Glossary
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Activist Art
Activist Art, sometimes known as Protest Art, is a genre that positions a wide variety of creative work as tools for addressing social and political issues. Pieces are often made in direct response to an issue and may be public in nature, whether included in literal protests, installed in unsanctioned locations, or containing subject matter that speaks to specific topics like racism, feminism, sexual orientation, gender issues, and more. Notable practitioners include the Guerilla Girls, Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold, and many, many more.
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Afrofuturism
Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic and philosophy that combines science fiction, fantasy, and history to explore African diasporic experiences and connect themes of reclamation, liberation, and predictions for the future through a Black cultural lens.
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Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist and activist. He grew up in northwest China, where his father, a poet, had been exiled by the government. The harsh conditions profoundly impacted Ai’s worldview. He moved to the U.S. to study art in 1981, then returned to China in 1993 when his father became ill.
Ai quickly established himself as a leading figure in Chinese contemporary art, and his work gained increasing international attention with seminal pieces like “Sunflower Seeds” (2010) at Tate Modern or his Study of Perspective series (1993-2017) in which the artist photographs his left hand giving the middle finger to institutions, landmarks, and monuments around the world.
As an activist, he has been critical of the Chinese government’s position on democracy and human rights. His provocative work and critiques led to his arrest in 2011 at the Beijing Capital International Airport, and he was detained for 81 days. Officials kept his passport until 2015, when he then left China and lived for a time in various parts of Europe. He eventually returned to China for a three-week visit with his son 10 years later, which he described as feeling like "a phone call suddenly reconnecting."
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anamorphic
In cinematography, anamorphic lenses intentionally distort an image, often by using unequal magnification and compressing images horizontally to capture a wider field of vision, which in post-production are “de-squeezed” to create a wider aspect ratio.
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Banksy
Banksy is a pseudonym for an England-based street artist, film director, and activist whose real name and identity remain unknown. Since the 1990s, he has captivated global audiences with his distinctively satirical, stenciled graffiti technique, often calling attention to political and social issues.
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bas-relief
A type of relief—or sculpture that projects from a two-dimensional background—in which the projection from the background surface is fairly shallow. The term comes from the Italian basso-relievo, or “low relief.”
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Bauhaus
The Bauhaus was a revolutionary school based in Germany, founded by architect Walter Gropius in 1919. The Bauhaus philosophy emphasized the unification of art, craft, design, and technology, and its emphasis on function eventually propelled modernist ideals into mass production with the motto “Art into Industry.”
Originally based in Weimar, the Bauhaus moved into a purpose-built school in Dessau in 1925. In 1930, it moved to Berlin, but increased political uncertainty led to its operating on a smaller scale, and it eventually closed in 1933 when the Third Reich took power. During its run, Bauhaus luminaries included Josef and Anni Albers, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and many more, many of whom emigrated to U.S. due to pressures in Germany. -
bioluminescence
Some living organisms have the ability to produce or emit light in a process called bioluminescence. These creatures are found both in marine habitats and on land.
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brutalism
The term “brutalism” was first coined by English architectural critic Reyner Banham, who observed the prominent, modern architectural style emerge especially in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. He derived the word from architect Le Corbusier’s use of raw concrete—beton brut in French—and it reflects how its arrival on the scene was viewed with major dismay by many. The style continues to divide opinion, known for its blocky use of industrial concrete and steel, typically in monumental, geometric forms best suited for civic and governmental buildings, universities, and public housing. Famous examples include Boston City Hall, London’s National Theatre, and the Breuer Building in New York City.
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color theory
A concept in visual art and design that explains the science of how people perceive color, the ways that hues interact with each other, how they can be combined, and what emotions, reactions, or messages they create.
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community art
Community art, which often overlaps with socially engaged work or social practice, is a form of art that engages the community—often collaborating with people who aren’t otherwise involved with the arts. Typically, a professional artist interacts with a group in the spirit of cultural democracy—the philosophy that everyone should feel empowered to make, experience, and participate in art, with no gatekeeping by central institutions or governments. Community art often takes the form of interactive or participatory projects and public art initiatives, such as murals. Community and socially engaged art practices can also overlap with activist art.
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Cubism
This approach was invented around 1907-08 by artists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, who represented reality by bringing different views of subjects like figures or objects together in the same picture, producing paintings that appear abstracted and fragmented. Cubism took hold as an avant-garde movement in Paris in the early 20th century, influencing innovations in literature, architecture, music, and performing arts.
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cyanotype
Cyanotype is a camera-less photography technique that involves laying an object, such as a flower, on paper coated with an iron-salt solution. The paper is then exposed to UV light and washed with water to create striking blue-and-white impressions.
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double exposure
Double exposure is a photographic technique invented with the use of film in which two or more exposures are combined in a single image. Film photography achieves this by exposing the film to light twice, capturing one underexposed image, and then rewinding the film to take another in the same frame. The dreamy or otherworldly aesthetic of this technique can also be achieved digitally.
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Dutch Golden Age painting
Approximately spanning the 17th century, the Dutch Golden Age refers to a period of history in what is today The Netherlands during which trade, colonization, and innovation was preeminent in Europe. Dutch painters like Johannes Vermeer, Frans Hals, Rembrandt van Rijn, Rachel Ruysch, and many more rose to prominence through a system of patronage. Unlike much Baroque painting being made during this time throughout other parts of Europe, Dutch artists emphasized more realistic, less romanticized themes like landscapes, maritime events, history painting, portraits, peasant scenes, and still lifes.
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encaustic
Encaustic translates from Greek to mean "to heat or burn." While the term is sometimes applied to various mediums that involve hot wax, the most well-known is encaustic painting. The technique mixes pigments with the molten material, the consistency of which can be altered by adding resin or oil to the wax.
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folk art
Folk art covers a range of visual art forms made in the context of folk culture. Some objects have a practical function, while others may be more decorative. Makers of folk art are typically trained with a local or popular tradition, rather than in the fine art tradition of a particular culture. Sometimes “naive art” is used to describe certain kinds of folk art, which is typically characterized as being made by someone who does not have a formal education or the training associated with a professional artist.
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fractals
The term “fractal” was coined by mathematician Benoit B. Mendelbrot and is derived from the Latin word fractus, meaning fragmented or broken. In mathematics, a fractal is any geometric shape with a “fractional dimension,” which relates to how the shape grows as its scale increases. Fractals form complex patterns that are self-similar—exactly replicating a part of itself—that scale infinitely. They are often employed in digital art using mathematical calculations to create visual representations of fractal objects.
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Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was born in Coyoacán, Mexico City, and rose to international acclaim for her portraits and self-portraits. She also made paintings inspired by Mexican artifacts, nature, and popular culture. Her folk art style explored themes of gender, class, and race in Mexican society, often incorporating autobiographical references.
In 1925, when she was 18 years old, a traffic accident left Kahlo in a full-body cast and confined to her bed for weeks. During this period, she developed some of the themes she is best known for in her work: pain, healing, and resolute honesty.
Kahlo also challenged traditional gender roles, frequently wearing trousers and other men’s garments. And she embraced her now iconic unibrow and mustache, portraying these characteristics boldly in her self-portraits in a fearless and radical embrace of her own identity. When the Louvre—the world’s largest art museum—acquired one of her works in 1939, she became the first Mexican artist in the storied institution’s collection.
The artist’s personal life has been the subject of fascination, especially her marriage to renowned Mexican artist Diego Rivera (1886-1957). Their tumultuous relationship captured the public imagination, and much of Kahlo’s work results from frank observation and her emotions during this time.
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glitch
Glitch art utilizes digital or analog errors, often referred to as glitches, for their aesthetic style. The errors are created or manipulated by corrupting digital data or physically altering electronic devices.
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Hokusai
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), known simply as Hokusai, was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist who lived during the Edo Period (1603-1868). He was a painter and printmaker best known for his woodblock series titled Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, which includes the iconic print, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.”
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hyperrealism
Hyperrealistic paintings and sculptures resemble high-resolution photographs and emphasize the artist’s technical proficiency. The style differs from photorealism in that artists don’t rely on copying a photograph exactly, often adding other elements and themes.
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impasto
Impasto is a painting technique that involves applying thick paint to a surface, usually emphasizing the visibility of brush strokes or palette knife marks. The word impasto is Italian for “mixed.”
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Impressionism
Impressionism is a movement that developed in France in the mid-19th century. Its seminal practitioners, like Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, and Berthe Morisot, broke the mode of painting at the time by employing small, visible brush strokes, a loose or open composition, and keen attention to accurately depicting light.
The term was coined—initially as an insult—by critic Louis Leroy after seeing the work “Impression, Sunrise” (1872) by Claude Monet at the First Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in April 1874.
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infrared
Infrared, or infrared light, is invisible to the human eye. Technically, it is electromagnetic radiation characterized by wavelengths longer than those of visible light but shorter than microwaves. Infrared technology can detect heat sources, such as night-vision devices that illuminate people or animals in the dark.
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kintsugi
Kintsugi (金継ぎ) is a Japanese term that translates to “golden joinery” and describes the art of repairing broken pottery using lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum to highlight cracks and breaks rather than obscure them. The practice is rooted in the philosophy that repair is an intrinsic part of the object’s history and should not be disguised.
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land art
The term Land Art is most often used to describe an art movement spurred in the 1960s and 1970s by artists like Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, Walter de Maria, Michael Heizer, Charles Ross, and others. Sometimes called Environmental Art or Earthworks, these monumental pieces employ the literal earth or the landscape as a medium, creating sculptures from rock and dirt. Smithson’s seminal “Spiral Jetty” (1970) or Heizer’s “Double Negative” (1969) involved removing or rearranging earth into geometric shapes, while Nancy Holt’s “Sun Tunnels” (1973-76) or Charles Ross’ “Star Axis” (1971-ongoing) involve unexpected forms installed within distinctive landscapes.
Land art and environmental art are also terms used to describe contemporary work that addresses nature and the climate crisis.
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letterpress
Letterpress is a relief-printing technique characterized by the production of many copies of an image or text by making repeated, direct impressions of an inked surface onto paper. The printmaker composes the images by arranging movable type or motifs on the “bed” of a printing press, rolling ink onto the raised surface of the image, and pressing the image against the paper to transfer the impression.
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light painting
Light painting is a long-exposure photography style in which the camera’s shutter is kept open while a light-emitting object moves around in the air. The resulting photo shows light that the appearance of being “drawn” to create messages or abstract forms.
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lithography
Lithography is a type of planographic printmaking process in which a flat surface is used to print marks and non-printing areas at the same level. A design is drawn onto a flat stone or metal plate and affixed with a chemical reaction.
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macro
Macro, short for macroscopic, is a length scale in which objects are large enough to see with the naked eye without needing magnification. It is the opposite of microscopic, which does require special equipment. Macro is a popular technique in photography, in which close-up images are captured of small subjects like insects and flowers.
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Magical Realism
In 1925, German photographer, art historian, and critic Franz Roh coined the term “magic realism” to describe a genre of painting that emerged following World War I. A reaction against the abstraction and the avant-garde that had risen to prominence before the war, Magic Realism embodied what was considered a “return to order” with more realistic subjects portrayed in a dreamlike manner. Among the movement’s most notable figures, Giorgio de Chirico is perhaps the most widely known.
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Minimalism
Developed in the U.S. in the 1960s, Minimalism is a form of abstract art typified by artworks that utilize simple geometric shapes and refer to the square or rectangle of the surface itself.
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photorealism
Photorealistic artists reproduce a photograph with highly proficient technical skills. This style differs from hyperrealism in that artists typically do not add emotion or intent to the work, preferring to focus on faithfully copying the original image.
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pointillism
Pointillism is a technique in painting in which small strokes or dots of color are applied to a surface, which visually blend together when viewed from a distance.
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Pompeii
The ancient city of Pompeii, near Naples in southern Italy, is known for its Roman ruins but was built upon a much older city that had been in use for centuries. In 79 C.E., a cataclysmic eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius covered the entire city in 13 to 20 feet of volcanic ash and pumice. It was a wealthy town, home to between 10,000 and 20,000 residents at the time it was destroyed.
Pompeii offers a unique snapshot of Roman life that appears frozen in place at the moment it was buried, preserving a complete city’s architecture, artwork, and infrastructure. Excavations continue today at the Archaeology Park of Pompeii, where visitors can explore the ancient ruins.
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Pop art
The Pop art movement emerged in the U.S. and U.K. in the mid- to late-1950s, spurred by artists’ interest in challenging traditional fine art styles. By incorporating elements of pop culture, artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, or Richard Hamilton seized on recognizable aesthetics typically associated with comic books, advertising, or banal or mass-produced kitsch.
Lichtenstein, for example, made large-scale paintings influenced by comic book frames. Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans tie in an American pantry staple, and Richard Hamilton’s use of collage incorporated magazine imagery into quirky and ironic commentary on mid-century society.
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public domain
Creative materials, such as film, music, or art, are considered in the public domain when they are no longer protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark, or patents. In the U.S., for most works created after 1978, copyright protection lasts the lifetime of the author, plus 70 years. When a copyright term expires, a work enters the public domain, and anyone can use it without permission from the author.
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quilling
Quilling is an art form involving paper cut into strips, which are rolled, shaped, and adhered together to create intricate, decorative designs.
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realism
In art, realism refers to the unembellished, detailed portrayal of contemporary life or nature, focusing on close observation of actual people or events rather than idealized or imaginative representations.
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Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1699), often referred to simply as Rembrandt, was a renowned Dutch Golden Age painter known for seminal works like “The Night Watch” (1642), “The Return of the Prodigal Son” (1661-1669), and around 40 self-portraits. In meticulous, atmospheric oil paintings, he depicted a wide range of subjects, an approach that was unique during this period. Genre scenes, allegories, portraits, biblical tableaux, animal studies, and more comprise his wide-ranging practice. His works are in the collections of numerous notable museums around the world such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and others.
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Renaissance
“Renaissance” is a French word meaning “rebirth,” used to describe a period in Europe between 1400 and 1600 when art and culture revived an interest in classical wisdom and style. The Renaissance began in Italy when artistic styles shifted from abstract decorations and forms used in the medieval period to more naturalistic representations of people and space. The period was also marked by the rising status of both the artist and individual patron.
Renaissance themes drew on classical religion and aesthetics of ancient Italy (Rome) and Greece (Athens), which spread quickly to other European countries. The High Renaissance (1500-1530) was a brief period during which the most exceptional work was produced in Italy, primarily in Rome, Florence, and the Papal States. Notable Italian Renaissance figures include Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Michelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio, and Marietta Tintoretto.
In other parts of Europe, similar artistic trends emerged in Spain and in what art historians call the Northern Renaissance because it occurred in nations north of the Alps. This movement encompasses the Low Countries—French Flanders and modern-day Belgium and The Netherlands—German, English, French, Polish Renaissances. Notable artists from these regions include Albrecht Dürer, Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Paul Rubens, Pieter and Jan Breughel the Elder, and Hans Holbein.
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rotoscoping
In filmmaking, rotoscoping is a process of creating animated sequences by tracing over live-action footage frame-by-frame. The technique allows animators to create characters who move just like people do in reality.
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Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist known for his technical skill and bizarre, striking, or absurd imagery. Major themes include dreams and the subconscious, sexuality, religion, science, and his own life and relationships.
Dalí pursued painting, sculpture, film, graphic arts, photography, and design. He sometimes collaborated with other artists, and he also wrote a wide range of fiction, poetry, and essays. His most famous work is “The Persistence of Memory” (1931) in which clocks melt in a desert landscape and a fleshy, alien creature in the center approximates an unsettling portrayal of the artist’s face in profile.
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steampunk
A subgenre of science fiction, steampunk incorporates a retro-futuristic aesthetic inspired by 19th-century steam-powered machinery and the Victorian-era romantic view of science, technology, and industrial progress.
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stippling
Stippling is a drawing technique used to create a pattern that simulates solidity or shading using small dots in various densities. The practice is typically associated with black-and-white ink works.
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surreal
Surrealism is a 20th-century artistic, literary, and philosophical movement that celebrated the poetic, revolutionary, and irrational and explored the workings of the mind, such as dreams.
The word “surrealist” was coined by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in the preface to a play performed in 1917, referring to the notion of being “beyond reality.” André Breton, who led a group of artists and poets in Paris, defined the philosophy in his Surrealist Manifesto (1924) as “pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought.”
Notable figures of the movement include Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Leonora Carrington, and Joan Miró.
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tilt-shift
In photography, tilt-shift refers to the use of camera movements to change the orientation of the lens relative to the image plane. The tilt effect alters the focal plane—the area within the frame that can be in focus—and the shift effect alters an image’s perspective. The term sometimes refers to a shallow depth of field simulated with digital post-processing.
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tondo
A Renaissance term derived from the Italian word rotondo, or “round,” tondo refers to a circular painting or relief.
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trompe l'oeil
Trompe l’oeil is a technique that creates the illusion of three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional plane. The French phrase translates to “the deceive the eye” and is often employed in murals in which painted objects or spaces appear real. This may range from portrayals of a decorative niche on a smooth wall to elaborate sidewalk chalk drawings. When completed successfully, there is the effect of an optical illusion, making viewers question the boundary between the artwork and reality.
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ukiyo-e
The word ukiyo, which translates to “floating world,” was used to describe a hedonistic lifestyle in Edo (modern-day Tokyo) under the Tokugawa shogunate, which took control in 1603. The city’s economy flourished, and its chōnin class—laborers, merchants, and craftsmen—indulged in entertainment like kabuki theatre, geisha, and the city’s pleasure districts.
Ukiyo-e developed as a genre of Japanese art popular from the 17th to 19th centuries, during which artists focused on woodblock printing and painting to represent scenes from history, folk tales, female figures, erotica, kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, flora and fauna, and landscapes. Ukiyo-e pieces were popular with the increasingly wealthy chōnin class, who decorated their homes with the work.
Political reforms in the mid-19th century led to the suppression of outward displays of luxury, and artists began focusing on nature scenes. Two of the most prominent artists of the late-era movement were Hokusai and Hiroshige, and the landscape ukiyo-e genre came to dominate Western perceptions of the movement.
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vanitas
Popularized in 17th-century Europe, vanitas—which means “vanity” in Latin—came to define a genre of primarily still-life painting. Highly symbolic subject matter such as wilting flowers, insects, tables strewn with fruit and game, and human skulls nodded to the transience of life. Akin to “memento mori,” which means “remember you will die,” vanitas paintings remind the viewer that one’s earthly pleasures, power, or wealth will all inevitably mean little after death.
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Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was a prolific Dutch painter who created approximately 2,100 artworks, about a third of which he made in the last two years of his life. He is known for his iconic renderings of sunflowers, landscapes, interiors, and self-portraits in oil using an impressionistic, impasto brush stroke technique.
Posthumously one of the most famous and recognizable artists in the world, van Gogh was virtually unknown during his lifetime. He traveled extensively throughout Europe, spending time in Belgium, France, and England. His brother, Theo, operated a gallery in London, and he introduced Vincent to art in the city’s museums. While Theo attempted to sell Vincent’s paintings, he was unable to find many buyers.
Van Gogh struggled with his mental health, often suffering from psychotic episodes, delusions, and blackouts. During one of these occurrences, spurred by an argument with fellow artist Paul Gaugin (1848-1903), he famously cut off his own ear, although he later could recall nothing about the event. He used painting to express his emotions and way of being in the world, and one of his most iconic self-portraits, “Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear” (1889) portrays the artist in a vulnerable period during the last year of his life.
The artist’s work is housed in major museum collections around the world and continues to be a popular subject of literature and cinema, including Irving Stone’s novel Lust for Life and a 1956 film based on the book, the 2017 animated film Loving Vincent, and the 2018 feature film At Eternity’s Gate.
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WPA/Federal Art Project
During the Great Depression, when jobs were few and far between, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms included an agency called the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The agency employed people to build public structures like schools, roads, park buildings, and more.
Under the directorship of Holger Cahill, a writer and curator of folk art, the WPA also employed artists and designers for the Federal Art Project (FAP), providing work relief by commissioning artwork around the country. The WPA/FAP established 100 community centers around the country—many in rural places where art and artists were typically not focused. Between 1935 and 1943, an unprecedented hundreds of thousands of artworks were produced by artists with the support of the program.
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zoetropes
Zoetropes are an early form of animation technology made from a cylinder with slits cut vertically in its sides. Inside the cylinder, a row of images is placed sequentially. The device is activated by manually spinning the cylinder and peering through the slits, which creates the illusion that the images inside are moving.
First invented by mathematician William Horner in 1834, the first versions failed to gain popularity, and the technology was forgotten until 1867 when a man named William Lincoln patented the “Zoetrope.” Milton Bradley began selling the contraption, and by 1868, more than 70 image strips were available for purchase.