The Flemish Primitives: The Masterpieces
Painting, graphic art, and sculpture produced in an area similar in size to that of modern Belgium and Luxembourg, formerly known as the Southern Netherlands. Flemish art assumed a major role in the history of European art during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. The largest county in the Southern Netherlands was Flanders and the term Flanders may be used to refer to the whole of the Southern Netherlands, just as Holland has often given its name to the whole of the Northern Netherlands.
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The leading American museum devoted to the modern tradition in the visual arts. At its founding in 1929, New York’s MoMA represented an original concept in the notion of a “museum,” since almost none then collected modern art. Only the Washington, D.C., establishment founded by Duncan Phillips preceded MoMA in specializing in the recent past. However, the Phillips Collection (as it is now known) includes a small old master collection as well as significant representation of impressionism and other nineteenth-century tendencies. By contrast, from the beginning MoMA focused exclusively on the work of postimpressionists, particularly Cézanne, and their artistic descendants. (To this day, however, the Phillips Collection boasts a much finer representation of early American modernism.) MoMA also led the way in presenting photography, film, and design within an art museum context.
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The building of the Louvre in its present form was begun in 1546 by François I , who also founded the royal collections, acquiring works by Leonardo , Raphael , and Titian . Louis XIV was both the most enthusiastic developer of the site and the most heroic art collector (buying in 1661 much of the Mazarin Collection that contained many paintings owned by Charles I of England), and under him the collection was briefly moved into the Louvre. When Versailles was established, however, the collection was dispersed.
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Here you can find some basics for understanding conceptual art.
Well, about book about conceptual my recommendations are:
Conceptual Art A&I (Art and Ideas)
Conceptual Art (Themes and Movements)
Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology
A 1960s innovation prioritizing idea over execution. At its extreme, a conceptual art work may consist only of a brief written description or set of instructions for fabrication. However, in practice, conceptual art intermingled freely with other 1960s and 1970s tendencies, such as minimalism, earth art, and performance art, as well as politically oriented art. It has also affected the underlying ethos of later art.
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Term referring to art employing videotape as its medium. As a flexible technique, it encompasses a considerable range of styles, approaches, and intentions, as well as varied presentation formats. Like performance art, video art gives its practitioners the opportunity to exploit duration in combination with the spatial concerns that have always been at the heart of visual arts.
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Jackson Pollock
Painter, printmaker, and occasional sculptor. The iconic abstract expressionist, he forged a singular style of great expressive power. Skeins of dripped, poured, and flung paint dominate his key all-over paintings of the late 1940s and early 1950s.
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Painter, draughtsman and designer, active in Switzerland and England, son of (1) Hans Holbein (i). He is best known as the most important portrait painter in England during the Reformation, although he began his career in Basle, where he worked mainly as a painter of altarpieces and designer of woodcuts. Dissatisfaction with patronage in Switzerland led him to visit England in 1526–8, where, through Erasmus, he met Sir Thomas More and his circle. On returning to Basle, he completed projects that he had begun before his trip to England, undertook commissions for the city authorities and produced designs for stained glass and goldsmiths’ work. In 1532 he returned to England, where he worked almost exclusively as a portrait painter, mainly under the patronage of King Henry VIII and his courtiers.
1. Life and work.
(i) Training and early works in The Hague, to 1425.
According to a 16th-century Ghent tradition, represented by van Vaernewijck and Lucas d’Heere, Jan trained with his brother Hubert. Pietro Summonte’s assertion (1524) that he began work as an illuminator is supported by the fine technique and small scale of most of Jan’s works, by manuscript precedents for certain of his motifs, and by his payment in 1439 for initials in a book (untraced) for Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. Jan is first documented in The Hague in August 1422 as an established artist with an assistant and the title of ‘Master’, working for John III, Count of Holland (John of Bavaria; reg 1419–25), who evidently discovered the artist while he was bishop (1389–1417) of the principality of Liège. Jan became the court’s official painter and was paid, with a second assistant when the work increased in 1423, continuously, probably until the count’s death in January 1425.
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How beauty worked within the general context of classical Greek life. Then
beauty was deemed a gift of the gods and was often prized
accordingly in religious ritual. Perhaps the most striking example
of this is the phenomenon of the beauty competition (kallisteion),
which figures in many myths and is often adopted and adapted in
literature. The most popular role for the myth of the beauty contest
is aetiological.
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By the New Kingdom, the quality of Egyptian “furniture” (ḫtwt) was renowned throughout the ancient world. It was often sent as tribute to the rulers of neighboring countries. Its origins can be found in the early Predynastic period. Then, poorly constructed furniture was made from roughly cut branches that were simply lashed together with rope; the timber was cut and formed with stone and flint tools. Flint knives have been found from that period with serrated teeth along their cutting edge, which enabled the woodworker to use them like a simple saw.
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