The art world is an exciting treasure trove with thousands of terms that describe artistic styles and movements. They educate and enlighten us and are essential when clarifying often complicated artistic concepts. For this article “The D, E, F of Fine Art Terms” I selected a few of them and share their origins and leading artists. Topics include Dada, De Stijl, Eco-Art, Expressionism, Fauvism, Futurism and more. This article follows “The A, B, C of Fine Art Terms”.
Explore this diverse wellspring of knowledge, especially those terms that are most closely aligned with your artistic vision. I hope you enjoy reading this and will learn something new about art in general and your own artistic expression. Perhaps you will inspired to incorporate some of the elements you find here in your own artwork.
D
Dada / Dadaism / Duchamp
Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde that emerged in the early 20th century. It is largely considered to have been initated by Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” exhibited at the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in 1917. It became an official movement at the Cabaret Voltaire in February, 1916, in Zürich. Dadaism as a loose network of artists spread across Europe and other countries, with New York becoming the primary center of Dada in the United States. Dadaism flourished in Paris after 1920. Dadaist activities lasted until the mid 1920s.
Artists in the Dada movement rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society. They chose to express nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest in their artworks.
An artist closely associated with this movement is Marcel Duchamp. His “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2”, shown above, depicts the mechanistic motion of a nude, with superimposed facets, similar to motion pictures. It shows elements of both the fragmentation and synthesis of the Cubists, and the movement and dynamism of the Futurists. Read more about “Futurism” under “F” below.
About his painting “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2”, Duchamp wrote, “I wanted to create a static image of movement: movement is an abstraction, a deduction articulated within the painting, without our knowing if a real person is or isn’t descending an equally real staircase.”Duchamp also wrote: “I have drawn people’s attention to the fact that art is a mirage. A mirage, just like the oasis that appears in the desert. It is very beautiful, until the moment when you die of thirst, obviously. But we do not die of thirst in the field of art. The mirage has substance.”
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De Stijl
De Stijl was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden, a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. This movement consisted of artists and architects who advocated pure abstraction and a reduction to the essentials of form and color. Their compositions were primarily simplified to vertical and horizontal and their color choices were limited to black, white and primary colors.
Piet Mondrian was one of the founders of the De Stijl art movement. He named his non-representational art form “Neoplasticism” and it became new “pure plastic art”. Mondrian believed this was necessary in order to create “universal beauty”. The artist is known for having defined a new reality in art. His influence on the course of abstract painting is indisputable and included major styles such as Color Field painting, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism.
Diptych
A diptych is an artwork consisting of two pieces or panels that together create a single art piece. In medieval times, panels were often hinged so that they could be closed and the artworks could therefore be protected.
Diptych artwork may consist of paintings, photographs, drawings, carvings, or any flat piece of artwork. it is common for both pieces to be the same size. It can appear in a portrait or landscape format. Diptychs can be found in many different styles of art.
Andy Warhol’s “Marilyn Diptych” is one example and is one of the artist’s most recognizable works of art. Many art authorities have suggested that Warhol’s relation between the left side of the canvas and the right side of the canvas was intended to symbolize Marilyn Monroe’s life and death.
While a diptych incorporates two pieces, adding another panel would transform the diptych into a triptych, a topic for a future article.
E
Environmental Art
Environmental Art embraces a variety of practices and movements such as, and not limited to, Land Art, Earth Art, Sustainable Art, and Conceptual Art. As a movement, environmental art emerged in the 1960s. The leading artists associated with this type of art included Jean-Max Albert, Piotr Kowalski, Nils Udo and Robert Smithson.
Environmental Art primarily addresses environmental issues and spans diverse scientific, social, and political areas. It encompasses topics such as climate change and the climate movement. The manner in which environmental artists approach this artform is very diverse. They also manifest a versatility in using a wide range of media, techniques and styles.
What is most significant today is how these artists are concerned about ecology, health, and human rights issues. Environmental artists are also activists and can be found in connection to conservation and “green” politics.
Many environmental artists create art for a particular place and it remains permanent and cannot be moved. Since this eliminates the opportunity for its display in museums and galleries environmental artists often create photographs of their installations that can be exhibited, sold and collected as works of art.
Eco-Art
Eco-Art, Ecological Art, or Ecoart is a subcategory of environmental art. Artists who use this art practice embrace a commitment to social justice and raise awareness about nature, the ecosystems, the environmental forces and materials that demand our attention and the damaged environmental areas of concern.
Artists who create art using recycled materials fit into this category of Eco-Art. One contemporary artist is Natalie Oliphant, natalieoliphantart.ca. She has an extraordinary talent for transforming body forms and mannequins and other discarded items into new life-affirming sculptures.
Natalie stresses the importance of recycling and explains, “I experimented with supplies to find what worked and what I could discard. I have amassed junk from many, many generous people and thrift stores. My mission is to ‘save it from the landfill’. My storage room looks kind of like a landfill but I see it as a room of treasure.”
Expressionism
The style of Expressionism is a modernist movement that originated around the beginning of the 20th century in Northern Europe, principally in Germany and Austria.
Expressionism refers to an “artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person.
One artist we associate as having influenced Expressionism is Vincent van Gogh. His style of self-portraits that implemented intense brushwork and facial expression greatly impacted the portraits created by Expressionist painters such as Emil Nolde, Erich Heckel, and Lovis Corinth. Edvard Munch was also a strong influence on Expressionist artists as was African art. Groups of Expressionist painters, includes Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) named after Wassily Kandinsky’s painting.
Expressionist artists present the world from a subjective perspective. Their focus is to evoke moods or ideas rather than capture physical reality and convey emotional expressions.
F
Fauvism
Fauvism is the style of “les Fauves” (French for “the wild beasts”), a group of early 20th-century modern artists who exalted a sense rebellious explosion. The painting methods used by these artists are characterized as wild brush work and strident colors. With unbridled exuberance and spontaneity the artists applied pure, brilliant color straight from the paint tubes. Another feature is that their subject matter retained a high degree of simplification and abstraction.
The leaders of Fauvism were Henri Matisse and André Derain. As you see in Matisse’s painting “Woman With A Hat” he emphasized tactile painterly qualities and strong bursts of color.
Like the Impressionist artists before them the Fauves painted directly from nature; however, they strongly departed from capturing the representational realistic values they observed in the natural world in favor of amplifying emotion.
While Fauvism as a style began around 1904 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1905–1908, and had only three exhibitions.
Futurism
Futurism was an Italian art movement of the early 20th century, which aimed to capture the dynamism and energy of the modern world in art. The key focus for Futurist artists was to represent a vision of the future. They denounced the past and what they believed to be outdated, traditional notions about art. They adamantly believed they would advance change through their artistic expressions.
Futurists were well versed in the latest developments in science and philosophy and particularly fascinated with aviation and cinematography. The Futurists worked across a wide range of art forms including painting, architecture, sculpture, literature, theatre and music.
Futurist artists emphasized speed and often portrayed urban landscapes and new technologies including trains, cars and airplanes. They developed techniques to express speed, dynamism and motion using blurred imagery and repetition. They also made use of lines of force – a method which they had adopted from the Cubists.
One of the famous Futurist artists was Umberto Boccioni who created paintings and sculptures. With “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space” he conveys his belief that “plastic dynamism” could only be achieved through a synthesis of relative motion (movement in relation to an environment) and absolute motion (dynamism inherent to an object).
Thanks Mrs /Ms Phillip. Your information is always appreciated. Pls stay Safe, the artistic world needs you.
Thank you Alix. Stay safe and keep creating inspirational works of art.
Thank you for dealing with the challenges inherent in creating concise articulation of the key, the essence of the words we use to make communication about art, aesthetics, and art history meaningful. That concise approach has significat limitations, that you know. I am not only impressed with the work challenges you undertake; concisely, do you ever sleep?
Type “A”, high need for achievement, broad sweep of interests…the Renaisance Woman – in slacks?
All the best.
Ted James
Thank you Theordore. I highly recommend having a passion for what one does, being an early riser, consuming a nutritional diet, and getting plenty of daily exercise.