New Pages Added to The Art Story

The birth of Realism in art is often given a specific time and place - France, 1840 - from whence it spread (and transformed) as a pan-European response to the age of industrialization. It remains, however, an open-ended concept that has taken on a uniquely national bent when applied to American art. What might be generally agreed is that Realism is a tendency whereby the artist in question has either subverted, or overlooked altogether, Academy (or typical orthodox) standards in pursuit of a more "authentic", or "relevant", figurative art. Realist art typically responds to contemporary events and situations, sometimes as a form of social commentary or documentation. Not so much a movement, then, American Realism is a tendency that has traveled the timeline of American history since its birth as an independent country. Indeed, through its various manifestations, Realism has become an important instrument in shaping America's self-identity as a nation.

Definition of Art for Art's Sake idea and uses in the history of visual art.

Louis Aragon was a French poet and writer for several revolutionary and avant-garde journals. He was involved with Dada in Paris before helping found Surrealism in 1924.

Richard Morris Hunt is widely credited with transforming American architectural design and became one of the most recognized architects in America.

Lowry is perhaps England's most instantly recognizable painter whose signature "matchstick men" go about their business within industrial backgrounds.

Peter Halley is an abstract artist known for his geometric paintings with the use of intense day-glo colors.

Stéphane Mallarmé is considered one of the greatest French poets of the later nineteenth century. He was also a champion of many of the avant-garde artists of the time, including the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

The pharmacy mogul Albert Barnes was a philanthropic art collector who built the world famous Barnes Foundation of modern art.

One of the founders of Berlin Dada, Hausmann is credited with formulating the technique of photomontage with his companion Hannah Höch.

Dehner left an indelible mark on twentieth century American sculpture - her most famous pieces are totem-like structures that incorporate abstract symbols and place stress on contour over mass.

Haring brought elements of popular culture to museums and showed how seemingly simple and even cartoon elements of the self-taught may be appreciated.

Duane Hanson was an American artist and sculptor, who worked primarily in Photorealism, a Pop-influenced style. Best known for his uncanny, life-size depictions of solitary tourists, derelicts, and housewives, his work explores social issues and the complexities of American identity.

Del Sarto was the most important Florentine painter of the early 16th century buyilding on Leonardo's sfumato technique by introducing a warmer and more vivid range of colours influencing the later Mannerist style.

Formalism is a critical and creative position which holds that an artwork's value lies in the relationships it establishes between different compositional elements such as color, line, and texture, which ought to be considered apart from all notions of subject-matter or context. Although the term primarily indicates a way of interpreting rather than making art, certain painters and sculptors, from Paul Cézanne to Jackson Pollock, have been associated with a Formalist approach. Originating in the mid-19th century, the ideas of formalism gained currency across the late nineteenth century with the rise of abstraction in painting, reaching new heights in the early 20th century with movements such as Cubism. During the mid-20th century, the North American critic Clement Greenberg defined a Formalist approach with unprecedented levels of detail and rigor. Since then, the term has been associated primarily with him, and with the artists he championed, such as the Abstract Expressionists.

Daniel Spoerri founded Nouveau Réalisme movement, and practiced an existentialist compulsion to directly appropriate reality.

The art critic Lucy Lippard played a key role in the development of Conceptual Art and Feminist Art in the 1960s and 1970s.

The French painter Jean Metzinger was a member of the Section d'Or group of Salon Cubist artist and he co-wrote the first major treatise, Du Cubisme.

Clarke is one of Ireland's greatest modern artists producing legendary stained glass windows and book illustrations.

The architect and artist Alberti is considered the father of Early Renaissance art theory and the archetypal "universal man".

The artist Komar and Melamid subverted the political and cultural systems of their native Soviet Union and later built their art upon their fascination with the vagaries of childhood memory.

Mercedes Matter was an American painter and a leading figure in Abstract Expressionism, working alongside the de Koonings, Pollock, Guston, and Kline. She was also the founder of The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.

Influenced by Cubism, American artists like Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth used precise lines and abstracted planes to depict vernacular architecture and the industrial landscape.

The idiosyncratic artist Richard Artschwager confounded art categories and he excelled in transforming the mundane into objects and images that became both familiar and alien.

The French painter Charles Gleyre was famous for works based on classical parables, and as the teacher of the future Impressionists.

Flemish painter Hans Memling developed the realistic representation of human figures, architectural constructions, and landscapes.

The St Ives School included artists Barbara Hepworth, Naum Gabo, Ben Nicholson, and others, who led to great innovation in British modern painting, sculpture, and ceramics, among other art forms.

Kerry James Marshall has spent his career as an artist working against marginalization, injecting Blackness into the grand narrative of art, seen through his symbolic, allegorical paintings.

Paul Eluard was a French poet, and one of the original participants in the Surrealism movement, forming strong ties with the likes of Breton, Aragon and Ernst.

The phrase "avant-garde" was adapted to apply to the work of artists that worked on the social, political, and cultural revolutionary potential of much modern art.

Jules Bastien-Lepage - or the "painter of peasants" as he was sometime known - expanded the vocabulary of French modernism and naturalism to include rural landscape and portraiture.

Graves is best known as an introspective and intensely spiritual artist who brought the influence of East Asian aesthetics and philosophy to American art.

The Group of Seven, or The Algonquin School, was Canada's first internationally recognized art movement that focused on the beauty of the their country's landscape.

Rogier van der Weyden, important painter of Flemish Northern Renaissance, is celebrated for his ability to represent intense emotions.

French designer Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann revolutionized fine furniture as an art form in and of itself leading the Art Deco movement.

The Academy of Art was the name of institutions in Europe that usually promoted the historical methods of painting and sculpture.

Boyd was one of Australia's most prolific modern artists who's works conveyed his deep concern for humanitarian matters and the natural environment.

The paintings and engravings of The Ancients are amongst the most powerful works of Romantic and naturalistic art produced in Britain during the 19th century.

Tobey was a legendary wanderer of the Americas, Europe, and the Far East in pirsuit of a highly personalized conception of abstract painting.

The African American Edmonia Lewis' sculptures powerfully depicted popular subject matter for 19th century American audiences.

Oscar Wilde was a nineteenth-century Irish poet and playwright, one of the most influential and celebrated. Associated with the Aesthetic Movement, he connected to the visual arts of his time, especially via Whistler and Ruskin.

Kenny Scharf is an American graffiti artist who was an integral member of the 1980s East Village art scene. His colorful paintings depict pop culture figures and science fiction backdrops.

Houdon was the preeminent sculptor of the age of Enlightenment making portraits of greats like Voltaire and George Washington.

One of the founding fathers of Cubism, Gleizes was in equal parts artist, theoretician and philosopher.

Dutch Golden Age painter Pieter de Hooch is renowned for interiors and courtyards featuring sophisticated spatial arrangements and virtuoso atmospheric lighting effects.

The expressionist artist Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was one of the four founding members of the Die Brücke group, that rejected restrictive social and aesthetic conventions.

Félix Vallotton was a major figure of the French avant-garde group Les Nabis. Recognized for his interest in decorative aesthetics, Vallotton painted landscapes, still lifes, and portraits and was heralded for his inventive use of woodcut printing.

Graffiti artist and prankster Banksy utilizes satire, subversion, dark humor to create resonant social, political, and humanist messages.

Painting in the open air was started in the Renaissance, and reached its height by the Impressionists.

Painting in the open air was started in the Renaissance, and reached its height by the Impressionists.

Roni Horn is an American contemporary artist and writer who probes the concepts of art and identity.

The American photographer Lorna Simpson investigates the complex and convoluted permutations of stereotypes and tropes of American racism.

Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, designer, inventor, and writer. He is best known for his designs of geodesic domes, such as the ones at Disney's Epcot Center and the Montreal Biosphere.

Burri was a pre-eminent Italian painter and sculptor whose multi-layered canvasses focused on experimentation and process rather than personal experience.

Ambroise Vollard was an important modernist dealer, collector, and arts patron who advanced Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Expressionism, influenced such artists as Cézanne, Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Picasso.

The African-American assemblage artist Betye Saar makes works powerfully spanning the past, present, and future and exploring the black, female, and spiritual.

Henry Hobson Richardson, of "Richardsonian Romanesque" architectural style, combined medieval-like exteriors with innovative modern elements.

The artist, curator, Guggenheim advisor, museum director, and collector Hilla Rebay advanced modern and abstract in the United States.

David Hare was an American sculptor known for his Surrealism and his connection to Abstract Expressionism.

The American painter William Merritt Chase brought Impressionism to America, disseminating its methods through his works and teachings.

The Hague School took its name from the coastal city where a group of Dutch artists painted powerful rural landscapes and scenes of coastal life.

Louise Bourgeois's often sexual and dark boldness of subject matter revolutionized feminist-inspired body art and the development of installation art.

The term Grand Manner refers to a style of portraiture that emerged in Britain during the 18th century and was popular for in the United States.

Severini was one of the most progressive of all the twentieth-century Italian artists. An early and important figure within the Futurist movement, the Paris-based Severini produced unique works that, through their emphasis on urban Parisian scenes (rather than machines), broadened the thematic possibilities for the movement. Having exhausted his commitment to Futurism, and to the French avant-gardes' penchant for pictorial deconstruction, he shifted his interest to Neo-Classicism; a move that saw him aligned with the interwar "Return to Order" movement. His modernist credentials were tested somewhat through his associations with the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini's "Third Rome" project (the dream of establishing a New Roman Empire), for which he provided murals and mosaics for architectural structures inspired by imperial Rome. In later years, however, Severini was "reborn" through his new commitment to the Catholic faith which saw the artist produce religious mosaics so finely skilled they earned him the title: "Father of Modern Mosaics". Complementing his considerable achievements as a painter and mosaicist, Severini proved an accomplished polemicist, publishing theoretical essays and books on the art of painting throughout his long career.

George Maciunas was a founding member of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers. He is most famous for organizing and performing happenings and for assembling a series of highly influential artists' multiples.

Jean-Michel Basquiat emerged in New York as a gritty, street-smart graffiti artist crossing over from downtown origins to art gallery stardom.

The American painter Nell Blaine is best known for her lyrical realism, blending figuration with abstraction's structural vocabulary and energy. A prominent artist in 1940s New York, she studied with Hans Hofmann and worked through a major disability through much of her career.

Isaac Levitan ushered in a golden age of Russian landscape painting with canvases charged with emotional and spiritual energy.

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler was a German art dealer, gallery owner and champion of Cubism. Kahnweiler is credited as one of the first people to truly appreciate the early works of Picasso, Braque, Léger and the success of such artists was highly influenced by Kahnweiler's purchase and promotion of these works.

John Millais Everett was an English painter and illustrator, and one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Millais earned both acclaim and a reputation for scandal because of his realistic depiction of relious figures.

Jasper Johns initiated a dialogue with the viewer and their cultural context through his artistic exploration of how people see the things around them.

Baudelaire was a highly influential poet and a key figure in the development of modern art.

Pussy Riot is an all-female Russian punk rock group, which was brought to international attention after the government arrested and imprisoned three of its members for protesting in an Orthodox cathedral. Pussy Riot's lyrics align with activist art; advocating for Feminism, LGBT rights, and opposing Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Louis Daguerre is one of the fathers of photography having invented the daguerreotype process in which a shorter exposure time is used to chemically develop a photographic image. This revolutionazed the medium and allowed many thousands of people to use personal cameras.

Exciting and unique, Yoshitomo Nara's children with piercing eyes have gained a cult following around the world. His works transform innocent images of wide-eyed characters and infuses them with horror and violence.

The Impressionists painters, such as Monet, Renoir, and Degas, created a new way of painting by using loose, quick brushwork and light colors to show how thing appeared to the artists at a particular moment: an "impression" of what they were seeing and feeling.

The groundbreaking work of Mikhail Larionov helped to revolutionize Russian art in the early 20th century.

Jeff Koons is the anti-modernist, a shrewd, self-proclaimed crowd-pleaser and avid promoter of his own work.

Collage was first employed in fine art in the context of Cubism, and has since been enormously influential, impacting not only drawing and painting but also attitudes to sculpture.

The performance and body artist Cassils sculpts, trains, and transforms their body to explore various topics such as identity, power, and abuse.

Gertrude Stein was an American writer and supporter of the arts whose Paris salons were key sites for avant-garde art in the early twentieth century. She built one of the earliest collections of modern art, including works by Matisse, Picasso, Gris, and others.

Beaux Arts architecture was popularized in Paris in the nineteenth century. The style became popular worldwide, including in America, before Art Deco became the prevailing style.

Brutalism was a movement in modern architecture responsible for some of the most striking building designs of the twentieth century.

In 1980s East Village of New York City young artists, misfits, and rebels came together to create graffiti, collage, and DIY sculpture.

Matthew Barney creates films based on performance and body art, most notably in his Drawing Restraint series and the five-film Cremaster Cycle.

Vivian Maier is often referred to as the Mary Poppins of Street Photography as she was working as a nanny while creating an large and imaginitive collection of photographs.

Relational Aesthetics focuses on artwork that produces a temporary environment or event in which viewers could participate in order to assimilate and comprehend the artist's message or idea.

Roger Fry was a scholar of the old masters and French Impressionism, and also a champion of early-20th century British modern art. He coined the term "Post-Impressionism" and he was also a painter himself.

The feminist artist Suzanne Lacy works across the spectrum of media to affect real, impactful change in the world.

Foster is arguably the world's most influential living architect recognized chiefly for his jewel-like modern designs of steel and glass.

George Brecht's artworks and musical compositions offered a different edge than the artists of the time and Neo-Dada peers. And he made important works constructed from everyday objects designed for viewer interaction.

Shepard Fairey is one of the most influential and best-known Street and Graffiti artist who became more widely known in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, specifically for his Barack Obama "Hope" poster.

André Masson was one of the pioneers of Surrealism. He specialized in dreamscapes of writhing mythological figures and tortured natural forms.

Guillaume Apollinaire was a French writer and art critic who advanced the avant-garde Cubists including Pablo Picasso, André Breton and Henri Rousseau. He is also credited with coining the term "Surrealism."

Assemblage is a style of sculpture inspired by the idea of introducing pre-existing, non-art objects into an art context. Although one can find precedents for the approach in the work of Duchamp and Picasso, it flourished as a tendency in the 1950s and 1960s, and continues to be a prominent technique today.

Sean Scully is an Irish-American painter who creates abstracted architectural constructions and emotionally-charged canvases that are often painted in colored stripes.

Henri Laurens, after meeting Cubists Picasso, Braque, and Gris, Laurens began making Cubism-inspired sculptures, which were among his most important works.

Pontormo was a Renaissance and Mannerist master famous for religious scenes, praised for perceptive portraits.

Sergei Diaghilev and his dance company Ballet Russes had a signicant and fascinating connection to the modern artists of the time.

The avant-garde artist Bruce Conner innovated in the of mediums: assemblage, sculpture, painting, photography and short film.

Wyndham Lewis was an important British modernist and founded the Vorticist movement, and was a politically polarizing figure.