Ch 27 KW

Academic Art

Sanctioned by the Royal academies, which provided instruction and sponsored exhibitions. They focused on traditional subjects and highly polished technique.

Apotheosis

Elevation to divine status.

Art for Art's Sake

The painter's first loyalty is to the canvas not the outside world or the patron and certainly not for use.

Barbizon school

Specialized in detailed pictures of forest and countryside without sentimentalism or romanticism.

Class Struggle

Karl Marx and Frederic Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto, which called for the working class to overthrow the capitalist system as labor was exploited to benefit the wealthy and the powerful.

Daguerreotype

A process developed in the early 19th century in which a photograph is produced on a silver plate, made sensitive by the action of iodine.

Empiricism

The search for knowledge based on observation and direct experience.

Fin-de-siecle

The end of the century world-weariness, fashionable despair.

Gothick

The ghoulish, infernal nightmarish, grotesque, the sublime (the fantastic, the occult, the macabre).

Hudson River School

A group of American artists who were interested in the American landscape, particularly the undeveloped wilderness areas not just the Hudson River but all the developed wilderness even South America.

Lampoon

Satire and ridicule.

Landscape painting

In the Romantic style was often 'picturesque' and used nature as an allegory to comment on spiritual, moral, historical, or philosophical issues.

Lithography

Uses a greasy crayon to write on a stone, then wipes water on the stone. The artist then applies oil-based ink onto the stone, presses the paper to the stone and the drawing transfers to the paper.

Modernism

Seeks to capture the images and sensibility of their age. Besides dealing with the present, it also involves the artist's critical examination of and reflection on the premises of art itself.

Napoleon

Established an Empire from 1789 to 1815. He favored the Neo classical style in painting, sculpture and architecture.

Odalisque

A female slave in the harems of the East. It was a favorite subject of the 19th century artists in a reclining position.

Pantheism

A doctrine that equates God with the forces and laws of the universe.

Positivism

Developed by Auguste Comte, believed in a purely scientific, empirical approach to nature and society.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Organized in 1848, wished to create a fresh and sincere art free from what they considered a tired and artificial art sponsored by the academies.

Realism

Focused attention on the experiences and sights of everyday contemporary life portraying the images previously thought unworthy.

Romanticism

A profound revolution in the human spirit of the late 18th and early 19th century, emphasizing feeling for nature and subjective sensibility.

Second Industrial Revolution

Centered on steel, electricity, chemicals and oil.

Supine

Exhibiting indolent inertia or passivity.

Vista

A picturesque distance.