Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century, the "Century of Philosophy". Some consider Descartes' 1637 statement "I think" to have sparked the period. Others cite the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica. French historians traditionally date the Enlightenment from 1715 to 1789, from the beginning of the reign of Louis XV until the French Revolution. Most end it with the turn of the 19th century. Philosophers and scientists of the period circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffeehouses and in printed books and pamphlets; the ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. A variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism and neo-classicism, trace their intellectual heritage to the Enlightenment; the Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on reason as the primary source of knowledge and advanced ideals such as liberty, toleration, constitutional government and separation of church and state.
In France, the central doctrines of the Enlightenment philosophers were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism, along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy—an attitude captured by the phrase Sapere aude; the Age of Enlightenment was preceded by and associated with the scientific revolution. Earlier philosophers whose work influenced the Enlightenment included Bacon, Descartes and Spinoza; the major figures of the Enlightenment included Beccaria, Hume, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Voltaire. Some European rulers, including Catherine II of Russia, Joseph II of Austria and Frederick II of Prussia, tried to apply Enlightenment thought on religious and political tolerance, which became known as enlightened absolutism. Benjamin Franklin visited Europe and contributed to the scientific and political debates there and brought the newest ideas back to Philadelphia.
Thomas Jefferson followed European ideas and incorporated some of the ideals of the Enlightenment into the Declaration of Independence. One of his peers, James Madison, incorporated these ideals into the United States Constitution during its framing in 1787; the most influential publication of the Enlightenment was the Encyclopédie. Published between 1751 and 1772 in thirty-five volumes, it was compiled by Diderot, d'Alembert and a team of 150 scientists and philosophers, it helped spread the ideas of the Enlightenment across Europe and beyond. Other landmark publications were Voltaire's Dictionnaire Letters on the English; the ideas of the Enlightenment played a major role in inspiring the French Revolution, which began in 1789. After the Revolution, the Enlightenment was followed by the intellectual movement known as Romanticism. René Descartes' rationalist philosophy laid the foundation for enlightenment thinking, his attempt to construct the sciences on a secure metaphysical foundation was not as successful as his method of doubt applied in philosophic areas leading to a dualistic doctrine of mind and matter.
His skepticism was refined by John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and David Hume's writings in the 1740s. His dualism was challenged by Spinoza's uncompromising assertion of the unity of matter in his Tractatus and Ethics; these laid down two distinct lines of Enlightenment thought: first, the moderate variety, following Descartes and Christian Wolff, which sought accommodation between reform and the traditional systems of power and faith, second, the radical enlightenment, inspired by the philosophy of Spinoza, advocating democracy, individual liberty, freedom of expression and eradication of religious authority. The moderate variety tended to be deistic, whereas the radical tendency separated the basis of morality from theology. Both lines of thought were opposed by a conservative Counter-Enlightenment, which sought a return to faith. In the mid-18th century, Paris became the center of an explosion of philosophic and scientific activity challenging traditional doctrines and dogmas.
The philosophic movement was led by Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued for a society based upon reason as in ancient Greece rather than faith and Catholic doctrine, for a new civil order based on natural law, for science based on experiments and observation. The political philosopher Montesquieu introduced the idea of a separation of powers in a government, a concept, enthusiastically adopted by the authors of the United States Constitution. While the Philosophes of the French Enlightenment were not revolutionaries and many were members of the nobility, their ideas played an important part in undermining the legitimacy of the Old Regime and shaping the French Revolution. Francis Hutcheson, a moral philosopher, described the utilitarian and consequentialist principle that virtue is that which provides, in his words, "the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers". Much of what is incorporated in the scientific method
National Art School
The National Art School, is a tertiary level art school based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The School is an accredited Higher Education Provider offering specialised study in studio arts practice with study offered at a range of levels in various studio disciplines, has been in operation on the historic Darlinghurst Gaol site in East Sydney in various forms since 1922. Under the management of NSW Department of Education, the School was re-established by the NSW Government in 2009 as a public company limited by guarantee, with two members, the NSW Ministers for Arts and Education, a Board of Directors was established to oversee governance of the institution. National Art School National Art School, Sydney at Google Cultural Institute East Sydney Technical College, Sydney Institute of TAFE. Deborah Beck. "National Art School". Dictionary of Sydney. Dictionary of Sydney Trust. Retrieved 11 October 2015
Laure Prouvost
Laure Prouvost is a French artist living and working in Antwerp. She won the 2013 Turner Prize. In 2019, she will represent France at the Venice Biennale. Prouvost was born in Croix, an upscale suburb of Lille and attended a local school with a strong arts focus, she studied film at Central Saint Martins and attended Goldsmiths, University of London. After graduating from Saint Martins, she worked as an assistant to the artist John Latham, who she describes as "more like a grandfather than my real grandfather", she has exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. She was awarded the biennial MaxMara Art Prize for Women in 2011 in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery and her work has appeared in the private contemporary art collection Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Prouvost's work combines installation and film. Prouvost was the principal prize winner at the 57th Oberhausen Film Festival In 2014, she staged her first solo museum exhibition in the United States at the New Museum, titled For Forgetting.
Prouvost won the 2013 Turner Prize winner for an installation named Wantee made in response to the artist Kurt Schwitters. In a tea party setting a film describes a fictional relationship between Prouvost's grandfather and Schwitters; the work is named in reference to the habit of Schwitters' partner of asking guests if they "want tea". The panel described the work as "outstanding for its complex and courageous combination of images and objects in a atmospheric environment". Prouvost was considered a surprise winner, she is a descendant of Jean Prouvost, a french textile, media magnate, politician, founder of Marie-Claire and Paris-Match magazine. 2007: Owt, video 2010: I need to take care of my conceptual Grand dad, video 2010: The Artist, video 2010: It Heat Hit, video 2011: The Wanderer, video 2012: Why does Gregor never rings, video installation 2013: Farfromwords: car mirrors eat raspberries when swimming through the sun, to swallow sweet smells, video installation 2013: Wantee, video installation 2016: Lick in the Past, video 2017: Dit Learn, video www.laureprouvost.com
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
Julian Opie
Julian Opie is a visual artist of the New British Sculpture movement. Opie was raised in Oxford, he graduated in 1982 from Goldsmiths, University of London, where he was taught by conceptual artist and painter Michael Craig-Martin. Opie emerged as an influential figure in the British art scene of the 1980s producing a series of painted metal sculptures that humorously combined loosely painted imagery with steel shapes. Portraits and animated walking figures, rendered with minimal detail in black line drawing, are hallmarks of the artist's style, his themes have been described as "engagement with art history, use of new technology, obsession with the human body" and "work with one idea across different media". The national art critic of The Australian, Christopher Allen, laments Opie's "limited repertoire of tricks" and described his work as "slight and commercial, if not kitsch"; when asked to describe his approach, Opie said "I feel that trying to make something realistic is the one criterion I can feel sure of.
Another one I sometimes use is, would I like to have it in my room? And I use the idea, if God allowed you to show Him one to judge you by, would this be it?"In 2007, the four-sided LED sculpture Ann Dancing was installed in Indianapolis, United States, as the first artwork on the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. Opie has created a monument to singer Bryan Adams. Opie has presented many public projects in cities around the world, notably in the Dentsu Building in Tokyo, City Hall Park in New York, Mori Building, Omotesando Hill in Japan, River Vltava in Prague, Phoenix Art Museum USA, Dublin City Gallery in Ireland, Seoul Square in South Korea, Regent's Place in London, Canada, The Lindo Wing, St Mary's Hospital and more permanent installations at SMETS in Belgium, PKZ in Zurich and Carnaby Street, London, UK. One of Opie's most notable commissions was the design of an album cover for British pop band Blur in 2000, for which he received a Music Week CADS award. In 2006, he created an LED projection for U2's Vertigo world tour, in 2008 Opie created a set design for Wayne McGregor's ballet Infra for the Royal Opera House in London.
In 2010, he was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to create a portrait of the inventor and engineer Sir James Dyson, titled James, Inventor. Julian Opie has internationally at major institutions and galleries. Solo exhibitions have included the National Gallery of Victoria, the Sakshi Gallery in Mumbai, the Lisson Gallery in Milan, his work was included in group shows at City Public Art Space in London. Six of Opie's portraits are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London: four portraits of the band members of Blur executed in colour print on paper, one of inventor and engineer Sir James Dyson rendered by inkjet on canvas, a self-portrait, Julian with t-shirt, executed on an LCD screen with computer software. More than two dozen of Opie's portraits and other works are in the collection of the Tate and six works are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Other collections include Victoria and Albert Museum, Arts Council and the British Council in London.
Opie has been awarded several prizes including Best Illustration for Best of Blur. In 1995 he was awarded the Sargent Fellowship at the British School at Rome. Cooke, Lynne. Julian Opie. Thames & Hudson. P. 125. ISBN 9780500277669. Horlock, Mary. Julian Opie. Tate publishing. P. 121. ISBN 9781854374707. Official website Julian Opie on ArtCyclopedia
John Skeaping
John Rattenbury Skeaping, R. A. was sculptor. He designed animal figures for Wedgwood. Born in South Woodford, Skeaping studied at Goldsmith's College, at the Royal Academy. In 1924 he won the British Prix de Rome and its scholarship to the British School at Rome.̣Skeaping was the first husband of the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, with whom he exhibited during the 1920s. He was a member of the London Group, worked for a period in Mexico, he was elected to the Royal Academy in 1960. He latterly lived in Devon near the village of Chagford and moved to the Camargue, France in 1959. A BBC documentary One Pair of Eyes - John Skeaping directed by David Cobham was produced for BBC TV during Skeaping's time there; the Tate Gallery owns eight works by Skeaping. Marble heads dating from London, c. 1927 of Barbara Hepworth by Skeaping, of Skeaping by Hepworth are documented by photograph in the Retrospective catalogue, but are both believed lost. A stone head of Arthur Lett-Haines dates from 1933, when Skeaping was living in the artists' colony at the house of Sir Cedric Morris after the breakup of his marriage to Hepworth.
A bronze sketch of Skeaping exists by Sally Arnup. John Skeaping. Drawn from Life: An Autobiography. London One Pair of Eyes - John Skeaping David Cobham BBC TV - full version available in various web repositories. 2011: The Sculpture of John Skeaping, Jonathan Blackwood.
Cornelia Parker
Cornelia Ann Parker OBE, RA is an English visual artist, best known for her sculpture and installation art. Parker was born in 1956 in England, she studied at the Gloucestershire College of Wolverhampton Polytechnic. She received her MFA from Reading University in 1982 and honorary doctorates from the University of Wolverhampton in 2000, the University of Birmingham, the University of Gloucestershire and the University of Manchester. In 1997, Parker was shortlisted for the Turner Prize along with Christine Borland, Angela Bulloch, Gillian Wearing. Parker is Honorary Professor at the University of Manchester and Honorary Fellow of Queen Elizabeth Hall, Oxford. Parker is married, has one daughter, lives and works in London. Parker's mother was a nurse in the Luftwaffe during the Second World War, her British grandfather fought in the Battle of the Somme in the First World War. Parker is best known for large-scale installations such as Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View – first shown at the Chisenhale Gallery in Bow, East London – for which she had a garden shed blown up by the British Army and suspended the fragments as if suspending the explosion process in time.
In the centre was a light which cast the shadows of the wood on the walls of the room. This inspired an orchestral composition of the same name by Joo Yeon Sir. In contrast, in 1997 at the Turner Prize exhibition, Parker exhibited Mass, suspending the charred remains of a church, struck by lightning in Texas. Eight years Parker made a companion piece "Anti-Mass", using charcoal from a black congregation church in Kentucky, destroyed by arson; the Maybe at the Serpentine Gallery, was a performance piece conceived by Tilda Swinton, who lay asleep, inside a vitrine. She asked Parker to collaborate with her on the project, to create an installation in which she could sleep. Swinton's original idea was to lie in state as Snow White in a glass coffin, but through the collaboration with Cornelia the idea evolved into her appearing as herself and not as an actor posing as a fictional character. Parker filled the Serpentine with glass cases containing relics that belonged to famous historical figures, such as the pillow and blanket from Freud's couch, Mrs. Simpson's ice skates, Charles Dickens' quill pen and Queen Victoria's stocking.
A version of the piece was re-performed in Rome and MoMA, New York without Parker's involvement. Parker has made other interventions involving historical artworks. For example, she wrapped Rodin's The Kiss sculpture in Tate Britain with a mile of string as her contribution to the 2003 Tate Triennial Days Like These at Tate Britain; the intervention was titled The Distance. She re-staged this intervention as part of her mid-career retrospective at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, in 2015. Subconscious of a Monument is composed of fragments of dry soil, which are suspended on wires from the gallery ceiling; these lumps are the now-desiccated clay, removed from beneath the Leaning Tower of Pisa in order to prevent its collapse. Avoided Object is the title of an ongoing series of smaller works which have been developed in liaison with various institutions, including the Royal Armouries, British Police Forces and Madame Tussauds; these "avoided" objects have had their identities transformed by being burned, squashed, drawn, cut, or dropped off cliffs.
Cartoon deaths have long held a fascination for Parker: "Tom being run over by a steamroller or Jerry riddled with bullet holes. Sometimes the object's demise has been orchestrated, or it may have occurred accidentally or by natural causes, they might be'preempted' objects that have not yet achieved a formed identity, having been plucked prematurely from the production line like Embryo Firearms 1995. They may not be classified as objects: things like cracks, shadows, dust or dirt The Negative of Whispers 1997: Earplugs made with fluff gathered in the Whispering Gallery, St Paul's Cathedral). Or they might be those territories you want to avoid psychologically, such as the backs, underbellies or tarnished surfaces of things."Another example of this work is Pornographic Drawings, using ink made by the artist who used solvent to dissolve video tape, confiscated by HM Customs and Excise. In 2009, for the opening of Jupiter Artland, a sculpture park near Edinburgh, Parker created a firework display titled Nocturne: A Moon Landing containing a lunar meteorite.
Therefore the moon landed on Jupiter. The following year Parker made Landscape with Gun and Tree for Jupiter Artland, a nine metre tall cast iron and Corten steel shotgun leaning against a tree. Inspired by the painting "Mr and Mrs Andrews" by Thomas Gainsborough where Mr Andrews poses with a gun slung over his arm; the shotgun used in the piece is a facsimile of the one owned by Robert Wilson, one of the founders of Jupiter Artland. For the Folkestone Triennial in 2011, Parker created a Folkestone version of one of the popular tourist attractions in Copenhagen, Little Mermaid. Through a process of open submission, Parker chose Georgina Baker, mother of two and Folkestone born and bred. Unlike the idealised Copenhagen version, this is a life-size, life-cast sculpture, celebrating the local and the everyday. Parker’s mermaid. To celebrate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, Parker created Magna Carta, a hand embroidered representation of the Wikipedia article Magna Carta as it was on 15 June 2014, completed in 2015.
Whilst Magna Carta was on display at the British
