1.
Joseph Csaky
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Joseph Csaky was a Hungarian avant-garde artist, sculptor, and graphic artist, best known for his early participation as a sculptor in the Cubist movement. Joseph Csaky was one of the first sculptors in Paris to apply the principles of pictorial Cubism to his art, a pioneer of modern sculpture, Csaky is among the most important sculptors of the early 20th century. He was an member of the Section dOr group between 1911 and 1914, and closely associated with De Stijl and Purism throughout the 1920s. Csaky fought alongside French soldiers during World War I and in 1922 became a naturalized French citizen and he was a founding member of lUnion des Artistes modernes in 1929. During World War II, Csaky joined forces with the French underground movement in Valençay, in the late 1920s, he collaborated with some other artists in designing furniture and other decorative pieces, including elements of the Studio House for the designer Jacques Doucet. After 1928, Csaky moved away from Cubism into a figurative or representational style for nearly thirty years. He exhibited internationally across Europe, but some of his pioneering artistic innovation was forgotten and his work today is primarily held by French and Hungarian institutions, as well as galleries and private collections both in France and abroad. József Csáky was born in Szeged, Hungary, then part of the monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A provincial southern city, Szeged is now the third-largest in the country, Csaky moved with his family to Budapest at an early age, where he frequented museums and galleries. In 1905 Csaky was accepted at the Academy of Applied Arts in Budapest, where he studied under the direction of the sculptor Mátrai Lajos, ifj. for one and a half years. In 1907, for six and a half months, he worked in the Zsolnay Factory in Pécs, making ceramic ashtrays and he worked briefly as a metal founder in Budapest, and at one point with a taxidermist. Attracted by its reputation for lights and great artists, Csaky made the decision to move to Paris France and he traveled mostly by foot, walking fifty or sixty kilometers per day during the summer of 1908. In Paris a new world opened up for him and he made a living by doing odd jobs, working as a peddler, stone cutter, and posing as a model for students at a local art school, making 20 francs a week. He later posed for artists in their own studios, making more money. By autumn of 1908 he shared a space at Cité Falguière with Joseph Brummer. Within three weeks of Csakys arrival in Paris, Brummer showed the newcomer a sculpture he was working on, Brummer told Csaky that another artist in Paris, a Spaniard named Pablo Picasso, was painting in the spirit of Negro sculptures. Shortly after, Csaky found a studio at the artists collective La Ruche in Montparnasse, the building had been constructed by Gustave Eiffel, and was adapted as artists studios by the sculptor Alfred Boucher. Among other émigré artists at La Ruche were Alexander Archipenko, Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine, with his discovery of the work of Auguste Rodin laying the groundwork for an oeuvre characterized by a mastery of sculptural techniques, Csakys work in stone carving would evolve
2.
Cubism
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Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century, the term is broadly used in association with a wide variety of art produced in Paris during the 1910s and extending through the 1920s. The movement was pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, joined by Andre Lhote, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger and Juan Gris. A primary influence that led to Cubism was the representation of form in the late works of Paul Cézanne. The impact of Cubism was far-reaching and wide-ranging, Cubism spread rapidly across the globe and in doing so evolved to a greater or lesser extent. In essence, Cubism was the origin of a process that produced diversity. In France, offshoots of Cubism developed, including Orphism, Abstract art, in other countries Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism, De Stijl and Art Deco developed in response to Cubism. Other common threads between these movements include the faceting or simplification of geometric forms, and the association of mechanization. Cubism began between 1907 and 1911, Pablo Picassos 1907 painting Les Demoiselles dAvignon has often been considered a proto-Cubist work. Georges Braques 1908 Houses at L’Estaque prompted the critic Louis Vauxcelles to refer to bizarreries cubiques, Gertrude Stein referred to landscapes made by Picasso in 1909, such as Reservoir at Horta de Ebro, as the first Cubist paintings. A second phase, Synthetic Cubism, remained vital until around 1919, english art historian Douglas Cooper proposed another scheme, describing three phases of Cubism in his book, The Cubist Epoch. Douglas Coopers restrictive use of terms to distinguish the work of Braque, Picasso, Gris. Alternative interpretations of Cubism have therefore developed, wider views of Cubism include artists who were later associated with the Salle 41 artists, e. g. John Berger identifies the essence of Cubism with the mechanical diagram. The metaphorical model of Cubism is the diagram, The diagram being a symbolic representation of invisible processes, forces, structures. A diagram need not eschew certain aspects of appearance but these too will be treated as not as imitations or recreations. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Europeans were discovering African, Polynesian, Micronesian, artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those foreign cultures. Around 1906, Picasso met Matisse through Gertrude Stein, at a time when artists had recently acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art and African tribal masks. Picassos paintings of 1907 have been characterized as Protocubism, as seen in Les Demoiselles dAvignon
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Art Deco
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Art Deco, sometimes simply referred to as Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture and design that first appeared in France just before World War I. It took its name, short for Arts Decorators, from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925 and it combined modernist styles with fine craftsmanship and rich materials. During its heyday, Art Deco represented luxury, glamour, exuberance, Art Deco was a pastiche of many different styles, sometimes contradictory, united by a desire to be modern. It featured rare and expensive materials such as ebony and ivory, the Chrysler Building and other skyscrapers of New York were the most visible monuments of the new style. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the became more subdued. New materials arrived, including chrome plating, stainless steel and plastic, a more sleek form of the style, called Streamline Moderne, appeared in the 1930s, it featured curving forms and smooth, polished surfaces. Art Deco became one of the first truly international architectural styles, with examples found in European cities, the style came to an end with the beginning of World War II. Deco was replaced as the dominant global style by the functional and unadorned styles of modernism. The term arts décoratifs was first used in France in 1858, in 1868, Le Figaro newspaper used the term art décoratifs with respect to objects for stage scenery created for the Théâtre de lOpéra. In 1875, furniture designers, textile, jewelry and glass designers and it took its present name of ENSAD in 1927. The term Art déco was then used in a 1966 newspaper article by Hillary Gelson in the Times, describing the different styles at the exhibit. Art Deco gained currency as a broadly applied stylistic label in 1968 when historian Bevis Hillier published the first major book on the style. Hillier noted that the term was already being used by art dealers and cites The Times, in 1971, Hillier organized an exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which he details in his book about it, The World of Art Deco. The emergence of Art Deco was closely connected with the rise in status of decorative artists, the term arts décoratifs had been invented in 1875, giving the designers of furniture, textiles, and other decoration official status. The Société des artistes décorateurs, or SAD, was founded in 1901, a similar movement developed in Italy. The first international exhibition devoted entirely to the arts, the Esposizione international dArte decorative moderna, was held in Turin in 1902. Several new magazines devoted to decorative arts were founded in Paris, including Arts et décoration, Decorative arts sections were introduced into the annual salons of the Sociéte des artistes français, and later in the Salon dautomne. French nationalism also played a part in the resurgence of decorative arts, in 1911 the SAD proposed the holding of a major new international exposition of decorative arts in 1912
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Hungary
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Hungary is a unitary parliamentary republic in Central Europe. With about 10 million inhabitants, Hungary is a member state of the European Union. The official language is Hungarian, which is the most widely spoken language in Europe. Hungarys capital and largest metropolis is Budapest, a significant economic hub, major urban areas include Debrecen, Szeged, Miskolc, Pécs and Győr. His great-grandson Stephen I ascended to the throne in 1000, converting the country to a Christian kingdom, by the 12th century, Hungary became a middle power within the Western world, reaching a golden age by the 15th century. Hungarys current borders were established in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon after World War I, when the country lost 71% of its territory, 58% of its population, following the interwar period, Hungary joined the Axis Powers in World War II, suffering significant damage and casualties. Hungary became a state of the Soviet Union, which contributed to the establishment of a four-decade-long communist dictatorship. On 23 October 1989, Hungary became again a democratic parliamentary republic, in the 21st century, Hungary is a middle power and has the worlds 57th largest economy by nominal GDP, as well as the 58th largest by PPP, out of 188 countries measured by the IMF. As a substantial actor in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds 36th largest exporter and importer of goods, Hungary is a high-income economy with a very high standard of living. It keeps up a security and universal health care system. Hungary joined the European Union in 2004 and part of the Schengen Area since 2007, Hungary is a member of the United Nations, NATO, WTO, World Bank, the AIIB, the Council of Europe and Visegrád Group. Well known for its cultural history, Hungary has been contributed significantly to arts, music, literature, sports and science. Hungary is the 11th most popular country as a tourist destination in Europe and it is home to the largest thermal water cave system, the second largest thermal lake in the world, the largest lake in Central Europe, and the largest natural grasslands in Europe. The H in the name of Hungary is most likely due to historical associations with the Huns. The rest of the word comes from the Latinized form of Medieval Greek Oungroi, according to an explanation the Greek name was borrowed from Proto-Slavic Ǫgǔri, in turn borrowed from Oghur-Turkic Onogur. Onogur was the name for the tribes who later joined the Bulgar tribal confederacy that ruled the eastern parts of Hungary after the Avars. The Hungarians likely belonged to the Onogur tribal alliance and it is possible they became its ethnic majority. The Hungarian endonym is Magyarország, composed of magyar and ország, the word magyar is taken from the name of one of the seven major semi-nomadic Hungarian tribes, magyeri
5.
Avant-garde
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The avant-garde are people or works that are experimental, radical, or unorthodox, with respect to art, culture, and society. It may be characterized by nontraditional, aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability, the avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, the avant-garde also promotes radical social reforms. Several writers have attempted, with limited success, to map the parameters of avant-garde activity, the Italian essayist Renato Poggioli provides one of the best-known analyses of vanguardism as a cultural phenomenon in his 1962 book Teoria dellarte davanguardia. Other authors have attempted both to clarify and to extend Poggiolis study, bürgers essay also greatly influenced the work of contemporary American art-historians such as the German Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. Buchloh, in the collection of essays Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry critically argues for an approach to these positions. Subsequent criticism theorized the limitations of these approaches, noting their circumscribed areas of analysis, including Eurocentric, chauvinist, and genre-specific definitions. The concept of avant-garde refers primarily to artists, writers, composers and thinkers whose work is opposed to cultural values. For Greenberg, these forms were therefore kitsch, phony, faked or mechanical culture, for instance, during the 1930s the advertising industry was quick to take visual mannerisms from surrealism, but this does not mean that 1930s advertising photographs are truly surreal. In this way the autonomous artistic merit so dear to the vanguardist was abandoned and sales became the measure. It has become common to describe successful rock musicians and celebrated film-makers as avant-garde, nevertheless, an incisive critique of vanguardism as against the views of mainstream society was offered by the New York critic Harold Rosenberg in the late 1960s. Since then it has been flanked by what he called avant-garde ghosts to the one side, and this has seen culture become, in his words, a profession one of whose aspects is the pretense of overthrowing it. Avant-garde in music can refer to any form of working within traditional structures while seeking to breach boundaries in some manner. The term is used loosely to describe the work of any musicians who radically depart from tradition altogether, although most avant-garde composers have been men, this is not exclusively the case. Women avant-gardists include Pauline Oliveros, Diamanda Galás, Meredith Monk, there are movements in theatre history that are characterized by their contributions to the avant-garde traditions in both the United States and Europe. Among these are Fluxus, Happenings, and Neo-Dada, Avant-garde – Wikipedia book Barron, Stephanie, and Maurice Tuchman. The Avant-garde in Russia, 1910–1930, New Perspectives, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art ISBN 0-87587-095-3, Cambridge, MA, ISBN 0-671-20422-X Berg, Hubert van den, and Walter Fähnders
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Sculpture
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Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of the plastic arts, a wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or molded, or cast. However, most ancient sculpture was painted, and this has been lost. Those cultures whose sculptures have survived in quantities include the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, India and China, the Western tradition of sculpture began in ancient Greece, and Greece is widely seen as producing great masterpieces in the classical period. During the Middle Ages, Gothic sculpture represented the agonies and passions of the Christian faith, the revival of classical models in the Renaissance produced famous sculptures such as Michelangelos David. Relief is often classified by the degree of projection from the wall into low or bas-relief, high relief, sunk-relief is a technique restricted to ancient Egypt. Relief sculpture may also decorate steles, upright slabs, usually of stone, techniques such as casting, stamping and moulding use an intermediate matrix containing the design to produce the work, many of these allow the production of several copies. The term sculpture is used mainly to describe large works. The very large or colossal statue has had an enduring appeal since antiquity, another grand form of portrait sculpture is the equestrian statue of a rider on horse, which has become rare in recent decades. The smallest forms of life-size portrait sculpture are the head, showing just that, or the bust, small forms of sculpture include the figurine, normally a statue that is no more than 18 inches tall, and for reliefs the plaquette, medal or coin. Sculpture is an important form of public art, a collection of sculpture in a garden setting can be called a sculpture garden. One of the most common purposes of sculpture is in form of association with religion. Cult images are common in cultures, though they are often not the colossal statues of deities which characterized ancient Greek art. The actual cult images in the innermost sanctuaries of Egyptian temples, of which none have survived, were rather small. The same is true in Hinduism, where the very simple. Some undoubtedly advanced cultures, such as the Indus Valley civilization, appear to have had no monumental sculpture at all, though producing very sophisticated figurines, the Mississippian culture seems to have been progressing towards its use, with small stone figures, when it collapsed. Other cultures, such as ancient Egypt and the Easter Island culture, from the 20th century the relatively restricted range of subjects found in large sculpture expanded greatly, with abstract subjects and the use or representation of any type of subject now common. Today much sculpture is made for intermittent display in galleries and museums, small sculpted fittings for furniture and other objects go well back into antiquity, as in the Nimrud ivories, Begram ivories and finds from the tomb of Tutankhamun
7.
Salon d'Automne
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The Salon dAutomne, or Société du Salon dautomne, is an annual art exhibition held in Paris, France since 1903. During the Salons early years, established such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir threw their support behind the new exhibition. Foreign artists are well represented. The Salon dAutomne also boasts the presence of a politician and patron of the arts and this was the idea behind Jourdains dream of opening a new Salon des Refusés in the late 1890s, and realized in the opening the Salon dAutomne in 1903. Providing a venue where artists could be recognized, while wrestling the public out of its complacency were, to Jourdain. The platform of the Salon dAutomne was based on an open admission, jurors were members of society itself, not members of the Academy, the state, or official art establishments. Refused exhibition space in the Grand Palais, the first Salon dAutomne was held in the poorly lit and it was backed financially by Jansen. While Rodin applauded the endeavor, and submitted drawings, he refused to join doubting it would succeed, notwithstanding, the first Salon dAutomne, which included works by Matisse, Bonnard and other progressive artists, was unexpectedly successful, and was met with wide critical acclaim. Even Paul Signac, president of the Salon des Indépendants, never forgave Jourdain for having founded a rival salon, what he had not predicted was a retaliation that threatened the future of the new salon. Carolus-Duran threatened to ban from his Société established artists who might consider exhibiting at the Salon dAutomne, retaliating in defense of Jourdain, Eugène Carrière issued a statement that if forced to choose, he would join the Salon dAutomne and resign from the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The valuable publicity generated by the articles on the controversy worked in favor of the Salon dAutomne. Thus, Eugène Carrière saved the burgeoning salon, Henri Marcel, sympathetic to the Salon dAutomne, became director of the Beaux-Arts, and assured it would take place at the prestigious Grand Palais the following year. The success of the Salon dAutomne was not, however, due to such controversy, success was due to the tremendous impact of its exhibitions on both the art world and the general public, extending from 1903 to the outset of the First World War. He soon became known as a staunch critic of traditionalism and a fervent proponent of Modernism, yet even for him. The first Salon dAutumne exhibition opened 31 October 1903 at the Palais des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris in Paris, Albert Gleizes exhibited two paintings, Vieux moulin à Montons-Villiers and Le matin à Courbevoie. A room at the 1904 Salon dAutome was dedicated to Paul Cézanne, with works, including various portraits, self-portraits, still lifes, flowers, landscapes. Another room presented works of Puvis de Chavannes, with 44 works, and another was dedicated to Odilon Redon with 64 works, including paintings, drawings and lithographs. Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec too were represented in separate rooms with 35 and 28 works respectively, Vauxcelles described their work with the phrase Donatello chez les fauves, contrasting the orgy of pure tones with a Renaissance-style sculpture that shared the room with them
8.
National Assembly (France)
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The National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate, the National Assemblys members are known as députés. There are 577 députés, each elected by a constituency through a two-round voting system. Thus,289 seats are required for a majority, the assembly is presided over by a president, normally from the largest party represented, assisted by vice-presidents from across the represented political spectrum. The term of the National Assembly is five years, however and it is guarded by Republican Guards. The Constitution of the French Fifth Republic greatly increased the power of the executive at the expense of Parliament, the President of the Republic can decide to dissolve the National Assembly and call for new legislative elections. This is meant as a way to resolve stalemates where the Assembly cannot decide on a political direction. The National Assembly can overthrow the government by a vote of no confidence. For this reason, the minister and his cabinet are necessarily from the dominant party or coalition in the assembly. The Government used to set the priorities of the agenda for the Assemblys sessions and this, however, was amended on 23 July 2008. Under the amended constitution, the Government sets the priorities for two weeks in a month, another week is designated for the Assemblys control prerogatives. And the fourth one is set by the Assembly, also, one day per month is set by a minority or opposition group. Members of the assembly can ask written or oral questions to ministers, the Wednesday afternoon 3 p. m. session of questions to the Government is broadcast live on television. Like Prime Ministers Questions in Britain, it is largely a show for the viewers, with members of the majority asking flattering questions, while the opposition tries to embarrass the government. Since 1988, the 577 deputies are elected by universal suffrage with a two-round system by constituency, for a five-year mandate. The constituencies each have approximately 100,000 inhabitants, however, districts were not redrawn between 1982 and 2009. As a result of population movements over that period, there were inequalities between the less populous rural districts and the urban districts, the constituencies were redrawn in 2009, but this redistribution was controversial. Among other controversial measures, it created eleven constituencies and seats for French residents overseas, albeit without increasing the overall number of seats beyond 577
