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Magic (illusion)
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Magic is one of the oldest performing arts in the world in which audiences are entertained by staged tricks or illusions of seemingly impossible or supernatural feats using natural means. These feats are called magic tricks, effects, or illusions, the term magic etymologically derives from the Greek word mageia. In ancient times, Greeks and Persians had been at war for centuries, ritual acts of Persian priests came to be known as mageia, and then magika—which eventually came to mean any foreign, unorthodox, or illegitimate ritual practice. The first book containing explanations of magic tricks appeared in 1584, during the 17th century, many similar books were published that described magic tricks. Until the 18th century, magic shows were a source of entertainment at fairs. A founding figure of modern entertainment magic was Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, John Henry Anderson was pioneering the same transition in London in the 1840s. Towards the end of the 19th century, large magic shows permanently staged at big theatre venues became the norm, as a form of entertainment, magic easily moved from theatrical venues to television magic specials. Performances that modern observers would recognize as conjuring have been practiced throughout history, for many recorded centuries, magicians were associated with the devil and the occult. During the 19th and 20th centuries, many stage magicians even capitalized on this notion in their advertisements. The same level of ingenuity that was used to produce famous ancient deceptions such as the Trojan Horse would also have used for entertainment. They were also used by the practitioners of various religions and cults from ancient times onwards to frighten uneducated people into obedience or turn them into adherents, however, the profession of the illusionist gained strength only in the 18th century, and has enjoyed several popular vogues since. Opinions vary among magicians on how to categorize a given effect, Magicians may pull a rabbit from an empty hat, make something seem to disappear, or transform a red silk handkerchief into a green silk handkerchief. Magicians may also destroy something, like cutting a head off, other illusions include making something appear to defy gravity, making a solid object appear to pass through another object, or appearing to predict the choice of a spectator. Many magical routines use combinations of effects, one of the earliest books on the subject is Gantzionys work of 1489, Natural and Unnatural Magic, which describes and explains old-time tricks. Among the tricks discussed were sleight-of-hand manipulations with rope, paper, at the time, fear and belief in witchcraft was widespread and the book tried to demonstrate that these fears were misplaced. All obtainable copies were burned on the accession of James I in 1603 and it began to reappear in print in 1651. In the early 18th century, as belief in witchcraft was waning, a notable figure in this transition was the English showman, Isaac Fawkes, who began to promote his act in advertisements from the 1720s – he even claimed to have performed for King George II. He throws up a Pack of Cards, and causes them to be living birds flying about the room and he causes living Beasts, Birds, and other Creatures to appear upon the Table
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Giovanni Battista Gaulli
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Giovanni Battista Gaulli, also known as Baciccio or Baciccia, was an Italian artist working in the High Baroque and early Rococo periods. He is best known for his grand illusionistic vault frescos in the Church of the Gesù in Rome and his work was influenced by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Gaulli was born in Genoa, where his parents died from the plague of 1654 and he initially apprenticed with Luciano Borzone. Painters such as Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck stayed in Genoa for a few years, in the 1660s, he experimented with the cooler palette and linear style of Bolognese classicism. He was first noticed by the Genoese merchant of artworks, Pellegrino Peri, Peri introduced him to Gianlorenzo Bernini, who promoted him. He found patrons among the Genoese Giovanni Paolo Oliva, a prominent Jesuit, in 1662, he was accepted into the Roman artists guild, the Accademia di San Luca, where he was to later hold several offices. The next year, he received his first public commission for an altarpiece, in the church of San Rocco and he received many private commissions for mythological and religious works. At his height, Gaulli was one of Romes most esteemed portrait painters, Gaulli is not well known for any other medium but paint, though many drawings in many media have survived. Gaulli died in Rome, shortly after 26 March 1709, probably 2 April and this was not true for the two large Jesuit churches in Rome, which, while rich in marble and stone, remained artistically barren by the mid-17th century. This void would have been evident for Il Gesù with its cavernous blank plaster nave ceiling. Funding and inertia stalled its decoration, in 1661, the election of a new General of the Jesuit order, Gian Paolo Oliva, advanced the decoration. A new inductee into the order, the French Jacques Courtois had become a painter and was the main candidate for its decoration. Oliva wanted his fellow Jesuit for the commission, yet other prominent names such as Maratta, Ferri, ultimately, with Berninis persuasive support and likely strong guidance thereafter, Oliva awarded the prestigious commission to the mere 22-year-old Gaulli. Gaulli decorated the entire dome including lantern and pendentives, central vault, window recesses, the original contract stipulated the dome was to be completed in two years, and the remainder by the end of ten years. If it met the approval of a panel, Gaulli was to be paid 14,000 scudi plus expenses, gaullis main vault fresco was unveiled on Christmas Eve,1679. After this, he continued frescoing of the vaults of the tribune, gaullis program for the nave was likely heavily overseen by Oliva and Bernini, though it is not clear how much all three contributed and whether they all shared the same philosophy. During this time, Bernini supposedly espoused some quietist teachings of the Spanish priest Miguel de Molinos, Molinos proposed that God was accessible internally through an individual experience, while the Jesuits saw the church and clergy as an essential intermediary for access to Christs salvation. Ultimately, just as Bernini approved of the fresco and plaster in this new plastic conception
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Art history
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Art history is the study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i. e. genre, design, format, and style. This includes the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture as well as the minor arts of ceramics, furniture. As a term, art history encompasses several methods of studying the arts, in common usage referring to works of art. One branch of this area of study is aesthetics, which includes investigating the enigma of the sublime, technically, art history is not these things, because the art historian uses historical method to answer the questions, How did the artist come to create the work. Who were his or her teachers, who were his or her disciples. What historical forces shaped the artists oeuvre, and How did he or she and the creation, in turn, affect the course of artistic, political, and social events. It is, however, questionable whether many questions of this kind can be answered satisfactorily without also considering basic questions about the nature of art, unfortunately the current disciplinary gap between art history and the philosophy of art often hinders this inquiry. Art history is not only a biographical endeavor, Art historians often root their studies in the scrutiny of individual objects. They thus attempt to answer in historically specific ways, questions such as, what meaning did this object convey. Did the artist meet their goals well, the historical backbone of the discipline is a celebratory chronology of beautiful creations commissioned by public or religious bodies or wealthy individuals in western Europe. Such a canon remains prominent, as indicated by the selection of objects present in art history textbooks, nonetheless, since the 20th century there has been an effort to re-define the discipline to be more inclusive of non-Western art, art made by women, and vernacular creativity. Art history as we know it in the 21st century began in the 19th century but has precedents that date to the ancient world, advances in photographic reproduction and printing techniques after World War II increased the ability of reproductions of artworks. Such technologies have helped to advance the discipline in profound ways, the study of visual art thus described, can be a practice that involves understanding context, form, and social significance. Art historians employ a number of methods in their research into the ontology, Art historians often examine work in the context of its time. In short, this approach examines the work of art in the context of the world within which it was created, Art historians also often examine work through an analysis of form, that is, the creators use of line, shape, color, texture, and composition. This approach examines how the artist uses a picture plane or the three dimensions of sculptural or architectural space to create his or her art. The way these individual elements are employed results in representational or non-representational art, is the artist imitating an object or image found in nature. The closer the art hews to perfect imitation, the more the art is realistic, is the artist not imitating, but instead relying on symbolism, or in an important way striving to capture natures essence, rather than copy it directly
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Realism (arts)
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Realism in the arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements. Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and is in part a matter of technique and training. In the visual arts, illusionistic realism is the depiction of lifeforms, perspective. Realist works of art may emphasize the mundane, ugly or sordid, such as works of realism, regionalism. There have been various movements in the arts, such as the opera style of verismo, literary realism, theatrical realism. The realism art movement in painting began in France in the 1850s, the realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century. Realism is the precise, detailed and accurate representation in art of the appearance of scenes. Realism in this sense is also called naturalism, mimesis or illusionism, realistic art was created in many periods, and it is in large part a matter of technique and training, and the avoidance of stylization. It becomes especially marked in European painting in the Early Netherlandish painting of Jan van Eyck, however such realism is often used to depict, for example, angels with wings, which were not things the artists had ever seen in real life. It is the choice and treatment of matter that defines Realism as a movement in painting. The development of increasingly accurate representation of the appearances of things has a long history in art. It includes elements such as the depiction of the anatomy of humans and animals, of perspective and effects of distance. Ancient Greek art is recognised as having made great progress in the representation of anatomy. Pliny the Elders famous story of birds pecking at grapes painted by Zeuxis in the 5th century BC may well be a legend, roman portraiture, when not under too much Greek influence, shows a greater commitment to a truthful depiction of its subjects. The art of Late Antiquity famously rejected illusionism for expressive force, scientific methods of representing perspective were developed in Italy and gradually spread across Europe, and accuracy in anatomy rediscovered under the influence of classical art. As in classical times, idealism remained the norm, intriguingly, having led the development of illusionic painting, still life was to be equally significant in its abandonment in Cubism. The depiction of ordinary, everyday subjects in art also has a history, though it was often squeezed into the edges of compositions. However these objects are at least largely there because they carry layers of complex significance, pieter Bruegel the Elder pioneered large panoramic scenes of peasant life
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Mural
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A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other permanent surface. A distinguishing characteristic of painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture. Some wall paintings are painted on canvases, which are then attached to the wall. Whether these works can be accurately called murals is a subject of controversy in the art world. Murals of sorts date to Upper Paleolithic times such as the paintings in the Chauvet Cave in Ardèche department of southern France, many ancient murals have been found within ancient Egyptian tombs, the Minoan palaces and in Pompeii. During the Middle Ages murals were executed on dry plaster. The huge collection of Kerala mural painting dating from the 14th century are examples of fresco secco, in Italy, circa 1300, the technique of painting of frescos on wet plaster was reintroduced and led to a significant increase in the quality of mural painting. In modern times, the became more well-known with the Mexican muralism art movement. There are many different styles and techniques, the best-known is probably fresco, which uses water-soluble paints with a damp lime wash, a rapid use of the resulting mixture over a large surface, and often in parts. The colors lighten as they dry, the marouflage method has also been used for millennia. Murals today are painted in a variety of ways, using oil or water-based media, the styles can vary from abstract to trompe-lœil. Initiated by the works of artists like Graham Rust or Rainer Maria Latzke in the 1980s, trompe-loeil painting has experienced a renaissance in private. The buon fresco technique consists of painting in pigment mixed with water on a layer of wet, fresh. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster, after a number of hours. After this the painting stays for a time up to centuries in fresh. Fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster, the pigments thus require a binding medium, such as egg, glue or oil to attach the pigment to the wall. By the end of the century this had largely displaced the buon fresco method. This technique had, in reduced form, the advantages of a secco work, in Greco-Roman times, mostly encaustic colors applied in a cold state were used
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Anamorphosis
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Anamorphosis is a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image. The word anamorphosis is derived from the Greek prefix ana‑, meaning back or again, an optical anamorphism is the visualization of a mathematical operation called an affine transformation. There are two types of anamorphosis, perspective and mirror. More-complex anamorphoses can be devised using distorted lenses, mirrors, or other optical transformations, examples of perspectival anamorphosis date to the early Renaissance. Examples of mirror anamorphosis were first seen in the late Renaissance, the deformed image is painted on a plane surface surrounding the mirror. By looking into the mirror, a viewer can see the image undeformed, leonardos Eye is the earliest known definitive example of perspective anamorphosis in modern times. The prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux may also use this technique, Hans Holbein the Younger is well known for incorporating an oblique anamorphic transformation into his painting The Ambassadors. In this artwork, a distorted shape lies diagonally across the bottom of the frame, viewing this from an acute angle transforms it into the plastic image of a human skull, a symbolic memento mori. During the seventeenth century, Baroque trompe loeil murals often used anamorphism to combine actual architectural elements with illusory painted elements, when a visitor views the art work from a specific location, the architecture blends with the decorative painting. The dome and vault of the Church of St. Ignazio in Rome, painted by Andrea Pozzo, due to neighboring monks complaining about blocked light, Pozzo was commissioned to paint the ceiling to look like the inside of a dome, instead of building a real dome. As the ceiling is flat, there is one spot where the illusion is perfect. Mirror anamorphosis emerged early in the 17th century in Italy and China and it remains uncertain whether Jesuit missionaries imported or exported the technique. Anamorphosis could be used to conceal images for privacy or personal safety, a secret portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie is painted in a distorted manner on a tray and can only be recognized when a polished cylinder is placed in the correct position. To possess such an image would have seen as treason in the aftermath of the 1746 Battle of Culloden. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, anamorphic images had come to be used more as childrens games than fine art, in the twentieth century, some artists wanted to renew the technique of anamorphosis. Marcel Duchamp was interested in anamorphosis, and some of his installations are visual paraphrases of anamorphoses, Jan Dibbets conceptual works, the so-called perspective corrections are examples of linear anamorphoses. In the late century, mirror anamorphosis was revived as childrens toys. Beginning in 1967, Dutch artist Jan Dibbets based a series of photographic work titled Perspective Corrections on the distortion of reality through perspective anamorphosis
7.
Op art
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Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions. Op art works are abstract, with better known pieces created in black. Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images, flashing and vibrating patterns, the antecedents of Op art, in terms of graphic and color effects, can be traced back to Neo-impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism and Dada. Time Magazine coined the term op art in 1964, in response to Julian Stanczaks show Optical Paintings at the Martha Jackson Gallery, works now described as op art had been produced for several years before Times 1964 article. For instance, Victor Vasarelys painting Zebras is made up entirely of curvilinear black, consequently, the stripes appear to both meld into and burst forth from the surrounding background. Martin Gardner featured Op Art and its relation to mathematics in his July 1965 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American, in Italy, Franco Grignani, who originally trained as an architect, became a leading force of graphic design where Op Art or Kenetic Art was central. His Woolmark Logo is probably the most famous of all his designs, Op art perhaps more closely derives from the constructivist practices of the Bauhaus. This German school, founded by Walter Gropius, stressed the relationship of form and function within a framework of analysis, students learned to focus on the overall design or entire composition to present unified works. Op art also stems from Trompe-lœil and Anamorphosis, links with psychological research have also been made, particularly with Gestalt theory and Psychophysiology. When the Bauhaus was forced to close in 1933, many of its instructors fled to the United States, there, the movement took root in Chicago and eventually at the Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, where Anni and Josef Albers eventually taught. The expression Kinetic art in modern form first appeared at the Museum für Gestaltung of Zürich in 1960. Some members of the group Nouvelle tendance in Europe also were engaged in Op art as Almir Mavignier and Gerhard von Graevenitz, the term Op irritated many of the artists labeled under it, specifically including Albers and Stanczak. They had discussed upon the birth of the term a better label, from 1964, Arnold Schmidt had several solo exhibitions of his large, black and white shaped optical paintings exhibited at the Terrain Gallery in New York. The exhibition focused on the aspects of art, which result both from the illusion of movement and the interaction of color relationships. The exhibition was enormously popular with the public, though less so with the critics. Critics dismissed op art as portraying nothing more than trompe-lœil, or tricks that fool the eye, regardless, op arts popularity with the public increased, and op art images were used in a number of commercial contexts. One of Brian de Palmas early works was a film on the exhibition. Riley tried to sue an American company, without success, for using one of her paintings as the basis of a fabric design, Op art is a perceptual experience related to how vision functions
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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
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Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstraten
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Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstraten was a Dutch painter of the Golden Age, who was also a poet and author on art theory. Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstraten trained first with his father Dirk van Hoogstraten, on the death of his father, he moved to Amsterdam where he entered the workshop of Rembrandt. A short time later, he started out on his own as a master and painter of portraits and he later made several travels which took him to Vienna, Rome and London, finally retiring to Dordrecht. There he married in 1656, and held an appointment as provost of the mint, a sufficient number of Van Hoogstratens works have been preserved to show that he strove to imitate different styles at different times. In a portrait dated 1645, currently in the Lichtenstein collection in Vienna and he continued in this vein until as late as 1653 when he produced the wonderful figure of a bearded man looking out of a window. This, one of the characteristic examples of his style, is exhibited in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. He was especially skillful in his Tromp-loeil still lifes, where the reality of the scene of apparently haphazard objects often has deeper meanings, a view of the Vienna Hofburg, dated 1652, displays his skill as a painter of architecture. In contrast, a piece at the Hague representing a Lady Reading a Letter as she crosses a Courtyard or a Lady Consulting a Doctor, one of his last remaining works is a portrait of Mathys van den Brouck, dated 1670. Hoogstraten also employed his skill with perspective to construct peepshows, or perspective boxes. For example, A Peepshow with Views of the Interior of a Dutch House is a box with convincing 3D views of the interior of a Dutch house when viewed through peepholes on either end of the box. One of his perspective boxes is on show at the National Gallery in London and it shows the interior of a typical Dutch house of his time. He produced many etchings as well, and some of his plates are still preserved and his self-portrait, engraved by himself at the age of fifty, still exists. His pupils were his younger brother Jan van Hoogstraten, Aert de Gelder, Cornelis van der Meulen, Van Hoogstratens fame derives from his versatile career as a painter, poet and zealous social climber. Besides painting and directing a mint, he devoted some of his time to literary labours and it covers issues such as pictorial persuasion and illusionism, the painters moral standards and the relation of painting to philosophy, referring to various ancient and modern authors. He wrote it as a sequel to Karel van Manders early 17th century book on painting, one of van Hoogstratens many students, Arnold Houbraken, later wrote the book entitled The Great Theatre of Dutch Painters, which included a biography of his teacher. This biography is the basis of most of the information that we have about van Hoogstraten today, Van Hoogstraten also composed sonnets and tragedies. We are indebted to him for some of the sayings of Rembrandt. Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstratens paintings This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh
10.
Frederic Leighton
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Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton PRA, known as Sir Frederic Leighton between 1878 and 1896, was an English painter and sculptor. His works depicted historical, biblical, and classical subject matter, Leighton was bearer of the shortest-lived peerage in history, after only one day his hereditary peerage ended with his death. Leighton was born in Scarborough to a family in the import and export business and he was educated at University College School, London. He then received his training on the European continent, first from Eduard von Steinle. When he was 24 he was in Florence, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti, from 1855 to 1859 he lived in Paris, where he met Ingres, Delacroix, Corot and Millet. In 1860, he moved to London, where he associated with the Pre-Raphaelites and he designed Elizabeth Barrett Brownings tomb for Robert Browning in the English Cemetery, Florence in 1861. In 1864 he became an associate of the Royal Academy and in 1878 he became its President and his 1877 sculpture, Athlete Wrestling with a Python, was considered at its time to inaugurate a renaissance in contemporary British sculpture, referred to as the New Sculpture. American art critic Earl Shinn claimed at the time that Except Leighton and his paintings represented Britain at the great 1900 Paris Exhibition. Leighton was knighted at Windsor in 1878, and was created a baronet, of Holland Park Road in the Parish of St Mary Abbots, Kensington, in the County of Middlesex, eight years later. He was the first painter to be given a peerage, in the New Year Honours List of 1896, the patent creating him Baron Leighton, of Stretton in the County of Shropshire, was issued on 24 January 1896, Leighton died the next day of angina pectoris. Leighton remained a bachelor and rumours of his having a child with one of his models in addition to the supposition that Leighton may have been homosexual continue to be debated today. He certainly enjoyed an intense and romantically tinged relationship with the poet Henry William Greville whom he met in Florence in 1856, the older man showered Leighton in letters, but the romantic affection seems not to have been reciprocated. Enquiry is furthermore hindered by the fact that Leighton left no diaries, after his death his Barony was extinguished after existing for only a day, this is a record in the Peerage. His house in Holland Park, London has been turned into a museum, the house also features many of Leightons inspirations, including his collection of Iznik tiles. Its centrepiece is the magnificent Arab Hall, the Hall is featured in issue ten of Cornucopia. A blue plaque commemorates Leighton at Leighton House Museum, Leighton was an enthusiastic volunteer soldier, enrolling with the first group to join the 38th Middlesex Rifle volunteers on 5 October 1860. His qualities of leadership were identified, and he was promoted to command A Company within a few months. On 6 January 1869 Captain Leighton was elected to command The Artists Rifles by a meeting of the corps
