Art and Artists

Highlights

List

Seven Things to Know about Vincent van Gogh’s Time in Britain

Britain was instrumental in shaping the van Gogh we know today

Interview

Photojournalism Now

We talk to photojournalist, Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi, about the ethics of her work and the impact of technology on documenting ...

Interview

Moon & Jeon: 'How can you define contemporary art?'

Meet South Korean artists Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho

Interview

In Conversation with Joanna Piotrowska

The Art Now artist talks to us about her motivation, inspiration and how she makes art that is relevant to ...

Artists In the Collection

Yinka Shonibare CBE, ‘The Swing (after Fragonard)’ 2001

Art Terms

Find definitions of over 400 terms, including art movements, styles and techniques

See more Art Terms

Surrealism

Surrealism was a movement which began in the 1920s of writers and artists (including Salvador Dalí and René Magritte), who experimented with ways of unleashing the subconscious

Sonia Boyce OBE, ‘From Tarzan to Rambo: English Born ‘Native’ Considers her Relationship to the Constructed/Self Image and her Roots in Reconstruction’ 1987

Identity politics is the term used to describe an anti-authoritarian political and cultural movement that gained prominence in the USA and Europe in the mid-1980s, asking questions about identity, repression, inequality and injustice and often focusing on the experience of marginalised groups

Impressionism

Impressionism developed in France in the nineteenth century and is based on the practice of painting out of doors and spontaneously ‘on the spot’ rather than in a studio from sketches. Main impressionist subjects were landscapes and scenes of everyday life

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt, ‘Ophelia’ 1851–2

Pre-Raphaelite

The Pre-Raphaelites were a secret society of young artists (and one writer), founded in London in 1848. They were opposed to the Royal Academy’s promotion of the ideal as exemplified in the work of Raphael

Allegory

Allegory in art is when the subject of the artwork, or the various elements that form the composition, is used to symbolize a deeper moral or spiritual meaning such as life, death, love, virtue, justice etc.

Henry Moore OM, CH, ‘Recumbent Figure’ 1938

Sculpture

Three-dimensional art made by one of four basic processes: carving, modelling, casting, constructing

Pablo Picasso, ‘Goat’s Skull, Bottle and Candle’ 1952

Memento mori

A memento mori is an artwork designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the shortness and fragility of human life

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, ‘I was a Rich Man’s Plaything’ 1947

Pop art

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the 1950s and flourished in the 1960s in America and Britain, drawing inspiration from sources in popular and commercial culture such as advertising, Hollywood movies and pop music. Key pop artists include Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake and David Hockney

Afrofuturism

Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic that combines science-fiction, history and fantasy to explore the African-American experience and aims to connect those from the black diaspora with their forgotten African ancestry

Collage

Collage describes both the technique and the resulting work of art in which pieces of paper, photographs, fabric and other ephemera are arranged and stuck down onto a supporting surface