General art history

General art history

Industry: Art history

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General art history

mail art

Art history; General art history

Considered to be the predecessor of Net art, Mail art began in the 1960s when artists sent postcards inscribed with poems or drawings through the post rather than exhibiting or selling them through ...

mannerist

Art history; General art history

Mannerism is the name given to the style of followers of Raphael and Michelangelo in Italy from about 1520-1600. It is characterised by artificiality, elegance, sensuous distortion of the human ...

maquette

Art history; General art history

A model for a larger piece of sculpture. Often fascinating works in their own right, conveying the immediacy of the artist's first realisation of an idea.

matter painting

Art history; General art history

The term appeared in the 1950s and referred to the use of thick impasto into which other materials were often inserted. These included sand, mud, cement and shells. Matter painting was popularised by ...

medium

Art history; General art history

In relation to art this term has two principal overlapping, even slightly confusing meanings. Painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, are all media of art in the sense of a type of art. However, ...

memento mori

Art history; General art history

Latin phrase meaning remember you must die. A memento mori painting or sculpture is one designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the brevity and fragility of human life in the face of ...

merz

Art history; General art history

Nonsense word invented by the German Dada artist Kurt Schwitters to describe his collage and assemblage works based on scavenged scrap materials. He made large numbers of small collages, and more ...