aesthetic attitude
The attitude of detached and disinterested, but engaged, contemplation often supposed to be appropriate to understanding the aesthetic value of a work of art. The centrality of an aesthetic attitude ...
aestheticism
1. An alleged social trend which involves an increasing personal concern with visual displays and/or a growing role for public spectacle in everyday life; typically a pejorative term. See also visual ...
aesthetics
(Greek sense perception)Kant keeps the ancient Greek usage, in which anything treating of sense perception may be called an aesthetic. The word had earlier been restricted by Baumgarten to the ...
Andrei Rublev
(b ?c.1360; d Moscow, 1430).The most famous of Russian icon painters. The 600th anniversary of his birth was celebrated by Soviet Russia in 1960, but the date is not firmly documented and there is ...
Arabic Calligraphy
Arabic writing, alphabetical in type, belongs to the Semitic scripts; it has 25 consonants, three semi-vowels and three long vowels. Appearing under the influence of Syriac in the Christian Arab ...
architecture
The term given to an organization's information technology platform, structure and process but increasingly used as a way of explaining complex marketing concepts and functions, for example ‘brand ...
Armament Culture
War has spawned some of humankind’s greatest achievements as well as its worst excesses. Its glories and tragedies have been celebrated in the epic poetry of Homer, the plays of ...
art and architecture: Armenian
Medieval Armenia’s visual culture bears strikingly distinctive features as well as evidence of close contact with neighbouring traditions. Art in the region is generally categorized into three ...
art and illusion
(1960)is an influential work by Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) that emphasizes the conventional context of art-historical discourse.In his introduction, Gombrich presents his psychology of perception and ...
art and morality
Argument in this area tends to cluster around either of two poles: one seeing the relation between art and morality as close and harmonious, the other more keenly aware of conflicts and tensions ...
Art Deco
The predominant decorative art style of the 1920s and 1930s, characterized by precise and boldly delineated geometric shapes and strong colours.
art Nouveau
A style of decorative art, architecture, and design prominent in western Europe and the US from about 1890 until the First World War and characterized by intricate linear designs and flowing curves ...
Arthur C. Danto
(1924– )Philosophy professor at Columbia University (1966–87) whose major works include Nietzsche as Philosopher (1965). He is however best known as a philosopher of art, and art critic, and ...
artisan
A skilled craft worker. The term was used particularly in the 19th century. Artisans provided the leadership of working-class political reform groups.
artist
In the MA the artist, or better artifex (‘artificer’), was most frequently considered a practitioner of the mechanical arts. Inextricably linked to his manual activities, he was viewed as a ...
Artists and Artisans
Egyptologists long debated whether the statuary, painting, and relief created during the three millennia of pharaonic history could properly be considered art, since those products were intended to ...
Beatus of Liébana
(d. 798)A Spanish monk in Liébana (Cantabria), who in the 8th century authored a highly influential commentary on the Apocalypse. The significance of this commentary lay not so much ...
Benedetto Antelami
(late 12th century) Emilian sculptor whose work, informed by both antique Roman and contemporary French sculpture,includes the free-standing prophets in façade niches of Fidenza cathedral and the ...
Berry, Jean, duc de
(1340–1416)Son of Jean II of France and greatest bibliophile of his time. He hired the Lombard illuminator Pietro da Verona as his librarian, and owned historical texts, romances, and ...
Bilzingsleben
Is an open-air Lower Paleolithic lakeshore site at Steinrinne in eastern Germany, near the confluence of the Wipper and Wirbelbach rivers. It first became known as an old quarry with ...
