INTRODUCTIONArt, the product of creative human activity in which materials are shaped or selected to convey an idea, emotion, or visually interesting form. The word art can refer to the visual arts, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, decorative arts, crafts, and other visual works that combine materials or forms. We also use the word art in a more general sense to encompass other forms of creative activity, such as dance, drama, and music, or even to describe skill in almost any activity, such as “the art of bread making” or “the art of travel.” In this article art refers to the visual arts.

The next sections of the article offer answers to the following questions: How have the visual arts been defined, and what purposes have they served? How have the different kinds of visual art been categorized and valued at different times? What are the elements of art? How do art historians study changes in art through time? The article concludes with some suggestions for appreciating works of art.

Although a firm definition of art may seem like a good idea, and philosophers in the field of aesthetics have attempted to come up with one, it is possible to create and enjoy art without such a definition. Artists are generally more concerned with how best to use materials to convey their ideas than with deciding what is or is not art, whereas museum curators and art historians are busier looking for examples of particular types of objects, such as Greek vases or Rembrandt drawings. It is most important to remember that art is a category with changing boundaries, not only in its general definition but also in its subdivisions. People not only make art, but also choose which objects should be called art.

Architecture is the art of creating structures in which we can live, work, worship, and play. Architects, more than painters and sculptors, are concerned with the function of their buildings as well as with the visual appearance, structural solidity, and way in which a building fits into the landscape. Landscape architecture and garden design use plants and the land itself as materials to create outdoor spaces and interesting visual effects. Urban planners use architecture and landscape design at a larger scale, to shape the communities in which we live. A designer—someone who imagines and works with the ideas—is common to all of these fields. Although many people with specialized skills work to make the projects a reality, the person considered the artist is the one who creates the design.

ART DECO

Art Deco Historic DistrictThe Art Deco Historic District is located at the southern end of Miami Beach, Florida. The art deco style, which features sleek geometric lines and stylized decoration, proliferated in the Miami area during a development boom in the 1920s and 1930s.

Art Deco, style popular in the 1920s and 1930s, used primarily in the design of buildings, furniture, jewelry, and interior decor. Art deco is characterized by sleek, streamlined forms; geometric patterns; and experiments with industrial materials such as metals, plastics, and glass. The term art deco is a shortening of the title of a major Paris design exhibition held in 1925, Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts), where the style first became evident. Art deco quickly gained hold in the United States, where it reached the height of its achievement in architecture, especially in New York City’s soaring skyscrapers of the late 1920s and early 1930s such as the Chrysler, Daily News, and Empire State buildings. Because many art deco buildings went up during a period of economic collapse known as the Great Depression, the style is sometimes known as depression moderne.

Art deco grew out of a conscious effort to simplify the elaborately curved shapes and plantlike motifs of art nouveau, the prevailing style in architecture and design at the beginning of the 20th century. Art deco retained the tendency of art nouveau toward abstraction and repetition of forms but moved away from the shapes and motifs of the older style.

The clean lines, streamlining, and symmetry of art deco designs reflect the increasing importance of industrial products in everyday life, and a corresponding interest among modern artists and designers in the beauty of machinery. Art deco objects were usually not mass-produced, yet many of them possess qualities belonging to mass production: simplicity, unvaried repetition, and geometric patterns. Designers began to look at industrial products less as utilitarian objects than as inspiration for art.

Art deco was also a product of the fertile artistic exchange between Paris, France, and New York City that occurred after World War I (1914-1918). American artists, writers, and musicians flocked to Paris after the war and brought with them a fresh approach to creative work. The French, who grounded their art in a firm grasp of tradition, absorbed something of the American spirit of improvisation. Later, American architects who had trained at Paris's École des Beaux Arts (School of Fine Arts) brought European influence to the design of New York’s many art deco skyscrapers.

Chrysler BuildingThe Chrysler Building (1930) in New York City is considered the quintessential example of art deco architecture. It was designed by William Van Alen, who was inspired in part by cubist art and machine forms. The building, which rises in a series of narrowing arches to the stainless steel spire on top, is 319 m (1,046 ft) tall. It was the tallest building in the world for one year, before the Empire State Building surpassed it.

In architecture, the crowning achievements of art deco occurred not in Europe but in the United States. A trio of New York City skyscraper specialists set the stage for an explosion of creative activity during the 1920s and early 1930s. Architects Raymond M. Hood, Ralph Walker, and Ely Jacques Kahn produced many of the city’s landmark tall buildings and inspired other designers with their innovations in form, materials, and decoration. A major influence on their work was a never-executed design by Finnish-born American architect Eliel Saarinen that he entered in the 1922 Chicago Tribune Building competition. Although his proposal did not win, it helped popularize the use of setbacks, the stepped building profile that became associated with so many art deco skyscrapers. New York's 1916 building and zoning ordinances also encouraged the use of setbacks in tall buildings to enable sunlight to penetrate to the canyonlike streets of the city.

Palais de Chaillot, ParisThe Palais de Chaillot in Paris was built for the 1937 World’s Fair. Today, it houses several museums and the French film archives.

The major art deco skyscrapers were built largely between the end of World War I in 1918 and the mid-1930s. This bubble of economic activity, most of it set in motion before the economic hardship of the 1930s, encouraged innovation in tall buildings. Hood set the standard for much of future skyscraper design with his designs for the sleek, black-and-gold American Radiator Building (1924); the towering New York Daily News Building (1930); and the McGraw-Hill Building (1931), accented with alternating bands of windows and green tile that gradually darken as they ascend. He also contributed to Rockefeller Center (1933, with several later additions), which was the largest design effort in New York City.

 

Hood accentuated the vertical sweep of the New York Daily News Building by setting windows within indented vertical panels to create an unobstructed band from the base of the building to the top.

The buildings of Ralph Walker are made up of massive geometric forms that almost seem sculpted out of clay. Walker’s Barclay-Vesey Telephone Building (1923-1926), situated on a trapezoidal site, features towers cut into faceted blocks. Kahn, on the other hand, provided his Two Park Avenue Tower (1927) with delicate ornamental details inside and out, using a wide range of materials including metal, glass, brick, and several colors of tile. This colorful design, in turn, contrasted with his largely white Squibb Building (1930). Other significant art deco designs in New York City include the Chrysler Building (1930) by American architect William Van Alen, the Empire State Building (1931) by the firm of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, and the exuberant interiors of Radio City Music Hall (1932) by American designer Donald Deskey

ART NOUVEAU

Detail of Art Nouveau DecorationThis detail of a door decoration from a building constructed in the early 20th century in Milan, Italy, illustrates the stylistic themes associated with art nouveau. The handcrafted intricacy of the work reflects the reaction of art nouveau artists against the rise of machine-made designs. The soft features of the human face and the robust pattern of leaves illustrate the importance of naturalistic representation. Depictions of flora were so integral to the movement that in Italy art nouveau was also known as stile floreale (floral style).

Art Nouveau (from French for “new art”), movement in Western art and design, which reached its peak during the 1890s. Hallmarks of the art nouveau style are flat, decorative patterns; intertwined organic forms such as stems or flowers; an emphasis on handcrafting as opposed to machine manufacturing; the use of new materials; and the rejection of earlier styles. In general, sinuous, curving lines also characterize art nouveau, although right-angled forms are also typical, especially as the style was practiced in Scotland and in Austria. 

Art nouveau embraced all forms of art and design: architecture, furniture, glassware, graphic design, jewelry, painting, pottery, metalwork, and textiles. This was a sharp contrast to the traditional separation of art into the distinct categories of fine art (painting and sculpture) and applied arts (ceramics, furniture, and other practical objects).

Balzarini House, MilanMilan has a number of buildings in the art nouveau style, including the Balzarini house on Via Pisacane shown here. The ironwork of the balcony railings provides an excellent example of the flowing lines and floral motifs favored by art nouveau designers. In Italy, the style was known as the Liberty style after a department store in London, England, that had popularized it.

The term art nouveau comes from an art gallery in Paris, France, called Maison de l'Art Nouveau (House of New Art), which was run by French dealer Siegfried Bing. In his gallery, Bing displayed not only paintings and sculpture but also ceramics, furniture, metalwork, and Japanese art. Sections of the gallery were devoted to model rooms that artists and architects designed in the art nouveau style. 

Art nouveau flourished in a number of European countries, many of which developed their own names for the style. Art nouveau was known in France as style Guimard, after French designer Hector Guimard; in Italy as the stile floreale (floral style) or stile Liberty, after British art nouveau designer Arthur Lasenby Liberty; in Spain as modernisme; in Austria as Sezessionstil (secession style); and in Germany as Jugendstil (youth style). These diverse names reflect the widespread adoption of the movement, which had centers in major cities all over Europe—Paris and Nancy in France; Darmstadt and Munich in Germany; Brussels, Belgium; Glasgow, Scotland; Barcelona, Spain; Vienna, Austria; Prague, Czech Republic; and Budapest, Hungary. 

Art nouveau represents the beginning of modernism in design . It occurred at a time when mass-produced consumer goods began to fill the marketplace, and designers, architects, and artists began to understand that the handcrafted work of centuries past could be lost. While reclaiming this craft tradition, art nouveau designers simultaneously rejected traditional styles in favor of new, organic forms that emphasized humanity's connection to nature. 

As art nouveau designers erased the barrier between fine arts and applied arts, they applied good design to all aspects of living—from architecture to silverware to painting. In this integrated approach art nouveau had its deepest influence. A variety of ensuing movements continued to explore integrated design, including De Stijl, a Dutch design movement in the 1920s, and the German Bauhaus school in the 1920s and 1930s. Although the stylistic elements of art nouveau evolved into the simpler, streamlined forms of modernism, the fundamental art nouveau concept of a thoroughly integrated environment remains an important part of contemporary design.   

Glasgow School of ArtScottish architect and interior designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s architectural masterpiece, the Glasgow School of Art (completed in 1909), is an important example of the Art Nouveau style. The building’s Art Nouveau features include its wrought-iron gates and an entrance resembling a castle. The exterior walls of the school’s rooms comprise large windows that provide light for the art studios and for the two-story library within.

Maison Saint-Cyr, BrusselsThe elaborate wrought-iron and glass-window facade, center, of this house in Brussels, designed and built in 1903 by Belgian architect Gustave Strauven, displays the flowing lines, inspired by natural vegetation, favored by the art nouveau movement.

Metro Station, ParisHector Germain Guimard’s subway entrances for the Paris Metro (early 1900s) are his most famous creations. Using wrought iron, bronze, and glass, Guimard composed his structures using the curves characteristic of the Art Nouveau style.

Majolikahaus, ViennaThis apartment building, known as Majolikahaus, in Vienna, Austria, was designed by Austrian architect Otto Wagner at the turn of the 20th century. The facade of the building is covered in ceramic tiles, known as majolica, the form a floral pattern. The building is an excellent example of the Sezession style, the Viennese version of art nouveau.

Casa Batlló by GaudíWhen Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí was asked to redesign the front of a conventional apartment building in Barcelona, Spain, he produced the curving facade of the Casa Batlló (1907), shown here. The organic forms--the pillars look like leg bones--and the undulating shapes link Gaudí with the art nouveau movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

ISMS

CUBISM

Cubism, movement in modern art, especially in painting, invented by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and French artist Georges Braque in 1907 and 1908. Although the look of cubism and the ideas behind it evolved over time, cubism retained certain general characteristics throughout. Cubist paintings create an ambiguous sense of space through geometric shapes that flatten and simplify form, spatial planes that are broken into fragments, and forms that overlap and penetrate one another. Art historians generally consider cubism to have been the most influential art movement of the first half of the 20th century.

The exact date of cubism's first appearance in art has been the subject of heated debate among art historians. Some see its onset in Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907, Museum of Modern Art, New York City), a painting of women composed of jagged shapes, flattened figures, and forms borrowed from African masks.

Other historians feel that the influence of French artist Paul Cézanne on the work of Picasso and Braque provided the primary catalyst for the new movement. Before his death in 1906, Cézanne increasingly simplified and flattened forms. In addition, Cézanne began to use what art historians have called passage, a device in which one physical object is allowed to penetrate another physical object. In a painting of Mont Sainte-Victoire (1902-1904, Philadelphia Museum of Art), for example, Cézanne left the outer contour of the mountain unfinished so that at intervals no clear boundary separates the sky from the mountain. This innovation—allowing air and rock to merge and interpenetrate—became especially important to the cubists for two reasons. First, passage defied the laws of physical experience. Second, it encouraged artists to view paintings as having an internal logic—or integrity—that functions independently of, or even contrary to, physical experience.

Profoundly influenced by these late Cézanne paintings, Picasso and Braque executed a series of landscapes in 1908 that were very close to Cézanne's, both in their color scheme (dark greens and light browns) and in their drastic simplification of form into geometric shapes. In Braque's Houses at L'Estaque (1908, Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland) and in Picasso's Houses on the Hill, at Horta de Ebro (1909, Museum of Modern Art, New York), houses have a three-dimensional, cubic quality. It was upon seeing these paintings that French art critic Louis Vauxelles coined the term cubism.

Mont Sainte-Victoire by CézanneFrench artist Paul Cézanne painted Mont Sainte-Victoire, a mountain near his home in Provence in southern France, on many occasions. Over time, the images he produced became flatter, less realistic, and more abstract. In this late version, painted from 1902 to 1904, patches of color barely indicate the mountain, sky, and foreground, while creating a rhythmic pattern across the painting’s surface. The mountain and sky, both intensely blue, appear almost to merge.

In these early cubist paintings, Picasso and Braque introduced other devices that undermine the illusion of space. For example, they abandoned conventional perspective: Buildings, instead of appearing one behind the other, appear one on top of the other. Moreover, in Houses at Horta, Picasso not only reduced the houses into cubic shapes but also transformed the background in the same manner. By treating earth and sky in the same way, Picasso made the canvas appear more unified, but in the process he also introduced ambiguity—by no longer differentiating what is solid from what is void.

The first cubist paintings also stood out because they avoided using a consistent light source, unlike paintings that seek to create the illusion of three-dimensional space. In some parts of cubist paintings, light appears to cast shadows from the left; in others, from the right, the top, or the bottom. In addition, planes intersect in ways that leave the spectator guessing whether angles are concave or convex. A delight in confusing the spectator is a regular feature of cubism.

Art historians generally divide Picasso and Braque’s early cubism into two phases. Analytical cubism, the earlier phase, continued until 1912. It was followed by synthetic cubism, which lasted through 1915. Analytical cubism fragments the physical world into intersecting geometric

planes and interpenetrating volumes. Synthetic cubism, by contrast, synthesizes (combines) abstract shapes to represent objects in a new way.

Georges Braque: Guitare et verre French artist Georges Braque painted Guitare et verre (Guitar and Glass, 1921) in the synthetic cubist style. Braque worked in conjunction with Spanish artist Pablo Picasso to develop the 20th-century art movement known as cubism. Cubist painting had two phases, called analytical and synthetic. The first, analytical cubism, is characterized by the use of monochromatic color schemes and flat, fragmented forms. With synthetic cubism, color and decoration played a greater role, and the technique of collage was introduced.

Picasso’s The Three Musicians Spanish painter Pablo Picasso used figures from the circus and the theater in a number of his works. The Three Musicians (1921) features two characters from Italian commedia dell’arte theater—Harlequin in the diamond-patterned costume and Pierrot in white. Some experts believe that Harlequin represents Picasso himself.

FUTURISMFuturism, early 20th-century movement in art that pointedly rejected all traditions and attempted instead to glorify contemporary life, mainly by emphasizing its two dominant themes, the machine and motion. The principles of futurism were originated by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and published by him in a manifesto in 1909. The following year the Italian artists Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, and Gino Severini signed the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting. Futurism was characterized by the attempted depiction of several successive actions of positions of a subject at the same time. The result resembled somewhat a stroboscopic photograph or a high-speed series of photographs printed on a single plate. Interesting examples are Severini's Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin (1912, Museum of Modern Art, New York City) and his Armored Train (1915, Collection Richard S. Zeisler, New York City). Although futurism was short-lived, lasting only until about 1914, its influence can be seen in the works of the painters Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, and Robert Delaunay in Paris and the constructivists in Russia. The futurist worship of the machine survived as a fundamental part of Fascist doctrine.

Boccioni’s Riot in the Galleria Futurist painter Giovanni Boccioni worked in Milan from 1908 to 1910, the year he painted Riot in the Galleria (Brera Art Gallery, Milan). He used the postimpressionist technique of applying small patches of complementary colors to produce a glittering effect.

VORTICISM

Vorticism, movement in modern English art that was founded by the writer and artist Wyndham Lewis. It was launched in 1913, but by the end of World War I (1914-1918) it had ceased to exist, despite efforts to revive it. Its members included the painters C. R. W. Nevinson, William Roberts, and Edward Wadsworth, and the sculptors Jacob Epstein and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

The mouthpiece of vorticism was the bombastic journal Blast: Review of the Great English Vortex, which appeared twice, in June 1914 and July 1915 (War Number). The first issue carried the “Vorticist Manifesto,” which was signed by 11 artists. Only one vorticist exhibition was ever held, in April 1915 at the Doré Galleries in London. The name of the movement was supposedly coined by American poet Ezra Pound. Although presented by Lewis as a distinctive national development, vorticism was in fact heavily reliant on cubism and particularly futurism for both its attitudes and style. Typical vorticist paintings are constructed from angular, geometric elements in either abstract or figurative compositions.

The initial stimulus to the foundation of vorticism came on June 7, 1914, with the publication in The Observer of the “Vital English Art Futurist Manifesto” by the Italian futurist leader Filippo Marinetti and Nevinson. In this, Marinetti claimed that certain English avant-garde artists, including Lewis and his colleagues, were essentially affiliates of the Italian futurist movement. Given that there was no cohesive group of such artists and that Lewis wanted to be the leader of an entirely independent group, he responded with the first issue of Blast on June 20, 1914. This “blasted” various people and institutions, including England (“curse its climate for its sins and infections”), and “blessed” others: England was also blessed “for its ships.” The rather vague manifesto contained a series of brief statements of belief, such as the importance of the primitive in modern art: “The artist of the modern movement is a savage.” It also asserted the superiority of northern culture over that of the south, essentially a snipe at the futurists.

Although elements of the vorticist style, the movement’s aggressive self-publicity, and its devotion to modernity brought it close to futurism, there are nevertheless important differences between the two. The machine was not a central part of vorticist imagery nor a determinant of its aesthetic, whereas for the futurists it was emblematic of all that most distinguished the modern world. Further, vorticist paintings are less frenetic and dynamic than futurist ones; again, speed was not crucially interesting to the vorticists. In fact, there is a harmony and balance in vorticist art that brings it closer to cubism, as seen, for example, in Lewis’s Workshop (about 1914-1915, Tate Gallery, London) or even Nevinson’s Bursting Shell (1915, Tate Gallery). Indeed, Lewis thought futurism essentially romantic in outlook, as compared to the classicism of vorticism. Despite its short life, vorticism was important for being the first organized avant-garde movement in 20th-century British art.

At the Seaside Painter and writer Wyndham Lewis was the chief figure in the British art movement known as vorticism. The angular, machinelike forms of Lewis’s work show the influence of both cubism and futurism. At the Seaside, painted in 1913, is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England.

The Rock Drill American-born British sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein was an important portraitist, but also created other types of sculpture. One of his more radical works was The Rock Drill (1913), in which he mounted a cubist influenced bronze torso on top of an actual drill. The torso from this piece is now in the collection of the Tate Gallery, London, England.

SUPREMATISM

Suprematism, a highly geometric style of 20th-century abstract painting, developed by Russian artist Kasimir Malevich. The term suprematism refers to an art based upon the supremacy of “pure artistic feeling” rather than on the depiction of objects. In 1913 Malevich executed his first suprematist composition: a pencil drawing of a black square on a white background (Russian State Museum, Saint Petersburg). In 1915 he published a manifesto and for the first time displayed his suprematist compositions at an exhibition in Saint Petersburg (then known as Petrograd).

Malevich’s earliest suprematist works were among his most severe, consisting of basic geometric shapes, such as circles, squares, and rectangles, painted in a limited range of colors. In the following years he gradually introduced more colors as well as triangles and fragments of circles. He also began to restore some illusion of depth to his compositions. Despite this apparent enrichment of his pictorial language, in 1918 he produced the extraordinary Suprematist Composition: White on White (Museum of Modern Art, New York City), a painting consisting of a tilted white square on a white background. Only the variation in the brush strokes allows the viewer to distinguish the different parts of the picture. Having attained this ultimate point of abstraction, Malevich declared in 1919 that the suprematist experiment had finished.

Any attempt to interpret suprematism inevitably draws upon Malevich's own explanation of the movement. Malevich distinguished his work not only from depictions of external reality, but also from any art that attempted to represent the emotions of its creator. He intended suprematism, by contrast, to express “the metallic culture of our time,” and he occasionally made direct references to technology in his art. In Suprematist Composition Expressing the Feeling of Wireless Telegraphy (1915), for example, Malevich incorporated a visual expression of the dots and dashes of telegraphy.

In general, Malevich used perfect abstract shapes such as the square as symbols of humanity’s ability to transcend the natural world. Like Dutch painter Piet Mondrian and other geometric abstractionists, Malevich was extremely interested in the mystical movement theosophy and in expressing a spiritual reality beyond the physical through his art. In this context the black square of his first suprematist work was not empty, as his critics claimed. Instead it was “filled with the spirit of non-objective sensation,” according to the artist, who described the areas of white in his compositions as “the free white sea” of “infinity.” This liberation from finite earthly existence reached a fitting climax in his white-on-white paintings, where the square finally lost its physical presence and merged with its brilliant white background.

Despite announcing the end of suprematism in 1919, Malevich continued to produce suprematist works during the 1920s. However, he gradually returned to figurative art after 1927. His most important followers were Russian artist El Lissitzky and Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy, who helped spread his ideas throughout Western Europe and North America.

Malevich’s Suprematist Composition Russian artist Kasimir Malevich created a form of abstract painting based upon elementary geometric shapes—primarily squares and rectangles—in basic colors on a white background. In doing so he sought to remove all reference to the world of objects and to create a spiritual art in which shapes and colors, and the surrounding space of the painting, evoke a state of tension and its opposite, equilibrium. This painting, completed between 1914 and 1916, is in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

CONSTRUCTIVISM

Constructivism, Russian art movement of the early 20th century that had an important influence on later schools of art. Constructivism was founded by Russian sculptor and painter Vladimir Tatlin. Its name derives from the “construction” of abstract sculptures from miscellaneous industrial materials, such as metal, wire, and pieces of plastic. Tatlin's relief constructions of 1913 to 1917 were the first works of the movement. He was joined before 1920 by artists Aleksandr Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, Naum Gabo, and Antoine Pevsner, among others.

Although the movement split into several factions in the 1920s, in general constructivism stood for the ideals of abstraction, functionalism, and utilitarianism. Utilitarianism, the dominant attitude toward art in the then newly born Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), held that art should be easily comprehensible and socially useful. Tatlin merged his constructivist dogma with that of the new Communist state and became a powerful and influential designer for the new order.

Constructivism had an important influence on mid-20th-century sculpture, architecture, and especially industrial design, where its advocacy of modern materials and clean design reinforced the emerging aesthetic of functionalism.

Model for Column This piece of sculpture by the Russian American sculptor Naum Gabo is a model for a larger piece he completed in 1923 called Column. The model, like the later piece, is made of glass, plastic, and metal. Column is a representative piece of constructivist sculpture. It is abstract, geometric, and created with industrial design methods. The model is part of the collection of the Tate Gallery, London.

DE STIJLDe Stijl (Dutch, “the style”), Dutch arts movement started in Amsterdam in 1917, and the periodical by the same name. De Stijl was dedicated to abstraction that would create a universal response from all viewers based on a quest for harmony and order. Among the founders of the movement were the painters Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, who also established its journal, De Stijl (1917-1932). The spare, abstract style that they advocated was also known as neoplasticism. It rejected all representation and restricted the elements of artistic expression to the use of straight lines, right angles, pure primary colors (blue, red, and yellow), and the so-called non-colors of black, gray, and white. De Stijl principles also influenced the decorative arts, especially architecture, exemplified by the austere clarity of the Schröder House (1924) in Utrecht, by architect and industrial designer Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, and the Workers’ Housing Estate (1924-1927) in Hook of Holland, by architect Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud.

Doesburg’s Rhythm of a Russian Dance In 1917 Dutch painters Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian founded De Stijl, a modern art movement intended to restrict artistic expression to the barest essentials. In Rhythms of a Russian Dance (Museum of Modern Art, 1918), van Doesburg reduces painting to straight horizontal and vertical lines in a limited number of colors on a flat plane.

EXPRESSIONISMExpressionism, in the visual, literary, and performing arts, a movement or tendency that strives to express subjective feelings and emotions rather than to depict reality or nature objectively. The movement developed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a reaction against the academic standards that had prevailed in Europe since the Renaissance (1300-1600), particularly in French and German art academies. In expressionism the artist tries to present an emotional experience in its most compelling form. The artist is not concerned with reality as it appears but with its inner nature and with the emotions aroused by the subject. To achieve these ends, the subject is frequently caricatured, exaggerated, distorted, or otherwise altered in order to stress the emotional experience in its most intense and concentrated form.

Although the term expressionism was not applied to painting until 1911, the qualities attributed to expressionism are found in the art of almost every country and period. Some Chinese and Japanese art emphasizes the essential qualities of the subject rather than its physical appearance. Painters and sculptors of medieval Europe exaggerated their work for the Romanesque and early Gothic cathedrals to intensify the spiritual expressiveness of the subjects. Intense religious emotions expressed through distortion are found also in the 16th-century works of the Spanish painter El Greco and the German painter Matthias Grünewald. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, the French artist Paul Gauguin, and the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch used violent colors and exaggerated lines to obtain intense emotional expression.

Improvisation 28 (second version) was painted by Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky in 1912. Kandinsky used energetic color and form to express the spiritual content of his work. He was also a musician and saw a connection between the visual arts and music, which he attempted to convey in paintings such as this one.

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

Abstract Expressionism, movement in mid-20th-century painting that was primarily concerned with the spontaneous assertion of the individual through the act of painting. The movement contains a variety of styles and is characterized more by the concepts behind the art than by a specific look. Generally, abstract expressionist art is without recognizable images and does not adhere to the limits of conventional form.

The roots of abstract expressionism are in the totally nonfigurative work of the Russian-born painter Wassily Kandinsky and that of the surrealists (see Surrealism), who deliberately used the subconscious and spontaneity in creative activity. The arrival in New York City during World War II (1939-1945) of such avant-garde European painters as Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Marc Chagall, and Yves Tanguy inspired the use of abstract expressionism among American painters in the 1940s and 1950s. American painters were also influenced by the subjective abstractions of the Armenian-born painter Arshile Gorky, who had immigrated to the United States in 1920, and by the German-born American painter and teacher Hans Hofmann, who stressed the dynamic interaction of colored planes.

The abstract expressionist movement centered in New York City and is also called the New York school. Although the styles embraced within abstract expressionism were as diverse as the styles of the painters themselves, two major tendencies were noted in the movement. Action painters were concerned with paint texture and consistency and the gestures of the artist, while color field painters gave their works impact by using unified color and shape. Jackson Pollock was the quintessential action painter. His unique approach to painting involved interlacing lines of dripped and poured paint that seemed to extend in unending arabesques. Willem de Kooning and Franz Josef Kline also were action painters; both used broad impasto brush strokes to create rhythmic abstractions in virtually infinite space. Mark Rothko created pulsating rectangles of saturated color in his works; many of these works are prime examples of color-field painting. Bradley Walker Tomlin, Philip Guston, Robert Burns Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, and Clyfford Still combined elements of both action and color-field painting in their works.

Abstract expressionism also flourished in Europe, where it influenced such French painters as Nicolas de Staël, Pierre Soulages, and Jean Dubuffet. The European abstract expressionist schools tachism (from the French word tâche, “spot”), which emphasized patches of color, and art informel (French for “informal art”), which rejected formal structure, had especially close affinities with New York action painting. Tachiste painters include the Frenchmen Georges Mathieu and Camille Bryen, the Spaniard Antoni Tàpies, the Italian Alberto Burri, the German Wols, and the Canadian Jean Paul Riopelle.

Hofmann’s Rising Moon German American artist Hans Hofmann was a major figure in the development of abstract expressionism, a movement that dominated American painting during the 1950s. Hofmann used high-intensity pigments, often applying the paint thickly and vigorously as in Rising Moon (1964, private collection), shown here. He was also a noted teacher who influenced many artists in Europe and the United States.

DADADada, early 20th-century art movement, whose members sought to ridicule the culture of their time through deliberately absurd performances, poetry, and visual art. Dadaists embraced the extraordinary, the irrational, and the contradictory largely in reaction to the unprecedented and incomprehensible brutality of World War I (1914-1918). Their work was driven in part by a belief that deep-seated European values—nationalism, militarism, and even the long tradition of rational philosophy—were implicated in the horrors of the war. Dada is often described as nihilistic—that is, rejecting all moral values; however, dadaists considered their movement an affirmation of life in the face of death.

Parade Amoureuse The work of French painter Francis Picabia from 1915 to 1920 displays his fascination with mechanical objects. Parade Amoureuse (1917), shown here, suggests a somewhat mysterious coupling of two machines.

POP ART

Pop Art, visual arts movement of the 1950s and 1960s, principally in the United States and Britain. The images of pop art (shortened from “popular art”) were taken from mass culture. Some artists duplicated beer bottles, soup cans, comic strips, road signs, and similar objects in paintings, collages, and sculptures. Others incorporated the objects themselves into their paintings or sculptures, sometimes in startlingly modified form. Materials of modern technology, such as plastic, urethane foam, and acrylic paint, often figured prominently. One of the most important artistic movements of the 20th century, pop art not only influenced the work of subsequent artists but also had an impact on commercial, graphic, and fashion design.

The historical antecedents of pop art include the works of Dadaists (see Dada) such as the French artist Marcel Duchamp, as well as a tradition, in U.S. painting of the 19th and early 20th centuries, of trompe l'oeil pictures and other depictions of familiar objects. Moreover, a number of pop artists had at times earned their living by working as commercial artists.

The pop art movement itself, however, began as a reaction against the abstract expressionist style of the 1940s and 1950s, which the pop artists considered overly intellectual, subjective, and divorced from reality. Adopting the goal of the American composer John Cage—to close the gap between life and art—pop artists embraced the environment of everyday life. In using images that reflected the materialism and vulgarity of modern mass culture, they sought to provide a perception of reality even more immediate than that offered by the realistic painting of the past. They also worked to be impersonal—that is, to allow the viewer to respond directly to the object, rather than to the skill and personality of the artist. Occasionally, however, an element of satire or social criticism can be discerned.

Painting by Roy LichtensteinWhaam! by American painter, sculptor, and graphic artist Roy Lichtenstein was painted in 1963. It is acrylic on canvas, and measures 1.73 by 4.06 m (5 ft 7 in by 13 ft 4 in). Lichtenstein was one of the first artists to develop a style known as pop, in which images from advertising and comic books became the subject matter of serious art. This painting is part of the collection at the Tate Gallery, London.

CONCEPTUAL ART

Conceptual Art, an art form that developed in the mid-1960s, in which the concept takes precedence over the actual object. As American conceptual artist Sol LeWitt notes in a 1969 article, not all ideas for art need to take physical form. Le Witt argued that art criticism is no longer necessary because artists can and should write their own analysis of art; these writings are themselves as legitimate an art form as painting or sculpture. Around the same time, another founder of the conceptual movement, Joseph Kosuth, declared that conceptual art is based on an inquiry into the nature of art itself.

Early conceptual art took several forms. LeWitt provided how-to instructions for creating drawings, specifying types of lines by length, curvature, color, and so forth. The instructions constituted the salable artwork; the drawings themselves were only a secondary result of the original creative concept. In 1965 Kosuth exhibited single objects—a chair, hammer, or saw, for example—alongside a life-size photograph of the object and a dictionary definition of the object printed on a placard. This presentation questioned the relationship between objects, images, and words.

Bicycle Wheel French-born artist Marcel Duchamp changed the course of modern art in 1913 by exhibiting a bicycle wheel turned upside down and mounted on a kitchen stool. Bicycle Wheel was the first of Duchamp’s so-called readymades, ordinary objects that he turned into objects of art by changing their context and exhibiting them as sculpture. Shown here is a 1964 replica of the original, which is now lost.

SURREALISM

Surrealism, artistic and literary movement that explored and celebrated the realm of dreams and the unconscious mind through the creation of visual art, poetry, and motion pictures. Surrealism was officially launched in Paris, France, in 1924, when French writer André Breton wrote the first surrealist manifesto, outlining the ambitions of the new movement. (Breton published two more surrealist manifestoes, in 1930 and 1942.) The movement soon spread to other parts of Europe and to North and South America. Among surrealism’s most important contributions was the invention of new artistic techniques that tapped into the artist’s unconscious mind.

Surrealism, in many respects, was an offshoot of an earlier art movement known as dada, which was founded during World War I (1914-1918). Disillusioned by the massive destruction and loss of life brought about by the war, the dadaists’ motivations were profoundly political: to ridicule culture, reason, technology, even art. They believed that any faith in humanity's ability to improve itself through art and culture, especially after the unprecedented destruction of the war, was naive and unrealistic. As a result, the dadaists created works using accident, chance, and anything that underscored the irrationality of humanity: for example, making poems out of pieces of newspaper chosen at random, speaking nonsensical syllables out loud, and displaying everyday objects as art. The surrealist program grew out of dada, but it put a more positive spin on dada's essentially negative message.

The Persistence of Memory Salvador Dalí’s painting The Persistence of Memory (1931) ranks as one of the most famous paintings of the 20th century. A surrealist, Dalí referred to his work as “hand-painted dream photographs,” and claimed that his imagery often came directly from his own dreams. The strange form in this painting’s foreground, however, is based on an image from Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (about 1505-1510).

IMPRESSIONISM

Impressionism (art), a movement in painting that originated in France in the late 19th century. Impressionist painters were considered radical in their time because they broke many of the rules of picture-making set by earlier generations. They found many of their subjects in life around them rather than in history, which was then the accepted source of subject matter. Instead of painting an ideal of beauty that earlier artists had defined, the impressionists tried to depict what they saw at a given moment, capturing a fresh, original vision that was hard for some people to accept as beautiful. They often painted out of doors, rather than in a studio, so that they could observe nature more directly and set down its most fleeting aspects—especially the changing light of the sun.

The style of impressionist painting has several characteristic features. To achieve the appearance of spontaneity, impressionist painters used broken brushstrokes of bright, often unmixed colors. This practice produced loose or densely textured surfaces rather than the carefully blended colors and smooth surfaces favored by most artists of the time. The colors in impressionist paintings have an overall luminosity because the painters avoided blacks and earth colors. The impressionists also simplified their compositions, omitting detail to achieve a striking overall effect.

Impression: Sunrise This painting by Claude Monet inspired the name of the late-19th-century French art movement, impressionism. Monet painted Impression: Sunrise in 1873, but when he signed the painting later, he wrongly recorded the date as 1872. The painting was stolen in 1985 from its home in the Musée Marmottan, Paris, but it was recovered in 1990.

ROMANTICISMRomanticism, in art, European and American movement extending from about 1800 to 1850. Romanticism cannot be identified with a single style, technique, or attitude, but romantic painting is generally characterized by a highly imaginative and subjective approach, emotional intensity, and a dreamlike or visionary quality. Whereas classical and neoclassical art is calm and restrained in feeling and clear and complete in expression, romantic art characteristically strives to express by suggestion states of feeling too intense, mystical, or elusive to be clearly defined. Thus, the German writer E. T. A. Hoffmann declared “infinite longing” to be the essence of romanticism. In their choice of subject matter, the romantics showed an affinity for nature, especially its wild and mysterious aspects, and for exotic, melancholic, and melodramatic subjects likely to evoke awe or passion.

The word romantic first became current in 18th-century English and originally meant “romancelike,” that is, resembling the strange and fanciful character of medieval romances. The word came to be associated with the emerging taste for wild scenery, “sublime” prospects, and ruins, a tendency reflected in the increasing emphasis in aesthetic theory on the sublime as opposed to the beautiful. The British writer and statesman Edmund Burke, for instance, identified beauty with delicacy and harmony and the sublime with vastness, obscurity, and a capacity to inspire terror. Also during the 18th century, feeling began to be considered more important than reason both in literature and in ethics, an attitude epitomized by the work of the French novelist and philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. English and German romantic poetry appeared in the 1790s, and by the end of the century the shift away from reason toward feeling and imagination began to be reflected in the visual arts, for instance in the visionary illustrations of the English poet and painter William Blake, in the brooding, sometimes nightmarish pictures of his friend, the Swiss-English painter Henry Fuseli, and in the somber etchings of monsters and demons by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya.

Two Men on a Seashore Two Men on a Seashore (1835) by German artist Caspar David Friedrich can be interpreted as a symbolic expression of the artist’s Christian faith. The sea is a symbol of death and the rocks on

the beach stand for faith and the future. The moon symbolizes Christ. This drawing in pencil and sepia ink closely resembles in its design a painting by Friedrich in the National Gallery in Berlin.

SYBOLISMSymbolist Movement, a movement in literature and the visual arts that originated in France in the late 19th century.

In the visual arts, symbolism has both a general and a specific meaning. It refers, in one sense, to the use of certain pictorial conventions (pose, gesture, or a repertoire of attributes) to express a latent allegorical meaning in a work of art . In another sense, the term symbolism refers to a movement that began in France in the 1880s, as a reaction both to romanticism and to the realistic approach implicit in impressionism. Not so much a style per se, symbolism in art was an international ideological trend that served as a catalyst in the development away from representation in art and toward abstraction.

In the visual arts, symbolism has both a general and a specific meaning. It refers, in one sense, to the use of certain pictorial conventions (pose, gesture, or a repertoire of attributes) to express a latent allegorical meaning in a work of art (see Iconography). In another sense, the term symbolism refers to a movement that began in France in the 1880s, as a reaction both to romanticism and to the realistic approach implicit in impressionism. Not so much a style per se, symbolism in art was an international ideological trend that served as a catalyst in the development away from representation in art and toward abstraction.

Munch’s The Dance of Life The Dance of Life (1899-1900) expresses the melancholy attitudes and sexual anxieties of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. The couple in the center of the painting appears entirely caught up in the erotic dance, while the woman in white on the left has not yet entered the dance and her counterpart in black no longer participates in it.

FAUVISM

Fauvism, a relatively short-lived movement in French painting (from about 1898 to about 1908) that revolutionized the concept of color in modern art. The fauves rejected the impressionist palette of soft, shimmering tones in favor of the violent colors used by the postimpressionists Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh for expressive emphasis. They achieved a poetic energy through vigorous line, simplified yet dramatic surface pattern, and intense color.

Les fauves, literally “the wild beasts,” was originally a pejorative label applied to the group at their first exhibition in 1905, although the fauvist style had been employed by the group's members for several years before that date. The artists included André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Raoul Dufy, Georges Braque, Henri Manguin, Albert Marquet, Jean Puy, Emile Othon Friesz, and Henri Matisse, their undisputed leader. The epithet was never accepted by the painters themselves and, indeed, in no way does it describe their sunny or lyrically subjective imagery.

Technically, the fauvist use of color derived from experiments made by Matisse at Saint-Tropez in the summer of 1904, working with the neoimpressionist painters who placed small dabs of pure color side by side to achieve an even more optically correct image than that of the impressionists. Matisse's neoimpressionist pictures, while abiding strictly by the rules, show, beyond a mere recording of optical response, a strong interest in lyrical color.

London Bridge

French artist André Derain painted London Bridge (Museum of Modern Art, New York City) in 1906. He is one of the central figures of the group of artists called the fauves (French for “wild beasts”), a name never accepted by the painters themselves. Derain created simplified yet dramatic designs using unnaturally brilliant colors to convey a sense of emotion. Inspired by non-Western art, the fauves became known for their use of distorted perspectives, vivid colors, and unrestrained brushwork.

Indian Art and ArchitectureI INTRODUCTION

Art on the Indian SubcontinentThis map highlights places in India and Pakistan where prominent examples of Indian art and architecture have been produced. The sites include Āgra, location of the 17th-century domed mausoleum known as the Taj Mahal; Sanchi, site of the Great Stupa, an ancient Buddhist temple completed in the 1st century ad; Khajurāho, where nearly 80 Hindu temples once stood; and Elephanta, known for its 8th-century temple caves containing statues of Hindu gods. Some of the oldest architectural remains, dating back to about 2500 bc, are located in Mohenjo-Daro and Harappā, in Pakistan.

Indian Art and Architecture, the art and architecture produced on the Indian subcontinent from about the 3rd millennium BC to modern times. To viewers schooled in the Western tradition Indian art may seem overly ornate and sensuous; appreciation of its refinement comes only gradually, as a rule. Voluptuous feeling is given unusually free expression in Indian culture. A strong sense of design is also characteristic of Indian art and can be observed in its modern as well as in its traditional forms.

The art of India must be understood and judged in the context of the ideological, aesthetic, and ritual assumptions and needs of the Indian civilization. These assumptions were formed as early as the 1st century BC and have shown a remarkable tenacity through the ages. The Hindu-Buddhist-Jain view of the world is largely concerned with the resolution of the central paradox of all existence, which is that change and perfection, time and eternity, and immanence and transcendence operate dichotomously and integrally as parts of a single process. In such a situation the creation cannot be separated from the creator, and time can be comprehended only as a matrix of eternity. This conceptual view, when expressed in art, divides the universe of

aesthetic experience into three distinct, although interrelated, elements—the senses, the emotions, and the spirit. These elements dictate the norms for architecture as an instrument of enclosing and transforming space and for sculpture in its volume, plasticity, modeling, composition, and aesthetic values. Instead of depicting the dichotomy between the flesh and the spirit, Indian art, through a deliberate sensuousness and voluptuousness, fuses one with the other through a complex symbolism that, for example, attempts to transform the fleshiness of a feminine form into a perennial mystery of sex and creativity, wherein the momentary spouse stands revealed as the eternal mother.

Sri Lankan Decorated CasketThe relief carving on this 16th-century casket from Sri Lanka depicts a nobleman riding an elephant as attendants and onlookers hail him. Another side of the casket is decorated with gold and rubies.

The Indian artist deftly uses certain primeval motifs, such as the feminine figure, the tree, water, the lion, and the elephant. In a given composition, although the result is sometimes conceptually unsettling, the qualities of sensuous vitality, earthiness, muscular energy, and rhythmic movement remain unmistakable. The form of the Hindu temple; the contours of the bodies of the Hindu gods and goddesses; and the light, shade, composition, and volume in Indian painting are all used to glorify the mystery that resolves the conflict between life and death, time and eternity.

Sun Temple of KonarakThis 13th-century relief depicting a wheel of the chariot of Indian sun god Surya is situated in the Konarak temple. The temple, dedicated to Surya, is situated at Puri in the Gulf of Bengal.

The arts of India expressed in architecture, sculpture, painting, jewelry, pottery, metalwork, and textiles, were spread throughout the Far East with the diffusion of Buddhism and Hinduism and exercised a strong influence on the arts of China, Japan, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, and Java. These two religions with their various offshoots were dominant in India until Islam became powerful from the 13th to the 18th century. With Islam, which forbids representation of the human figure in religious contexts, geometrical patterns became the most common decoration in the arts patronized by the Muslim rulers.

II ARCHITECTURE

Indian architecture found its earliest expression in brick buildings that were contemporary with buildings that were constructed of wood. The wooden structures disappeared over the centuries, but they were succeeded and imitated in stone buildings, which have survived.

A Early Indian and Buddhist Styles

Great StupaThe Great Stupa is an ancient Buddhist temple located in Sanchī, a historic site in the state of Madhya Pradesh in central India. Constructed between the 3rd century bc and the early 1st century ad, the temple is solid and enclosed by a stone outer fence with toranas, or gateways, on all four sides. Worshipers at the site pay their respects to Buddha by circling the dome, which represents the world mountain. Atop the dome, a square fence called the harika represents the heaven. The harika surrounds the yasti, a spire with three chatras, or disk shapes. The yasti represents the axis of the universe.

The oldest architectural remains in India are buildings of burnt brick found at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappā (now in Pakistan), dating from about 2500-1750 BC. The subsequent Vedic period, which precedes the beginning of historical styles, is represented by burial mounds at Lauriya Nandangarh, in Bihār State, and rock-cut tombs in Malabar, Kerala State.

The establishment of historical styles began about 250 BC in the time of the Indian king Ashoka, who gave imperial patronage to Buddhism. Accordingly, the monuments of this time were built for Buddhist purposes. A characteristic Buddhist construction was the tope, or stupa, a memorial mound encased in masonry, with an altar and parasol at the top, corridors around the base, and four entrances marked by gateways. The best example of these structures, commemorative of the death and entering into Nirvana of Buddha, is the Great Stupa in Sanchi in the state of Madhya Pradesh.

Columns from Ajanta Caves, IndiaMany Indian temples were supported by massive stone columns decorated with carved horizontal bands and richly sculpted capitals. This cave temple at Ajanta was carved between the 2nd century bc and the 7th century ad.

Other Buddhist structures are the dagoba, a relic shrine, said to be the ancestral form of the pagoda; the lat, a stone edict pillar, generally monumental; the chaitya, a hall of worship in basilican form; and the vihara, a monastery or temple. Chaityas and viharas were often hewn out of living rock. Architectural details such as capitals and moldings show influence from Middle Eastern and Greek sources. Notable examples of early rock-cut monuments in Mahārāshtra State are the Great Chaitya Hall at Karle (circa early 2nd century AD ) with its elaborate sculptured facade and tunnel-vaulted nave, and various temples and monasteries at Ajanta and Ellora.

B Jain and Hindu Styles

Temple of Devi JogadantaThe temple of Devi Jogadanta in Khajurāho, India, exemplifies a style of architecture that flourished in north central India from the 10th to the 13th century. The features of the style include a longitudinal layout, rich sculptural decoration on both interior and exterior walls, and a central spire surrounded by clusters of secondary spires. Because of its remote location, the temple complex in Khajurāho is better preserved than most Indian archaeological sites of comparable antiquity.

Buddhism waned after the 5th century as Hinduism and Jainism became dominant. The Jain and Hindu styles overlapped and produced the elaborate allover patterns carved in bands that became the distinguishing feature of Indian architecture. The Jains often built on a gigantic scale, a marked feature being pointed domes constructed of level courses of corbeled stones. Extensive remains have been discovered on hilltops far removed from one another in three states, at Parasnath Hill in Bihār, Mount Abut at Abu in Rājasthān, and Satrunjaya in Gujarāt. Small temples were congregated in great numbers on hilltops; one of the earlier groups is on Mount Ābu. Typical of Jain commemorative towers is the richly ornamented, nine-story Jaya Sthamba.

Orissan TemplesThe ancient city of Bhubaneshwar, in Orissa State, India, contains around 30 Orissan temples dating from the 6th to the 16th century. These temples display the characteristic emphasis on strong horizontal patterns and beehive-shaped towers crowned with a flat round stone.

The Hindu style is closely related to the Jain style. It is divided into three general categories: northern, from AD 600 to the present; central, from 1000 to 1300; and southern, or Dravidian, from 1350 to 1750. In all three periods the style is marked by great ornateness and the use of pyramidal roofs. Spirelike domes terminate in delicate finials. Other features include the elaborate, grand-scale gopuras, or gates, and the choultries, or ceremonial halls. Among the most famous examples of the style are the temples in the south at Belur, and at Halebid, Tiruvalur, Thanjāvūr, and Rameswaram in Tamil Nādu State; temples in the north at Barolli in Rājasthān, at Vārānasi in Uttar Pradesh, and at Konarak the Sun Temple in Orissa State.

C Indo-Islamic Style

Fatehpur Sikri

The city of Fatehpur Sikri is located near Āgra, in northern India. Mughal emperor Akbar established the city as the capital of his empire in 1573, but 12 years later he abandoned it for unknown reasons. Fatehpur Sikri is now a popular tourist spot. Seen here is one of its several courtyards.

Islamic architecture in India dates from the 13th century to the present. Brought to India by the first Muslim conquerors, Islamic architecture soon lost its original purity and borrowed such elements from Indian architecture as courtyards surrounded by colonnades, balconies supported by brackets, and above all, decoration. Islam, on the other hand, introduced to India the dome, the true arch, geometric motifs, mosaics, and minarets. Despite fundamental conceptual differences, Indian and Islamic architecture achieved a harmonious fusion, especially in certain regional styles.

Indo-Islamic style is usually divided into three phases: the Pashtun, the Provincial, and the Mughal. Examples of the earlier Pashtun style in stone are at Ahmadābād in Gujarāt State, and in brick at Gaur-Pandua in West Bengal State. These structures are closely allied to Hindu models, but are simpler and lack sculptures of human figures. The dome, the arch, and the minaret are constant features of the style; a famous monument in this style is the mausoleum Gol Gumbaz (17th century) in Bijāpur, Karnātaka State, which has a dome with a 43-m (142-ft) diameter, almost as big as that of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. Another notable structure is the five-story stone and marble tower called the Qutb Minar (12th century), near Delhi.

The Provincial style reflected the continued rebellion of the provinces against the imperial style of Delhi. The best example of this phase is in Gujarāt, where for almost two centuries until 1572, when Emperor Akbar finally conquered the region, the dynasties that succeeded one another erected many monuments in varying styles. The most notable structures in this phase are found in the capital, Ahmadābād. The Jami Masjid (1423) is unique in the whole of India; although Muslim in inspiration, the arrangement of 3 bays and almost 300 pillars, as well as the decoration, in this mosque is pure Hindu.

Ibrahim Roza, BijāpurIbrahim Roza, located in Bijāpur, India, was constructed by Ibrahim Adil Shah II in the early 1600s for his queen, Taj Sultana. The minarets, or prayer towers, are 24 m (about 79 ft) high and may have inspired those of the Taj Mahal. Ibrahim Adil Shah and his family are buried here.

The Mughal phase of the Indo-Islamic style, from the 16th to the 18th century, developed to a high degree the use of such luxurious materials as marble. The culminating example of the style is the Taj Mahal in Āgra. This domed mausoleum of white marble inlaid with gemstones was built (1632-48) by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a tomb for his beloved wife. It stands on a platform set off by four slender minarets and is reflected in a shallow pool. Other famous examples of the Mughal style are the Pearl Mosque at Āgra, Uttar Pradesh State, the palace fortresses at Āgra and Delhi, and the great mosques at Delhi and Lahore (now in Pakistan).

D Modern Styles

Vidhana Soudha, BangaloreLocated in Bangalore, in southern India, Vidhana Souda is considered one of the country’s most spectacular buildings. Built in 1954 in neo-Dravidian style, the granite building houses the Karnātaka State Legislature and the secretariat.

Building in India since the 18th century has either carried on the indigenous historical forms or has been patterned after European models introduced by the British. Numerous examples of Western styles of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries may be seen in public buildings, factories, hotels, and houses. The most outstanding example of modern architecture in India is the city of Chandīgarh, the joint capital of Haryāna and Punjab; the city was designed by the Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier in collaboration with Indian architects. The broad layout of the city was completed in the early 1960s. Notable architectural features include the vaulted structure, topped by a huge, concrete roof umbrella, and the use of concrete grille and bright pastel colors in the Palace of Justice; the arrangement of concrete cubes topped by a concrete parasol that is the Governor's Palace; and the use of projections, recesses, stair towers, and other contrasting elements to break the monotony of the long facades of the secretariat building, which are 244 m (800 ft) long. Modern Indian architecture has incorporated Western styles, adapting them to local traditions and needs—as in the design of the railroad station at Alwar, Rājasthān State.

III SCULPTURE

Descent of the Ganges, MāmallapuramA scene carved into rocks near Māmallapuram, India, depicts the descent of the sacred river Ganges from the Himalayas. Following a natural crack in the rock, the carving is 6 m (20 ft) high and depicts gods, celestial beings, and animals gathered along the river’s path. The carvings date from the 7th century ad.

The earliest prehistoric sculpture in India was produced in stone, clay, ivory, copper, and gold.

A Early Period

Figure from Mohenjo-DaroAmong the remains of the Mohenjo-Daro archaeological site in present-day Pakistan were terra-cotta, alabaster, and marble figures. This fragment shows a bearded male in ornamental dress dating from 3000 bc.

Examples of the 3rd millennium BC from the Indus Valley, found among the remains of the burnt-brick buildings of Mohenjo-Daro, include alabaster and marble figures, terra-cotta figurines of nude goddesses, terra-cotta and faience representations of animals, a copper model of a cart, and numerous square seals of ivory and of faience showing animals and pictographs. The similarity of these objects to Mesopotamian work in subject matter and stylized form indicates an interrelationship of the two cultures and a possible common ancestry (see Mesopotamian Art and Architecture). In Vedic and later times, from the 2nd millennium to the 3rd century BC, connections with Middle Eastern culture are not evident. An example of the earlier phase of this period is a 9th-century BC gold figurine of a goddess, found at Lauriya Nandangarh. Later, from 600 BC to historical times, common examples include finely polished and ornamented stone disks and coins representing many kinds of animals and religious symbols.

B Buddhist Sculpture

Carvings on the Great StupaFour gateways were built as entrances to the Great Stupa at Sanchi, India, during the 1st century bc. This detail of one of the gateways shows the intricate relief carvings of elephants, horses, camels, and human figures that decorate the gateways.

With the rise of Buddhism in the 3rd century BC and the development of a monumental architecture in stone, stone sculpture both in relief and in the round became important architectural adjuncts. Buddha himself was not shown in early Indian art; he was represented by

symbols and scenes from his life. Among other common subjects for representation were Buddhist deities and edifying legends. At this time and subsequently throughout the history of Indian sculpture, figures and ornamentation were arranged in intricately related compositions. Monuments of the period include the animal capitals of King Ashoka's sandstone edict pillars, and the marble railings that surround the Buddhist stupas at Bharhut, near Satna in Madhya Pradesh, where the reliefs seem to be compressed between the surface plane and the background plane. Also outstanding are the gates of the Great Stupa at Sanchi, where the reliefs suggest the delicacy and detail of ivory carving.

In northwest India, in a region that was called Gandhara in ancient times and now includes Afghanistan and part of the Punjab, a Greco-Buddhist school of sculpture arose that combined the influence of Greek forms and Buddhist subject matter. It reached the peak of its production in the 2nd century AD. Although the Gandhara style greatly influenced sculptural work in Central Asia and even in China, Korea, and Japan, it did not have a major effect in the rest of India; it is probable, however, that the images as well as the symbols of Buddha developed at Gandhara later spread to Mathura, now in Uttar Pradesh, where an important school of sculpture developed from the 2nd century BC to the 6th century AD. Remains of the earlier work of this school also show a close relationship to the style of the sculpture at Bharhut. Later, in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, the Mathura school discarded the old symbols of Buddha and represented him with actual figures. This innovation was carried on through subsequent phases of Indian sculpture.

The Gupta period, from AD 320 to about 550, produced Buddhas with clearly defined lines and refined contours. The drapery of the figure was diaphanous and clung to the body as if wet. Often the figures were made on a great scale, as in the colossal copper sculpture, weighing about 1 metric ton, from Sultanganj, Bihār State.

C Hindu Sculpture

ShivaThe Hindu deity Shiva is shown here with three heads, each representing one of his divine aspects. This early 7th-century bust, right, stands over 5 m (18 ft) high. It is in a Hindu temple cut into a cave at Elephanta, India.

Hindu sculpture also developed during the Gupta period. Reliefs were carved in rock-cut sanctuaries in Udayagiri, Madhya Pradesh (400-600), and adorned temples at Garhwa, near Allahābād, and Deogarh. From the 7th to the 9th century a number of schools flourished. They include the highly architectural style of the Pallavas, exemplified by the work at Kānchipuram, Tamil Nādu; the Rastrakuta style, of which the best-preserved examples are a colossal temple relief and the three-headed bust of Shiva at Elephanta, near Mumbai (formerly Bombay); and the Kashmīr style, which shows some Greco-Buddhist influence in the remains at Vijrabror, and more indigenous forms in figures of Hindu gods found at Vantipor.

Hindu Cave TemplesThis 8th-century rock-cut shrine dedicated to various Hindu gods is on Elephanta, an island off the coast of India.

From the 9th century to the consolidation of Muslim power at the beginning of the 13th century, Indian sculpture increasingly tended toward the linear, the forms appearing to be sharply outlined rather than voluminous. More so than previously, sculpture was applied as a decoration, subordinate to its architectural setting. It was intricate and elaborate in detail and was characterized by complicated, many-armed figures drawn from the pantheon of Hindu and Jain gods, which replaced the earlier simple figures of Buddhist gods. Emphasis on technical virtuosity also added to the multiplication of involved forms.

Relief Sculpture in Khajurāho, IndiaThese relief sculptures on a sandstone temple in Khajurāho, India, date from the 11th century. They depict hundreds of figures in a variety of poses. Some poses are sexual in nature, while others are believed to be symbolic and have yet to be deciphered by archaeologists. Several sculpture-adorned temples devoted to Hinduism and Jainism are found in Khajurāho, which is located in north central India.

At this time the three distinct areas of production in sculpture were (1) the north and east, (2) Rajputana (now part of Gujarāt, Madhya Pradesh, and Rājasthān states), and (3) the south-central and western regions. In the north and east, one of the main schools was centered in Bihār and Bengal under the Pala dynasty from 750 to 1200. A notable source for sculpture was the monastery and university at Nalanda in Bihār. Black slate was a common medium, and the themes, at first still Buddhist, gradually became more and more Hindu. Another northeastern school, in Orissa, produced typically Hindu work, including the monumental elephants and horses and erotic friezes at the Sun Temple in Konarak. In Rajputana the local style was exemplified in the hard sandstone temple of Khajurāho, which was literally covered with Hindu sculptures. The south-central and western schools produced notable works at Mysore, Halebid, and Belur. The temples were embellished with friezes, pillars, and brackets carved in fine-grained dark stone.

After the Muslims became dominant, they adopted many of the native patterns as ornament. The traditions have persisted until the present day, especially in the south, where art retains its indigenous purity.

IV PAINTING

Rajput PaintingThe Rajput style of northern Indian painting flourished from the 16th to the 19th century. Brightly colored and miniature, Rajput paintings resemble the illuminated manuscript paintings of the Mughal Empire. Most Rajput artists were Hindu, and their works depict scenes from daily life and stories from Hindu epics. In this 17th-century painting, Rajput princes hunt bears while an elephant and its rider rescue a fallen horseman from a tiger.

Remains of Indian painting before AD 100 have survived in two localities. The remarkable Buddhist murals in rock-cut shrines in Ajanta, in Mahārāshtra, cover the period from AD 50 to 642. The earlier paintings of the Ajanta caves represent figures of indigenous types, having noble bearing and depicted with strong sensuality. The painting in the Jogimara cave at Orissa belongs to two periods, 1st century BC and medieval; the later work is not as good, obscuring the earlier, more vigorous drawing.

Krishna with His Maidens Krishna, shown with blue skin, is a human hero who is worshiped as an avatar, or earthly descent of the Hindu god Vishnu. This 17th-century painting, Krishna with His Maidens, is from the book Rasamanjari by Indian writer Bhanudatta. The flattened human figures appear in profile against a solid background. Fragments of iridescent beetle wings have been used in their jewelry.

The Gupta period established the classical phase of Indian art, at once serene and energetic, spiritual and voluptuous. Art was the explicit medium of stating spiritual conceptions. A special kind of painting, executed on scrolls, depicted the reward of good and evil deeds in the world. Painting of the Gupta period has been preserved in three of the Ajanta caves. Represented are numerous Buddhas, sleeping women, and love scenes. Another group of Buddhist wall paintings, found at Bamian, in Afghanistan, reveal that these artists could represent any human posture. The drawing is stated in firm outline, and the subjects vary from the sublime to the grotesque. The whole spirit is one of emphatic, passionate force. The paintings in the first and second Ajanta caves date from the early 7th century and can hardly be distinguished in style from those of the Gupta period. Represented are bacchanalian scenes of the type that recur in Buddhist art from the early Kusana period onward. Also of great interest are the Jain Palava paintings (7th century), discovered in a cave shrine at Sittanāvasal, Tamil Nādu State. Remains of murals have been found at Ellora (late 8th century). Such subjects as a rider on a horned lion and many pairs of figures floating among clouds anticipate characteristic themes of the Indian medieval style.

Akbar Visiting His Eastern ProvincesAkbar, who ruled from 1556 to 1605, is generally considered the founder of India’s Mughal Empire. This watercolor painting was created toward the end of his reign for a manuscript that told of his feats. In the painting Akbar and his entourage are traveling to the eastern parts of his empire. Akbar’s Expedition by Boat to the Eastern Provinces (1602-1604) is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The only surviving documents of the Pala school are the illustrations in the two palm-leaf manuscripts in the University of Cambridge library, in England, one dating from the beginning and the other from the middle of the 11th century, and containing, in all, 51 miniatures. The illustrations represent Buddhist divinities or scenes from the life of Buddha, evidently replicas of traditional compositions.

Radha and Krishna in the Grove Many Indian paintings depict the love of the married woman Radha for the Hindu god Krishna. Their love affair symbolizes the human longing for union with the divine. In this colorful painting, the natural world around the lovers appears to spring to life and reflect their joyous embrace. This painting, which dates from 1780, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England.

One example of an illustrated Kalpa Sutra, or manual of religious ceremonial, on palm leaf is known, dated equivalent to 1237 and now at Patan, Gujarāt. The variety of scenes represented affords valuable information on the manners, customs, and dress of the Gujārāti culture; Gujārāti painting was a continuation of the early western Indian style; the frescoes of Ellora represent an intermediate stage of development.

Churning of the SeaThis Indian miniature painting (15th century to 17th century) depicting the churning of the sea represents the cosmic struggle between order and chaos. The Hindu Devas, or deities who rule the heaven, air, and earth, are opposed by the demonic Asuras. The high gods have wrapped a serpent around Mount Mandara and set it in the ocean where the Devas and the Asuras, pulling on the snake, churn the ocean into butter.

Rajput painting flourished in Rajputana, Bundelkhand (now part of Madhya Pradesh), and the Punjab Himalayas from the late 16th into the 19th century. It consisted of manuscript illumination in flat, decorative patterns and bright colors that resembled Persian and Mughal painting of the same period. Rajput painting, a refined and lyrical folk art, illustrates traditional Hindu epics, especially the life of the god Krishna.

The Ten Incarnations of VishnuThe Hindu god Vishnu appears on Earth in ten incarnations, called avatars, to destroy injustice and save humankind. Sacred Hindu writings called the Puranas describe these incarnations. Vishnu is always depicted in dark blue or black and usually with four arms, though his avatars may take other forms, such as the golden fish (top left panel) and the man lion (panel below the fish). In his tenth avatar, still to come, Vishnu will appear with a white horse (bottom right panel) to destroy the universe. This painting was created about 1890 in Jaipur in northern India and is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England.

Mughal painting, derived from the sophisticated Persian tradition, was a court art sponsored by the emperors. Reflecting an exclusive interest in secular life, it is essentially an art of portraiture and of historical chronicle. Mughal painting, on manuscripts or as independent album leaves, is dramatic and precisely realistic in detail, showing Western influence. Painters signed their own work, and at least 100 of their names are known.

Caliph Uthman ibn AffanUthman ibn Affan was appointed the third caliph (spiritual and secular leader) of Islam in 644. In this Indian manuscript painting from the late 18th century, he is shown seated with prayer beads in his hand and a copy of the Qur'an, the sacred scripture of Islam, on a stand. During his caliphate, a standardized version of the Qur'an was achieved. This miniature painting in gouache, from the Deccan school, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

By the end of the 19th century, traditional Indian painting had begun to die out, replaced by work merely imitative of Western styles; European influence had started to infiltrate with the establishment of British rule in India. After the turn of the century there was a revival of interest in the older styles (stimulated by the archaeological study that had been going on in India since about the middle of the 19th century). Art centers arose in Bombay and, more importantly, in Bengal, where many of the artists were associated with the Calcutta (now Kolkata) School of Art and with Visva-Bharati, the university founded in 1921 by the Indian poet and painter Rabindranath Tagore to reconcile Indian and Western traditions. Experiments were made in styles ranging from Ajanta, Rajput, and Mughal painting to impressionism, postimpressionism, and surrealism. Artists such as Nandalal Bose drew their inspiration primarily from Ajanta art; others, like Jamini Roy, found their inspiration in Bengali folk art. By the mid-20th century,

Indian painting was international in flavor, and Indian artists were working in a number of different idioms.