The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (146 page)
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Authors: Ian Chilvers
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Drysdale , Sir Russell
(1912–81).
Australian painter. He was born in England of a family that had long associations with Australia and he spent several years of his childhood there. The family settled in Melbourne in 1923 and in the late 1930s Drysdale gave up farming to study art. After moving to Sydney in 1940, he devoted himself fulltime to painting and his work became well known throughout Australia during the 1940s. It revived in a new fashion the tradition of hardship, tragedy, and melancholy associated with the Australian bush that had been obscured by the much more optimistic interpretation developed by the city-based painters of the
Heidelberg School
during the 1890s. In 1949 Kenneth
Clark
, on a visit to Sydney, encouraged Drysdale to exhibit in London and late in 1950 he held an exhibition at the Leicester Galleries. It is to this exhibition that the beginning of a new interest in Australian art in London, which reached a peak in the early 1960s, may be traced. During the 1950s Drysdale travelled widely throughout Australia, drawing and painting the life of the interior. The plight of the Australian Aborigines in contact with white settlement became an important and continuing theme in such paintings as
Mullaloonah Tank
(Art Gal. of South Australia, Adelaide, 1953). During the early 1960s he experienced periods of depression accentuated by the death of his son and his wife. From that time he continued to broaden and develop the themes and methods with which he began in the 1940s.
Australian painter. He was born in England of a family that had long associations with Australia and he spent several years of his childhood there. The family settled in Melbourne in 1923 and in the late 1930s Drysdale gave up farming to study art. After moving to Sydney in 1940, he devoted himself fulltime to painting and his work became well known throughout Australia during the 1940s. It revived in a new fashion the tradition of hardship, tragedy, and melancholy associated with the Australian bush that had been obscured by the much more optimistic interpretation developed by the city-based painters of the
Heidelberg School
during the 1890s. In 1949 Kenneth
Clark
, on a visit to Sydney, encouraged Drysdale to exhibit in London and late in 1950 he held an exhibition at the Leicester Galleries. It is to this exhibition that the beginning of a new interest in Australian art in London, which reached a peak in the early 1960s, may be traced. During the 1950s Drysdale travelled widely throughout Australia, drawing and painting the life of the interior. The plight of the Australian Aborigines in contact with white settlement became an important and continuing theme in such paintings as
Mullaloonah Tank
(Art Gal. of South Australia, Adelaide, 1953). During the early 1960s he experienced periods of depression accentuated by the death of his son and his wife. From that time he continued to broaden and develop the themes and methods with which he began in the 1940s.
Dubois , Ambroise
.
.
Dubreuil , Toussaint
.
.
Dubuffet , Jean
(1901–85).
French painter, sculptor, lithographer, and writer. He studied painting as a young man but was engaged mainly in the wine trade until 1942 when he took up art seriously again, his first exhibition coming in 1945. He made a cult of
Art Brut
(‘raw art’), the products of psychotics or wholly untrained persons, and of graffiti, preferring untrained spontaneity to professional skill. His own work is aggressively reminiscent of such ‘popular’ art, often featuring subjects drawn from the street life of Paris (
Man with a Hod
, Tate Gallery, London, 1956). Frequently he incorporated materials such as sand and plaster into his paintings, and he also produced large sculptural works made from junk materials. His work initially provoked outrage, and he stands out as the pioneer and chief representative of the tendency in contemporary art to depreciate traditional artistic materials and methods and, as he himself said in 1957, to ‘bring all disparaged values into the limelight’. Opinions about his work have differed widely, but he has undoubtedly been highly influential, foreshadowing many of the trends of the 1960s and beyond by discrediting all conventional artistic standards.
French painter, sculptor, lithographer, and writer. He studied painting as a young man but was engaged mainly in the wine trade until 1942 when he took up art seriously again, his first exhibition coming in 1945. He made a cult of
Art Brut
(‘raw art’), the products of psychotics or wholly untrained persons, and of graffiti, preferring untrained spontaneity to professional skill. His own work is aggressively reminiscent of such ‘popular’ art, often featuring subjects drawn from the street life of Paris (
Man with a Hod
, Tate Gallery, London, 1956). Frequently he incorporated materials such as sand and plaster into his paintings, and he also produced large sculptural works made from junk materials. His work initially provoked outrage, and he stands out as the pioneer and chief representative of the tendency in contemporary art to depreciate traditional artistic materials and methods and, as he himself said in 1957, to ‘bring all disparaged values into the limelight’. Opinions about his work have differed widely, but he has undoubtedly been highly influential, foreshadowing many of the trends of the 1960s and beyond by discrediting all conventional artistic standards.
Duccio di Buoninsegna
(active 1278–1318/19).
The most famous painter of the Sienese School. Little is known of his life: records of several commissions survive and he is known to have been fined on several occasions for various minor offences (one perhaps involving sorcery), but only one fully documented work by him survives. This is the famous
Maestá
commissioned by Siena Cathedral in 1308 and completed in 1311. Today most of this elaborate double-sided altarpiece is in the cathedral museum, but several of the
predella
panels are scattered outside Italy—in London (NG), Washington (NG), and elsewhere. It has been described by John White (
Art and Architecture in Italy: 1250–1400
, 1966) as ‘probably the most important panel ever painted in Italy. It is certainly among the most beautiful. Compressed within the compass of an altarpiece is the equivalent of an entire programme for the fresco painting of a church.’ The whole of the front of the main panel is occupied by a scene of the Virgin and Child in majesty surrounded by angels and saints, and corresponding to this on the back are twenty-six scenes from Christ's Passion. Originally there were subsidiary scenes from Christ's life above and below the main panel. The whole work is of a superb standard of craftsmanship, and the exquisite colouring and supple draughtsmanship create effects of great beauty. Although Duccio drew much on
Byzantine
tradition, he introduced a new warmth of human feeling that gives him a role in Sienese painting comparable to that of
Giotto
in Florentine painting. He recreates the biblical stories with great vividness, and as no one else before him he succeeds in making the setting of a scene—a room or a hillside—a dramatic constituent of the action, so that figures and surroundings are intimately bound up together. The other main work attributed to Duccio is the large
Rucellai Madonna
(Uffizi, Florence), which is probably the picture documented as having been painted by him for Sta Maria Novella, Florence, in 1285. Several other smaller panels can be attributed to him or his workshop with a fair degree of confidence, but there is no evidence that he ever worked in fresco. His influence in Siena was enormous (
Simone Martini
was his greatest disciple) and reached as far as France, notably in the work of
Pucelle
. It is possible that he visited France: a ‘Duche de Siene’ is documented in Paris in 1296 and 1297.
The most famous painter of the Sienese School. Little is known of his life: records of several commissions survive and he is known to have been fined on several occasions for various minor offences (one perhaps involving sorcery), but only one fully documented work by him survives. This is the famous
Maestá
commissioned by Siena Cathedral in 1308 and completed in 1311. Today most of this elaborate double-sided altarpiece is in the cathedral museum, but several of the
predella
panels are scattered outside Italy—in London (NG), Washington (NG), and elsewhere. It has been described by John White (
Art and Architecture in Italy: 1250–1400
, 1966) as ‘probably the most important panel ever painted in Italy. It is certainly among the most beautiful. Compressed within the compass of an altarpiece is the equivalent of an entire programme for the fresco painting of a church.’ The whole of the front of the main panel is occupied by a scene of the Virgin and Child in majesty surrounded by angels and saints, and corresponding to this on the back are twenty-six scenes from Christ's Passion. Originally there were subsidiary scenes from Christ's life above and below the main panel. The whole work is of a superb standard of craftsmanship, and the exquisite colouring and supple draughtsmanship create effects of great beauty. Although Duccio drew much on
Byzantine
tradition, he introduced a new warmth of human feeling that gives him a role in Sienese painting comparable to that of
Giotto
in Florentine painting. He recreates the biblical stories with great vividness, and as no one else before him he succeeds in making the setting of a scene—a room or a hillside—a dramatic constituent of the action, so that figures and surroundings are intimately bound up together. The other main work attributed to Duccio is the large
Rucellai Madonna
(Uffizi, Florence), which is probably the picture documented as having been painted by him for Sta Maria Novella, Florence, in 1285. Several other smaller panels can be attributed to him or his workshop with a fair degree of confidence, but there is no evidence that he ever worked in fresco. His influence in Siena was enormous (
Simone Martini
was his greatest disciple) and reached as far as France, notably in the work of
Pucelle
. It is possible that he visited France: a ‘Duche de Siene’ is documented in Paris in 1296 and 1297.
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