The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (250 page)

Kinetic art
.

Term describing art incorporating real or apparent movement (from the Greek
kinesis
, ‘movement’). In its broadest sense the term can encompass a great deal of phenomena, including cinematic motion pictures,
happenings
, and the animated clockwork figures found on clock-towers in many cities of Europe. More usually, however, it is applied to sculptures such as
Calder's
mobiles that are moved either by air currents or by some artificial means—usually electronic or magnetic. As well as works employing actual movement, there is another type of Kinetic art that produces illusory movement when the spectator moves relative to it (and
Op art
paintings are sometimes included within the field of Kinetic art because they appear to flicker). The idea of moving sculpture had been proposed by the
Futurists
as early as 1909, and the term ‘kinetic’ was first used in connection with the visual arts by
Gabo
and
Pevsner
in their
Realistic Manifesto
in 1920. Gabo produced an electrically driven oscillating wire construction in this year, and at the same time Marcel
Duchamp
was experimenting with
Rotative Plaques
that incorporated movement. Various other works over the next three decades made experiments in the same vein, for example
Moholy-Nagy's
Light-Space-Modulator
(Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University, 1922–30), one of a series of constructions he made using reflecting metals, transparent plastics, and sometimes mechanical devices to produce real movement. However, for many years Calder was the only leading figure who was associated specifically with moving sculpture (and many people regarded him as eccentric), and it was not until the 1950s that the phrase ‘Kinetic art’ became a recognized part of critical vocabulary; the exhibition ‘Le Mouvement’ at the Denise René Gallery, Paris, in 1955 was a key event in establishing it as a distinct genre. The artists represented in the exhibition included
Agam
,
Bury
, Calder , Duchamp ,
Tinguely
, and
Vasarely
.

 
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(1934– ).
British sculptor. He is probably the most renowned of the generation of avant-garde British sculptors (mainly, like himself, pupils of
Caro
) who came to prominence at the
New Generation
exhibition in 1965. His work at this time was characteristically in smooth, man-made materials such as plastic or fibreglass, often brightly coloured, with the cone shape being a favourite motif (
And the Birds Began to Sing
, Tate Gallery, London, 1964). At the end of the decade he began using more rugged materials, including steel and wood. With Bridget
Riley
he represented Britain at the Venice
Biennale
of 1968 and his work has been included in many other international exhibitions. He has taught at various art schools in Britain and elsewhere and from 1980 to 1990 he was Professor of Sculpture at the
Royal College of Art
.

 
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(1653–1722).
Dutch topographical engraver who migrated to England in about 1690. He is best known for his engravings of country houses in the sumptuous
Britannia Illustrata
(1708 and subsequent volumes). They are of little artistic merit but of great historical interest.

 
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(1782–1836).
Russian painter, active for much of his career in Italy. He is best known for his
Romantic
portraits in which he combined the then fashionable attitude of ‘Byronic’ melancholy with an elegance that earned him the epithet ‘the Russian van
Dyck
’.

 
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(1880–1938).
German
Expressionist
painter, graphic artist, and sculptor, the dominant figure in the
Brücke
group. He was the first of the group to discover an enthusiasm for Polynesian and other
primitive
art, but this had less apparent effect on his own painting or sculpture than on the work of other members of the Brücke. In painting he was first influenced by the Post-Impressionists and particularly by
Gauguin
and van
Gogh
. But under the influence chiefly of
Munch
he developed a style similar to that of the
Fauves
, with simplified drawing and boldly contrasting colours. By 1907–10 he had matured a manner of painting superficially similar to that achieved by
Matisse
and his colleagues in 1905, but he was more impetuous and direct in his approach to his subjects. He was also more committed to theme than they and attempted to express in paint the emotional atmosphere distilled by the life of the circus and the music-hall, the gaiety and the sadness with its overtones of sexuality in the human detritus of the urban scene. In 1911 he moved to Berlin and during 1912 and 1913 created the series of street scenes which are regarded as the most mature manifestation of German Expressionism. In a style which had become more frenzied, with more ruthless fragmentation of the object, he gave visible expression to the pace, the morbidity, the glare, and the exhibitionist eroticism of megapolitan man (
Street, Berlin
, MOMA, New York, 1913). Kirchner had always been highly strung and he was invalided out of the army in the First World War after suffering a physical and nervous breakdown. In 1917 he was sent to convalesce in Switzerland and stayed there for the rest of his life. Living in solitude among the Swiss mountains near Davos, Kirchner began to paint again, mainly monumental mountain landscapes and scenes from the life of mountain peasants. In the new environment his work gained in serenity what it lost in vigour. From 1928 his style underwent another change. It became more abstract as he painted less directly from nature. Kirchner's work was declared
degenerate
by the Nazis in 1937, adding to his already acute depression at the political events in Germany, and in the following year he killed himself. Thoughout his life printmaking was as important as painting to him and he ranks as one of the 20th cent.'s greatest masters in this field. He produced a large body of work in wordcut, etching, and lithograph, but each print usually exists in only a few impressions as he liked to print his work himself. In addition to paintings and prints, he made coloured wooden sculpture.