Objective
Abstraction.
Term applied to the work of a group of British artists in
the 1930s. It was used after the exhibition Objective
Abstractions was held at the Zwemmer Gallery, London, from
March to April 1934. Seven painters participated: Rodrigo
Moynihan, Geoffrey Tibble (1909–52), Graham Bell, Victor
Pasmore, Ceri Richards, Thomas Carr and Ivon Hitchens; Edgar
Hubert (b 1906) and William Coldstream were also
members of the group (although they did not exhibit on this
occasion), and with Moynihan, Tibble and Bell were the only
truly abstract painters at the time. All, however, as
indicated by their answers to a ‘questionnaire’ published in
the catalogue, were united in their rejection of the geometric
abstraction espoused by much of the European avant-garde in
the 1930s and in their belief in an art, inspired initially by
nature, that would develop according to an unpredictable
internal logic of its own.
Objet trouve. *found object
Objet
trouve.
Term applied in the 20th century to existing objects,
manufactured or of natural origin, used in, or as, works of
art. With the exception of the READY-MADE, in which a
manufactured object is generally presented on its own without
mediation, the objet trouvé is most often used as raw
material in an ASSEMBLAGE, with juxtaposition as a guiding
principle. Prior to the 20th century unusual objects were
collected in cabinets of curiosities, but it was only in the
early 20th century that found objects came to be appreciated
as works of art in their own right. Antoni Gaudí, for example,
used broken pieces of pottery to cover exterior surfaces in
the Park Güell buildings (1900–14) in Barcelona and on various
buildings designed by him during the same period. The
development of COLLAGE in Cubism heralded a greater dependence
on found objects, paralleling the incorporation of
conversational fragments in the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire from 1912; Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, in
particular, used real items in their paintings and
constructions as a way of commenting on the relationship
between reality, representation and illusion. Their example in
turn encouraged Vladimir Tatlin to use ordinary objects in his
reliefs of 1913–14, and other sculptors, such as Alexander
Archipenko and Umberto Boccioni, to extend the range of
materials acceptable in sculpture.
Obrist
Hermann
(b Kilchberg, Switzerland, 23 May 1862; d
Munich, 26 Feb 1927).
Swiss artist, craftsman and teacher. After studying science
and medicine at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
(1885–7), he travelled in England and Scotland in 1887.
There the Arts and Crafts Movement influenced his decision
to turn his attentions to the applied arts. Following brief
studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Karlsruhe and an
apprenticeship as a potter, his ceramics and furniture won
gold medals at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889.
In 1890 he studied at the Académie Julian in Paris, before
visiting Berlin and Florence, where he experimented in
marble sculpture and established an embroidery studio in
which his own designs could be carried out; he moved his
studio to Munich in 1894.
Oceanic art. The term refers to the *primitive art of the
island populations of the Pacific. 3 mam areas are
distinguished: Melanesia (New Guinea and surrounding
islands), Micronesia (islands to the N. of Melanesia), and
Polynesia (the triangle formed by the Hawaiian Islands, New
Zealand and Easter Island).
The art objects include ancestor figures, canoe-prow
ornaments, ceremonial shields and clubs, masks, decorated
human skulls, stone carvings, carved stools and other cult
objects and artefacts. Besides wood and stone, the materials
used include shells, wicker, feathers, cane, fibre, bamboo,
rattan and bark cloth. As distinct from * African art,
various materials are often used in combination, and may be
painted in bright pigments, the surfaces with stylized
designs of the human face or figure. The range of styles
among such widely scattered peoples is enormous, though many
groups reveal related art motifs. Among the most famous
examples of C). a. are the giant stone ancestor-cult figures
of Easter Island, the convoluted designs of Maori wood
carvings and the vast production of carved drums, masks,
stools and shields of the Sepik river area on the N. coast
of New Guinea.
Oil painting. An increasingly important technique in
European painting since the late 1 5th c. O. p. in one form
or another had been known since antiquity for coarse work
such as house painting, but the technique was immensely
refined in early 1 sth-c. Flanders, the improved medium
being gradually taken up
by Italian painters. Powdered colours, mixed with a fine oil
(usually linseed) until the resulting paint is sufficiently
viscous, are applied to a prepared ground - usually
stretched canvas with an overall coating in a neutral
pigment. The technique at its most elaborate, as in the work
of the old masters, involved a careful application of
colours building up from dark to lighter tones and relying
on extensive technical knowledge of the interaction between
the various pigments — the various chemicals involved can
act on one another and, if not carefully applied, can over a
period of time damage the layers of paint above and next to
them. Colours can be laid down with the intention that they
should show through upper layers to a certain extent, while
coloured transparent glazes can be applied for further
gradations of tone. Apart from the immense tonal subtlety of
the medium, surface texture can also be varied by *impasto
and *brushwork.
Oderisi Roberto
( fl Naples, c. 1330–82).
Italian painter. He was one of the foremost artists of 14th-century Naples, and
the only named south Italian painter active in the mid-14th century whose
artistic personality can be reconstructed. He is known from a single documentary
reference, when he was appointed ‘magistrum pictorium regium’ by Charles III,
King of Naples, on 2 February 1382, and from his signature, ROBERTUS DE ODERISIO
DE NEAPOLI, on the foot of a Crucifixion from S Francesco, Eboli (Salerno, Mus.
Duomo). The earliest panel paintings attributed to Oderisi include the polyptych
of the Dormition and Coronation of the Virgin, with SS Nicholas, James, Julian
and Anthony Abbot, executed for the Coppola family for Scala Cathedral, near
Amalfi (Lombardy, priv. col.), the smaller Coronation of the Virgin (Milan, priv.
col.) and the Crucifixion (Naples, Capodimonte). Associated with these paintings
are some badly preserved frescoes, for example those in the cathedral at Amalfi,
which appears to have been the region of Oderisi’s early activity. Despite being
extremely rough and schematic, the style of these works reveals a thorough
grounding in Tuscan figure painting that can be linked to the presence in
Naples, between 1328 and 1333, of Giotto and some of his assistants , among them
Maso di Banco and the so-called Master of the Vele from Assisi. The iconography
of the frescoes was also clearly inspired by Tuscan works in Naples, such as the
Giotto panel painted for the palatine chapel at Castel Nuovo, and the fresco of
the Crucifixion by his shop in the convent of S Chiara.
Oehme
Ernst Ferdinand
(Dresden, 1797 - Dresden, 1855).
Romanticism
Oelze Richard
(b Magdeburg, 29 June 1900; d Posteholz, nr Hameln,
27 May 1980). German painter and draughtsman. He studied at the
Bauhaus in Weimar under Johannes Itten (1921–5). His early work was
influenced by Constructivism, but Oelze was soon impressed by Neue
Sachlichkeit, with which he became familiar while living in Dresden
(1926–9). At this time he also became acquainted with Otto Dix and
his work. His pictures from the late 1920s, for example
Still-life with White Plate and Coloured Balls (oil on panel,
1928–9; Berne, priv. col.), show a clear concreteness and strong
composition and reflect the trance-like state found in works of
Magic Realism. During this period he also visited the Bauhaus in
Dessau for several months. On a trip to Ascona in 1929 he saw
reproductions of the works of Max Ernst and Hans Arp for the first
time. In 1933 he moved to Paris, where he remained until 1936 and
made contact with the Surrealists. By the 1930s dreams and
premonitions were becoming themes in his work, and his paintings
increasingly featured dream-creatures, combinations of animal and
plant, plant and human, human and animal. In the painting Daily
Tribulations (1934; Düsseldorf, Kstsamml. Nordrhein–Westfalen)
the fears and difficulties experienced by Oelze one year after the
Nazis had taken power in Germany were given visual form. Morbid
forms in a river dominate the picture and block, like a hedge, any
view into depth. In the same year that it was painted this work was
enthusiastically taken up by the Surrealists at an exhibition in the
Porte de Versailles. In 1936 it was shown in New York at the
Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition at MOMA.
Expectation (1936; New York, MOMA), probably Oelze’s best-known
work, conveys like no other picture of its time the mood in Europe
in those years, in all its oppressiveness and apprehension. The
clarity of the realism of the human figures is contrasted with the
dark forms of vegetal growth; both dissolve in the cool and utterly
alien coloration cast over them by the deep sky. The deep
perspective of this picture is unusual in Oelze’s work.
Okamoto Taro (1911-1996).
Surrealism in Japan
O'Keeffe Georgia (1887—1986). U.S. painter and wife of
*Stieglitz; she was one of the prominent figures in the
1920s U.S. reaction against avant-garde European ideas and
movement towards a romantic, naturalistic art. Her own
painting, however — 'magical realism' — has Surrealist
undertones. The exotic colour and form of plants and flowers
are heightened by taking them out of their natural context.
Later works include the 24-ft wide (7.3-m.) Sky Above
Clouds IV (1965).
Oldenburg Claes (1929— ). Swedish-born U.S. artist; he came
to prominence as one of the major figures of U.S. art of the
1960s associated with *Pop. Early works in the style of
*Abstract Expressionism gave place to 'total environments'
(The Street, i960), *Happenings (Store Days, 1962) and
*Performance art and eventually to soft sculptures of
commonplace, vastly enlarged objects made out of canvas,
kapok or vinyl — Floor-Burger (1962), Soft Light Switches
(1964), etc. —and monuments, e.g. Lipstick on Caterpillar
Tracks (1969).
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Olivier Johann Heinrich
Ferdinand von
(b Dessau, 1 April 1785; d Munich 11 Feb 1841).
Painter, draughtsman and lithographer, brother of Heinrich Olivier. The
brothers’ mother was a court opera singer in Dessau, and Ferdinand’s later
interest in the German medieval and Nazarene styles owed much to the
intellectual climate at the Anhalt-Dessau court, where Leopold III Frederick
Francis, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, had been the first German prince to introduce
the Gothic Revival style. Olivier took up drawing in 1801–2 under the tuition of
Carl Wilhelm Kolbe and the engraver Johann Christian Haldenwang (1777–1831). In
1802–3 he accompanied his father to Berlin, where he studied woodcut techniques
under Johann Friedrich Gottlieb Unger (1755–1804) and may have attended August
Wilhelm Schlegel’s lectures on belles-lettres and art. It was here, at the
latest, that he discovered Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden
Klosterbruders (Berlin, 1797) by Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder and Ludwig Tieck,
and the latter’s Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen (Berlin, 1798), two books of vital
significance for the painting of the Romantic era. Having decided to make art
their career, Ferdinand and his brother Heinrich spent two years (1804–6) in
Dresden, where they copied the works of Ruisdael and Claude Lorrain in the art
gallery during the summer months. Ferdinand also took lessons from Jacob Wilhelm
Mechau (1745–1808) and Carl Ludwig Kaaz, both painters of idealized landscapes,
and he was probably introduced to the work of Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar
David Friedrich by Friedrich August von Klinkowström (1778–1835), a friend of
Runge. In June 1807 Ferdinand’s excellent knowledge of French led to his
appointment as embassy secretary in Paris, where Heinrich soon joined him.
However, after just a few weeks he gave up his diplomatic career in order to
devote himself to a study of the Musée Napoléon, which at that time housed art
treasures pillaged from all parts of Europe. Ferdinand and Heinrich jointly
produced three paintings for Leopold III Frederick Francis of Anhalt-Dessau: a
portrait of Napoleon on Horseback (c.1809; Wörlitz, Schloss), and a Last Supper
and Baptism (1809–10; Wörlitz, Evangel. Ch.) for the Gothic Revival church in
Wörlitz. Although these last two were supposed to be copies after the ‘old
German school’, the Olivier brothers in fact used 15th- and 16th-century Dutch
and Flemish models to create original compositions. At the end of 1809 they
returned to Dessau. In 1810, on a tour of the Harz with his younger brother
Friedrich Olivier, Ferdinand produced a number of markedly naturalistic sketches
that testify to the break with his schooling in Dresden, for example Cliffs on
the Brocken (1810; Dessau, Anhalt. Gemäldegal.). In 1811 he travelled with
Friedrich via Dresden to Vienna where the Lukasbrüder had been formed shortly
before. Although the group had since moved to Rome, the Olivier brothers soon
became acquainted with its ideals through Philipp Veit, Friedrich von Schlegel’s
stepson, whose home they frequented, and Joseph Sutter (1781–1866). In 1817,
with Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, they were accepted—from afar—into the
Lukasbrüder.
Olmec. *Pre-Columbian Mexican culture, fl. с
800—400 ВС; the
principal O. site is at La Venta on the Gulf Coast.
Archaeological finds include carved altars, plaques, jade
figurines and massive stone heads.
Olson Axel (1899-1986).
Surrealism.
Olson Erik
(1901-1986).
Surrealism.
Omega Workshops. Founded by Roger Fry in 1913; several
painters including *Grant and V. *Bell took part. Furniture,
fabrics and pottery were designed and decorated in the
workshops following current fashions in painting among the
*Bloomsbury Group and issued anonymously with the Greek
letter omega as sole mark; the actual construction, weaving,
etc. of their products was done by craftsmen. The O.W. were
not financially successful and closed in 1920.
Omega
Workshops.
English applied arts company based in London. It was
founded by Roger Fry in 1913 and lasted until 1919. The
company produced ceramics, furniture, carpets and other
textiles, designed and made by Fry, Duncan Grant, Vanessa
Bell, Henri Doucet (1883–1915), Henri Gaudier-Brzeska,
Winifred Gill (1891–1981) and Nina Hamnett. The name Omega
Workshops was first mentioned in Fry’s circular letter of 11
December 1912 sent out as a financial appeal. Wyndham Lewis
may also have been involved in the founding of the Workshops.
Of the various explanations of the name the most common is
that it implied the products to be the ‘last word’ in design
(OH being the last letter of the Greek alphabet).
Ono Yoko.
Happening.
Onslow-Ford Gordon
(1912- 2003). Gordon Onslow Ford was the last surviving member of the 1930s
Paris surrealist group surrounding André Breton.
He was born in Wendover, England, on December 26, 1912. He served in the British
Navy until 1937 after which he focused on his art career. In 1938 he became an
official member of the surrealist group in Paris. At the onset of World War II,
he returned to Britain. In 1941 he was asked to present a series of lectures in
New York. It was while in New York that he met and married Jacqueline Johnson.
They lived in Erongaricuaro, a small village in central Mexico, for six years
before moving to San Francisco.
Optical Art. Term which gained currency in the 1960s
for a
style of abstract painting deriving from the work of such
painters as *Albers and *Vasarely. O. a. concerns itself
with purely visual sensations, relying for its effects upon
optical illusions; often canvases are a mass of small
shapes, lines or vivid colours constantly shifting under the
eye. The best works are black-and-white. Some of the most
inventive works are by B. *Riley.
Op Art.
Term used as an abbreviation of ‘optical art’ to refer to
painting and sculpture that exploits the illusions or optical
effects of perceptual processes. It was used for the first
time by a writer in an unsigned article in Time
magazine (23 Oct 1964) and entered common usage to designate,
in particular, two-dimensional structures with strong
psychophysiological effects. The exhibition, The Responsive
Eye, held in 1965 at MOMA, New York, under the direction
of William C. Seitz, showed side by side two types of visual
solicitations already practised by artists for some time:
perceptual ambiguity created by coloured surfaces, then at the
fore in the USA, and the coercive suggestion of movement
created by lines and patterns in black and white, used
abundantly by European artists engaged in KINETIC ART. The
outstanding Op artists included Victor Vasarely, Bridget
Riley, Jesús Soto, Yaacov Agam, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Julio Le
Parc and François Morellet.
Opbouw De
[Dut.: ‘construction’].
Dutch association of architects, based in Rotterdam between
1920 and 1940. It was founded on 31 January 1920 by the
Rotterdam architect Willem Kromhout as an alternative to the
existing group Bouwkunst en Vriendschap; precise details of
the establishment of De Opbouw, however, were lost when its
archives were destroyed by fire during the German bombing in
1940. Its initial members were Marinus Jan Granpré Molière, a
leading figure of the Delft school, Josephus Klijnen
(1887–1973), L. Bolle, Alphonsus Siebers (1893–1978), Pieter
Verhagen (1882–1950), Leendert Cornelis van der Vlugt, Jaap
Gidding (1887–1955), Jacob Jongert, Willem Hendrik Gispen
(1890–1981) and J. J. P. Oud. Later they were joined by MART
STAM and JOHANNES BERNARDUS VAN LOGHEM, who became chairmen,
Cornelis van Eesteren, Willem van Tijen, W. van Gelderen, Piet
Zwart, Paul Schuitema (1897–1973) and Theodor Karel van
Lohuizen (1890–1956). Binding the members initially was the
search for a clearly distinctive position in contrast to that
of Amsterdam, the cultural centre. The influence of De Stijl,
Nieuwe Bouwen (‘new building’) and a general interest
in new ideas about art and architecture played a part, but no
manifesto was possible because differences in viewpoints—such
as those between Granpré Molière and Oud—were too great. De
Opbouw moved to the left politically from the second half of
the 1920s, through the influence of Stam and van Loghem. This
gradually resulted in some members leaving the group,
including Oud and Klijnen. This political orientation became
linked with support for functionalist architecture, thus
making possible De Opbouw’s merger with the Amsterdam-based
ARCHITECTENGROEP DE 8 in 1932. Collective action with
Amsterdam was achieved mainly through the periodical De 8
en Opbouw and through participation in CIAM activities,
while De Opbouw continued to be active independently in
Rotterdam. De Opbouw ceased in 1940, with the German
occupation. It held a number of exhibitions of members’ work
and twice (1927 and 1935) issued statements about urban
planning questions, but its importance was chiefly defined by
the work of its members.
Oppenheim Dennis .
Born in Electric City,
Washington, 1938. School of Arts and Crafts, Oakland (B.F.A.,
1965) and Stanford University, Palo Alto, (M.F.A., 1965).
Lives and works in New York City. The artistic trajectory of
Dennis Oppenheim has always been characterized by its
incorrigible discontinuity, motivated then as today by an
intensely adventurous curiosity. Following his earthworks
(1967-69 and body-works came the installations (from 1972
onwards), using puppets as their main theme (the harrowing
piece "Attempt to Raise Hell" at the Pompidou Center). Later
on, at the end of the seventies, Oppenheim produced what he
calls his "machine pieces" which, by denying the object its
sculptural status, are presented as complex constructions,
systems open to both an aleatory and an enigmatic mode of
functioning... There is an interesting progression from the
early machine pieces which seemed infused with a confidence
in rationality and in the possibility of grasping the
structure of the mind to the late works which were designed
to literally blow up and which seem to celebrate the triumph
of irrationality and chaos.
Oppenheim
Meret
(1913—85). *Surrealist artist widely known
for her Objet (1936): a cup, saucer and spoon covered in
fur, which has come to be seen as the archetypal Surrealist
object.
Orellana Chilean Gaston (b 1933).
Grupo Hondo.
Spanish group of painters.
Orozco Jose Clemente (1883—1949). Mexican painter, trained
as an architect, who turned to painting in 1909. At first
working in water-colours (e.g. Mexico in Revolution, 1916),
he later became a leading fresco painter, much in demand for
decorating public buildings in Mexico and the U.S.A. In
1923—4 he executed the famous murals for the National
Preparatory School in Mexico where he also did a 2nd series
in 1926—7. From 1927 O. worked continuously in the U.S.A.
where he had important commissions, notably at Dartmouth
College in Hanover, New Hampshire (Modem Migration of the
Spirit, 1932—4). * Pollock became attracted to O.'s work as
well as to that of the other 2 important contemporary
Mexican inuralists,
*Rivera and *Siqueiros. O.'s subject matter tended to social
realism, but it was treated m a decorative, formalized and
rhythmic manner. In this sense O. gave a new aspect to the
Revolutionary epic style initiated by Rivera.
Orphism. A tendency of abstract art in Paris с
1911-14. In
1912 Apollinaire called the Cubist painting of *Delaunay
'Orphic', linking it with that of Leger, Picabia, Duchamp
and some works of Picasso and F. Kupka. The name has only
stayed with the painting of Delaunay and his wife Sonia Terk
Delaunay, who experimented with colour circles, segments and
rhythms in a style called 'simultaneity'. 2 U.S. painters,
MacDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell, stressed colour in a
similar way (*Synchromism).
Orphism.
Term coined by Guillaume Apollinaire c. 1912 to
refer to the work of several painters in Paris. He applied it
to a new kind of joyously sensuous art, whose roots were in
Cubism and which had a tendency towards abstraction. The word
orphique had been used by the Symbolists and originated
in the Greek myth of Orpheus, who was significant as the ideal
artist for the Symbolists. In 1907 Apollinaire had written a
collection of quatrains under the title Bestiaire ou
cortège d’Orphée (Paris, 1911), with woodcuts by Raoul
Dufy, into which he incorporated the figure of Orpheus as a
symbol of the poet and the artist in general. For Apollinaire,
however, as for the generation of Symbolists who preceded him,
the myth of Orpheus meant the study of mystic, occult and
astrological sources, which gave rise to artistic inspiration.
‘The voice of light’, which he described in his Orphic poems,
was a metaphor, common in mystic texts, for ‘inner
experiences’. In a footnote to his volume of poetry he
identified the ‘voice of light’ by means of a line drawing,
although it was still not fully articulated; once it had
totally expressed itself, it would take on colour and become
painting. The metaphor of light, therefore, represented the
artist’s power to create entirely new forms and colours, and
in the process referred to the creation myth of hermetic,
Orphic texts. Accordingly, Orphism could signify a direct
sensuous address by means of colour and light, as well as an
innovative creative process.
OSA [Ob’edineniye
Sovremennikh Arkhitektorov; Rus.: Union of Contemporary
Architects].
Soviet architectural group, active in Moscow from 1925 to
1930. It was founded by MOISEY GINZBURG and Aleksandr Vesnin and it attracted many of Moscow’s Modernist architects
by arguing for architecture’s pivotal role in creating the new
Soviet society. OSA’s activities passed through several
distinct phases in response to changing political
circumstances and engaged the public on several fronts: these
included an exhibition of contemporary architecture in 1927;
architectural conferences in 1928 and 1929; and the bi-monthly
journal Sovremennaya arkhitektura, which appeared from
1926 to 1930. Disavowing aesthetic and formal considerations,
OSA made functional and technical matters pre-eminent.
Starting with general reflections about the USSR, OSA
architects then analysed the State’s building requirements in
terms of cost, user profile and building types. The group
endorsed a view of architecture as an integral part of the
State apparatus, with a role in transforming society, for
example by evolving new building types, such as the Workers’
Club, and with responsibilities, for example in containing
costs by adopting prefabrication methods. Their approach to
design was disciplined, with the design process itself being
reduced to four distinct phases: the building programme’s
spatial organization and technical requirements; the
volumetric implications of these factors; their physical
implementation; and the consolidation of the previous three
steps into architectural coherence and unity. This rigorous
design method helped OSA to forge its own identity and to
create a legacy of designs challenging the best work of other
European and Soviet avant-garde groups. The most
characteristic designs by architects associated with the group
include: the Vesnin brothers’ unexecuted projects for the
Palace of Labour (1922–3), Moscow, and the Leningrad Pravda
Building (1924), Moscow;
Grigory Barkhin’s Izvestiya Building (1925–7), Moscow;
Ginzburg’s unexecuted project for the Orgametals Headquarters
(1926–7); Il’ya Golosov’s Zuyev Club, Moscow; and Ivan Leonidov’s unexecuted projects
for the Lenin Institute (1927) and the Ministry of Heavy
Industry (1933–4), both Moscow. All
of these designs, however, owed as much to the talents of
their respective authors as to OSA’s design method.
Osbert
Alphonce (1857-1939),
French Symbolist.
Ostroumova-Lebedeva Anna
(b St Petersburg, 17 May 1871; d Leningrad [now St
Petersburg], 5 May 1955). Russian painter and printmaker. She studied at the St Petersburg Academy
of Arts and also worked in Paris in 1898 and 1899 in the studio of James
A. McNeill Whistler, alongside Konstantin Somov. She joined the WORLD OF
ART (Mir Iskusstva) group in 1899 and contributed to their journal.
Working mainly in graphic arts, in both monochrome and colour, she was
responsible for a revival of woodcutting techniques in Russia. Following
the example of Alexandre Benois, she worked on ‘historical landscapes’,
and she is best remembered for her views of the Baroque and classical
architecture of St Petersburg and its environs, as in the series of
woodcuts entitled St Petersburg (1908–10).
Ott
Jerry
(American 1947-) Jerry Duane Ott is an artist that is most
known for his photorealism work and creative use of painting
surfaces. Painting anything on anything and vice versa. His
latest technical development are paintings wrapped across
two and three dimensional surfaces. They range from drawings
a few inches wide to sculptural assemblages more than five
feet tall and eight feet long. His paintings are more about
the nature of art and the experience of seeing than about
the subjects they depict. Jerry Ott is a true master airbrush artist and a leading
painter in the 'Photo Realist' school of painting that
emerged in the 60's. In the early 70’s Jerry Ott received a
great deal of attention in his career as one of two such
artists – Hilo Chen being the other - dealing exclusively
with the nude figure. If there ever were a subject ideally
suited for rendering by an airbrush, it would be the human
figure and the airbrush is the tool used to develop that
"feel" of the human body--skin that you think you can touch. Ott's work has found international acclaim. His realistic
paintings appear in the art capitals of Europe, Japan and as
far a field as New Zealand. Among the prestigious
Institutions that have acquired his works are New York
City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, DC, the Minneapolis Institute of
Arts and the Walker Art Center. In his recent paintings, the effects of light and shade,
optical illusions, nubile woman and delicate flesh continue
to fascinate Ott. In "Pipe Dreams," he juxtaposes a pretty
but unanimated girl with three banal lamps which refer to
the mass-produced ceramic jars, vases and lamps sold as art.
In Ott's painting, however, the reflections in the porcelain
lamp bases and shadows that play across the skin are least
as important as the woman herself.
Ottoman art. *Islamic art
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Outerbridge Paul
(1896–1958) was an American photographer noted for
early use and experiments in color photography. Outerbridge was a
fashion and commercial photographer, an early pioneer and teacher of
color photography, and an artist who created erotic nudes
photographs that could not be exibited in his lifetime.
Outerbridge, while still in his teens, worked as an illustrator and
theatrical designer designing stage settings and lighting schemes. After
an accident caused his discharge from the Royal Canadian Naval Air
Service, in 1917, he enlisted in the U.S. Army where he did his first
photography work. In 1921, Outerbridge enrolled in the Clarence H. White
school of photography at Columbia University. Within a year his work began
being reproduced in Vanity Fair and Vogue magazine. In London, in 1925, the Royal Photographic Society invited Outerbridge
to exhibit in a one-man show. Outerbridge then traveled to Paris and
became friends with surrealist artists, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, and
Berenice Abbott. In Paris, Outerbridge did a layout for the French Vogue
magazine, met and worked with Edward Steichen, and built the largest, most
completely equipped advertising photography studio of the times. In 1929,
12 of Outerbridge's photographs were included in the prestigious, German
Film und Foto exhibition. Returning to New York in 1929, Outerbridge opened a studio doing
commercial and artistic work and began writing a monthly column on color
photography for the U.S. Camera Magazine. Outerbridge worked in tri-color
carbro process. In 1937, Outerbridge's photographs were included in an
exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art and, in 1940, Outerbridge published
his seminal book, Photographing in Color, using high quality illustrations
to explain his techniques. A scandal over his shocking, full-color erotic
nude photography, led to Outerbridge retiring as a commercial photographer
and moving to Hollywood in 1943, although he continued to contribute photo
stories to magazines and write his monthly column. In 1945, Outerbridge
married fashion designer Lois Weir and worked in their joint fashion
company, Lois-Paul Originals. One year after his death, Smithsonian Institution staged a one-man show
of Outerbridge's photographs in 1959. Although his reputation has faded,
revivals of Outerbridge's photography in 1970s and 1990s has periodically
brought him into contemporary public knowledge.
Outsider art. Art made by artists who are either not
specifically trained as such by defined standards, accepted
members of the art establishment or of the same racial,
cultural and social background as those who become
professionally empowered to define art within a society. At
various times art not conforming to such definitions and
made by people marginalized by such societies — women,
ethnic minorities, peasants, children and the insane — has
been designated as C). a. *Primitive art and *primitives.
Overbeck Johann Friedrich
(1789—1869). German painter. After
studying in Vienna, he went to Rome (1810) and became well
known after an exhibition of work there in 1819. He
founded, in Rome, the German *Nazarene
movement with *Cornelius, *Pforr and others. His subjects
were mainly historical and religious.
Ozentant Amedee (1886-1966). French painter and one of the
theorists of the school of *Paris. He was a pupil of
*Segonzac. A leading exponent of *Purism, he collaborated in
writings with *Le Corbusier; in 1920—5 they co-published
L'Espril nouveau. He founded the Academie Ozenfant (1930)
in Paris, but subsequently went to live in N.Y. in 1938.
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