The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (30 page)

(1893–1965).
American painter, active mainly in New York. Through the 1930s and 1940s he perpetuated in America
Matisse's
post-
Fauvist
style of figure painting, with flat areas of restrained but scintillating colour enclosed in flowing outlines. His favourite subjects included landscapes and beach scenes, but some of his late works are so broadly conceived and ethereally painted that at first glance they can be mistaken for abstracts. Avery was the main and practically the only channel through whom Matisse's sophisticated innovations in the decorative use of colour survived in America until new interest was taken in them by younger artists such as
Rothko
(his close friend) and
Gottlieb
. Rothko in particular acknowledged the debt that he and other abstract painters owed to the ‘sheer loveliness’ of Avery's work, in which he had ‘invented sonorities never seen nor heard before’.

 
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Avignon, School of
.

School of painting associated with the city of Avignon originating during the period when the papal court was transferred there from Rome (1309–77). The presence of this great source of patronage drew many artists to the city, mainly Italian masters, including
Simone Martini
. After the departure of the popes Avignon became the centre of a school of painting which amalgamated Italian with northern Flemish influences (see
CHARONTON
,
FROMENT
). The greatest single work which the School produced is the
Pietà
from Villeneuve-lès-Avignon (Louvre, Paris,
c.
1460), now generally attributed to Charonton. Several 14th-cent. frescos survive in the Palace of the Popes, but many works which were at one time attributed to the School of Avignon have since been reassigned and the School is no longer a clearly defined stylistic entity.

 
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Aycock , Alice
.

See
LAND ART
.

 
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(1921–75).
British painter, sculptor, theatre designer, book illustrator, writer on art, and broadcaster. His career was often marked by ill health, but he travelled widely and had a long and varied list of works to his credit. He was an erudite, inventive, and highly individual artist, much of whose work revolved around his obsession with the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, which he treated as analogous to his own artistic endeavours. The most extreme expression of his obsession is the enormous maze of brick and stone he built at Arkville in New York State, imitating the labyrinth Daedalus built for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. He wrote several books, induding
The Testament of Daedalus
(1962), and illustrated several others. From 1944 to 1946 he was art critic of
The Spectator
(succeeding John
Piper
), and at about the same time he became a regular radio broadcaster on art (he also appeared often in the BBC's
Round Britain Quiz
).

 
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(
c.
1595?–1624).
Dutch painter of religious works and
genre
scenes. After training in Utrecht with
Moreelse
, he went (
c.
1612) to Rome, where his style became strongly influenced by
Caravaggio
. He returned to the Netherlands in about 1621 and although he died only a few years after this he played a leading role, with
Honthorst
and
Terbrugghen
, in establishing Utrecht as a stronghold of the Caravaggesque style. His best-known work is
The Procuress
(Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston, 1622). This picture is seen in the background of two paintings by
Vermeer
, whose mother-in-law evidently owned it.

 
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