The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (58 page)

 
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blot drawing
.

A technique evolved by Alexander
Cozens
and described in
A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape
(1785 or 1786). He prescribed the use of an accidental stain or ‘blot’ on the paper as a basis for an imaginative landscape composition. A similar suggestion had much earlier been made by
Leonardo da Vinci
, who proposed that marks on wall surfaces might be used in this way. Somewhat similar techniques were used by the
Surrealists
for stimulating subconscious imagery.

 
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Blue Rider
.

See
BLAUE REITER
.

 
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(1907–83).
English art historian. He was Director of the
Courtauld Institute of Art
from 1947 to 1974, Surveyor of the King's (later Queen's) Pictures from 1945 to 1972, and one of the leading figures in establishing art history as an academic discipline in Britain. In 1979, however, his career was blighted when—amid clamorous publicity—it was revealed that he had spied for the Soviet Union during his service at the War Office in the Second World War. He wrote on a wide variety of subjects, but is best known for his contributions to the study of French and Italian art and architecture in the 16th cent. and 17th cent., above all for his numerous books and articles on
Poussin
. His books include
Artistic Theory in Italy 1450–1600
(1940),
Art and Architecture in France 1500–1700
(1953 and subsequent editions),
The Art of William Blake
(1959), and
Guide to Baroque Rome
(1982). His brother
Wilfrid
(1901–87) was drawing master at Eton 1938–59, Curator of the
Watts
Gallery at Compton 1959–85, and the author of numerous books on art and other subjects, notably
The Art of Botanical Illustration
(1950) and
‘England's Michelangelo’
(1975), a biography of Watts.

 
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(1882–1916).
Italian
Futurist
painter and theorist, and the only sculptor in the movement. He joined the Futurists in 1909, helped to draw up their manifestos of painting (1910) and sculpture (1912), and became the most energetic member of the group. Advocating a complete break with the art of the past, Boccioni was centrally concerned with the two main preoccupations of the Futurists—the production of emotionally expressive works and the representation of time and movement. He believed that physical objects have a kind of personality and emotional life of their own, revealed by ‘force lines’ with which the object reacts to its environment. These ideas are perhaps best shown in Boccioni's most famous piece of sculpture,
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
(casts in Tate, London, MOMA, New York, and elsewhere, 1913), which vividly expresses bodily movement. His theories on sculpture were very forward-looking. He advocated the use of materials such as glass and electric lights and the introduction of electric motors to create movement. However, he died in an accident whilst serving in the Italian army before most of his ideas could be put into practice.

 
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(1827–1901).
Swiss painter. With
Hodler
he ranks as the most important Swiss painter of the 19th cent., and in the 1880s and 1890s he was the most influential artist of the German-speaking world, even though from 1850 he had spent most of his time in Italy. He established his reputation with
Pan in the Reeds
(Neue Pinakothek, Munich, 1857), the beginning of his preoccupation with the world of nymphs and satyrs, naiads, and tritons, the results of which are sometimes slightly absurd. Later his style became more sombre and charged with mystical feeling, as in his best-known work,
The Island of the Dead
(Met. Mus., New York, 1880, and four other versions). Such works are considered among the most distinguished
Symbolist
paintings produced outside France, and their morbid imagery appealed to the
Surrealists
. A curious aspect of Böcklin's career is that like
Leonardo
—whom he disliked—he spent much of his time experimenting with flying machines.