Belgian, 20th century, male.
Born 1918, in Damprémy.
Painter. Designs for jewellery.
Rémi van den Abeele studied at the academy of fine art in Mons. In the Belgian Surrealist circle centring around the painters Magritte and Delvaux, the poet Mesens, and many other artists, Van den Abeele went practically unnoticed until the 1960s. His Surrealism arises from unexpected juxtapositions of different objects, based on the method used by the poet Lautréamont, the objects being painted in ...
Italian, 20th century, male.
Born 1900, in Marciana Marina (Livorno); died 1971, in Milan.
Painter, ceramicist, illustrator, scenographer, writer. Stage costumes.
Futurism.
Giovanni Acquaviva studied philosophy and law at the University of Pisa, while devoting himself to illustration at the same time. He founded the Futurist group ...
(b Paris, Jan 14, 1904; d La Clarté, Brittany, Aug 27, 1967).
French sculptor, printmaker and tapestry designer. His father was a jeweller, and after his return from World War I in 1918 Adam worked in his studio and learnt how to engrave. At the same time he studied drawing at the Ecole Germain-Pilon and read Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, which was to have a great influence on him. In 1925 he attended evening classes at a school of drawing in Montparnasse. From 1928 to 1934 he started to produce prints and became associated with André Breton, Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard, although he was never greatly influenced by them. His early prints, reminiscent of the work of George Grosz, were mostly designed as social satire, mocking the myths surrounding patriotism, the family and religion, as in When Papa is Patriotic (1935). In 1933 he designed the costumes and scenery for Hans Schlumberg’s Miracle à Verdun performed at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris. His first exhibition of prints was held in ...
(Gilbert) [Greenburg, Adrian Adolph]
(b Naugatuck, CT, March 3, 1903; d Los Angeles, CA, Sept 13, 1959).
American costume and fashion designer. Adrian is best known for his costume designs for Hollywood films and his signature women’s suits (see fig.). Adrian was educated at the School for Fine and Applied Arts (now Parsons School of Design) in New York and Paris. He began his career in New York by designing costumes for Irving Berlin’s Music Box Revue of 1921. It was through his work on Broadway that he met the costume designer Natacha Rambova, wife of the screen idol Rudolph Valentino, and began designing costumes for films. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1924 and by 1926 was working for the director Cecil B. DeMille, who brought him to Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) in 1928. When his contract with DeMille ended, Adrian signed with MGM, where he would remain as head costume designer until 1942. At MGM, Adrian dressed stars such as Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, Norma Shearer and Jeanette McDonald. Although it was his designs for Garbo, in which he was careful not to distract from her natural beauty, that first brought him fame, it was his creations for Joan Crawford that made him a household name....
French, 20th century, male.
Born 1889, in Strasbourg; died 1953, in Paris.
Painter, watercolourist. Landscapes.
After beginning as a technical draughtsman in Strasbourg, Adrion became a fashion designer in Paris at the age of 18, and then travelled to London, Munich and Frankfurt. He was apprenticed as an engraver to Hermann Struck in Berlin, returned to his home town in 1919 and finally settled in Paris, where he allied himself primarily with Soutine, Kikoïne and Krémègne....
(b Wairoa, Hawke’s Bay, NZ, Aug 27, 1939).
Maori painter, carver, weaver, costume and stage designer. His involvement with art began at Te Aute Maori Boys’ College (1954–7), Hawke’s Bay, Waipawa County, and continued with formal art training at Ardmore Teachers’ College (1958–9) and at Dunedin Teachers’ College (1960), where he trained as an art specialist. He subsequently worked for the Department of Education as an arts and crafts adviser and served on committees for national art education policies, the Historic Places Trust (with particular reference to Maori sites), art museums and tribal committees (dealing with traditional and customary art forms and architecture). He helped to promote contemporary developments in Maori arts for community buildings, meeting houses, churches and public sites, serving on private and governmental commissions. In his own work he maintains a balance between the conservation of older traditional materials and forms of Maori arts and the experimental use of new materials, such as composite chipboard, synthetic dyes, plastic-coated basketry fibres and composite, laminated board. His painted and woven-fibre works are notable for their rich but subtle colours and controlled sense of line. They vary in size from complex architectural installations or stage designs for the Royal New Zealand Ballet to designs for postage stamps. At Te Huki Meeting House (...
In Africa body arts, an integral part of dressing the body, are widely varied and include both permanent and temporary modifications of the body’s contours and surface (see also Africa: Dress). The head, neck, hair, teeth, nose, ears, lips, trunk and limbs may all be decorated or in some way altered for aesthetic or ritual purposes. Evidence of the antiquity of some of these body arts can be seen in Saharan rock art of c. 5000
In the broadest sense the art of African dress involves totally or partially covering the body with garments, accessories, paint and jewellery and/or modifying the body itself (see Africa: Body arts). Both body modifications and body supplements involve manipulating colour, texture, shape, volume, scent and sound. For many Africans, to dress well involves proper decorum and elegant style. Display of appropriate apparel, cosmetics and coiffure is often accompanied by magnificent carriage, graceful movement, fastidious toilette and immaculate garments.
See also Africa
The understanding of African dress as an art form requires a consideration of both single items and total ensembles. Occasionally, only a single item is used to adorn the body of an individual, for example a string of beads around the waist. In such a case the texture, colour and shape of the beads, whether of seeds, pods, shells or glass, are judged in the context of the texture and colour of the skin and the body shape. African dress ensembles range from simple to complex. A simple ensemble may consist of a wrapper, body paint and uncomplicated hairdo; a complex one may combine several richly decorated garments, an intricate coiffure, opulent jewellery and other accessories. Both single items and total ensembles may have an additive, cumulative character; examples include clusters of beads, layers of cloth or layers of jewellery. Such clusters and layers are often necessary components, adding the sounds of rustling fabrics and jingling jewellery to the ensemble’s visual impact. Layering of garments also provides the effect of bulk, as does the use of heavy fabric. The importance of an individual’s social position may be visually reinforced by the size of his or her ensemble. The robes of a ruler are often massive, as is the wrapper set of a powerful and successful trader. Moreover, such accessories as canes, walking-sticks, horsehair switches, umbrellas, fans, purses, handbags, handkerchiefs, linguist staffs and tusks are often needed to complete an ensemble....
In Africa regalia include the raiment that adorns a ruler, the insignia carried by a ruler and the emblematic devices that support or shelter the ruler as symbols of royal power. The interaction between ruler and emblems glorifies both the royal personage and the reign itself. Art objects commissioned by a king or queen, together with royal vestments, headgear, jewellery, thrones, stools, special weapons or other implements, constitute the regalia that embody the strength and spirit of each monarch’s rule, and they are intimately involved in the exercise of leadership. The regalia of the Asante king, for example, are symbols of the kingly office, chronicles of royal history and evidence of traditional religion, cosmology and social organization (see Kyerematen, p. 1).
In many African kingdoms a concept of divine right exists, wherein a ruler is chosen by virtue of his or her special relationship with the deities. There are, however, other modes of succession to office relating to the political position of a candidate, clan membership, consequences of gift exchange or victory in warfare. Whether considered divine or semi-divine, all rulers in Africa are perceived as larger than life and, as such, are vested at their coronations with material symbols expressing their rank and claim to power. Certain possessions are intended to reinforce this image both physically and metaphorically, thus legitimizing and validating the ruler’s authority and right to rule....
Portuguese, 18th – 19th century, male.
Born 1767, in Oporto.
Engraver (line-engraving). Portraits, natural history, costume studies.
After completing his studies at the academy in Oporto in 1793, Aguilar moved to London to perfect his skills in the studio of Thomas Milton, an engraver of landscapes. On his return to Portugal in ...
Belgian, 20th century, female.
Born 1903.
Painter. Stage costumes.
Primarily a dancer, Akarova was married to the painter Marcel Louis Baugniet, and it was probably under his influence as an artist of the Avant-Garde that she too emerged as a painter. Some exhibitions held in Belgium in the 1990s acknowledged her contribution to the art of the early 20th century....
Pieces of jewellery dating to the 6th–4th centuries
(b Tunis, Feb 2, 1935).
French fashion designer, of Tunisian birth. Alaïa is renowned for his ‘second skin’ fashions and masterful cutting techniques (see fig.). Christened the ‘King of Cling’ by fashion journalists, Alaïa rose to prominence in the 1980s following years of realizing commissions for a loyal and select clientele. His designs are modern, overtly feminine in their celebration of the female form and, in Alaïa’s own words: ‘not sexy, voluptuous’. Alaïa’s sculpted fashions have been known to render other designers’ fashions unwearable—they simply feel too large in comparison.
Born in southern Tunisia, Alaïa was raised by his maternal grandparents and at the age of 15 undertook the study of sculpture. Realizing soon after that sculpture was not his calling, and serendipitously passing a dressmaker’s window on his way to classes, he saw a sign for an assistant. He was hired for the task of finishing hems at five francs apiece. Alaïa rose quickly to become a favourite of Tunisian high society, copying for the local clientele the work of the great ...
Romanian, 20th century, male.
Born in Bucharest.
Painter. Stage costumes.
Alkar Alexandresco was important as a theatrical costume designer and exhibited as such in Paris at the Salon des Indépendants in 1927. Assyrian Idol is quoted in a private collection.
Native American (Choctaw), 20th–21st century, male.
Born 1959, in Phoenix.
Beadworker, painter, fashion designer, glass artist , performance artist.
Marcus Amerman is a distinguished Choctaw artist who works in a number of media and in performance (as a figure called ‘Buffalo Man’) but is best known for creating his own approach to the Native American tradition of beadworking. Amerman has a BA in Fine Art from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and also studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and the Anthropology Film Center. He lives and works north of Santa Fe. Amerman uses a highly mimetic style in his beadwork to recreate, and hence reclaim, Indian images from history, as in his beaded version of the famous D.F. Barry photograph, ...
Object worn or placed somewhere special in the belief that it has magico-religious powers, such as to protect against danger, cure disease, give strength or promote good fortune. In this sense it is more or less synonymous with ‘talisman’. Amulets are commonly worn as jewellery or carried within the clothing, but they may also be incorporated into such objects as weapons or placed within buildings or near crops. They have been treated as goods to trade in several cultures. A charm (i.e. magical formula) may be recited over an amulet, which may then itself be referred to as a charm. The term ‘amulet’ also denotes a medical or prophylactic treatment and a substance used in medicine.
Scholarly views on how and why amulets are perceived by their users to have power include the theory of ‘sympathetic magic’ based on similarity and contiguity. The perception here would be that like produces like—that intrinsically connected things act on each other even if the contact is broken. ...
Italian, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 6 March 1847, in Florence; died 1930.
Painter, watercolourist, fresco artist. Allegorical subjects, genre scenes, portraits, costume studies. Wall decorations.
Federigo Andreotti studied at the fine art academy in Florence under Pollastrini and Tricca. He was made a professor there and was awarded a scholarship. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in London ...
(Platonovich)
(b Serpukhov, Moscow district, Oct 1, 1882; d Serpukhov, April 29, 1947).
Russian photographer. He was the son of a hairdresser. In 1901 Andreyev studied painting and, at the same time, ‘art’ photography. In his later works he successfully combined the qualities of easel painting and photography, and he experimented widely with printing techniques involving oil pigment, bromoil and gum arabic. He was a master of delicate, lyrical landscapes, striving for the broadest tonal generalization of forms in his depictions of the countryside of middle Russia. Among his most famous landscape photographs are the coarse-grained Crimean Landscape (1929; see Morozov, no. 140) and Into the Blizzard (1930; see Morozov, no. 141). The same rich tonality and picturesque quality are also present in his genre photographs. From 1906 he successfully exhibited at national and international photographic exhibitions, where he was awarded many diplomas and gold medals.
S. Morozov: Tvorcheskaya fotografiya [Creative photography] (Moscow, 1986) L. Ukhtomskaya and A. Fomin: Antologia soveskoy fotografii, 1917–70...[Andjar, ‛Anjar, ‛Ayn al-Jarr]
Late Antique and early Islamic settlement in the Beqa‛a Valley of Lebanon, 56 km east of Beirut. Excavations since 1953 have revealed a cardinally orientated rectangular enclosure (370×310 m) with dressed stone walls. Each side has regularly spaced half-round towers and a central gate. Two colonnaded avenues intersecting at right angles under a tetrapylon link the gates, a plan recalling that of Roman foundations in the Levant and in North Africa. Within the enclosure are the remains of two palaces and the foundations of three others in stone and hard mortar, as well as a mosque, two baths (one paved with mosaics) and a well. The western area has streets intersecting at right angles and housing units with private courts, and the eastern area has open fields beyond the palaces and mosque. The construction of the greater palace in alternating courses of stone and brick is a technique well known in Byzantine architecture. Reused architectural elements from the Roman and early Christian periods, some bearing Greek inscriptions, are found all over the site. A large quantity of archivolts and mouldings, carved with vegetal, geometrical and figural motifs, was found among the ruined palaces. Texts suggest that Anjar was founded in the time of the Umayyad caliph al-Walid (...
