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[il Sordino]

(b Bologna, Feb 23, 1740; d Bologna, May 5, 1815).

Italian painter, biographer, draughtsman and engraver. He was a pupil of Giuseppe Varotti (1715–80). While a student at the Accademia Clementina, Bologna, he received two awards, including the Premio Marsili for the Sacrifice of Noah (1758; Bologna, Accad. B.A. & Liceo A.). He pursued literary interests throughout his life and became a member of the avant-garde Accademia Letteraria degli ‘Ingomiti’ in Bologna in 1763. His early paintings, notably the St Francis de Sales (1764; Bologna, Ospizio dei Preti), continue the strict classical strain within the Bolognese figurative tradition; they show the influences of Ercole Graziani, Marc Antonio Franceschini and Donato Creti. Calvi primarily painted sacred subjects, receiving numerous, mainly local, commissions. From about 1770 onwards many pictures, including his superb Self-portrait (1770; Bologna, Pin. N.), became increasingly austere and Raphaelesque in both style and design, anticipating 19th-century Bolognese Neo-classicism. In 1766 he frescoed an Assumption of the Virgin...

(b Paris, May 15, 1786; d Paris, Feb 16, 1857).

French architect, writer and engraver. He was a pupil of Jean-Antoine Alavoine and Jean-Nicolas Huyot at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and began his career as a vérificateur (1811–15) in the Direction des Travaux Publics from its creation in 1811, subsequently becoming Chef de la Révision (1815–19). He was sous-inspecteur for the restoration (1819–20) of the Porte St Martin, Paris, and then inspecteur of the Bourse (1821–6) and architect of the reserve granary (1827–31). At the same time he worked (1819–33) for the Conseil des Bâtiments Civils, serving as its secretary from 1824 to 1831. In 1835 he was involved in important work on several cathedrals on behalf of the Ministère des Cultes, including the choir at Nantes and rebuilding the nave roof at Chartres, following a fire in 1836. Gourlier was also an engraver and exhibited at the Salon many architectural designs, which were published in ...

(b Lausanne, May 25, 1841; d Paris, Oct 23, 1917).

French illustrator, decorative artist and printmaker of Swiss birth. Before arriving in Paris in the autumn of 1871, Grasset had been apprenticed to an architect, attended the Polytechnic in Zurich and travelled to Egypt. In Paris he found employment as a fabric designer and graphic ornamentalist, which culminated in his first important project, the illustrations for Histoire des quatre fils Aymon (1883). Grasset worked in collaboration with Charles Gillot, the inventor of photo-relief printing and an influential collector of Oriental and decorative arts, in the production of this major work of Art Nouveau book design and of colour photomechanical illustration. Grasset used a combination of medieval and Near Eastern decorative motifs to frame and embellish his illustrations, but most importantly he integrated text and imagery in an innovative manner which has had a lasting influence on book illustration.

In 1881 he was commissioned by Rodolphe Salis to design furnishing in a medieval style for the latter’s new Chat Noir cabaret in Montmartre. This project brought him in direct contact with Montmartre avant-garde artists such as Adolphe Willette, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, Henri Rivière and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Grasset’s numerous posters include ...

(Mykolayovych) [Masyutin, Masyuta-Soroka; Vasyl’ Nikolayevich]

(b Chernihiv, 1884; d Berlin, Dec 15, 1955).

Ukrainian printmaker, sculptor, medallist and art historian, active in Germany. He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under Vasyl’ Maté (1856–1917). After the 1917 Revolution he taught briefly at Vkhutemas (Higher Art and Technical Studios), moving to Berlin in 1921. He frequently sent works back to Ukraine to participate in the exhibitions of the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists (ANUM), of which he became a member when it was formed in Lwów (L’viv) in 1931. His early graphic work includes etchings treated as symbolic fantasies bordering on the grotesque. He also produced a cycle of engravings, the Seven Deadly Sins, and illustrations to Aesop’s fables and to the works of Gogol and Balzac. He sculpted busts of Balzac and several hetmans and produced an entire series of commemorative medallions of the Cossack leadership, medieval princes and contemporary cultural figures, a total of 63 portraits rendered with historical accuracy. Examples of his work are in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. He also contributed to art pedagogy with his ...

(b Goyencourt, Nov 25, 1765; d Paris, Feb 13, 1840).

French designer, engraver and architect. He trained as an architect and in 1792 won the Grand Prix de Rome and travelled to Rome. He was responsible for thousands of engraved plates between 1800 and 1815, notably those for Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine’s Recueil de décorations intérieures (Paris, 1801), the seminal publication of the Empire style. Normand’s own designs in the Neo-classical style were published in his Décorations intérieures et extérieures (1803), on which he collaborated with the sculptor, Pierre-Nicolas Beauvallet; its 48 plates include designs for furniture, vases and ornaments.

(b Eisenach, 1832; d Nuremberg, May 28, 1895).

German architect, architectural historian, lithographer and writer. He was in Rome for a few months in 1855–6. In the early 1860s he produced Ornamente der Renaissance aus Italien (1861), a collection of 24 lithographs of drawings taken from life, as well as Entwürfe zu Grabdenkmalen (1861) and two further collections, Ornamentenschule (1861) and Ornamente griechischen und römischen Stils (n.d.). In 1864 he published his collection of designs for shop-fronts, the Zeichnungen zu Schaufenstern, Waarenauslagen und Ladenvorbauen, in Weimar, where in 1866, together with F. Jaede, he founded the Atelier für Architektur und Kunstgewerbe (Studio for architecture and arts and crafts) and, the following year, the weekly review Kunst und Gewerbe. In 1873 Stegmann became Director of the Bayerisches Gewerbemuseum at Nuremberg. He also supervised work on the construction (1861–8) of the new building for the Ducal Museum (now Landesmuseum) in Weimar, designed by ...

Culture of images and visuality that creates meaning in our world today. This includes media forms such as photography, film, television, and digital media; art media such as painting, drawing, prints, and installations; architecture and design; comic books and graphic novels; fashion design, and other visual forms including the look of urban life itself. It also encompasses such social realms as art, news, popular culture, advertising and consumerism, politics, law, religion, and science and medicine. The term visual culture also refers to the interdisciplinary academic field of study that aims to study and understand the role that images and visuality play in our society; how images, gazes, and looks make meaning socially, culturally, and politically; how images are integrated with other media; and how visuality shapes power, meaning, and identity in contemporary global culture.

The emergence of the concept of visual culture as a means to think about the role of images in culture and as an academic field of study is a relatively recent phenomenon, emerging in the late 1980s and becoming established by the late 1990s. There were numerous factors that contributed to the idea that images should be understood and analysed across social arenas rather than as separate categories, including the impact of digital media on the circulation of images across social realms, the modern use of images from other social arenas (such as news and advertising) in art, and the cross-referencing of cultural forms displayed in popular culture and art. It was also influenced by the increasingly visible role played by images in political conflict and a general trend toward interdisciplinarity in academia....