English Literature

English literature has sometimes been stigmatized as insular. It can be argued that no single English novel attains the universality of the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’sWar and Peace or the French writer Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Yet in theMiddle Ages the Old English literature of the subjugated Saxons was leavened by theLatin and Anglo-Norman writings, eminently foreign in origin, in which the churchmen and the Norman conquerors expressed themselves. From this combination emerged a flexible and subtle linguistic instrument exploited byGeoffrey Chaucer and brought to supreme application by William Shakespeare. During the Renaissance the renewed interest in Classical learning and values had an important effect on English literature, as on all the arts; and ideas of Augustan literary propriety in the 18th century and reverence in the 19th century for a less specific, though still selectively viewed, Classical antiquity continued to shape theliterature. All three of these impulses derived from a foreign source, namely the Mediterranean basin. The Decadents of the late 19th century and the Modernists of the early 20th looked to continental European individuals and movements for inspiration. Nor was attraction toward European intellectualism dead in the late 20th century, for by the mid-1980s the approach known as structuralism, a phenomenon predominantly French and German in origin, infused the very study of English literature itself in a host of published critical studies and university departments. Additional influence was exercised by deconstructionist analysis, based largely on the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida.

Further, Britain’s past imperial activities around the globe continued to inspire literature—in some cases wistful, in other cases hostile. Finally, English literature has enjoyed a certain diffusion abroad, not only in predominantly English-speaking countries but also in all those others where English is the first choice of study as a second language.

English literature is therefore not so much insular as detached from the continental European tradition across the Channel. It is strong in all the conventional categories of the bookseller’s list: in Shakespeare it has a dramatist of world renown; in poetry, a genre notoriously resistant to adequate translation and therefore difficult to compare with the poetry of other literatures, it is so peculiarly rich as to merit inclusion in the front rank; English literature’s humour has been found as hard to convey to foreigners as poetry, if not more so—a fact at any rate permitting bestowal of the label “idiosyncratic”; English literature’s remarkable body of travel writingsconstitutes another counterthrust to the charge of insularity; in autobiography,biography, and historical writing, English literature compares with the best of any culture; and children’s literature, fantasy, essays, and journals, which tend to be considered minor genres, are all fields of exceptional achievement as regards English literature. Even in philosophical writings, popularly thought of as hard to combine with literary value, thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, and Bertrand Russell stand comparison for lucidity and grace with the best of the French philosophers and the masters of Classical antiquity.

Some of English literature’s most distinguished practitioners in the 20th century—from Joseph Conrad at its beginning to V.S. Naipaul and Tom Stoppard at its end—were born outside the British Isles. What is more, none of the aforementioned had as much in common with his adoptive country as did, for instance, Doris Lessing andPeter Porter (two other distinguished writer-immigrants to Britain), both having been born into a British family and having been brought up on British Commonwealth soil.

On the other hand, during the same period in the 20th century, many notable practitioners of English literature left the British Isles to live abroad: James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Robert Graves, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, and Anthony Burgess. In one case, that of Samuel Beckett, this process was carried to the extent of writing works first in French and then translating them into English.

Even English literature considered purely as a product of the British Isles is extraordinarily heterogeneous, however. Literature actually written in those Celtic tongues once prevalent in Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales—called the “Celtic Fringe”—is treated separately (see Celtic literature). Yet Irish, Scots, and Welsh writers have contributed enormously to English literature even when they have written in dialect, as the 18th-century poet Robert Burns and the 20th-century Scots writer Alasdair Gray have done. In the latter half of the 20th century, interest began also to focus on writings in English or English dialect by recent settlers in Britain, such as Afro-Caribbeans and people from Africa proper, the Indian subcontinent, and East Asia.

Even within England, culturally and historically the dominant partner in the union of territories comprising Britain, literature has been as enriched by strongly provincial writers as by metropolitan ones. Another contrast more fruitful than not for English letters has been that between social milieus, however much observers of Britain in their own writings may have deplored the survival of class distinctions. As far back as medieval times, a courtly tradition in literature cross-fertilized with an earthier demotic one. Shakespeare’s frequent juxtaposition of royalty in one scene with plebeians in the next reflects a very British way of looking at society. This awareness of differences between high life and low, a state of affairs fertile in creative tensions, is observable throughout the history of English literature

Russian artists. Creation of a free union of artists in the 19th century

Russian artists 19th century during the time tired of academic monopolies in Russian art, wanted independence and creative work. Either way, the creation of the combined membership of Famous russian artists contributed to the interest of many artists who work on a freely chosen subject, therefore, to ensure its independence from the Academy of Fine Arts, the various agencies, organizations and patrons protected by the government. In 1863, 14 graduates of artists, headed by Ivan Kramskoy refused to fulfill graduation painting on proposed Academy mythological theme Feast in Valhalla but the artists demanded free choice of topic, but in the academy flatly refused, after which many artists have deliberately left the academy. The solution was this: that it was necessary to establish an independent guild of artists by type of commune, Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions "Peredvizhniki" independent from academic monopoly. It lasted not long time and broke up after 7 years, though this time in 1870, originated a new alliance of famous russian artists or traveling art exhibitions company, which moved in different cities of Russia. 

Society of famous russian artists have tried to show in their work side of true art is valued much higher than the mythological, the artists have aimed to make a broad propaganda of Fine Arts, whose purpose was social and aesthetic education of the masses, approaching life with a democratic art. Reveal in his paintings a true real life of the oppressed peasants who suffer from the power of the landlords and rich, this was main task. Many works of Union of Russian artists painted from life in the style of genre painting and other works created by the imagination from real life. Russian artists with great conviction demonstrated the existence of a new artistic movement in the first exhibition, gradually developing from 1860s. In this exhibition was shown paintings - pictures of many famous Russian artists, which presented all the popular genres: portrait, landscape and historical genre. Entire showed that 47 pieces overturned the academic ideas of art, it was the first success step of Famous Russian artists showing their paintings from true life.

By this time the academy has seen some changes. because the old rules of training is gradually disappearing. 19th century, the golden age of Russian art, which gave Russia a large number of famous artists who left a rich legacy to his descendants, whose value is simply immeasurable. Due to new free movement of Russian artists, Russian art paintings helps mankind to understand life concepts of those years and the work of artists who have great difficulty with the establishment of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions. 

In the fate of artists took a huge part Paul Tretjakov (1832-1898) Russian philanthropist collected a large number of paintings most of which he bought from Russian artists, later his enormous collection of paintings has reached a level of a museum collection Tretjakov quiveringly concerned to painting art russian famous artists, respected to hard work of artists, almost all condition has been enclosed in pictures famous russian paintings. In the future all the paintings were given to the museum in Moscow. Now it is world renowned Tretjakov gallery where are presented Russian painting, drawings and other masterpieces.

Art of the United Kingdom

The Art of the United Kingdom refers to all forms of visual art in or associated with the United Kingdom since the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. For earlier periods, and some more detailed information on the post-1707 period, see English art, Scottish art, Welsh art and Irish art. It is part of Western art history, and during the 18th century Great Britain began once again to take the leading place England had in European art during the Middle Ages, being especially strong in portraiture and landscape art. Increasing British prosperity led to a greatly increased production of bothfine art and the decorative arts, the latter often being exported. The Romantic period produced the very diverse talents of William Blake, J. M. W. Turner, John Constable and Samuel Palmer. The Victorian period saw a great diversity of art, and a far larger quantity created than before. Much Victorian art is now out of critical favour, with interest concentrated on the Pre-Raphaelites and the innovative movements at the end of the 18th century.

The training of artists, which had long been weak, began to be improved by private and government initiatives in the 18th century, and greatly expanded in the 19th, and public exhibitions and later the opening of museums brought art to a wider public, especially in London. In the 19th century publicly displayed religious art once again became popular, after a virtual absence since the Reformation, and, as in other countries, movements such as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Glasgow Schoolcontended with established Academic art. The British contribution to early Modernist art was relatively small, but since World War II British artists have made a considerable impact on Contemporary art, especially with figurative work, and Britain remains a key centre of an increasingly globalized art world.

What is the History of Art?

'Art for art's sake' – but not for many historians. The fine and decorative arts, their styles and iconography, have been mined for insight into the politics, religion and social obsessions of the past. Placing key images alongside the views of six contributors we continue the search.

Alex Potts

A history of the visual arts, defined simply as a chronological description of the various objects we now classify as art, would be a pretty marginal affair, probably of less general interest than a history of machinery, or a history of clothing. It would certainly be a history that remained on the fringes of what most people recognise as the central concerns of life. A history of art begins to look a little more interesting where it claims that art has a symbolic value, and that visual artefacts reflect important attitudes and 'realities' of the society in which they were produced.

Such claims were first advanced explicitly during the Enlightenment, most notably in Winckelmann's famous History of the Art of Antiquity, published in 1764. With Winckelmann, art was conceived, not just as a category of visual representations that provoked pleasurable responses, but as a medium for defining ourselves and our engagement with the material world – in Hegel's words, Winckelmann, in characterising art in the way he did, invented a 'new organ of the human spirit'. At the same time, artefacts of the past were interpreted as eloquent signs of the general character of the society that had produced them. In the words of another contemporary, the Comte de Caylus, a collection of antiquities, classified according to place and date of origin, would provide a 'picture of all the centuries'. Similar preoccupations are still active in the study of the history of art, but cast in a much more negative mould.

Ideas of art and the aesthetic have at no time attracted such intense scholarly scrutiny as now; yet arguments for their actual significance rarely ring true. The more convincing studies are concerned with the ideological interests which lie behind traditional mythologies of art, or with questions about why art might have mattered in the past. Similarly, the idea that the meanings of art are anchored in social and political life, that art history should be conceived as an integral part of general history, has rarely been so widely accepted; yet attempts to ascribe definite social and political meanings to visual images usually meet with scepticism. The fruitful art historical analyses, rather than explaining the exact meaning of an image, demonstrate how futile it is to try and fix the varied and often ill-defined meanings it could have for different audiences in different contexts. Interpreted as bits of historical evidence illustrating what a past society was like, visual artefacts tend to function as intriguing images onto which we are all free to project whatever historical fantasies we wish. The central concerns of art historical study have not always been so intensely problematic. But the paradoxes involved can be traced back to the formation of a modern conception of the history of art in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Jacob Burckhardt's definition of the Renaissance as a distinct phase in the history of Western European culture obviously owes a lot to his study of Italian Renaissance art. Yet when he came to write his Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, published in 1860, he did not discuss the visual arts, and defined his conception of Italian Renaissance culture entirely from written sources. The Renaissance is still represented most vividly for many people by Italian Renaissance art, just as Modernism seems most clearly exemplified in modern art. But it is only at a highly symbolic level that an abstract painting, say, can be interpreted as symptomatic of tendencies within modern culture as a whole. If the history of art has encouraged a division of general history into phases or periods, specialised studies of art seem to offer few concrete insights into the larger social and political factors, or the prevailing day-to-day attitudes and ways of life, that might characterise such periods.

Yet interest in the past is to a considerable extent formed by responses to visual artefacts, and the study of the visual arts is not as marginal as its ostensible function serving the art market and tourist industry would seem to imply. Art continues to be a focus of debate about definitions of culture – though what matters much more in practical terms is the use of visual imagery in the media and film, even for the minority ' of the rich and powerful who make the art scene their hobby.

Winckelmann's history of Greek and Roman art, the publication that effectively put the modern study of the history of art on the map, was based on artefacts that featured in the day-to-day life of only a tiny circle of antiquarians and collectors of antique sculpture in eighteenth-century Rome. Yet the book seemed to break the bounds of the interests of this exclusive and peripheral social group, largely by virtue of claims about the value of art and its history that seem highly suspect, yet gripping, today.

The Arts and Human Development: Framing a National Research Agenda forthe Arts, Lifelong Learning, and Individual Well-Being

In March 2011, the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services hosted a first-of-its-kind event to showcase and discuss recent research on the arts and human development. The one-day forum examined the relationship between the arts and positive health and educational outcomes at various segments of the lifespan—from early childhood, to youth and adolescence, to older adult populations. This white paper summarizes major themes from the forum, and highlights related studies. It also makes recommendations toward establishing a long-term federal partnership to promote research and evidence-sharing nationwide.