African art describes modern and historical paintings, sculptures, installations, and other visual cultures from native or indigenous Africans and the African continent. The definition may also include the art of the African diasporas, such as art in African-American, Caribbean or South American societies inspired by African traditions. Despite this diversity, there are unifying artistic themes present when considering the totality of the visual culture from the continent of Africa.
A brooch is a decorative jewellery item designed to be attached to garments, often to fasten them together. It is usually made of metal, often silver or gold or some other material. Brooches are frequently decorated with enamel or with gemstones and may be solely for ornament or serve a practical function as a clothes fastener. The earliest known brooches are from the Bronze Age. As fashions in brooches changed rather quickly, they are important chronological indicators. In archaeology, ancient European brooches are usually referred to by the Latin term fibula. One example is the Tara Brooch.
A figurine or statuette is a small, three-dimensional sculpture that represents a human, deity or animal, or, in practice, a pair or small group of them. Figurines have been made in many media, with clay, metal, wood, glass, and today plastic or resin the most significant. Ceramic figurines not made of porcelain are called terracottas in historical contexts.
A Moor's head, also known as a Maure, since the 11th century, is a symbol depicting the head of a black moor. The term moor came to define anyone who was African and Muslim.
Blackamoors may refer to:
The sculpture of ancient Greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient Greek art as, with the exception of painted ancient Greek pottery, almost no ancient Greek painting survives. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture in bronze and stone: the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic. At all periods there were great numbers of Greek terracotta figurines and small sculptures in metal and other materials.
A lawn jockey is a statue depicting a man in jockey clothes, intended to be placed in front yards as hitching posts, similar to those of footmen bearing lanterns near entrances and gnomes in gardens. The lawn ornament, popular in certain parts of the United States and Canada in years past, was a cast replica, usually about half-scale or smaller, generally of a man dressed in jockey's clothing and holding up one hand as though taking the reins of a horse. The hand sometimes carries a metal ring and, in some cases, a lantern, which may or may not be operational.
The cigar store Indian or wooden Indian is an advertisement figure, in the likeness of a Native American, used to represent tobacconists. The figures are often three-dimensional wooden sculptures measuring from several feet tall up to life-sized. They are still occasionally used for their original advertising purpose, but are more often seen as decorations or advertising collectibles, with some pieces selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Andrea Brustolon was an Italian sculptor in wood. He is known for his furnishings in the Baroque style and devotional sculptures.
Hellenistic art is the art of the Hellenistic period generally taken to begin with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and end with the conquest of the Greek world by the Romans, a process well underway by 146 BC, when the Greek mainland was taken, and essentially ending in 30 BC with the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt following the Battle of Actium. A number of the best-known works of Greek sculpture belong to this period, including Laocoön and His Sons, Dying Gaul, Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. It follows the period of Classical Greek art, while the succeeding Greco-Roman art was very largely a continuation of Hellenistic trends.
Architectural sculpture is a general categorization used to describe items used for the decoration of buildings and structures. In the United States, the term encompasses both sculpture that is attached to a building and free-standing pieces that are a part of an architects design.
Etruscan art was produced by the Etruscan civilization in central Italy between the 10th and 1st centuries BC. From around 750 BC it was heavily influenced by Greek art, which was imported by the Etruscans, but always retained distinct characteristics. Particularly strong in this tradition were figurative sculpture in terracotta, wall-painting and metalworking especially in bronze. Jewellery and engraved gems of high quality were produced.
Dunham Massey Hall, usually known simply as Dunham Massey, is an English country house in the parish of Dunham Massey in the district of Trafford, near Altrincham, Greater Manchester. During World War I it was temporarily used as the Stamford Military Hospital.
Moresque is an obsolete alternative term to "Moorish" in English, and in the arts has some specific meanings. By itself, the word is used to describe the stylized plant-based forms of tendrils and leaves found in ornament and decoration in the applied arts in Renaissance Europe that are derived from the arabesque patterns of Islamic ornament. Like their Islamic ancestors, they differ from the typical European plant scroll in being many-branched and spreading rather than forming a line in one direction. The use of half-leaves with their longest side running along the stem is typical for both.
There are various allegorical representations of Argentina or associated in any way with Argentina. There is not, however, a national personification with its own name, like Marianne from France, or Hispania from Spain, but sculptures and engravings representing liberty, republic, motherland or other concepts that have been used officially by the Argentine state.
Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt is a 1939 bronze sculpture by James Earle Fraser. It was located on public park land at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The equestrian statue depicts Theodore Roosevelt on horseback. Walking on either side of him are two men, on one side a Native American and on the other, a sub-Saharan African.
The Middle Ages was a period that spanned approximately 1000 years and is normally restricted to Europe and the Byzantine Empire. The material remains we have from that time, including jewelry, can vary greatly depending on the place and time of their creation, especially as Christianity discouraged the burial of jewelry as grave goods, except for royalty and important clerics, who were often buried in their best clothes and wearing jewels. The main material used for jewelry design in antiquity and leading into the Middle Ages was gold. Many different techniques were used to create working surfaces and add decoration to those surfaces to produce the jewelry, including soldering, plating and gilding, repoussé, chasing, inlay, enameling, filigree and granulation, stamping, striking and casting. Major stylistic phases include barbarian, Byzantine, Carolingian and Ottonian, Viking, and the Late Middle Ages, when Western European styles became relatively similar.
A number of statues and memorials were the subject of protests and petitions during the George Floyd protests in the United Kingdom in 2020.
The Dunham Massey Hall sundial is a lead sculpture depicting a kneeling Black man holding a sundial on his head. It was created during the early 18th century, and until 2020 stood outside Dunham Massey Hall, a stately home in Cheshire, England.
Yingluo is a ring-shaped neck ornament or fashion jewellery of Buddhist origins in ancient China with its earliest prototypes having roots in ancient India. In China, the yingluo was first used as a Buddhist ornament in Buddhist decorative arts, including sculptures and paintings such as the Dunhuang frescoes. The yingluo depicted as decorative Buddhist art elements and was later imitated and turned into an actual elegant necklace by the Tang dynasty. It was then widely adopted as a classical necklace in Chinese society for centuries and as a head-wear. It was also used the hanfu of Chinese women where it was used as a neck ornament or jewellery, and was especially favoured by the Chinese court ladies in ancient times. The yingluo could also be used as a textile pattern which would applied on Chinese clothing. The yingluo gradually lost popularity as it lost its appeal due to the changes in people's sense of aesthetic and aesthetic needs in modern times. However, it currently continues to be worn as a common modern-day hanfu accessory by Hanfu enthusiasts since the Hanfu movement and can appear in various styles and materials.
