O

objet trouvé. found object

Oceanic art. The term refers to the primitive art of the island populations of the Pacific. 3 main areas are distinguished: Melanesia (New Guinea and surrounding islands), Micronesia (islands to the N. of Melanesia), and Polynesia (the triangle formed by the Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand and Easter Island).

The art objects include ancestor figures, canoe-prow ornaments, ceremonial shields and clubs, masks, decorated human skulls, stone carvings, carved stools and other cult objects and artefacts. Besides wood and stone, the materials used include shells, wicker, feathers, cane, fibre, bamboo, rattan and bark cloth. As distinct from African art, various materials are often used in combination, and may be painted in bright pigments, the surfaces with stylized designs of the human face or figure. The range of styles among such widely scattered peoples is enormous, though many groups reveal related art motifs. Among the most famous examples of O. a. are the giant stone ancestor-cult figures of Easter Island, the convoluted designs of Maori wood carvings and the vast production of carved drums, masks, stools and shields of the Sepik river area on the N. coast of New Guinea.

Ochtervelt Jacob (1634–82). Dutch genre and portrait painter, the pupil of Berchem. He was influenced by Metsu and Terborch, and above all by Pieter de Hooch, and therefore by Vermeer. He worked in Rotterdam but spent his later years in Amsterdam. 2 of his better-known works are A Woman Standing at a Harpsichord and A Woman Playing a Virginal.

O’Connor James (1792–1841). Irish landscape painter who moved to London in 1813 and later settled there. Trained as an engraver, he tried, unsuccessfully, to make a living as a landscape painter. His style is modelled largely on that of R. Wilson.

oil painting. An increasingly important technique in European painting since the late 15th c. O. p. in one form or another had been known since antiquity for coarse work such as house painting, but the technique was immensely refined in early 15th-c. Flanders, the improved medium being gradually taken up by Italian painters. Powdered colours, mixed with a fine oil (usually linseed) until the resulting paint is sufficiently viscous, are applied to a prepared ground – usually stretched canvas with an overall coating in a neutral pigment. The technique at its most elaborate, as in the work of the old masters, involved a careful application of colours building up from dark to lighter tones and relying on extensive technical knowledge of the interaction between the various pigments – the various chemicals involved can act on one another and, if not carefully applied, can over a period of time damage the layers of paint above and next to them. Colours can be laid down with the intention that they should show through upper layers to a certain extent, while coloured transparent glazes can be applied for further gradations of tone. Apart from the immense tonal subtlety of the medium, surface texture can also be varied by impasto and brushwork.

O’Keeffe Georgia (1887–1986). U.S. painter and wife of Stieglitz; she was one of the prominent figures in the 1920s U.S. reaction against avant-garde European ideas and movement towards a romantic, naturalistic art. Her own painting, however – ‘magical realism’ – has Surrealist undertones. The exotic colour and form of plants and flowers are heightened by taking them out of their natural context. Later works include the 24-ft wide (7.3-m.) Sky Above Clouds IV (1965).

Oldenburg Claes (1929– ). Swedish-born U.S. artist; he came to prominence as one of the major figures of U.S. art of the 1960s associated with Pop art. Early works in the style of Abstract Expressionism gave place to ‘total environments’ (The Street, 1960), Happenings (Store Days, 1962) and Performance art and eventually to soft sculptures of commonplace, vastly enlarged objects made out of canvas, kapok or vinyl – Floor-Burger (1962), Soft Light Switches (1964), etc. – and monuments, e.g. Lipstick on Caterpillar Tracks (1969).

Olitski Jules (1922–2007). Russian-born U.S. painter and teacher. His canvases of the 1950s were in thick impasto; in those of the 1960s there is a decisive change with sprayed, stained-canvas, Color-field paintings of large forms and clear colours (e.g. High A Yellow, 1967). O.’s atmospheric and luminous paintings emphasize the flatness of the picture surface and the edges of the canvas. Post-painterly abstraction.

Oliver Isaac (d. 1617). British miniaturist of French Huguenot parentage. He studied under Hilliard and became his master’s principal rival, developing a style of portraiture less linear than Hilliard’s. He painted Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, and worked at the court of James I. A visit to Venice in 1596 stimulated him to paint religious and classical subjects. His son Peter (c. 1594–1647) was also a miniaturist.

Oliver Unknown Man c. 1590–5

Olmec. Pre-Columbian Mexican culture, fl. c. 800–400 BC; the principal O. site is at La Venta on the Gulf Coast. Archaeological finds include carved altars, plaques, jade figurines and massive stone heads.

Omega Workshops. Founded by Roger Fry in 1913; several painters including Grant and V. Bell took part. Furniture, fabrics and pottery were designed and decorated in the workshops following current fashions in painting among the Bloomsbury Group and issued anonymously with the Greek letter omega as sole mark; the actual construction, weaving, etc. of their products was done by craftsmen. The O.W. were not financially successful and closed in 1920.

Op(tical) art. Term which gained currency in the 1960s for a style of abstract painting deriving from the work of such painters as Albers and Vasarély. O. a. concerns itself with purely visual sensations, relying for its effects upon optical illusions; often canvases are a mass of small shapes, lines or vivid colours constantly shifting under the eye. The best works are black-and-white. Some of the most inventive works are by B. Riley.

Opie John (1761–1807). British painter. In 1781 he was introduced to London as the self-taught ‘Cornish Wonder’ by J. Wolcot (Peter Pindar). He excelled in portraits and in genre scenes in which he made notable use of chiaroscuro effects. The quality of his work declined as he became increasingly fashionable. His wife Amelia (1769–1853) was author of numerous popular, moralizing domestic novels.

Oppenheim Meret (1913–85). Surrealist artist widely known for her Objet (1936): a cup, saucer and spoon covered in fur, which has come to be seen as the archetypal Surrealist object.

Opsomer Isidore (1878–1967). Belgian painter, pupil of A. de Vriendt. His main work was in portraiture and scenes in Antwerp. His studio at the Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts was one of the leading influences in Belgian art.

Orcagna Andrea (Andrea di Cione) (c. 1308–c. 1368). Florentine painter, sculptor and architect in a traditional Gothic idiom. His only certain painting, the Strozzi altarpiece in S. Maria Novella, Florence, rejects many of Giotto’s innovations (definition of space, solidity, etc.), returning to a more hieratic, less humanist religious idiom. His tabernacle in Or San Michele, Florence, is a riot of crockets, gables and finials. As an architect he was also traditional: the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence (attributed to him on Vasari’s authority) is still wholly Italian Gothic in spite of its round arches. His brothers Nardo (fl. 1343–65) and Jacopo (fl. 1365–98) were both painters.

Orchardson Sir William Quiller (1832–1910). Scottish subject and portrait painter known principally for his picture Napoleon on Board the ‘Bellerophon’.

Ordóñez Bartolomé (fl. c. 1515–20). Spanish sculptor who was influenced by High Renaissance sculptors in Italy where he often worked. He executed reliefs for the Barcelona cathedral and several tombs (e.g. in the royal chapel at Granada).

Orley Barnaert van (c. 1490–1541). Belgian painter who also designed tapestries. He was influenced by Italian art and was employed as a court painter by Margaret of Austria and Mary of Hungary.

Orozco José Clemente (1883–1949). Mexican painter, trained as an architect, who turned to painting in 1909. At first working in watercolours (e.g. Mexico in Revolution, 1916), he later became a leading fresco painter, much in demand for decorating public buildings in Mexico and the U.S.A. In 1923–4 he executed the famous murals for the National Preparatory School in Mexico where he also did a 2nd series in 1926–7. From 1927 O. worked continuously in the U.S.A. where he had important commissions, notably at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire (Modern Migration of the Spirit, 1932–4). Pollock became attracted to O.’s work as well as to that of the other 2 important contemporary Mexican muralists, Rivera and Siqueiros. O.’s subject matter tended to social realism, but it was treated in a decorative, formalized and rhythmic manner. In this sense O. gave a new aspect to the Revolutionary epic style initiated by Rivera.

Orpen Sir William Newenham Montague (1878–1931). Irish painter, a founder of and exhibitor at the New English Art Club. He painted portraits of great technical virtuosity, interiors and conversation pieces of historical interest, including the famous Homage to Manet (1909) with Sickert, Wilson Steer, George Moore and others grouped in front of Manet’s portrait of Eva Gonzalès.

Orphism. A tendency of abstract art in Paris c. 1911–14. In 1912 Apollinaire called the Cubist painting of Delaunay ‘Orphic’, linking it with that of Léger, Picabia, Duchamp and some works of Picasso and F. Kupka. The name has only stayed with the painting of Delaunay and his wife Sonia Terk Delaunay, who experimented with colour circles, segments and rhythms in a style called ‘simultaneity’. 2 U.S. painters, MacDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell, stressed colour in a similar way (Synchromism).

Ostade Adriaen van (1610–84). Dutch painter working in Haarlem, perhaps the pupil of Frans Hals or of Salomon van Ruysdael. His genre pictures of peasant, country and tavern life were highly popular. He was closely associated in his work with A. Brouwer. O. later in life produced watercolours, etchings and religious paintings.

Ottoman art. Islamic art

Oudry Jean-Baptiste (1686–1755). French painter, ill. and tapestry designer, and also director of the Beauvais tapestry works. He began as a still-life and portrait painter but after being commissioned to paint Louis XV’s pack of hounds turned to painting animals, hunting scenes and landscapes. He ill. La Fontaine’s Fables.

Oulton Thérèse (1953– ). British abstract painter. Her meticulous, layered application of paint (impasto) in deep and rich colours characterizes her works, which appear both dense and transparent, alluding to the molecular makeup of matter. Despite their apparent abstractness, O. intends her paintings to work as metaphors with references to traditional pictorial language, hinting at representational art, but confounding any single obvious reading, e.g. Spinner (1986), Lachrimæ (1987), Vanitas (1989) and the ‘Abstract with Memories’ series (1991).

Outsider art. Art made by artists who are either not specifically trained as such by defined standards, accepted members of the art establishment or of the same racial, cultural and social background as those who become professionally empowered to define art within a society. At various times art not conforming to such definitions and made by people marginalized by such societies – women, ethnic minorities, peasants, children and the insane – has been designated as O. a. Primitive art and primitives.

Ouwater Albert van (mid 15th c.). Dutch painter who worked at Haarlem. Very little is known about him and his reputation rests on the one painting definitely attributable to him, The Raising of Lazarus. Geertgen tot Sint Jans was his pupil.

Overbeck Johann Friedrich (1789–1869). German painter. After studying in Vienna, he went to Rome (1810) and became well known after an exhibition of work there in 1819. He founded, in Rome, the German Nazarene movement with Cornelius, Pforr and others. His subjects were mainly historical and religious.

Overbeck Madonna and Child 1825

Ozenfant Amédée (1886–1966). French painter and one of the theorists of the school of Paris. He was a pupil of Segonzac. A leading exponent of Purism, he collaborated in writings with Le Corbusier; in 1920–5 they co-published L’Esprit nouveau. He founded the Académie Ozenfant (1930) in Paris, but subsequently went to live in N.Y. in 1938.