The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (274 page)

liberal arts
.

Term applied to those arts that were traditionally considered primarily as exercises of the mind rather than of practical skill and craftsmanship. The concept of a distinction between ‘liberal’ (worthy of a free man: Latin
homo liber
) and ‘vulgar’ arts goes back to classical antiquity, and survived in one form or another up to the
Renaissance
, forming the basis of secular learning in the Middle Ages. In the early Renaissance the lowly position accorded to the visual arts was increasingly contested, providing a theoretical basis for the social struggle which took place to raise them from the status of manual skill to the dignity of a liberal exercise of the spirit. The most formidable champion of the visual arts was
Leonardo
, who more than anyone else was responsible for creating the idea of the painter as a creative thinker. By about 1500 painting and sculpture were generally accepted as liberal arts by Italian humanists (significantly so in Baldassare Castiglione's influential
Book of the Courtier
of 1528, which was translated into English in 1561). However, as Anthony
Blunt
points out (
Artistic Theory in Italy
1450–1600), ‘As soon as the visual arts became generally accepted as liberal, the protagonists began to quarrel among themselves about which of them was the noblest and most liberal.’ The acceptance came later in other parts of Europe than in Italy.

 
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Libre Esthétique , La
.

See
VINGT
.

 
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(1923– ).
American painter, sculptor, and graphic artist. In the late 1950s his style was
Abstract Expressionist
, but in the early 1960s he changed to
Pop art
and his first one-man exhibition in this style, at the Leo
Castelli
gallery, New York, in 1962 was a sensational success. In common with other Pop artists, Lichtenstein adopted the images of commercial art, but he did so in a highly distinctive manner. He took his inspiration from comic strips but blew up the images to a large scale, reproducing the primary colours and dots of the cheap printing processes (
Whaam!
, Tate Gallery, London, 1963). The initial stimulus is said to have come from one of his young children, who pointed to a comic book and challenged ‘I bet you can't paint as good as that.’ Despite their use of such kitsch material, his paintings show an impressive feeling for composition and colour and Lichtenstein has enjoyed continued critical success as well as popular appeal. In the mid-1960s he began making Pop versions of paintings by modern masters such as
Cézanne
and
Mondrian
, and in the 1970s he expanded his range to include sculpture, mostly in polished brass and imitating the
Art Deco
forms of the 1930s. His work in the 1980s included two large murals in New York (at Leo Castelli's gallery in Greene Street and in the Equitable Building).

 
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(1847–1935).
German painter and graphic artist. His importance in his day lay in his openness to foreign influences, overcoming German parochiality. During a visit to France in 1874 he found himself more in sympathy with
Courbet
,
Millet
, and the
Barbizon School
than with
Manet
or
Renoir
, but after his return to Germany in 1878 he came to be considered the leading German
Impressionist
painter together with
Corinth
and
Slevogt
. In 1899 he founded the Berlin
Sezession
and became its President. He was unable, however, to keep abreast of developments and a decade later stood as the supporter of that old-fashioned traditionalism against which
Nolde
, the members of the
Brücke
and other German
Expressionists
were at this time in revolt. Nevertheless, his work was declared
degenerate
by the Nazis.

 
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(1607–74).
Dutch painter and graphic artist. He was extremely precocious, and after training in Amsterdam with
Lastman
he was practising independently in his native Leiden when he was in his early teens. From
c.
1625 to 1631/2 he worked in close collaboration with his friend
Rembrandt
. They shared the same models (and probably a studio) and even worked together on the same pictures—a
Portrait of a Child
in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, for example, is signed ‘Lievens retouched by Rembrandt’. The diplomat and connoisseur Constantin Huygens visited them in 1629 and thought they showed equal promise of greatness. He wrote that Rembrandt surpassed Lievens in vivacity of expression, but that Lievens was superior in ‘a certain grandeur of invention and boldness of subjects and forms’. That this was not excessive praise is borne out by Lievens's marvellously melodramatic
Raising of Lazarus
(Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, 1631), in which the only parts of Lazarus shown are his arms emerging from the tomb. After the paths of the two young artists separated in 1631/2, however, Lievens did not sustain his early brilliance. From 1635 to 1644 he was in Antwerp, where under the influence of van
Dyck
he adopted a more elegant and facile style that brought him renown as a portraitist. In 1644 he returned to the Netherlands, where he remained for the rest of his life and during the last three decades was popular in official circles in Amsterdam and The Hague. Lievens was a talented etcher and also made some woodcuts.

 
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