The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (4 page)

academy
.

Association of artists, scholars, etc., arranged in a professional institution. Although the name was applied to various informal gatherings of artists from
c.
1500, the first formal art academy was not set up until 1563, when Duke Cosimo de'
Medici
founded the Accademia del Disegno in Florence. The prime mover was Giorgio
Vasari
, whose aim was to emancipate artists from control by the guilds, and to confirm the rise in social standing they had achieved during the previous hundred years.
Michelangelo
, who more than anyone else embodied this change of status, was made one of the two heads and Duke Cosimo was the other. The next important step was taken in Rome, where the Accademia di S. Luca was founded in 1593, with Federico
Zuccaro
as its first president. More stress was laid on practical instruction than at Florence, but the Academy was not at all successful in its war against the guilds until the powerful support it received from Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo
Barberini
) in 1627 and 1633. Thereafter it grew in wealth and prestige. The only other similar organization in Italy was the Academy established in Milan by Cardinal Federico Borromeo in 1620. But meanwhile the word was very frequently used of private institutions where artists met to draw from life. The most famous example of this kind was organized by the
Carracci
in Bologna.
In France a group of painters, moved by the same reasons of prestige as had earlier inspired the Italians, persuaded Louis XIV to found the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1648. Here too the guilds put up powerful opposition, and its supremacy was not assured until Louis' chief minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert , was elected Vice-Protector in 1661 and found in the Académie an instrument for imposing official standards and principles of taste. Colbert and
Lebrun
, the Director, envisaged dictatorship of the arts, and for the first time in history the expression ‘academic art’ acquired a precise significance. The Académie assumed a virtual monopoly of teaching and of exhibition, and an orthodoxy of artistic and aesthetic doctrine obtained official sanction. Implicit in the academic theory and teaching was the assumption that everything to do with art can be brought within the scope of rational understanding and reduced to logical precepts that can be taught and studied.
Other art academies were founded in Germany, Spain, and other countries after the middle of the 17th cent., and by the end of the 18th cent. well over a hundred were flourishing throughout Europe. Among these was the
Royal Academy
in London, founded in 1768. Everywhere the academies made themselves champions of
Neoclassicism
in opposition to the surviving styles of
Baroque
and
Rococo
. There was some opposition to these bodies from the start. Towards the end of the 18th cent. French Revolutionary sentiment was especially bitter about the exclusive privileges enjoyed by members of the Académie, and many artists, with
David
in the lead, demanded its dissolution. This step was taken in 1793, and the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts
was set up in 1795. While this looked after practical instruction, social functions were left to the fine arts section of the Institut de France, which in 1816 was reconstituted as the Académie des Beaux-Arts.
The principal threat to academies, however, came from the
Romantic
notion of the artist as a genius who produces his masterpieces by the light of inspiration which cannot be taught or subjected to rule. Virtually all the most creative artists of the 19th cent. stood outside the academies and sought alternative channels for exhibiting their works, although
Manet
for example, always craved traditional success at the
Salon
. Academies still retained prestige in conservative cities, but they were condemned out of hand by the adventurous, and in 1898, in his book
Modern Painting
, the novelist and critic George Moore wrote ‘that nearly all artists dislike and despise the Royal Academy is a matter of common knowledge.’ Gradually compromises were made on both sides, and academies became more liberal in the face of competition from rival teaching institutions and artists' groups (such as the
Slade
School and the
New English Art Club
in England and the
Sezessionen
in Germany and Austria). In spite of this liberalization, however, the word ‘academic’ now almost always carries a pejorative meaning, and is associated with mediocrity and lack of originality.

 
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academy board
.

A pasteboard used for painting, especially in oils, since the early 19th cent. It is made of sheets of paper sized and pressed together, treated with a
ground,
and sometimes embossed with an imitation canvas grain. Because it is fairly inexpensive, academy board is a popular
support
with amateur painters, and it is also used by professional artists for sketches and studies.

 
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academy figure
.

A careful painting or drawing (usually about half life-size) from the nude made as an exercise. The figure is usually depicted in a heroic pose, and there is a tradition of suitable postures which goes back to the
Carracci
.

 
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Acconci , Vito
.

See
BODY ART
.

 
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Achilles Painter
.

Greek vase painter, active in Athens in the mid 5th cent. BC, named after an amphora decorated with a figure of Achilles (Vatican Museums). He was a contemporary of
Phidias
and his paintings have some of the nobility associated with the great sculptor's work. His compositions are simple (usually limited to one or two figures) and his figures are serene and graceful.