In addition to painted contours, a linear design is composed of all of the edges of tone and colour masses, of the axial directions of images, and of the lines that are implied by alignments of shapes across the picture. The manner in which these various kinds of line are echoed and repeated animates the design. The artist, whether acting consciously or intuitively, also places them in relationship to one another across the picture, so that they weave a unifying rhythmic network throughout the painting.

The principal dimensions of colour in painting are the variables or attributes of hue, tone, and intensity. Red, yellow, and blue are the basic hues from which all others on the chromatic scale can be made by mixtures. These three opaque hues are the subtractive pigment primaries and should not be confused with the behaviour of the additive triads and mixtures of transparent, coloured light. Mixtures of primary pairs produce the secondary hues of orange, violet, and green. By increasing the amount of one primary in each of these mixtures, the tertiary colours of yellow-orange, orange-red, red-violet, violet-blue, blue-green, and green-yellow, respectively, are made. The primary colours, with their basic secondary and tertiary mixtures, can be usefully notated as the 12 segments of a circle. The secondary and tertiary colour segments between a pair of parent primaries can then be seen to share a harmonious family relationship with one another—the yellow-orange, orange, and orange-red hues that lie between yellow and red, for example.

An achromatic colour will seem more intense if it is surrounded by neutralized hues or juxtaposed with its complementary colour. Complementaries are colour opposites. The complementary colour to one of the primary hues is the mixture of the other two; the complementary to red pigment, for example, is green—that is, blue mixed with yellow. The colour wheel shows that the tertiaries also have their colour opposites, the complementary to orange-red, for instance, being blue-green. Under clear light the complementary to any chroma, shade, or tint can be seen if one “fixates,” or stares at, one colour intently for a few seconds then looks at a neutral, preferably white, surface. The colour afterimage will appear to glow on the neutral surface. Mutual enhancement of colour intensity results from juxtaposing a complementary pair, red becoming more intensely red, for instance, and green more fiercely green when these are contiguous than either would appear if surrounded by harmonious hues. The 19th-century physicist Michel-Eugène Chevreul (Chevreul, Michel-Eugène) referred to this mutual exaltation of opposites as the law of simultaneous contrast. Chevreul's second law, of successive contrast, referred to the optical sensation that a complementary colour halo appears gradually to surround an intense hue. This complementary glow is superimposed on surrounding weaker colours, a gray becoming greenish when juxtaposed with red, reddish in close relationship with green, yellowish against violet, and so on.

Hues containing a high proportion of blue (the violet to green range) appear (perception) cooler than those with a high content of yellow or red (the green-yellow to red-violet range). This difference in the temperature of hues in a particular painting is, of course, relative to the range and juxtaposition of colours in the design. A green will appear cool if surrounded by intense yellow, while it will seem warm against blue-green. The optical (optics) tendency for warm colours to advance before cold had been long exploited by European and Asian painters as a method of suggesting spatial depth. Changes in temperature and intensity can be observed in the atmospheric effects of nature, where the colours of distant forms become cooler, grayer, and bluish, while foreground planes and features appear more intense and usually warmer in colour.

While the often-complex religious and cultural colour symbologies may be understood by very few, the emotional response to certain colour combinations appears to be almost universal. Optical harmonies and discords seem to affect everyone in the same way, if in varying degrees. Thus, an image repeated in different schemes of colour will express a different mood in each change.

In modern painting (Pop art), both conceptual and perceptual methods of representing space are often combined. And, where the orbital movement of forms—which has been a basic element in European design since the Renaissance—was intended to hold the spectator's attention within the frame, the expanding picture space in late 20th- and early 21st-century mural-size abstract paintings directs the eye outward to the surrounding wall, and their shapes and colours seem about to invade the observer's own territory.

Geometrical shapes and masses are often the basic units in the design of both “flat patterns,” such as Byzantine and Islamic paintings, and “sculptural compositions,” such as Baroque and Neoclassical figure tableaux. The flat, overlapping squares, circles, and triangles that create the pattern of a Romanesque mural, for example, become the interlocking cubic, spherical, and pyramidal components that enclose the grouped figures and surrounding features in a Renaissance or a Neoclassical composition.

Whether a painting reached completion by careful stages or was executed directly by a hit-or-miss alla prima method (in which pigments are laid on in a single application) was once largely determined by the ideals and established techniques of its cultural tradition. For example, the medieval European illuminator's painstaking procedure, by which a complex linear pattern was gradually enriched with gold leaf and precious pigments, was contemporary with the Song (Song dynasty) Chinese Chan ( Zen) practice of immediate, calligraphic brush painting, following a contemplative period of spiritual self-preparation. More recently, the artist has decided the technique and working method best suited to his aims and temperament. In France in the 1880s, for instance, Seurat might be working in his studio on drawings, tone studies, and colour schemes in preparation for a large composition at the same time that, outdoors, Monet was endeavouring to capture the effects of afternoon light and atmosphere, while Cézanne analyzed the structure of the mountain Sainte-Victoire with deliberated brush strokes, laid as irrevocably as mosaic tesserae (small pieces, such as marble or tile).

A tempera medium is dry pigment tempered with an emulsion and thinned with water. It is a very ancient medium, having been in constant use in most world cultures, until in Europe it was gradually superseded, during the Renaissance, by oil paints. Tempera was the original mural medium in the ancient dynasties of Egypt, Babylonia, Mycenean Greece, and China and was used to decorate the early Christian catacombs (catacomb). It was employed on a variety of supports, from the stone stelae (stela) (or commemorative pillars), mummy cases, and papyrus rolls of ancient Egypt to the wood panels of Byzantine icons (icon) and altarpieces (altarpiece) and the vellum leaves of medieval illuminated manuscripts (illuminated manuscript).

The design for a large tempera painting traditionally was executed in distemper on a thick paper cartoon. The outlines were pricked with a perforating wheel so that when the cartoon was laid on the surface of the support, the linear pattern was transferred by dabbing, or “pouncing,” the perforations with a muslin bag of powdered charcoal. The dotted contours traced through were then fixed in paint. Medieval tempera painters of panels and manuscripts made lavish use of gold leaf on backgrounds and for symbolic features, such as haloes and beams of heavenly light. Areas of the pounced design intended for gilding were first built up into low relief with gesso duro, the harder, less absorbent gesso compound used also for elaborate frame moldings. Background fields were often textured by impressing the gesso duro, before it set, with small, carved, intaglio wood blocks to create raised, pimpled, and quilted repeat patterns that glittered when gilded. Leaves of finely beaten gold were pressed onto a tacky mordant (adhesive compound) or over wet bole (reddish-brown earth pigment) that gave greater warmth and depth when the gilded areas were burnished.

Colours were applied with sable brushes in successive broad sweeps or washes of semitransparent tempera. These dried quickly, preventing the subtle tonal gradations possible with watercolour washes or oil paint; effects of shaded modelling had therefore to be obtained by a crosshatching technique of fine brush strokes. According to the Italian painter Cennino Cennini (Cennini, Cennino), the early Renaissance tempera painters laid the colour washes across a fully modelled monochrome underpainting in terre vert (olive-green pigment), a method developed later into the mixed mediums technique of tempera underpainting followed by transparent oil glazes.

The great Byzantine tradition of tempera painting was developed in Italy in the 13th and 14th centuries by Duccio di Buoninsegna (Duccio) and Giotto (Giotto di Bondone). Their flattened picture space, generously enriched by fields and textures of gold leaf, was extended by the Renaissance depth perspectives in the paintings of Giovanni Bellini (Bellini, Giovanni), Piero della Francesca, Carlo Crivelli (Crivelli, Carlo), Sandro Botticelli (Botticelli, Sandro), and Vittore Carpaccio (Carpaccio, Vittore). By that time, oil painting was already challenging the primacy of tempera, Botticelli and some of his contemporaries apparently adding oil to the tempera emulsion or overglazing it in oil colour.

Buon', or “true,” fresco is the most durable method of painting murals, since the pigments are completely fused with a damp plaster ground to become an integral part of the wall surface. The stone or brick wall is first prepared with a brown trullisatio scratch coat, or rough-cast plaster layer. This is then covered by the arricciato coat, on which the linear design of the preparatory cartoon is pounced (see above (painting)) or engraved by impressing the outlines into the moist, soft plaster with a bone or metal stylus. These lines were usually overworked in reddish sinopia pigment. A thin layer of fine plaster is then evenly spread, allowing the linear design to show through. Before this final intonaco ground sets, pigments thinned with water or slaked lime are applied rapidly with calf-hair and hog-bristle brushes; depth of colour is achieved by a succession of quick-drying glazes. Being prepared with slaked lime, the plaster becomes saturated with an aqueous solution of hydrate of lime, which takes up carbonic acid from the air as it soaks into the paint. Carbonate of lime is produced and acts as a permanent pigment binder. Pigment particles crystallize in the plaster, fusing it with the surface to produce the characteristic lustre of buon' fresco colours. When dry, these are mat and lighter in tone. Colours are restricted to the range of lime-resistant earth pigments. Mineral colours such as blue, affected by lime, are applied over earth pigment when the plaster is dry.

Oil paints (oil painting) are made by mixing dry pigment powder with refined linseed oil to a paste, which is then milled in order to disperse the pigment particles throughout the oil vehicle. According to the 1st-century Roman scholar Pliny the Elder, whose writings the Flemish painters Hubert and Jan van Eyck (Eyck, Jan van) are thought to have studied, the Romans used oil colours for shield painting. The earliest use of oil as a fine-art medium is generally attributed to 15th-century European painters, such as Giovanni Bellini (Bellini, Giovanni) and the van Eycks (Eyck, Jan van), who glazed oil colour over a glue-tempera underpainting. It is also thought probable, however, that medieval manuscript illuminators had been using oil glazes in order to achieve greater depth of colour and more subtle tonal transitions than their tempera medium allowed.

Hog-bristle brushes are used for much of the painting, with pointed, red sable-hair brushes generally preferred for outlines and fine details. Oils, however, are the most plastic and responsive of all painting mediums and can be handled with all manner of tools. The later works of Titian and Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn), for example, appear to have been executed with thumbs, fingers, rags, spatulas, and brush handles. With these and other unconventional tools and techniques, oil painters create pigment textures ranging from delicate tonal modulations to unvarying, mechanical finishes and from clotted, impasto ridges of paint to barely perceptible stains.

The rapid deterioration of Leonardo's 15th-century Last Supper (last restored 1978–99), which was painted in oils on plaster, possibly deterred artists from using the medium directly on a wall surface. And the likelihood of eventual warping also prohibited using the large number of braced wood panels required to make an alternative support for an extensive mural painting in oils. canvas, however, can be woven to any length, and, since an oil-painted surface is elastic, mural paintings could be executed in the studio and rolled and restretched on a wooden framework at the site or marouflaged (fastened with an adhesive) directly onto the wall surface. In addition to the immense studio canvases painted for particular sites by artists such as Jacopo Tintoretto (Tintoretto), Paolo Veronese (Veronese, Paolo), Delacroix (Delacroix, Eugène), Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes (Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre), and Monet (Monet, Claude), the use of canvas has made it possible for mural-size, modern oil paintings to be transported for exhibition to all parts of the world.

Watercolours are pigments ground with gum arabic and gall and thinned with water in use. Sable and squirrel (“camel”) hair brushes are used on white or tinted paper and card.

The chief exponents of the English method were Thomas Girtin (Girtin, Thomas), John Sell Cotman (Cotman, John Sell), John Robert Cozens (Cozens, John Robert), Richard Parkes Bonington (Bonington, Richard Parkes), David Cox, and Constable. Their contemporary J.M.W. Turner, however, true to his unorthodox genius, added white to his watercolour and used rags, sponges, and knives to obtain unique effects of light and texture. Victorian watercolourists, such as Birket Foster, used a laborious method of colour washing a monochrome underpainting, similar in principle to the tempera-oil technique. Following the direct, vigorous watercolours of the French Impressionists and Postimpressionists, however, the medium was established in Europe and America as an expressive picture medium in its own right. Notable 20th-century watercolourists have been Wassily Kandinsky (Kandinsky, Wassily), Paul Klee (Klee, Paul), Dufy (Dufy, Raoul), and Georges Rouault (Rouault, Georges); the U.S. artists Winslow Homer (Homer, Winslow), Thomas Eakins (Eakins, Thomas), Maurice Prendergast (Prendergast, Maurice Brazil), Charles Burchfield (Burchfield, Charles), John Marin (Marin, John), Lyonel Feininger (Feininger, Lyonel), and Jim Dine (Dine, Jim); and the English painters John and Paul Nash (Nash, Paul).

Ink is the traditional painting medium of China and Japan (arts, East Asian), where it has been used with long-haired brushes of wolf, goat, or badger on silk or absorbent paper. Asian black ink is a gum-bound carbon stick that is ground on rough stone and mixed with varying amounts of water to create a wide range of modulated tones or applied almost dry, with lightly brushed strokes, to produce coarser textures. The calligraphic brush technique is expressive of Zen Buddhist and Confucian (Confucianism) philosophies, brush-stroke formulas for the spiritual interpretation of nature in painting dictating the use of the lifted brush tip for the “bone,” or “lean,” structure of things and the spreading belly of the hairs for their “flesh,” or “fat,” volumes. The East Asian artist poises the brush vertically above the paper and controls its rhythmic movements from the shoulder. Distant forms represented in landscapes painted on silk were sometimes brushed on from the reverse side.

Gouache is opaque watercolour, known also as poster paint and designer's colour. It is thinned with water for applying, with sable- and hog-hair brushes, to white or tinted paper and card and, occasionally, to silk. Honey, starch, or acrylic is sometimes added to retard its quick-drying property. Liquid glue is preferred as a thinner by painters wishing to retain the tonality of colours (which otherwise dry slightly lighter in key) and to prevent thick paint from flaking. Gouache paints have the advantages that they dry out almost immediately to a mat finish and, if required, without visible brush marks. These qualities, with the capacities to be washed thinly or applied in thick impasto and a wide colour range that now includes fluorescent and metallic pigments, make the medium particularly suited to preparatory studies for oil and acrylic paintings. It is the medium that produces the suede finish and crisp lines characteristic of many Indian and Islamic miniatures, and it has been used in Western screen and fan decoration and by modern artists such as Rouault, Klee, Dubuffet, and Morris Graves (Graves, Morris).

Encaustic painting (from the Greek: “burnt in”) was the ancient method, recorded by Pliny, of fixing pigments with heated wax. It was probably first practiced in Egypt about 3000 BC and is thought to have reached its peak in Classical Greece, although no examples from that period survive. Pigments, mixed with melted beeswax, were brushed onto stone or plaster, smoothed with a metal spatula, and then blended and driven into the wall with a heated iron. The surface was later polished with a cloth. Leonardo and others attempted unsuccessfully to revive the technique. North American Indians (American Indian) used an encaustic method whereby pigments mixed with hot animal fat were pressed into a design engraved on smoothed buffalo hide.

Casein, or “cheese painting,” is a medium in which pigments are tempered with the gluey curd of cheese or milk precipitate. For handling, an emulsion of casein and lime is thinned with water. The active element of casein contains nitrogen, which forms a soluble caseate of calcium in the presence of lime. It is applied in thin washes to rigid surfaces, such as cardboard, wood, and plastered walls.

Synthetic mediums, developed by industrial research, range from the Liquitex fabric dyes used on canvas by the U.S. abstract painter Larry Poons to the house enamel paints employed at times by Picasso and Jackson Pollock (Pollock, Jackson).

French pastels, with the sharpened lumps of pigment used by Ice Age artists, are the purest and most direct painting materials. Pastel pigments are mixed only with sufficient gum to bind them for drying into stick molds. Generally, they are used on raw strawboard or on coarse-grained tinted paper, although vellum, wood, and canvas have been also employed. These colours will not fade or darken, but, since they are not absorbed by the surface of the support, they lie as pigment powder and are easily smudged. Unfortunately, pastel colours lose their luminosity and tonality if fixed with a varnish and so are best preserved in deep mounts behind glass. Degas often overcame the fragile nature of true pastel painting by the unorthodox method of working on turpentine-soaked paper, which absorbed the powdery pigment.

Eighteenth-century portrait pastellists, such as Maurice-Quentin de La Tour (La Tour, Maurice-Quentin de), Jean-Baptiste Peronneau, Jean-Étienne Liotard (Liotard, Jean-Étienne), Rosalba Carriera (Carriera, Rosalba), and Anton Raphael Mengs (Mengs, Anton Raphael), blended the pigment with coiled paper stumps so the surface resembled that of a smooth oil painting. Later pastel painters, such as Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Mary Cassatt (Cassatt, Mary), Everett Shinn, Odilon Redon (Redon, Odilon), and Arthur Dove (Dove, Arthur G.), contrasted broad masses of granular colour, spread with the side of the stick, with broken contours and passages of loose cross-hatching and smudging. They often used the tinted ground as a halftone, and, according to the amount of manual pressure exerted on the chalk, they varied the degree of pigment opacity to extract a wide range of tints and shades from each pastel colour.

Ivory painting was practiced in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe and America for portrait miniatures. These were generally oval-shaped and designed as keepsakes, lockets, and mantle pictures. They were painted under a magnifying glass in fairly dry watercolour or tempera stippling, with sable- or marten-hair brushes on thin, semitranslucent ivory pieces. Corrections were made with a needle. The velvet quality of their colours was enhanced, on the thinner ivories, by the glow produced by a gold leaf or tinted backing.

Lacquer has been a traditional Chinese medium for more than 2,000 years. It combines painting with intaglio relief. Linen-covered wood panels are coated with chalk or clay, followed by many thin layers of black or red lacquer-tree resin. The surface is polished and a design engraved, which is then coloured and gilded or inset with mother-of-pearl. Layers of compressed paper or molded papier-mâché have also provided supports. In China and Japan, lacquer has been used principally for decorating shrine panels, screens, caskets, panniers (large baskets), and musical instruments.

Sand, or dry, painting is a traditional religious art (Native American art) of the North American Indians; it is still practiced in healing ceremonies among the Navajos (Navajo) of New Mexico and Arizona. Ground sandstone, natural ochres, mineral earths, and powdered charcoal are sprinkled onto a pattern marked into an area covered with yellow-white sand. The patient sits in the centre of this vivid symbolic design of coloured figurative and geometrical shapes. Following the ritual, the painting is destroyed. These “floor” pictures influenced Jackson Pollock (Pollock, Jackson) in his horizontally spread “action paintings (Action painting).”

From the end of the 18th century, profiles and full-length group portraits were cut in black paper, mounted on white card, and often highlighted in gold or white. A silhouette (“shade”) might be first outlined from the sitter's cast shadow with the aid of a physionotrace. American artist Kara Walker (Walker, Kara) revived the silhouette technique with a series of controversial works that commented on race, gender, and class.

Mural painting has its roots in the primeval instincts of people to decorate their surroundings and to use wall surfaces as a form for expressing ideas, emotions, and beliefs. In their universal manifestation in graffiti and in ancient murals, such as cave paintings and protodynastic Egyptian frescoes, symbols and representational images have been spread freely and indiscriminately across walls, ceilings, and floors. But, in more disciplined attempts to symbolize the importance and function of particular buildings through their interior decoration, murals have been designed for the restricted framework of specific surface areas. They therefore have to be painted in close relationship to the scale, style, and mood of the interior and with regard to such siting considerations as light sources, eye levels, the spectators' lines of sight and means of approach, and the emotive scale relationship between spectators and the painted images.

Early mural decorations for tombs, temples, sanctuaries, and catacombs were generally designed in horizontal divisions and vertical axes. These grid patterns were in harmony with the austere character of the interiors, and their geometrical plan enabled the artist to depict clearly the various episodes and symbols of a narrative subject. In these early traditions of mural design, in China, India, Mexico, Egypt, Crete, and Byzantium, no illusionary devices were used to deny the true flatness of the wall surface; images were silhouetted against a flatly painted ground framed by decorative dadoes (the decoration adorning the lower part of an interior wall) of stylized motifs in repeat patterns. By the early Renaissance, however, innovators such as Giotto (Giotto di Bondone), Masaccio, and Fra Angelico (Angelico, Fra) were placing figures within architectural and landscape settings, painted as if extensions to the real dimensions of the interior. The peak of technical skill and artistic expression was reached in the 15th and 16th centuries with the frescoes of Piero della Francesca, Michelangelo, and Raphael. The irregular shapes of wall areas and the distortions produced by convex surfaces were inventively exploited in the design. Intruding doors and windows, for example, were skillfully circumvented by sweeping pattern rhythms or were incorporated as features in the painting, and figures were foreshortened so as to appear to float across or to rise into cupolas (rounded vaults that form ceilings), lunettes (rounded spaces over doors or windows), and apses (domed projections of a church, usually at the east end or altar), the curving surfaces of which might be painted to simulate celestial skies. Existing structural wall features provided the divisions between narrative episodes. These were often supplemented by trompe l'oeil (“deceive the eye”) columns, pilasters, arcading, balustrading, steps, and other architectural forms that also served to fuse the painted setting with the real interior.

With the increasing dependence upon tapestry hangings and stained glass as primary forms of interior decoration, mural painting suffered a decline in the Western world. Except for those given to Rubens (Rubens, Peter Paul), Tiepolo (Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista), Delacroix (Delacroix, Eugène), and Puvis de Chavannes (Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre), there were relatively few important mural commissions in the period following the High Renaissance. In the 20th century, however, enlightened patronage occasionally enabled leading modern artists to execute paintings for specific sites: Monet (Monet, Claude)'s Water-Lilies series for the Paris Orangerie, for example, and other murals in France by Vuillard (Vuillard, Édouard), Matisse (Matisse, Henri), Léger (Léger, Fernand), Chagall (Chagall, Marc), and Picasso (Picasso, Pablo); in Mexico and the United States by Orozco (Orozco, José Clemente), Rivera (Rivera, Diego), Tamayo (Tamayo, Rufino), and David Siqueiros (Siqueiros, David Alfaro), and also in the United States by Matisse, Shahn (Shahn, Ben), Keith Haring (Haring, Keith), and Willem de Kooning (de Kooning, Willem); in Britain by Sir Stanley Spencer (Spencer, Sir Stanley) and Bawden; in Norway by Edvard Munch (Munch, Edvard); in The Netherlands by Karel Appel (Appel, Karel); and in Italy by Afro Basaldella.

miniature painting is a term applied both to Western portrait miniatures and to the Indian and Islamic forms of manuscript painting discussed below. Portrait miniatures, or limnings, were originally painted in watercolour with body colour on vellum and card. They were often worn in jewelled, enamelled lockets. Sixteenth-century miniaturists, such as Hans Holbein the Younger (Holbein, Hans, the Younger), Jean Clouet (Clouet, Jean), Nicholas Hilliard (Hilliard, Nicholas), and Isaac Oliver (Oliver, Isaac), painted them in the tradition of medieval illuminators. Their flat designs, richly textured and minutely detailed, often incorporated allegorical and gilded heraldic motifs. In 17th- and 18th-century Western portrait miniatures, the two-dimensional pattern of rich colours was developed by atmospheric tonal modeling into more naturalistic representations; these were sometimes in pastel and pencil or painted in oils on a metal base. Pantographs (pantograph) (reducing and enlarging copying instruments made on the lazy-tongs lever principle) might be used to transfer a drawing. Among the exponents of this naturalistic style were Francisco Goya (Goya, Francisco de), Fragonard (Fragonard, Jean-Honoré), Samuel Cooper (Cooper, Samuel), and François Dumont (Dumont, François). The introduction of painted ivory miniatures was followed, in the 19th century, by a decline in aesthetic standards, although a classical simplicity was achieved by unsophisticated itinerant limners and by the German miniaturist Patricius Kittner. The painted miniature was eventually superseded by the small, hand-tinted photograph.

Among the earliest surviving forms of manuscript painting are the papyrus rolls of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, the scrolls of Classical Greece and Rome, Aztec pictorial maps, and Mayan and Chinese codices, or manuscript books. European illuminated manuscripts were painted in egg-white tempera on vellum and card. Their subjects included religious, historical, mythological, and allegorical narratives, medical treatises, psalters, and calendars depicting seasonal occupations. In contrast to the formalized imagery of Byzantine and early Gothic manuscript painters, Celtic (Celt) illuminators developed a unique, abstract style of elaborate decoration, the written text being overwhelmed by intricate latticework borders, with full-page initial letters embraced by interlacing scrolls. The medieval Gothic (Gothic art) style of illumination, in sinuous, linear patterns of flattened forms isolated against white or gilded grounds, had developed, by the end of the 15th century, into exquisitely detailed, jewel-like miniatures of shaded figures and spatial landscapes. These were often framed by gilded initial letters as vignettes or by margin borders in simulated half relief. With the advent of printing in the 15th century and a final, brilliant period of Flemish and Italian illumination, European manuscript painting survived only in official documents, maps, and in the form of hand-coloured, block-printed pages. Pennsylvanian-German birth and baptismal certificates in the U.S. and William Blake's hand-coloured engravings to the Bible and to his own poems were isolated revivals of those forms.

Indian (India) and Islamic (Islamic arts) miniature painting, however, was practiced into the 19th century; and 11th-century Asian albums of poem paintings in ink, on leaves of silk or paper, represent a tradition that was continued into modern times. The subjects of Middle Eastern (Near East) miniatures included religious and historical narrative, cosmic maps, and medical, palmistry, and astrological charts, as well as illustrations to poems, songs, and romantic epics. These were generally painted in gouache on paper, with occasional gold- or silver-leaf embellishment. The linear design was first drawn with a brush in delicate contours and soft shading. Landscape and architectural detail was as well observed as in that of the principal figures.

Hand scrolls, traditional to China and Japan, are ink paintings on continuous lengths of paper or silk. They are unrolled at arm's length and viewed from right to left. These generally represent panoramic views of rivers, mountain and urban landscapes, and domestic interiors. They also illustrate romantic novels, Daoist (Daoism) and Buddhist (Buddhism) themes, and historical and genre subjects. Narrative poetic commentaries were included as integral textures in the flowing design. The scrolls are remarkable for their vitality, the lyrical representation of atmospheric space, and for the rising and dipping viewpoints that anticipate the zooming motion-picture camera. The earliest surviving scrolls, such as Gu Kaizhi's The Admonitions of the Court Instructress, date from the 4th century AD. Asian hanging scrolls and Indian and Tibetan temple banners are forms similar to those of Western easel and panel paintings. Their subjects range from the seasons, domestic interiors, landscapes, and portraits to Vishnu epics, mandalas (mandala) (symbolic diagrams of the universe), and temple icons (icon). They are painted in ink or gouache on silk and paper and are usually mounted on embroidered or block-printed silk. The dramatic interplay of bold, flattened images against the open space of an unpainted or gilded ground influenced 19th-century Western Art Nouveau decoration.

Folding screens and screen doors originated in China and Japan, probably during the 12th century (or possibly earlier), and screen painting continued as a traditional form into the 20th. They are in ink or gouache on plain or gilded paper and silk. Their vivid rendering of animals, birds, and flowers and their atmospheric landscapes brought nature indoors. In some screens each panel was designed as an individual painting, while in others a continuous pattern flowed freely across the divisions. Japanese screens were often painted in complementary yin and yang (yinyang) pairs. Large 12-panel Chinese coromandel lacquer screens were imported into Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. French Rococo (Rococo style) boudoir screens depicting fêtes champêtres (fête champêtre) (townspeople enjoying rural surroundings) and toile de Jouy (landscape or floral) pastoral themes were painted on silk or on wood panels in a flamboyantly scrolled, gilded framework. The designs of Art Nouveau screens were inspired by the Japanese tradition. Sidney Nolan (Nolan, Sir Sidney)'s screens on Greek themes and the pastiches of Victorian paper-scrap screens by Pop art painters are recent Western revivals. Traditional to the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches is the iconostasis screen, which stands between the nave and sanctuary and displays icon panel paintings representing the Virgin, the saints, and narrative subjects.

Rigid fans are depicted in the paintings and reliefs of ancient Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome, but the oldest surviving specimens are the round and folding fans from East Asia. These were painted in India ink and colour on paper, card, and silk, the ground often sprinkled with gold dust or laid with gold or silver leaf. Spread freely across the mount, a calligraphic design depicted seasonal landscapes, genre scenes, and bird, flower, and animal motifs, with accompanying poems and commentaries. Leading Asian painters produced much of their finest work in this form. In Europe, however, where fan painting had been rarely practiced until the 17th century, it was considered a minor art, and designs were often based on frescoes and easel paintings. The richest and most elegant of these were painted in France and Italy during the 18th century. Watercolour and gouache paintings and hand-coloured engraved designs were made on paper, card, kid, and gauze. Allegories and romantic pastoral landscapes were frequently designed as separate vignettes, linked by floral swags and border scrolls. Both sides of the mount might be painted. The guards and sticks of the spoke framework were in delicately carved wood or ivory, inlaid with gold leaf or mother-of-pearl. Round hand-screens of parchment, mounted on handles like lollipops, were popular in early 19th-century English society. Charles Conder was a notable fin de siècle (“end of the century,” characterized by effete sophistication) fan painter, and, in the early 20th century, Oskar Kokoschka (Kokoschka, Oskar) decorated a lively set of fans on an autobiographical narrative theme.

The concept of painting as a medium for creating illusions of space, volume, texture, light, and movement on a flat, stationary support was challenged by many modern artists. Some late 20th-century forms, for example, blurred the conventional distinctions between the mediums of sculpture and painting. Sculptors such as David Smith (Smith, David), Eduardo Paolozzi, and Philip Sutton made multicoloured constructions; painters such as Jean Arp (Arp, Jean) and Ben Nicholson (Nicholson, Ben) created abstract designs in painted wood relief, and Richard Smith painted on three-dimensional canvas structures the surfaces of which curl and thrust toward the spectator. And, rather than deny the essential flatness of the painting support by using traditional methods of representing volume and texture, Robert Rauschenberg (Rauschenberg, Robert) and Jim Dine (Dine, Jim) attached real objects and textures to the painted surface, and Frank Stella (Stella, Frank) and Kenneth Noland (Noland, Kenneth) designed their irregularly shaped canvases to be seen as explicitly flat art objects. Rejecting earlier painting methods of reproducing effects of light with tonal contrasts and broken pigment colour, some artists made use of neon tubes and mirrors. Instead of simulating sensations of movement by optical illusion, others designed kinetic panels and boxes in which coloured shapes revolved under electric power. The traditional definition of painting as a visual, concrete art form was questioned by conceptual art, in which the painter's idea might be expressed only in the form of documented proposals for unrealized and often unrealizable projects. In performance art and happenings (Happening), which employed techniques akin to those used in theatre, the artists themselves became a kind of medium.

Allegorical (allegory) narrative subjects might exalt the sensuous arts, as in the symbolic muses portrayed by Poussin (Poussin, Nicolas) and Luca Signorelli (Signorelli, Luca) and the paradisiac gardens of 15th-century French illuminated manuscripts (illuminated manuscript). But they might also carry warnings. In the 16th century, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Bruegel, Pieter, the Elder), for example, combined overt and often grotesque symbols with subtle visual metaphors to point stern morals in such paintings as The Triumph of Death (alluding to the “wages of sin”), The Land of Cockaigne (attacking gluttony and sloth), and Mad Meg (ridiculing covetousness). Even Bruegel's apparently straightforward genre subjects, such as The Peasant Dance and the festival of The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, conceal parables on human folly and sin, while Hieronymus Bosch (Bosch, Hiëronymus) introduced abstruse, allegorical phantasmagoria into such traditional narratives as The Temptation of St. Antony and The Prodigal Son and made his Garden of Delights an expression of disgust rather than of joy. Botticelli (Botticelli, Sandro)'s late paintings, probably produced under the influence of the 15th-century Italian monk and reformer Girolamo Savonarola (Savonarola, Girolamo), are other savagely pessimistic allegories: The Story of Virginia Romana and The Tragedy of Lucretia, representing virtue upheld only by death, and The Calumny of Apelles, in which envy, suspicion, deceit, guile, repentance, and truth are identified, like medieval mummers, by their costume, pose, and gesture. Rubens (Rubens, Peter Paul), however, found in allegorical symbolism a means of dramatizing mundane state commissions, such as The Union of Scotland and Ireland and The Bounty of James I (Triumphing over Avarice). Among famous 19th-century allegories are Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People and Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (Prud'hon, Pierre-Paul)'s Crime Pursued by Vengeance and Justice.

Possibly the highest achievements in narrative illustrations to poetry and literature are found in Eastern miniatures and Asian scrolls, such as the Persian paintings of Ferdowsī's 11th-century national epic poem, the Shāh-nāmeh, and the 12th-century Japanese scrolls of the Genji monogatari and the Story of Ben Dainagon. An example of modern literary painting is Sir Sidney Nolan (Nolan, Sir Sidney)'s narrative series portraying the Australian folklore hero Ned Kelly (Kelly, Ned).

The earliest surviving portraits of particular persons are probably the serene, idealized faces painted on the front and inside surfaces of dynastic Egyptian sarcophagi (sarcophagus). The human individuality of the Roman mummy portraits of the 1st and 2nd century AD, however, suggests more authentic likenesses. Although portraits are among the highest achievements in painting, the subject poses special problems for the artist commissioned to paint a notable contemporary. The portraits of patrons by artists such as Raphael, Rubens, Hyacinthe Rigaud (Rigaud, Hyacinthe), Antoine-Jean Gros (Gros, Antoine-Jean, Baron), Jacques-Louis David (David, Jacques-Louis), and Sir Thomas Lawrence (Lawrence, Sir Thomas) were required to express nobility, grace, and authority, just as the sultans and rajahs portrayed on frontispieces to Persian and Indian illuminated books and albums had understandably to be flattered as benevolent despots. Such concessions to the sitter's vanity and social position seem to have been disregarded, however, in the convincing likenesses by more objective realists such as Robert Campin (Campin, Robert), Dürer, Jan van Eyck, Velázquez, Goya, and Gustave Courbet (Courbet, Gustave). Probably the finest are the self-portraits and studies of ordinary people by Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) and van Gogh (Gogh, Vincent van), where psychological insight, emotional empathy, and aesthetic values are fused. A more decorative approach to the subject is seen in the flattened portraits by Holbein, the Elizabethan and itinerant naïve U.S. limners, and the East Asian paintings of ancestors, poets, priests, and emperors. Like these paintings, the full-length portraits by Boucher, Gainsborough, Kees van Dongen (Dongen, Kees van), and Matisse display as much regard for the texture and form of their sitters' dress as for their facial features.

Genre (genre painting) subjects are scenes from everyday life. Hunting expeditions and tribal rituals figure in prehistoric rock paintings. Domestic and agricultural occupations, with banquet scenes of feasting, dancing, and music, were traditional subjects for ancient Egyptian tomb murals. East Asian hand scrolls, albums, and screens brilliantly describe court ceremonies, the bustle of towns, and the hardships of the countryside. The depiction of earthly pursuits was forbidden under the strict iconography prescribed by the early Christian Church, but the later illuminated Books of Hours (book of hours) provide enchanting records of the festivals and occupations of northern European communities. In Renaissance painting, genre subjects were generally restricted to background features of portraits and historical narratives. Domestic scenes, however, not only provided Bruegel with subjects for moral allegories but, as with Rembrandt, were used to counterpoint the emotional intensity of a dramatic religious theme. The withdrawal of religious patronage in northern Europe directed painters toward secular subjects. The rich period of genre painting in the 17th-century Netherlands (Holland) is represented by the interiors, conversation pieces, and scenes of work and play by David Teniers the Younger (Teniers, David, The Younger), Frans Hals (Hals, Frans), Jan Steen (Steen, Jan), Judith Leyster (Leyster, Judith), Gerard Terborch (Terborch, Gerard), Pieter de Hooch (Hooch, Pieter de), Adriaen van Ostade (Ostade, Adriaen van), and, the finest, by Johannes Vermeer (Vermeer, Johannes). Pictures of rustic life had a special appeal for collectors in 18th-century France and England (United Kingdom); these were the somewhat picturesque representations of peasant life painted by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (Greuze, Jean-Baptiste), Boucher (Boucher, François), George Morland (Morland, George), and Gainsborough (Gainsborough, Thomas). Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (Chardin, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon)'s paintings of servants and children, however, exhibit a timeless dignity and grandeur. The harsher realities of working life were depicted by Jean-François Millet (Millet, Jean-François), Daumier, Courbet, van Gogh, and Degas; the robust gaiety of cafés and music halls was captured by Toulouse-Lautrec, John Sloan (Sloan, John French), Everett Shinn, and Walter Richard Sickert (Sickert, Walter Richard); and intimate domestic scenes were recorded by Bonnard and Vuillard. Modern genre movements have included the American Scene painters, the Ashcan (Ashcan School) and Kitchen Sink schools (represented by such painters as George Wesley Bellows (Bellows, George Wesley), Jack Smith, and Derrick Greaves), the Camden Town (Camden Town Group) and Euston Road groups (Frederick Spencer Gore, Sir William Coldstream, and Victor Pasmore), and the Social Realists in England and in the United States (Robert Henri (Henri, Robert), Stuart Davis (Davis, Stuart), and Maurice Prendergast (Prendergast, Maurice Brazil)).

Idealized landscapes were common subjects for fresco decoration in Roman villas. Landscape painting (as exemplified by a Chinese landscape scroll by Gu Kaizhi dating from the 4th century) was an established tradition in East Asia, where themes such as the seasons and the elements held a spiritual significance. In Europe, imaginary landscapes decorated 15th-century Books of Hours. The first naturalistic landscapes were painted by Dürer and Bruegel. Landscapes appeared in most Renaissance paintings, however, only as settings to portraits and figure compositions. It was not until the 17th-century Dutch and Flemish schools—of Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael (Ruisdael, Jacob van), Meindert Hobbema (Hobbema, Meindert), Aelbert Cuyp (Cuyp, Aelbert), Rubens, and Hercules Seghers (Seghers, Hercules Pietersz)—that they were accepted in the West as independent subjects. The most significant developments in 19th-century painting, however, were made through the landscapes of the Impressionists (Impressionism) and the Neo-Impressionists and Post-Impressionists (Post-Impressionism). Styles in landscape painting range from the tranquil, classically idealized world of Poussin and Claude, the precise, canal topography of Francesco Guardi (Guardi, Francesco) and Canaletto and the structural analyses of Cézanne to the poetic romanticism of Samuel Palmer and the later Constables and Turners and the exultant pantheism of Rubens and van Gogh. Modern landscapes vary in approach from the Expressionism of Oskar Kokoschka's cities and rivers, Maurice de Vlaminck (Vlaminck, Maurice de)'s wintry countrysides, and John Marin (Marin, John)'s crystalline seascapes to the metaphysical country of Ernst (Ernst, Max), Dalí (Dalí, Salvador), and René Magritte (Magritte, René) and the semi-abstract coastlines of Nicolas de Stael, Maria Elena Vieira da Silva (Vieira da Silva, Maria Elena), and Richard Diebenkorn.

Since ancient times, animals (animal) and birds have provided the primary subject matter of a painting or have been included in a design for their symbolic importance. In the paintings of prehistoric caves and dynastic Egyptian tombs, for example, animals are portrayed with a higher degree of naturalism than human figures. Their texture, movement, and structure have provided some artists with a primary source of inspiration: the classical, anatomical grace of a George Stubbs (Stubbs, George) racehorse and a more romantic interpretation in the ferocious energy of a Rubens and Géricault stallion; the vivid expression of rhythmically co-ordinated movements of deer by Tawaraya Sotatsu (Sōtatsu) and Antonio Pisanello (Pisanello, Il); the weight and volume of George Morland's pigs and Paul Potter (Potter, Paulus)'s cows; the humanized creatures of Gothic bestiaries and of Edward Hicks's Peaceable Kingdom; and, finally, Dürer's The Hare, which is possibly as famous as Leonardo's Mona Lisa.

Most early cultures developed iconographic systems (iconography) that included prescriptions for the site, design, function, form, medium, subject matter, and imagery of their painting. The siting of early Byzantine murals (Byzantine art), for instance, echoed the symbolic, architectural planning of the basilica. Thus, a stylized, linear image of Christ (Jesus Christ), surrounded by heavenly hosts, occupied the central dome; the Virgin was represented in the apse; and stiff figures of apostles, prophets, martyrs, and patriarchs occupied the aisle walls. The format of early devotional paintings was also prescribed, Christian (Christianity) and Buddhist (Buddhism) deities being placed in the focal centre of the design, above the eye level of the audience and larger than surrounding figures. And, in the conventional arrangement of a Christian subject such as the Holy Trinity, a central, bearded, patriarchal God, flanked by archangels, presented Christ on the cross; between them was a dove, representing the Holy Spirit. In a rendering of the risen Christ, the Son faced the audience, with the Virgin Mother on the left and St. John on the right of the design. In East Asia a traditional format depicted Buddha on a lotus throne or in a high chariot drawn by oxen across clouds, surrounded by figures representing the planets. Deities generally appear against undefined grounds of white (signifying eternity or nothingness), blue (the celestial vaults), or gold (representing heavenly light by radiating lines or the spiritual aura by a nimbus). The elaborate surface preparation of supports and the painstaking execution with the finest materials symbolized the intention that paintings dedicated to a deity should last forever. The imagery, subject matter, and form might also have a mystical function: the realistic rendering of animals in contrast to the perfunctory human representations in Ice Age rock paintings, thought to signify a wishful guarantee for success in hunting; the earthly pleasures depicted on ancient Egyptian tomb murals intended to secure their continuance for the deceased; and the North American Indian sand paintings designed for magic healing ceremonies and the Tantric (relating to Tantrism, a school of Mahayana Buddhism (Mahayana)) mandalas used for meditation and enlightenment.

Symbolism in Eastern painting—intended to deepen the experience of a picture's mood and spirituality—is more generalized and poetic than in Western art. Both the execution and the subject matter of Buddhist Chinese and Japanese (arts, East Asian) painting have a religious or metaphysical significance: the artist's intuitive, calligraphic brush movements symbolizing his mystical empathy with nature and his cyclic landscape and flower subjects expressing his belief in the spiritual harmony of natural forms and forces. Much of Indian (India) symbolism is visually emotive, images such as snakes, plantain leaves, twining creepers, and rippling water being overtly sexual. And, although symbolic attributes and colour codes identify Indian mythological characters (for example, the four arms of the terrible goddess Kali and the blue skin of the divine lover Krishna), the formal character and colour scheme of settings generally reflect the narrative's emotional mood (for example, vibrant, dark-blue, cloudy skies and embracing, purple-black glades evoking amorous anticipation and red grounds expressing the passions of love or war).

Both Kimberley Reynolds with Richard Seddon, Illustrated Dictionary of Art Terms (1981, reissued 1984); and Ralph Mayer, A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques (1969, reissued 1981), include modern art references. Two works by Harold Osborne (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Art (1970), and The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Art (1981), provide extensive bibliographies. Also see René Huyghe (general ed.), Larousse Encyclopedia of Prehistoric and Ancient Art, rev. ed. (1966, reissued 1981); Larousse Encyclopedia of Byzantine and Medieval Art, rev. ed. (1966, reissued 1981); Larousse Encyclopedia of Renaissance and Baroque Art (1964, reissued 1981); and Larousse Encyclopedia of Modern Art (1965, reissued 1981).

Good surveys of the subject include Frederick Malins, Understanding Paintings: The Elements of Composition (1981); and Johannes Itten, Design and Form: The Basic Course at the Bauhaus, rev. ed. (1975; originally published in German, 1963). Works on colour include Josef Albers, The Interaction of Color (1963, reissued with rev. plate section, 1975); Johannes Itten, The Art of Color (1961, reissued 1973; originally published in German, 1961); Faber Birren, Creative Color (1961), and (ed.), A Grammar of Color: A Basic Treatise on the Color System by Albert H. Munsell (1969); Robert L. Herbert, Neo-Impressionism (1968); William Innes Homer, Seurat and the Science of Painting (1964, reprinted 1978); and Barbara Rose, “The Primacy of Color,” Art International, 8:22–26 (1964). The influence of photography on painting is examined in Aaron Scharf, Art and Photography (1968, reissued 1974); and Karen Tsujimoto, Images of America: Precisionist Painting and Modern Photography (1982).

Standard works on most painting materials, supports, surfaces, and techniques include Ralph Mayer, The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques, 4th rev. ed. (1982), with extensive bibliography; Hilaire Hiler, The Painter's Pocket Book of Methods and Materials, 3rd ed. rev. by Colin Hayes (1970); Kurt Herberts, The Complete Handbook of Artist's Techniques (1958; trans. from the German); Maria Bazzi, The Artist's Methods and Materials (1960; originally published in Italian, 1956), with a bibliography of important treatises on mediums and techniques; Frederic Taubes, A Guide to Traditional and Modern Painting Methods (1963); and Max Doerner, The Materials of the Artist and Their Use in Painting, rev. ed. (1949, reprinted 1969; originally published in German, 4th ed., 1933). For discussion of tempera, see the appropriate sections in Daniel V. Thompson, The Materials of Medieval Painting (1936; reprinted as Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting, 1956). Watercolour painting is treated in Walter Koschatzky, Watercolor: History and Technique (1970; originally published in German, 1969). For treatment of ink painting, see Fei Ch'eng Wu, Brush Drawing in the Chinese Manner (1957); and Osvald Síren, Chinese Painting: Leading Masters and Principles, 7 vol. (1973). Fred Gettings, Polymer Painting Manual (1971), is a thorough and well-illustrated guide to acrylic painting. Works on other mediums include Jean Guichard-Melli, Matisse Paper Cutouts (1984; originally published in French, 1983); and Harriet Janis and Rudi Blesh, Collage, rev. ed. (1967).

William G. Archer, Indian Miniatures (1960), and Indian Paintings from the Punjab Hills: A Survey and History of Pahari Miniature Painting (1973); Mark Zebrowski, Deccani Painting (1983); Janet Woodbury Adams, Decorative Folding Screens: In the West from 1600 to the Present Day (U.S. title: Decorative Folding Screens: 400 Years in the Western World, 1982); Elise Grilli, The Art of the Japanese Screen (1971); Roselee Goldberg, Performance: Live Art, 1909 to the Present (1979); and Adrian Henri, Environments and Happenings (U.S. title: Total Art: Environments, Happenings, and Performance, 1974).

E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 4th ed. (1972); Gyorgy Kepes (ed.), Sign, Image, Symbol (1966); Leon M. Zolbrod, Haiku Painting (1983); Lucy R. Lippard et al., Pop Art (1960, rev. ed. 1970); and J.H. Matthews, Eight Painters: The Surrealist Context (1982).

Howard Daniel, Encyclopedia of Themes and Subjects in Painting (1971), a concise survey of Western mythological and religious subjects; David Rosand, Painting in Cinquecento Venice (1982); Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (1983); Norman Bryson, World and Image: French Painting of the Ancient Régime (1982); Michael Levey, The Painter Depicted: Painters as a Subject in Painting (1982); John Pope-Hennessy, The Portrait in the Renaissance (1966, reissued 1979), includes interpretive discussions of the works and extracts from the artists' letters; Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art (1949, reissued 1975); A. Richard Turner, The Vision of Landscape in Renaissance Italy (1966, reprinted 1974); Joseph S. Czestochowski, The American Landscape Tradition (1982); Roger Boulet, The Canadian Earth: Landscape Paintings by the Group of Seven (1982); Michael Jacobs, Nude Painting (1979); and Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art (1976).

Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (1939, reissued 1972), and Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955, reprinted 1982); F.D.K. Bosch, The Golden Germ (1960); Carl G. Jung et al., Man and His Symbols (posthumous ed. 1964, reprinted 1979), with excellent illustrations; Rudolf Wittkower, Allegory and the Migration of Symbols (1977), includes Eastern imagery; Paul Frankl, The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations Through Eight Centuries (1960); George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (1954, reprinted 1973); Joan Evans, Monastic Iconography in France: From the Renaissance to the Revolution (1970); and Jitendra Nath Banerjea, The Development of Hindu Iconography, 2nd rev. ed. (1956, reprinted 1974).

Irma A. Richter (ed.), Selections from the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1952, reprinted 1977), illustrated; Giorgio Vasari, Vasari on Technique, ed. by G. Baldwin Brown, trans. by Louisa A. Maclehose (1907, reprinted 1961); The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, 1679–1701, included in Mai-mai Sze, The Tao of Painting, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (1963); Elizabeth G. Holt (ed.), A Documentary History of Art, 2nd ed., 3 vol. (1957–65); John Rewald (ed.), Cézanne's Letters, 5th ed. (1982); Vincent Van Gogh, The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, 2nd ed., 3 vol. (1978); Fernand Léger, Functions of Painting, ed. by Edward F. Fry (1973; originally published in French, 1965); Robert Delaunay and Sonia Delaunay, The New Art of Color, ed. by Arthur A. Cohen (1978); Robert Motherwell (ed.), The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, 2nd ed. (1981); Marcel Jean (ed.), The Autobiography of Surrealism (1980); Wassily Kandinsky, Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art, 2 vol., ed. by Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo (1982), with the original illustrations; Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook (1953, reprinted 1977; originally published in German, 1925), On Modern Art (1948, reprinted 1966; originally published in German, 1945), The Thinking Eye, ed. by Jürg Spiller (1961, reprinted 1969; originally published in German, 1956), and The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898–1918, ed. by Felix Klee (1964, reissued 1968; originally published in German, 1957); Marcel Duchamp, The Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp: Salt Seller, ed. by Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson (1975; originally published in French, 1958), and Marcel Duchamp, Notes, ed. by Paul Matisse (1983); Henri Matisse, Notes of a Painter, included in Alfred H. Barr, Matisse: His Art and His Public (1951, reprinted 1966); Edward F. Fry, Cubism (1966, reprinted 1978; trans. from the French and German); Pierre Daix, Cubists and Cubism (1982; originally published in French, 1982); Pablo Picasso, Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views, comp. by Dore Ashton (1972); Katharine Kuh, The Artist's Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists (1962); and The New York School, foreword by Maurice Tuchman (1970), with an extensive bibliography.Peter D. Owen