Metallic
Works with the reflective sheen of metal, whether polished metal itself or gold leaf, lustre glaze and metallic paint.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
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About
A metallic surface does more than reflect light; it pulls the surroundings into the work. Gold leaf has done this since antiquity, and medieval panel painters laid it behind saints so images glowed in candlelight. Potters in 9th-century Iraq developed lustreware, glazes fired to leave a thin metallic film, and the technique later flourished in Spain and Renaissance Italy.
Polish became a modern ideal in the 20th century. Constantin Brancusi burnished bronze birds and heads to a mirror finish, the industrial designer Walter von Nessen used chrome and brushed aluminium in lamps of the 1920s and 30s, and Andy Warhol had his studio, the Factory, lined with silver foil in the 1960s. Jeff Koons's stainless-steel Rabbit (1986) mimics an inflatable toy. Look for how the sheen shifts an object's colour, dissolves its edges and places the viewer's reflection inside it.
Related artists
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Mimicking Ruined Materials
Mirrored
Pastel Colors
Patinated and Oxidized
Patterns
Pixelated
Primary Abstraction
Primary Colors
Psychedelic
Radiating Lines
Raw versus Finished
Rough
Scattered Composition
Single Object
Slender
Smooth Surface
Sparse
Stained Glass Effect
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Striped
Symmetrical
Tangled Forms
Viscous Forms
