The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (394 page)

 
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Ratcliffe , William
.

See
CAMDEN TOWN GROUP
.

 
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(
c.
1480–1526).
German painter, active in Swabia. His few surviving paintings show him to have been closer in spirit to
Grünewald
than practically any of his contemporaries. The most important is the Herrenberg Altarpiece (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, 1519), which has some harrowing Passion scenes. Ratgeb himself met a gruesome end—executed at Pforzheim for his part in the Peasants' War.

 
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(1925– ).
American painter, printmaker, designer, and experimental artist. With his friend Jasper
Johns
, whom he met in 1954, he is regarded as one of the most influential figures in the move away from the
Abstract Expressionism
that had dominated American art in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He studied at various art schools, most notably
Black Mountain College
. In the mid-1950s he began to incorporate three-dimensional objects into what he called ‘
combine paintings
’. The best-known example is probably
Monogram
(Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 1959), which features a stuffed goat with a rubber tyre around its middle, splashed with paint in a manner recalling
Action painting
. Other objects he used included Coca-Cola bottles, fragments of clothing, electric fans, and radios, and because of his preoccupation with such consumer products he has been hailed as one of the pioneers of
Pop art
. In 1958 he had a one-man show at Leo
Castelli's
gallery and from this time his career began to take off. By the early 1960s he was building up an international reputation, and in 1964 he was awarded the Grand Prize at the Venice
Biennale
. This caused great controversy, the Vatican newspaper
L'Osservatore Romano
describing the award as ‘the total and general defeat of culture’. In the 1960s Rauschenberg returned to working on a flat surface and was particularly active in the medium of
silk screen
. He has been interested in combining art with new technological developments and in 1966 he helped to form EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology), an organization to help artists and engineers work together. In 1985 he launched Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange (ROCI), an exhibition dedicated to world peace that toured the world and included works created specifically for each place visited.

 
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(1885–1957).
British graphic artist, theatre designer, painter, and writer, born in Cambridge, the daughter of Sir George Darwin , Professor of Astronomy, and granddaughter of Charles Darwin . She studied at the
Slade
School, but was mainly self-taught in engraving, which was her primary activity. Her best known works are her book illustrations, notably of collections of poems by her cousin Frances Cornford. Her style was bold and vigorous and she was uninterested in technical virtuosity. Although she was art critic for
Time and Tide
from 1928 to 1939, she did not consider herself a writer and was surprised at the success of
Period Piece
(1952), an account of her childhood with her own illustrations, which became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic.

 
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(1903–42).
British painter, graphic artist, and designer. His highly varied output included (apart from paintings) book illustrations and bookjackets, designs for the Wedgwood pottery factory (including a mug commemorating Edward VIII's coronation in 1937), and designs for furniture, glass, and textiles. He was one of the outstanding wood engravers of his time, his book illustrations in this medium making striking use of bold tonal contrasts and complex patterning. In 1940–2 he was an
Official War Artist
, and he produced some memorable watercolours of naval scenes off Norway (
Norway
, 1940, Laing Art Gal., Newcastle upon Tyne). His plane disappeared on a flying patrol near Iceland, in 1942, and he was officially presumed dead the following year.