Impressionism

Impressionism (pronounced im-presh-uh-niz-uhm)

(1) In fine art (an appropriated by others), a style of painting developed in the late nineteenth century, characterized by short brush strokes of bright colors in immediate juxtaposition to represent the effect of light on objects and a focus on everyday subject matters (by convention usually with an initial capital).

(2) A manner of painting in which the forms, colors, or tones of an object are lightly and rapidly indicated and there’s sometimes an attempt deliberately to include discordant subjects.

(3) In sculpture, a compositional style in which volumes are partially modeled and surfaces roughened to reflect light unevenly.

(4) In poetry, a style which used imagery and symbolism to convey the poet's impressions

(5) In literature, a theory and practice which emphasizes immediate aspects of objects or actions without attention to details.

(6) In musical composition, a movement of the late nineteen and early twentieth centuries (in parallel with the developments in painting) which eschewed traditional harmonies, substituting lush pieces with subtle rhythms, the unusual tonal colors used as evocative devices.

1880–1885: The construct was impression + -ism.  Impression was from the Old French impression, from the Latin impressio, from imprimo (push, thrust, assault, onslaught; squashing; stamping; impression), the construct being in- (the prefix which usually to some extent nullified but here in its rare form as an intensifier) +‎ premō (to press), from the Proto-Italic premō which may be linked with the primitive Indo-European pr-es- (to press), from per- (to push, beat, press).  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Impressionism and impressionist are nouns; the noun plural is impressionisms.

Lindsay Lohan rendered in the style of nineteenth century Impressionism by Gemini.ai.  The digital version was based on a photograph of her in a Jil Sander (b 1943) gown while attending the Disney Legends Awards ceremony, Anaheim, California, August, 2024.  On the day, although the environment was not optimized for photography, the light and even the breeze cooperated, the gown’s fabric swishing in a way the Impressionists would have painted, even had the air been still.

The meanings of impressionism are wholly unrelated to impressionistic which is used to describe an opinion reached by means of subjective reactions as opposed to one which was the product of research or deductive reasoning (ie based on impression rather than reason or fact).  The most extreme example of the impressionistic is a gaboso (the acronym of "Generalized Association Based On Single-Observation") such as assuming if one known Terf has a particular haircut, anyone sporting that style must be "a terf".  As a noun an impressionist is (1) one who in art, music or literature produced work in the tradition of impressionism or (2) an entertainer who performs impressions of others (a mimic).  Although by some used in philosophy since 1839, impressionism really isn’t a recognized field in the discipline, instead used metaphorically (and often critically) to describe certain tendencies which share similarities with the artistic movement.  Those who describe themselves as impressionist philosophers reject the idea that objective knowledge or absolute truths exist and instead stress the importance of individual perception and personal experience, arguing that individual (and debatably collective) understanding of the world is determined only by the wholly subjective: senses and emotions.  They’re thus much concerned with perception, consciousness, and the nature of reality.  In all that there’s obviously some overlap with earlier traditions and mainstream philosophers tend to be dismissive, some suggesting impressionism is less a philosophical school than a mode of which has been explored for millennia.

Le pont du chemin de fer à Argenteuil (The Railroad Bridge in Argenteuil (1873-1874)), oil on canvas by Claude Monet (1840-1926), Musée d’Orsay, Paris).

Impressionism was an art movement that emerged in France in the late nineteenth century and was a romantic form, the core of which was the capturing of a fleeting moment (ie an impression) in time and place, characterized by the play of light and color, rendered with what gave the impression of loose (even careless) brushwork, the paint often applied in brief, broken strokes.  Breaking from the intricacy and preciseness which had distinguished high art since the Renaissance, the artists sought a feeling of spontaneity rather than the staged effect engendered by meticulously rendered details.  The whole idea was to “capture the moment” of those transitory scenes one might view humdres of times a day, the subject matter often the vistas of everyday, the apparent casualness of the composition an important psychological aspect because recollections of such visions often are hazy because the mind tends to remember only the part which has "caught the eye".  Accordingly, artists handled the peripheral surroundings with a “sense of the blurred”, summoning the notion of things vaguely being “filled in” from an incomplete memory; what they wanted to represent was the immediate sensory impressions of a particular moment rather than a polished and wholly realistic composition.  Given all this, it’s not surprising the Impressionists so frequently painted en plein air (ie outdoors) because there, natural light and breezes made for an ever-changing environment, ideal for a technique dedicated to capturing the ephemeral.

The Church at Auvers (1890), oil on canvas by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

In the way of such things, from Impressionism, very late in the nineteenth century came post-impressionism.  Deliberately positioned as a reaction against what had come to be regarded as the strictures and limitations of Impressionism, it was noted especially for an expressive and symbolic use of color which neglected and sometimes even abandoned the link with naturalistic representation, the intensity of shade itself a vehicle of an artist’s personal interpretations.  It also distorted form and perspective, the exaggerations wildly beyond anything in the mannerist tradition and the influence upon the cubists who would follow is undeniable.  Something of a preview of post-modernism, the concerns were more with laying bare the underlying structure rather than showing anything directly representational.  However, despite the perceptions of some, technical innovation was rare and even the techniques most associated with the movement had been seen before although famously, the post-impressionists delighted in non-naturalistic color schemes.  While this was something which caught the eye, it wasn’t exactly new and claims it somehow created a heightened emotional impact have always seem hard to sustain although they certainly displeased Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) who decried most forms of "modern art".  Whether he ever said the quote attributed to him: “...anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized” has never been verified but it certainly encapsulates his world view.  Still, the work post-impressionists influenced Fauvism and Cubism and there are critics who maintain post-impressionism was the first discernible epoch in modern art and a kind of proto-surrealism.

The Seine at Courbevoie (1885), oil on canvas by Georges Seurat (1859-1891).

Although post-impressionism can to some extent be seen as something new, the companion neo-impressionism really was a fork.  The alternative name of the movement was Divisionism which hints at the scientific basis which underlay many of the works, most notably Pointillism (the use of tiny dots which blended optically when viewed from a distance) which explored the principles of the physics of color and light by rendering paintings almost as a mathematical exercise and one far removed from the spontaneous brushwork of Impressionism.  Color under this regime came to be understood in itself as a theory, the concept of “simultaneous contrast” expressed in the placement of contrasting or complementary colors explored to exploit the way the brain processed the relationship by either “toning down” or making more luminous the visual experience.  The work was thus in the impressionist tradition of using light and color but it was different in that instead of representing an impression of how nature was seen, it deployed a scientific understanding of how the mind perceived and interpreted light and color to produce something which enhanced the effect.  In that sense it can be understood as a structuralist movement.

Separation (1896), oil on canvas by Edvard Munch (1963-1944), Munch Museum, Oslo.

Neo-impressionism should not be confused with Expressionism, a contemporary movement from Germany which some have characterized (not wholly unfairly) as “painting Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844–1900) nightmares”.  The expressionists sought to convey the subjective emotions, inner experiences and psychological states of the artist; the viewer was there simply to view and understand the feelings of the artist who seem frequently drawn to the darker aspects of human existence.  They used distorted and exaggerated forms, heavy brushwork, and non-naturalistic colors designed expressly to be discordant.  The classic example of Expressionism is Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893).

Lindsay Lohan (2012), oil on canvas by Lucas Bufi.

Florida-based Lucas Bufi describes himself as “modern Impressionist artist, guided by light and shadows”.  Definitely, this was an application of "light and shadow" to canvas in a way very different to the technique perfected by the chiaroscurists.  For those with a responsibility for categorizing works of art, it can be difficult to determine where impressionism ends and expressionism begins and what credit should being given to the influences of mannerism.  For that reason, some use the term “pop art” as a kind of dumping ground, displeasing those who are quite protective about the genre's boundaries.  Mr Bufi's take on Lindsay Lohan was based on one of the images from a 2011 photo-shoot for the January/February 2012 issue of Playboy magazine which featured her as the cover model.  By 2011, Playboy's sales were in sharp decline because of the availability of on-line content but the photo-shoot induced a short-lived “Lindsay Lohan led recovery”, the magazine's founder Hugh Hefner (1926-2017) tweeting on X (then known as Twitter): “The January-February Double Issue is breaking sales records.”  Unfortunately for Mr Hefner, the blip was a one-off and didn't attract “conquest customers”, the sales numbers not matched with the decline continuing until publication ceased during the COVID-19 pandemic (it was in 2025 resurrected as “an annual” but its future remains uncertain). 

Modernism

Modernism (pronounced mod-er-niz-uhm)

(1) A modern usage or characteristic; modern character, tendencies, or values; adherence to or sympathy with what is modern.

(2) In theology, a movement in Roman Catholic thought that sought to interpret the teachings of the Church in the light of philosophic and scientific conceptions prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (always with initial capital).  The movement was in 1907 condemned by Pope Pius X (1835–1914; pope 1903-1914).

(3) In theology, the liberal theological tendency in Protestantism which emerged in the twentieth century and became the intellectual core of the moderate wings in many denominations, most obviously displayed in the interplay between the liberal and evangelical factions at recent Lambeth Conferences.

(4) A deliberate philosophical and practical estrangement or divergence from the techniques and practices of the past in the arts and literature, occurring from late in the nineteenth century and (a little arbitrarily), thought to have concluded in the post-war years.  Taking the form in any of various innovative movements and styles, it was an aesthetic descriptor used in mostly in architecture, literature and art to label work thought modern in character, quality of thought, expression or technique (sometimes with initial capital).

1730-1740: The construct was modern + ism.  Modern was from the Middle French moderne, from the Late Latin modernus (modern), from the Classical Latin modo (just now; in a (certain) manner)), from the adverb modo (to the measure) originally ablative of modus (manner; measure) and hence, by measure, "just now".  Root was the primitive Indo-European med- (take appropriate measures).  The adjective modern entered English circa 1500 in the sense of "now existing", the meaning "of or pertaining to present or recent times" attested from the 1580s.  The verb modernize (give a modern character or appearance to, cause to conform to modern ideas, adapt to modern persons) has existed since the 1680s, thought probably a borrowing from the French modernizer rather than a native coining.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & -isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).

In the narrow, technical sense, modern began in English enjoying a broad meaning, simply a description of that which was not ancient and medieval, but it quickly gained niches, Shakespeare using it to indicate something "every-day, ordinary, commonplace" and the meaning "not antiquated or obsolete, in harmony with present ways" was formalized by the early nineteenth century.  Formerly, the scientific linguistic division of historical languages into old, middle, and modern began only in the nineteenth century, the first university department of modern (ie those still living (unlike Latin and Ancient Greek) and of some literary or historical importance) was created in 1821 although the use of Modern English can be traced from at least circa 1607 when jurist John Cowell (1554–1611) published The Interpreter, a dictionary of law which, inter alia, examined and explained the words of Old and Middle English.  The extended form modern-day was noted from 1872; Modern dance is attested by 1912; modern conveniences (increasingly electrically-powered labour-saving devices) dates from 1926; modern jazz was used in 1954 and the slang abbreviation mod (tidy, sophisticated teen-ager (and one contrasted usually with a disreputable rocker or some other delinquent)) dates from a surprisingly early 1960.

There have been references to modern art since 1807 but it then was simply a chronological acknowledgement in the sense of something being recent rather than a recognizable style or school, that sense, “work representing a departure from or repudiation of traditional or accepted styles”, not attested until 1895, the idea by 1897 extended to the individual, a modern person one thought “thoroughly up to date”.  Although it would take decades to assume its (now) modern meaning, as an adjective, post–modern appears first to have been use in 1919 and by the late 1940s had become common in the language of architects (presumably the first among the modernists to feel no longer modern) and use extended to the arts in the 1960s, infecting politics, literature and just about every form of criticism and critical theory.  The "moment" of post-modernism has passed but but some of its strands have become orthodoxies and so profound were the influences it will for at least decades remain a reference point. 

Tatra T77, Czechoslovakia 1934.

Confusion is sometimes attached to the words “modernity” and “modernism”.  The noun modernity, dating from the 1620s, meant simply the "quality or state of being modern", an elaborated way of saying “recent”, the sense "something that is modern" noted since 1733.  As a word to describe specifically the epoch which began in the early twentieth century, it was in use before World War I (1914-1918).  The sense of that modernity was the particular combination of circumstances and forces which had coalesced to produce in Europe and North America a society which had in technical and other ways progressed with greater rapidity than any in history: (1) A long period of general peace, (2) a level of prosperity, which although uneven and often erratic, was unprecedented, (3) an array of technical innovations (electricity, radio, flight, telegraphs, internal combustion engines etc), (4) increasing literacy and a proliferation of mass-media, (4) an on-rush of new and transformative theories in psychology, philosophy & science (Freud, Darwin, Einstein et al), and (5) a relaxation of historically censorious attitudes which allowed innovations in art and literature to flourish.

Woman with a Hat (1905) by Henri Matisse (1869-1954).

Modernism, a word Dr Johnson (1709-1784) claimed was invented by the novelist Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) to suggest any "deviation from the ancient and classical manner" had by 1830 come to refer to generally to "modern ways and styles" but since the mid-1920s, it’s been used exclusively to describe the movements in art, music, architecture and literature which depart in some radical way from classical and other traditional antecedents.  By 1925, the noun modernist was applied to a producer or follower of the work of the movement.  In the 1580s it had meant "one who admires or prefers the modern"; something similar but without the political and other connotations modernity imposed.

Monument House of the Bulgarian Communist Party (Buzludzha Monument), Buzludzha Peak, Bulgaria (1974-1981).  Now a very modern ruin.

Modernism, even if considered separately within the genres where the label was adopted had no coherence of style, intent or result, the significance being what it was not in that it deliberately aimed to depart from classical and traditional forms.  Although it’s contested still, much of what began as modernist art is attributed to the modernist’s growing alienation from the strictures and conventions which had characterized their formative years during the Victorian age.  It defined an epoch and, somewhere in the post-war period, became part of the history of art or architecture and for those for whom modernism is now just another product, such as art dealers, there’s really no distinction between modernist and postmodernist phases, both grouped under the rubric of Modern Art.

Rendered with Vondy's AI engine: A proto-cubist Lindsay Lohan as Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) might have painted her had his experiments with cubism begun during his “blue period” (1901-1904).

Proto-Cubism (which some prefer as Pre-Cubism because they detect a distinct break rather than an evolution) was a term coined by art historians to describe the works produced in the last years of the twentieth century’s first decade.  However expressed, what was being described was the early framework of cubism, characterized by artists reducing images to component parts and rendering them in geometric forms, soon distorting things further by arranging the constructs roughly in place but viewed from different perspectives, the various cones, cubes, cylinders and polygons inherently were simplified forms yet when re-assembled yielding something complex which delighted some and appalled others.  The unhappy critics had to prepare themselves because worse was to come for while the Proto-Cubist works were at least vaguely recognizable representations of someone or something, as the movement unfolded, there was the feeling the technique was being exploited to produce material weird beyond immediate understanding: newness for the sake of newness.

Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier) (1910) by Pablo Picasso, oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City.

It was what came to be called Analytical Cubism (circa 1908–1912) which took the deconstruction and re-assembly of Proto-Cubism down its logical path, the fragments viewed from multiple viewpoints and abandoning the tradition of lineal perspective which had developed from Antiquity, through the Primitives and the Renaissance to the modern era.  The palettes tended to be monochromatic or at least muted (shades of brown & gray predominate) and, by the standards of the time, many paintings were jarringly abstract and sometimes described as “wrongly assemble jigsaw puzzles” with pieces dissected into overlapping planes, three dimensional depth and volume flattened to be twisted back to the two dimensions of a flat surface.  Something of an arms race developed between artists as they vied to see who would conjure something which demanded of the viewer even more work to interpret.  As an intellectual exercise in perception and structural analysis, it must have been great fun for those in the studios and for the avant-garde who “got it” but many would have agreed with comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) who later would condemn such exercises of technical ecstasy as “formalism”.

Still Life with Chair Caning (1912) by Pablo Picasso, oil on oil-cloth over canvas edged with rope, Musée Picasso, Paris.

As a technique, Analytical Cubism could go only so far because ultimately, it remained tied to something which began as representational and had to get back there, albeit in distorted form.  What came next, from 1912-1923, came to be known as Synthetic Cubism which took everyday, real-world objects from kitchens, factories and the streetscape, reducing them to their simplest form to become building blocks to be synthesized into a new whole.  With this came brighter and more varied colors which seemed to imply something more traditional decorative than the often drab geometrical exercises of the analytic works but not all were convinced.  At the time, the general audience seems to have found cubism in any flavour no fun at all: collages with no unifying structure.  That would be the theme of public scepticism about modern art for the next century-odd but there was in places a recognition the cubists were sometimes being playful in their “construction without prior deconstruction”.  As has long happened in the art market, there were those for whom the notion of comparing (1) the analytic dissecting of reality with (2) assembling previously unconnected parts of it to create a synthetic “new” was intriguing but most stuck to the Old Masters.

Analytical Cubism: The Castle of La Roche-Guyon (1909), oil on canvas by Georges Braque (1882-1963), The Met, New York City.

Modernist literature was influenced by the bleak surroundings created by urbanization and industrialization but it was the blast of the Great War which left writers grasping to find a response to what was a much-changed world.  The roots of modernist literature can be found in pre-war works but the war had so undermined faith in the foundations of Western society and culture which early in the century had been viewed with an optimism it’s hard now to convey.  An inescapable element in modernism was a rejection of beauty as if humanity had proved itself somehow unworthy of loveliness and modernist literature reflected disillusionment and betrayal, TS Eliot’s (1888-1965) epic-length poem The Waste Land (1922) is emblematic, reflecting the search for redemption in a spiritually empty landscape and technically, its discordant images and deliberate obscurity typify Modernism and preview the techniques developed in post-modernism which demand the reader be involved in interpreting and deconstructing the text.

Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) reading Ulysses, 1955.

Modernist fiction however, in content or technique, wasn’t monolithic and even to label it a genre does require that word to adopt a nuance of meaning, the works could explore the life of one, of a group or all of humanity and ranged from the nihilistic to the utopian.  The great landmark was James Joyce’s (1882-1941) Ulysses (1922), a work of such sometimes impenetrable density which adopted the even then known device of a stream of consciousness to document the events of one day in the lives of three Dubliners, the idea being the abandonment of any structural order, conventional sentence construction sacrificed in an attempt to capture the nature of human fragmentary thought.  Not all readers were seduced by the approach but Ulysses picked up a cult following which endures to this day, some of the adherents compelled even to praise Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939), a work which in which a few find rare genius while others conclude it's merely modernism pursued to its inevitable unintelligible conclusion.  Reading Joyce can be hard work although Anthony Burgess (1917–1993), a fair critic of modernism, literary and otherwise, claimed to find a laugh of every page of Finnegans Wake.  For most, it's no fun at all.

Paysage coloré aux oiseaux aquatiques (Colored Landscape with Aquatic Birds, circa 1907) by Jean Metzinger (1883-1956).

In painting, the roots really lie in mannerism although elements can be traced through thousands of years of what is, strictly speaking, non-representational art, exemplified in many aspects by the sometimes (and not deliberately) almost abstract Italian primitives created between the late eleventh and mid-thirteenth centuries.  However, historians regard the first of the modernists as Édouard Manet (1832-1883) who, from his early thirties began to distort perspective and devalue representation, using techniques of brushstroke to emphasize the very nature of the flat canvas on which he worked, something artists had for centuries crafted to disguise.  In his wake came the rush of -isms that would characterize modernism: Impressionism, Cubism, Constructivism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism & Expressionism, an array of visions which would see the techniques and physical construction of the works vie for attention (at least among fellow artists and critics) with what was once thought the art itself.

TWA Flight Center (1959-1962) by Eero Saarinen (1910-1961) and Associates, John F Kennedy International Airport, New York City.

In architecture, while not literally technologically deterministic, the advances in the technologies available made possible the abandonment of earlier necessities.  However, while  the existence of steel frames and increasingly complex shapes rendered in reinforced concrete may have allowed what came to be known as the “new international style”, neither precluded the ongoing use of decoration and embellishment, the discarding of which was a hallmark of modernist architecture.  It was the choice of the architects to draw simple geometric shapes with unadorned facades, a starkness associated especially with the mid-to-late twentieth century steel and glass skyscrapers.  Architects are less keen to be associated with some other high-rise buildings of the era, especially the grim housing projects which blighted so much of the urban redevelopment of the post-war years; there was none of the awful grandeur of the best neo-brutalism to many of these.

Cinque

Cinque (pronounced singk)

(1) In certain games (those using cards, dice, dominoes etc), a card, die, or domino with five spots or pips.

(2) As cinquefoil (1) a potentilla (flower), (2) in heraldry, a stylized flower or leaf with five lobes and (3) in topology, a particular knot of five crossings.

(3) As cinquecentist, (1) an Italian of the sixteenth century, especially a poet or an artist, (2) a student or imitator of the art or literature of that period and (3) the style of art or architecture of that period.

(4) In fine art, as cinquecento, the works of the sixteenth-century (ie the 1500s).

(5) In bladesmithing, as cinquedea, a long dagger (ie short sword) with an unusually heavy blade, developed in Renaissance-era northern Italy during the fifteenth century.  The name is from the Italian cinquedea (literally “five fingers”), a reference to the width of the tapered-blade at the hilt, the expanse of steel meaning they often were richly ornamented although, typically being only some 18 inches (460 mm) in length, they were still light enough in combat to be an effective weapon.

1350–1400: From the Middle English cink, from the Old French cinq (five), from the Vulgar Latin cinque, from the Latin quīnque (five).  The archaic spelling cinq was from the modern French cinq, whereas the standard spelling probably emerged either under the influence of the Italian cinque or was simply a misspelling of the French.  In typically English fashion, the pronunciation “sank” is based on a hypercorrect approximation of the French pronunciation, still heard sometimes among what use to be called “the better classes”.  The alternative forms were cinq (archaic), sinque (obsolete) and sink & sank (both misspellings) while the homophones are cinq, sink, sync & synch (and sank at the best parties).  Cinque is a noun; the noun plural is cinques.

Cinque outposts, attested since the 1640s was a term which referred to the five senses.  The noun cinquecento (written sometimes as cinque-cento) is used in (as noun & adjective) criticism & academic works when describing sixteenth century Italian art and literature.  It dates from 1760, from the Italian cinquecento (literally “500”) and was short for mil cinquecento (1500).  The use to describe "a group of five, five units treated as one," especially at cards or dice, dates from the late fourteenth century and in English was borrowed directly from the French cinq, a dissimilation from Latin quinque (five) which in Late Latin also picked up the familiar spelling cinque.  The ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European penkwe (five).

Cinquefoil housing stained glass (leadlight) window.

In architecture, a cinquefoil is a ornament constructed with five cuspidated divisions, the use dating from the late fifteenth century, from the Old French cinqfoil, the construct being cinq (five) + foil (leaf).  The basis for the French form was the quinquefolium, the construct being quinque (five) + folium (leaf), from the primitive Indo-European root bhel- (to thrive, bloom).  In Gothic tracery, there was a wide use of circular shapes featuring a lobe tangent to the inner side of a larger arc or arch, meeting other lobes in points called cusps projecting inwards from the arch and architects defined them by the number of foils used, indicated by the prefix: trefoil (3), quatrefoil (4), cinquefoil (5), multifoil etc.  Although used as stand-alone fixtures, bands of quatrefoils were much used for enrichment during the "Perpendicular Period" (the final phase of English Gothic architecture, dated usually between circa 1350–1550; it followed the "Decorated Style" and was characterized by strong vertical lines, large windows with intricate tracery, and elaborate fan vaulting) and, when placed with the axes set diagonally, quatrefoils were called cross-quarters.

Porsche "phone-dial" wheels, clockwise from top left: 1981 911SC, 1988 924S, 1987 944S & 1985 928S.  With a myriad of variations, the cinquefoil motif was a style for wheels used by a number of manufacturers, the best known of which were the ones with which Porsche equipped the 911, 924, 944 & 928 where they were known as the “phone-dial”, a reference which may puzzle those younger than a certain age.  Because these have five rather than ten holes, they really should have picked up the nickname "cinquefoil" rather than "phone-dial" but the former was presumably too abstract or obscure so the more accessible latter prevailed.  All Porsche’s phone dial wheels looked similar and for non-expert eyes it really was necessary to have the variants side-by-side to notice the subtle differences.  The factory for example fitted 15” wheels to the early 928s if equipped with an automatic transmission and 16” units if a manual but the larger wheels were available (option code I401) for the former while the smaller could be ordered even on a manual, the attraction being the smoother ride provided by the taller tyre’s sidewall.  Fortunately for restorers and collectors, the part-number is stamped on the inside of each wheel (eg the 7” x 16” fitted typically to a 1979 928 with a five-speed manual transmission is part # 928 361 916 00) and the compatibility list widely is available.  Being this is a Porsche thing, there are specialists who have memorized all the permutations and thus have no need to resort to looking up the papers; such folk are great fun at dinner parties.

Fiat 500 (2023), watercolor on paper by Monika Jones.  While the artist hasn't provided notes, it's tempting to imagine the inspiration was something like “Lindsay Lohan in white dress during summer in Rome, leaning on Fiat 500, painted in the tradition of Impressionism.”

A classic of the La Dolce Vita era, the rear-engined Fiat 500 was in continuous production between 1957-1975 and was the successor to the pre-war Fiat 500 Topolino, an even more diminutive machine which proved its versatility in roles ranging from race tracks to inner-city streets to operating as support vehicles used by the Italian Army in the invasion of Abyssinia (1935).  Almost 3.9 million of the post-war 500s (dubbed the Nuova Cinquecento (New 500)) were produced and as well as the two-door saloon (almost all fitted with a folding sunroof) there were three-door station wagons (the Giardiniera) & panel vans.  Although not all wore the 500 badge, in the home market, universally Italians called them the Cinquecentro.  There was also the unusual 500 Jolly, a cut down version built by Carrozzeria Ghia which featured wicker seats and a removable fabric roof in the style of the surrey tops once used on horse-drawn carriages.  The Jolly was intended as “beach car”, some carried on the yachts of the rich and although Ghia built only 650 originals, many 500s have since been converted to “Jolly Spec”, one of coach-building’s less-demanding tasks.  Being an Italian car, there were of course high-performance versions, the wildest of which was the Steyr-Puch 650 TR2 (1965-1969) which ran so hot it was necessary to prop open the engine cover while it was in use.  The Nuova 500’s successors never achieved the same success but such was the appeal of the original that in 2007 a retro-themed 500 was released although, al la Volkswagen’s “new Beetles” (1997-2019), the configuration was switched to a water-cooled front-engine with FWD (front-wheel-drive).

1985 Ferrari Testarossa “monospecchio-monodado”.

The early Testarossas were fitted with centre-lock magnesium-alloy wheels, chosen for their lightness.  Responding to feedback from the dealer network, as a running-change during 1988, these were substituted for units with a conventional five-bolt design.  The centre-lock wheels were called monodado (one nut) while the five lug-types were the cinquedado (five nut) and because of the time-line, while all the monospecchio cars are also monodado, only some of the monodaddi are monospecchi.  Monospecchi (literally "one mirror") is an unofficial designation for the early cars fitted with a single external mirror, mounted unusually high on the A-pillar, the location the product of Ferrari's interpretation of the EU's (European Union) rearward visibility regulations.  The Eurocrats later clarified things and Testarossas subsequently were fitted with two mirrors in the usual position at the base of the A-pillar. 

Plastic wheelcover for the Ford (Australia) Fairmont XE (1982-1984, left), a circa 1949 British GPO standard telephone in Bakelite (centre) (globally, the most produced handset in this style was the Model 302, which, with a thermoplastic case, was manufactured in the US by Western Electric between 1937-1955 and plastic wheelcover for the Ford (Australia) Fairmont XF (1984-1988, right).  Telephones with larger dial mechanisms usually didn't use all the available space for the finger-holes.

Probably some are annoyed at the “five-hole” wheel design coming to be known as the “phone-dial” because of course the classic rotary-dial mechanism had ten holes, one for each numeral.  Ford Australia actually stuck to the classics when designing a plastic wheel-cover for the XE Fairmont (then the next rung up in the Falcon's pecking order) because it featured the correct ten holes and it was re-allocated as a “hand-me-down” for the Falcon when the XF was introduced, the Fairmont now getting an eight-hole unit.  None of these seem ever to have been dubbed “phone-dials”, probably because plastic wheel–covers have never been a fetish like the older metal versions or aluminium wheels (often as “rims” in modern usage, a practice which also annoys some).  The XE hubcap may be thought a decemfoil (10 leaf) and the XF unit a octofoil (8 leaf).

1971 Ford (South Africa) XY Fairmont GT with the GS Pack wheel covers.

The South African Fairmont GTs were never fitted with the "five slot" wheels used in Australia, getting instead the chromed wheel cover which in Australia was part of the "GS Pack", a collection of "dress-up" options designed to provide much of the look of a GT without the additional costs to purchase or insure one.  The GS Pack wheel covers were first seen in Australia on the 1967 XR Falcon GT and came from the Mercury parts bin in the US where they'd appeared on the 1966 Mercury Comet Cyclone GT; they were designed to look like a chromed, naked wheel, the idea a tribute to the Californian hot rod community in which the motif originated.

1971 Ford (Australia) XY Falcon GT with “five slot” wheels.

Although scholars of Latin probably haven’t given much thought to the wheels Ford used in the 1960s & 1970s, their guidance would be helpful because the correct Latin form for “slot” depends on context, the words being (1) Fissura: “crack, split or narrow opening”, (2) Rima: “narrow gap or slit”, (3) Foramen: “opening, hole or perforation” and (4) Scissura “cleft or division”.  So a XY GT’s wheel would be a cinquefissura, cinquerima, cinqueforamen or cinquescissura.  The scholars would have to rule but cinquerima seems best, tied in nicely with the modern (albeit contested) use of “rim” to mean wheel.      

In production over six generations between 1965-2008 the Fairmont was a "blinged-up" version of the Australian Ford Falcon (1960-2016), a car based on the US compact (1960-1969) Ford of the same name (the one-off 1970 US Falcon an entry level model in the intermediate Torinio (formerly Fairlane) range).  Ford in the US would also use the Fairmont name for a compact (1978-1983) but the most quirky use was that between 1969-1971, Ford South Africa sold a car substantially similar to the Australian Falcon GT but badged it "Fairmont GT".  Assembled (with some local components) in South Africa from CKD (completely knocked down) packs imported from Australia, the Fairmont name was chosen because US Falcons (assembled from Canadian CKD packs) had been sold in South Africa between 1960-1963 but had gained such a bad reputation (Ford Australia had to do much rectification work after encountering the same fragility) the nameplate was decreed tainted.  In the technical sense, "Fairmont GT" would have been a more accurate name in Australia too because the Falcon GT was trimmed to the same specification (ie bling) as the Fairmont; the choice of "Falcon GT" was just a desire by the marketing team to create a "halo" machine for the mainstream range, something which succeeded to an degree which probably surprised even those ever-optimistic types.  Ford South Africa never offered a Fairmont GTHO to match the Falcon GTHOs produced in Australia to homologate certain combinations of parts for competition.

Lamborghini has used the phone-dial since the first incarnation appeared on the Silhouette in 1976 and it likes it still, left to right: Huranan, Gallardo, Countach, Diablo and Silhouette.  With five "holes", these are true cinquefoils and thoughtlessly, like Porsche, Lamborghini seems never to have provided a "trigger warning" urging caution on the trypophobic (those suffering from trypophobia (an obsessive or irrational fear of patterns or clusters of small holes)).

Despite being often called a "hubcap", what appeared on the South African Fairmont GTs really was a "wheel cover".  The origin of the hubcap was, fairly obviously, “a cap for hub”, something which dates from the age of horse-drawn carts.  Although they would later become something decorative, hubcaps began as a purely function fitting designed to ensure the hub mechanism was protected from dirt and moisture because removing a wheel when the hub was caked in mud with bolts “rusted on” could be a challenge.  In the twentieth century the practice was carried over to the automobile, initially without much change but as wheels evolved from the wooden-spoked to solid steel (and even in the 1920s some experimented with aluminium), the hubcaps became larger because the securing bolts were more widely spaced.  This meant they became a place to advertise so manufacturers added their name and before long, especially in the US, the humble hubcap evolved into the “wheel-cover”, enveloping the whole circle and they became a styling feature, designs ranging from the elegant to the garishly ornate and some were expensive: in 1984 a set of replacement “wire” wheel covers for a second generation Cadillac Seville (the so-called “bustle-back”, 1980-1985) listed at US$995.00 if ordered as a Cadillac part-number and then that was a lot of money.  By the late 1980s, most wheel covers were plastic pressings, other than in places like the isolated environments behind the Iron Curtain.

Beltless: Lindsay Lohan in 2004 using touch-dial wall-phone, note the hooking of the thumbs in the belt loops.

Remarkably, although touch-dial (ie buttons) handsets appeared in the consumer market as early as 1963 and soon became the standard issue, in 2024 it’s possible still to buy new, rotary-dial phones although only the user experience remains similar; internally the connections are effected with optical technology, the “sound & feel” emulated.  There’s also a market for updating the old Bakelite & Thermoplastic units (now typically between 70-90 years old) with internals compatible with modern telephony so clearly there’s some nostalgia for the retro-look, if not the exact experience.  Even after the touch-dial buttons became ubiquitous the old terminology persisted among users (and in the manufacturers' documents); when making calls users continued to "dial the number".  The same sort of linguistic legacy exists today because ending a call is still the act of "hanging up" and that dates from the very early days of telephony when the ear-piece was a large conical attachment on a cord and at a call's conclusion, it was "hung up" on a arm, the weight of the receiver lowering the arm which physically separated two copper connectors, terminating the link between the callers.  

Ms Justine Haupt with custom rotary-dial cell phone in turquoise.

Ms Justine Haupt (b 1987), an astronomy instrumentation engineer at New York’s Brookhaven National Laboratory went a step further (backwards, or perhaps sideways, some might suggest) and built a rotary-dial cell phone from scratch because of her aversion to what she describes as “smartphone culture and texting”, something to which many will relate.  In what proved a three year project, Ms Haupt used a rotary-dial mechanism from a Trimline telephone (introduced in 1965 and produced by Western Electric, the manufacturing unit of the Bell System), mounted on a case 4 x 3 x 1 inches (100 x 75 x 25 mm) in size with a noticeably protuberant aerial; it used an AT&T prepaid sim card and had a battery-life of some 24-30 hours.  Conforming to the designer’s choices of functionality, it includes two speed-dial buttons, an e-paper display and permits neither texting nor internet access.  

Designer colors: Available in black, white, turquoise, beige and the wonderful Atomic Hotline Red.

“Atomic Hotline Red” is an allusion to the Moscow-Washington DC “hotline” installed in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962). In truth, despite frequently appearing in popular culture, there never was a “red phone” and the US connection terminated not on the POTUS’s desk in the Oval Office but in the Pentagon (now HQ of the Department of War) in Arlington County, Virginia.  The first implementation in 1963 used a version of Telex while it was an analogue facsimile service (ie fax machines) between 1986-2008.  Since 2008 the data has travelled over a secure digital link, decrypted into text at each end.

Although she intended the device as a one-off for her own use, Ms Haupt was surprised at the interest generated and in 2022 began selling a kit (US$170) with which others could build their own, all parts included except the rotary-dial mechanism which would need to be sourced from junk shops and such.  Unlike the larger mechanism on the traditional desk or wall-mounted telephone, the holes in the Trimline’s smaller rotary-dial used the whole circle so the ten-hole layout is symmetrical and thus the same as the XE Fairmont’s wheelcover, something doubtlessly wholly coincidental.  Unfortunately, Ms Haupt encountered many difficulties (bringing to market a device which connects to public telephony networks involves processes of greater complexity than selling mittens and such) but the project remains afoot.

The rough-fruited cinquefoil or sulphur cinquefoil (Potentilla recta).

In botany, the potentila is a genus containing some three-hundred species of annual, biennial and perennial herbaceous flowering plants in the rose (rosaceae) family.  Since the 1540s it’s been referred to as the cinquefoil (also “five fingers” or “silverweeds”), all distinguished by their compound leaves of five leaflets.

The Confederation of Cinque Ports was a group of coastal towns in Kent, Sussex and Essex, the name from the Old French which means literally “five harbors”.  The five were Hastings, Sandwich, Dover, Romney, and Hythe, all on the western shore of the English Channel, where the crossing to the continent is narrowest.  Because of (1) their importance in cross-channel trade and (2) being in the region ,most vulnerable to invasion, they were granted special privileges and concessions by the Crown in exchange for providing certain services essential for maritime defense, dating from the years prior to the formation of the Royal Navy in the fifteenth century.  The name was first used in the late twelfth century in Anglo-Latin and the late thirteenth in English.

An early version of a PPP (public-private partnership), with no permanent navy to defend it from sea-borne aggression, the crown contracted with the confederation to provide what was essentially a naval reserve to be mobilized when needed. Earlier, Edward the Confessor (circa 1003–1066; King of England 1042-1066) had contracted the five most important strategically vital Channel ports of that era to provide ships and men “for the service of the monarch” and although this was used most frequently as a “cross-Channel ferry service” and was not exclusively at the disposal of the government.  Under the Norman kings, the institution assumed the purpose of providing the communications and logistical connections essential to keeping together the two halves of the realm but after the loss of Normandy in 1205, their ships and ports suddenly became England’s first line of defense against the French.  The earliest charter still extant dates from 1278 but a royal charter of 1155 charged the ports with the corporate duty to maintain in readiness fifty-seven ships, each to be available each year for fifteen days in the service of the king, each port fulfilling a proportion of the whole duty.  In return the ports and towns received a number of tax breaks and privileges including: An exemption from tax and tolls, limited autonomy, the permission to levy tolls, certain law enforcement and judicial rights, possession of lost goods that remain unclaimed after a year and of flotsam (floating wreckage and such) & jetsam (goods thrown overboard).  Even at the time this was thought to be a good deal and the leeway afforded to the Cinque Ports and the substantial absence of supervision from London led inevitability to smuggling and corruption although in this the Cinque Ports were hardly unique.

The Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was something like a viceroy and the office still exists today but is now purely ceremonial and, although technically relict, remains a sinecure and an honorary title, regarded as one of the higher honors bestowed by the Sovereign and a sign of special approval by the establishment which includes the entitlement to the second oldest coat of arms of England.  The prestige it confers on the holder is derived from (1) it being the gift of the sovereign, (2) it being England’s most ancient military honor and (3), the illustrious standing of at least some of the previous hundred and fifty-eight holders of the office.  It is a lifetime appointment.

William Lygon (1872-1938), seventh Earl Beauchamp, in uniform as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

The office of lord warden has not been without the whiff of scandal.  William Lygon, who in 1891 succeeded his father as the seventh Earl Beauchamp, was at twenty-seven appointed governor of New South Wales, a place to which he would later return, happily and otherwise.  In 1913, Lord Beauchamp, well-connected in society and the ruling Liberal Party’s leader in the House of Lords, was appointed Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and, fond of pomp, ceremony and dressing-up, he enjoyed the undemanding role.  However, in 1930, he embarked on a round-the-world tour which included a two-month stint in Sydney, where he stayed, accompanied by a young valet who lived with him as his lover.  This, along with other antics, did not go unnoticed, and the Australian Star newspaper duly reported:

“The most striking feature of the vice-regal ménage is the youthfulness of its members … rosy cheeked footmen, clad in liveries of fawn, heavily ornamented in silver and red brocade, with many lanyards of the same hanging in festoons from their broad shoulders, [who] stood in the doorway, and bowed as we passed in … Lord Beauchamp deserves great credit for his taste in footmen.”

The report found its way to London when Beauchamp’s brother-in-law, the second Duke of Westminster (1879–1953), hired detectives to gather evidence, hoping to destroy him and damage the Liberal Party, the Tory duke hating both.  Evidence proved abundant and not hard to find so in 1931 Westminster publicly denounced Beauchamp as a homosexual to the king (George V 1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom & Emperor of India 1910-1936), who was appalled and responded that he “…thought men like that always shot themselves.”  Westminster insisted a warrant be issued for Beauchamp’s arrest and that forced him into exile.

Lady Beauchamp seems to have shown some confusion upon being informed of her husband’s conduct.  Although he had enjoyed many liaisons in their (admittedly large) residences (his partners including servants, socialites & local fishermen) and his proclivities were an open secret known to many in society, his wife remained oblivious and expressed some confusion about what homosexuality was.  Leading a sheltered existence, Lady Beauchamp had never been told about the mechanics of “the detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery committed with Mankind or Beast” (that was the wording of what was criminalized in the Buggery Act (1533) passed during the reign of Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) and the text had since changed but the original better captures how her ladyship would have felt about such things) and was baffled, thinking her husband was being accused of being a bugler.  The evocative phrasing in the the statute of 1533 no longer existed in English law by the 1930s so if anyone disclosed to her the details they'd have told her the charge was : “Gross Indecency contrary to Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885”.  The change had been created by the so-called Labouchere Amendment and it solved the practical problem created by the specificity of the words of the sixteenth century.  For the state, the problem was the old law had been too exact in that if the prosecution could not beyond reasonable doubt prove anal sex had happened between at least two “male persons”, a conviction couldn’t be secured.  Thus the attraction of the phrase “Gross Indecency” which covered the whole vista of “unnatural caresses” and it was under the new law Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was tried and convicted, receiving a sentence of two years.  So it cast a wider net but was less harsh in that as late as 1861 a conviction could attract the death penalty although this was thought so onerous a punishment for what was often a consensual act that prosecutions became rare.  Despite the reforms in England, in some parts of the old British Empire, terminology like “the abominable crime of buggery” remained on the statute books until late in the twentieth century.

Once things were became clear in Lady Beauchamp's mind, she petitioned for divorce, the papers describing the respondent as: “A man of perverted sexual practices, [who] has committed acts of gross indecency with male servants and other male persons and has been guilty of sodomy … throughout the married life … the respondent habitually committed acts of gross indecency with certain of his male servants.”  Tipped-off (then as now, the establishment had a "gay network"), his lordship promptly decamped, first to Germany which then would have seemed a prudent choice because, although homosexual acts between men had been illegal since the unification of Germany in 1871, under the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), enforcement was rare and a gay culture flourished blatantly in the larger German cities, the Berlin scene famous even then, the writer Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) describing things memorably although it wasn't until his diaries were later published one fully could "read between the lines".  After the Nazis gained power in 1933, things changed and Beauchamp contemplated satisfying George V’s assumption but was dissuaded, instead spending his time between Paris, Venice, Sydney and San Francisco, four cities with a tolerant sub-culture and certainly places where wealthy gay men usually could bribe their way out of any legal unpleasantness.

Sir Robert Menzies in uniform as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

Sir Robert Menzies (1894–1978; prime-minister of Australia 1939-1941 & 1949-1966) was one of the more improbable appointments as lord warden.  In the office (1965-1978), he replaced Sir Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) on whom the hardly onerous duties had been imposed in 1941.  The old soldier Churchill had spent a lifetime appearing in a variety of military uniforms (his RAF (Royal Air Force) Air Commodore's outfit adorned with "pilot's wings" (aviator badge), "awarded" by the RAF on the basis of flying lessons (concluded after a non-fatal crash) he'd undertaken at the Royal Naval Flying School at Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey while serving as First Lord of the Admiralty (1911-1915)) and wore it well but the very civilian Menzies looked something like one of the characters from a Gilbert & Sullivan (Sir William Gilbert (1836–1911) & Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) comic opera.  That he was made lord warden rather than being granted a peerage was thought by some emblematic of the changing relationship between the UK and Australia.

After the death of George V, the warrant for Beauchamp’s arrest was lifted and, in July 1937, he returned to England.  What did come as a surprise to many was that soon after his arrival, invitations were issued for a Beauchamp ball, ostensibly a coming-of-age celebration for Richard Lygon (1916-1970; the youngest son) but universally regarded as an attempt at a social resurrection.  In a sign of the times, much of London society did attend although there were those who declined and made it known why.  Still, it seems to have appeared a most respectable and even successful event, Henry "Chips" Channon (1897-1958) noting in his diary it was a bit dull, the “only amusing moment when Lord Beauchamp escorted… a negress cabaret singer into supper.  People were cynically amused but I was not surprised, knowing of his secret activities in Harlem.  It is never a long step from homosexuality to black ladies.”  Lord Beauchamp didn’t long enjoy his return to society, dying within a year of the ball but the vicissitudes of his life were helpful to Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) when writing Brideshead Revisited (1945), the character of Lord Marchmain based on Beauchamp himself while the ill-fated Sebastian Flyte was inspired by Beauchamp’s son Hugh (1904-1936) who shared and (with some enthusiasm) pursued some of his father’s interests.  Despite it all, an appointment as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports is for life and Lord Beauchamp remained in office until his death.