airbrush

A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art

airbrush. An instrument for spraying paint or varnish by means of compressed air. It looks rather like an outsize fountain pen and is held in a similar fashion, the pressure of the forefinger on a lever regulating the air supply. It can be controlled so as to give large areas of flat colour, delicate gradations, or a fine mist. Originally the air compressors used to power the brushes were cumbersome, noisy, and expensive, but modern versions are quiet and portable; small cans of compressed air can also be used, but these are not suitable for prolonged use. The airbrush was invented by Charles Burdick, an American watercolour painter, who patented it in England in 1893 and in the same year set up a manufacturing firm called The Fountain Brush Company. In 1900 he founded the Aerograph Company, and the tradename Aerograph was for many years used as a general term for airbrushes (like Biro for ballpoints); Man Ray called paintings he did with an airbrush ‘aerographs’. In the early 20th century airbrushes were used mainly for photographic retouching, and their principal use is now in commercial art. Artists who have made distinctive use of them in this field include the British designer Abram Games (1914–96), who created many memorable posters for the War Office during the Second World War, and the Peruvian-born Alberto Vargas (1896–1982), whose pictures of pin-up girls appeared regularly in Playboy magazine from 1960 to 1978. Airbrushes are also used by painters such as Hard-Edge abstractionists and Superrealists who require a very smooth, impersonal finish.

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© A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art 1999, originally published by Oxford University Press 1999.

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