Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An ancient Greek mystery religion arising in the sixth century BC from a synthesis of pre-Hellenic beliefs with the Thracian cult of Zagreus and soon becoming mingled with the Eleusinian mysteries and the doctrines of Pythagoras.
  • noun A short-lived movement in early 20th-century painting, derived from cubism but marked by a lyrical style and the use of bold color.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The mystical system of life and worship embodied in the Orphic poems and practised and inculcated in the Orphic mysteries. See Orphic.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun A religious movement in antiquity, supposed to have been founded by Orpheus.
  • proper noun art A minor Cubist art movement focusing on pure abstraction and bright colours.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French orphisme, from Orphée, Orpheus, from Greek Orpheus.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Orpheus +‎ -ism; art sense coined by Guillaume Apollinaire.

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Examples

  • Mr. Weightman is right about the renunciation of hermitism, to an extent (what Artaud rejects has been more usually titled Orphism), but Artaud's move is to Dionysius, from herald or singer to participant.

    A Wearying Task Schaff, David S. Stevens 1968

  • Finally, you have assemblages of lines that do not draw anything, even cubes or triangles; and we are assured that there is now a newest school of all, called Orphism, which, finding still some vestiges of intelligibility in any assemblage of lines, reduces everything to shapeless blotches.

    Artist and Public And Other Essays On Art Subjects Kenyon Cox 1887

  • Greek Religion (not just the sections on Orphism and Dionysos), Walter Burkert

    2008 December « paper fruit 2008

  • Greek Religion (not just the sections on Orphism and Dionysos), Walter Burkert

    the list « paper fruit 2008

  • If our amalgam of shamanistic Orphism, Enthusiasm, and Gnosticism can mask so successfully as Christianity, why cannot it as adroitly impersonate Buddhism and Hinduism?

    ‘The American Religion’ 2007

  • Nyx, both associated with Orphism and very significant in that particular Greek religion.

    While we're on astronomy... 2006

  • The elusive connection between Orphism and Pythagoreanism rears its head with Brontinus, since the fourth-century author, Epigenes, reports that Brontinus is supposed to be the real author of two works circulating in the name of Orpheus (West 1983, 9 ff.).

    Pythagoreanism Huffman, Carl 2006

  • Muller (1922-1958) absorbed the lessons of precedent-Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Orphism and the quiddities of the unclassifiable Paul Klee-with determination and fidelity.

    Allusive, Eccentric Complex: A Different Kind of de Kooning 2004

  • Muller (1922-1958) absorbed the lessons of precedent-Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Orphism and the quiddities of the unclassifiable Paul Klee-with determination and fidelity.

    Allusive, Eccentric Complex: A Different Kind of de Kooning 2004

  • Muller (1922-1958) absorbed the lessons of precedent-Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Orphism and the quiddities of the unclassifiable Paul Klee-with determination and fidelity.

    Currently Hanging 2004

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