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For definitions that might
be on the test, see the bottom of the first page
of each chapter in the book. The Study Guides
will tell you
exactly what to study.
DEFINITIONS OF ART
Abstract Expressionism
In 1946 a style of painting emerged in
New York that was spontaneous, painterly, free,
and energetic. Emotions were its subject matter.
It was the first American movement to achieve
worldwide influence, and placed New York City at
the center of the art world - a role formerly
filled by Paris. Its artists include: Wassily
Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning,
and Arshile Gorky.
Balance
A
basic principle in art, it refers to the way the
art elements are arranged to create a feeling of
equilibrium or stability in a work. Balance can
be symmetrical (formal), or it can be
asymmetrical (informal).
Baroque art
A
seventeenth European style of art and
architecture that is highly elaborate,
ornamented, dramatic, and grandiose.
Chiaroscuro
Dramatic lighting and shadows.
Color
An element of art with three properties:
(1) hue, the color name, for example, red,
yellow, blue; (2) intensity, the brightness and
purity of a color, for example, bright red or
dull red; and (3) value, the lightness or
darkness of a color
Contour line
A
line that surrounds and defines the edges of an
object or figure.
Contrapposto
A
way of sculpting a human figure in a natural
pose with the weight of one leg, the shoulder,
and hips counterbalancing each other.
Contrast
A
principle of art that differentiates one thing
from another, differences between elements,
opposites, unlikeness, or dissimilarity.
Cool Colors
Blue, violet, and green.
Cubism
A
twentieth-century art movement developed by
Picasso and Braque. All sides of
three-dimensional objects are displayed. The
subject matter is disassembled, analyzed, and
reassembled. Subjects are also integrated in the
background, and cannot be removed from the
space, or room for example, while leaving the
space intact.
The first cubist painting (Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon) was painted by Pablo Picasso.
Dada
It began in Zürich Switzerland in 1916 as a
reaction to World War I. They believed that
“Destruction is also creation." Dada can best be
defined as art without rules. It focuses on the
absurdity of existence, irrationality, is
countercultural, controversial, and shocking.
Dry media
Drawing or painting media that are
applied dry. These include: pencil, pastels,
charcoal, crayons, and chalk.
Elements of art
The elements of art can include: point, color,
value, line, shape, form, texture, and space.
Emotionalism
With abstract expressionism the subjects of the
painting are intense emotions and energy. With
emotionalism the motive of the work
is to produce intense emotions in the
viewer.
Emphasis
A
point of interest in a work of art.
Expressionism
(1905-20)
A twentieth-century German art movement. Its
main purpose was to elicit emotions. They
distorted reality, used vivid colors, and think
textures. Expressionism is exhibited in many art
forms, including painting, literature, theatre,
film, architecture, and music. El Greco’s
paintings anticipated this movement.
Fauvism
(1905–1907)
The leaders of the movement were Henri
Matisse and André Derain in France. The
works emphasized painterly qualities and strong
color over representational or realistic values.
Form
Form is an element in art. These are
three-dimensional shapes such as spheres or
cubes.
Gesso
A
mixture of glue and plaster to create a surface
for painting.
Gradation
A
principle of art that refers to gradual changes.
Giclée (zhee-clay)
The printing process of sprayed ink. Computer
printers use this technology.
Harmony
In music harmony refers simultaneously pitches
or chords. It also refers to sounds that are
pleasing.
In the visual arts, harmony results when the
parts of a picture combine to create a sense of
wholeness. This is usually achieved by
similarity and repetition.
Hue
The name of a color: red, blue, yellow, green,
brown etc..
Impressionism
This style of
painting and music started in France during the
1860's. Claude
Monet (1840 –1926) was a founder of the movement
in painting. The name comes from the title of
his painting Impression Sunrise.
Characteristics of Impressionist painting
include bold visible brush strokes, emphasis on
light, ordinary subject matter, and unusual
angles.
Intensity
It is the brightness of color, and is also
called saturation.
Line
A
continuous mark. Line can be two-dimensional
(drawing), three-dimensional (string), implied
(shapes that line up), or contour (edge or
outline).
Linear perspective
When, in
two-dimensional art, parallel lines
converge at a distance to what we call a
vanishing point, it creates the illusion of
depth.
Lithography
A
printing method invented by Alois Senefelder in
1796. A drawing using oil-based crayons is done
on a smooth flat stone or plate. When the plate
is washed, the grease drawing attracts the ink
to be printed, and the water repels the ink.
By contrast the intaglio printing plate is
engraved, etched, or stippled to make cavities
to contain the ink, and in woodblock printing
ink is applied to raised surfaces of letters or
images.
Mannerism
(1520 - 1600)
A period of European art that emerged from
the High Renaissance in Italy. It is focused on
the human form, uses distorted elongated
figures, uses exaggerated colors and
proportions, and is more emotional. It was
replaced by the Baroque style. Michelangelo and
Raphael are both mannerists.
Medium
The materials used in an artwork.
Mobile
Invented by American artist Alexander Calder,
these kinetic sculptures hang objects off of
arms that are balanced and suspended from the
ceiling.
Monochromatic
One color
Mosaic
Mosaic is the art of creating images with small
pieces of colored glass, stone, tiles, or
fragments of pottery.
Movement
A
principle of art, is a way of combining elements
to produce the look of action or to cause the
viewer's eye to sweep over the work in a certain
manner.
A movement is a style of art, architecture, or
literature that has a shared philosophy, goals,
and a following of artists. In music it is more
common to speak about genres and styles.
Movement also refers to how the artwork causes
the eye to travel around the work.
Mural
A mural is a painting on a wall, ceiling, or
other large permanent surface.
Neoclassicism
(1750-1880)
A French revival of earlier classical Greek and
Roman art. It was a reaction against the Baroque
era.
Nonobjective
Abstract art that is without reference to
objects from reality.
Painterly
A
painting is painterly when there are visible
brush strokes, rough textures, a spontaneous,
and free use of paint. The Impressionists and
Abstract Expressionists are examples of
painterly movements.
The opposite of painterly is linear. Pop Art and
photo-realism are examples of linear syyles.
They emphasize flatness, smooth, and subdued
brushstrokes. The Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein
rejected painterliness by created images of
brush strokes, rendered with comic book style
colors, and Ben-day dots.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Day_dots
Parable
A parable is a brief, succinct story, in prose
or verse, that illustrates a moral or religious
lesson. It differs from a fable in that fables
use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and
forces of nature as characters, while parables
generally feature human characters.
Pastel
Pastel is an art medium in the form of a stick.
It consists of powdered pigment and a binder.
The pigments used in pastels are the same as
those used to produce all colored art media -
including oil paints.
Perspective
The illusion of depth or distance in
two-dimensional artwork. There are three types
of perspective: linear, atmospheric, and
shifting.
With linear perspective parallel lines appear to
converge at a distance. The point where they
converge is called the vanishing point.
Atmospheric perspective, also called aerial
perspective, creates the illusion of depth by
making the background or distant objects less
detailed. As an object recedes into the
background, the atmosphere defuses the light;
its contrast with the background is reduced; its
color fades, and it becomes bluer.
Shifting perspective appears in Chinese
landscapes. The foreground of the painting is
separate from the background. The foreground is
detailed, and stretches to the middle ground –
where a vast space appears.
Photo-Realism
Art the is rendered so realistically that it
appears to be a photograph.
Pigment
Powders, called pigments, are used in paint.
They absorb certain wavelengths of light, and
reflect other wavelengths. The wavelengths that
are reflected give the paint its color. Black
absorbs all the wavelengths while white reflects
all visible wavelengths of light.
Plane
Same as surface.
Pop Art
Pop art is a visual art movement that emerged in
the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1960s
in the United States. Pop art rejected
traditional art - especially abstract
expressionism, and presented
mass-produced products from popular culture as
acceptable objects of Fine Art since it removes
the objects from their context, and isolates
them for contemplation. It featured images from
comic strips, magazine ads, and supermarket
products. Pop artists include: Andy Warhol, Roy
Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Claes
Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, and George Segal.
Portrait
A
portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture,
or other artistic representation of a person, in
which the face and its expression is
predominant. The intent is to display the
likeness, personality, and mood of the person.
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the
British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910
to describe the development of French art since
Manet. Post-Impressionists extended
Impressionism while rejecting its limitations:
they continued using vivid colours, thick
application of paint, distinctive brushstrokes
and real-life subject matter, but they were more
inclined to emphasize geometric forms, to
distort form for expressive effect, and to use
unnatural or arbitrary color.
Primary colors
Red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors.
From them you can make all other colors.
Principals of art
The principles of art are rules that help us
judge a work. The principles are movement,
unity, variety, balance, emphasis, contrast,
proportion, and pattern.
Proportion
Proportion is
the
principle of art concerned with the size of
objects in relationship to other objects. The
drawing by Leonardo da Vinci shows the
proportions of the human face.
Realism
A
mid-nineteenth-century style of art in which subjects are
depicted as they appear in everyday life.
In theatre realism is a movement towards
depicting real life.
Regionalism
Regionalism is an American realist movement that
was popular during the depression of the 1930s.
They shunned city life and technological
advances, and depicted scenes of rural life.
Some regionalist artists are: Grant Wood, Thomas
Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry.
Renaissance
A
revival or rebirth of cultural awareness and
learning that took place during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, particularly in Italy
Renaissance Man
A Renaissance Man, or polymath, is well educated
in a wide variety of subjects or fields. The
basic tenets of Renaissance Humanism considered
man empowered, limitless in capacities for
development, and led to the notion that people
should embrace all knowledge, and develop their
capacities as fully as possible. Thus people of
the Renaissance sought to develop skills in all
areas of knowledge, physical development, and
the arts.
Repetition
A
principle of art, also known as pattern or
rhythm, repetition is consistency, the repeating
of elements and patterns that bring movement to
the work.
Rhythm
Pattern and rhythm (also known as repetition) is
consistency with colors and lines. Putting a red
spiral at the bottom left and top right, for
example will cause the eye to move from one
spiral to the other. It is indicating movement
by the repetition of elements. Rhythm makes an
artwork seem active.
Rococo art
An eighteenth-century style of art in Europe. It
succeeded the Baroque style, but is also very
elaborate.
Romanticism
Romanticism is a complex artistic, literary,
musical, and intellectual movement that
originated in the second half of the 18th
century in Western Europe. It was a revolt
against aristocratic norms. It stressed emotions
as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new
emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror
and awe.
Screen printing
A
printing process that pushes ink through a
screen.
Secondary colors
Secondary colors are made by mixing two primary
colors together. The secondary colors are:
Orange - made by mixing red and yellow
Green - made by mixing blue and yellow
Violet - made by mixing blue and red
Shape
Shape is an element of art. It is
two-dimensional with height, width, and an
outline. Forms are three-dimensional.
Sketch
A
hurried rough drawing.
Solvent
A
chemical used to dilute paint.
Space
An element of art. Positive space is the space
occupied by objects. Negative space is the
distance between objects. Nothing exists without
it. Space can be thought of as the distance or
area around, between, above, below or within
places. In art, space can be described as either
two-dimensional or three-dimensional.
Still life
A
painting, drawing, or sculpture of a setting of
food, plants, and other ordinary objects.
Style
The common characteristics of an artist's own
original work or a group’s work.
Surrealism
The surrealism movement began in the 1920s, and
was concentrated in Paris. It stresses subject
matter taken from the subconscious mind, dreams,
and creative fantasies. Surrealist works also
feature the element of surprise and unexpected
juxtapositions. It is a revolutionary movement -
developed out of Dadaism of World War I. The
movement spread worldwide, and influenced the
visual arts, literature, film, and music.
Symmetry
A balanced mirrored image.
Tempera
A
paint that is mage by mixing pigments with egg
yolks or whites.
Texture
Texture can be either real or perceived. Tactile
texture is how an artwork actually feels while
implied texture is how an artwork appears to
feel.
Unity
A
principle of art, unity or harmony is the
quality of wholeness that is achieved through
the effective use of the elements and principles
of art. It is the arrangement of elements and
principles to create a feeling of completeness.
Value
The lightness or darkness of color.
Vanishing point
With linear perspective parallel lines appear to
converge at a distance. The point where they
converge is called the vanishing point.
Variety
Variety is the quality of having different forms
or types. The differences give a design visual
and conceptual interest: notably use of
contrast, emphasis, difference in size and
color.
Volume
The space inside a three-dimensional form.
Warm colors
Warm colors are the different shades of red,
yellow and orange. They convey the feeling of
warmth.
Wet media
Media that are applied wet. This includes paint
and ink.
Woodcut or Woodblock printing
The negative image is engraved in wood; Ink is
applied to the raised surfaces, and the block is
pressed onto paper.
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