Culture, Art, and Aesthetic Values in Western Civilisation Vocabulary

Flashcards covering key vocabulary from the lecture notes on culture, art, and aesthetic values in Western civilization

Aesthetics

A set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty.

Art

The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

Culture

‘Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.’ Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture.

Linear Perspective

A system invented by Brunelleschi to render distance in a scientifically measurable way, by observing that all parallel lines running into space at right angles to the ‘window’ will seem to converge on a central vanishing point at the viewer’s eye-level.

Orthogonals

The lines that provide a geometrical network defining pictorial space in linear perspective.

Fresco

A technique where paint is applied on fresh (fresco) damp plaster, with which the soluble earth pigments unite chemically as it dries, fixing the colors and lending them a unique transparency.

Sfumato

vague, indefinite, hazy – blurred edges.

Chiaroscuro

contrast of light and dark

Perspective

Artists use perspective to represent three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface (a piece of paper or canvas) in a way that looks natural and realistic.

Tenebrism

A style of painting characterized by high contrast between light and shade — emphasis placed on chiaroscuro to achieve dark, dramatic effects