Review Flashcards on Modern Art

Flashcards to help review key vocabulary and concepts related to Modern Art.

Modernism

A broad cultural, artistic, and intellectual movement that emerged in the late 19th century, reflecting a break from traditional forms and values.

Modern Art

The visual expression of Modernism, encompassing a wide variety of styles and movements committed to innovation and experimentation while rejecting historical conventions.

Avant-Garde

Artists who critique bourgeois culture and explore political themes through their art.

Subjectivity

A focus on individual perception and inner experience, rather than absolute truths.

Autonomy of Art

The principle that art does not need to serve a moral, religious, or utilitarian purpose.

Ruskin-Whistler Conflict

A famous art controversy highlighting the divide between traditional (Ruskin) and modern (Whistler) aesthetics regarding the nature, purpose, and value of art.

Art for Art's Sake

The idea that art should be valued for its aesthetic qualities, independent of narrative or morality, championed by James Whistler.

Neo-Classicism

A revival of classical art and culture, emphasizing order, harmony, and rationality, that contributed formal principles to modern art.

Romanticism

An emphasis on emotion, imagination, and individualism that anticipated Expressionism and Symbolism.

Realism

The depiction of everyday life and ordinary people with honesty and objectivity, introducing social and political themes into art.

Symbolism

Art as a reflection of inner truths, dreams, myths, and metaphysical ideas, anticipating Surrealism and abstract art.

The Mask (Modernism)

A metaphor symbolizing performance, concealment, and identity used by modernist artists to explore the split between inner self and outward persona.

The Laboratory (Modernism)

A metaphor representing modern art as a scientific or exploratory activity, emphasizing formal innovation over traditional beauty or narrative.

The Machine (Modernism)

A metaphor symbolizing modernity, industrialization, and mechanical precision, highlighting the tension between human and technology.

The Garden (Modernism)

A metaphor representing the artist’s private, symbolic world—a contrast to the external chaos of modern life—focusing on introspection, dreams, myths, and spirituality.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB)

A group of English artists and writers who rejected academic standards, seeking the purity and detail of early Renaissance painting.

Truth to Nature

The Pre-Raphaelite motto emphasizing faithful, detailed observation of the natural world.

Symbolism

Sought to express the inner world—dreams, fantasies, emotions, and the spiritual realm—rather than external reality.

The Nabis

A group that believed art should be decorative, spiritual, and convey subjective emotion.

Barbizon School

A group of painters who settled in Barbizon to paint nature directly, considered early Realists and proto-Impressionists.

Heliography

The process used by Nicéphore Niépce to create the first permanent photograph.

Daguerreotype

An early photographic process that produced a single, highly detailed image on a silver-plated copper sheet.

Calotype

A photographic process that used paper negatives, allowing multiple prints from one negative.

Cyanotype

A photographic process that produced blue-toned prints using ferric compounds, often used for scientific documentation.

Impressionism

An art movement that began in France in the 1860s and 1870s focusing on the fleeting, subjective experience of vision—light, movement, and atmosphere.

En Plein Air

The practice of painting outdoors to capture natural light and atmosphere, embraced by the Barbizon School and later the Impressionists.

Japonisme

The influence of Japanese prints on Western art, particularly on composition, color, and line in Impressionist works.

Pointillism

A technique using tiny, distinct dots of color that blend optically in the viewer's eye to create vibrant color and light effects.

Neo-Impressionism

The use of scientific color theory and pointillism to create structured, vivid paintings.

Post-Impressionism

Diverse, expressive styles using symbolic color, emotional brushwork, and non-naturalistic form.