APAH - Early 20th c. Art Identifiers and Vocab

“A House is a Machine for Living In”

a phrase coined by Le Corbusier, indicating his belief about the essence of modern architecture – that a house should be modern, technological and efficient

Abstraction

Works of art reduced to basic forms with little or no desire for pictorial representation

Cantilever

a projecting beam that is attached to a building at one end and suspends outward beyond the edge of the building

Documentary photography

Chronicled significant historical events or scenes from everyday life; typically related to photojournalism

Ferroconcrete

reinforced concrete

Fin de siècle

French for “end of an era”; end of 19th c. to 1914 in Europe; age of growing wealth but anxiety about political tensions

Found objects

Images, materials, or objects as found in the everyday environment that are incorporated into works of art

Gouache

opaque watercolor, as opposed to transparent watercolor

Harlem Renaissance

a rich period of cultural production for African Americans; celebrated their heritage, culture, and redefined artistic forms of expression

Mural

large scale frescoes in Mexico; depicted non-European heroes and socially relevant messages

Pilotis

slender columns with no ornamentation

Primitivism

artistic inspiration from “primitive” “unadvanced” “simple” non-western cultures

Photogravure

a technique to copy a negative (technically, this is a print); used to capture middle tones on the value scale

Photomontage

process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs

Ready-mades

a commonplace object selected and exhibited as a work of art

Ribbon windows

slender, long, streamlined window panes

The Kiss

Fallingwater

Villa Savoye

Goldfish

Self-Portrait as a Soldier

Improvisation 28

Memorial Sheet for Karl Liebknecht

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

The Portuguese

Illustration from The Results of the First Five-Year Plan

Object

The Two Fridas

The Jungle

Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park

Fountain

Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow

The Kiss

The Steerage

The Migration of the Negro, Panel no. 49