Art History and Visual Arts Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering core concepts, visual elements, design principles, media, and methods in art history based on the lecture slides.

Cultural Diversity

The quality of diverse or different cultures as opposed to monoculture, referring also to mutual respect between cultures or the variety of human societies in a specific region.

Work of Art

The visual expression of an idea or experience formed with skill through the use of a medium.

Medium

A particular material, along with its accompanying technique, used to create art (plural: media).

Mixed Media

Art made with a combination of different materials.

Representational Art

Descriptive of a work of art that depicts forms in the natural world.

Abstract Art

Descriptive of art in which the forms of the visual world are purposefully simplified, fragmented, or otherwise distorted.

Nonrepresentational Art

Also called nonobjective; descriptive of art that does not represent or otherwise refer to the visible world outside itself.

Aesthetics

The branch of philosophy concerned with the feelings aroused in us by sensory experiences such as seeing and hearing, examining the nature of art and beauty.

Wabi

A concept central to Zen aesthetics that embraces naturalness, simplicity, understatement, and impermanence.

Sabi

A concept central to Zen aesthetics that adds overtones of loneliness, old age, and tranquility.

Installation Art

An art form in which a space is presented or modified as a work of art that can be entered, explored, experienced, and reflected upon.

Vanitas

Latin for 'vanity'; alludes to the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes as a meditation on the fleeting nature of earthly life and happiness.

Bodhisattvas

In Buddhism, enlightened or spiritually advanced beings who defer their ultimate goal of nirvana in order to help others attain enlightenment.

Visual Elements

The elements perceived and responded to when looking at a work's form, including line, color, light, shape and mass, texture and pattern, space, time, and motion.

Palette

The wooden board on which artists set out pigments, or the range of pigments selected by an artist for a work or characteristically.

Hue

The name of a color according to the categories of the color wheel.

Color Harmonies

Also known as color schemes; the selective use of two or more colors in a single composition.

Monochromatic Color Scheme

Color harmonies composed of variations on the same hue, often with differences of value and intensity.

Complementary Color Scheme

Color harmonies involving colors directly opposite each other on the color wheel, such as red and green or blue and orange.

Chiaroscuro

Italian for 'light/dark'; the technique of employing values to record contrasts of light and shadow in the natural world to model three-dimensional mass.

Hatching

Areas of closely spaced parallel lines used to create value in drawing or printmaking.

Cross Hatching

Darker values achieved through additional sets of parallel lines laid across an initial set of parallel lines.

Stippling

A technique where areas of dots average out through optical color mixing into values, appearing darker where dots are densely placed.

Shape

A two-dimensional form that occupies an area with identifiable boundaries.

Mass

A three-dimensional form that occupies a volume of space.

Figure and Ground

Figure is a shape detached and focused on; ground is the surrounding visual background that the figure stands out from.

Positive Shapes

The shapes in a visual composition that are perceived as figures.

Negative Shapes

The shapes in a visual composition that form the background or ground.

Texture

The surface quality of a work of art—a perception of smooth or rough, flat or bumpy, fine or coarse.

Pattern

Any decorative, repetitive motif or design, which can create visual texture.

Principles of Design

The guidelines for making compositional decisions in designing a work of art, including unity and variety, balance, emphasis and subordination, scale and proportion, and rhythm.

Unity

A sense of oneness, of things belonging together and making up a coherent whole in a work of art.

Variety

Difference within a work of art, which provides visual interest.

Visual Weight

The apparent heaviness or lightness of forms arranged in a composition, gauged by how insistently they draw the viewer's eye.

Mandala

From Sanskrit for 'circle'; a diagram of a cosmic realm used to focus meditation with the goal of achieving enlightenment.

Symmetrical Balance

A composition in which forms mirror each other across a central imaginary axis dividing the artwork in half.

Asymmetrical Balance

A composition that achieves visual equilibrium despite having two sides that do not match.

Emphasis and Subordination

Complementary concepts where emphasis draws attention to certain parts of a composition while subordination purposefully makes other areas less visually interesting.

Scale

Size in relation to a standard or expected 'normal' size.

Proportion

Size relationships between parts of a whole object or figure.

Hierarchical Scale

The use of scale to indicate the relative importance of figures or elements in an artwork.

Rhythm

A principle of design based on repetition that structures visual elements in a composition.

Dry Media

A category of drawing tools including graphite, charcoal, crayon, pastel, and chalk.

Liquid Media

A category of drawing tools that includes pen and ink as well as brush and ink.

Collage

From the French for 'pasting' or 'gluing'; artwork made by pasting or piecing together bits of paper, photographs, or other materials onto a backing.

Fresco

A wall painting technique where pigments mixed with water are applied to a plaster support, such as a wall or ceiling.

Gouache

Watercolor paint with inert white pigment added, drying quickly and uniformly into flat, saturated color.

Impasto

From the Italian for 'paste'; a thick application of paint to a surface.

Relief Printing

Any printing method in which the image to be printed is raised from a background, commonly executed in wood block carving.

Intaglio

From Italian 'to cut'; printmaking techniques where areas meant to print are below the surface of the plate, such as engraving, etching, and aquatint.

Etching

An intaglio printmaking process where lines and depressions are eaten into a metal plate using acids.

Lithography

A planographic printing process in which the printing surface is flat rather than raised or depressed.

Screenprinting

Also called silkscreen or serigraphy; a stencil technique where ink is forced through a fine mesh to transfer an image onto paper or fabric.

Memento Mori

From Latin meaning 'remember that you must die'; objects or artworks created as reminders of human mortality.

Camera Obscura

Latin for 'dark room'; an optical device projecting an inverted image through a small hole or lens, serving as a historical precursor to the modern camera.

Pure Photography

Also called straight photography; a practice where it is considered a point of honor not to crop or manipulate photographs in any way.

Machinima

From 'machine cinema'; an artistic practice where real-time computer-generated 3-D video from sources such as online games or virtual worlds is recorded and used as film material.

Internet Art

Also casually known as net art; art that uses the Internet as its medium.

Earthwork

A work of art made for a specific place using natural materials found there, especially the Earth itself.

Ceramics

Meaning 'of pottery'; the art of making objects from clay, a naturally occurring earth substance.

Weaving

A fiber technique involving placing two sets of parallel fibers (warp and weft) at right angles and interlacing them in an up-and-down movement on a loom or frame.