art terms 2

Still Life

Still Life

a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural or man-made.

Landscape

the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.

Figure

A figure drawing is a drawing of the human form in any of its various shapes and postures using any of the drawing media. The term can also refer to the act of producing such a drawing. The degree of representation may range from highly detailed renderings to loose and expressive sketches.

Portrait

a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography, a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer.

Lithography

a planographic printmaking process in which a design is drawn onto a flat stone and affixed by means of a chemical reaction. Lithography is a printing process that uses a flat stone on which the image areas are worked using a greasy substance so that the ink will adhere to them by, while the non-image areas are made ink-repellent.

Serigraphy (silkscreen printing)

a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil.

Etching

traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design incised in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types of material. As a method of printmaking, it is one of the most important techniques for old master prints, and remains in wide use today.

Linolium Print

a printmaking technique, a variant of woodcut in which a sheet of linoleum is used for a relief surface. A design is cut into the linoleum surface with a sharp knife with the raised (uncarved) areas representing a reversal (mirror image) of the parts to show printed. The linoleum sheet is inked with a roller, and then impressed onto paper or fabric. Printing can be done by hand or with a printing press.

Wood Print

is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is created by carving a wooden block to leave only some areas and lines at the original level; it is these that are inked and show in the print, in a relief printing process. Carving the blocks is skilled and laborious work, but a large number of impressions can then be printed.

Architecture

the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings or other structures. The term comes from Latin architectura. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols and as works of art. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements.

Photography

the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed in many fields of science, manufacturing, and business, as well as its more direct uses for art, film and video production, recreational purposes, hobby, and mass communication.

Modernism

a movement in the arts in the first half of the twentieth century that rejected traditional values and techniques, and emphasized the importance of individual experience. The terms modernism and modern art are generally used to describe the succession of art movements that critics and historians have identified since the realism of Gustav Courbet and culminating in abstract art and its developments in the 1960s.

Post-Modernism

As a philosophy, it rejects concepts of rationality, objectivity, and universal truth. Instead, it emphasizes the diversity of human experience and multiplicity of perspectives. Postmodern art rejected the traditional values of modernism, and instead embraced experimentation with new media and art forms including intermedia, installation art, conceptual art, multimedia, performance art, and identity politics.

Abstract Art

comes from a Latin word meaning “pulled away, detached” and the basic idea is of something detached from physical, or concrete, reality. It is frequently used of ideas, meaning that they don’t have a clear applicability to real life, and of art, meaning that it doesn’t pictorially represent reality. Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.

Expressionism

a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionism refers to art in which the image of reality is distorted in order to make it expressive of the artist's inner feelings or ideas.