History of Art - Spring 2024: Post-Impressionism to Futurism

These flashcards cover vocabulary and core concepts from the Spring 2024 History of Art lecture on Post-Impressionism through Futurism, focusing on key artists like Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, and Kandinsky.

Motif

A pattern within a work of art.

Realization of the motif

The act of achieving a pattern through the use of colors and textures.

Equivalence

A comparison or substitution in art, such as painting a face as a wallpaper pattern or representing a woman as a coffee pot.

Stephan Mallarme's Dictum

The principle to paint not the thing itself but the effect it produces.

Multiple view points

The technique of using parallel and high viewpoints simultaneously to represent the duration of time passing.

Arbitrary colors

The use of colors that are not descriptive or imitative, but chosen to express "terrible passions" or specific emotions.

Glazing

A painting technique using layers of color, such as red over yellow or black glazed with red, to create depth or emphasize an aura of fear and anxiety.

The Frieze of Life

A series of paintings by Edvard Munch that winds through themes of love, anxiety, and death.

Les fauves

A phrase meaning "wild beasts" used by critic Louis Vauxcelles to describe the exaggerated and arbitrary use of color by artists like Henri Matisse.

Fauvism

An art movement characterized by "wild" use of color, aesthetic moods, and a break away from Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism.

Aesthetic moods

The emotions an artist has while painting, those discovered through painting, or the mood generated through the creative act of making art.

Abstraction

Art that is non-representational or non-objective, reducing content to color, line, and texture.

Expressionism

A term coined by Wilhelm Worringer referring to the use of the language of art (color, line, texture) to express content.

Art of Empathy

According to Wilhelm Worringer, a form of realism associated with a perception of the world as safe and inhabitable for humanity.

Urform

Essential lines that express the essence of life or living, such as jagged lines used to represent pain or balance in the body.

Animalization

The interpenetration of an animal with space, often used by Franz Marc to imagine how nature is reflected in the eyes of an animal.

Synesthesia

The mixing of different senses in art, where sounds evoke colors and colors produce a spiritual vibration.

Suprematism

An art movement founded by Kazimir Malevich that seeks the rediscovery of pure art and the feeling of nonobjectivity.

Plastic reality

A concept by Piet Mondrian involving a 3-D reality created through straight lines and primary colors that appear to recede and advance.

Supreme language

The structure of the world represented through vertical and horizontal lines, black and white structures, and primary colors.

Analytical cubism

The analysis of the fourth dimension and the simultaneity of a figure within space.

Synthetic cubism

A style of cubism where one part stands for the whole, often utilizing collage and the assemblage of different materials.

Collage

A work of art made from an assemblage of different materials like rope, glass, paper, and cloth.

Futurism

An art movement that emphasizes vibration, flux, and the simultaneous interpenetration of dynamic forms with their environment.

Dynamism

The interpenetration of a form with its spatial envelope, often depicted through wing-like displacements or helical shapes.