Art, Society, and Culture | Fall 2026 Exam 2

NOT FINISHED.

Chiaroscuro

The use of light and dark in a painting to create the impression of volume.

One-point Perspective

A perspective system with a single vanishing point on the horizon.

Two-point Perspective

A perspective system with two vanishing points on the horizon.

Orthogonals

Imaginary sightlines in perspective systems extending from forms to the vanishing point.

Fresco

A painting technique in which the artist paints onto freshly applied plaster.

Lamentation Scenes

Scenes depicting the grief over Christ’s death and suffering as recounted in Christian belief and tradition.

Pieta (Christian)

Forms created to represent the agony of death, grief, and torture that Jesus and other Christian idols went through.

Last Supper

A depiction of Christ sharing a last meal with his disciples before his crucifixion.

Protestant Reformation

A religious and political movement that split the Church between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Eucharist

A communion ceremony.

Baroque

A Western style of art that originated in Rome, Italy.

Realism

The accurate, detailed, and unembellished depiction of nature or contemporary life.

Fin de Siècle

French for “end of the century”, a period that described the cultural, social, and artistic climate of Europe.

Enlightenment

A historical period in which reason was prized above faith, liberty above oppression, and a movement to secure equal rights for all men.

Neo-classicism

A period/movement in which old principles, aesthetics, and values of ancient Rome and Greece were revived.

Romanticism

A movement concerned with the power of imagination and greatly valuing intense feeling.

Academic Art

A style of painting and sculpture taught and promoted by official European art academies.

Modernism

A radical art and architectural movement that embraced modern industrial materials and a machine aesthetic.

Impressionism

A style conveying the fleeting impression of the effect of lights.

Post-Impressionism

A styled that moved away from its past and more towards modernism and cubism.

Die Brucke

A German Expressionist movement with the aim of defying anything Classical and using art as a bridge between the past, present, and a utopian future.

Der Blau Reiter

A German Expressionist movement, used abstract forms to suggest a spiritual content as a contrast to corruption and materialism of the times.

Fauvism

A movement that emphasized bold, exaggerated colors and simplified forms to favor creative expression over accuracy.

Cubism

A movement and style in which perspective with a single viewpoint was abandoned and use was made of simple geometric shapes, interlocking planes and collages.

Abstraction

The degree to which an image is altered from an easily recognizable subject.

Non-objectivity

Art that does not depict a recognizable object.

Platonic Forms

Plato’s view on visual art and poetry as a “copy of a copy”, three steps removed from ultimate truth and reality.

Abstract Expressionism

A style characterized by its capacity to convey intense emotions using non-representational images.

Surealism

A movement in which art was a model for human freedom, meaning, and creativity in an absurd world.

Action Painting

The application of paint to canvas by dripping, splashing, or smearing that emphasizes the artist’s gestures.

Pop Art

A movement inspired by commercial art forms and popular culture.