Art AcDec Vocabulary

art acdec vocab

Aesthetics

The philosophical inquiry into the nature and expression of beauty.

Art Criticism

The explanation of current art events to the general public via the press.

Art History

An academic discipline dedicated to the reconstruction of the social, cultural, and economic contexts in which an artwork was created.

Formal Analysis

Focuses on the visual qualities of the work of art itself.

Contextual Analysis

Involves looking outside of the work of art to determine its meaning, focusing on the cultural, social, religious, and economic context.

Patronage

The goals and intentions of the patron of the work of art.

Primitivism

When an artist, usually from an affluent, well-educated background, borrows from the artistic styles or techniques of a group they view as "other" than themselves.

Conceptual Art

Works that are more concerned with the concept, or the idea behind the art, than with fabrication, artistic technique, or representation.

Hierarchical Scale

A style that uses the status of figures or objects to determine their relative sizes within an artwork.

Post-Impressionism

Art movement where artists took various features of Impressionism in quite different directions.

Art Nouveau

A style of decoration, architecture, and design characterized by the depiction of leaves and flowers in flowing, sinuous lines.

Cubism

Art style developed by Picasso and Braque that broke down and analyzed form in new ways, often into multiple overlapping perspectives.

Expressionism

A highly charged attempt to make the inner workings of the mind visible in art.

Dada

An antiwar art movement that aimed to protest against everything in society and to lampoon and ridicule accepted values and norms.

Ready-Mades

Ordinary consumer products that an artist purchased, titled, and displayed in artistic spaces, transforming them from commodities into "art."

Surrealism

Art movement attempting to portray the inner workings of the mind, embracing strange juxtapositions, uncanny imagery, and chance encounters to unlock the viewer's unconscious mind.

Abstract Expressionism

Movement aiming at the direct presentation of feeling with an emphasis on dramatic colors and sweeping brushstrokes, free from pictorial subject matter.

Action Painting

A type of Abstract Expressionism that employed dramatic brushstrokes or Pollock's innovative dripping technique.

Color Field Paintings

A type of Abstract Expressionism that featured broad areas of color and simple, often geometric forms.

Pop Art

Art movement in the 1960s with the incorporation of images of mass culture.

Minimalism

Art movement that sought to reduce art to its barest essentials, emphasizing simplification of form and often featuring monochromatic palettes.

Photorealism

Art style that aimed to create a kind of super-realism or hyper-real quality through sharp focus, as in a photograph.

Earthworks/Land Art

A newer category of art form that is often large in scale, constructed on-site, and usually not permanent.

Performance Art

A combination of theater and art in which the artists themselves become the work; fleeting and transitory in nature.

Postmodernist Art

Art that arose in reaction to the modernist styles, tending to reintroduce traditional elements or to exaggerate modernist techniques.

Camp

An over-the-top or exaggerated quality that includes an ironic embrace of bad taste or tackiness.

Social History

An examination of how historical events interfaced with the lives of ordinary people.

Futurism

An early twentieth-century Italian movement focusing on speed, technology, modern life, and dynamism.

Precisionism

A hard-edged, photorealist painting style celebrating modern technology, prevalent in the 1920s.

Purism

A post-World War I French art movement stressing a return to basics of primary colors, simple shapes, and apparently solid forms.

Biomorphic Abstraction

Abstract work that takes forms from the natural world, incorporating references to the human body, plants, trees, water, or other landscape elements.

Geometric Abstraction

Abstract work that builds forms using primarily straight lines and rigid, simple shapes such as squares and triangles.

Abstraction

The artistic approach of departing from realistic representation.

High-Edge Painting

Term for the style achieved by minimalist painters using acrylic paint and the airbrush to create precise outlines.

Megaliths

"Great stones" of the New Stone Age, such as the arrangement found at Stonehenge.

Fractional Representation

Egyptian technique where the body is presented so that each part is shown as clearly as possible (e.g., head in profile with eye frontal).

Contrapposto

A pose in Greek sculpture where the standing figure shifts its weight onto one leg for a more relaxed, naturalistic appearance.

Doric

An early Greek column decorative style.

Ionic

An early Greek column decorative style.

Corinthian

A highly decorative column style, more popular in the Late Classical and later periods.

Fresco

A specialized painting technique, usually on walls or ceilings, where pure powdered pigments are mixed with water and applied to a wet plaster ground.

Buon Fresco

"True" fresco, where paint is applied to wet plaster and is permanently bound in the plaster.

Fresco Secco

Fresco technique where paints are applied to dry rather than wet plaster.

Linear Perspective

The mathematical technique developed during the Renaissance to create the illusion of space where lines recede and appear to converge at a vanishing point on the horizon.

Sfumato

An artistic technique using mellowed colors and a blurred outline, allowing forms to blend subtly without perceptible transitions.

Mannerism

An artistic style popular in the late sixteenth century characterized by the distortion of elements, acidic colors, and the twisted positioning of subjects.

Chiaroscuro

Dramatic contrasts of light and dark used to heighten the emotional impact of a subject, creating a theatrical lighting effect.

Baroque

Artworks produced from the late sixteenth century through the mid-eighteenth century, characterized by a greater sense of movement, energy, and richness of color/ornamentation.

Rococo

Art style of the eighteenth century, characterized by celebrations of gaiety, romance, and the frivolity of court life, using light-hearted decoration and pastel colors.

Neoclassicism

A style emerging in the decades leading up to the French Revolution, demonstrating a revival of interest in the art of classical Greece and Rome and stressing line, order, and detachment.

Romanticism

Art style that favored feeling over reason, tending to be highly imaginative, emotional, and characterized by exotic or melodramatic elements.

Realism

Art style illustrating all features of its subjects, including negative ones, and showing the lives of ordinary people as important subjects.

Impressionism

Art movement using rapid strokes and juxtaposing colors to capture rapidly changing light, often working outdoors.

Enlightenment Philosophy

Ideas of the mid-eighteenth century that strongly influenced modern art history.Nubian Art

Islamic Art

Art largely non-figurative, characterized by abstract or calligraphic decoration, following the Koran's scriptures.

Mosque

A site for communal prayer in Islam, with its qibla wall facing toward Mecca.

Mesoamerican Art

Art from ancient civilizations in the Americas, including Olmec, Toltec, Maya, Inca, and Aztec.

Mayan Architecture

Style consisting of heavy stone structures covered with intricate geometrical carving and using large interlocking cubic forms.

Incan Architecture

Notable for sites high in the Andes Mountains like Machu Picchu, using techniques like double-walled construction.

Black-on-Black Ware

A pottery style invented by Maria and Julian Martinez, featuring matte black designs painted on shiny black vessels.

Slip

Watered down clay used by potters to coat pots before firing.

Nemes

A folded and striped cloth head covering typically seen on ancient Egyptian pharaoh portraits.

Indigenismo

A new Mexican interest in Indigenous life and heritage that emerged after the revolution.

Pan-African Movement

A political and artistic movement stressing solidarity among people of African descent and a common struggle against racism and colonialism.

Egyptology

The study of ancient Egypt, of contemporary interest to Black intellectuals in the Jazz Age.

Mogollon Pottery

Ancient pottery from the Mimbres Valley, serving as a possible inspiration for patterns by Julian Martinez.

Japanese Prints

Art form collected by French artists in the late nineteenth century, influencing Western art with their flat colors and overhead viewpoint.Line

Implied Line

A series of interrupted dots or lines that the eye connects.

Shape

Defines the two-dimensional area of an object.

Form

Objects that are three-dimensional, having length, width, and depth.

Geometric

Shapes and forms that can be defined mathematically and are precise and regular.

Organic

Shapes and forms that are freeform and irregular, often conveying a sense of movement and rhythm.

Positive Space

The space occupied by the objects, shapes, or forms (sometimes called the figure).

Negative Space

The area around the objects, shapes, or forms.

Freestanding Sculpture

Sculpture that is fully in the round and can be seen from every angle.

Relief Sculpture

Sculpture that projects from a surface or background of which it is a part.

High Relief

Relief sculpture projecting significantly from the carrier surface.

Bas (Low) Relief

Relief sculpture projecting only slightly from the surface of the sculpture.

Perspective

The creation of the illusion of depth in two-dimensional artworks.

Aerial/Atmospheric Perspective

Technique taking into account how fog, smoke, and airborne particles change the appearance of things when viewed from a distance (distant objects appear lighter/more neutral).

Hue

The name of the color.

Primary Colors

Red, blue, and yellow.

Secondary Colors

Colors formed from the mixture of two primary colors (orange, green, violet).

Tertiary Colors

Colors made by combining a primary and an adjacent secondary color.

Neutrals

Colors that are not hues (black and white).

Value

The lightness or darkness of a color or of gray.

Intensity

The brightness or purity of a color.

Complementary Color

Colors that lower the intensity of one another when mixed.

Local Color

The "true" color of an object or area as seen in normal daylight.

Optical Color

The effect that special lighting has on the color of objects.

Arbitrary Color

Colors chosen by artists for their emotional or aesthetic impact.

Actual Texture

How a surface really feels if touched.

Visual Texture

An illusion of a textured surface in a two-dimensional artwork.

Composition

The artist's organization of the elements of art.

Rhythm

The principle associated with movement or pattern, created through repetition of elements.

Motif

A single element of a pattern.

Pattern

The repetition of certain elements (color, line, or motifs) within a work of art.

Balance

The equal distribution of visual weight in a work of art.

Symmetrical Balance

Balance achieved when elements are repeated exactly on both sides of the central axis.

Asymmetrical Balance

Visual balance achieved through the organization of unlike objects.