AP Art History Review Notes

Prehistory to Post-Modernism

Time Periods

  • Prehistory: 30,000-500 BCE
  • Ancient Near East: 3500-600 BCE
  • Egyptian: 3500-40 BCE
  • Etruscan: 1000-270 BCE
  • Ancient Greece: 1000-30 BCE
  • Ancient Rome: 30 BCE-400 CE
  • Early Christian: 100-500 CE
  • Byzantine: 500-1300 CE
  • Medieval: 500-1300
  • Islamic: 1630-1700
  • Renaissance: 1400-1600
  • Baroque: 1600-1750
  • Rococo: 1700-1750
  • Neoclassical: 1750-1800
  • Romanticism: 1800-1850
  • Realism: 1830-1860
  • Impressionism: 1870-1880s
  • Post-Impressionism: 1880-1900
  • Symbolism: 1890-1910
  • Modernism: 1900-1960
  • Global Contemporary: 1980-Present

Global Prehistory (30,000-500 BCE)

  • Key Concepts:
    • Ritual and symbolic works involving food sources.
    • Manipulation of available materials.
    • Monumental structures for astrological events.
    • Animal images and female figurines connected to shamanism.
  • Terms:
    • Animism: Belief in spirits inhabiting natural objects.
    • Anthropomorphic: Having human characteristics.
    • Post-and-lintel: A basic architectural system with vertical posts supporting a horizontal lintel.
    • Shamanism: Religious practice involving communication with spirits.
    • Stele: An upright stone slab or pillar.
    • Stylized: Represented in a non-naturalistic conventional form.
    • Twisted perspective: A convention where parts of a figure are shown from different viewpoints.
    • Undulation: A wave-like form or outline.
    • Paleolithic: Old Stone Age.
    • Neolithic: New Stone Age.

Ancient Near East (3500-600 BCE)

  • Civilizations: Assyrian, Sumerian, Mesopotamian, Persian.
  • Themes: Civilizations taking over other civilizations, showing power and authority; religious and political art.
  • Characteristics:
    • Frontal sculpture; stiff and rigid.
    • Animal + human hybrids.
  • Terms:
    • Apadana: A large hypostyle hall in Persian palaces.
    • Apotropaic: Having the power to avert evil influences.
    • Bent-axis: A plan where the entrance to a building is not directly aligned with the main axis.
    • Capital: The decorative top of a column or pillar.
    • Cuneiform: An ancient writing system of Mesopotamia.
    • Facade: The front of a building.
    • Ground plan: A diagram showing the arrangement of a building's spaces.
    • Stele: An upright stone slab or pillar.
    • Hierarchy of scale: Representation of more important figures as larger than others.
    • Lapiz lazuli: A semi-precious blue stone.
    • Negative space: Empty space around and between solid objects.
    • Register: A horizontal band containing decoration.
    • Relief sculpture: Sculpture that projects from a background.
    • Bas-relief: A type of relief sculpture with shallow projection.
    • Ziggurat: A stepped pyramid-like structure with a temple on top.

Egyptian (3500-40 BCE)

  • Themes: Obsession with the afterlife; the pharaoh as a god.
  • Characteristics:
    • "Egyptian stance" is rigid and frontal.
    • Style consistent except during the Amarna Period (slender, protruding belly).
    • Sacred temples with ashlar masonry.
  • Periods: Old Kingdom, New Kingdom, Amarna Period.
  • Terms:
    • Amarna style: An artistic style during the reign of Akhenaten emphasizing naturalism.
    • Ankh: An Egyptian symbol of life.
    • Axial plan: A plan in which the parts of a building are organized along an axis.
    • Engaged column: A column attached to a wall.
    • Hieroglyphics: An ancient Egyptian writing system.
    • Hypostyle: A hall with a roof supported by columns.
    • Ka: The Egyptian concept of the soul or spirit.
    • Mastaba: An ancient Egyptian tomb with a flat roof and sloping sides.
    • Necropolis: A city of the dead; a large burial area.
    • Papyrus: A writing surface made from the papyrus plant.
    • Peristyle: A row of columns surrounding a space.
    • Pharaoh: An ancient Egyptian ruler.
    • Pylon: A monumental gateway to an Egyptian temple.
    • Register: A horizontal band containing decoration.
    • Sarcophagus: A stone coffin.
    • Stylized: Represented in a non-naturalistic conventional form.
    • Bas-relief: A type of relief sculpture with shallow projection.
    • Sunken relief: A relief sculpture where the image is carved into the surface.

Etruscan (1000-270 BCE)

  • Location: Italy (Etruria) before the Romans.
  • Characteristics:
    • Necropolis with tombs.
    • Frescoes.
    • Buildings made of wood and mud brick with terra cotta sculptures on the roof.

Ancient Greece (1000-30 BCE)

  • Philosophy: "Man is the measure of all things."
  • Themes: Proportions and geometry; perfection and idealization of human form; perfection of temples used to idolize gods.
  • Characteristics: Contrapposto stance, marble, folds of drapery, emotion.
  • Periods: Archaic Greek, Classical Greek, Hellenistic Greek.
  • Terms:
    • Acropolis: A high fortified area of a Greek city.
    • Agora: A public open space used for assemblies and markets.
    • Amphora: A tall ancient Greek or Roman jar with two handles and a narrow neck.
    • Caryatid: A sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support.
    • Cella: The inner area of an ancient temple, especially one housing the hidden cult statue.
    • Contrapposto: An asymmetrical arrangement of the human figure in which the line of the shoulders and hips are set at an angle to each other.
    • Cornice: An ornamental molding around the wall of a room just below the ceiling.
    • Encaustic: A painting technique using pigments mixed with hot wax.
    • Entablature: A horizontal part of a building above the columns and below the roof.
    • Frieze: A broad horizontal band of sculpted or painted decoration.
    • Kouros/Kore: An ancient Greek statue of a young man or woman.
    • Metope: A rectangular architectural element that fills the space between two triglyphs in a Doric frieze.
    • Mosaic: A picture or pattern produced by arranging together small colored pieces of hard material, such as stone, tile, or glass.
    • Pediment: The triangular upper part of the front of a building in classical style, typically surmounting a portico.
    • Peristyle: A row of columns surrounding a space.
    • Portico: A structure consisting of a roof supported by columns at regular intervals, typically attached as a porch to a building.
    • Relief sculpture: Sculpture that projects from a background.
    • Bas-relief: A type of relief sculpture with shallow projection.
    • Shaft: The main vertical section of a column between the base and the capital.
    • Stele: An upright stone slab or pillar.

Ancient Rome (30 BCE-400 CE)

  • Themes: Prestige, power, and expansion of the EMPIRE; political propaganda.
  • Characteristics:
    • Emperors want to show power and authority through statues and buildings they have erected.
    • Appropriation of Greek culture (art, pantheon of gods).
    • Engineering: aqueducts, dome, arch, concrete.
  • Periods: Republican Roman, Imperial Roman.
  • Terms:
    • Atrium: An open-roofed entrance hall or central court in an ancient Roman house.
    • Basilica: A large oblong hall or building with double colonnades and a semicircular apse, used in ancient Rome as a court of law or for public assemblies.
    • Bust: A sculpture of a person's head, shoulders, and chest.
    • Coffer: A sunken panel in a ceiling or dome.
    • Continuous narrative: The depiction of two or more scenes of a story in the same image.
    • Contrapposto: An asymmetrical arrangement of the human figure in which the line of the shoulders and hips are set at an angle to each other.
    • Cupola: A small dome-like structure on top of a building.
    • Foreshortening: To reduce or distort (parts of a represented object) in order to convey the illusion of three-dimensional space as perceived by the human eye.
    • Forum: A public square or marketplace in a Roman city.
    • Fresco: A painting done rapidly in watercolor on wet plaster on a wall or ceiling, so that the colors penetrate the plaster and become fixed as it dries.
    • Keystone: A central stone at the summit of an arch or vault, locking the whole together.
    • Oculus: A round or oval opening at the center of a dome or in a wall.
    • Peristyle: A row of columns surrounding a space.
    • Perspective: The art of drawing solid objects on a two-dimensional surface so as to give the right impression of their height, width, depth, and position in relation to each other.
    • Vanishing point: The point at which receding parallel lines viewed in perspective appear to converge.
    • Pier: A solid support designed to sustain vertical pressure.
    • Vault: An arched roof or ceiling.
    • Veristic: Extremely realistic or naturalistic.

Early Christian (100-500 CE)

  • Themes: Secret Jesus art; Christians hiding overtly Christian symbols to avoid persecution; Jesus as shepherd.
  • Terms:
    • Ambulatory: A passageway around the apse or choir of a church.
    • Apse: A semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome.
    • Atrium: An open-roofed entrance hall or central court in an ancient Roman house.
    • Axial plan: A plan in which the parts of a building are organized along an axis.
    • Basilica: A large oblong hall or building with double colonnades and a semicircular apse, used in ancient Rome as a court of law or for public assemblies.
    • Catacomb: An underground cemetery consisting of a subterranean gallery with recesses for tombs.
    • Clerestory: The upper part of the nave, choir, and transepts of a large church, containing a series of windows.
    • Coffer: A sunken panel in a ceiling or dome.
    • Cubicula: A small room carved out of rock in the catacombs of ancient Rome, serving as mortuary chambers.
    • Gospels: The record of Jesus' life and teaching in the first part of the New Testament.
    • Loculi: An architectural niche or opening in a wall or other structure to receive a body or burial urn.
    • Lunette: A crescent-shaped space, sometimes over a doorway, that contains sculpture or painting.
    • Narthex: An antechamber, porch, or distinct area at the western entrance of some early Christian churches, separated off by a railing or screen.
    • Nave: The central part of a church building, intended to accommodate most of the congregation.
    • Orant figure: A figure with its hands raised in prayer.
    • Spolia: The reuse of earlier building material or decorative sculpture on new monuments.
    • Transept: In a cruciform church, either of the two parts forming the arms of the cross shape, projecting at right angles from the nave.

Byzantine (500-1300 CE)

  • Characteristics: Rome of the East; mosaic lovers; flat, frontal, floating, and golden; dome on pendentives!
  • Terms:
    • Encaustic: A painting technique using pigments mixed with hot wax.
    • Icon: A painting of Jesus Christ or another holy figure, typically on wood, venerated and used as an aid to devotion.
    • Iconoclasm: The destruction of religious icons and other images or monuments for religious or political motives.
    • Illuminated manuscript: A manuscript in which the text is supplemented with such decoration as initials, borders (marginalia), and miniature illustrations.
    • Martyrium: A church built over the tomb of a martyr.
    • Mosaic: A picture or pattern produced by arranging together small colored pieces of hard material, such as stone, tile, or glass.
    • Pendentive: A curved triangle of vaulting formed by the intersection of a dome with its supporting arches.
    • Squinch: A straight or arched structure across an interior angle of a square tower to carry a superstructure such as a dome.

Medieval (500-1300)

  • Themes: Everything revolved around God/The Church.
  • Characteristics:
    • Manuscript illumination.
    • Large, heavy churches (Romanesque).
    • High, light, stained-glass window cathedrals (Gothic).

Early Medieval

  • Terms:
    • Animal style: A decorative approach focused on stylized animal forms.
    • Chasing: To ornament (metal) by indenting from the front.
    • Cloisonne: A technique of decoration in which enamel, glass, or gemstones are separated by strips of flattened wire placed edgewise on a metal backing.
    • Codex: An ancient manuscript text in book form.
    • 4 evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
    • Fibula: A brooch, especially one in the form of a bow or arc, used to fasten garments.
    • Illuminated manuscript: A manuscript in which the text is supplemented with such decoration as initials, borders (marginalia), and miniature illustrations.
    • Scriptorium: A room set apart for writing or copying manuscripts.
    • Zoomorphic: Having or representing animal forms or aspects.

Romanesque

  • Terms:
    • Abbey: A complex of buildings used by a religious order under the governance of an abbot or abbess.
    • Ambulatory: A passageway around the apse or choir of a church.
    • Apse: A semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome.
    • Arcade: A succession of arches, each counter-thrusting the next, supported by columns or piers.
    • Axial plan: A plan in which the parts of a building are organized along an axis.
    • Baptistery: A building or part of a building used for baptism, especially the rite of Christian initiation in infancy.
    • Bay: A division of a building marked off by vertical elements, such as columns or pilasters.
    • Cathedral: The principal church of a diocese, with which the bishop is officially associated.
    • Clerestory: The upper part of the nave, choir, and transepts of a large church, containing a series of windows.
    • Continuous narrative: The depiction of two or more scenes of a story in the same image.
    • Embroidery: The art or pastime of decorating cloth or other materials with needle and thread or yarn.
    • Gallery: A balcony, especially a platform resting on brackets or consoles along the inside wall of a hall or church.
    • Jamb: A vertical side member of a door or window frame.
    • Narthex: An antechamber, porch, or distinct area at the western entrance of some early Christian churches, separated off by a railing or screen.
    • Portal: A doorway, gate, or entrance, especially one of imposing appearance.
    • Radiating chapel: Chapels that radiate tangentially from one of the bays or divisions of the choir or apse.
    • Reliquary: A container for holy relics.
    • Rib vault: A vault in which the diagonal and transverse ribs compose a structural skeleton that partially supports the masonry web between them.
    • Tapestry: A piece of thick textile fabric with pictures or designs woven into it, used to cover walls or furniture.
    • Transept: In a cruciform church, either of the two parts forming the arms of the cross shape, projecting at right angles from the nave.
    • Tympanum: A vertical recessed triangular space forming the center of a pediment, typically decorated.
    • Vault: An arched roof or ceiling.
    • Voussoir: A wedge-shaped element, typically a stone, used in the construction of an arch or vault.

Gothic

  • Terms:
    • Bay: A division of a building marked off by vertical elements, such as columns or pilasters.
    • Choir: The area of a church or cathedral that provides seating for the clergy and church choir.
    • Close: An enclosed space, typically a courtyard or garden, especially one surrounding or beside a cathedral or other important building.
    • Compound pier: A pier or support composed of a group or cluster of members, often consisting of a large central shaft with smaller shafts set around it.
    • Flying buttress: A buttress sloping from a separate pier, typically forming an arch with the wall it supports.
    • Haggadah: A Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder.
    • Lancet: A tall, narrow window with a pointed arch at the top.
    • Ogee arch: A pointed arch having an S-shaped curve on both sides.
    • Pieta: A representation of the Virgin Mary mourning over the dead body of Jesus.
    • Pinnacle: An ornamental feature resembling a pyramid or cone, typically surmounting a roof or parapet.
    • Portal: A doorway, gate, or entrance, especially one of imposing appearance.
    • Rib vault: A vault in which the diagonal and transverse ribs compose a structural skeleton that partially supports the masonry web between them.
    • Rose window: A circular window with stained glass and stone tracery radiating from the center.
    • Spire/Steeple: A tall, pointed structure on top of a building, especially a church tower.
    • Troforium: a shallow arched gallery within the thickness of inner wall, above the nave of a church.

Islamic (1630-1700)

  • Art Forms: Textiles, metalwork, Persian manuscripts, Qur’an folios.
  • Characteristics:
    • Mosque architecture with abstract designs; no figural art.
    • Calligraphy, arabesques, and tessellations.
    • Influenced by trade (Byzantine, Asian) and pilgrimages.
  • Terms:
    • Arabesque: An ornamental design consisting of intertwined flowing lines.
    • Calligraphy: Decorative handwriting or lettering.
    • Hajj: The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca that takes place in the last month of the year, and that all Muslims are expected to make at least once during their lifetime.
    • Hypostyle: A hall with a roof supported by columns.
    • Illuminated manuscript: A manuscript in which the text is supplemented with such decoration as initials, borders (marginalia), and miniature illustrations.
    • Kufic: An early angular form of the Arabic alphabet found chiefly in decorative inscriptions.
    • Madrasa: A college for Islamic instruction.
    • Mausoleum: A building housing a tomb or tombs.
    • Mecca: The holiest city of Islam; Muhammad's birthplace.
    • Medina: A city in western Saudi Arabia; a holy city of Islam.
    • Mihrab: A niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the direction of Mecca.
    • Minaret: A tall slender tower, typically part of a mosque, with a balcony from which a muezzin calls Muslims to prayer.
    • Minbar: A pulpit in a mosque from which the imam (prayer leader) delivers sermons.
    • Mosque: A Muslim place of worship.
    • Muezzin: A man who calls Muslims to prayer from the minaret of a mosque.
    • Muhammad: The prophet and founder of Islam.
    • Muqarna: A form of ornamented vaulting in Islamic architecture, the geometric subdivision of a squinch, or cupola into a large number of miniature squinches, producing a sort of cellular structure, sometimes also called a honeycomb vault.
    • Pyxis: A cylindrical box, often of ivory, with a lid, used in the Byzantine period for cosmetics or jewelry.
    • Qur’an: The Islamic sacred book, believed to be the word of God as dictated to Muhammad by the archangel Gabriel and written down in Arabic.
    • Sahn: A courtyard in a mosque.
    • Squinch: A straight or arched structure across an interior angle of a square tower to carry a superstructure such as a dome.
    • Tessellation: The tiling of a plane using one or more geometric shapes, called tiles, with no overlaps and no gaps.
    • Voussoirs: A wedge-shaped element, typically a stone, used in the construction of an arch or vault.
    • Keystone: A central stone at the summit of an arch or vault, locking the whole together.

Renaissance (1400-1600)

  • Themes: Rebirth of the Greek and Roman Classical styles; Humanism.
  • Characteristics: Idealized human form, Classical repose and proportions; Protestant Reformation influences Northern works.
  • Art Forms: Altarpieces, oil paintings, woodcuts, Classical symmetry in architecture.

Italian Renaissance

Northern European Renaissance

High Renaissance

  • Terms:
    • Altarpiece: A work of art, especially a painting on wood, set above and behind an altar.
    • Annunciation: The Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God.
    • Engraving: A printmaking technique in which an image is incised onto a metal plate.
    • Etching: A printmaking technique in which an image is incised onto a metal plate using acid.
    • Protestant Reformation: A major 16th-century European movement aimed initially at reforming the beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic Church.
    • Triptych: A picture or relief carving on three panels, typically hinged together side by side and used as an altarpiece.
    • Woodcut: A printmaking technique in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood.
    • Humanism: An intellectual movement that focused on human potential and achievements.
    • Atmospheric perspective: A technique of rendering depth or distance in painting by modifying the tone or hue and distinctness of objects perceived as receding from the picture plane, especially by reducing the contrast between objects and their backgrounds.
    • Linear perspective: A type of perspective used by artists in which the relative size, shape, and position of objects are determined by drawn or imagined lines converging at a point on the horizon.
    • Mullion: A vertical bar between panes of glass in a window.
    • Orthogonal: At right angles; a line that appears to recede toward a vanishing point in a composition using linear perspective.
    • Pilaster: A rectangular column, especially one projecting from a wall.
    • Tromp l’oeil technique: Visual illusion in art, especially as used to trick the eye into perceiving a painted detail as a three-dimensional object.
    • Arcadian: Depicting or evocative of a pastoral paradise.
    • Chiaroscuro: The treatment of light and shade in drawing and painting.
    • Genre painting: A style of painting depicting scenes from ordinary life, especially domestic situations.
    • Ignudi: Heroic figures of nude young men.
    • Sfumato: The technique of allowing tones and colors to shade gradually into one another, producing softened outlines or hazy forms.
    • Still life: A painting or drawing of an arrangement of objects, typically including fruit and flowers and objects contrasting with these in texture, such as bowls and glassware.

Mannerism

Baroque (1600-1750)

  • Themes: Protestants (North) vs. Catholics (South).
  • Characteristics:
    • Catholics: awe-inspiring, dramatic religious images meant to inspire spiritual re-invigoration.
    • Protestants: No religious images; genre scenes, landscapes, still lifes, portraits.

Italian Baroque

Dutch Baroque

Aristocratic Baroque

Spanish Colonial (1600-1750)

  • Characteristics: Spanish colonists combined European Baroque traditions with Native American labor and Asian imports; religious images, portraits, painted screens, landscapes, and historical episodes.
  • Terms:
    • Genre painting: A style of painting depicting scenes from ordinary life, especially domestic situations.
    • Impasto: The process or technique of laying on paint or pigment thickly so that it stands out from a surface.
    • Still life: A painting or drawing of an arrangement of objects, typically including fruit and flowers and objects contrasting with these in texture, such as bowls and glassware.
    • Tenebrism: Dramatic illumination; a style of painting using very pronounced chiaroscuro, where there are violent contrasts of light and dark, and where darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image.
    • Vanitas: A symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death.

Rococo (1700-1750)

  • Characteristics: Frivolous fluff and puff; pastel colors, seashells, foliage; art of the aristocrats; feminine and decadent; aristocrats picnicking in the countryside.

Neoclassical (1750-1800)

  • Themes: Bring back Ancient Rome to inspire civic virtue; era of revolutionary thought (American and French) meant to display lessons of civic pride and virtue; Enlightenment.

Romanticism (1800-1850)

  • Characteristics: Poetic, moving, meant to arouse emotion and intense feeling; the sublime; dreamlike, fantastical; a reaction to Neoclassical constraints.

Realism (1830-1860)

  • Themes: They paint only what they see; lower class people, sex workers, gleaners; earth tones; art with social consciousness; reaction to Romanticism.

Impressionism (1870-1880s)

  • Characteristics: Captured moments in time like the camera; effect of light on color in plein air; captured the new, modernized, urban Parisian life.

Post-Impressionism (1880-1900)

  • Characteristics: Reaction to the trivial nature of Impressionism; bold colors, thick brushstrokes, and more structured approach to form; greater focus on emotion and symbolism.

Symbolism (1890-1910)

  • Themes: Inner experience of the artist’s life is inspiration; reaction to the literal world of Realism.

Modernism (1900-1960)

  • Characteristics:
    • Questions reality.
    • Focuses on the process.
    • Experiments with new materials.
    • Manipulates the image.
    • Shocks with new things.
    • Makes sure you know it’s ART!
  • Terms:
    • Aquatint: An etching technique that creates areas of tone.
    • Avant-garde: New and unusual or experimental ideas.
    • Caricature: A picture, description, or imitation of a person or thing in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect.
    • Drypoint: A printmaking technique in which an image is incised onto a plate with a sharp-pointed needle.
    • Japonisme: The influence of Japanese art and design on Western art.
    • Lithograph: A printmaking technique in which an image is drawn on a stone or metal plate with a greasy crayon and then printed.
    • Plein-air: Painting outdoors.
    • Positivism: A philosophical system recognizing only that which can be scientifically verified or which is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and therefore rejecting metaphysics and theism.
    • Skeleton: The internal or external framework of a building or other object.
    • Zoopraxiscope: An early motion picture device.

Fauvism

  • Characteristics: Broad, flat areas of violently contrasting color; appeared to be created by les fauves (wild beasts).

Expressionism

  • Characteristics: Traditional representation discarded in favor of communicating the emotion or meaning behind the work.

Cubism

  • Characteristics: Reduction of subjects into geometric or ‘cube-like’ shapes to produce a more three-dimensional perspective.

Constructivism

  • Characteristics: Dramatic use of materials; influenced by modern industrial complex that dominated employment in 20th century.

Harlem Renaissance

  • Characteristics: Art produced in Harlem in the 1920s-1930s by African-Americans; themes of racial pride, civil rights, and the influence of slavery on modern culture.

Color Field Painting

  • Characteristics: Subtle tonal values that are often variations of a monochromatic hue.

Dada

  • Characteristics: Mocked the capitalist and nationalistic cultural climate of WWI, focusing instead on the irrational, nonsensical, and absurd; Dada= “hobby horse” (nonsense word).

De Stijl

  • Characteristics: White background with black lines to create rectangular spaces; only primary colors and perpendicular lines; completely abstract; De Stijl = Dutch for “the style”.

Mexican Muralism

  • Characteristics: Revival of fresco painting with political or social message, often labor and struggle of working class.

Surrealism

  • Characteristics: Expression through the exploration of the unconscious mind; unsettling, dreamlike settings with juxtaposing and deformed subject matter.

Abstract Expressionism

  • Characteristics: Brash, chaotic brushstrokes and bold pops of color; abstraction of subject matter.

Pop Art

  • Characteristics: Juxtaposed or inconsistent elements from comic books, magazines, and advertisements, placed together to emphasize the banality of popular culture.

Happenings

  • Characteristics: The word “happening” was coined in the 1950s to describe an act of performance art that is initially planned, but involves spontaneity, improvisation, and often audience participation.

Site Art

  • Characteristics: Sometimes called Earth Art, Site Art began in the 1970s and is dependent on its location to render full meaning.

  • Terms:

    • Abstract: Art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, forms, colors, and textures.
    • Action painting: A style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied.
    • Assemblage: An artistic form or medium usually created on a defined substrate that consists of three-dimensional elements projecting out of or from the substrate.
    • Cantilever: A long projecting beam or girder fixed at only one end, used chiefly in bridge construction.
    • Collage: A piece of art made by sticking various different materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric onto a backing.
    • Color field painting: A style of abstract painting that emerged in the 1940s and 1950s, characterized by large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas creating unbroken surfaces and a sense of scale and all-over composition.
    • Documentary photography: A type of photography used to record historical events or the current condition of people or places.
    • Earthwork: A work of art made for a specific place using natural materials found there, especially earth and rocks.
    • Ferroconcrete: Concrete reinforced with steel.
    • Happening: A performance, event, or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art or theatre.
    • Harlem Renaissance: A cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, spanning the 1920s.
    • Installation: An artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space.
    • Mobile: A decorative structure or toy consisting of several objects suspended and balanced so that they turn in response to a current of air.
    • Neoplasticism: The name given by the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian to his abstract style.
    • Photomontage: A montage constructed from photographic images.
    • Ready-made: An ordinary manufactured object that may by the mere choice of the artist acquire status as a work of art.
    • Silkscreen: A printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil.
    • Venice Biennale: An arts organization based in Venice, and also the name of the original biennial art exhibition organized by it.
    • International Style: A style of architecture which developed in the 1920s and 1930s and was closely related to modernism and modern architecture.
    • Prairie School: A late 19th- and early 20th-century architectural style, most common to the Midwestern United States.
    • Post-Modernism: A late-20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism, which represents a departure from modernism and has at its heart a general distrust of grand theories and ideologies as well as a problematical relationship with any notion of “art."

Indigenous Americas (1000-1900)

  • Mesoamerica (Aztec, Maya): pyramidal structures, jadeite, astronomy, calendars.
  • North America (Puebloans, Mississipian, various tribes): earthworks, pottery, oneness with animals.
  • Andes (Chavin, Inka): mountain veneration, burial, human-environment.
  • Terms:
    • Ashlar masonry: Carefully cut and grooved stones that support a building without the use of