Category: Art Dictionary

Albert Einstein: Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was born in Germany and was a Jewish philosopher and author, who is widely regarded as one of the most influential and best known scientists and intellectuals of all time. In 1933, he joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and lived and worked there until his death. Einstein is probably familiar to most people for his mathematical equation about the nature of energy, E = MC2.

Zoomorphic: motifs based on animal forms.

Ziggurat: ancient Babylonian and Assyrian pyramid-shaped construction. See: Assyrian Art (c.1500-612 BCE).

Yellow Book: influential quarterly magazine published from 1894, of which Aubrey Beardsley (1872-98) was art editor.

Yamato-e: the School of Japanese painting from the 10th to the 15th century that preserved the native traditions.

Xylography: Early form of wood engraving, first seen in China in the 1st century CE. Xylography is the oldest known engraving technique.

Word Art: Includes any text-based word painting, sculpture or graphic art. Exponents include Barbara Kruger (b.1945), Christopher Wool (b.1955) and On Kawara (1932-2014).

Wood Carving: Reached its apogee in Late Gothic Germany, at the hands of master wood-carvers like Veit Stoss (1450-1533) and Tilman Riemenschneider (1460-1531).

Woodblock: Print produced from a design on a wooden block. See also Woodcut prints.

Watercolour Painting: Uses a water-soluble painting medium. Watercolours are usually applied with brushes, but several other tools may also employed. The most common painting techniques are known as wet-on-dry and wet-on-wet, plus the dry brush techniques dry-on-dry and dry-on-wet. Watercolours can be removed while still wet, by blotting. When watercolour are made thicker, opaque and mixed with white, it is generally referred to as gouache. Thomas Girtin and JMW Turner were two great pioneers of the art form.

Visual art: A broad category of artistic disciplines, encompassing the fine arts, some of the applied arts and certain modern art forms.

Viking Art: Norse art mainly embraces portable metalwork and carvings.

Video Art: Contemporary form pioneered by artists like Andy Warhol (1928-87) and Bill Viola (b.1951). Can be either stand-alone or combined with other media in an installation.

Victorian Art: British architecture, arts and crafts produced during the reign of Queen Victoria (c.1840-1900).

Vanitas Painting: Still Life paintings, popular in 17rh century Holland, which contain objects as reminders of the impermanence of temporal life and of mortality.

Vanishing point: point at which the receding parallel lines in a painting appear to meet; see Linear perspective.

Ukiyo-e (woodblock prints): Japanese, meaning “pictures of the floating world”. Genre painting, and later Woodblock prints, whose subjects were actors, domestic scenes, and courtesans.

Trompe l’oeil: painting that “deceives the eye”; type of illusionistic painting characterized by its very precise naturalism.

Triptych: picture or carving in three parts; a form of polyptych common for altarpieces.

Tribal Art: Also called Primitive Native Art, it embraces the traditional art of tribal societies in the Americas, Africa, India, the South Pacific, and Australasia.

Trecento: Italian for the 14th century. Traditionally refers to Italian fine art (1300-1400).

Tondo: circular picture or relief.

Terracotta (Latin: “baked earth”): hard, fired hut unglazed, brownish-red clay used for pottery, and building. See: Terracotta Sculpture.

Tenebrism: style of 17th-century painting associated with Caravaggio making much use of strong Chiaroscuro.

Tempera: a method of painting in which pigments are combined with an emulsion of water and egg yolks or whole eggs (plus sometimes glue or milk). Widely used in Italian art in the 14th and 15th centuries, both for panel painting and fresco, was then superceded by oil paint.

Tapestry: wall hanging of silk or wool with a nonrepeating pattern or narrative design woven in by hand, during manufacture. For details and history, see: Tapestry Art.

Support: Canvas, paper, panel, wall, etc on which a painting or drawing is executed.

Stone Sculpture: Includes carvings from metamorphic, sedementary and igneous rocks.

Stoneware: hard pottery made from clay plus a fusible stone (usually feldspar) and fired at 1200-1400°C so that the stone is vitrified.

Stippling: a drawing technique which employs many small dots or flecks to construct the image, or shading.

Still Life painting: one of the major genres of Western art, it describes a type of painting featuring inanimate everyday objects. There are four types: (1) flower pieces, (2) breakfast or banquet pieces, (3) animal pieces, (4) Symbolic Still Lifes.

Stencil art: An image created by applying ink or paint through a cut-out surface.

Statue: Freestanding sculpture; life-size, representational art.

Stained Glass Art: Attained its apogee during the era of Gothic Architecture.

Stabile: A style of 20th century sculpture consisting of a stationary object, fixed to a base of some description. Contrasts with a mobile, the free-hanging sculptural invention of American sculptor Alexander Calder (1898-1976), stabiles were also created by Calder.

Skyscraper: a type of high-rise building design pioneered by American architects in the Chicago School of Architecture (c.1880-1910).

Sketching: Typically a sketch is a rapidly executed or casual portrayal of a subject, in pencil, charcoal, pen and ink or other portable medium, often produced as a preliminary work in preparation for something more detailed.

Site-specific art: Any work of art (typically murals, or sculpture) created for a specific place, which cannot be separated or exhibited outside its intended environment.

Silverpoint: A drawing method using a piece of metal, usually silver wire, drawn on a ground prepared with Chinese white, sometimes with pigment added.

Sgraffito: A term meaning scratched; in painting, one colour is laid over another, and scratched with a tool so that the underlying colour is revealed.

Sfumato: a painting technique developed by Leonardo da Vinci, in which transitions from light to dark are so gradual they are almost imperceptible; sfumato blurs lines and creates a soft-focus effect.

Self-Portraiture: Self-portraits were created as early as the Amarna Period (c.1365 BCE) in Ancient Egypt, although the genre wasn’t properly exploited until the time of Albrecht Durer in late 15th century Germany. Since then, other important pioneers of self-portrait painting have included Rembrandt, Vincent Van Gogh and Egon Schiele.

Seascape: painting or drawing of the sea and shipping.

Scumble: an opaque or semiopaque layer of paint applied over another so that the first is partially obliterated, producing a slightly broken effect.

Sculpture: Object carved or modeled in wood, stone, etc or cast in metal for an aesthetic, nonfunctional purpose; or the process of producing it; hence sculptor. “Sculptural” is used to describe art (including painting and drawing) that has pronounced three-dimensional qualities.

Scroll: scroll of paper or silk, popular in Oriental art. A hand scroll is about 30cm (12 in) wide and up to 30m (100 ft) long, and unrolls from right to left to give a continuous picture, viewed section by section. A hanging scroll, as the name implies, is hung like a painting. Both are usually painted in ink or watercolour.

Scholar-painter: the Japanese equivalent of Wen-jen hua (or “literary men’s painting”) in Chinese art; a literary-minded amateur who painted for pleasure.

Sand Art: Practised for centuries by Navajo Indians, Australian aborigines, Oceanic natives and Tibetan Buddhists, it has been given a new lease of life by contemporary artists around the world.

Salon des Refuses: exbibition of 1863 promoted by Napoleon III to show works rejected by the official Paris Salon.

Salon des Independants: exhibition of the Societe des Artistes Independents of 1884, including Seurat and Signac. The society had no selection jury.

Salon d’Automne: Rival exhibition held in Paris by the Societe du Salon d’Automne.

Salon: French annual exhibition in Paris (held from 17th century onwards) of painting and sculpture by members of the Academy, traditionally hostile to innovation.

Rock Art: Petroglyphs, pictographs and other forms of stone engraving or cave painting.

Representational art: art that attempts to show objects as they really appear, or at least in some easily recognizable form.

Repoussoir: A method of creating or enhancing perspective in a painting, for instance by placing a large figure/object in the foreground. Such repoussoir figures were common features of Dutch figure painting of the seventeenth-century. Dutch Realist landscape artists often exploited the dramatic effect of repoussoir to enliven their pictures of the flat and featureless Dutch countryside.

Repousse: Technique of metalwork art, where metal is decorated by hammering from the side not seen, so that the design stands out in relief.

Renaissance (“rebirth”): The period of Renaissance art runs from c.1400 to 1600, divided into Early Renaissance (c.1400-90), High Renaissance (c.1490-1530), and Mannerism (c. 1530-1600); as a whole it was characterized by greater emphasis on realism, a mastery of linear perspective, Humanism (a belief in the primacy of man) and the rediscovery of Classical art. North of the Alps, the movement is known as the Northern Renaissance.

Religious Art: Typically architecture, sculpture, painting or crafts or artifacts with a religious theme.

Relief sculpture: carving, etc in which forms project and depth is hollowed out; the type of relief is determined by the degree to which the design stands out; thus alto rilievo (high relief) and bas relief (low relief), in which the projection is slight.

Red-figure technique: The technique of the finest ancient Greek vase-painting in which figures were drawn in black and the back-ground blocked in in black so that the figure stood out in the red.

Realism: style of painting dating from the 19th century, typified by Courbet, that makes a deliberate choice of everyday subject matter (Realisme). Also: the opposite of abstract or distorted (similar to naturalism). Also: in Greek Classical sculpture. work that is not stylized or idealized.

Readymades: Name given by Dadaist Marcel Duchamp to prefabricated objects exhibited as works of art.

Raku: Japanese pottery used for the tea ceremony; molded, not thrown on a wheel.

Quattrocento (It.): Italian for the 15th century. Traditionally refers to Italian fine art (1400-1500).

Quadratura: Trompe l’oeil ceiling mural paintings that seem to extend the architectural features beyond the actual space of the room.

Public Art: A loose term which, in practice, means artworks financed out of the public purse. Can also mean works (usually sculpture) sited in public places, such as the Chicago Picasso.

Provenance: A term meaning the origins of a work of art, specifically its history of ownership since its creation. Museum curators and fine art research experts at auctioneers like Christie’s and Sotheby’s study a work’s provenance to establish its authenticity.

Protestant Reformation Art: A less overt, more humble, smaller-scale type of religious art, triggered by Luther’s revolt (1517) and exemplified by the work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Rembrandt and Jan Vermeer.

Proportion: in painting, sculpture and architecture, this describes the ratio between the respective parts and the whole work, as annunciated (for instance) in the Canon of Proportion, a mathematical formula establishing ideal proportions of the various parts of the human body.

Printmaking: A term which applies to fine art printing processes, such as etching, engraving, lithography, woodcut, and silkscreen, in which multiple images are replicated from the same metal plate, stone, wood or linoleum block, or silkscreen, with monochrome or colour printing inks.

Print: any image, pattern, or lettering produced on fabric or paper by a variety of graphic processes. Also: (verb) to make an impression or image by such a process. Usually means letter-printing; printmaking involves producing an image that is aesthetically pleasing, or illustrative.

Primitivism/Primitive art: Paintings and drawings by people outside the influence of traditional Western styles. Also: works by intuitive painters or sculptors with a “naive” style commonly due to their lack of formal arts training.

Primary colours: red, blue, and yellow; the colours that can be mixed to produce other colours, but cannot themselves be produced from mixtures.

Prehistoric art: Creative expression of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods of the Stone Age. For a chronological dateline, see: Prehistoric Art Timeline.

Poussinist: adherent of the French late 17th-century theory of poussinism: the supremacy of line (draftsmanship) over colour.

Pottery: A form of ceramic art, in which wet clay is shaped, dried, glazed and fired in a kiln to create a variety of vessels, and ornaments. For history and styles of Antiquity, see: Greek Pottery.

Pop Art: Sixties movement led by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. See: Andy Warhol’s Pop Art.

Poster Art: Either advertising lithographic designs, propaganda posters or reproductions of famous paintings. For more details, see: History of Poster Art.

Portrait Art: Drawn or painted image of a person, usually naturalistic and identifiable; hence portraiture, portraitist. See also Bust.

Porcelain: hard, refined ceramic stoneware, invented by the Chinese in the 7th century. See Chinese Porcelain.

Polyptych: painted work (usually an altarpiece) of more than three panels; see also Diptych, Triptych.

Polymorphic painting: multiform painting, produced by some modern kinetic artists. The appearance of the work changes according to the position of the observer.

Pochade: sketch, especially one made outdoors.

Plein air painting: refers to the spontaneous outdoor method of painting from nature – usually landscapes – as perfected by Claude Monet among others.

Plastic art: three-dimensional forms of art such as sculpture, pottery, and architecture.

Plastic: used in art to describe anything that can be molded or modeled; the opposite of Glyptic.

Plains Art: describes the native American Indian art practised by the Sioux, Commanche and Blackfeet tribes, on the Western Plains of the United States.

Pigment: the colour element in paint. Pigments can consist of a wide variety of ingredients, including minerals, natural/artificial dyestuffs, and other synthetic compounds. See: Colour Pigments: Types, History.

Pieta: representation of the Virgin Mary holding the dead body of Christ.

Picturesque: quaint, charming. From the 18th century onwards “The Picturesque” acquired a more specific meaning, particularly in connection with landscape painting, and architecture; it suggested a deliberate roughness or rusticity of design, and was to some extent transitional between Classicism and Romanticism.

Pictographs (Prehistoric): Also called pictograms, they are images typically on rock faces which express an idea or information.

Photorealism: a hyper-realistic style of painting in which an image is created in such detail that it resembles a photograph.

Photomontage: picture combining juxtaposed photographic images.

Photography: Now a fine arts medium.

Phalerae: metal boss or disc, worn as an ornament or decorating a horse’s harness. Commonly seen in Hallstatt and La Tene style Celtic art.

Petroglyphs: Primitive rock carvings and engravings.

Perspective: A term which refers to the “depth” of a picture – that is, the illusion of three-dimensional space on the picture’s two-dimensional surface – whereby forms in the background appear smaller than those in the foreground. The “single point” or linear perspective system was pioneered by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) in Florence in relation to his architecture. Mathematically constructed so that all receding parallel lines seem to converge towards each other, eventually meeting at a single point (the vanishing point), this method of perspective was employed by artists from the early 15th century onwards. Curiously, Dutch and Flemish painters of the early 15th century developed their own independent method of perspective.

Performance Art: Contemporary form; see also Happenings.

Pensieri: small models made as preliminaries to larger models, when making sculpture.

Pastoral: idealized landscape painting or country scene.