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ArtSpeak
... speaking of art ....

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• This list of terms below should be useful for newcomers to the world of art. Using specialized art vocabulary might be called "artspeak."
• These terms can be heard and seen in art galleries, museums, and in discussions about art and art history. This list in not comprehensive but should be helpful in speaking about and in understanding art.

Assignment

artspeak vocab links:

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A

• abstract art - art that depends significantly form natural appearances. Forms are modified or or changed to varying degrees in order to emphasize certain qualities or content. Recognizable references to original appearances may be very slight.This term is also used to describe art that is nonrepresentational.
  
• Abstract Expressionism - a manner of abstract painting, also called action painting - paint is applied in expansive, unpremeditated gestures. Especially associated with New York artists, such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.
• academy - an institution of artists and scholars, originally formed during the Renaissance to free artist from control by guilds and to elevate them from artisan to professional status.In an academy, art is taught as a humanist discipline along with other disciplines of the liberal arts.
• acrylic - paint with a synthetic base that is thinned with water (until it is dry); acrylics are notably more opaque than oil paints..
• aesthetic - pertaining to the sense of the beautiful and to heightened sensory perception general.
  
• aesthetics - the study and philosophy of the quality and nature of sensory responses related to, but not limited by, the concept of beauty. Within the art context: the philosophy of art focusing on questions regarding what art is, how it is evaluated, the concept of beauty and the relationship between the idea of beauty and the concept of art.
  
• afterimage - the visual image that remains after an initial stimulus is removed. Staring at a single intense hue may cause the cones of color receptors, of the eye to become fatigued and perceive only the complement of the original hue after it has been removed.
  
• airbrush - a small-scale paint sprayer that allows the artist to control a fine mist of paint.
• allegory - a story or concept represented symbolically.
• analogous colors - closely related hues, especially those in which a common hue can be seen; hues that are neighbors on the color wheel, such as blue, blue-green, and green.
  
• aperture - in photography, the camera lens opening ants relative diameter. Measured in f-stops such as f/8, f/11, etc. As the number increases, the size of the aperture decreases, thereby reduc9ng the amount of light passing through the lens and striking the film.
  
• apse - a semicircular end to  an aisle in a basilica or a Christian church. In Christian churches an apse is usually placed at the eastern end of the central aisle.
  
• aquatint - an intaglio printmaking process in which value areas rather that lines are etched on the printing plate. Powdered resin is sprinkled on the plate, which is then immersed in an acid bath. The acid bites around the resin particles, creating a rough surface that holds ink. Also, a print made using this process.
  
• arcade - a series of arches supported by columns or piers. Also, a covered passageway between two series of arches or between a series of arches or between a series of arches and a wall.
  
• arch - a curved structure designed to span  an opening, usually made of stone or other masonry. Roman arches are semicircular; Islamic and Gothic arches come to a point at the top.
• architecture - buildings that are planned and designed; in history, often the most prominent art form of a civilization.
• armature - a rigid framework serving as a supporting inner core for clay or other soft sculpting material.
  
• art criticism - the process of using formal analysis, description, and interpretation to evaluate or explain the quality and meanings of art.
• Art Deco - style in decorative arts and architecture popular in the 1920s and 1930s, mostly in Europe and the United States. Its goal was to adapt design to the technologies of mass production and to the availability of new materials.
• Art Nouveau - an art style that originated in the late 1880s based on  the sinuous curves of plant forms. It was used primarily in architectural detailing and the applied arts.
  
• artist's proof - a trial print, usually made as an artist works on a plate or block - to check the progress of a work.
• Arts and Crafts - influential late nineteenth century movement that aimed to revive vernacular, often medieval, forms and methods in reaction against industrial mass production.
• assemblage - sculpture using preexisting sometime "found" objects that may or may not contribute their original identities to the total content of the work.
• automatism - embracing the the results of chance and irrational impulse, Surrealists sought to bypass conscious artistic control, thereby releasing deeper, unconscious, mental processes.
• avant-garde - assertive new or progressive art.
• asymmetrical - without symmetry.
  

B

• background - those things that appear the farthest in a picture, a landscape for example, are in the background.
• balance - an equilibrium in an artwork, using colors or values, for example, to achieve a sense of composure; symmetry is a form of balance
• Baroque - a dramatic, dynamic style associated with the Catholic counter-Reformation of the seventeenth century; this period and its art.
• Basilica - a Roman town hall with three aisles and and apse at one or both ends. Christians appropriated this form for their churches.
  
• Bauhaus - German art school existing from 1919 to 1933, best known for its influence on design, leadership in art education and its radically innovative philosophy of applying design principles to  machine technology and mass production. Closed under Nazi rule in 1933.
• Bodhisattva -
• bronze - a metal alloy of copper, zinc, and tin, easily melted and cast, used in sculpture and building.
• brushstoke - marks made by brushes used to apply paint.
• buttress -
  
• Byzantine Art - of the Easter Roman Empire from 330 to 1453. For most of this period, the classically inspired and hieratic forms of Byzantine art were Christianity's primary artistic expression.

C

• calligraphy - the art of beautiful writing in which the artistic qualities of the handwriting are as important as its textual meaning, often more so.
• camera
• camera obscura - a box with a pinhole at one end allowing light to enter for tracing.
• cantilever
• canvas - a tightly stretched cloth surface on which to paint.
• cartoon
• carving - a form created by cutting into stone (such as marble or jade), wood, ivory, or other material.
• casting - the process in which an object is created by pouring a liquid substance  - such as molten metals or still-wet plaster - into a mold., letting it harden, then removing it from the mold.
• catacombs
• ceramics - objects made out of soft clay and treated (fired in a kiln) to harden the clay. Clay qualities include porcelain, stoneware, earthenware and terra cotta.
• charcoal - the remains of slowly burnt wood (before it turns to ash); used for drawing and sketching. Charcoal can achieve light gray, medium gray, and if applied heavily, a complete black.
• chiaroscuro - light and dark
• Classical - an imprecise term referring to the form of cultural expression that reflects the style of ancient Greece and Rome.
• collage - a two-dimensional form of assemblage made by gluing pieces of paper, wood, cloth, or other materials to a flat surface.
• color - We see light as it reflects off of certain natural elements; we interpret that light as color. Those certain elements are used as pigments in paint. The basic hues are red, yellow, and blue, from which we mix the other colors, also adding white and black.
• color field painting
• color wheel - 
• commodification - art is said to be commodified when it is traded like any product of industrial capitalism.
• Complementary colors - in color theory, colors found opposing one another on the color wheel.
• composition - the arrangement of elements in an artwork; the organizing principle of and artwork.
• Conceptual Art - art that focuses on ideas and relies less on visual clues. Some artists use written text as most (or all) of their art, making it similar to poetry. Conceptual art can use "non-art" mediums and materials: video, slide projectors, photographic techniques . billboards have been used for conceptual art. One artist opened an "art show" without any visible works - the exhibit was air.
• Constructivism - an early twentieth-century Russian art movement based on the idea that art should be constructed from geometric elements and modern materials rather than imitating appearances
• Contemporary - contemporary art is often seen as a response to modernism - sometimes called postmodernism because of the way it rejects the aesthetics and concerns of earlier modern styles.
• content - of a work of art: it's subject matter, the ideas contained in the work, its meaning for the beholder.
• context - the social or historical situation in which something happens, in which an artwork is completed.
• contour - the outline or outer edge (silhouette) of some shape or form.
• contrapposto - a way of representing the human body so that its weight appears to be resting on one leg. This term is most often used when discussing sculpture.
• cool colors - greens and blues ; colors that remind us of things that are cold.
• costumes - outfits made for a performance or event, usually transforming or disguising the wearer.
• craft - an artist's working process or skill, craft is often associated with handwork and relatively simple tools and technology, as in  a drawing with a pen or painting with brushes . It is also used to refer to particular forms of artistic activity (called "crafts"), such as working with clay, wood, and fiber, each of which can be handled in many ways, with finishes ranging from roughly textured to highly refined.
• Cubism - art movement that began in Paris around 1907 with Braque and Picasso dismantling of traditional rules of perspective and composition in painting. One of the first radical developments of modern art, making pictures that tend to abstract objects, people, and places.
• culture - the human-made world, what it looks like, what it sounds like; what people surround themselves with, what they believe, what they value.
• cuneiform - form of wedge-shaped script used in Mesopotamia between the third and first millennia BC based on angular characters derived from an earlier pictographic script.
• curvilinear - consisting of curved lines; marked by flowing tracery.

D

• Dada - movement founded in Zurich, Switzerland in 1915, espousing anarchy, irony, and chance as means of opposing the political and cultural establishment, particularly regarding developments that led to WWI.
• daguerreotype - an early photography process creating a picture on a silver plate or a silver coated copper plate. (See also Jean-Louis Daguerre)
• decorative arts - various kinds of useful objects that are made with the intent  to beautify and to improve the visual quality of life.
• density - pant that is applied so as to appear solid or opaque.
• depth of field
• design - the overall visual presentation of an artwork, including both composition and style. Design can also refer to a drawing or a model as the preliminary layout or plan of an art project to be further developed and executed.
• drawing - the essential medium of artmaking that involves putting marks or lines on a surface, usually paper. Many different materials can be used such as charcoal, pencil, pastel, pen and ink, conté crayon.
• drypoint - an engraving made with a steel or other pointed tool into a metal plate without the use of acid for etching.
• dynamism - seeming to have energy or force; the aspects of pictures that seem to be in motion. (dynamic).

E

• easel - the stand on which a canvas rests when an artist is painting or drawing.
• earthenware
• earthworks - a type of contemporary sculpture created in nature. often very large and referring to phenomena such as the slow process of erosion or the movement of planets or stars, especially the sun.
• eclecticism - a mid 19^th-century movement in architecture and design that revived the styes of various historical periods.
• edition - images struck from an original source, such as in printmaking, making a set of identical prints; when numbered and signed, establishing an "edition." 
• Edo - the period when Japan was ruled by the warlords of Edo (1615-1868), prior to the opening of major trade routes to Europe and the Western Hemisphere.
• elevation - a flat scale drawing of the front, rear, or side of a building.
• enamel - made from the same elements as glass, enamel is applied in its molten state to another surface, usually metal; used in jewelry and other small objects.
• encaustic - durable painting method using hot beeswax mixed with pigment, damar resin, and heat to create luminous, layered art.
• engraving - a print technique in which an image or design is cut into the surface of a metal plate or flat block of wood. Ink is applied to the entire surface and then wiped, leaving ink only in the incised areas - then paper is laid on top and pressed - the image is registered.
• Enlightenment - phase in European history roughly corresponding to the eighteenth century, when intellectuals widely believed that human experience, knowledge, and society has a purely rational basis.
• en plein air - from the French term for "in the open air," the practice of painting outdoors.
• etching - a printing technique involving drawing or scratching a metal plate which will later be inked
• Expressionism - early twentieth century German art movement. More widely, any art that emphasizes the expression of the artist's feelings.

F

• Fauvism - from the French term "fauves" for wild animals used to explain the work of Matisse, Derain and others around 1905 that used non-naturalistic strong colors.
• feminism - a theory of social and political equality of the sexes. This attitude is often expressed in art - see Barbara Kruger, Lempicka.
• feng shui - a Chinese geomantic practice in which a structure or site is chosen or configured so as to harmonize with the spiritual forces that inhabit it.
• figurative - art concerned with recognizable objects and figures, often contrasted with non-representational or abstract, (aka: representational art).
• figure - usually, the human form, as in "figure-drawing."
• focal point - a high-schooler's remark
• folk art - art in which schooling and academic training play little part, handed down from generation to generation and usually reflects commonly held regional values and customs.
• font - an assortment or set of type, all of one size and style.
• foreground - those things that appear closest in a picture, a landscape for example, are in the foreground.
• foreshortening - to shorten proportionally; the illusion of projection or extension in space obtained, through drawing technique, for example. 
• forging - a process of shaping metal by heating it to very high temperatures and then hammering it into a desired form. 
• form - refers to volume or mass that takes up space; images on a two dimensional format that appear to have volume and weight.
• format - the shape, size and general makeup (as of something printed).
• fresco - from the Italian word for fresh - painting into wet plaster (applied to a wall).
• frieze - a horizontal band running around a building (originating in Greek temples) between the roof and the supporting walls or columns which provides a long narrow horizontal field for decoration.
• frontalism - ancient Egyptian artists adhered to strict rules when producing works of art; the human form was depicted with the head in profile, eye drawn in full, torso forward-facing, and legs in profile — one foot in front of the other. This style, known as frontalism.
• Futurism - Italian art movement founded by Filippo Tomasso Marinetti in 1909. Futurism rejected historical art and architecture and glorified machines, speed and war.

G

• genre - genre art has to do with ordinary people engaged in ordinary activities. Genre can also refer to a category of art, such as painting.
• gesso
• gesture - the permanent imprint of an artist's hand on a  work, providing an insight into the artist's way of working and emotional intentions
• glaze - in ceramics, an outermost layer of vitreous material that when fired renders a waterproof and decorative surface.
• glyph - element in a carved script, for example the pictographic script on Pre-Colombian Maya buildings.
• gouache - paint created by mixing water directly into powdered pigment, generally producing an opaque paint.
• Gothic - European style of art and architecture of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. Later rejuvenation of this style would become known as Neo-Gothic or Gothic Revival.
• gouache - a type of opaque watercolor that has a distinct chalky effect.
• graffiti - referring to the age old practice of writing or drawing on public walls - one form of "street art", that is creative statements, usually making some kind of social comment and appearing in public spaces.
• ground
• Gupta - the Gupta dynasty of India (c. 320BCE - 55CE); the golden age of Indian art. Gupta art achieved realism in objects of worship that balanced refined simplicity with a love of decoration.

H

• Han - the reign of the Han dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE), called the the imperial age of China. The Han legacy includes work in terra cotta, tiles, figures in sculpture, bronze vessels, mirrors, lacquered art, ceramics, and silk costumes.
• happening - a type of art form incorporating performance, theater, and visual images. The happening may include audience participation and improvisation.
• hard-edge
• harmony - a term borrowed from music to suggest a satisfactory or pleasant arrangement of elements.
• hatching - a series of parallel lines, especially in drawing or prints as a method of darkening areas to make shadows , for example. Also cross-hatching.
• Heian - Japan (794 - 1185) in the Kyoto area. A dominant medium was scrolls, which were detailed emotion- and action-filled paintings on paper or thin cloth mounted on silk.
• Hellenistic
• Hindu - the art of Hinduism, the name given to the principal religion of India, which began its development as early as 2000 BCE, drawing from a a variety of sources and spreading to other parts of southeast Asia. Its best known forms are sacred bronze and stone sculptures of gods such as Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, and, later, Krishna as well as ornate stone buildings and temples and dome-like shrines.
• horizon line - a horizontal "line" formed by the actual or implied meeting point of earth and sky.
• hue - a technical name for a color.
• humanism - intellectual movement in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, characterized by renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman literary and artistic culture and a desire to develop its secular modern equivalent.

I

• icon
• iconography - a language of symbols, such as a dove representing peace.
• idealize - attempting to create perfection. For example, artists have aspired to fashion perfect ("ideal") Human figures in order to represent gods, as the ancient Greeks and Romans did.
• illuminated manuscript - especially from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, hand printed books made on parchment (before paper became widely available). Parchment pages were decorated with colorful painted decorations. manuscripts were often devotional and religious.
• illusionism - using artificial means to create the effect of real experiences, such as flat painted objects that appear three-dimensional.
• image - usually the word is used to mean "picture" - what is depicted. The term "imagery" can be applied also to abstract art in order to imply that the colors, shapes, or brushstrokes can convey meanings just as identifiable objects can.
• impasto - thickly applied paint
• implied line
• Impressionism - style now greatly admired that shook the foundation of European art in the late nineteenth century and had a profound impact on all art that happened after it.
• inkjet - type if printer that translates digital information from a computer into jets of ink that produce text or images.
• installation - a type of sculpture that takes over and alters the space where it is installed, usually temporarily. It is an important aspect of postmodern art.
• intaglio - in graphic arts: engraving, etching, drypoint, all processes in which ink transfers to paper from incised, ink-filled lines cut into a metal plate.
• intensity
• intermediate color
• International Style
• Islamic - art that comes from areas of the world - primarily northern Africa, the Middle East, and Pakistan - that follow the teachings of the prophet Mohammed and the religion known as Islam. Colorful mosaics and tile work are characteristic of Islamic design.

J

• jeu d'esprit - French term meaning "game of wit."
• juxtaposition - putting side by side or close together; this may highlight their differences. In painting, juxtaposing forms against flat areas of paint increases their three-dimensional quality.

K

• kachina - one of the deified ancestral spirits believed among the Hopi and other Pueblo Indians to visit the pueblos at intervals.
• Kamakura - the Kamakura period (1185-1333) saw a new realism in Japanese portraiture, expressed in both painting and sculpture.
• kiln - a furnace in which ceramic art is fired, transforming fragile clay into vitrified, durable objects, often with a glassy coat of colored glaze.
• kinetic art - type of sculpture initiated by Alexander Calder's "mobiles" - works that were engineered to  move with the wind currents yet stay balanced.
• kitsch - German"trash" or "trashy." Used of art that deliberately combines references to popular culture with the language of "high" (elite) art or assertively courts the accusation of bad taste.
• kore - an ancient Greek statue of a clothed young woman standing with feet together.
• kouros - an ancient Greek statue of nude male youth standing with left leg forward and arms at the sides.

L

• landscape - work of art that depicts a scene in nature.
• lens
• life-drawing - drawing from a nude model.
• line - marks made by using a pen or pencil; some lines are implied by adjacent or overlapping objects in a artwork.
• linear - those aspects of art having to do with lines.
• linear perspective
• linoleum cut
• lithography - artwork printing made from a design drawn on a stone block and then inked.
• local color
• logo
• loom
• lost-wax casting - a method of creating metal designs by pouring liquid metal into a clay or plaster mold in which the original form made of wax has been fired, leaving a void.

M

• madrasa - An Islamic institution of higher learning, where teaching is focused on theology, law, and the sciences.
• Mannerism - style of Italian art from the 1520s to about 1600. Vasari praised the maniera ("style") of his contemporaries, but Mannerism later became a pejorative term for affectation and distortion.
• mass
• mat
• matte - a surface that is smooth, but without shine or luster.
• Medieval - - an era in European history, often called the Middle Ages, dating from the fall of the Western Roman Empire, in the fifth century, to the fifteenth century, at the advent of the Renaissance. Christianity was the unifying force of medieval culture - much of the art of this period relates to the Catholic Church.
• medium - the material from which any given job is made. In painting, the liquid in which the pigment is suspended to create paint.
• mihrab - a recess or niche that distinguished the wall oriented toward Mecca in a mosque.
• minaret - a tall slender tower on the exterior of a mosque from which believers are called prayer.
• Ming - one of the most famous periods in Chinese art history (1368-1644). Artists of the Ming dynasty are acclaimed for beautiful porcelain - much of it made specifically for export - sculptures of jade, ivory, and glass, and complex designs for parks and gardens.
• Minimalism - movement in European and American sculpture and painting of  the 1950s and 1960s that that subsumed the artist's personal engagement in the work and emphasized the integrity of rational configurations of geometric shapes.
• mixed media
• mobile
• modeling - molding
• Modernism - broad term for tendencies in early twentieth-century art and culture that broke with conventions of the preceding era, including abstract and Surreal art.
• molding - the act of manipulating a soft material in order to create and art object, such as forming a ball of clay into a sculpted head.
• Momoyama - a period in Japanese history (1573-1615) when the country was governed by warlords living in the castle towns of Anzuchi and Momoyama. Characteristic of the period is its architecture: stone buildings many stories high with curving tile roofs that overhang each ascending story. 
• monochromatic - a design emphasizing or restricted to one color.
• montage
• mosaic - patter or image made of may pieces of colored stone, glass, or tile adhered to  a flat surface.
• mosque - an edifice dedicated to communal Muslim worship.
• motif - artists who depict what is in front them are said to work "from the motif" (French: sur le motif  - "in front of the object").
• Mughal - a Muslim empire in India (1523-1857) during which a distinctive style arose, especially in northern India. As the Mughal style developed, drawings, costumes, and illuminated manuscripts combined elaborate Islamic patterning an bright colors with Indian-influenced landscape detail and Western-influenced modeling and perspective. The Taj Mahal is an example of Mughal architecture.
• mural - a painting created for walls or ceilings; from the French word for wall - "mur."
• Muromachi - a Japan era (1392-1573) when the shoguns ruled. Zen Buddhism influenced art.

N

• naive - a descriptive term applied to art made by individuals who were not trained as artists. The work often looks as if it were made by children because it pays no attention to the conventions of academic training that we associate with "fine art."
• naturalism - the attempt to represent things as the actually appear. Naturalism is found in many differnt types of art: for example, holy figures in Renaissance religious paintings may have naturalistic clothing or features.
• nave - the long central space of a Christian church laid out in a cruciform plan.
• negative space - empty or open space within or bounding a painting, sculpture, or architectural design.
• Neoclassicism - art of the  eighteenth and early nineteenth century reflecting the renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman culture, also influenced by antiquities discovered following Napoleon's invasion of Egypt.
• Neo-Expressionism - European and North American art movement of the 1970s-80s, characterized by large paintings executed in a raw, expressionistic manner and with somber subject matter.
• Neolithic art
• neutrals
• nonrepresentational - a term describing any artwork of an abstract nature, with no attempt to reproduce the appearance of the natural world.

O

• Oceanic - applies to art produced by the island peoples of the South Pacific, especially Melanesia.
• oil - a paint made from mixing pigments into an oil bse.
• Op art - a type of painting and drawing that concentrates on creating optical effects to convince our eyes that there is motion where there is none. The sensation of movement is achieved by the interactions of colors that seem to vibrate when placed next to others by strong contrasts in light and dark, and by certain kinds of patterns, such as wavy lines that run parallel but vary in distance from one another.
• opaque
• open form
• optical color mixture
• organic shape
• original print

P

• painterly - a way of painting that blends paint strokes and merges colors.
• painting - a way of making a picture by applying a sticky liquid mixed with colored pigments to paper, panel, or canvas when it is wet and allowing it to dry.
• Paleolithic - archaeological era beginning with the earliest traces of human activity and lasting until about 10,000 year ago. The earliest known European Paleolithic art dates from aroudn40,000 year ago.
• pastels - a soft chalky drawing material that can be sued in many of the same ways as charcoal; but has the advantage of coming in colors. Drawing using pastels are very often composed of light colors.
• patina - the coloration of the surface of a sculpture, often from aging or weathering.
• pattern - repetition of shapes within a work, usually a matter of lines and colors.
• pen and ink - a tool for drawing and the accompanying liquid, usually India ink.
• pencil - a writing and drawing tool, usually made of wood with a graphite core.
• performance art - literally a work of art, a piece of theater, dance, or music performed in front of a live audience. In the twentieth century, performers called on spontaneity for the content of their performances; they also expressed through abstraction and absurdity, becoming "performance artists."
• persistence of vision
• perspective - perspective in a drawing can be achieved through atmospheric or vanishing point perspectives. Linear perspective uses a vanishing point to establish lines that converge as they get "further away," such as converging rails on a railroad track as it goes into the distance. Atmospheric perspective takes advantage of the artist's knowledge of lighting, shading and amount of detail to give the illusion of distance.
• photo-montage - a photographic work created from many smaller photographs arranged in a composition.
• photo-realism
• pictogram - writing that uses pictures to represent a world, syllable or sound; hieroglyphs; petroglyphs.
• picture plane - plane defined by the physical surface of a picture, in relation to which the various elements in the picture may appear to be either farther away or closer to the viewer.
• pigment
• planes - the surfaces of a building or sculpture, usually referring to flat surfaces in particular.
• plein air
  
• Pointillism - the method of applying paint in small brush-marks of pure color - so that colors interact in the viewers perception rather than being mixed together by the artist; exemplified by Georges Seurat.
• Pop Art - a movement that dominated the 1960s in which artists used the intensely rich world of popular and commercial images, from soup cans to to comic strips and billboards, both for inspiration and as subject matter for their art.
• porcelain - a type of extremely hard and fine pottery made from kaolin and other minerals; fired at high temperature; having a translucent quality.
• portraits - a portrait tries to present both an accurate depiction and other aspects of a person's character, personality, moral goodness or authority.
• positive shape
• Post-Impressionism - painters in this late nineteenth-century period turned away from the interests of the Impressionists, focusing less on surfaces and fleeting effects and more on  personal concerns, emotions, and even spiritual matters. 
• Post-Modern - the diversification of styles and concerns that came with the waning of modernism as a style. Most postmodernism is a reaction to modern art, to some extent bouncing off it, often with humor.
• primary colors -
• prime
• primer - a liquid or smooth paste used to prepare artists' canvases; gesso is an example.
• printmaking - an art form made by transferring an image from an original source to another surface, usually paper; wood-block printing, intaglio, lithography are examples.
• progressive - art that aims to do something new, often inn terms of a wider vision of social progress (similar to avant-garde).
• proportion - 
• public art - art that is displayed in public spaces. Sometimes this art is commemorative and monumental. At other times this art is intended to to beautify or enliven an otherwise bleak or or bland opens space, such as a plaza or at a point of public transportation.

Q

• quadriptych - 
• quasi-reality - the creation of an illusion has for centuries been the aim of painting. The particular nature of the artistic world, the semi-reality, mediates between a viewer and his or her passions (rendering them manageable).
• quilling - 
• quilting - the process of joining three or more layers of fabric together to form a blanket-like furnishing. Quilt-making often involves group work in which community and therapeutic values develop. The history of quilting goes back s far as the Egyptian Pharaohs.

R

• ready-made - an ordinary object taken to its con text and exhibited with little of no modification  as art. The ready-made was pioneered by Marcel Duchamp in such works as Fountain (1917), a signed porcelain urinal.
• Realism - art movement in mid-nineteenth-century France associated with Gustave Courbet's painting of provincial working class life and socialist aspirations for art. Realism is also used for other types of art that represent the harsher aspects of life. Techniques were used to depict detail and accuracy so that the depicted object looks "real."
• registration
• relief printing
• relief sculpture - a form of sculpture that is not fully three dimensional; also known as "bas" relief. A portrait on a coin may be considered bas relief.
• reliquary - container for a sacred object.
• Renaissance - term meaning "rebirth" adopted by the French historian Jules Michelet (1855) and subsequently applied to the flowering of arts and intellectual culture - inspired by Classical precedents, in fourteenth- to sixteenth-century Italy and, slightly later, in other regions of Europe.
• rendering - the way an artist uses his or her tools to draw. A sketch may be rendered in bold, rough strokes of charcoal. Style.
• reportage - reporting current events in the manner of news journalism.
• representational art - figurative art
• reproduction - an art piece that is intended to reproduce a copy of another work. When a reproduction is passed off as real, it is called a forgery or a fake.
• rhythm
• Rococo - style of art and architecture associated with eighteenth-century aristocratic culture in which Baroque grandeur and drama were replaced by lighter, more graceful and decorative forms.
• Romanesque - a period in medieval art and architecture inspired mainly by Roman architecture  - especially the rounded arch but which also included some elements of Byzantine design.
• Romanticism - an artistic revolt in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries against what artists believed was a confining emphasis on reason and order.

S

• Salon
• santero
• scale - refers to relative size or proportion. A door can be too big for a wall. 
• school - a term art historians used first to describe the students of a particular artist, or people who were strongly influenced by one but whose names were lost in history; the term has been used  to refer to groups or artists who work in a similar style or with similar attitudes,
• screen-printing
• sculpture - the art of carving, casting, forging, molding, or welding materials into statues or other objects.
• secondary colors
• self-portrait - a portrait of oneself.
• serif
• serigraphy
• sfumato - smoky, diffused lighting
• shade - the result of adding black to a hue, making it darker.
• shape - the outline of some mass; also, contour, form, volume.
• shutter
• silk screen
• slip - a mixture of clay and water, used for surface decoration, for joingin moist clay parts, for pouring into a plaster mold.
• Song - a dynastic period in Chinese history (960-1279), during which landscape painting reached its peak.
• space - among the illusions that particularly interest artists are ones that can make our eyes perceive space when in fact we know an artwork, a painting or a drawing, to be flat.
• still-lifes - pictures of object, typically bowls, vases, or fruit; (unlike figure painting or portrait painting).
• stoneware
• storyboard
• stupa - the earliest form of Buddhist architecture, a dome-like structure probably derived from Indian funeral mounds.
  
• style - a particular manner, form, or character of representation, construction, or expression typical of an individual artist or of a certain school or period.
• stylize - the act of eliminating or exaggerating details in order to portray a subject based on a stylistic pattern rather that on natural appearance.
• subject - refers to what the artist makes pictures of - the things they depict.
• Sublime - aesthetic concept developed by eighteenth-century thinkers such as Edmund Burke central to the spirit of Romanticism. In contrast to beauty's calming effect, the Sublime inspired awe and even terror. Mountains, cataclysms, and momentous events could all embody the Sublime.
• Suprematism - movement in Russian art developed by Kazimir Malevich around 1915, based on the idea that nonrepresentational geometric forms could "unmask" life's spiritual foundations.
• Surrealism - term coined by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917 and formulated as a movement by André Breton in his Surrealist Manifesto (1924). Surrealists sought a reality beyond conventional appearances, using new methods such as automatism.
• symbolism - a school of artist who, at the end of the nineteenth century, began to experiment with increasingly abstract ways of conveying ideas, often through distorted or exaggerated figures as well as symbols.
• symmetry - an arrangement of parts so that the shapes, patterns and colors are reflected (side to side in bilateral symmetry; symmetry can also be radial). Also, asymmetry.

T

• tempera - a form of watercolor paint made from mixing colored pigment into a sticky base (egg yolks is an historical example) that will adhere to a a surface, usually paper.
• tessera - the small piece of stone, glass or other object that is pieced together with many others to create a mosaic.
• textiles - material created by spinning fibers into thread of yarn and weaving, knitting, or otherwise combining them to create what we also call "cloth." 
• texture - the look and/or feel of a work of art, such as smooth or rough.
• three-dimensional - refers to a mass having height, width, and depth.
• throwing
• tint - the result of adding white to a hue, making it lighter.
• tone - aspects of art and music having to do with the quality of the impression - gentle or harsh, for example.
• tradition - referring to a long history of making something the same way, repeatedly. Traditional art is time-tested, made according to customs and conventions that dictate style, subject matter, materials, and technique. Examples include art specific to an ethnic group, including folk art and some aspects of craft.
• Triptych - a work of art divided into three parts, as the prefix "tri-" would indicate. The triptych form was used a great deal in medieval times to make elaborate "altarpieces" consisting of a large central panel and two side panels that could be folded in over the larger one to protect the sacred images contained within.
• trompe l'oeil
• tusche
• two-dimensional - refers to a mass or an object having only height  and width, such as a sheet of drawing paper.
• typography

U

• underpainting - blocked out areas of light , pastel paint in preparation for finish layers with detail.
• unity

V

• value - the relative relationships in a painting between darks and lights, as well as differing hues.
• vanishing point - in a perspective system, the point on the horizon line at which orthoganols meet.
• vantage point - the point from which the art seems to have been looking in order to depict a scene. Also, vantage point.
• vault
• vehicle
• video art - the use of television technology to produce art.
• volume - referring to the amount of space a mass takes up. 
• Vorticism - short-lived British art movement founded bin1914 by Percy Wyndham Lewis and characterized by an emphatically angular machine-inspired style.

W

• warm colors - reds and orange colors that remind us of things that are hot, such as fire.
• warp - the vertical threads in a weavers loom.
• wash - a diluted watercolor.
• watercolor - paint often associated with drawing. colored pigments are mixed with a substance that allows them to dissolve in water, and they are usually painted on paper. The look normally associates with watercolor is obtained by keeping tn paint thin and allowing the paper to show through - rendering transparent colors.
• weft - the horizontal threads in a woven piece of cloth.
• welding - a means of combining metal elements by heating the edges of two pieces and fusing them to each other with additional molten metal.
• Western - art that comes from Europe and the Americas. Also, art that has to do with cowboys, pioneers, and European-American perceptions of native Americans.
• woodblock - a type of print made by cutting away areas from a block of wood, which is the inked and pressed onto paper so that the uncut areas form an image.
• woodcut - aka xylograph

X

• x-ray style - in aboriginal art, a manner of representation in which the artist depicts a figure or animal buy illustrating its outline as well as essential internal organs.
• Xenocrates - 
• xylograph - a woodcut or a wood engraving. The practice originated in China and Japan as early as the 7th and 8th centuries. The technique became widespread in Europe around the 14th century, coinciding with the availability of paper. Albrecht Dürer mastered this technique during the German Renaissance.

Y

Z

• ziggurat - a massive, stepped-pyramid structure built in ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and Iran) as a temple complex, with a shrine at the summit; central to religious and civic life; from approximately 2200 until 500 BCE.
• zone of proximal development (ZPD) - the mental space where a child feels challenged, yet capable. When the child is able to navigate, negotiate classroom assignments, for example, and find success, the child learning process advances and is ready to continue. (See Lev Vygotsky).

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