Art Terms

Question 1

abstract art

Answer 1

Abstract art - art that takes from reality only what the artist wants or that renders a visual depiction of concepts in the artist’s mind; the result is a work of art that in no way resembles the familiar world

Question 2

alteration

Answer 2

Alteration – how the modern artist changes reality by adding to it shapes, lines, and even colors not found in nature

Question 3

Chiaroscuro

Answer 3

Chiaroscuro – Italian term denoting a way of reproducing in a work of art the interplay of light and shadow in the real world

Question 4

Classicism

Answer 4

Classicism – the balanced, harmonious, often mathematical characteristics of art and architecture in fifth-century Athens and those aspects of Roman art that were heavily influenced by artists of that period; also used for all subsequent art and architecture created in that style.

Question 5

Collage

Answer 5

Collage – a work of art in which a variety of materials such as newsprint, magazine pictures crepe paper, even glass and wood are glued together, forming a new whole, expressive of the artist.

Question 6

Cubism

Answer 6

Cubism – movement in modern art, epitomized by Picasso, in which the artist breaks down the field of vision into discontinuous segments or in which the artist shows a number of visual events taking place simultaneously (as in Guernica).

Question 7

Dutch school

Answer 7

Dutch school – group of painters producing intensely realistic art, centered in Holland during the 17th century, with Rembrandt the outstanding example.

Question 8

Fresco

Answer 8

Fresco – artwork painted on the walls of churches and public buildings, popular in the Renaissance, in which the artist applied paint to wet plaster.

Question 9

Golden section

Answer 9

Golden section – aesthetically pleasing relationship between the two sides of a plane (like a rectangle), such that the short is to the longer as the longer is to the sum of both. The ratio is 1 to 1.68.

Question 10

Gothic

Answer 10

Gothic – an architectural style of the late Middle Ages featuring high pointed spires and pointed arches; coined by a critic of the style who called it barbaric “like the Goths who destroyed the Roman Empire.”

Question 11

Imitation

Answer 11

Imitation – transference of what is experienced either outside or inside the artist to a medium of art; it can mean an idealized reproduction (as in classicism), a faithfully realistic one (as in the Dutch School), or an externalization of what exists in the artist’s mind (as in abstract art).

Question 12

Impressionism

Answer 12

Impressionism – a mid-nineteenth-century art movement where in the attempt to be realistic is abandoned and instead the artist projects onto the canvas a subjective experience of the world as color and light. In Impressionist art, forms tend to be less sharply divided from each other than they are in, say, landscape painting.

Question 13

Likeness

Answer 13

Likeness – the reproduction by an artist of a person or landscape with the aim of being as close to reality as possible; photography in the 19th century

Question 14

Media

Answer 14

Media – the particular materials in which a given artist works, such as paint, acrylic, charcoal, stone, or even tires, mufflers, broken pieces of glass, etc.

Question 15

Modernism

Answer 15

Modernism – refers less to a particular art movement than to art produced in the late 19th to 20th centuries

Question 16

Performance art

Answer 16

Performance art – art as an event that generally exists only for the time it takes for the presentation or installation. The wrapper buildings, surrounded islands, and other installations of Christo may be kept for longer periods of time, but not indefinitely.

Question 17

Perspective

Answer 17

Perspective – technique of rendering, on a plane or curved surface, objects as they appear to natural vision; developed and refined during the early Italian Renaissance

Question 18

Pop Art

Answer 18

Pop Art – style of mid-20th century art influenced by comic books, movies, television, commercials, and billboard advertising; can be just plain fun or satiric.

Question 19

Post-Impressionism

Answer 19

Post-Impressionism – broad term used by art historians for art of the late 19th century and early 20th centuries that resembles but is not strict Impressionism; it is neither realistic nor abstract. The work of van Gogh belongs to this category.

Question 20

Postmodernism

Answer 20

Postmodernism – art produced from the late 20th century to the present; less a specific movement than a broad umbrella term for the many innovative techniques

Question 21

Psychological realism

Answer 21

Psychological realism – the manner in which such artists as Leonardo and Rembrandt are able to convey the inner life of their figures

Question 22

Realism

Answer 22

Realism – as used in this chapter, art as likeness

Question 23

Renaissance

Answer 23

Renaissance – the period of artistic, political, and social movements that began in 14th century Italy, then spread throughout western Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries; characterized by renewed interest in the classical world, and also marking the end of medievalism and the emergence of the modern world.

Question 24

Superrealism

Answer 24

Superrealism – modern style made famous by sculptures of Duane Hanson that are so lifelike they seem about to move; this art form also can make biting social commentary

Question 25

Surrealism

Answer 25

Surrealism – modern style associated with work of Salvador Dali, among others, in which recognizable objects are put together in bizarre contexts that seem like visualizations of dreams.