Art Terms (I-L)

Question 1

Iconography

Answer 1

The iconography of an artwork is the imagery within it

Question 2

Identity Politics

Answer 2

Identity politics is the term used to describe an anti-authoritarian political and cultural movement that gained prominence in the USA and Europe in the mid-1980s, asking questions about identity, repression, inequality and injustice and often focusing on the experience of marginalised groups

Question 3

Illusionism

Answer 3

The term illusionism is used to describe a painting that creates the illusion of a real object or scene, or a sculpture where the artist has depicted figure in such a realistic way that they seem alive

Question 4

Impasto

Answer 4

Impasto refers to an area of thick paint or texture, in a painting

Question 5

Impressionism

Answer 5

Impressionism developed in France in the nineteenth century and is based on the practice of painting out of doors and spontaneously ‘on the spot’ rather than in a studio from sketches. Main impressionist subjects were landscapes and scenes of everyday life

Question 6

Indigenism

Answer 6

There are several meanings relating to the word indigenism, but in the context of visual art the term refers to a movement that originated in Latin America during the 1920s which saw artists fighting against the dominance of European art in favour of making art about their own culture which embraced pre-Columbian art

Question 7

Industrial Design

Answer 7

The term industrial design refers to design of mass-produced, machine-made goods

Question 8

Ink

Answer 8

Ink is an ancient writing and drawing medium in liquid or paste form, traditionally black or brown in colour – though it can also contain coloured dyes or pigments

Question 9

Installation Art

Answer 9

The term installation art is used to describe large-scale, mixed-media constructions, often designed for a specific place or for a temporary period of time

Question 10

Institutional Criticism

Answer 10

Institutional critique is the act of critiquing an institution as artistic practice, the institution usually being a museum or an art gallery

Question 11

Intaglio

Answer 11

Intaglio describes any printmaking technique in which the image is produced by incising into the printing plate – the incised line or area holds the ink and creates the image

Question 12

International Style

Answer 12

The term international style was first used in 1932 to describe architects associated with the modern movement whose designs shared similar visual qualities – being mostly rectilinear, undecorated, asymmetrical and white

Question 13

Intimism

Answer 13

Intimism is a French term applied to paintings and drawings of quiet domestic scenes

Question 14

Japonisme

Answer 14

Japonisme is a French term coined in the late nineteenth century to describe the craze for Japanese art and design in the West

Question 15

Khartoum School

Answer 15

The Khartoum School was a modernist art movement formed in Sudan in 1960 that sought to develop a new visual vocabulary to reflect the distinctive identity of the newly independent nation

Question 16

Kinaesthetic Art

Answer 16

Kinaesthetic art is art that deals with the body in movement

Question 17

Kinetic Art

Answer 17

Kinetic art is art that depends on motion for its effects

Question 18

Kitsch

Answer 18

Kitsch is the German word for trash, and is used in English to describe particularly cheap, vulgar and sentimental forms of popular and commercial culture

Question 19

Laboratoire Agit’Art

Answer 19

Founded in Dakar in 1974, Laboratoire Agit’Art was a revolutionary and subversive art collective that sought to combine traditional African performance and creativity with a modern aesthetic

Question 20

Land Art

Answer 20

Land art or earth art is art that is made directly in the landscape, sculpting the land itself into earthworks or making structures in the landscape using natural materials such as rocks or twigs

Question 21

Landscape

Answer 21

Landscape is one of the principal types or genres of subject in Western art

Question 22

Lightbox

Answer 22

A lightbox is a box with a translucent white surface fitted with an internal light source, commonly a fluorescent tube or small incandescent bulbs

Question 23

Linocut

Answer 23

A linocut is a relief print produced in a manner similar to a woodcut but that uses linoleum as the surface into which the design is cut and printed from

Question 24

Lithography

Answer 24

Lithography is a printing process that uses a flat stone or metal plate on which the image areas are worked using a greasy substance so that the ink will adhere to them by, while the non-image areas are made ink-repellent

Question 25

Live Art

Answer 25

The term live art refers to performances or events undertaken or staged by an artist or a group of artists as a work of art, usually innovative and exploratory in nature

Question 26

Luminism

Answer 26

Luminism means roughly, the painting of light and is applied specifically to the American landscape painters of the Hudson River school from about 1830–70