Art Terms (S) Flashcards
Salon
Originally the name of the official art exhibitions organised by the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture (Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture) and its successor the Academy of Fine Arts (Académie des Beaux Arts)
Sampling
In its most basic form sampling simply re-processes existing culture, usually technologically, in much the same way a collage does
School of Altamira
Avant-garde art school (Academia Altamira) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, founded in 1946 with the aim of promoting the idea that a new art was necessary to reflect the modern world as revealed by science
School of London
School of London was a term invented by artist R.B. Kitaj to describe a group of London-based artists who were pursuing forms of figurative painting in the face of avant-garde approaches in the 1970s
School of Paris
In the early years of the twentieth century, Paris became a magnet for artists from all over the world and the focus of the principal innovations of modern art – the term School of Paris grew up to describe this phenomenon
Scottish Colourists
Group of four Scottish artists, who were among the first to introduce the intense colour of the French fauve movement into Britain in the 1920s
Screenprint
A variety of stencil printing, using a screen made from fabric (silk or synthetic) stretched tightly over a frame
Sculpture
Three-dimensional art made by one of four basic processes: carving, modelling, casting, constructing
Scuola Romana
Scuola romana (School of Rome) is an umbrella term for the artists based in Rome, or having close links with it, in the 1920s and 1930s
Secession
The breaking away of younger and more radical artists from an existing academy or art group to form a new grouping, the most famous being the Vienna secession formed in 1897 and led by symbolist painter Gustav Klimt
Serial Art
Serial art is art that adheres to a strict set of rules to determine its composition or to determine a series of compositions
Significant Form
Term coined by art critic Clive Bell in 1914 to describe the idea that the form of an artwork or forms within an artwork can be expressive, even if largely or completely divorced from a recognizable reality
Simulacrum
A term from Greek Platonic philosophy that meant a copy of a copy of an ideal form
Simultanism
Term invented by artist Robert Delaunay to describe the abstract painting developed by him and his wife Sonia Delaunay from about 1910
Site-Specific
The term site-specific refers to a work of art designed specifically for a particular location and that has an interrelationship with the location
Situationist International
Revolutionary alliance of European avant-garde artists, writers and poets formed at a conference in Italy in 1957 (as Internationale Situationiste or IS)
Social Realism
Refers to any realist painting that also carries a clearly discernible social or political comment
Social Sculpture
Social sculpture is a theory developed by the artist Joseph Beuys in the 1970s based on the concept that everything is art, that every aspect of life could be approached creatively and, as a result, everyone has the potential to be an artist
Social Turn
Social turn was first used in 2006 to describe the recent return to socially engaged art that is collaborative, often participatory and involves people as the medium or material of the work
Socialist Realism
A form of modern realism imposed in Russia by Stalin following his rise to power after the death of Lenin in 1924, characterised in painting by rigorously optimistic pictures of Soviet life painted in a realist style
Socially Engaged Practice
Socially engaged practice describes art that is collaborative, often participatory and involves people as the medium or material of the work
Solarisation
Technique that involves exposing a partially developed photograph to light, before continuing processing, creating halo-like effects
Sound Art
Art which uses sound both as its medium (what it is made out of) and as its subject (what it is about)
Spazialismo
Italian movement started by the Argentine-born Italian artist Lucio Fontana in 1947 who, in its manifesto, stated that art should embrace science and technology
Spiral
Spiral was a New York based African American collective formed in 1963 with the aim of addressing how African American artists should respond to America’s changing political and cultural landscape
Still Life
One of the principal genres (subject types) of Western art – essentially, the subject matter of a still life painting or sculpture is anything that does not move or is dead
Street Art
Street art is related to graffiti art in that it is created in public locations and is usually unsanctioned, but it covers a wider range of media and is more connected with graphic design
Stuckism
Founded by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson in 1999, Stuckism is an art movement that is anti-conceptual and champions figurative painting
Subjective Photography
Subjective photography was an international movement founded in Germany by the photographer Otto Steinert in 1951 which championed photography that explored the inner psyche and human condition rather than reflecting the outside world
Sublime
Theory developed by Edmund Burke in the mid eighteenth century, where he defined sublime art as art that refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation
Supra-Sensorial
Supra-sensorial is a term devised by the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica to describe the experience of being in one of his installations – environments that were designed to encourage the viewer’s emotional and intellectual participation
Surrealism
A twentieth-century literary, philosophical and artistic movement that explored the workings of the mind, championing the irrational, the poetic and the revolutionary
Symbolism
Late nineteenth-century movement that advocated the expression of an idea over the realistic description of the natural world
Synaesthesia
Synaesthesia (or synesthesia) is a neurological condition in which the stimulation of a sense (like touch or hearing) leads involuntarily to the triggering of another sense (like sight or taste)
Synthetic Cubism
Synthetic cubism is the later phase of cubism, generally considered to run from about 1912 to 1914, characterised by simpler shapes and brighter colours
Sythetism
Term associated with the style of symbolic representation adopted by Paul Gauguin and his followers in the 1880s characterised by flat areas of colour and bold outlines
Systems Art
Loosely describes a group of radical artists working in the late 1960s early 1970s who reacted against art’s traditional focus on the object with the aim of making their art more responsive to the world around them
