Art Vocab Part 2 Flashcards
Two separate paintings which are attached by hinges or other means, displayed as one artwork.
Diptych
A principle of visual movement in artworks, which can be carried by line, dots, marks, shapes, patterns, color, and other compositional elements. ____ in paintings or sculptures directs the viewer’s eye around or through the artwork, in a way which the artist consciously or unconsciously determines. One important function is to keep the viewer’s eye from “leaving” the work, and instead cause the viewer to follow an inventive (interesting) path within the work, or exit in one area, only to be brought back in another area.
Directional Movment
Pencil, pen, ink, charcoal or other similar mediums on paper or other support, tending toward a linear quality rather than mass, and also with a tendency toward black-and-white, rather than color (one exception being pastel).
drawing
A type of contemporary art begun in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, which uses the landscape, or environment, as its medium, either by using natural forms as the actual work of art, or by enhancing natural forms with manmade materials. Two well-known earthwork artists are the husband and wife team of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and Robert Smithson. Some of these earthworks can be very large, measured in miles. The origin of earth art may have been the environment-conscious ‘60’s and ‘70’s, but ___ also refer back to ancient ____, such as the large Native American and other burial mounds. Christo’ and Jeanne-Claude’s work is various, usually temporary and site-specific, and ranges from “wrapping” an island or a building (such as the former German Reichstag headquarters), to erecting a very high “curtain” of fabric over miles of uninhabited (and inhabited) land. They work with an army of workers to erect these works, and also work with the surrounding community to get permission and establish guidelines of what they can and cannot do, during which meetings they explain their artistic purposes to community members, and often the residents evolve from their initial reluctance to give permission, to becoming enthusiastic supporters. It is a very interesting process to watch, and I think is another example of how some contemporary art tries to enlist the participation of the public in the art-making process, or at the very least to familiarize the public with artistic motivations. In Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work, I see a kind-of Quixotic whimsy - when they wrapped the former Reichstag headquarters building in Germany, it seemed to me to be a poetic expression of victory over the former Nazi Third Reich tyranny.
earthwork
The process of using pigments dissolved in hot wax as a medium for painting; mostly used long ago, but there are some contemporary artists who have used ____, such as Jasper Johns.
encaustic
A general term used to describe traditional printing processes, such as etching, aquatint, drypoint, etc., where an image is made by the use of metal plates and engraving tools, and printed, usually through a printing press. The image can be incised into the plate, or drawn with fluid and then dipped in acid to etch the uncovered areas. These processes are still used by artists, but of course have been supplanted by more modern processes for general printing purposes.
engraving
A characteristic of some art, generally since the mid-19th century, leaning toward the expression of emotion over objective description. James Ensor, Edvard Munch and Vincent Van Gogh were perhaps the first expressionists, though there was not really a movement per se, but individual artists. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, expressionism became widely espoused, particularly by German and Austrian artists, such as Emil Nolde, Kirchner, Gustav Klimt, and others. Though there is variation, certain characteristics predominate: bright, even garish, color; harsh contrasts of black and white (as in woodcuts); exaggeration of form; and distortion or elongation of figures. There are still many artists whose work has expressionistic tendencies; in the 1980’s there was a period of art called Neo-Expressionist. (The word ‘neo’ before an art label means that there is a reprise of work similar to the original movement.)
expressionistic
A term used to describe art which is based on the figure, usually in realistic or semi-realistic terms; also loosely used to describe an artist who paints or sculpts representationally, as opposed to painting or sculpting in an abstract or non-objective manner
figurative
The relationship of the picture surface (____) to the images on the picture surface (____). The figure is the space occupied by forms (e.g., a person in a portrait) (also known as the ‘positive’ space); the ground is the “empty” or unoccupied space around the person in the portrait (also known as the ‘negative’ space) (The ground is also commonly called the ‘background.’) In art since the early 20th century, this division of the picture plane has been seriously challenged, to the point where there is not a distinction of figure/ground, but rather one continuous surface and space, with no ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ space, just one interwoven space.
figure/ground
In two-dimensional images, the center of interest visually and/or subject-wise; tends to be used more in traditional, representational art than in modern and contemporary art, where the picture surface tends to have more of an overall importance, rather than one important area.
focal point
Perspective applied to a single object in an image, for a three-dimensional effect, which often results in distortion with possible emotional overtones. It is used particularly with the human figure, in Renaissance and Mannerist art.
foreshortening
A term used by artists to describe the visual elements of a work of art, such as composition, space, color, etc., i.e., _____ elements.
formal
First used in the early years of the 20th century (in the Dadaist movement), a found object is any object that an artist comes upon, and uses in an artwork, or as the artwork itself. Marcel Duchamp called these works ‘readymades.’ He exhibited a urinal in the Society of Independent Artists exhibition in New York in 1917, under the signature ‘R Mutt’; Dada was the precursor to Surrealism, and was an ‘anti-art’ movement after World War I, which sought to avoid order and rationality in art. Dada also questioned the very meaning of art: what is art? who decides if an object is art? is it art because an artist places it in a museum and calls it art? etc. Later, Picasso made a bull’s head from found objects: the seat and handle bars of a bicycle.
found object
Wall painting in water-based paint on moist plaster, mostly from the 14th to the 16th centuries; used mostly before the Renaissance produced oil paint as a more easily handled medium.
fresco
French term, meaning to rub a crayon or other tool onto paper or other material, which is placed onto a textured surface, in order to create the texture of that surface on the paper. The Surrealist artist Max Ernst used this technique in some of his collages.
frottage
