Week 2: The Fundamentals Flashcards
Balance
A principle of art in which elements are used to create a symmetrical or asymmetrical sense of visual weight in an artwork.
Elements of art
The basic vocabulary of art-line, shape, form, volume, mass, texture, value, (lightness/darkness), space, color, and motion, and time.
Contrast
A drastic difference between such elements as color or value (lightness/darkness) when they are presented together.
Cubism, cubist
Twentieth-century movement and style in art, especially painting, in which perspective with a single viewpoint was abandoned and use was made of simple shapes, interlocking planes, and later, collage, the cubists were artists who formed part of the movement. “cubist” is also used to describe their style of painting.
Engraving
A printmaking technique where the artist gouges or scratches the image into the surface of the printing plate.
Etching
An intaglio printmaking process that uses acid to bite (or etch) the engraved design into the printing surface.
Actual line
A continuous, uninterupted line.
Color
The optical effect caused when reflected white light of the spectrum is divided into separate wavelengths.
Collage
A work of art assembled by gluing materials, often paper, onto a surface. From the French word Collar, to glue.
Automatic
Suppressing conscious control to access subconscious sources of creativity and truth.
Conceptual art
A work in which the communication of an idea are most important to the work.
Abstract Expressionism
A mid-twentieth-century artistic style characterized by its capacity to convey intense emotions using non-representational images.
Anamorphosis
The distorted representation of an object so that it appears correctly proportioned only when viewed from one particular position.
Expressionism, Expressionist
A artistic style, at its height in 1920s Europe, devoted to representing subjective emotions and experiences instead of objective or external reality.
Genre
Category of artistic subject matter, often with a strongly influential history and tradition.
Hue
General classification of a color, the distinctive characteristics of a color as seen in the visible spectrum, such as green or red.
Iconographic
The study of art by interpreting symbols, themes, and subject matter as sources of meaning.
Memento mori
The Latin phrase that means “remember that you must die”. Artworks, such as skulls, flowers, and clocks are used to represent the transient nature of life on earth.
Mixed Media
The use of a variety of materials to make a work of art.
Neutral
Color (such as blacks, whites, grays, and dull gray-browns) made by mixing complementary hues.
Palette
The range of colors used by an artist.
Pattern
An arrangement of predictably repeated elements.
Realism
the nineteenth-century artistic style that aimed to depict nature and everyday subjects in an unidealized manner. “Realism” is also used to describe a historical movement from the same period, which tried to achieve social change and equality by highlighting art and literature the predicament of the poor.
Representational
Art that depicts figures and objects so that we recognize what is represented.
Triptych
An artwork comprising three panels, normally joined together and sharing a common theme.
Emphasis
The principle of drawing attention to particular content within a work.
Monumental
having massive or impressive scale.
Primary colors
Three basic colors from which all ohers are derived.
Subordination
The opposite of emphasis, it draws our attention away from a particular area of a work.
Classical period
A period in the history of Greek art, c.480-323BCE.
Abstract
Art imagery that departs from recognizable images of the natural world.
Format
The shape of the area an artist uses for making a two-dimensional artwork.
Texture
The surface quality of a work, for example, fine/course/detailed/lacking, in detail.
Tenebrism
Dramatic use of intense darkness and light to heighten the impact of a painting.
Symbolist
Artist or Artistic style belonging to the movement in European art and literature, c.1884-1910, that conveyed meaning by the use of powerful yet ambiguous symbols.
Relative placement
The arrangement of shapes or lines to form a visual relationship to each other in a design.
Picture plane
The surface of a painting or drawing.
Perspective
The creation of the illusion of depth in a two-dimensional image by using mathematical principles.
Orthogonals
In perspective systems, imaginary sightlines extending from forms to the vanishing point.