More Art Terms Coming Soon…

Please feel free to suggest terms in the Comments area of this blog entry.

Cubism

Cubism was a new way of representing reality in art invented by Picasso and Braque from1907-8. Cubism showed everything reduced to ‘geometric outlines, to cubes’. In their Cubist paintings Braque and Picasso began to bring different views of the object together on the picture surface, and the art became increasingly abstract.

Example: Cubism

Primitive/Native Art

Includes tribal art from Africa, the South Pacific and Indonesia, as well as prehistoric and very early European art, and European folk art.

Example: Primitive Native Art

Folk Art

Art originating among the common people of a nation or region and usually reflecting their traditional culture, especially everyday or festive items produced or decorated by unschooled artists.

Example: Folk Art

Illustration

A visual representation that is used make some subject more pleasing or easier to understand.

Example: Illustration

Abstract Expressionism

Term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters in 1940s and 1950s. The Abstract Expressionists were mostly based in New York City, and also became known as the New York School. The name evokes their aim to make art that while abstract was also expressive or emotional in its effect. They were inspired by the Surrealist idea that art should come from the unconscious mind, and by the automatism of Miró. Within Abstract Expressionism were two broad groupings. These were the so-called action painters led by Pollock and De Kooning, and the colour-field painters, notably Rothko, Newman and Still. The action painters worked in a spontaneous improvisatory manner often using large brushes to make sweeping gestural marks. Pollock famously placed his canvas on the ground and danced around it pouring paint direct from the can or trailing it from the brush or a stick. In this way they directly placed their inner impulses on the canvas. The colour field painters were deeply interested in religion and myth. They created simple compositions with large areas of a single colour intended to produce a contemplative or meditational response in the viewer.

Example: Abstract Expressionism 

Pop Art

Name given to British and American versions of art that drew inspiration from sources in popular and commercial culture. These sources included Hollywood movies, advertising, packaging, pop music and comic books.

Example: Pop Art 

Expressionism

Expressionism as a general term refers to art in which the image of reality is more or less heavily distorted in form and colour in order to make it expressive of the artists inner feelings or ideas about it. In expressionist art colour in particular can be highly intense and non-naturalistic, brushwork is typically free and paint application tends to be generous and highly textured. Expressionist art tends to be emotional and sometimes mystical.

Example: Expressionism

Impressionism

Way of painting landscape and scenes of everyday life developed in France by Monet and others from early 1860s. Based on practice of painting finished pictures out of doors, as opposed to simply making sketches (actually pioneered in Britain by Constable around 1813-17). Result was greater awareness of light and colour and the shifting pattern of the natural scene. Brushwork became rapid and broken into separate dabs to render these effects.

Example: Impressionism 

Abstract

Art in which the artist has started with some visible object and abstracted elements from it to arrive at a more or less simplified or schematised form. Term also applied to art using forms that have no source at all in external reality. These forms are often, but not necessarily, geometric.

Example: Abstract