Art History 2 Terms

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fete galante

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French, “amorous festival.” A type of Rococo painting depicting the outdoor amusements of upper-class society.

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Neoclassicism

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A style of art and architecture that emerged in the later 18th century as part of a general revival of interest in classical cultures. Neoclassical artists adopted themes and styles from ancient Greece and Rome.

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Poussiniste

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A member of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture during the early 18th century who followed Nicholas Poussin in insisting that form was the most important element of painting.

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Rubeniste

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A member of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture during the early 18th century who followed Peter Paul Rubens in insisting that color was the most important element of painting.

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Rococo

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A style, primarily of interior design, that appeared in France around 1700. Rococo interiors featured lavish decoration, including small sculptures, ornamental mirrors, easel paintings, tapestries, reliefs, and wall paintings, as well as elegant furniture. The term Rococo derived from the French word rocaille (“pebble”) and referred to the small stones and shells used to decorate grotto interiors.

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odalisque

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A woman in a Turkish harem

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baldaccino

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A canopy on columns, frequently built over an altar. The term derives from baldacco.

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Baroque

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The traditional blanket designation for European art from 1600 to 1750. The stylistic term Baroque, which describes art that features dramatic theatricality and elaborate ornamentation in contrast to the simplicity and orderly rationality of Renaissance art, is most appropriately applied to Italian art of this period. The term derives from barroco

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barroco

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Portuguese, “irregularly shaped pearl.” See Baroque.

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tenebrism

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Painting in the “shadowy manner,” using violent contrasts of light and dark, as in the work of Caravaggio. The term derives from tenebroso.

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tenebroso

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Italian, “shadowy.” See tenebrism.

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transubstation

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The transformation of the Eucharistic bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.

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camera obscura

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Latin, “dark room.” An ancestor of the modern camera in which a tiny pinhole, acting as a lens, projects an image on a screen, the wall of a room, or the ground-glass wall of a box; used by artists in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries as an aid in drawing from nature.

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Realism

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A movement that emerged in mid-19th-century France. Realist artists represented the subject matter of everyday life (especially that which up until then had been considered inappropriate for depiction) in a relatively naturalistic mode.

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Romanticism

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A Western cultural phenomenon, beginning around 1750 and ending about 1850, that gave precedence to feeling and imagination over reason and thought. More narrowly, the art movement that flourished from about 1800 to 1840.

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Salon des Refuses

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The Salon des Refusés, French for “exhibition of rejects” is generally an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon, but the term is most famously used to refer to the Salon des Refusés of 1863.

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Daguerrotype

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The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process. The image is a direct positive made in the camera on a silvered copper plate. The raw material for plates was called Sheffield plate, plating by fusion or cold-rolled cladding and was a standard hardware item produced by heating and rolling silver foil in contact with a copper support. [2] The surface of a daguerreotype is like a mirror, with the image made directly on the silvered surface; it is very fragile and can be rubbed off with a finger, and the finished plate has to be angled so as to reflect some dark surface in order to view the image properly. Depending on the angle viewed, and the color of the surface reflected into it, the image can change from a positive to a negative.

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Realism vs. realism

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The realistic and natural representation of people, places, and/or things in a work of art. The opposite of idealization. One of the common themes of postmodernism is that this popular notion of an unmediated presentation is not possible. This sense of realism is sometimes considered synonymous with naturalism.

And Realism (with an upper case "R"), also known as the Realist school, denotes a mid-nineteenth century art movement and style in which artists discarded the formulas of Neoclassicism and the theatrical drama of Romanticism to paint familiar scenes and events as they actually looked. Typically it involved some sort of sociopolitical or moral message, in the depiction of ugly or commonplace subjects.

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daguerrotype

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The search for knowledge based on observation and direct experience.

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complimentary colors

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Those pairs of colors, such as red and green, that together embrace the entire spectrum. The complement of one of the three primary colors is a mixture of the other two.

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Impressionism

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A late-19th-century art movement that sought to capture a fleeting moment, thereby conveying the illusiveness and impermanence of images and conditions.

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plein air

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An approach to painting much popular among the Impressionists, in which an artist sketch outdoors to achieve a quick impression of light, air, and color. The artist then takes the sketches to the studio for reworking into more finished works of art.