Art History Vocabulary (Exam 3)

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Pre-Raphaelites

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Disenchanted with contemporary academic painting, the Brotherhood instead emulated the art of late medieval and early Renaissance Europe until the time of Raphael, an art characterized by minute description of detail, a luminous palette of bright colors that recalls the tempera paint used by medieval artists, and subject matter of a noble, religious, or moralizing nature.

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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 elusiveness and impermanence of images and conditions.

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En plein air

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An approach to painting very popular among the Impressionists, in which an artist sketches 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.

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Modernism

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A movement in Western art that developed in the second half of the 19th century and sought to capture the images and sensibilities of the age. Modernist art goes beyond simply dealing with the present and involves the artist’s critical examination of the premises of art itself.

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Local Color

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An object’s true color in white light.

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Pastels

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A powdery paste of pigment and gum used for making crayons; also, the pastel crayons themselves.

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Japonisme

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The French fascination with all things Japanese. Japonisme emerged in the second half of the 19th century.

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Post-Impressionists

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The term used to describe the stylistically heterogeneous work of the group of late-19th-century painters who more systematically examined the properties and expressive qualities of line, pattern, form, and color than the Impressionists did.

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Pointillism

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A system of painting devised by the 19th-century French painter Georges Seurat. The artist separates color into its component parts and then applies the component colors to the canvas in tiny dots (points).

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Symbolism

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A late-19th-century movement based on the idea that the artist was not an imitator of nature but a creator who transformed the facts of nature into a symbol of the inner experience of that fact.

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Fin-de-Siecle

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French, “end of the century.” A period in Western cultural history from the end of the 19th century until just before World War I, when decadence and indulgence masked anxiety about an uncertain future.

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Futurism

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An early-20th-century Italian art movement that championed war as a cleansing agent and that celebrated the speed and dynamism of modern technology.

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Dada

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An early-20th-century art movement prompted by a revulsion against the horror of World War I. Dada embraced political anarchy, the irrational, and the intuitive. A disdain for convention, often enlivened by humor or whimsy, is characteristic of the art the Dadaists produced.

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Constructivism

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An early-20th-century Russian art movement formulated by Naum Gabo, who built up his sculptures piece by piece in space instead of carving or modeling them. In this way the sculptor worked with “volume of mass” and “volume of space” as different materials.

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Suprematism

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A type of art formulated by Kazimir Malevich to convey his belief that the supreme reality in the world is pure feeling, which attaches to no object and thus calls for new, nonobjective forms in art—shapes not related to objects in the visible world.

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Filippo Marinetti (1876-1944)

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Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet and editor, the founder of the Futurist movement. He was one of the first affiliates of the Italian Fascist Party.

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"Readymade"

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An ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.

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Photomontage

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A composition made by pasting together pictures or parts of pictures, especially photographs.

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Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity")

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An art movement that grew directly out of the World War I experiences of a group of German artists who sought to show the horrors of the war and its effects.

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Pittura Metafisica ("Metaphysical Painting")

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An early-20th-century Italian art movement led by Giorgio de Chirico, whose work conveys an eerie mood and visionary quality.

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Surrealism

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A successor to Dada, Surrealism incorporated the improvisational nature of its predecessor into its exploration of the ways to express in art the world of dreams and the unconscious. Biomorphic

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De Stijl

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Dutch, “the style.” An early 20th century art movement founded by Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, whose members promoted utopian ideals and developed a simplified geometric style.

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Bauhaus

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A school of architecture in Germany in the 1920s under the aegis of Walter Gropius, who emphasized the unity of art, architecture, and design.