Survey of Western Art: Exam 4
Terms
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- Neoclassicism
- characterized by renewed enthusiasm for subjects and motifs from classical antiquity; this style is characterized by clarity, balance, and restraint.
- Romanticism
- emotions, drama/imagination, and color play the dominant roles in this style (“the heart rules the head”).
- Realism
- a movement in the 19th C. (especially in France) where artists represented subject matter from everyday life (which had previously been considered an inap
- Salon
- an annual juried art exhibition of painting and sculpture in France, dating back from the early 17th c. through the 19th c. and characterized b
- Salon des Refuses
- an alternative Salon of rejected artworks (promoted by Napoleon III); it is often said to herald the beginning of modern art.
- Impressionism
- 19th c. French movement that relied heavily on color and the ever-changing effects of light to capture a given moment in time; sought to create the illusi
- Local color
- the actual color of an object, which “appears” to change when the object is seen under different light and atmospheric conditions.
- Instantaneity
- a fleeting moment in time (e.g. involving weather conditions or candid, unguarded moments.) This concept arises from the rapidly changing, imperma
- Taches
- separate patches of color that are visible and often look somewhat sloppy.
- Post-Impressionism
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a movement whose followers rejected the importance given to Naturalism and the depiction of the momentary effects in Impressionism; these artists never rejected t
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Divisionism/ a technique based on the scientific juxtaposition of pure dabs of color; the brain blends these colors together automatically in the involuntary process of optical m
- Impasto
thick, heavy application of paint, where the strokes of the brush or palette knife are very pronounced, leaving the paint to stand up in relief.
Exam
- Maquette
a small-scale model for a sculpture.
Example: Burghers of Calais by Rodin
- Fauvism
an early 20th c. art movement where color became the element most responsible for conveying meaning and pictorial coherence. Charact
- “Fallacy of intention”
- artists often achieve things they do not intend and do not always succeed in communicating things they do; what artists say about their works may not be the same thi
- Cubism
early 20th c. art movement that rejected naturalistic depictions, preferring compostitions of often geometric shapes and forms “abstracted”
- The fourth dimension
- an idea of time inspired partly by the desire to express the space-time qualities of reality newly revealed by scientists like Einstein.
- Prairie Style
- architectural style characterized by long, sweeping ground lines, unconfined by abrupt limits of the wall (which seemed to reach out towards and express the great fl
- Cantilever
- a horizontal projection supported by a downward force behind a fulcrum. It is without external embracing and therefore appears to be self-supporti
- Dada
- movement that took an “antirational” stance reflecting cynicism engendered by World War I in improvised, sarcastic expressions of intuition and irrationa
Readymades/found objects
- mass-produced objects selected by the artists and sometimes “rectified,”modified, or combined with another object; such objects are taken out of their or
- Organic sculpture
- sculpture that emphasizes through its form the natural or organic (e.g. soft, curved ovoid shapes).
Abstract art/Abstraction
- art that desires to represent the idea, the essence, of a thing—to separate that from the exact appearance of the object in the real world.
- Truth to materials
- respect for the medium –using the medium’s properties to their full potential (e.g. polished, shiny, bronze)
- Organic formalism
- a simplified, abstract art inspired by living organisms (and/or organs of the body)
- Surrealism
- a movement in the 20th c. that sought to examine the reality behind appearances, especially in a psychological sense, drawing heavily on theories involvin
- Juxtaposition
- to place together objects that don’t ordinarily belong side by side.
Nonobjective/nonrepresentational art
- art that has no discernible reference to the external appearance of the physical world; or art without recognizable subject matter (all identifiable subject matter h
- Neoplasticism
- a movement that is an extension of Cubism, in which the action of color and forms are reduced to utter simplicity by strict adherence to simple geometric shapes.
- Documentary photography
- photography that captures a reflection of reality, but that also must be read through the lens of cultural conditioning.
- Abstract expressionism
- a movement characterized by distortion, emotion, spontaneity, energy, and visible (often aggressive) brushwork.
- Action painting
- principle method in American Abstract Expressionism where painting is revealed through the brush gesture and the signature left by the fall and touch of the paint.
- Automatism
- governed by unconscious free association, the artist works with uncontrolled movements of the hand.
- Pop Art
- Short for popular; challenges the tradition of fine arts by insisting that common culture and mass media are legitimate inspirations; deals with the expendable objec
- Photo silk-screen
- a method of producing a stencil in which a photograph is imposed upon a screen of silk; ink is then pulled across the stencil and forced onto the printing surface.
- Activist art
- art that has the power to change people and society
- Feminist art
- art concerned with women and women’s issues
- Installation
- came into vogue in the 1970’s; sometimes refers to outdoor sculptural ensembles, but usually characterizes indoor, site-specific painting, sculpture, or mixed
Earth/environmental/site art
- takes art outside the museum and involves the community, raising the population’s awareness of their surroundings
- Minimal art
- movement that rejected space, texture, subject matter, and atmosphere, relying instead on simple, geometric form, flat color, and the power of the artwork’s pr