Art Terminology - Marble Brook Haven

Whether you're a beginner or seasoned artist, having a solid understanding of art terminology can enhance your ability to discuss, analyze, and create art. This glossary covers essential terms across various art disciplines, techniques, and movements.

A

Abstract Art: Art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of visual reality but instead uses shapes, colors, forms, and gestural marks to achieve its effect.
Acrylic Paint: A fast-drying paint made of pigment suspended in acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylics can be diluted with water but become water-resistant when dry.
Aesthetics: The study of beauty and taste, concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty, especially in art.
Art Deco: A style of visual arts, architecture, and design that first appeared in France just before World War I, characterized by bold geometric patterns, bright colors, and the use of industrial materials.
Atelier: A workshop or studio used by an artist, especially in France.

B

Baroque: A highly ornate and often extravagant style of art, architecture, and music that flourished in Europe from the early 17th to mid-18th century.
Blending: A technique used to smooth the transition between colors or tones by mixing them together where they meet.
Brushwork: The way in which a painter applies paint with a brush, reflecting their technique, style, and expression.
Balance: The distribution of the visual weight of objects, colors, texture, and space within a composition to create visual equilibrium.
Bas-Relief: A sculpture technique where figures project slightly from the background, creating a shallow depth.

C

Chiaroscuro: The use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition, used to create dramatic effects.
Composition: The arrangement of elements within a work of art to create a harmonious whole and convey the intended message or feeling.
Conceptual Art: Art in which the concept or idea involved in the work takes precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns.
Cubism: An early 20th-century art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture by depicting subjects from multiple viewpoints simultaneously to create a fragmented, geometric appearance.
Canvas: A strong, woven cloth used as a surface for painting, typically stretched across a wooden frame.

D

Dada: An early 20th-century art movement that rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, advocating for expressions of nonsense and anti-bourgeois protest.
Depth: The perceived distance from front to back or near to far in a work of art, created through techniques such as perspective, overlapping, and diminishing size.
Drypoint: An intaglio printmaking technique in which an image is incised into a plate with a hard-pointed needle, creating a furrow with a rough edge that holds the ink.
Digital Art: Art created or modified using digital technology, such as computer software or hardware.
Diptych: A painting or relief carving made of two panels, typically hinged together.

E

Easel: A freestanding support used by artists to hold a canvas upright while they work on it.
Encaustic: A painting technique that uses beeswax and colored pigments, which are heated and applied to a surface, then reheated to fuse the paint.
Expressionism: An artistic style that emphasizes subjective expression of the artist's inner experiences, often distorting reality for emotional effect.
En Plein Air: The practice of painting outdoors, directly from the landscape or subject, rather than in a studio from sketches or photographs.
Etching: A printmaking technique that uses chemical action to produce incised lines in a metal plate, which then holds the applied ink and transfers it to paper.

F

Fresco: A technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster, where water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment.
Focal Point: The part of a composition that draws the viewer's eye and holds attention, often achieved through contrast, isolation, placement, or convergence of lines.
Foreshortening: A technique for creating the illusion that an object recedes into space by shortening its lines in relation to the angle at which it is observed.
Found Object: An existing object that is repurposed by an artist with little or no manipulation and presented as artwork.
Figurative: Art that represents recognizable forms from real life, primarily the human figure, as opposed to abstract art.

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