Georges Seurat, Circus Sideshow, 1888, oil on canvas, 39¼” x 59”, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Public Domain
Pointillism (noun) Click here for pronunciation. Also called Divisionism and Chromoluminarism, this is a style of painting in which very small dots of contrasting color are placed next to one another on a canvas. When a viewer stands back from … Continue reading
Salisbury Cathedral, 1220-1258, Salisbury, England, photo by Gaius Cornelius, Creative Commons attribution license via Wikimedia Commons
Nave (noun) The central part of the interior of a church. The term derives from the medieval Latin word for “ship,” which is navis. The horizontal divisions in the nave of the Salisbury Cathedral dominate the vertical ones and are … Continue reading
Anna Atkins, Algae, cyanotype, 1843, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Cyanotype (noun) Blue photographic prints made with light-sensitive iron salts. The process reproduces items placed directly on the paper. The simple and low cost cyanotype process, invented by the renowned English scientist Sir John Frederick William Herschel, was often used … Continue reading
Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1951 (after a lost original from 1913), metal wheel mounted on a painted wood stool, 51” x 25” x 16½”, Museum of Modern Art, New York, photo by rocor - flickr
Readymade (noun) An ordinary manufactured object that an artist selects and modifies so that it becomes art. When Marcel Duchamp created the first readymade, he inaugurated conceptual art in which the idea takes precedence over aesthetics.
Shrine of Hazrat Ali, also know as the Blue Mosque, 15th century, Mazari Sharif, Afghanistan. Photo by Michal Hvorecky, Creative Commons license via Wikimedia Commons.
Horror vacui (noun) Fear or dislike of empty space in the visual arts. Many accuse artists from the Ancient Egyptian era to Jackson Pollock of suffering from horror vacui. The term frequently is used to describe Islamic art in which … Continue reading
© 2011 Sally Whitman Coleman, PhD. All rights reserved.
Primitivism (noun) The use of non-western art styles, such as African Art, in an effort to be progressive and new. Western artists believed that non-western art conveyed fundamental truths. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, a German Expressionist, was drawn to primitivism for … Continue reading
Claude Monet, London, Houses of Parliament, 1904, oil on canvas, 32.1” x 36.4”, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Claude Monet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Avant-garde (noun) A military term meaning, “advance force,” that was adopted by French artists and critics in the nineteenth century to describe innovative art. The Impressionists were the first avant-garde artists. Their colorful and sketchy paintings were radically new.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Conversion of Saint Paul, c. 1601, oil on canvas, 7’6” x 5’7”, Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Chiaroscuro (noun) Italian word that refers to the shading (or modeling) in a work of art. Caravaggio is well known for his highly developed chiaroscuro. Sally Coleman | The Art Minute