DEFINITIONS

The following is a brief article on the definitions used in the art world which is offered to those who might not be familiar with all the terms used.  It’s also good to occasionally refresh your memory.


ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM – A painting movement in which artists typically applied paint rapidly and with force to their huge canvases in an effort to show feelings and emotions, painting gesturally, non-geometrically, sometimes applying paint with large brushes, sometimes dripping or even throwing it onto canvas.  It has few recognizable images with great emphasis on line, color, shape, texture; putting the expression of the feelings or emotions of the artist above all else.  The expressive method of painting was often considered as important as the painting itself.  Among the Abstract Expressionists were Willem De Kooning, Jackson Pollock Adolph Gottlieb and many others.
ALLA PRIMA – A method of oil painting in which the picture is completed with the first application of paints to the entire area instead of being built up by layering.
ART DECO – A style of design and decoration popular in the 1920s and 1930s characterized by designs that are geometric and use highly intense colors, to reflect the rise of commerce, industry and mass production.
BINARY COLORS – Colors made by mixing two hues.  Examples are orange, green and purple.
CUBISM – Art that uses two-dimensional geometric shapes to depict three-dimensional organic forms; a style of painting created by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in the early 20th century.  They were greatly inspired by African sculopture and by painters Paul Cezanne and Georges Seurat and by the Fauvists.
DADA – An early twentieth century art movement which ridiculed contemporary culture and traditional art forms.  It was born as a consequence of the collapse during World War 1 of nihilistic and reflected a cynical attitude toward social values.  At the same time, it was irrational, absurd and playful, emotive and intuitive and often cryptic.
EGG TEMPERA – A medium created by mixing pure, ground pigments with egg yolk.  This was a very common medium before the invention of oil paints.
En plein air -   French for “in the open air,” it is used chiefly to describe paintings that have been executed outdoors, rather than in the studio.  Plein air  painting was taken up by the English painters Richard Parks Benington and John Constable.  It became central to impressionism.  Good examples of en plein air paintings are by Edouard Monet, Winslow Homer and Claude Monet.
GESSO  A mixture of plaster, chalk, or gypsum bound together with a glue which is applied as a ground or coating to surfaces in order to give them the correct properties to receive paint.
GOUACHE – A type of watercolor paint, made heavier and more opaque by the addition of a white pigment (chalk, Chinese white, etc.) in a gum Arabic mixture.  This results in a stronger color than ordinary watercolor.
IMPASTO – A thick or lumpy application of paint, or deep brush marks (brushstrokes), as distinguished from a flat, smooth paint surface.
IMPRESSIONISM – An art movement and style of painting that started in France during the 1860s.  A loose spontaneous style of painting, the impressionist style is characterized chiefly by concentration on the general impression produced by a score or object and the use of unmixed primary colors and small strokes to simulate actual reflected light.  The leaders of this movement were Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Pierre Renoir. 
POINTILLISM – A method of painting developed in France in the 1880s in which tiny dots of color are applied to the canvas.  When viewed from a distance, the points of color appear to blend together to make other colors and to form shapes and outlines. 
SURREALISM – A twentieth century avant-gard art movement that originated in the nihilistic ideas of the Dadaist and French literary figures.  Surrealist works can have a realistic, though irrational style, precisely describing dreamlike fantasies.
TERTIARY COLORS – Also called intermediate colors, these are blends of primary and secondary colors.  Colors such as red-orange and blue-green are tertiary colors.

 “The past is what man should not have been.  The present is what man ought not to be.   The future is what artists are.”
~ Oscar Wilde ~