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Art Terms

Find definitions of over 400 terms, including art movements, styles and techniques

Diaspora Surrealism Land art Mail art Installation art Hyper-realism Photogram Collage Authenticity Feminist art Performance art Collective Ephemeral art
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Donald Rodney, ‘In the House of My Father’ 1996–7

Diaspora

Diaspora is a term used to describe movements in population from one country to another and is often cited in discussions about identity
Salvador Dalí, ‘Metamorphosis of Narcissus’ 1937

Surrealism

A twentieth-century literary, philosophical and artistic movement that explored the workings of the mind, championing the irrational, the poetic and the revolutionary
Richard Long, ‘Sahara Circle’ 1988

Land art

Land art or earth art is art that is made directly in the landscape, sculpting the land itself into earthworks or making structures in the landscape using natural materials such as rocks or twigs
Július Koller, ‘NO ART!’ 1970

Mail art

Mail art is a movement based on the principle of sending small scale works through the postal service
Cornelia Parker, ‘Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View’ 1991

Installation art

The term installation art is used to describe large-scale, mixed-media constructions, often designed for a specific place or for a temporary period of time
Ron Mueck, ‘Spooning Couple’ 2005

Hyper-realism

The term hyper-realism appeared in the early 1970s to describe a resurgence of particularly high fidelity realism in sculpture and painting at that time
György Kepes, ‘Hand on Black Ground’ c.1939–40

Photogram

A photogram is a photographic print made by laying objects onto photographic paper and exposing it to light
Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, ‘Meet the People’ 1948

Collage

Collage describes both the technique and the resulting work of art in which pieces of paper, photographs, fabric and other ephemera are arranged and stuck down onto a supporting surface
Patrick Caulfield, ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon vues de derrière’ 1999

Authenticity

Authenticity is a term used by philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin to describe the qualities of an original work of art as opposed to a reproduction
Guerrilla Girls, ‘Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into the Met. Museum?’ 1989

Feminist art

Feminist art is art by artists made consciously in the light of developments in feminist art theory in the early 1970s
Mona Hatoum, ‘Performance Still’ 1985, 1995

Performance art

Artworks that are created through actions performed by the artist or other participants, which may be live or recorded, spontaneous or scripted

Collective

Loosely defined, an art collective is a group of artists working together to achieve a common objective
Anya Gallaccio, ‘preserve ‘beauty’’ 1991–2003

Ephemeral art

Ephemeral art is art that only lasts for a short amount of time

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