Featured Art Terms

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 ...

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt, ‘Ophelia’ 1851–2

Pre-Raphaelite

The Pre-Raphaelites were a secret society of young artists (and one writer), founded in London in 1848. They were opposed ...

Claude Monet, ‘Water-Lilies’ after 1916

Impressionism

Impressionism developed in France in the nineteenth century and is based on the practice of painting out of doors and ...

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 ...

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Albert Gleizes, ‘Portrait of Jacques Nayral’ 1911

A Abbaye de Créteil

Established in 1906, the Abbaye de Créteil was a group of French writers, artists and composers who were inspired by ...

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John Singer Sargent, ‘Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose’ 1885–6

B British impressionism

British impressionism describes the work of artists working in Britain in the late nineteenth-century who were influenced by the ideas ...

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Lucio Fontana, ‘Spatial Concept ‘Waiting’’ 1960

C Canvas

Canvas is a strong, woven cloth traditionally used by artists as a support (surface on which to paint)

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Wassily Kandinsky, ‘Cossacks’ 1910–1

D Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter was a German expressionist group originating in Munich in 1909

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Bruce Nauman, ‘Violent Incident’ 1986

E Electronic media

The most common examples of electronic media are video recordings, audio recordings, slide presentations, CD-ROM and online content

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Michael Landy, ‘Costermonger’s Barrow II’ 1991

F Found object

A found object is a natural or man-made object, or fragment of an object, that is found (or sometimes bought ...

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire ...’ exhibited 1817

G Genres

Genres are types of painting. These were codified in the seventeenth century as (in descending order of importance) history, portrait ...

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Jo Spence, ‘The Highest Product of Capitalism (after John Heartfield)’ 1979

H Hackney Flashers

Hackney Flashers was a women’s arts collective active between 1974 and 1980. Most of the group were photographers and defined ...

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Giorgio de Chirico, ‘The Painter’s Family’ 1926

I Il Novecento Italiano

Il Novecento Italiano was an Italian group formed in 1922 with the aim of reviving the tradition of large format ...

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James Abbott McNeill Whistler, ‘Three Figures: Pink and Grey’ 1868–78

J Japonisme

Japonisme is a French term coined in the late nineteenth century to describe the craze for Japanese art and design ...

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Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson, ‘Study for ‘Returning to the Trenches’’ 1914–15

K Kinaesthetic art

Kinaesthetic art is art that deals with the body in movement

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John Constable, ‘Flatford Mill (‘Scene on a Navigable River’)’ 1816–7

L Landscape

Landscape is one of the principal types or genres of subject in Western art

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Július Koller, ‘NO ART!’ 1970

M Mail art

Mail art is a movement based on the principle of sending small scale works through the postal service

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John Constable, ‘Flatford Mill (‘Scene on a Navigable River’)’ 1816–7

N Naturalism

Naturalism was a broad movement in the nineteenth century which represented things closer to the way we see them

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Rodrigo Moynihan, ‘Objective Abstraction’ c.1935–6

O Objective abstraction

The term objective abstraction refers to a non-geometric style of abstract art developed by a group of British artists in ...

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George Stubbs, ‘Haymakers’ 1785

P Pendant

A pendant picture is one of two pictures designed to hang together as a matching pair

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Philippe Parreno, ‘6.00 PM’ 2000–6

R Relational aesthetics

Term created by curator Nicholas Bourriaud in the 1990s to describe the tendency to make art based on, or inspired ...

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Lucio Fontana, ‘Spatial Concept ‘Waiting’’ 1960

S School of Altamira

Avant-garde art school (Academia Altamira) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, founded in 1946 with the aim of promoting the idea that ...

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Bruce Nauman, ‘MAPPING THE STUDIO II with color shift, flip, flop, & flip/flop (Fat Chance John Cage)’ 2001

T Time-based media

Refers to art that is dependent on technology and has a durational dimension

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Tania Bruguera, ‘Tatlin’s Whisper #5’ 2008

U Useful Art Association

The Useful Art Association was started in New York by the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera and promotes the idea of ...

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Jeff Koons, ‘Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Two Dr J Silver Series, Spalding NBA Tip-Off)’ 1985

V Vitrine

A large, glass cabinet used for displaying art objects

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Edward Calvert, ‘The Brook’ 1829

W Wood engraving

A printmaking method distinct from woodcut in that the line is incised into the woodblock, rather than the background being ...

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Damien Hirst, ‘Mother and Child (Divided)’ exhibition copy 2007 (original 1993)

Y Young British Artists (YBAs)

The label Young British Artists (YBAs) is applied to a loose group of British artists who began to exhibit together ...

Heinz Mack, ‘Light Dynamo’ 1963

Z Zero

Group of artists who practised a form of kinetic art using light and motion

Lionel Wendt, ‘[title not known]’ c.1934–7

0–9 43 Group

43 Group was a modern art movement formed in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1943 by a group of ...