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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James Rosenquist, ‘Marilyn’ 1974

A Airbrushing

Airbrushing is a painting technique which uses an airbrush to give an even and consistent surface, often used to create ...

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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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Joseph Kosuth, ‘Clock (One and Five), English/Latin Version’ 1965

C Conceptual art

Conceptual art is art for which the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art ...

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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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Guerrilla Girls, ‘Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into the Met. Museum?’ 1989

F Feminist art

Feminist art is art by artists made consciously in the light of developments in feminist art theory in the early ...

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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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Minoru Hirata, ‘Kyushu Faction Street Happening at the Tenjin Intersection of Fukuoka, 26 February 1970’ 1970, printed 2011

H Hi-Red Center

Hi-Red Center was a short-lived radical art collective that emerged in post-war Japan and was active between 1963 and 1964

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Cornelia Parker, ‘Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View’ 1991

I Installation art

The term installation art is used to describe large-scale, mixed-media constructions, often designed for a specific place or for a ...

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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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Sir Edward Poynter, ‘A Visit to Aesculapius’ 1880

O Olympians

The term Olympians was often used to describe certain Victorian artists whose work emphasised the classical in both style and ...

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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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Henry Moore OM, CH, ‘Recumbent Figure’ 1938

S Sculpture

Three-dimensional art made by one of four basic processes: carving, modelling, casting, constructing

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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

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0–9 43 Group

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