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 …

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    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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Sir Jacob Epstein, ‘Jacob and the Angel’ 1940–1

A Alabaster

Alabaster is a soft white or translucent stone, it is a fine-grained marble-like variety of gypsum

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B Black Audio Film Collective

The Black Audio Film Collective is a pioneering arts initiative founded in 1982 whose ground-breaking experimental works engaged with black …

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Leon Kossoff, ‘Self-Portrait. Verso: Untitled (Two Figures)’ 1967

C Charcoal

Charcoal is a black crumbly drawing material made of carbon and often used for sketching and under-drawing for paintings, although …

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Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé, ‘Jazzmen’ 1961

D Décollage

Décollage is a French word meaning literally to unstick, generally associated with a process used by artists of the nouveau …

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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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F Fantastic realism

The term fantastic realism refers to the work of a group of painters working in the late 1950s in Vienna …

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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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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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Susan Hiller, ‘Belshazzar’s Feast, the Writing on Your Wall’ 1983–4

M Multi-media

The term multi-media describes artworks made from a range of materials and include an electronic element such as audio or …

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Adolph Gottlieb, ‘The Alchemist’ 1945

N New York school

The term New York school seems to have come into use in the 1940s to describe the radical art scene …

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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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John Hoyland, ‘17. 3. 69’ 1969

P Picture plane

A picture plane refers to the physical surface of the painting

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Thomas Struth, ‘Galleria dell’Accademia I, Venice 1992’ 1992

R Renaissance

French word meaning rebirth, now used in English to describe the great revival of art that took place in Italy …

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Vanessa Bell, ‘Studland Beach. Verso: Group of Male Nudes by Duncan Grant’ c.1912

S Significant form

Term coined by art critic Clive Bell in 1914 to describe the idea that the form of an artwork or …

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James Abbott McNeill Whistler, ‘Harmony in Grey and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander’ 1872–4

T Tone

The lightness or darkness of something – this could be a shade, or how dark or light a colour appears

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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 …