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 ...

Browse 463 Art Terms

Alberto Burri, ‘Sacking and Red’ 1954

A Art informel

Art informel is a French term describing a swathe of approaches to abstract painting in the 1940s and 1950s which ...

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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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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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Philip Mercier, ‘The Schutz Family and their Friends on a Terrace’ 1725

F Fancy picture

Fancy picture refers to a type of eighteenth century painting that depict scenes of everyday life but with elements of ...

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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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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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Pablo Picasso, ‘Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper’ 1913

P Papier collé

French term which translates as pasted paper, papier collé is a specific form of collage that is closer to drawing ...

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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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George Richmond, ‘Christ and the Woman of Samaria’ 1828

T The Ancients

The Ancients were a group of artists who formed around the visionary artist and poet William Blake in the last ...

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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 ...