AESTHETICS
Aesthetics is a branch of Western philosophy that is concerned with the perception and meaning of beauty. The notion of what is beautiful is a cultural value and, therefore, has an enormous range of meaning.
Strictly speaking, aesthetics is not the same thing as the philosophy of art. Aesthetics is a broader term, not just referring to created artwork but to matters of taste in general. Translated from the original Greek, the word encompasses any sort of sensory perception. It wasn’t until the 18th century that the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten gave aesthetics its modern meaning. In short, the study of aesthetics, as we understand it today, is concerned with how our judgments of taste relate to our language, our minds, and our surroundings. - the Daily Book of Art
FORMAL ELEMENTS
FORMAL ELEMENTS
1. Asymmetrical Balance
Balance based on a visual sense of equilibrium that can be felt more than it can be measured.
2. Balance
A major underlying principle of composition that unifies all the elements of design in either symmetrical or asymmetrical format.
3. Color
Color is a formal element that is essential to painting, the decorative arts, and design but is not fundamental to sculpture or architecture. Color exists because of light and only when there is light. Light waves bounce off objects and pass through the retina of the eye to the brain, which interprets the waves as colors.The science of color optics is fairly advanced physics. Fortunately you need to know only the most basic optical principles to appreciate color as one of the formal elements.
The properties of color that are most basic to making and appreciating art are:
• HUE
• VALUE
• INTENSITY OR SATURATION
SECONDARY COLORS
The combination of two primary colors: ORANGE (red & yellow), GREEN
(blue & yellow), VIOLET (blue &; red)
TERTIARY COLORS
The combination of primary and secondary colors. Tertiary colors are identified by the names of the colors used: BLUE-Green, YELLOW-Green, YELLOW-Orange, RED-Orange, RED-Violet, BLUE-Violet
4. Composition
In a general sense any piece of music or writing, or any painting or sculpture can be referred to as a composition. More specifically, the term refers to the way in which an artist has arranged the elements of the work so as to bring them into a relationship satisfactory to the artist and, it is hoped, the viewer.
5. Contour
The outermost extremities or limits of a shape, whether two or three dimensional, as in the skin or outer shell of an object, form , mass or volume.
6. Contour Line
An outline or defining edge
7. Contrast
A visual effect of a striking difference between art elements, usually tonal creating a condition of compositional intrigue.
8. Cross Contour Line
A line on the surface of an object that indicates direction and structural form.
9. Cross Hatching
Similar to hatching except now the lines cross each other to create a wider set of marks.
10. Distortion
The changing of an accepted perception of a form or object so that it may be barely or not at all recognizable.
11. Eye Flow
The directional pathway of eye movement around a picture plane precipitated by compositional accents of visual intrigue.
12. Focus
The center of prime visual importance within a composition to which all other visual elements yield.
13. Form
The total appearance and organization of the physical and formal qualities of an artwork.
14. Formal qualities
All that makes up an artwork, such as the formal elements (line, value and light, color, shape, space, texture, volume and mass, time, and motion), the medium, proportion, size, and subject matter.
15. Genres
Various categories of paintings, as well as arts in general.
16. Geometric
Calculated forms characterized by straight lines, triangles, circles, or similar regular forms.
17. Gesture
The essential physical character, posture, and or movement of an object or live form.
18. Gesture Drawing
Drawing act that captures the essential posture of descriptive motion of forms in space; a drawing that depicts the essence of live forms.
19. Gesture Line
Life like furrows that poignantly captures and describes the essential posture or movement of a form.
20. Gesture Line Drawing
A quick line drawing that indicates energy, action, or motion rather than specific form.
21. Line
The pathway of a moving point, as the trail of deposited material or scratch from dragging a drawing tool or stylus over a surface.
22. Mass and Volume
The terms mass and volume tend to be used interchangeably in speaking about three dimensional arts such as sculpture and architecture. Mass is solid form that takes up real space. Volume takes up space, but may contain space as well. Mass is always solid; volume can be solid and hollow.
23. Pattern
A compositionally repeated element producing an arrangement of forms or a disposition of shapes as an organized whole.
24. Picture Plane
The area of a flat surface defined by its outer borders on which an artist creates an image, the outer edges being the first and most important lines of a composition.
25. Push Pull
The advancing and receding of compositional forms.
26. Render
To depict or execute in an art form.
27. Repetition
A unifying visual sense of regularity in the appearance of similar elements - lines, shapes, patterns, textures, colors, values, and movements - within a composition.
28 Rhythm
The visual flow of regular repetition, variation, patterning, harmony, of form and movement within a composition.
29. Scale and Proportion
Scale is about size but is applied to the size relationship of objects to each other, to their surroundings, and often to human size.
30. Shape
The flat two,dimensional definition of form as opposed to three dimensional volume.
31. Space
The two-dimensional surface on which artists paint or draw is called the picture plane. The imaginary area behind the actual flat “front” plane is the picture space.
32. Symmetry
Balance achieved by distributing equal weight evenly throughout a composition. If an imaginary line could be drawn vertically down an artwork that has symmetrical balance, one side would mirror the other.
33. Symmetrical Balance
The dividing of a composition into two equal halves with seemingly identical elements on each side of a vertical or horizontal
34. Texture
In the language of art, texture refers only to the visual or tactile surface characteristics of an object
- Actual texture. What you feel when you touch something: roughness, smoothness, hardness, and the like.
- Simulated texture. The appearance of texture, such as flower petals in a still life, or the grain of wood in a painting.
35. Unity
An ephemeral quality of compositional wholeness enveloping the states of harmony, balance and cogency.
36. Value
The relative lightness or darkness of a color or tone or shade. This includes a range of black to white and all the shades of gray in between.
37. Value Scale
A tool that indicates gradations of tone from the lightest to the darkest.
MATERIALS AND MEDIA
38. Acrylic
A water-soluble, permanent synthetic paint that was developed in the 1960s.
39. Assemblage
Sculptures made from various found objects or prefabricated parts that are put together.
40. Architecture
The science and art of designing buildings and other structures that are both aesthetic and functional.
41. Binder
A liquid or wax that holds pigment particles together and dries to create a paint layer.
42. Calligraphy
Handwriting that is considered exceptionally beautiful.
43. Ceramic
Pottery and objects made of clay.
44. Collage
A two-dimensional composition in which paper, cloth, or other materials are glued to a surface.
45. Conté
A hard wax crayon used for drawing. Traditional conté comes in browns, black and white; more recently, it has been available in an array of colors.
46. Crayon
A small stick used as drawing material, with pigment held together by a wax binder.
47. Daguerreotype
A photographic process invented in the nineteenth century for fixing an image on a silver-coated metal plate.
48. Digital art
Art that is made with the assistance of electronic devices, or intended to be displayed on a computer.
49. Diptych
A two-paneled painting, often hinged.
50. Drypoint
An etching, which is a kind of printmaking, in which the design is scratched into the surface of a metal plate.
51. Egg tempera
Paint created by grinding dry pigment into egg yolk, which is the binder.
52. Encaustic
A paint medium in which pigments are mixed into heated beeswax.
53. Engraving
The process of incising or scratching lines on a hard material, such as wood or a metal plate.
54. Etching
The creation of lines or areas on glass or a metal plate, using acid that eats into the exposed surface but leaves coated, protected areas unchanged. When etched plates are inked, they can be used in printmaking.
55. Found objects
Actual everyday objects, such as shoes, tools, and so on, that are incorporated into artworks.
56. Freestanding sculpture
Sculpture in the round, intended to be seen from many viewpoints.
57. Fresco
A painting made on plaster; in true fresco, water-based pigments are painted directly on a wet lime plaster ground and bind with the plaster when dry; in dry fresco, the paint is applied to dry plaster.
58. Gouache
Painting with opaque watercolors.
59. Graffito
pl. Graffiti Writing or drawing written or painted on public walls.
60. Installation
An art piece usually of mixed media that is designed for a specific space.
61. Intaglio
A printmaking process in which lines are incised or etched into a metal plate, which is then inked and wiped so that the ink remains only in the incised lines.
62. Lithography
A form of printmaking, invented in the nineteenth century, based on the principle that water and oil do not mix.
63. Medium, Media
Traditional and nontraditional materials used to make art, such as charcoal, paint, clay, bronze, video, or computers.
64. Mixed Media
The mixing of art materials and forms in creating an artwork.
65. Moai
A large, stone figure from the Easter Islands (Rapa Nui).
66. Monochromatic
An artwork that contains the hue, tints, and shades of only one color.
67. Paint
Colored pigment ground with a binder, having a semiliquid or paste consistency.
68. Parchment
Animal skin, usually of a goat or sheep, specially prepared to be used as paper.
69. Photomontage
A composition of many photographs, or of one using many prints to create a new image.
70. Pigments
Colors in powder form, mixed with binders to create paint.
71. Print
In printmaking, an image created by pressing an inked plate onto a surface; in photography, a photograph usually made from a negative.
72. Relief
Sculpture that is partly projecting from a flat surface. When the sculptural form is at least half round or more, it is called a high relief; when it is less, it is called a low or bas relief.
73. Serigraphy
A printmaking technique in which ink is applied to a stencil that has been temporarily adhered to a stretched cloth.
74. Silk screen
See serigraphy.
75. Stained glass
Pieces of colored glass arranged to create an abstract composition or representational image.
76. Subtractive method (sculpture)
A technique in which a sculptural material, such as clay or wood, is carved away to produce a form.
77. Support
A surface upon which a two-dimensional artwork, such as a painting, is made.
78. Tempera
Painting with pigments mixed with size, casein, or egg yolk.
79. Three-Dimensional
Having or appearing to have height, length, and depth.
80. Tooth
The surface texture of paper.
81. Triptych
A three-paneled painting.
82. Two-dimensional
Having or appearing to have height and length, without significant depth.
83. Video; video art
Art made with recording cameras and displayed on monitors, and having moving imagery.
STYLES & MOVEMENTS
84. Abstract Art
An art style developed in Western cultures in the second to fifth decades of the twentieth century. Its imagery ranged from somewhat abstract to nonobjective forms. Its roots are accredited to Cubism.
85. Abstraction
Visual imagery in art that does not copy reality. This might be achieved by simplifying, distorting, or exaggerating objects from nature, or it may be expressed in completely nonobjective forms.
86. Abstract Expressionism
An art movement that emerged after World War II that emphasized spontaneous artistic self-expression, non-representational imagery, and distinct point application; most abstract expressionist works were paintings.
87. Assemblage
Sculptures made from various found objects or prefabricated parts that are put together.
88. Avant-Garde
Late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists who develop new concepts in their work.
89. Classical
The art of ancient Greece during the fifth century BCE, based on ideal proportion grounded in the human figure. The term also refers to a style that is clear and rational. Western art aesthetics are heavily influenced by Classical Greek art, seen in Roman, Romanesque, Renaissance, and Neoclassical styles.
90. Conceptual Art
Artwork whose primary purpose is to convey an idea or a concept in any medium. Printed text is often included.
91. Craft
A category of art that requires special manual skills and is often functional in origin.
92. Cubism
An art movement that represents multiple viewpoints or facets on a two-dimensional picture plane. Analytical Cubism broke down forms, while Synthetic Cubism used collage and assemblage to represent parts of objects in order to visually play with illusions and reality.
93. Dada
Deliberately meaningless name of the first ANTI-ART Movement. Dada began in Zurich, neutral Switzerland during the First World War. It can be seen as a reaction by artists to what they saw as the unprecedented horror and folly of the war. Their aim was to destroy traditional values in art and to create a new art to replace the old. Dada became an international movement and eventually formed the basis of Surrealism in Paris after the war.
94. Digital art
Art that is made with the assistance of electronic devices, or intended to be displayed on a computer.
95. Ephemeral arts
Artworks that are fleeting or transitory and are not permanent. Examples include the masquerade from Africa, and twentieth-century Performance Art or a Happening.
96. Expressionism
An art movement in early-twentieth-century Europe that focused on capturing the subjective feeling toward objective reality. The movement developed a bold, colorful, and vigorous style, especially in painting.
97. Idealism
An artistic interpretation of the world as it should be according to respective cultural aesthetics. Generally, all flaws and imperfections found in nature are removed.
98. Impasto
Paint that has been thickly applied to the ground.
99. Impressionism
A 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists who came to prominence in the 1870s and 1880s. Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on the accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities.
100. Installation
An art piece usually of mixed media that is designed for a specific space.
101. Kitsch
The German word for trash that came into use in English sometime int the 1920's to describe particularly cheap, vulgar and sentimental forms of popular and commercial culture.
102. Landscape
Art depicting natural land formations and scenes.
103. Naturalism
A style of art with imagery that resembles what we see in the world around us.
104. Nonobjective
Artwork that has no imagery that resembles the natural world.
105. Performance Art
Influenced by the “Happening,” performance art consists of live-action events staged as artworks.
106. Pop Art
An art movement in the mid-twentieth century that used popular commercial items as subject matter, including newspapers, comic strips, popular and political personalities, Campbell’s soup cans, and Coca-Cola bottles. Usually created as satire, these artworks glorified the products of mass popular culture and elevated them to twentieth-century icons.
107. Post-Impressionism
The late-nineteenth-century movement in European painting that followed Impressionism, in which artists emphasized their subjective viewpoint or the formal qualities of the painting.
108. Representational art
Art that presents nature, people, and objects from the world in a recognizable form.
109. Style
Specific recognizable attributes and characteristics that are consistent and coherent in the artwork within a historical period, within a cultural tradition, or of an individual artist.
110. Surrealism
An art movement in early-twentieth-century Europe influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud. Fantastic and dreamlike imagery drawn from the subconscious was executed through automatic drawing similar to doodling.
111. Tourist Art
Art that is based on a particular ethnic tradition, but is specifically created to sell to tourists.
* For Vocabulary on Color Attributes see link: Color Attributes
