Quick Links--  A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | R | S | T | U-Z

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ABSTRACT--Art that looks as if it contains little or no recognizable or realistic forms from the physical world. Focus on formal elements such as colors, lines, or shapes. Artists often "abstract" objects by changing, simplifying, or exaggerating what they see.

 

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM--Art that rejects representation; has few recognizable images; emphasis on line, color, shape, texture, value; expression of internal feelings or emotions of the artist.

ACCORDION-PLEATED--A series of accordian-like folds, often found in clothing.

AERIAL VIEW--A view from the sky of the landscape or objects below, same as birds-eye-view.

AESTHETICIANS--Philosophers who study the question "what is art?" and "what is beauty?"

AESTHETICS--The philosophical study that explores questions about "what is art?" or "what is beauty?"

AGRONOMY--A branch of agriculture dealing with field-crop production and soil.

ALLÉE--French word for a planned walkway.

ALLEGORY--An image, mythical figure, or story that refers to something else entirely--usually large concepts such as good and evil or comments on the human condition.

 

ANECDOTE--A short story of some interesting or humorous incident.

ANCESTOR--A member of your family who lived a long time ago, usually before your grandparents.

APPLIQUÉ--A sewing technique in which a cutout decoration is attached to a larger piece of material.

ARBOR--A shaded structure often covered with shrubs, vines or branches.

ARCHAEOLOGIST--A scientist who studies the life and customs of past cultures by examining their material remains, usually artifacts such as utensils, stone carvings, architecture.

ARCHITECT--Someone who designs and lays out plans for buildings and then sees that the plans are followed by the workers who construct the buildings.

ARMORY SHOW--An exhibition (actually titled The International Exhibition of Modern Art) that was held in the armory in New York from February 17- March 15, 1913. It subsequently traveled to Boston and Chicago. The exhibition, which was seen by more than 400,000 people was controversial, but a major cultural event of its time. The Armory Show included approximately 1,200 works that introduced the American public to Post-Impressionist and Cubist art.

ARTIFACT--An object which has been made by a human.

ASSEMBLAGE--A three-dimensional collage created from a group of everyday objects, many times pre-made and put together in a specific way.

ASTRONOMER--A scientist who studies the planets, and other objects and matter outside the Earth's atmosphere.

ATELIER--French word for studio.

ATRIUM--A large space in a building open to the ceiling. An atrium usually has a glass ceiling or many windows to let in a lot of light.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL--Telling the story of your own life.

AUTOMATISM--Technique of creating a work of art without the use of thought or the conscious mind.

AVANT-GARDE--Describes new and innovative art or artists that depart from tradition to experiment with a new style, technique, or subject matter. From the French word for "vanguard."

B [ top ]

BALANCE--When both sides of something weigh the same or are equal in other ways.

 

BATIK--A fabric dyeing technique in which the pattern is first drawn with beeswax onto the cloth with a metal tool, and then the cloth is immersed in dye. The areas covered by the wax are not affected by the dye, creating a pattern that can be seen when the wax is removed by boiling the cloth. Wax and dye applications may be repeated for color variation.

 

BAUHAUS--A design school founded in Weimar, Germany, in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius. Many of the new experiments in design, architecture (The International Style), painting and sculpture in the 1920s came from the Bauhaus. Although architecture was a main focus, some of the most famous designs for chairs, tables, stacking stools, lights, textiles, and dinnerware are still in use today.

BEAT ARTISTS--The artists who struggled against conformity, mechanization, and materialism of mainstream culture during the 1950s and 1960s.

BELIEF SYSTEM--A system of values that are applied to meet a culture's needs. Our understanding of the values of a culture and our acceptance or rejection of those values is often based upon our own cultural belief system.

BIOMORPHIC--Abstract shapes that suggest living organisms.

BIRD'S-EYE VIEW--Seen from above as if by a flying bird, same as aerial view.

 

BRACKET--A support or fixture to hold something up.

BRUSHSTROKES--The movement of the paintbrush as it appears on the painting surface.

 

BUILDING CODE--Rules made by a government about how a building must be constructed.

 

C [ top ]

CANAL--A man-made waterway built for passage from one place to another.

CANTILEVER--Horizontal shapes extending outward over space.

CAPPING CEREMONY--A Chinese ceremony held when a boy turns thirteen.

CARICATURE--A representation of a person that exaggerates or distorts certain recognizable features, often concentrating on personal as well as physical features.

CARPORT--A roofed, open-sided storage place for a car.

CHRYSALIS--The casing, or pupa, of an undeveloped butterfly.

CIVIC--Relating to citizenship or the public affairs of a community.

CLAMP--A tool for holding things firmly in place.

CLIENT--A person or group of people who hire a professional for his or her services.

COLLABORATE--To work together and cooperate on a project.

COLLABORATION--To work together in an artistic undertaking.

COLLAGE--A composition of different images and sometimes different media.

COLUMN--A tall, upright pillar that helps support a building.

COMBINE PAINTINGS--Using found objects or ready-made in random juxtaposition in order to unleash the unconscious mind by free association.

COMMISSION--An order for something, such as a work of art. One person can commission an artist to create a work of art; a group or an organization like a museum can commission an artist. When an artist is commissioned to make a work of art, he or she takes into account the wishes of the people or group who have commissioned the work of art.

COMPLEMENTARY COLORS--Colors which appear opposite one another on a color wheel. When placed next to one another, complimentary colors are intensified and often appear to vibrate.

CONCEPT--Idea. In art, it is the idea of what the final work will be.

CONCEPTUAL ART--Art that focuses on the idea expressed and the process of creating the work.

CONFUCIUS--A Chinese philosopher who lived from 551 to 479 B.C. His teachings are called Confucianism, a system of ethics that was very important in China.

CONSUMER--Person who buys products.

CONTRAST--The use of opposing elements such as light and dark, large and small, smooth and rough. Shows differences between elements such as the light and dark parts of a picture.

CORNCRIB--A structure used by farmers out in the fields to store ears of corn.

COSMOS--The universe regarded as an orderly, harmonious whole.

 

COURTYARD HOUSE--A type of house where small structures are grouped around an open area surrounded by walls, typical of Chinese houses.

CREST--A symbol representing families or clans, groups of people who share the same ansestors.

CROPPING--In photography, cropping refers to the practice of establishing the edge of an image. Often a close cropped photograph cuts parts of the central image off for expressive or compositional purposes.

CROSSBEAM--A piece of wood that crosses an open space as part of a building's frame.

 

CROSS-STITCH EMBROIDERY--Needlework stitch which forms an "x."

 

CRYSTAL PALACE--A large iron and glass structure built in London, England 1851, by Sir Joseph Paxton, a designer of greenhouses. It was built as an exhibition hall (think of a World's Fair) and was so big that it enclosed many trees that grew on the site.

CRYSTAL--Often a clear or transparent material that has an internal arrangement of interesting and varied patterns.

CUBISM--An early 20th Century style of art characterized by overlapping picture planes, multiple perspectives; analytic cubism looks at all views at once; synthetic cubism is basically two-dimensional.

CULTIVATE--To encourage the growth of something.

CULTURAL RECLAMATION--The act of "looking for, searching out, and piecing together aspects of lost or hidden legacies."

CULTURE--For the purposes of this unit, culture is the values, customs, language hustory, and traditions of a group of people. This term includes, but is not exclusive to, ethnic origin.

D [ top ]

DADA--Anti-art movement which emerged in Europe in 1916 as a reaction against the inhumanity of World War I; interpreted irrational and nihilistic, or hopeless, social forces by creating ridiculing images; and used shock tactics.

DECODE--To translate an unknown idea, word, or image into an understandable idea or image.

DECONSTRUCTIONISM--In art and literature, a tendency in recent work to subvert or pull apart and examine existing conventions having to do with meaning and individualism. Whether using language, images, or building elements, deconstructivists raise questions about meaning, materials, forms, and other aspects of artistic expression.

DEN TILSANDEDE KIRKE--The sand covered church (Danish). Description of painting by Matthies--"Skagen, Denmark, is where my grandmother Jensen was born. This particular church with only the steeple visible was covered with sand from the dunes in the 1700s. The parishioners had to shovel away the sand from the doors each week. In 1795, King Christian VII gave permission to abandon and dismantle the main part of the church. The rocks and bricks were moved into the small town of Skagen and used to build the church my grandmother attended."

DEPRESSION--A period during the 1930s of drastic decline in the economy characterized by decreasing business activity, falling prices, and unemployment.

DIAGONAL--a straight line joining corners of a square or rectangle.

DICHROIC--something that is dichroic changes color when different light, such as sunlight or light from a lightbulb, strikes it.

 

E [ top ]

EARLY RENAISSANCE--The first decades of the Renaissance, which began in Italy about 1400-1450, in which a revival or "rebirth" of learning from Classical Greece and Rome took place in the arts, literature, and sciences.

 

ENDANGERED SPECIES--An animal or plant that is in danger of extinction or ceasing to exist.

ENVIRONMENT--All the conditions, circumstances, and influences surrounding and affecting the development of an organism.

ENVIRONMENTAL or ECOLOGICAL ART--Art that focuses on human interaction with their environments such as pollution and land use.

EXISTENTIALISM--A philosophical perspective in which it is believed that humans are totally responsible for their actions; from this persepctive, art is a conscious act.

EXPRESSIONISM--Generally, expressionism (with a lowercase "e") refers to any art that emphasizes strong emotions or feelings. Shortly before World War I, a group of artists in Germany set as their goal the depiction of emotional and psychological concerns of themselves and their times. Some of these German Expressionists (with an uppercase "E") used strong color contrasts, angular simplified forms, and heavy black outlines to express their anger and hostility; others explored color and abstraction to express spiritual or mystical ideas.

F [ top ]

FAUNA--Animals.

FAUVE--A French term meaning "a wild beast" used to label a group of early 20th century French artists, led by Henri Matisse, who used bright, unnatural colors and slashing brush strokes to paint images of contemporary life.

FAUVISM--An art style characterized by the bold distortion of form and the use of strong, pure color.

FEDERAL ARTS PROJECT (FAP)--A program organized by the U. S. government in 1935 during the Depression designed to employ artists by placing them on the federal payroll and in return having the works they produced, which included murals, photographs, archival drawings, and easel paintings, submitted to the government for use in public buildings. By the time it was dissolved in 1943, the FAP had employed ten thousand artists.

FIGURATIVE--Art that depicts animals or human figures.

FLEMISH--From a region in northwestern Europe including parts of southern Netherlands, northern France and western Belgium. Beginning with the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, Flemish culture was at a peak and Flemish painters achieved a high degree of skill especially in depicting realistic landscapes using aerial perspective.

FLORA--Plants.

FOLK ART--Art made by people who are untrained as artists that often takes the form of traditional decoration and functional forms that reflect a particular culture.

FOREGROUND--The part of the picture that appears to be closest to the viewer.

FORMAL--Following set or prescribed rules.

FORMAL SKILLS--The elements and principles of design (line, shape, color, texture, balance, unity, etc.)

FORMALIST--An artist who focuses on the visual elements of an artwork--its color, line, shape, size, structure, etc.--to give it its form. Generally, but not always, a formalist artist emphasizes these elements over content or subject matter in a work.

FOUND OBJECTS--Sculpture materials from everyday life.

FOUND SCULPTURE--Made from objects already in existence; objects found and put together by the sculptor.

FRAME--The basic structure over which something is built.

FRONTIER--The far edge of a country, where few people live.

FUNK ART--Art that is visceral and earthy; portrays the subject in a deliberately distasteful way; sometimes pushes the limits of "good taste" (from Beat artists) of the 1950s and 1960s.

G [ top ]

GEOMETRIC SHAPES--Shapes with regular contours, and straight edges such as squares, triangles, or circles.

 

GESTURE--A motion of the body as a means of communication or expression.

GNOMOM--Pronounced NO-mon, a Greek word meaning "the one who knows." The gnomon is the pointer on a sundial, the part of the sundial that "knows" the time.

GONDOLA--A long narrow boat used on the canals in Venice, Italy.

 

GRISAILLE--A painting technique using only grey tints.

H [ top ]

HAPPENING--Loosely organized performance art that might include music, theater, dance, visual art, or audience participation.

KEITH HARING--Came to New York to attend art school, but believed the most interesting art was happening "on the street" rather than in the classroom or art galleries. He did thousands of illicit anonymous graffiti drawings on public spaces. He achieved international recognition as a gallery artist working in the graffiti style. Keith Haring died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of thirty-two.

 

HARVEST--The act of gathering a crop from the field when it is ripe. Also, the reward for trying hard.

HEARTH--The fireplace, or other main source of heat in a room. Rooms are often designed around a hearth.

HIERARCHY--A system of dividing people or things into ranks.

HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL MEANING--Refers to what the artist was trying to express considering the history, period, school, style or cultural influences evident during the time in which the art was created.

HOLLAND--Popular reference to the country known as The Netherlands. Holland is actually a province (state) in The Netherlands.

HORIZON LINE--The line created where the sky and earth appear to meet.

 

I [ top ]

ICON--An image or representation of something that may be considered sacred or symbolic.

ICONOGRAPHY--The study of symbols and their meanings.

IDENTITY--The distinguishing character or personality of an individual; the condition of being the same with something described or asserted.

IMPASTO--A painting technique in which the paint is applied very thickly on the canvas.

IMPRESSIONISM--A movement in painting in which the emphasis on light and color, loose brush strokes, ordinary subject matter; creates the "impression" of a moment in time. Dabs and strokes of color are used to depict the natural appearances of objects and reflected light.

INDIGENOUS--A plant or animal natural to a particular region.

INFRARED FILM--A special kind of film which is sensitive to infrared radiation, which is in the spectrum of light but is not visible to the human eye. Common photographic film records the light and dark tones of a scene as they would ordinarily be seen by the human eye. Infrared film records a scene with a shift in tones, which can suggest an unreal, fantasylike state.

INSTALLATION--Art that is created for a specific gallery space or outdoor site, comprised of individual works to be viewed as an entire whole or environment

INTERIOUR DESIGNER--Someone who designs the furniture and decoration of the inside of a house or room.

INTERNATIONAL STYLE--A style of architecture which appeared in Europe between the 1920s and 1930s. Some of the characteristics included the use of new materials that allowed buildings to have outside walls of materials such as glass, instead of large heavy walls. The exterior of buildings had no decorations. Interiors were wide, open, free-flowing spaces instead of small, boxy rooms.

J [ top ]

JUDICIAL--Relating to the system of laws and justice in a community.

JUXTAPOSITION--To place two different things side by side.

K [ top ]

KITSCH--Art using popular culture icons, mass-produced objects; means "worthless" in German.

L [ top ]

LANDSCAPE--A painting, drawing, or other depiction of natural scenery.

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT--Architect who designs parks and gardens in artistic ways.

LARVA--Worm-like stage of butterfly development.

LITHOGRAPH--A method of printing that uses stone (or a metal plate), a grease pencil or brush, and water and ink to produce a number of prints from one drawing or painting.

M [ top ]

MACHINE AGE--The early 1900s focus on the positive aesthetic and social qualities of the factory and cityscape.

MANAGEMENT--The supervising or directing of an enterprise.

MASTABA--The Egyptians didn't become great pyramid builders right away. They started by cutting tombs into the rock of the desert floor and building mastabas (from the Arab word meaning "bench") over them. Mastabas were raised, flat, platforms. Some were as large as twenty-five feet high and two-hundred feet square. Ordinarily a burial chamber was cut into rock below ground level.

MEGALITHIC--A period dating back to as early as 5000 bce.. Marked by the establishment of huge architectural monuments. Early megalithic man-made monuments, such as Stonehenge, were massive, upright stones. Almost 50,000 of these structures still exist.

MAYA--A race of Native Americans in southern Mexico and Central America whose civilization reached its height around 1000 A.D.

MEDIEVAL--Related to the Middle Ages--a period in history between the last emperor of Rome, 475 A.D., and the Renaissance, about 1450. Art production during this period was dominated by the Catholic Church.

MEMORIAL--Something designed to preserve the memory of a person or an event, like a monument or a special day. The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., and Presidents Day in February are both memorials to our first president.

METAMORPHOSIS--A change from one form or shape to another.

METAPHOR--An idea or image that stands for something else.

MINIMALISM--A style of art in which the least possible amount of form shapes, colors, or lines are used to reduce the concept or idea to its simplest form (geometric shapes, progressions).

MOBILE--Movable.

MODERN ARCHITECTURE--A style of architecture using simplicity of design, minimal decoration and large, free--flowing spaces.

MODERNISTS, MODERNISM--In art history, this term refers to the philosophies of art made in Europe and the United States during a period roughly from the 1860s through the 1970s when certain artists began to take radical steps away from traditional art in order to be deliberately different, critical, and often dissenting from the dominant official taste. Modern art or modernism is characterized by changing attitudes about art, an interest in contemporary events as subjects, personal artistic expression, and freedom from realism. Modernism can be seen as artists' attempts to come to terms with urban, industrial, and secular society that emerged during the 19th century in Western society.

MONOCHROMATIC--One color.

MONTAGE--The process of making one picture from many pictures or designs closely arranged or overlapping each other.

MONTMARTRE DISTRICT--The section in the city of Paris, France, where the artists and writers gather. The description of the painting by E. Matthies--"Montmartre district is located at the highest elevation of the city of Paris, France. It is the part of the city where artists, poets, musicians, actors, writers and the like have gathered since the 1800s. The large domed building is Sacre Coeur, a non-denominational place of worship that hold services twenty-four hours a day with clergymen taking turns delivering the message. This has been happening since the Second World War."

MORTAR--A building material similar to cement which is used in masonry or plastering.

MOTIF--A dominant theme, idea, or pattern in a work of art. Motifs are often repeated.

MYTHICAL--Having to do with a traditional or legendary story, usually one that contains superhuman beings or magical events. For example, stories about Greek gods like Hercules are mythical stories.

MYTHOLOGY--A collection of stories belonging to a group of people that address their origin, history, and heroes.

N [ top ]

NATURALIST--A scientist who studies plants and animals from the natural world.

NEO-EXPRESSIONISM--A prefix meaning "new," here referring to a revival or renewed interest in German Expressionism and expressive art in general by American and European artists in the 1980s.

NEO-SURREALISM--A prefix meaning "new," here referring to a revival, or renewed interest in surrealism in the 1980s.

NON-OBJECTIVE--Art that is purely an arrangement of line, color, shape, form, or texture and that does not show any recognizable person, place, or thing.

O [ top ]

OCCULT--Ideas having to do with the supernatural and mysterious; specifically, in the early 20th Century, a system of Ohidden truthsO leading to metaphysical revelations.

ORGANIC--Things pertaining to living organisms or something from the natural world. In art, organic shapes are derived from natural forms.

ORNAMENT--Details added to a surface for decoration.

 

OVOID--A design element used in Northwest Coast Indian art, described as a rounded rectangle, and angular oval, or an eggshape.

OXIDIZED--Combined with oxygen.

P [ top ]

PARADIGM--A particular way in which a person views the world, their reality.

PERIOD ROOM--A room set up to resemble a particular time and place in history. Period rooms frequently contain furnishings and actual flooring or wall paneling from historic houses. Period rooms can reveal much about the values and lifestyles of the people who inhabited them.

PERSPECTIVE--A variety of techniques used to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface by mimicking the effects of distance on human perception. Perspective shows depth and make objects appear three-dimensional on a two-dimensional surface.

PETROGLYPHS--An ancient carving or inscription in a rock.

PHOTO-REALISM (SUPER-REALISM)--A style of painting in which an image is created in such exact detail that it looks like a photograph; uses everyday subject matter, and often is larger than life.

PHYSICS--The study of matter and energy.

PICTURE PLANE--The surface of a picture.

PILASTER--A flat column which is attached to the wall.

PLAZA--A broad, paved, open-air public area.

POINTILLISM--A painting technique in which a white background is covered with tiny dots of pure color that fuse when seen from a distance producing a luminous visual effect.

POP ART--An art movement associated with the 1960s in the United States in which artists incorporated imagery and/or media from popular culture such as advertisements, mass produced objects, movies, and comics.

POPULAR CULTURE--The opposite of high cultural art forms, such as the opera, historic art, classical music, traditional theater or literature; popular culture includes many forms of cultural communication including newspapers, television, advertising, comics, pop music, radio, cheap novels, movies, jazz, etc. In the beginning of the 20th century, "high art" was the realm of the wealthy and educated classes while popular culture or "low art" was considered commercial entertainment for the lower classes. In the 1950s and 1960s the gulf between high and low art closed with the rise of Pop Art.

PORO SOCIETY--The secret association for men in Mende society.

POST-IMPRESSIONISTS--A label given to a diverse group of French artists: Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat, who were working in the 1880s and 1890s. These artists shared a dissatisfaction with Impressionism's tendency to blur shapes and forms with loose brush strokes, but each explored their own individual approaches to form and expression in art. The Post-Impressionists are credited for laying the groundwork for the many modern movements that followed.

POST-MODERN--A term used to describe a diversity of styles and mediums explored by artists beginning in the 1970s. Initially applied to architecture that reacted to pure geometric modern styles, Post-modernism is often ornamental and borrows from past art and architectural sytles, putting these elements in new combinations and contexts.

POTLATCH--An important ceremony of the Northwest Coast Indians in which the person hosting the potlatch gives away his or her possessions. It is a way for people to share their wealth with the community, to strengthen their leadership, and to earn the respect of others.

PROCESS--A series of actions to produce a goal.

PSYCHOANALYSIS--A method of treating mental disorders through investigating emotional conflicts and childhood repressions by getting the patient to talk freely, examining his or her dreams.

PUPA--Inactive cocoon stage of butterfly development.

R [ top ]

RANDOM--Having no specific pattern, arrangement, or predictable outcome.

READY-MADES--A label given by artist Marcel Duchamp to a series of works he created in the early 20th century in which common oBJects--such as bicycle wheels, urinals, snow shovels, and bottle racks--were altered slightly and signed with a fictitious name and presented as works of art.

REALISM--A style of art that represent nature accurately as seen by the human eye.

RECEPTION HALL--A large room for gatherings or parties.

REPETITIVE PATTERN--A visual shape (or dance step or musical note) that is repeated over and over.

REPRESENTATIONAL--Depicts an object in nature in recognizable form.

RITUAL--A ceremonial act or action.

RITUALS AND TRADITIONS--As a culture evolves, common practices develop that influence the members of that culture.

ROYALTY--The family of the ruler of a country.

 

RURAL--Of or relating to a small town or countryside.

RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVISM--A Russian art movement founded in 1913 in which abstract geometric forms and industrial materials were used to reflect modern machinery and technology; integrated creativity and industrial production.

S [ top ]

SANDE SOCIETY--The secret association for women in Mende society.

SCALE--The size of an object in relation to things around it.

SCARIFICATION--Permanent patterned marks made by small scratches or cuts on the skin. In many parts of Africa these scars are marks of beauty and a way to identify someone belonging to a particular group.

SHADE--A gradation of a color mixed with black.

SHAMAN--A holy man or woman who has contact with the gods or spirits.

SHARECROPPER--A tenant farmer who gives a share of his crop to the landowner in lieu of rent.

SHUTTER SPEED--Control on a camera which regulates the amount of time the film is exposed to light.

SILHOUETTE--An outline drawing solidly colored in.

SILK-SCREEN PRINTING--A color printing process in which ink or paint is forced through a mesh screen onto the paper or canvas.

SITE--The place or plot of land where something is built, or a particular space or place, in this case for a work of art.

SITE-SPECIFIC--Made for one particular place or space.

STAGNANT CIVILIZATION--The best example of this concept is the Egyptian civilization that flourished for about 3000 years. Because of its cultural obsession with immortality, the Egyptian's rituals and traditions were concerned with assuring a comfortable afterlife.

STONEHENGE--An ancient structure in England. The description of the painting by Matthies--"Swirled by winds up to 50 mph, it is a reminder that England seemed ancient even to the Saxons and Normans. The seven-ton Blue Stones in the structure are rocks quarried in Wales during the Bronze Age. Construction has been dated 2800 to 1500 B.C. Many people have worshipped here including the late Neolithics, the Early Bronze Age chieftains, and the Druids. Stonehenge is two miles west of the village of Amesbury and 10 miles north of Salisbury in the plains of England."

STUDIO--Space where an artist works.

STYLIZATION--Portrayal which eliminates or exaggerates details of the subject based on a style or pattern rather than nature.

SUBCONSCIOUS--A mental process which occurs without awareness, or conscious perception on the part of the individual.

LOUIS SULLIVAN--One of the first modern architects. He is known for his tall buildings, which had steel frameworks. Some of his buildings had exterior designs inspired by nature. As a young man, Frank Lloyd Wright studied under Sullivan.

SURREALISM--Movement in art and literature from 1924 to 1945 where artists attempted to give visual representation to dreams, fantasies, and the unconscious mind. Emphasized real objects in unreal situations, surprise, contradiction and shock.

SURREALIST--A very important movement in art and literature from 1924 to 1945 in which artists attempted to give visual representation to dreams, fantasies, and the unconsious mind.

SYMBOL--Usually an image that stands for an idea or object.

SYMBOLISM--The practice of using something, usually an object or sign, to represent something else, usually intangible, such as an idea or concept.

SYMMETRICAL--Identical on both sides of a two-sided image.

T [ top ]

TECHNIQUE--A method or way of doing something.

TEMPLE--A building used for worship.

TEXT--Text can be written (word), visual (art), or ambient (body language); used to communicate.

THREE-DIMENSIONAL--An object which has height, width, and depth. Artists use illusionary techniques to create a sense of depth on a flat surface which has only height and width (two-dimensional).

TINT--A gradation of a color mixed with white.

TOPOGRAPHICAL PAINTING--A type of art using realistic and accurate detail to record a scene or particular place. Often called "the portraiture of places."

TOTEM--An object considered to have special meaning to a family or clan.

TRUSSES--Large beams that are often arranged in triangles, which support a roof or bridge across an open space.

 

TWO-DIMENSIONAL--An object which has only height and width. The surface of a painting, for example, is two-dimensional or "flat."