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WD_144/ 2005
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Works on paper: Drawings 2 | | Medium: | oilstick on paper | | Size (inches): | 25 x 19.9 | | Size (mm): | 640 x 510 | | Catalog #: | WD_0144 | | Description: | Signed, date and copyright in pencil on the reverse.
Glossary of Art Terms: H-Z
note: Continued from the preceding "page" as "WD_143".
hatching - A technique used in drawing to indicate light and shade, or form, consisting of parallel lines of varying width, darkness and spacing. Cross-hatching is simply two or more overlapping sets of these parallel sets of lines, at a perpendicular or other angle to the first set of lines.
hue - Referring to the actual color of a form or object, e.g., a red car.
iconography - Knowledge of the meanings to be attached to pictorial representations; perhaps the visual equivalent of symbols or metaphors in literature. An artist may be aware of his/her iconography and use it consciously; probably just as often, the iconography is used in a semi-conscious way. An artist will intuitively choose images because of meanings they have for him/her, and over the course of time a pattern can often be found, as a logical progression or repeating images. An artist can be said to have a personal iconography, which is often noted and analyzed by others, including art historians, critics, writers and the public. Often, the meanings seen in an artist's work by others differs, somewhat or considerably, from what the artist has intended.
ideal art - Art which aims to be the true, eternal reality. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this included some Neoclassical art, which emulated the forms and ideas found in classical art (Greece and Rome). In modern times, this could include artists such as Mondrian and Malevich, who considered pure abstraction to be the manifestation of this pure reality. Perhaps the theoretical opposite of ideal art is realism, which tries to depict things not as some ideal, but as they 'really' are.
impasto - An Italian term for oil paint applied very thickly onto the canvas or other support, resulting in evident brushstrokes (visible).
installation - A type of art, usually sculptural, which is often large enough to fill an entire space, such as a gallery, and consists of a number and variety of components. Installation art perhaps began in the 1960's with Ed Kienholz and George Segal, two American sculptors. Ed Kienholz' work contains such elements as cars and institutional furniture (suggesting a state hospital or prison), with the content being death and serious societal issues. Segal's work, in contrast, consists of lifesize plaster figures (cast from real people and usually white), engaged in contemporary and mundane activities, such as adding letters to a movie marquee or waiting for the subway, and often represent the poetry of the mundane. Installation art is often site-specific, meaning that it is created specifically for a certain site. There are many contemporary artists creating installations, such as Judy Pfaff.
linear - Describing a quality related to the use of line in painting or sculpture; can refer to directional movement in composition, or the actual use of the element of line in the image or sculpture, as contrasted with the use of mass or shape forms.
local color - The actual color of a form or object, uninfluenced by the effects of light or reflected color. For instance, a vase may be turquoise (the local color), but appear pale blue because of sunlight hitting it in certain places; dark blue because of areas in shadow; and many subtle color shades in certain areas because of reflected light from surrounding surfaces.
lyrical - A quality applied to various art forms (poetry, prose, visual art, dance and music), referring to a certain ethereal, musical, expressive, or poetic quality of artistic expression. Although difficult to define, when a visual work of art is described as having a lyrical quality, it means that it possesses a certain spiritual or emotional quality; perhaps the color relationships may be said to "sing"; or the linear quality of directional movement may be
of a sensitive and expressive nature; or the work expresses a particularly profound, passionate or tender sentiment, perhaps related to romanticism or other lofty expression.
mannerism/mannered - Mannerism was a style of art in 16th century Italy, characterized by somewhat distorted (usually human) forms and a high emotional key. Practitioners included the artist Pontormo. In modern and contemporary art, the term mannered when applied to a style or work of art is somewhat critical, implying that the style or work of art is done not from the inner convictions and perceptions of the artist, but rather out of the artist's historical artistic habits or preconceptions. In other words, the work appears contrived or forced, as opposed to arrived at by genuine and self-aware creative impulses.
mass/masses - Shapes or forms used in visual art, as contrasted with lines; also masses often form the large part(s) of the compositional structure, without the additional complexity of detail.
medium - Material or technique an artist works in; also, the (usually liquid or semi-liquid) vehicle in which pigments are carried or mixed (e.g., oil, egg yolk, water, refined linseed oil).
mobile - (pronounced mo-beel) - A type of kinetic sculpture (that which moves), invented and first used by the artist Alexander Calder. Trained as an engineer, Calder built many hanging mobiles with various attached forms, which moved and changed with air currents, etc. Many of them were very large, and hang in museum lobbies or auditoriums, from the ceiling. The forms which rotate and change their configurations are often of a biomorphic nature, similar to those used by Hans Arp and Juan Miro.
modeling - Three-dimensional effect created by the use of changes in color, the use of lights and darks, cross-hatching, etc.
modern art - Generally considered to be the period from about 1905-6 to the mid-1950's, when Pop art ushered in what is referred to as the postmodern period in art. Modern art is generally characterized by formal experimentation and exploration, and mostly seriousness of purpose. (Dada and Surrealism may be the exceptions to this rule.)
motif - (pronounced mo-teef) - A French term which refers to: the subject matter or content of a work of art (e.g., a landscape motif); also refers to a visual element used in a work of art, as in a recurring motif (i.e., Warhol used the motif of soup cans in his early works; or Mondrian used rectangles as a visual motif.
naturalism - A style of painting which uses an analysis of tone (value) and color of its subject, resulting in a representation of the appearance of forms or landscapes. Impressionism has naturalistic tendencies, because it analyzes tone and color in the play of light on surfaces. Naturalism can also have a sensual character (as against composition and drawing). The Impressionists were influenced by 19th century researches into the physics of color by Chevreul (a scientist) and others, which showed that an object casts a shadow which contains its complementary color (see complementary color). This theory eventually hardened into Neo-Impressionism, where Seurat and others sought the maximum optical truth about nature and the ideal composition and color relationships. This line of inquiry also led eventually to Post-Impressionism, where Gauguin and Van Gogh, among others, used color in a purely artistic and anti-naturalistic manner, which was non-intellectual. (Color used by Gauguin and Van Gogh is often deliberately independent of the local or light-influenced color of objects; and beyond that in the early 20th century, the Fauve painters used bright color and forms even more distant from their perceptual origins.)
negative space - In a painting or sculpture, the areas where there are no forms (the "empty" areas). In a painting, this means the areas which have no forms or objects (sometimes also called the 'background' ). In sculpture, this means the "holes" between forms or within a form (e.g., Henry Moore sculptures). Negative space is the other side of the coin of positive space, which is space actually occupied by forms in a painting or sculpture (the figure in a portrait). The notions of positive and negative space were advanced during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, replacing the more traditional notion of a 'background' which was subordinate to and separate from the subject image - portrait, still life, etc. Since about 1950, the notions of positive and negative space have also been replaced by much contemporary art, which sees the picture surface not as positive and negative areas, but rather one continuous surface where every area is equally important, and at the same spatial depth. (See also positive space.)
neutral color - A color which in color theory is neither warm nor cool. Neutral colors are said to result from the combination of two complementary colors (e.g., red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and purple). Neutral colors can also be mixed by other means. (See also complementary colors, and warm and cool colors.)
non-objective - A term used to describe visual art which is not based on existing, observable forms, but rather on abstract or idealized forms, such as geometric, mathematical, imaginary, etc. Non-objective art came into existence in the early 20th century, often with much theoretical accompaniment. Mondrian is an example of an artist whose work is non-objective. (See also abstract.)
non-representational - Non-representational art is art which is not based on external appearances; this covers several types of art - abstract, non-objective, and decorative; as contrasted with representational art, which is art based on "real" imagery, whether actually existant or existant only in the artist's imagination.
one-point linear perspective - Developed in 15th century Italy, a mathematical system for indicating spatial distance in two-dimensional images, where lines converge in a single vanishing point located on the horizon line, as seen by a stationary viewer. (See also two-point linear perspective.)
organic - A description of images which are partly or wholly derived from natural forms, such as curvilinear, irregular, indicative of growth, biologically-based, etc.
painterly - An adjective used to describe a style of painting which is based not on linear or outline drawing, but rather patches or areas of color. In painterly two-dimensional images, the edges of forms tend to merge into one another, or into the background, rather than be separated by outlines or contours. Titian and Rembrandt are two artists with painterly approaches; Botticelli's work is not painterly, but more linear/drawing oriented.
palette - A thin piece of glass, wood or other material, or pad of paper, which is used to hold the paint to be used in painting; also, the range of colors used by a particular painter.
pastel - A drawing stick made of pigments ground with chalk and mixed with gum water; also, a drawing executed with these pastel sticks; also, a soft, subdued tint (light shade) of a color.
pentimenti - Italian term, from the word meaning 'repent'; refers to the lines or marks which remain after an artist corrects his/her drawing (or painting). Traditionally, this meant that these lines or marks remained unintentionally, in the quest for the perfectly drawn figure, for instance. However, at the end of the 19th century (with Cezanne), these marks became part of the visual expression; his figure drawings, for example, often show several contours in the search for the "correct" one contour. With Cezanne's drawings, these multiple contours in fact aid in the expression of three dimensions, more than one contour alone would do, giving a sense of roundness and volume. In addition, these pentimenti contribute in an expressive sense. In drawings and paintings since, some artists have taken advantage of this expressive function of pentimenti, particularly in painting, and have left the marks/lines deliberately, or even created them on purpose. They can add richness to a work.
photomontage - (pronounced photo-montaj) - A two-dimensional combining of photographs or parts of photographs into an image on paper or other material (a technique much used by the Surrealists in the 1920's, such as Max Ernst).
pictorial/picture surface - The flat plane of the canvas or other support, which is the two-dimensional arena of the image.
picture plane - The flat surface on which an image is painted, and that part of the image which is closest to the viewer. (In modern and contemporary art, the picture plane is synonymous with pictorial surface, meaning that the entire image is located on the picture plane, as contrasted with art from the Renaissance until the mid-19th century, where the picture surface was considered as a window into which the viewer looked into the illusion of distance.)
positive space - The areas of a painting or sculpture which are occupied by forms or images, as contrasted with negative space, which are the "empty" areas where no forms/images are located. For example, in a portrait, the figure would be the positive space, the "background" would be the negative space. In painting since around 1950, the differentiation between positive and negative space has given way to a sense of a continuous surface/space/plane, where all the forms are located on the picture surface, rather than on different planes in space. (See also negative space.)
postmodern - A term used to describe the period of art which followed the modern period, i.e., from the 1950's until recently. The term implies a shift away from the formal rigors of the modernists, toward the less formally and emotionally stringent Pop artists, and other art movements which followed.
printmaking - The category of fine art printing processes, including etching, lithography, woodcut, and silkscreen, in which multiple images are made from the same metal plate, heavy stone, wood or linoleum block, or silkscreen, with black-and-white or color printing inks.
proportion - The relation of one part to the whole, or to other parts (for example, of the human body). For example, the human body is approximately 7 to 7-1/2 times the height of the head; the vertical halfway point of the body is the groin; the legs are halved at the knees, etc. Proportion also refers to the relative sizes of the visual elements in a composition, and their optimum relationships for good design.
realism - Representational painting which, unlike ideal art, desires to depict forms and images as they really are, without idealizing them. Courbet was one of the first realists, in opposition to the previous reigning Neoclassical art in France; 19th century realist artists wanted to depict life "as it is," warts and all.
representational art - Art which is based on images which can be found in the objective world, or at least in the artist's imagination; i.e., images which can perhaps be named or recognized. For instance, an objectively faithful depiction of a person is representational art; also, a depiction of an alien from outer space can also be considered a representational image. (See also non-representational.)
rubbing - A product of rubbing a crayon or other tool onto paper or other material over a textured surface, in order to reproduce that texture into a two-dimensional image. For example, a rubbing of a gravestone, a penny, etc. (See also frottage.)
scumbling - A painting technique (the opposite of glazing), consisting of putting a layer of opaque oil paint over another layer of a different color or tone, so that the lower layer is not completely obliterated, giving an uneven, broken effect.
shade - A dark value of a color, i.e., a dark blue; as opposed to a tint, which is a lighter shade of a color, i.e., light blue. Also, to shade a drawing means to add the lights and darks, usually to add a three-dimensional effect.
sfumato - (pronounced sfu-ma-to) - Italian term meaning smoke, describing a very delicate gradation of light and shade in the modeling of figures; often ascribed to da Vinci's work (also called blending). Da Vinci wrote that 'light and shade should blend without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke', in his Notes on Painting.
sgraffito - (pronounced sgraf-ee-to) - Italian term meaning scratched; in painting, one color is laid over another, and scratched in (with the other end of the brush, for example) so that the color underneath shows through.
shaped canvas - A type of painting/stretched canvas first begun in the 1960's, where the canvas takes other forms than the traditional rectangle. Canvas is stretched over multiple three-dimensional shapes, which are combined to form a three-dimensional, irregularly shaped canvas on which to paint (often abstract or non-objective) images.
spatial cues - Methods of indicating three-dimensional space in two-dimensional images. Examples are: the modeling of forms with light and shade to indicate volume; overlapping of forms to indicate relative spatial position; decrease in the size of images as they recede in space; vertical position in the image (the further away an object is, the higher it is normally located in the image); the use of increased contrast of light and dark (value) in the foreground; the decreasing intensity of colors as they recede in space; the use of a perspective system, of lines converging toward the horizon line. Spatial cues are used also in abstract or non-objective art to indicate relative position in relation to the picture plane, by means of overlapping forms, color and size relationships, and other spatial cues, but generally without perspective and other indications of Renaissance (illusional) space.
stabile - (pronounced stah-beel) - A type of 20th century sculpture which consists of a stationary object, usually on a base of some kind. Described in contrast to a mobile, the free-hanging sculptural invention of sculptor Alexander Calder, stabiles were also created by Calder.
stained canvas - A method of painting first begun in the 1960's, consisting of the application of (liquid) paint directly to canvas by pouring or rolling, rather than with the traditional brush, and without the prerequisite layer of priming normally done to stretched canvas. Helen Frankenthaler is one example of an artist who worked with stained canvas. This way of applying paint gives a totally different image than one brushed on - obviously a more fluid image, with translucent fields of color - perhaps like the aurora borealis - an effect impossible with traditional brushes.
stippling - A drawing technique consisting of many small dots or flecks to construct the image; obviously, this technique can be very laborious, so generally small images are stippled. The spacing and darkness of the dots are varied, to indicate three dimensions of an object, and light and shadow; can be a very effective and interesting technique, which can also be used in painting.
study - A preliminary drawing for a painting; also, a work done just to "study" nature in general.
subject matter - As opposed to content, the subject matter is the subject of the artwork, e.g., still life. The theme of Vanitas (popular a few centuries ago) of vanity, death, universal fate, etc., used in the still life, can be considered the content. The still life objects used in the image are the subject matter. (See also content.)
tint - A light value of a color, i.e., a light red; as opposed to a shade, which is a dark value, i.e., dark red.
tone - The lightness or darkness of an area in terms of black to white; also called value, i.e., a light or dark red, or light or dark gray.
two-point linear perspective - A more recent version of perspective than one-point perspective; using two (or more) points instead of one on the horizon line gave artists a more naturalistic representation of space in two-dimensional images.
triptych - A painting which consists of one center panel, with two paintings attached on either side by means of hinges or other means, as "wings."
underpainting - A layer of color or tone applied to the painting surface before the painting itself is begun, to establish the general compositional masses, the lights and darks (values) in the composition, or as a color to affect/mix with subsequent layers of color. Underpainting is generally a thin, semi-opaque layer of paint.
value - The lightness or darkness of a line, shape or area in terms of black to white; also called tone; e.g., a light red will have a light value; a dark red will have a dark value.
volumetric - A quality of two-dimensional images characterized by a sense of three dimensions, solidity, volume, as contrasted with atmospheric, which is characterized more by a sense of space, or airiness, than with volume. Volumetric is generally more characteristic of representational or traditional art, than with modern or contemporary art, which is generally less concerned with the depiction of three dimensions in objects and space.
warm colors - In color theory, colors which contain a large amount of yellow, as opposed to cool colors, which contain more blue. For example, a yellow-orange color would be warm; a greenish-blue would be cool. Warm colors are thought to appear to be closer to the viewer, while cool colors are thought to recede into the distance. (See also cool colors.)
wash - A thin layer of translucent (or transparent) paint or ink, particularly in watercolor; also used occasionally in oil painting.
-www.ndoylefineart.com/glossary.html
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