neoplasticism

(art) A style of abstract painting, developed by Piet Mondrian, that used only vertical and horizontal lines with the spaces filled in black, white, grey, and primary colours


scratchboard

(art) A technique in which drawings are created using sharp knives and tools for etching into a thin layer of white china clay that is coated with black India ink.


profilist

(art) An artist who draws or paints profiles


glyptography

(art) carving or engraving on precious stone


relievo

Moreover, a perfect Medal has its Profile and out-ſtroaks ſharp (Nummus aſper) and by no means rugged; the Figures clean and well poliſh'd; the Contours neatly trimm'd, and exactly round and carefully preſerv'd; that the Extancy and Relievos correſpond with the Ingraving, and have not ſuffer'd in Percuſſion; in all which, there is a certain Spirit of Antiquity and Excellency to be diſcern'd in Antient Medals almoſt inimitable.

1697, J[ohn] Evelyn, “Instructions How to Collect, and Procure such Medals as are Antique, and Rare; and to Distinguish the True from the False, for the Prevention of Frauds and Impostures”, in Numismata. A Discourse of Medals, Antient and Modern. […], London: […] Benj[amin] Tooke […], →OCLC, page 201:


thingly

en-adj

thingly (comparative more thingly, superlative most thingly)

more thingly (comparative)
most thingly (superlative)

From Middle English thingli, þingly; equivalent to thing + -ly. For sense development, compare Latin reālis.

All works have this thingly character.

2009, Donald Preziosi, The art of art history: a critical anthology:

(philosophy, art, linguistics) Pertaining to the substance of a work, separate from what is conveyed; material, substantive.


pastellist

pastellists (plural)
pastelist (alternative)


underdrawing

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-underdrawing.wav

Depending on the medium used, underdrawing in embroidery and other decorative techniques may be revealed by radiography where it is relatively radio-absorbent in comparison to other materials used either in the original artefact or in later mounting and conservation methods.

2007, Sonia O'Connor, Mary Brooks, X-Radiography of Textiles, Dress and Related Objects, page 153:

When subjected to printing or photocopying, the blue underdrawing will disappear, leaving only the ink lines.

2013, Chip Sullivan, Drawing the Landscape, pages 3-35:

The 'Aegyptiaca' would thus have removed herself from the embrace in the underdrawing and have turned towards the woman who is just awakening from her dream.

2018, Meinhard Michael, Hieronymus Bosch ́s The Garden Of Earthly Delights, page 161:

(art) A sketch done on the ground of a work of art before paint, pastel, ink, or other more permanent medium is applied.


hardstone

en-noun

hardstone (countable and uncountable, plural hardstones)

I was curious what it would take, so doing some calculations based on instamining hardstone, and comparing hardness, I've determined you need 45k mining speed to instamine mithril. 11.25k with mining speed boost. Is this achievable? Well, looking at the ways of increasing speed on the wiki: […]

2022 August 24, Yazinator, Hypixel Forums:

(art) Precious stone or semi-precious stone used to make intaglio, mosaics etc.


favrile

(art) An iridescent form of Tiffany glass.


underpainting

underpainting (countable and uncountable, plural underpaintings)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-underpainting.wav

He would start with a stenciled acrylic underpainting and finish by making marks with the chalk and charcoal shells.

2007 May 13, Carol Kino, “Something There Is That Loves a Wall”, in New York Times:

(art) An initial layer of paint, often monochromatic, applied to a ground as a base for subsequent layers.

At first they wouldn't believe him, but he gave them proof. X-ray the Adulteress, he told them, and you will find an underpainting. They did and found the underpainting van Meegeren had described.

2012, Leo Katz, Bad Acts and Guilty Minds: Conundrums of the Criminal Law:

(art) A painting that the artist later painted over to create the final work.


(art) Ellipsis of MoMA PS1, a contemporary art institution in Long Island City.


blort

blort (countable and uncountable, plural blorts)

Onomatopoetic; in sense 1, also blend of blow + snort.

(ABDL, chiefly art and comics, uncommon) Indicates the sound of defecation, especially into a diaper.


Orphism

From Orpheus + -ism; art sense coined by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in 1912 as orphisme.

coin

“Orphism,” he writes wearily, italicizing the word for effect, “and now we speak of Orphism. Or rather, we do not speak of it. All that we've tried to say has only clouded the question.” The same day Goth's article appeared, two separate caricatures of Orphism also showed up in the popular press—one in Le rire (figure 1.26), the other in Le journal amusant[…]

2014, Gordon Hughes, quoting Max Goth, Resisting Abstraction: Robert Delaunay and Vision in the Face of Modernism, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 28:

(art) A minor Cubist art movement focusing on pure abstraction and bright colours.


DTW

(art) Dance Theater Workshop, a performance venue in New York City, New York


apostolado

/əˌpɒstəˈlɑːdəʊ/

Borrowed from Spanish apostolado. Doublet of apostolate.

(Christianity, art) A series of portraits of the apostles, sometimes also including those of Jesus Christ or other close disciples of Christ.


academic art

After a three years’ study in Italy, where he [Benjamin West] became imbued with the traditions of Academic art, but remained curiously insensible to the real excellences, especially that of colour, of the old masters, […]

1873, Mrs. Charles Heaton, A concise history of painting, Bell and Daldy, pages 511–512:

So let me finally quote again from Véron who made a bitter fight against the fossilism of the old Academic Art of his day, one who may be said to be the real father of modern Individualism in æsthetics, and the best friend that mere “technicians” ever had.

1917 February, Frederick Wellington Ruckstull, “A Standard of Art Measurement, Part I”, in The Art World: Volume 1 Number 5, page 327:

(art) A style of art influenced by European art academies, especially one which lacks innovation or individualism; academism.


tenebrism

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From Italian tenebrismo, from tenebroso + -ismo, from Latin tenebrōsus (“dark, gloomy”).

(art) A style of painting using very pronounced chiaroscuro, with darkness a dominating feature of the image.


representationalist

(art) An artist who aims to produces realistic depictions.


spatialize

en-verb

spatialize (third-person singular simple present spatializes, present participle spatializing, simple past and past participle spatialized)

spatializes (present singular third-person)
spatializing (participle present)
spatialized (participle past)
spatialized (past)

On things that change as they move, Mr. Lelong writes, “when the composer spatializes a sound object — whether it is a chord, a motif or a rhythm — the sound object that is set in motion evolves, or to put it another way, the motion stimulated by the compositional process transforms the object, whereas previously works of spatial music merely give an impression of the same object moving unchanged through space.”

2007 July 8, Bernard Holland, “Don’t Let Words Get in the Way”, in New York Times:

(transitive, music, art) To localize sounds in physical space.


Giottesque

en-adj

Giottesque (comparative more Giottesque, superlative most Giottesque)

more Giottesque (comparative)
most Giottesque (superlative)

(art) In the manner of Giotto di Bondone


irrealism

en-noun

irrealism (usually uncountable, plural irrealisms)

(art) A style that features an estrangement from our generally accepted sense of reality.


antiexpressionist

en-adj

antiexpressionist (comparative more antiexpressionist, superlative most antiexpressionist)

more antiexpressionist (comparative)
most antiexpressionist (superlative)


tonalism

(art) An American artistic style of the nineteenth century, characterised by landscapes with a misty atmosphere and dark, neutral hues.


arabesqued

arabesqued (comparative more arabesqued, superlative most arabesqued)

more arabesqued (comparative)
most arabesqued (superlative)


Conté

en-noun

Conté (countable and uncountable, plural Contés)

Contés (plural)
Conte (alternative)
conté (alternative)

From the surname of its inventor, French painter and army officer Nicolas-Jacques Conté (1755–1805), who created it in 1795.

Conté is an artificial chalk, of which there are various kinds. The square Conté, Number 1, is hard; Number 2, is soft; Number 3, is very soft. […] Dutch Chalk is a new kind, in some respects equal to the best Contés, and sold at a moderate price.

1849, H[enry] O’Neill, “Materials”, in A Guide to Pictorial Art: How to Use the Black Lead Pencil, Chalks, and Water Colours; […], 4th edition, London: George Rowney, & Co., […], →OCLC, part I, 2nd division (Light and Shade), page 10:

A woman and a girl seated on chairs in a park. Conté crayon.

1992, Carol Clark, “Catalogue”, in Robert P. O’Neill, editor, American Drawings and Watercolors (The Robert Lehman Collection; VIII), New York, N.Y.: Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 51:

Conté sticks and pencils are made of dry pigments mixed with wax or clay and compressed into square sticks or thin rods that can be held in a metal or wooden holder or sheath. Conté typically comes in varieties of whites, grays, browns, and blacks and in a range of densities from soft to hard; the harder forms have more binder or wax and the softer less.

2017, Al[bert F.] Gury, “Essential Drawing Materials”, in Foundations of Drawing: A Practical Guide to Art History, Tools, Techniques, and Styles, New York, N.Y.: Watson-Guptill Publications, →ISBN, page 48:

(art) A drawing medium, usually square in cross-section, composed of compressed powdered charcoal or graphite mixed with a clay or wax base.

Bathers at Asnières
Georges Seurat
Nicolas-Jacques Conté


linework

Dalrymple’s linework, tremulous and twitchy, and Paul Hornschemeier’s muted colors don’t look much like any other superhero comics; there’s a sense of human frailty to their characters that inverts the muscles-and-action tradition.

2009 March 1, Douglas Wolk, “The First Action Heroes”, in New York Times:


neomodern

en-adj

neomodern (comparative more neomodern, superlative most neomodern)

more neomodern (comparative)
most neomodern (superlative)

Under Hartmut Warkuss, its design director until 2003, Volkswagen styling celebrated its Teutonic origins and the spare modernist tradition expressed in Braun radios and coffee makers, reference points for the neomodern simplicity of the iPod. Freeman Thomas and J Mays, now both with Ford, worked under Mr. Warkuss.

2009 April 12, Phil Patton, “At VW, the Italian Accent Gets Stronger”, in New York Times:

(art, architecture) Of or pertaining to a "new simplicity" in reaction to the complexity of postmodern architecture and eclecticism.

néomoderne

of or pertaining to a "new simplicity" in reaction to the complexity of postmodern architecture and eclecticism


postmedium

Today many aspects of craft have been absorbed — minus the reverence — by contemporary art, now considered in its postmedium phase.

2009 April 18, Roberta Smith, “Why Craft Never Was a Four-Letter Word”, in New York Times:

(art) In a time when choice of medium no longer matters.


anticlassical

anticlassical (comparative more anticlassical, superlative most anticlassical)

more anticlassical (comparative)
most anticlassical (superlative)

Nothing in the decorative scheme derives from classical architecture — indeed it could be said to be anticlassical, so thoroughly does it bypass traditional design.

2009 May 3, Christopher Gray, “Fidel Castro Slept Here”, in New York Times:

(art) Opposing or rejecting what is classical.


lifecast

On rap Web sites, which abhor a vacuum, seemingly every move he’s made in recent months has been captured and archived in what has amounted to, essentially, a Drake lifecast: video footage and photographs of concerts, audio clips of radio interviews, endless personal and professional gossip and, oh, new songs to go with the two, “Best I Ever Had” and “Every Girl,” that have already become hits, before this Toronto rapper has even signed a recording contract.

2009 May 28, Jon Caramanica, “A Rapper With Celebrity but No Label”, in New York Times:

When both lifecasts are completed, we will put the two molds together and reinforce the seam with plaster before we fill the mold[…]

2013, Todd Debreceni, Special Makeup Effects for Stage and Screen:

(art) A three-dimensional copy of a living human body.


pochade

In despair, he finally painted a pochade of people leaving the church of Saint-François, in the village of the same name.

2004, David Karel, André Biéler: at the Crossroads of Canadian Painting, page 115:

This painting was very small, not even a study but a pochade — no more than a first idea jotted down in paint.

2008, Martin Gayford, The Yellow House, page 116:


casualism

en-noun

casualism (countable and uncountable, plural casualisms)

(art) An art movement characterized by an unpolished esthetic, incorporating such elements as rough or torn edges, exposed staples, etc.


monotonist

If read with propriety, it will soon correct the monotonist of that sameness of tone, which so disgusts in most common readers, and with which no person can ever reasonably expect to give pleasure to those who are so unfortunate as to be his hearers ,

1817, Daniel Staniford, The Art of Reading, page 211:

I could chide thee now As vexed Apollo some monotonist That will but finger in one mode alone, And learn no other.

1885, John Todhunter, Helena in Troas, page 73:

Milton's management of his angels and evils proves as much as anything in the poem the versatility of his genious, the delicacy of his discrimination of character, that Shakespearean quality in him which has been so much over-looked. […] No mere monotonist could have succeeded in it .

1903, Testimonies and Criticisms Relating to the Life and Works of John Milton, page 189:

In these first lyrics he disclosed the eye of monotonist and etcher for the beauty of Nature.

2022, John Daniel Logan, Donald G. French, Highways of Canadian Literature:

(art) One whose work is monochromatic or characterized by sameness.


monochromy

monochromy (countable and uncountable, plural monochromies)

(art) The art of painting or drawing in monochrome (shades of the same color).


disoccupation

I posit the aethetic nature of the Statue as a purely spatial organism, to be exact, the active disoccupation of the Statue through the fusion of lightweight or unimposing formal elements.

1957, Jorge Oteiza, Experimental Proposal 1956-1957:

In cultural terms this was reflected in ETA's appreciation of Baque sculptor Jorge Oteiza's artistic theory of the disoccupation of space.

1999, William A. Douglass, Basque Politics and Nationalism on the Eve of the Millennium, page 107:

the mask is what in "Experimental Proposition" is identified as the funerary stele, the disoccupation of space that sets the man in relation to the beyond.

2016, Elixabete Ansa Goicoechea, “From Pre-Columbian Masks to the Basque Cromlech: The Art of Unconcealment through Jorge Oteiza”, in Andrew Reynolds, Bonnie Roos, editor, Behind the Masks of Modernism, page 105:

(art) The use of art to convert a space to one that reveals "emptiness", as opposed to one that is merely empty; the revelation of negative space by sculpture.


Raphaelism

(art) The principles, or style of painting introduced by the Italian painter Raphael


photosculpture

photosculpture (countable and uncountable, plural photosculptures)

(art) A process in which, by means of a number of photographs simultaneously taken from different points of view on the same level, rough models of the figure or bust of a person or animal may be made quickly.


intermural

From Latin intermūrālis. By surface analysis, inter- + mural.

Balakian continues the theological metaphor in defining the artwork itself as "sacred," "a system of symbolization of which the correspondences are strictly intramural or self-referential to start and become intermural only when other artists accept the signal-making character of the work."

2010, Betty Jean Craige, Relativism in the Arts, page 12:

Intermural Art is thus an art venturing beyond these previous designations, venturing beyond and between the gaps in these practices. It is an art exploring the space between the street and the studio, between Graffiti and the gallery. It is an art exploring the vibrancy of the threshold, the space in between the walls.

2016, Konstantinos Avramidis, Myrto Tsilimpounidi, Graffiti and Street Art, page 112:

What is key to intermural art is thus its liminal position between inside and out.

2020, Rafael Schacter, “Curating the intermural: graffiti in the museum 2008-18”, in Roger Sansi, editor, The Anthropologist as Curator, page 168:

(art) Originating as street art but being curated and displayed in a gallery or museum.


figurist

(art) An artist who produces figures (representations of people, animals, etc.).


demitone

Dr. van Monckhoven, of Ghent, displays several remarkable enlargements printed in carbon, all distinguished by delicacy of demitone; and Mr. Edward Viles heads the scientific list with microscopi enlargments to the extent of two hundred diameters.

1876, (Please provide the book title or journal name), page 532:

In the distance is a pale glint of light, but otherwise this painting is in a demitone of grey .

1877, S. N. C, “The Tenth New York Water-Colour Exhibition”, in The Art Journal, volume 3, page 96:

One also can bring in demitones by means of breadcrumbs. Perhaps only the very deepest shadows can't be done very well with it, but in many cases one can use lithographic crayon then, which is also very rich in tone.

1883 March 6, Vincent van Gogh, Letter to Theo van Gogh:

Illustrated by three plates, viz., the plan, the longitudinal and the transverse sections—and three photographs shoing the lift in operaton—the plunger, the trough and the basin—and the machinery (demitone plates).

1893, The World's Columbian Exposition, page 4:

(art) A color that is only partly saturated.


demitint

Borrowed from French demi-teinte, or demi- + tint.

(art) That part of a painting, engraving, etc. which is neither in full darkness nor full light.

(art) The shade itself; neither the darkest nor the lightest in a composition.


immersionist

(art) One who practices ecosocial immersion as innovated by the Brooklyn Immersionists.


immersionism

(art) Ecosocial immersion as practiced by the Brooklyn Immersionists.


bambocciade

From Italian bambocciata, from Bamboccio (“a nickname of Pieter van Laer, a Dutch genre painter; properly, a child, simpleton, puppet”), from bamboccio (“chubby child”).

(art) A bambocciante painting, depicting a scene from lower-class or rustic life.


metagraphy

metagraphy (countable and uncountable, plural metagraphies)

The rich and free merging of visual arts and literature envisioned by Isou in 1949-1950 under the name of "metagraphy" appeared fertile to many more people than the one proposed earlier with Lettrist painting, left almost unnoticed.

1983, Stephen C. Foster, Lettrisme: into the present, page 29:

For all their energised glory, the graphic scores of the Cageans (like the metagraphies of the Lettrists, and thus exactly like pre-Futurist scores) demanded a priestcraft to ensure their authentic interpretation.

2002, Rob Young, Undercurrents: the hidden wiring of modern music, page 191:

In 1950 the Letterist, Maurice Lemaltre, had published Riff-raff, a ten-page "metagraphy," which included a sequence that zoomed from the solar system through a drawing of the earth to maps of Europe, France, and Paris, and Finally one of Saint Germain de Prés.

2006, Cartographic Perspectives: Bulletin of the North American Cartographic Information Society:

[…] in an attempt to elaborate a sort of hypergraphy, or super-writing, produced to go beyond the limits of the preceding metagraphy, or post-writing.

2008, Adriano Spatola, Toward Total Poetry, page 58:

(art, countable) metagraphics; hypergraphy


intermedial

From inter- + medial: compare Latin intermedius.

Dr. Katia Arfara received her PhD in Art History from Paris I in 2006 with a focus on the intermedial relations between visual and performing arts since the 1960s.

2010, Sarah Bay-Cheng, Chiel Kattenbelt, Andy Lavender, Mapping Intermediality in Performance, page 283:


aftercast

However, not marking a reproduction or an aftercast "Reproduction" in a visible and indelible manner does constitute an infringement of copyright.

2007, Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, Hélène Marraud, Diane Tytgat, The Bronzes of Rodin, page 72:

Consequently, the aftercast in lead must here have been made from the model.

2012, J.W. Frederiks, Dutch Silver, page vii:

Note that an aftercast is always an indirect cast, while two directly cast bronzes can be only variants.

2016, David A. Scott, Art: Authenticity, Restoration, Forgery, page 430:

Another group that may contain modern aftercasts are figural units composed of two confronting winged semi-human creatures grasping with one hand stylized trees; animals or birds are set in a triad between them; the scene probably depicts a ritual.

2022, Muscarella, The Lie Became Great, page 113:


isocephalism

From Ancient Greek, meaning "like-headed". See iso- + cephalon.

(art) A peculiarity in the design of bas-relief, and also in painting, in which the heads of human figures are depicted at the same height from the ground, or along a vertical line, regardless of their pose.


vedutista

vedutista (plural vedutistas or vedutisti)

vedutistas (plural)
vedutisti (plural)
vedutist (alternative)
vedutiste (alternative)


postsymbolic

(art) Beyond traditional symbolic communications or representations.


Netherlandic

en-adj

Netherlandic (comparative more Netherlandic, superlative most Netherlandic)

more Netherlandic (comparative)
most Netherlandic (superlative)

From Netherland(s) + -ic. Compare Netherlandish, which is used mainly in the context of art and culture.

(chiefly art, linguistics, history) Dutch, of the Netherlands or the Dutch language


ecce homo

Unadapted borrowing from Latin ecce homo (“behold the man!”). See John xix. 5 in the Bible.

ubor

(art) A picture representing Jesus Christ wearing a crown of thorns, before his crucifixion.


toreutic

From Ancient Greek τορευτικός (toreutikós, “belonging to work in relief”), from τορεύω (toreúō), from τορός (torós, “piercing”).


lay in

en-verb

lay in (third-person singular simple present lays in, present participle laying in, simple past and past participle laid in)

lays in (present singular third-person)
laying in (participle present)
laid in (participle past)
laid in (past)

She uses a round brush to lay in the background.

The whole [mountain] is first laid in with a very delicate and masterly grey, right in tone, agreeable in colour, quite unobjectionable for a beginning. But how is this made into rock?

1843, [John Ruskin], chapter 3, in Modern Painters […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, part II (Of Truth), section IV (Of Truth of Earth), § 4, page 287:

(transitive, art) To add (something) to a painting, especially directly onto the blank canvas in the early stages of the work.


demi-rilievo

(art) Half relief; sculpture in relief, whose figures project from the background by one half their full roundness.


pietra dura

A Florentine mosaic is a familiar instance of work in pietra dura, though the ground may be soft marble.

(art) A decorative art, the inlay technique of using cut and fitted, highly polished colored stones to create images.


doryphoros

From Latin doryphoros, from Ancient Greek [Term?], literally "spear-bearing".

(historical or art) A spear-bearing soldier (nowadays, a statue of a man holding a spear, or appearing to do so).


coulage

en-noun

coulage (countable and uncountable, plural coulages)

(art) A form of surrealist sculpture made by pouring a molten material into cold water.


fumage

From Old French fumage, fumaige, from Latin fumus (“smoke”).

2013, Whitney Sherman, Playing with Sketches, The Quarto Group (Rockport Publishers), page 32,
Fumage is not a frequently used drawing technique, but when used it can produce a subtle and mysterious effect. One notable twentieth-century fumage artist was banker Hugh Parker Guiler, spouse of diarist Anaïs Nin.

(art) A surrealist art technique, devised by Wolfgang Paalen, in which impressions are made by the smoke of a candle or kerosene lamp on a piece of paper or canvas.


waterwork

waterwork (countable and uncountable, plural waterworks)

/ˈwɔːtəˌwəːk/

From Late Middle English [Term?], analysable as water + work.

(countable, art) A textile fabric used like tapestry.

[F]or thy wals a pretty ſleight drollery, or the ſtorie of the prodigal, or the Iarman hunting in waterworke, is worth a thouſand of theſe bed-hangers, and theſe flie bitten tapeſtrie, let it be x. ♇ [i.e., ten pounds] if thou canſt: [...]

c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Second Part of Henrie the Fourth, […], quarto edition, London: […] V[alentine] S[immes] for Andrew Wise, and William Aspley, published 1600, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:

(uncountable, art) A style of painting executed in distemper or size, on canvas or a wall, intended to resemble a tapestry; (countable) such a painting.


giallolino

/ˌdʒæləˈliːnəʊ/

From Italian giallo (“yellow”), probably from Old High German gelo, German gelb, akin to English yellow.

(art, obsolete) The yellow oxide of lead, or massicot.


tauroctony

From Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek ταυροκτόνος (tauroktónos), from ταῦρος (taûros, “bull”) + κτόνος (któnos, “killing”).

lbor

In any event, if, as I am arguing, the tauroctony represents the astronomical situation which obtained during the epoch in which the spring equinox was in Taurus, the fact that the summer solstice was in Leo during that epoch provides a convincing explanation for the occasional presence of the figure of a lion in the tauroctony.

1991, David Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries, Oxford University Press, page 54:

The central icon, ever present in Mithras temples throughout the Roman Empire, is the tauroctony, or bull-slaying.

2005, Payam Nabarz, The Mysteries of Mithras, Inner Traditions, page 20:

Tauroctonies featuring Mithras' regular clothes but with a crown instead of a cap would belong to a further cluster. A tauroctony would then also be assigned to other clusters for its patterns of features relating to the torchbearers, to the animals, and so on.

2022, Kevin Stoba, “6: A network analysis of the Mithraic tauroctony”, in Anna Collar, editor, Networks and the Spread of Ideas in the Past, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), unnumbered page:

(Mithraism, historical, art) A depiction (typically in relief or sculpture) of Mithras killing a bull; associated with the practice of Mithraism (as a cult) in the Roman Empire.

tauroctonie

depiction of the killing of a bull by Mithras


impaste

en-verb

impaste (third-person singular simple present impastes, present participle impasting, simple past and past participle impasted)

impastes (present singular third-person)
impasting (participle present)
impasted (participle past)
impasted (past)

From im- (“in”) + paste. Compare Italian impastare, Old French empaster.

(art) To lay colours thickly on canvas by the impasto technique.


email ombrant

(art) The art or process of flooding transparent coloured glaze over designs stamped or moulded on earthenware or porcelain


cavo-rilievo

/ˌkɑːvəʊ ɹɪlˈjeɪvəʊ/

From Italian cavo rilievo (literally “hollow relief”).

bor

(art) Sculpture in relief within a sinking made for the purpose, so no part of it projects beyond the surrounding surface.


tetramorph

From Ancient Greek τετράμορφος (tetrámorphos). By surface analysis, tetra- + -morph.

der

(art) The union of the four attributes of the Evangelists in one figure or a group of four figures.


nacré

nacré ware

(art) Having an iridescence like that of nacre, or mother-of-pearl.


mezzo-rilievo

en-noun

mezzo-rilievo (countable and uncountable, plural mezzo-rilievos)

(art) half-relief; a middle degree of relief in figures, between high and low relief


subjectile

(art) A substrate, material, or support upon which a painting or engraving is created.


soufflage

(art) The surrealist technique of blowing liquid paint to inspire or reveal an image.


mixel

(art) In pixel art, a pixel of incoherent or inconsistent size when compared to the rest of the artwork as a whole.


negative space

negative space (countable and uncountable, plural negative spaces)

(art) The space around and between the subjects of an image.


tableau vivant

tableau vivant (plural tableaux vivants)

Borrowed from French tableau vivant (literally “living picture”).

bor

Indeed, there is something uncanny about the careful re-enactment of the scene in the manner of a tableau vivant, something that Jean-Luc Godard would also experiment with and try to push to its limits in Passion (1982).

2013, Rob Stone, Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla, A Companion to Luis Buñuel, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN:

(art) A tableau (group scene resembling a painting).


demirelief

Borrowed from French demi-relief, demi- + relief.


actionist

The most radical of all 1960s performers, the Viennese Actionists explored a broad spectrum of transgressions up until the end of the 1960s: sodomy, rape, necrophilia, zoophilia, anthropophagy, self-mutilation, and animal sacrifices.

2022, Sascha Bru […] , editors, Crisis: The Avant-Garde and Modernism in Critical Modes, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN:

(art, sometimes capitalized) One taking part in the actionism movement.


Thuluth

(art, chiefly calligraphy) An Arabic script style.


ruinism

At that time, "ruinism" actually became an artistic category, in demonstration of the depth of sentiment the ancient glories excited in the viewer's soul.

1991, Armando Ravaglioli, Rome, a Journey of Dreams, →ISBN:

Already in the early 1960s, however, in the wake of John Cage's aleatoric compositions, some traces of 'ruinism' could be found, for instance, in Walter De Maria's radical proposal of May 1960 for an Art Yard, published in La Monte Young's An Anthology.

2011, Frederik Le Roy, Tickle Your Catastrophe!, →ISBN, page 34:

This is the inexplicable, says the Northern European: a Bauhaus of ruins. But there is no architecture in these rooms lacking arche. And no complacency for ruinism, a general lack of complacency.

2012, Jean-François Lyotard, Herman Parret, Miscellaneous Texts, →ISBN, page 219:

The growth of tourism and the increase in the number of “picturesque voyages” were likewise crucial factors, since “ruinism,” a style first manifested in the veduta (view), was particularly popular among travelers.

2013, Michel Delon, Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, →ISBN, page 1160:

(art) An enthusiasm for appreciating ruins or sites of destruction.


antihistoricism

en-noun

antihistoricism (countable and uncountable, plural antihistoricisms)

(philosophy, art) Any aesthetic, such as futurism in architecture, that rejects traditions and historicism.

anti-historicismo

any aesthetic that rejects traditions and historicism


antiform

Dada forms and antiforms were used as a means of reacting against Abstract Expressionism and abstract art generally[…]

1983, Edith Kurzweil, William Phillips, Writers and Politics: A Partisan Review Reader, page 236:

(art) A form that defies the usual conventions of artistic forms.

antiforma

a form that defies the usual conventions of artistic forms


abstract expressionist

abstract expressionist (plural abstract expressionists)

Abstract Expressionism
Abstract Expressionism

(art) An artist who works within the genre of Abstract Expressionism.


academy board

(art) A heavy card used for oil painting.


antiretinal

(art) Having some philosophical or political content, rather than merely being designed to please the eye.


sgraffitoing

Sgraffitoing is probably as popular as any method of surface texturing.

1955, Craft Horizons, volumes 15–16, New York, N.Y.: American Craft Council, →ISSN, page 27:

(art) The act or process of creating a sgraffito design.


sgraffitoed

en-adj

sgraffitoed (comparative more sgraffitoed, superlative most sgraffitoed)

more sgraffitoed (comparative)
most sgraffitoed (superlative)

(art) That has been decorated with sgraffito.


quadriptych

Blend of quadri- + diptych, triptych, etc.


antiexpressive

antiexpressive (comparative more antiexpressive, superlative most antiexpressive)

more antiexpressive (comparative)
most antiexpressive (superlative)

(art) Opposing or avoiding expressiveness.


Greek foot

en-noun

Greek foot (countable and uncountable, plural Greek feet)

From Greek artists' preference for bare feet exhibiting a second toe longer than the hallux, as opposed to the Egyptian statues which used a longer big toe.

(countable, chiefly art) A foot with a second toe longer than the hallux.


groundline

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-groundline.wav

(art) A line drawn to signify the surface of the ground, especially in architectural blueprints and in drawings by children which lack dimension.


photoserigraphy

(photography, art) The production of photoserigraphs


photoserigraph

(photography, art) A serigraph made from an existing photograph


rhopography

From rhopos- + -graphy, from Ancient Greek ῥοπογραφία (rhopographía), meaning the painting of petty subjects, such as still-life.

(art) The depiction of trivial, everyday things.


megalography

/ˌmɛɡəˈlɒɡrəfi/

/ˌmɛɡlˈɒɡrəfi/

/ˌmɛɡəˈlɑɡrəfi/

From Ancient Greek μεγαλογραφία (megalographía). Morphologically megalo- + -graphy,

uder

μεγαλογραφία

The room was decorated with magnificent megalography, overwhelming the viewer upon entrance.

What were, in short, these astonishing decorators of all sorts, lavishing frescoes, ceilings, and that historical megalography which surprises us even now by its boldness and breadth?

1889, Octave Uzanne, The Mirror of the World, King's Street, London: John C. Nimmo, page 21:

The Pompeian houses are usually small; the space which the architect gave over to the painter was not, as a rule, of great extent, and was little suited for what the Greeks styled "megalography."

1896, Gaston Boissier, translated by D. Havelock Fisher, Rome and Pompeii: Archaeological Rambles, New York City: G. P. Putnam's Sons, page 425:

(art) The depiction of great or grand things, such as heroes and gods; painting on a large scale


transavantgarde

(art) An Italian form of neo-expressionism


tradigital

/tɹəˈdɪd͡ʒɪtl̩/

Blend of traditional + digital, coined by Judith Moncrieff.

What has happened since the formulation of The Technological Sublime has not proved me wrong: ASCII art, digital art, glitch art, digital poetry, tradigital art, software art, telematic art, system art, generative art, virtual art, computing art, viral art, […]

2017, Silvia Benso, Viva Voce: Conversations with Italian Philosophers, page 132:

The resulting “tradigital” media practice has become a focus of my creative efforts over the past several years. […] it seems that there is no end to the variety one might find in what could ultimately be labeled as tradigital art practice.

2018, Anna Ursyn, Visual Approaches to Cognitive Education With Technology Integration:

(art) Produced through a combination of traditional and computer-based techniques.


hauntological

en-adj

hauntological (comparative more hauntological, superlative most hauntological)

more hauntological (comparative)
most hauntological (superlative)

Boards of Canada also pioneered the hauntological approach to creating old-timey and elegiac atmospheres through the use of sound treatments suggestive of decay and wear-and-tear.

2011, Simon Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past, Faber & Faber, →ISBN, page 331:

In that spirit, some young musicians now are creating music that has been described as “hypnagogic” or “hauntological.” The melodies and rhythms are reminiscent of catchy pop songs of previous decades, but recorded in a way that simulates the effects of age — fuzzy and staticky — as if worn out or heard at a great distance through a grimy haze.

[2011 August 4, Carl Wilson, “‘My So-Called Adulthood’”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

Vaporwave and its more developed form, Simpsonwave, are of course concerned with an entirely different set of tropes–but they are no less hauntological for it. Both are recognizably hauntological by virtue of the techniques they employ—VHS crackle, Windows start-up sounds, etc.

2019, Tom Whyman, “Oh, They Have the Internet on Computers Now?”, in Alfie Bown, Dan Bristow, editors, Post Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production, punctum books, →ISBN, page 212:

(music, art) Using digital effects that simulate the effects of aging; reminiscent and nostalgic of obsolete media.


battle piece

w:Webster's Dictionary#Webster's New International Dictionary 1909

(art) A painting, or a musical composition, representing a battle.

sotamaalaus

painting or musical composition representing a battle


multifigured

a multifigured scene or composition


elementarism

(art) A genre of painting that makes use of bold geometric shapes.


Bim, BEM, Bum

Clipping of bimbo + BEM (“Bug-Eyed Monster”) + bum (“incompetent man”). From a typical composition for the cover art of science fiction pulp magazines such as Thrilling Wonder Stories, notably by artists such as Earle K. Bergey and Rudolph Belarski, featuring a woman (the "Bim") being attacked or threatened by a monster (the "BEM"), while a man (the "Bum") protects her and/or attacks the monster.

(fandom slang, art) Retro art composition; composition stereotypical of the cover art of mid-20th-century science fiction pulp magazines.

Earle K. Bergey
Thrilling Wonder Stories


musivisual

(art) Of or relating to a semiotic system that is the synchronous union of music and image.


kinechromatic

(art) Changing colour as a result of some form of movement.


horror vacui

From Latin horror vacuī (“fear of empty space”), from horror (“horror, fear”) + vacuum (“vacuum”).

bor

The “Where's Wally?” series exhibits horror vacui.

(art) In particular, the tendency of an artist (or of art) to fill an entire surface with detail, leaving no blank space.


chromoluminarism

See chromo- and luminous. The style was believed to achieve greater luminosity than physically mixing pigments.


nanoart

(art) art made from assemblies of nanoparticles, or by manipulation of matter at the atomic / molecular level


merry company

The continued interest of the Utrecht School in such merry companies is found as late as 1644 in Bronchorst's Merry Party also in Brunswick.

2012, Jay Richard Judson, Gerrit Van Honthorst: A Discussion of his Position in Dutch Art:

(art) A painting, usually from the 17th century, showing a small group of people enjoying themselves, usually seated with drinks and music.


foresketch

(art, very rare) A first or tentative sketch; a study.


quattrocentist

quattrocentists (plural)
quatrocentist (alternative)

(art) An artist of the 1400s, the fifteenth-century Renaissance Italian period


centauromachy

From Ancient Greek; see centaur + -machy.

(art) A fight in which centaurs take part; a common theme in ancient relief sculpture.


œil-de-perdrix

œils-de-perdrix (plural)
oeil-de-perdrix (alternative)

Borrowed from French œil-de-perdrix (literally “eye of a partridge”).

(art) A small, round figure; a decorative dot.


œil-de-perdrix

an œil-de-perdrix pattern

(art) Characterized by, or decorated with, small round spots or rings.


eau forte

Borrowed from French eau forte (“strong water; nitric acid (which is used in etching plates)”).

(art) An etching or a print from an etched plate.


nero antico

A table of red granite, above which is a relief in nero antico on a ground of lapislazzuli […]

1843, Jeremiah Donovan, Rome, Ancient and Modern: And Its Environs, volume 3, page 730:

(art) A beautiful black marble found in fragments among Ancient Roman ruins, and usually thought to have come from ancient Laconia.


Neo-Greek

(art) Describing a style of French painters and architects of the mid-19th century.


quadraturism

(art) An Italian genre of painting that used architectural elements to create illusions of perspective.


trench art

(art, military) Any decorative item made by soldiers, prisoners of war, or civilians, where the manufacture is directly linked to armed conflict or its consequences.


champlevé

/ˌʃɒ̃mləˈveɪ/

(art) Having the ground engraved or cut out in the parts to be enamelled; inlaid in depressions made in the ground; said of a kind of enamel work in which depressions made in the surface are filled with enamel pastes, which are then fired.


Neo-Attic

(art) Describing a late Hellenistic style of bas-relief sculpture


neonist

(art) An artist who constructs artworks from neon fluorescent tubes.


neo-historicism

neo-historism (alternative)
neo-Historism (alternative)
Neo-Historism (alternative)
neo-Historicism (alternative)
Neo-Historicism (alternative)

(philosophy, art, architecture) A movement that draws inspiration from classical historicism


loose-handed

en-adj

loose-handed (comparative more loose-handed, superlative most loose-handed)

more loose-handed (comparative)
most loose-handed (superlative)

In a search for the complex shifts of form in the foot's shaping, the drawings present a loose-handed version of planar slices.

2013, Sue Ferguson Gussow, Architects Draw: Freehand Fundamentals, →ISBN, page 83:

On the wall to his right, loose-handed paintings in dark, pungent red boasted familiar shapes; varied angles of human faces, mouths stretched open, lips curled back, eyes bulging, teeth clenched and grinding.

2004, Andre Duza, Dead Bitch Army, →ISBN, page 118:

Smith not only replaced Warhol's purposely bland flavors with posole (white hominy) which is popular in the Southwest, she also replaced Warhol's clinical rendition of the can with a loose-handed drawing and applied a jolly background ....

2000, Marjorie Devon, Tamarind: forty years, page 106:

(art) Sketchy and flowing rather than geometric and precise.


vaporwave

vapourwave (alternative UK)
Vaporwave (alternative)

Largely ignored by the mainstream press, vaporwave has instead flourished on websites such as Bandcamp and SoundCloud and on Reddit […] Because vaporwave exists almost entirely outside the sphere of PR and the music industry at large, it has tremendous “underground” appeal. […] Vaporwave is critical of Western culture's preoccupation with the past, but it is not the only art form to call our collective regression into question.

2016, Grafton Tanner, Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave And The Commodification Of Ghosts, John Hunt Publishing, →ISBN, page 7:

Vaporwave arose in reaction to huge economic and social forces that are still very much a part of our lives: globalization, runaway consumerism, and manufactured nostalgia chief among them.

2016 August 18, “How Vaporwave Was Created Then Destroyed by the Internet”, in Esquire:

Recess’s website features the charms of vaporwave internet art and Lisa Frank-style nostalgia, while their Instagram account evokes the combined look of “Endless Summer” with “Floridian retiree” and the summer-camp psychedelia that has replaced “Lifestyle Lumberjack” as the default millennial style choice.

2019 January 8, Kate Carraway, “How to Make a Millennial Feel Cozy in Just One Beverage”, in New York Times:

The haunting affect of Vaporwave's ghostly music is clearly seductive to a political moment which revels in dystopia, the golden years of the 90s and the sounds of the 90s: financial boom, pedestalled American Dreams and […]

2019, Emile Frankel, Hearing the Cloud: Can Music Help Reimagine The Future?, John Hunt Publishing, →ISBN:

(music, art) A genre of electronic music and visual arts style that emerged in the early 2010s. As a musical genre, it evolved from chillwave and seapunk with influences from lounge music, elevator music, smooth jazz, and 1980s dance-pop. As an aesthetic, it is influenced by 1990s web design and digital art, anime, and cyberpunk.


overgrain

en-verb

overgrain (third-person singular simple present overgrains, present participle overgraining, simple past and past participle overgrained)

overgrains (present singular third-person)
overgraining (participle present)
overgrained (participle past)
overgrained (past)

(art) To apply an additional layer of colour to graining, or imitation woodgrain.


gesturalism

(art) A style of modern art painting characterized by energetic, expressive brushstrokes deliberately emphasizing the sweep of the painter's arm or movement of the hand


penwork

An extraordinary English Regency cabinet-on-chest entirely covered in elaborate penwork, circa 1820, is at Kentshire of New York, with a $475,000 price tag.

2007 February 9, Wendy Moonan, “Relics of the 19th Century, in a Sentimental Mood”, in New York Times:


alloverness

The virtual absence of white in Mr. Whitney’s work creates a great visual heat and internal pressure — an alloverness that reflects his careful study of Pollock — but, of course, it also has symbolic overtones.

2015 July 16, Roberta Smith, “Review: Stanley Whitney’s Paintings Reinvent the Grid”, in New York Times:

(art) The non-differential treatment of the surface of a two-dimensional artwork such as a painting, giving it a sense of uniformity and a lack of focus.


International Klein Blue

Named after French artist Yves Klein, who first mixed it.

(art) An intense deep blue hue achieved by means of ultramarine pigment and a binder.

Internasionale Klein-blou

deep blue hue achieved through ultramarine pigment and a binder


luminism

(art) An American artistic style of the 19th century, characterised by effects of light in landscapes.


shopdropping

/ˈʃɒpˌdɹɒpɪŋ/

/ˈʃɑpˌdɹɑpɪŋ/

From shop + dropping, modelled on shoplifting.

This is the season of frenetic shopping, but for a devious few people it's also the season of spirited shopdropping. Otherwise known as reverse shoplifting, shopdropping involves surreptitiously putting things in stores, rather than illegally taking them out, and the motivations vary.

2007 December 24, Ian Urbina, “Anarchists in the aisles? Stores provide a stage”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-04-19:

(often art) The covert placing of items in retail stores as a form of advertising, countercultural performance art, protest, etc.


Daedalic

(art) Belonging or relating to an early form of Ancient Greek sculpture with Oriental influences.


sabeline

en-noun

sabeline (countable and uncountable, plural sabelines)

(art) Ox hair dyed red to look like the higher-quality red sable, and sometimes blended with it; a substitute material for red sable in making brushes.


camel-hair brush

camel-hair brush (plural camel-hair brushes)

(art) A soft haired brush made from squirrel hair or a blend of hairs.


formatize

en-verb

formatize (third-person singular simple present formatizes, present participle formatizing, simple past and past participle formatized)

formatizes (present singular third-person)
formatizing (participle present)
formatized (participle past)
formatized (past)

The desired symmetry was only achieved by "formatizing" great masterpieces; and this was why Christian von Mechel had to remove additions to pictures and remedy losses when the Hapsburg paintings were moved from the Stallburg to the new museum in the Belvedere Palace.

1982, Joseph Alsop, The Rare Art Traditions, page 120:

While not as destructive as formatizing, this close trimming is a further indication that the albums are art collections and not essentially print collections, for even in the eighteenth century a diehard print collector would always prefer ...

1992, Marjorie B. Cohn, A noble collection: the Spencer albums of old master prints, page 42:

Indeed, this latter process may have begun during the seventeenth century: Muizelaar and Van de Wetering have suggested that 'formatizing' (the term sometimes used to describe the cutting down or adding to a picture, or changing its shape from oval to rectilinear as part of a predetermined scheme) may have been ...

2000, John Loughman, John Michael Montias, Public and private spaces, page 125:

(rare, art) To trim or add to a picture in order to make it fit into a standard frame size.


alogism

en-noun

alogism (countable and uncountable, plural alogisms)

His right eye was black; the left, for some strange reason (alogism), green. Black eyebrows, but (alogism) one higher that the other. In short a foreigner (alogism).

1974, Canadian Slavonic Papers - Volume 16, page 5:

The formal composition in all of these works done in the style of alogism is structured with mathematical precision approaching that of a blueprint.

2000, Nina Gurianova, Exploring Color: Olga Rozanova and the Early Russian Avant-garde, 1910-1918, →ISBN, page 95:

According to Firtich, the alogism that links Carroll's and Kruchenykh's nonsense is made up of three aspects, of which the linguistic experiment of 'nonsense' is but one. Also linking these figures is the concept of alternative metaphysical realms being explored, and an artistic épatage against the dominant contemporary social and cultural institutions.

2014, Helen Palmer, Deleuze and Futurism: A Manifesto for Nonsense, →ISBN, page 10:

(art) An early 20th century movement in painting and writing, emerging from the Russian avant-garde, which made use of antirational or nonsensical elements.

The theatricality of logic is, then, at least as effective in such speeches as are the meanderings of many an avant-garde playwright whose comic alogisms tend, sometime, to detract from the gravity of the situation described.

1968, The Cresset - Volume 32, Issue 1, page 9:

In the puppet show he also found the style of discourse of the puppet-show barker, which breaks into the course of the action, with its tones of ironic publicity and praise, its alogisms and deliberate absurdities.

1976, Henryk Baran, Semiotics and Structuralism: Readings from the Soviet Union, page 288:

Mann's division of alogisms into 1 . alogisms as a basis and 2. alogisms as overtone (style), together with his account of the generalising (all-embracing) nature of the grotesque is convincing, and using these theories H. Gunther takes the discussion further.

1982, Per Dalgård, The Function of the Grotesque in Vasilij Aksenov, page 18:

But many verbal absurdities and alogisms are scattered throughout the book.

1984, Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, →ISBN, page 423:

The dadaists emphasized that the basis of the creative process stems from alogisms.

1997, Osip Mandelʹshtam, Jane Gary Harris, The complete crítical prose, →ISBN, page 345:

(art) An absurd or nonsensical element deliberately added to a work that belongs to the alogism movement.


Neo-Dada

(art) A minor art movement with similarities in method or intent to earlier Dada art.


ringstone

(art) A carved, contoured, donut-shaped stone object in early Indian art.


noli me tangere

noli me tangere (plural noli me tangeres)

noli me tangeres (plural)
noli-me-tangere (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-noli me tangere.wav

/-ˌmeɪ ˈtɑnd͡ʒəɹeɪ/

Antonio da Correggio
Jesus
Mary Magdalene
Museo del Prado
Vulgate

PIE word
 *né
From Middle English noli me tangere, noly me tangere (“skin disease of the face; bad-tempered person who should be avoided; personification of wrath”), a learned borrowing from Late Latin nōlī mē tangere (literally “do not touch me”), from Latin nōlī (“do not”) + mē (“me, myself”) + tangere (the present active infinitive of tangō (“to grasp; to touch”)). The phrase is recorded in John 20:17 of the Vulgate, a 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible, as having been spoken to Mary Magdalene by Jesus shortly after his resurrection outside his tomb. The original phrase was the Koine Greek μή μου ἅπτου (mḗ mou háptou, “stop clinging to me”).
Senses 2–5 refer to the literal meaning of the phrase. For example, in the case of sense 4 (“any of various plants with fruits or seed capsules that, when ripe, burst open and discharge their seeds when touched, or with leaves that fold and droop when touched”), the name alludes to the assumption that the plants do not wish to be touched, and react by exploding their fruits or closing their leaves if this happens.

ref

From the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain.

noncog

μή μου ἅπτου

asia josta pysyä loitolla

someone or something to be avoided or not interfered with

kosketusherkkä kasvi

In the rest of the private lodgings contiguous to this, are divers of the best pictures of the greate masters, Raphael, Titian, &c. and, in my esteeme, above all, the Noli me tangere of our blessed Saviour to Mary Magdalen after his Resurrection, of Hans Holbein [the Younger], than which I never saw so much reverence and kind of heavenly astonishment express'd in a picture.

1680 September 12 (Gregorian calendar), John Evelyn, “[Diary entry for 2 September 1680]”, in William Bray, editor, Memoirs, Illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn, […], 2nd edition, volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […]; and sold by John and Arthur Arch, […], published 1819, →OCLC, page 524:

In a compartment over the communion-table is an estimable picture; a noli me tangere, by [Anton Raphael] Mengs, who painted it at Rome, and parted with it to the college for three hundred guineas.

1813, J[ames] N[orris] Brewer, “Oxfordshire [All Souls’ College]”, in The Beauties of England and Wales: Or, Original Delineations, Topographical, Historical, and Descriptive, of Each County. […], volume XII, part II, London: […] J. Harris; […], →OCLC, page 110:

Half of the other pictures are Magdalens, Flights into Egypt, Crucifixions, Depositions from the Cross, Pietas, Noli-me-tangeres, or the Sacrifice of Abraham, or martyrdoms of saints, originally painted as altar-pieces, or for the shrines of chapels, and wofully lacking the accompaniments which the artist had in view.

1860, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Emptiness of Picture-galleries”, in The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni. […], volume II, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 133:

He studied a tapestry on one wall of a noli me tangere wrought by a craftsman whose signature was illegible.

2008, Allen Russo, chapter 1, in Rufus of Rhodes: Volume II: Marching with the Legions, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN, page 13:

(Christianity, art) A picture depicting Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene shortly after his resurrection from the dead (see the etymology).


Holbeinian

en-adj

Holbeinian (comparative more Holbeinian, superlative most Holbeinian)

more Holbeinian (comparative)
most Holbeinian (superlative)

Change Thackeray's spirited devil into a dancing skeleton with an answering grin, and you have a picture that would fit into a medieval, or Holbeinian, Dance of Death.

2000, Siegbert Salomon Prawer, W.M. Thackeray's European Sketch Books, →ISBN, page 127:

His letters to Anne translate social codes of French diplomacy, Holbeinian portraiture, and Erasmian epistolary friendship into performances of personal desire.

2006, Seth Lerer, Courtly Letters in the Age of Henry VIII, →ISBN, page 98:

Mercator replaced Ziegler's stiff, artificial rivers and lakes with fluid, Holbeinian waters, while the Bavarian's sea - so tormented and heavily worked that it always threatened to inundate the land -- was substituted by patches of placid hatching cruised by ships and improbable fish.

2010, Nicholas Crane, Mercator: The Man who Mapped the Planet, →ISBN:

(art) In the style of Hans Holbein the younger.


gryllos

From Ancient Greek γρύλλος (grúllos, “comic figure, caricature”).

bor

(art, historical) A caricatural creature found in ancient and medieval art, typically featuring a human head with mostly bizarre, animal anatomy.


New Sincerity

Popularized in the 1990s by American author David Foster Wallace.

[Christy Wampole] notes that the New Sincerity has been around since the 1980s, and is a response to "postmodern cynicism, detachment and meta-referentiality." She's right about that, and the examples she cites—David Foster Wallace, Wes Anderson, and Cat Power—are right too. But the New Sincerity failed, she tells us.

2012 November 20, Jonathan D. Fitzgerald, “Sincerity, Not Irony, Is Our Age's Ethos”, in The Atlantic:

(art) A partial return to modernism, going against prevailing modes of postmodernist irony or cynicism.


clavilux

Coined by the musician and inventor Thomas Wilfred (1889-1968), from Latin clavis (“key”) and lux (“light”).

(art) A mechanical device for projecting lumia (an art form consisting of light patterns).


birth tray

(art) A painted salver used as a ceremonial gift on the occasion of a birth in parts of medieval Italy


empaestic

en-adj

empaestic (comparative more empaestic, superlative most empaestic)

more empaestic (comparative)
most empaestic (superlative)
empaistic (alternative)

From Ancient Greek ἐμπαιστικός (empaistikós, “embossed”), from ἐμπαίω (empaíō), from παίω (paíō, “strike”).

der

Semper called attention to the empaestic character of the reliefs, and his remarks have often been repeated.

1897, “Two Reliefs from Assos”, in American journal of archaeology, page 512:

The empaestic pictures of the Jews in the minds of those who dislike them are seldom devoid of any grain of truth: yet such images are always falsifications of the truth.

1949, Jewish Affairs, volume 4, page 11:

(art, rare) Embossed, especially of Ancient Greek art.


neomorphism

(biology, geology, art) A new development of form or structure.


blackstream

Blend of black + mainstream, coined by Elsa Honig Fine in her paper Mainstream, Blackstream and the Black Art Movement (1971).

(art) Conforming to the mainstream, with the exception of depicting people with black skin; not being a distinctively black style of art.


surmoulage

en-noun

surmoulage (countable and uncountable, plural surmoulages)

(art) The fraudulent practice of taking a casting directly from a sculpture rather than from the artist's original.


multiplism

He's now mostly doing originals and his own style of art called multiplism. Multiplism is when Victori does multiple, connected faces in one piece to show a person or character's various emotions.

2015 February 18, Marlon Wallace, “DVD Review - Victori: The Truth Just Can't Be One Thing”, in WBOC TV 16:

Guided by his business school-educated son, he wants to take on the New York Art scene with his aesthetic movement “multiplism,” a cubist spin-off featuring works such as the Mona Lisa with a dozen different expressions.

2015 February 28, “Lives and times”, in Boston Globe:

It tells the story of Victor's career as a famous lucrative portrait artist who migrated from Korea to America in 1972, working mainly out of malls across America to his retirement in present day spent painting and perfecting his post-modern art form "Multiplism."

2015 March 25, “Documentary tells story of Rutherford resident artist and the family that backs him”, in NorthJersey.com:

(art) The style created and promoted by Victor Victori, which depicts a subject in different positions and expressions in order to show change over time.


namepiece

namepieces (plural)
name piece (alternative)

(art) The artwork after which an otherwise unnamed artist is named.


artist's impression

artist's impression (plural artists' impressions)

(art, architecture) A sketch or drawing of someone or something, produced when it is not possible to take a photograph.

Ideenskizze

if of something planned but not realized


surasundari

(art) In Indian art, a young maiden characterizing feminine beauty and graceful sensuality.


watermedia

(art) Media that are distinguished from oil or other media by being diluted with water when used.


Empire

However, the first style of this century was known as Empire furniture. It was a derivative of the French Empire furniture, popular at that time.

1997, Mark McGrail, Furniture Brasses: A Short History of English Furniture Fittings, Armac Brassworks, →ISBN, page 21:

(fashion, furniture, art) Following or imitating a style popular during the First French Empire (1804–1814).

...and for a moment he could not identify the lady in the Empire dress, nor imagine why her presence created such excitement among the initiated.

1920, Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, New York: Random House, →OCLC, page 17:

(of a woman's dress) Having the waistline just below the bust; featuring an empire waist.


watercolouring

(art) The practice of painting in watercolours.


crimson lake

crimson lake (countable and uncountable, plural crimson lakes)

These locomotives, which were finished in crimson lake livery with gold lining and lettering, were not considered very satisfactory, for their gearless motors, with armatures mounted directly on the axles, set up considerable vibration.

1950 September, “Central London Railway Jubilee”, in Railway Magazine, page 620:


Arte Povera

/ˌɑːteɪ ˈpɒvəɹə/

/ˌɑɹteɪ ˈpoʊvəɹə/

Borrowed from Italian arte povera (literally “poor art”). The term was coined by Italian art critic and curator Germano Celant and introduced in Italy during the period of upheaval at the end of the 1960s, when artists were taking a radical stance.

coin

One mysterious collector wearing a black porkpie hat enthusiastically bid on many of the best Arte Povera works and ended up buying several by Boetti.

2014 February 12, Carol Vogel, “In London, an Auction of Arte Povera Yields Rich Results”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

Arte Povera, the politicized avant-garde art movement that blossomed in Italy in the late ’60s, is having a moment.

2017 January 30, M. H. Miller, “Arte Povera Is Back”, in The New York Times Style Magazine, →ISSN:

Energetic and urbane[…] Mr. Celant championed this generation of artists throughout his 50-year career, presenting large exhibitions of Arte Povera at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and at P.S. 1 in New York City.

2020 April 30, Jason Farago, “Germano Celant, Curator Behind Italy’s Arte Povera, Dies at 79”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

(art) A radical Italian modern art movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, making use of worthless or common materials such as earth or newspaper, in the hope of subverting the commercialization of art.


fifth wall

If the 'fourth wall', the barrier between the actor and the audience introduced by theatre conventions, is an invisible artefact between the stage and the audience, the fifth wall may be thought of as the invisible wall between critics or readers and theatre practitioners.

2005, Lynette Hunter, Peter Lichtenfels, Shakespeare, Language and the Stage, →ISBN:

The volume is based on a workshop held at the Globe, designed as an opportunity to break down a so-called fifth wall – an invisible barrier between theatre practitioners and critics.

2006, Peter Holland, Shakespeare Survey: Volume 59, Editing Shakespeare, →ISBN, page 372:

Not only does Sturgeon break the “fifth wall” between playwright and audience in section 7 of this story (becoming a sort of character in the story himself), he goes further in section 8, breaking a sixth wall by warning the reader that he or she may already have become infected by the parasite just by reading this far.

2013, Theodore Sturgeon, The Perfect Host, →ISBN:

The words "stop complaining" serve as advice for the character within the game; acknowledgement of potential frustration the player may be experiencing by breaking the fourth wall (between character and player); and a wink toward critics with a move known as lampshade hanging (self-deprecatingly pointing out a flaw in anticipation of criticism), which breaks the fifth wall (between videogame designer and critic) (Hunter & Lichtenfels, 2005).

2014, Hannah R. Gerber, Sandra Schamroth Abrams, Bridging Literacies with Videogames, →ISBN, page 40:

(art) The divide between critics or audience members and author or theater practitioner.


pleinairism

Some Americans may have concluded that such passionate pleinairism was unsustainable; it may have seemed too chaotic, insubstantial, repetitious, or ugly.

2017, Kathleen A. Foster, American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent, page 214:

(art) The practice of painting outdoors, in the open.


pleinairist

(art) An artist who paints outdoors, in the open.


cliché verre

(art) A method of either etching, painting or drawing on a transparent surface, such as glass or film, and printing the resulting image on light-sensitive paper in a photographic darkroom.


midtone

(photography, art) A medium tone, one that is neither very dark nor very light.


half-length

Coordinate term: full-length

(art, of a portrait, a sculpture or a photograph) Depicting only the upper half of the subject.

puolivartalo-

(arts) depicting only the upper half of the subject


pen picture

pen pictures (plural)
pen-picture (alternative)

(art, archaic) A picture drawn with a pen.


cad.

cad. yellow


High Renaissance

(art, historical) The period marked by the apogee of the visual arts in the Italian Renaissance, traditionally regarded as taking place from the 1490s until 1527.


imago clipeata

en-noun

imago clipeata (plural imagines clipeatae)

(art, historical) A depiction of a deceased or famous person on a round shield (clipeus), popular in the art, manuscripts and architecture of Roman and Early Christian culture.


clipeated

(art, rare, historical) Depicted on a round shield (clipeus).


oligochromatic

(art) Using only a few colours; oligochrome.


moist media

(art) A form of art that represents the fusion of biological processes and computing.


aleatoricism

(art) An artistic technique involving the use of chance to produce an artwork.


netprov

netprov (countable and uncountable, plural netprovs)

(art) A form of online theatrical improvisation acted out on social media.


cyberperformance

cyberperformance (countable and uncountable, plural cyberperformances)

(art) dramatic performance presented online or in cyberspace


cyberperformer

(art) One who enacts a cyberperformance.


geometrism

(art) a focus on geometric forms in visual art or the various movements that have engaged in it


parsemage

Soufflage is a technique in which liquid paint is blown onto a surface; in parsemage charcoal dust is scattered on the surface of water and then skimmed off with a sheet of paper; in fumage images are imprinted on a sheet of paper or canvas by the smoke of a candle or a kerosene lamp […]

2017, Kari Jormakka, Basics Design Methods, page 37:

(art) A surrealist automatic art technique in which dust from charcoal or chalk is scattered onto water and then skimmed off by passing stiff paper or cardboard just under the surface.


intermediality

(especially art) The quality of being intermedial, combining several media.


Dataism

He regards it above all as 'Dataism' - a term and an art opposed to the iconoclasm of Modernism in general and Dadaism in particular. Dataism restates traditional aesthetics through formal practices.

1993, Frank Popper, Art of the electronic age, page 87:

One of the Cyberart aspects is the "Dataism" This art is opposed to the iconoclast features of Dadai"sm. By his formal practices, the Dataism reaffirms the traditional aesthetic.

1999, Jean-Claude Heudin, Virtual Worlds: Synthetic Universes, Digital Life, and Complexity:

Arts Westchester's Dataism exhibition is scheduled to open in the fall of 2019 in its downtown White Plains gallery.

2018 March 12, Aleesia Forni, “ArtsWestchester receives $30000 from National Endowment for the Arts”, in Westfair:

(art) A movement that emphasizes traditional aesthetics and formal practices.


Dataist

en-adj

Dataist (comparative more Dataist, superlative most Dataist)

more Dataist (comparative)
most Dataist (superlative)

Dataist works are not singular art objects but algorithmic procedures and digital databases that have a symbolic description.

The "Dataist" works are not only unique art objects. They are algorithmic processes and data bases. The Dataist art works can appear as existing in a 3D space, and as moving in the time.


diaperwork

(art) Surface decoration in the diaper style.


Greek key

(art) A decorative border constructed from a continuous line, shaped into a repeated motif, that is commonly found in Greek art.


crushed strawberry

(art) A pinkish-red colour like strawberries that have been crushed.


lack-life

lack-life (comparative more lack-life, superlative most lack-life)

more lack-life (comparative)
most lack-life (superlative)

What influence the decorative motives of Egypt and Assyria, imported by the Phoenicians, had upon the early artists of Greece, it is again, as yet, very difficult to say, and we have to glean such scanty information as we can from what exists of archaic Greek art in pre-Phoenician strata, compared with such ancient Phoenician remains as are entirely destitute of any admixture of Greek influence. Such is the surpassing value of these Phoenician shields, the most ancient metal shields yet discovered. They belong to an epoch when the Greek race was in its youth, when the springs of its mind were fresh, when it was most likely to be influenced by external agents, and such objects were the first to introduce the young and aspiring Greek to the rigid, severe, monotonous, mysterious, and impenetrable forms of Egypt, and to the dreamy, lack-life, symbolic and ideal creations of the Assyrians.

1888 August 7, Rev. Joseph Hirst, “Opening Address of the Antiquarian Section”, in The Archaeological Journal, volume 46, number 181, Royal Archaeological Institute, published 1889, pages 31–32:

(art, nonce word) Represented in such a way as to show important characteristics, rather than in a realistic or literal manner; stylized; abstract.


assemblagist

(art) One who constructs assemblages (a form of 3D collage).


varnishing day

(art) The final day before a public exhibition; originally the day when artists could apply a final coat of varnish to their paintings after they had been hung, now the day when artists can make finishing touches, make sure pictures have been hung the right way up etc., and meet their fellow artists.


evocationism

After outlining the desiderata that must be met by any acceptable theory, Levinson lists the main contenders as basing their analyses on (i) evocationism, (ii) make-believe, (iii) metaphor, (iv) judgment, and (v) appearance of expression

1999 Summer, S Davies, “Review: The Pleasures of Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays”, in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, volume 57, number 3:

Perhaps, therefore, Impressionism is not so accurate a word as Evocationism, by which I mean the rendering of a vision such as an object or an idea has evoked

1934, The Artist - Volumes 7-9, page 61:

Different from both, Dusyanta seems to espouse what may be termed as emancipated evocationism. He represents the privileged viewpoint of the artist critic, also its limitations and perils.

1991, Girdhari Lal Chaturvedi, Re-visiting Śākuntalam, page 113:

(art) An approach to creating artworks by which the artist aims to evoke certain ideas in the audience.


circulationism

In such a situation, Steyerl advocates, echoing Benjamin, an updated form of critical-cultural barbarism in the guise of a strategy of 'circulationism' – an emphasis on 'postproducing, launching, and accelerating' an image.

2018, Andrew McNamara, Surpassing Modernity: Ambivalence in Art, Politics and Society:

Here, for Steyerl, “circulationism” is an appropriate descriptor: What the Soviet avant‐garde of the twentieth century called productivism – the claim that art should enter production and the factory – could now be replaced by circulationism.

2019, Brad Buckley, A Companion to Curation, page 407:

(economics, art) An emphasis on circulating goods as opposed to producing them.


3D pen

(art) A pen-like tool which melts a special thread into three-dimensional models (3D statues).


plique-à-jour

From French plique-à-jour, literally "letting in daylight".

(art) A vitreous enamelling technique where the enamel is applied in cells, similar to cloisonné, but with no backing in the final product, so light can shine through the transparent or translucent enamel.


madder lake

en-noun

madder lake (countable and uncountable, plural madder lakes)

(art) A colour mixed with either oil or water, made from madder.


tinty

en-adj

tinty (comparative more tinty, superlative most tinty)

more tinty (comparative)
most tinty (superlative)

(art) inharmoniously tinted; making poor use of colour


plasticism

en-noun

plasticism (usually uncountable, plural plasticisms)

The New York plasticism will be also the plasticism of Paris and Petrograd.

1916, Daniel Gregory Mason, The Art of Music: The dance, page 267:

But it also developed wonderfully in linear delineation, as seen in Seison's “Water-Drawing Ceremony”; in serene spatial constructivism, as seen in Gyoshu's “Tea Ceremony Room”; and in sharp and sensual plasticism as in Yuki's “Moonlit Night."

1969, A Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Oriental Arts:

The only essentiel difference is in the degree of plasticism : the mosaic architecture is rather flat and two-dimensional while the architecture of the miniature introduces chiaroscuro.

1973, Agostino Pertusi, Venezia E Il Levante Fino Al Secolo XV - Volume 2, page 288:

But even as the Messmer-Sullivan cartoons emphasized Felix's ingenious use of that plasticism—as we see in his ability to turn his tail or a graphic flourish like an exclamation point into a useful, narrative-furthering prop, thus all the more flattening out the world, making "everything in the drawn world. . . of the same stuff," as Leslie suggests (23) -- the early Mickeys seem far more intent on making space function within the narrative so that it might thereby reveal itself.

2010, J.P. Telotte, Animating Space: From Mickey to WALL-E, →ISBN, page 66:

While the expressive possibilities of Neoplasticism are limited to two dimensions (the plane), Elementarism realizes the possibility of plasticism in four dimensions, in the field of time-space.

2013, Linda Dalrymple Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art:

(art) The plastic quality of certain artworks, and the theory or movement of art that embodies this quality.


brunaille

From French brunaille, from brun (“brown”). Compare grisaille.

A corporate desire for identity and recognition also helps to explain the unusual coincidence of a traditional brunaille exterior in conjunction with a crowded, lively, visually striking interior painted in the most novel, fashionable, local style.

1984, Larry Silver, The Paintings of Quinten Massys, page 48:

(art) Consisting of shades of brown, painted or executed with shades of brown, brown monochrome.


brunaille

brunaille (countable and uncountable, plural brunailles)

Genre paintings in grisaille (grey monochrome) or brunaille (brown monochrome) by Adriaen van de Venne represent a special chapter in Dutch art history.

1986, Görel Cavalli-Björkman, Dutch and Flemish Paintings, volume 2, page 483:

(art) A method of painting or other work that uses shades of brown primarily or exclusively.

Paintings of this kind are known as brunailles – by analogy with grisailles, which are paintings done mainly in grey.

1996, Jeroen Giltaij, Jan Kelch, Praise of Ships and the Sea: The Dutch Marine Painters of the 17th Century, page 370:

(art) An artwork or study executed in this style.


synthetist

(art) An artist working in the style of synthetism.


archaic smile

From archaic + smile, referring to the Archaic period of Ancient Greek art.

(Ancient Greece, art, sculpture, historical) A smiling facial expression commonly found on Greek statues of the Archaic period (circa 700–500 B.C.E.).

Ancient Greece; sculpture; Ancient Greece; sculpture


verdaille

verdaille (countable and uncountable, plural verdailles)

Compare French vert (“green”), as well as English grisaille or brunaille, from French.

Unless the work of a skilled imitator, Pillement also executed an oil painting in monochromatic shades of olive green, called “Verdaille”, featuring a smaller procession of figures riding on elephants.

2006, Maria Gordon-Smith, Pillement, page 51:

Verdaille is a painting created entirely in green. Unlike other colourwork, in which a single hue is either tinted in lighter tones or shaded into darker tones, verdaille can involve many different hues.

2012 June 27, Sheila Singhal, “Elephant No. 269: Verdaille”, in An Elephant a Day:

(uncommon, art) A method of painting or other work which employs only varying shades of green, or work executed with this method.


parallel palette

parallel palette (plural parallel palettes)

(art) A palette that is positioned close to, and parallel with, the surface being painted


mater dolorosa

mater dolorosa (plural mater dolorosas or matres dolorosae)

mater dolorosas (plural)
matres dolorosae (plural)

From Latin mater dolorosa (“sorrowful mother”).

bor

(art) The Virgin Mary represented as the sorrowing mother.


detailist

The simple art of the detailist would compel him to draw every flower that he saw : the suggestive artist, with his more vigorous appeal to the imagination, would get the effect by setting a few in the immediate foreground, and still fewer scattered over the middle distance.

The detailist fills his canvas with work and interest; the full-souled painter concentrates his detail upon a few salient points.

1890, The Photo-beacon - Volume 2, page 86:

His canvases are worked over with painstaking care, not as the detailist works to delineate buttons and boot-straps, but for harmonies of tender color and the charm of reflected light.

1903, Harper's Monthly Magazine - Volume 107, page 638:

Impressionism is the generalizing of the subject-matter as a whole and the expression of only its salient features. The extreme realist or detailist of the Ruskin type has for years been insisting that a spade was a spade and should be painted to look like a spade; that a spade was not a spade until every nail in the handle and every crack in the blade became apparent.

1915, Francis Hopkinson Smith, Outdoor Sketching, page 62:

But when we come to examine the fundamental reasons for nature's supremacy over all art, even the noblest, we find it in the fact that nature is the transcendent detailist.

1915, Country Life in America - Volume 28, page 34:

(art) An artist who produces highly detailed work.


monoscenic

I only like monoscenic comics like The Family Circus and Dennis the Menace.


phyllomorph

(art) A stylised representation of a leaf


sauce crayon

(art) A soft black pastel used for backgrounds.


whole-length

A whole-length Picture of a Woman, by Van Dyck

1693, A Catalogue of the Pictures in the Collection of Mr. Lanckrinck, Lately Deceased; […], London: […] [A]t Mr. Smith’s […] and at Mr. Basset’s […] and at Mr. Lanckrinck’s […], page 7:

In the Great Gallery is a moſt admirable Ritratto of Cardinal Spada, a whole-length Figure, ſitting; by Guido.

1730, Edward Wright, Some Observations Made in Travelling Through France, Italy, &c. in the Years 1720, 1721, and 1722, London: […] Tho. Ward and E. Wicksteed, […], page 299:

[A]s Lady D. was not there, Charlotte had leisure to look about, & to be told by Mʳˢ P. that the whole-length Portrait of a stately Gentleman, which placed over the Mantlepeice,^([sic]) caught the eye immediately, was the picture of Sir H. Denham—[…]

1817 (date written), Jane Austen, chapter 12, in R[aymond] W[ilson] Chambers, editor, Fragment of a Novel Written by Jane Austen, January–March 1817 […] [Sanditon], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, published 1925, →OCLC, page 170:


whole-length

(art) A portrait or statue depicting the whole figure.


scanography

Blend of scan + radiography or scanner + photography.

In 2009, she had her first exhibition at Tashkeel in Dubai where she debuted work using scanography, a process of creating photographic prints from layered images captured with a flatbed scanner.

2023, Sabrina DeTurk, Women and Contemporary Art in the Gulf, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN:

(art) The process of capturing digitized images of objects using a flatbed scanner for the purpose of creating photographic prints.


Judd's dictum

(art) The position that anything is art as long as somebody calls it art.


kalaga

Borrowed from Burmese ကန့်လန့်ကာ (kan.lan.ka, “curtain”).

(art) An embroidered appliqué tapestry made of silk, flannel, felt, wool and lace, indigenous to Myanmar (Burma).


middle distance

en-noun

middle distance (plural middle distances)

The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine.

1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., page 12:

(art, photography) The central portion of a picture in terms of depth, between the foreground and background.


semifigure

(art) A partial human figure in ornamental design.


ideoplastic

(art) Being a form of symbolic art created by mental modification of natural artistic subjects.


bricolagist

(art) An artist who uses bricolage in the creation of art.


cloisonnism

(art) A school of postimpressionist painting


nonrepresentationalism

(art) A nonrepresentational approach to art.


Moresco

(art, architecture, archaic) Moorish; Moresque


dead colouring

The colours necessary for dead colouring are: common white, light ochre, brown ochre, burnt umber, Indian red, ivory black, and Prussian blue.

1829, Alexander Jamieson, A dictionary of mechanical science, arts, manufactures, and miscellaneous knowledge:

(art) The first broad outlines of a picture.


Little Master

(art, historical) Any of a group of German printmakers who produced finely detailed miniature prints in the first half of the 16th century.


retrogarde

From retro- + garde. Doublet of rearguard.

(art, literature) Descriptive of an art movement, particularly in Slovenia, that looks back to the past, as opposed to avant-garde.


semi-effigy

(art) A representation of a figure seen at half-length only.


colour field painting

colour field painting (countable and uncountable, plural colour field paintings)

(art) A style of abstract painting characterised by large, flat surfaces of solid colour


cubo-futurism

(art, historical) A Russian school of painting and sculpture, influenced by cubism and Italian futurism.


cubo-futurist

en-adj

cubo-futurist (comparative more cubo-futurist, superlative most cubo-futurist)

more cubo-futurist (comparative)
most cubo-futurist (superlative)

(art, historical) Relating to cubo-futurism.


cubo-futurist

(art, historical) An artist working in the style of cubo-futurism.


Counter-Mannerism

The decisive factor in the origins of Colonial painting in Peru came a few years later from late Italian Mannerism and Counter-Mannerism.

1975, The Connoisseur: An Illustrated Magazine for Collectors:

Nevertheless the artists did not create in "Counter-Mannerism" a wholly new stvle in the way that Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci were to do in the last decade of the century; it seems that, once trained in Mannerism, they could never entirely lose that touch of elegance and that beguiling preciosity which are still very evident in Barocci 's Deposition.

1978, Gary R. Walters, Federico Barocci, anima naturaliter, page 72:

Domenico Cresti (or Crespi), known as “il Passignano” (from the name of the district of Tavarnelle Val di Pesa, near Florence, where he was born, 1559–1638), was a painter of the late-Renaissance or Counter-Mannerism style; he was educated by the Vallombrosan monks.

2019, Stefano Gattei, On the Life of Galileo:

(art) A trend in the late sixteenth century that rejected some of the distortions of Mannerism, returning to a more classicist emphasis on clarity.


fashion design

(fashion, art) The art of applying design, aesthetics and natural beauty to clothing and its accessories.

時裝設計 /时装设计

the art of applying design, aesthetics and natural beauty to clothing and its accessories


high-key

high-key (comparative more high-key, superlative most high-key)

more high-key (comparative)
most high-key (superlative)
highkey (alternative)
high key (alternative)
highk (alternative)

Details are tremendously important in composing an outstanding high-key photograph.

1942 November, Victor Keppler, “Key to Good Pictures”, in Popular Photography, →ISSN, page 29:

(art, photography) Characterised by light tones and absence of shadow.


public art

(art) Any artwork planned and executed with the intention of being presented openly to the public, usually outside and accessible to all.


fundamental painting

De Keyser's work from this period can be unequivocally linked to the so-called Fundamental Painting that was prominent in the art world at the time.

2000, Raoul de Keyser, Steven Jacobs, Raoul de Keyser paintings 1980-1999, page 19:

Evidently, formalist and fundamental painting practices dependent upon American reductive theories of art, such as the modernist painting thesis propounded by Clement Greenberg […]

2005, Jessica Wyman, Pro Forma: Language, Text, Visual Art, volume 1:

(art) An approach to painting that focuses on the physical brushwork, textures, etc.


all-over painting

en-noun

all-over painting (countable and uncountable, plural all-over paintings)

(art, uncountable) The non-differential treatment of the surface of a painted artwork, so that it is uniform rather than divided into distinct sections.

(art, countable) An individual painting in this style.


anonymous sculpture

anonymous sculpture (countable and uncountable, plural anonymous sculptures)

Calque of German Anonyme Skulpturen; the term was used by Bernd and Hilla Becher, who photographed such structures.

(art) Any industrial structure whose architecture is thought to have unintended artistic qualities.


factography

(art) A movement originating in the Soviet Union, promoting the use of film and photography for documentary purposes by the working class.


retinal art

(art) Artworks designed to please the eye, without philosophical or political content.


geometry of fear

Coined in 1952 by Herbert Read in his description of the work of the eight British artists represented in the "New Aspects of British Sculpture" exhibition at the Biennale di Venezia of 1952.

(art, historical) The artistic style of an informal group or school of young British sculptors in the years after the Second World War, characterized by angular, jagged forms thought to reflect post-war angst and guilt.


snare-picture

(art) A kind of artwork, introduced by Daniel Spoerri, in which objects found in chance positions (such as cutlery and crockery after a meal) are permanently fixed in those positions.


Proletkult

From Russian Пролетку́льт (Proletkúlʹt).

bor

Пролетку́льт

(art, historical) An experimental Soviet artistic institution that arose in conjunction with the Russian Revolution of 1917, and aspired to radically modify existing artistic forms by creating a new, revolutionary working-class aesthetic drawing inspiration from the construction of modern industrial society in backward, agrarian Russia.


chemigram

(art) A form of experimental artwork made by painting with chemicals on photographic paper or similar.


cinetization

cinetizations (plural)
cinetisation (alternative)

For example, cinetizations of the Pan Am Building or the George Washington Bridge show these structures in a state of collapse.

1978, Linda Konheim Kramer, Prints from the Guggenheim Museum Collection, page 12:

(art) A distorted image created by removing portions of an original image and reassembling the remainder at disjointed angles.


cool art

(art) A form of impersonal, geometric abstract art.


auricular style

Coined with reference to the flowing figures of the style, which sometimes resemble the human ear.

Later, following the general tendency towards a more 'painterly' taste, came the soft Ohrmuschel or auricular style of about 1620 and after, characterized by forms like parts of conch shells or the gristle of an ear.

1965, Eberhard Hempel, translated by Elisabeth Hempel and Marguerite Kay, Baroque Art and Architecture in Central Europe: Germany/Austria/Switzerland/Hungary/Czechoslovakia/Poland (The Pelican History of Art), volume Z22, Baltimore: Penguin Books, translation of original in German, →OCLC, page 32:

The choice and treatment of the motifs which form the inner ornamental border - rams' heads and drapery - suggest a Northern goldsmith familiar with the early auricular style.

1971 January, Hugh MacAndrew, “A Silver Basin Designed by [Bernardo] Strozzi”, in The Burlington Magazine, volume 113, number 814, Burlington Magazine Publications, →JSTOR, page 11:

The auricular style was created by two members of the Utrecht goldsmithing family of van Vianen.

1976, J[ohn] F[orrest] Hayward, Virtuoso Goldsmiths and the Triumph of Mannerism, 1540-1620, London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, →OCLC, page 290:

The auricular style appears to have come to Northern Europe via the engravings of Hendrick Goltzius, who may have seen it in Tuscany during his visit to Italy in 1591.

1984, Paul Mitchell, “Italian Picture Frames, 1500—1825: A Brief Survey”, in Furniture History, volume 20, Furniture History Society, →JSTOR, page 26:

The subtlety and refinement of the auricular style as practised by the Van Vianens plainly appealed very considerably to Charles [I, King of England], not least because they were so different from the humdrum or conservative Late Mannerist style of English goldsmith's work. For if Christian [van Vianen] was not an innovator, yet he was at his best a most excellent workman in the auricular style.

1989, Ronald Lightbown, “Charles I and the art of the goldsmith”, in Arthur MacGregor, editor, The Late King's Goods: Collections, Possessions and Patronage of Charles I in the Light of the Commonwealth Sale Inventories, London: Alistair McAlpine, →ISBN, page 239:

JHM B 96 Basin [...] In the centre section of the oval plate there is an embossed relief showing the judgement of Paris. The broad rim is formed in auricular style with shells and has a scalloped edge.

1995 January, Edward van Voolen, Irene Faber, Annette Weber, “Jewish Ceremonial Silver from Germany in the Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam”, in The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, volume 40, number 1, →DOI, page 268:

An important founding element was a form of late Mannerist ornament now called auricular, named after the fleshy parts of the ear, which it somewhat resembles. The auricular style, which fully emerged in the earliest years of the seventeenth century, sprang from an interest in fleshy forms, shells and scaly shapes, which began in the Low Countries in the 1550s, inspired by a fashion for dripping grottoes inhabited by scaly creatures.

2009, Evonne Levy, “The Cornaro Chapel”, in Michael Snodin, Nigel Llewellyn, editors, Baroque, 1620-1800: Style in the Age of Magnificence, London: V&A Publishing, →ISBN, page 106:

(art, historical) An ornamental style of the first half of the 17th century, characterized by stylized and softly flowing abstract shapes in relief.


earshell work

Coined with reference to the flowing figures of the style, "in which undulating, slithery and boneless forms occasionally carry a suggestion of the inside of an ear or of a conch shell."

The earshell work is alternately sinewy and muscular, picturesque and doughy, which characterizes the development of this decorative style, in its early stages during the first decades of the seventeenth century and reveals the birth of the style.

1986, Hans Soop, The Power and the Glory: The Sculptures of the Warship Wasa, Almqvist och Witsell, →ISBN, page 63:

Seventeenth century Dutch and German Renaissance styles often feature grotesques, as well as what was then a new artistic element, earshell work, also known as auricular ornamentation or knorpelwerk in German.

2018, Leticia Pinheiro Lima, Karolina Pallin, “The whipstaff mascaron: symbolism and the making of space in a 17th century Swedish warship.”, in The Society for Maritime and Historical archaeology’s conference 2018, page 2:

(art, historical) Synonym of auricular style


lobate style

Adam [van Vianen]'s suppleness is not only equalled, but even surpassed by [Joannes] Lutma. In fact, the lobate style, if it was not Lutma's invention, reached its highest perfection in his work.

1961, J. W. Frederiks, “III. The Baroque Style. A. The Lobate Style. North-Holland. Amsterdam. Joannes Lutma Sr.”, in Dutch Silver: Embossed Ecclesiastical and Secular Plate from the Renaissance until the End of the Eighteenth Century, Dordrecht: Springer, →DOI, →ISBN, page 45:

The auricular or lobate style, known in Holland as Kwabornament and in Germany as Knorpelwerk, appears to be the only ornamental style which was developed mainly by silversmiths and found its fullest and most notable expression in silver.

1971, Hugh Honour, “Paulus van Vianen (c. 1568—1613)”, in Goldsmiths & Silversmiths (Great Craftsmen), New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →OCLC, page 97:

The two-handled cup and cover by the Hound Sejant maker at Wadham College, Oxford, to which he compared it, shows a similar tentative application of the lobate style to an essentially English form.

1993, Ellenor M. Alcorn, “58. Two-Handled Cup and Cover, London, ca. 1665, Gold, 60.534a,b”, in English Silver in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Volume I. Silver Before 1697, Boston: Museum of Fine Arts. Distributed by Northeastern University Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 137:

The ornament in this window comprises not only Netherlandish grotesque with its characteristic combination of strapwork and scrollwork but also classical motifs in the two friezes. The two empty cartouches in the lower register (fig. II) moreover herald an entirely new fashion, that of the auricular or lobate style.

1997, Zsuzsanna van Ruyven-Zeman, “Hendrick de Keyser: Draftsman and Designer of Stained Glass”, in Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, volume 25, number 4, →DOI, →JSTOR, page 292:

The smooth, kneaded, almost unfinished appearance of the heart-shaped relief ornament is reminiscent of the lobate style of relief decoration, known as kwabornament, which was popular in the first half of the seventeenth century.

2009, Natalie Zemon Davis, Deborah L. Krohn, Dutch New York Between East and West: The World of Margrieta Van Varick, New York: Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 232:


metamorphosality

(art) A major change in style of a painter


kit-cat

kit-cats (plural)
kitcat (alternative)
kitkat (alternative)
kit-kat (alternative)

So called because the size was adopted by Sir Godfrey Kneller for the portraits he painted of the members of London's 18th-century Kit-Cat Club, said to have been named after innkeeper Christopher Catt.

(historical, art) A short portrait, measuring 28 or 29 by 36 inches, less than half-length, but including the hands.

Godfrey Kneller
John Vanbrugh
Kit-Cat Club
kit-cat portrait


synthetism

(art) A style of postimpressionism that aims to synthesize varioous elements: the outward appearance of the thing depicted, the artist's feelings about it, and aesthetic considerations.


zeroist

Let us admit at once that the author has made out a case against the zeroist who uses words as a squid uses its color-sac — to becloud vision.

1929, Printers' Ink - Volume 147, page 154:

What are you talking about Ali this is the text we are creating it verbally we are the text we do not exist either we are a pack of lies dreamt up by the unreliable narrator in love with the zeroist author in love with himself but absent in the nature of things, an etherised unauthorised other.

1975, Christine Brooke-Rose, Thru, page 155:

(art) An artist who is part of the movement called zeroism; An artist whose works have no message or meaning.


Modiglianiesque

(art) Relating to or characteristic of Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920), Italian Jewish painter and sculptor.

modiglianesco

relating to or characteristic of Amedeo Modigliani


word art

(art) Artistic forms, such as concrete poems and visual poems, that use words as visual elements rather than merely to convey verbal meaning.

WordArt

a technology for creating stylized text effects in wordprocessing


mixed media

(art) An assemblage or collage using two or more different materials


outsider art

Coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972.

coin

Outsider Art is increasingly recognized as a representation of the purest and most direct form of artistic creation.

2006, Liz Aggiss, Billy Cowie ed., Anarchic Dance, Routledge, →ISBN, page 48:

The concepts of raw art and outsider art were typical of a time when oppositional politics still infused artistic and academic discourses.

2014, Ian Buchanan, Lorna Collins, Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Visual Art, A&C Black, →ISBN, page 57:

Inherent in all artistic activity, these dialogical mechanisms become particularly striking in outsider art and can serve as a basis for fighting stigma.

2015, Ekaterina Sukhanova, Hans-Otto Thomashoff, Body Image and Identity in Contemporary Societies, Routledge, →ISBN, page 11:

The principal problem with Outsider Art is the most obvious: it is so often so bad.

2015, Adam Geczy, Jacqueline Millner, Fashionable Art, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 160:

Outsider art could not be stopped. Once its greatness — and its market potential — was understood, the insider art world opened the flood gates and here we are.

2022 March 3, Roberta Smith, “The Outsider Art Fair Returns, in Top Form”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

(art) Art by untrained artists, outside of the institutional mainstream.


gold size

en-noun

gold size (countable and uncountable, plural gold sizes)

gold sizes (plural)
goldsize (alternative)

Whatsoever you would gild must be first drawn with a gold size.

1735, Dictionarium Polygraphicum, volume I:

Gold size […] is drying oil mixed with calcined red ochre.

1842, William Thomas Brande, A Dictionary of Science, Literature and Art:

(art) A size (or viscous wash) put down on a surface on which gold leaf is to be applied.


eccentric abstraction

(art) A style of abstract sculpture that suggests organic forms.


mimeticist

(art, literature) One who takes a mimetic approach; a proponent of mimesis.


stamp art

(art) Artwork, typically a mosaic, made from postage stamps.


Mary Gregory

After Mary Gregory (1856–1908), American artist who created such pieces.

(art) A style of decorated glass painted in white enamel, typically with figures of children at play.


arterati

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-arterati.wav

(informal, art) People who are considered the elite in the world of art.