Art Movements

Abstract Art: Not realistic, though the intention is often based on an actual subject, place, or feeling. Pure abstraction can be interpreted as any art which contains no recognizable forms from the physical world or that converts forms from nature into patterns seen mainly as color, lines, shapes and material.When the representation of real objects is completely absent, such art may be called Non-objective.

Abstract Expressionism: a dominant New York painting movement loosely started in the 1940s and based on Abstract Art. This type of spontaneous painting is often referred to as Action Painting as it conveyed very powerful emotions through its bold, gestural brushstroke. deKooning, Francis, Kline and Frankenthaler are just a few of its recognized exponents. > top

Art Deco: Named after the 1925 Paris exhibition of decorative art and popular in the Twenties and Thirties, artists used decorative motifs derived from French, African, Aztec, Chinese, and Egyptian cultures and integrated them with the look of mass industrialization. > top

Art Nouveau: A style that evolved during the 1890s which used asymmetrical decorative elements derived from objects found in nature. > top

Ashcan School: A group of American painters and illustrators of the early 20th century, often known as The Eight. They were Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Luks, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, Maurice Prendergast, Arthur Davies, and Ernest Lawson. Their work depicted such subjects as the streets and inhabitants of big cities with a vigorous sense of realism. > top

Barbizon School: French landscape artists who worked near Barbizon, France between 1835 and 1870. > top

Bauhaus: A design school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 in Germany. The Bauhaus attempted to achieve a reconciliation between the aesthetics of design and the more commercial demands of industrial mass production. Artists include Klee, Kandinsky, and Feininger. > top

Beaux-arts: A school of fine arts located in Paris which stressed the necessity of academic painting. > top

Contemporary Art: Very loosely defined as art which was produced during the second half of the twentieth century. > top

Cubism: A revolutionary art movement between 1907 and 1914 in which natural forms were changed by geometrical reduction and multiple perspectives. Leading figures were Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. > top

Expressionism: A concept of painting in which traditional adherence to realism and proportion is overridden by the intensity of an artist's emotional (expressive) response to the subject. > top

Imaginary Landscape: Unlike pure "plein air" landscape painting, whereby an artist paints in the open air surrounded by the hills, woods, or horizon which may be the painter's subject matter, the imaginary landscape painter paints from within. Typically, painters of imaginary landscape step away from the literal landscape of nature and tap into imagery created within their mind's eye. Often, the ensuing works are evocative of their personal feelings and individual experiences and interpretations of the outdoors.
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Impressionism: A painting technique in which the artist concentrates on the changing effects of light and color. Often this style can be characterized by its use of discontinuous brush strokes and heavy impasto. > top

Genre: A form of realistic painting of people that depicts ordinary events. These paintings are not religious, historical, abstract or mythological. > top

Non-Objective Art: Not representing any object, figure, or element in nature, in any way; nonrepresentational and often typified by severely geometric works and color fields.> top

Plein Air: After the French term for "in the open air", a method of painting by which the artist leaves the confines of a studio and literally sets up shop among the landscape being painted. Commonly associated with California Impressionism, both early twentieth century and modern day, plein air painting best captures the light and color for which the Southern California region is famous. > top

Pop Art: A style derived from commercial art forms and characterized by larger than life replicas of items from mass culture. This style evolved in the late 1950s and was characterized in the 1960s by such artists as Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Claus Oldenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Larry Rivers,Tom Wesselmann, Robert Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist. > top

Urban Landscape: A style focusing on urban scenery as opposed to rural landscape. Works can be typified by often provocative, sometimes desolate images of the city, it's inhabitants and the effects that industry and the population at large has on its surroundings. > top

Painting Terms

Acrylic Paint: a pigment in a plastic binder medium that is water based and adheres to most surfaces. Acrylic paint is used to mimic the look of oil paint. The advantages of acrylic over oil is that it is less toxic and it dries more quickly. > top

Chiaroscuro: The dramatic use of light and shadow to create a mood or a focal point in a painting. > top

Collage: A grouping of different textured materials or objects that are glued together. > top

Encaustic: Pigment is mixed with melted wax and resin and then applied to a surface while hot. The paints must be heated prior to their application but once dry are extremely durable. Encaustic was widely used during the Middle Ages.> top

Frottage: Textural rubbing on paper done with crayon, oil or pencil. > top

Gesso: An underpainting medium consisting of glue, plaster of Paris, or chalk and water. Gesso is used to size the canvas and prepare the surface for painting. > top

Gouache: A watercolor medium which is mixed with finely ground white pigment to provide an opaque paint. > top

Impasto: The thick textured build up of a picture's surface which is created through the repeated applications of paint. > top

Mural: A continuous painting which is designed to fill a wall or other architectural area. > top

Oil Paint: A powdered pigment which is held together with oil, usually linseed oil. > top

Pen and Ink: The artist's use, typically of a nibbed pen and India ink, as the medium for drawing on paper. Depending on the artist's motivation and the subject matter, the use of pen and ink will typically result in a richly saturated image that may appear either as a swift and spontaneous sketch or a very deliberate, detailed drawing. > top

Pentimento: An underlying image in a painting, as an earlier painting, a part of a painting, or an original draft, that shows through, usually when the top layer of paint has become transparent with age. > top

Tempera: Pigment which is mixed with water or egg yolk and usually applied to board or panel. > top

Watercolor: A pigment mixed with a binder and applied with water to give a transparent effect. > top

Photographic Terms

Archival Digital Print: A digital print is any print that originates from either a traditional latent image or directly from an artist manipulated digital file, using a computer and sophisticated output printer. This is in contrast to darkroom prints which are made from negatives or transparencies. An Archival Digital Print is simply the same print created with special pigment inks on a specially coated paper that with proper care and handling can rival the archival permanence of traditional darkroom prints. State of the art digital prints can last as long or longer than traditional darkroom prints, which are usually rated at anywhere between twenty and a hundred and fifty years, depending on the process. The technique allows photographic reproduction with an unsurpassed technical finesse. > top

Carbon Quadtone Prints: Carbon quad-tone prints are digital prints made using a collaboration of four shades of archival carbon-black pigment inks designed for software. A digitized image is output via a computer and printer onto a paper medium which is specially coated to receive the pigment. The aesthetic benefit of using Quadtone pigments that they are pigments rather than dyes. Additionally, because the photographer is working with four shades of black and grey (hence "quadtone"), truer black and white images are achieved, capturing the most subtle highlight or the deepest shadow detail. > top

Sabattier Effect: The Sabattier effect (sometimes confused with Solarization), named for Armand Sabattier, who discovered it in 1862, is an intentional darkroom technique, employed to produce tone reversals. The procedure is to partially develop a negative or print, momentarily expose it to light, then continue the normal development process. Tone reversal in completed prints principally occurs in background dark areas. At edges, between areas of the print where reversal has occurred and where it has not, a distinct black line is visible, particularly if it was the negative rather than the developing print that was flashed with light. Results of the Sabattier effect are somewhat unpredictable. Man Ray employed the Sabattier and Solarization effects in some of his work.
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Selenium Toned Print: Selenium toner is one of many chemical toners used on black and white prints during the darkroom printing process to change or shift the color of the image of a photographic print or strictly for the purpose of extending archival permanence. There are many kinds and colors of toner - sepia, gold, blue, etc. Selenium will translate onto the print with almost no color if the printer uses a light toning and can take on a slightly purplish color if doing a heavy toning. The primary reason for selenium toning is that it makes a black and white silver print more archival, with proper care and handling, lasting over one hundred years. > top

Silver Gelatin Print: (photography) a black and white photograph processed from a gelatin emulsion of silver within the paper. Although much more labor intensive than printing onto RC (resin coated) paper, which can be machine printed, silver gelatin prints must be printed by hand. Aesthetically, they produce crisp imagery and detail and greater tonal range when compared to other prints. Archivally, they can endure 100+ years while RC prints tend to lose color and integrity of the image in a shorter time span. > top

Thiocarbamide Toned Print: A photograph printed using a variable sepia toner producing a wide choice of colors ranging from a yellow hue to a chocolate brown. Color is governed by the printer's choice of paper, the amount of bleaching prior to the toning and the proportion of these chemicals. Similarly to Selenium toned prints, this process also enhances the permanence of the print.
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Printmaking Terms

Artist Proof: A print outside of the regular, numbered edition but equal in quality to it. Often, an artist will retain artist proofs for private sale. The number of artist proofs are small in proportion to the regular numbered edition, usually less than ten percent of the regular numbered edition. Contrary to popular belief, artist proofs are typically no more valuable than the numbered prints. > top

Aquatint: An intaglio method (see below) in which areas of subtle color are created in a print. This occurs by dusting powdered resin on a metal plate and then allowing an acid bath to eat the plate surface away from around it as well as the areas which were incised by the artist's etching tool. The granular appearance which results, creates subtle tonal differences in the print ranging from very light to very dark color values. > top

Deckle Edge: The rough, untrimmed edge of handmade paper. This effect is sometimes artificially created in machine-made paper to simulate an elegant, handmade quality. > top

Drypoint: Refer to Intaglio
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Edition: The sum total of the numbered prints of a particular image printed by an artist. An edition of 100 contains 100 prints consecutively numbered 1/100, 2/100, 3/100, etc. > top

Engraving: Refer to Intaglio
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Etching: Refer to Intaglio
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Embossing: A raised image produced by exerting pressure on dampened paper during the printmaking process. > top

Home Made Print: A printmaking medium specific to the artist David Hockney. As an evolutionary outgrowth of his celebrated photographic work, this medium utilizes a color copier, itself a camera of sorts, as the mechanism by which an edition of prints are created. Sheets of cotton rag paper are fed through the machines multiple times as colors and images are laid one upon another. After multiple runs, the desired image (the finished print) has been achieved and is thus acceptable for distribution. As Hockney has stated, in reference to traditional printmaking "I’ve always been bothered by the lack of spontaneity...but with these copying machines I can work with great speed and responsiveness. In fact, this is the closest I’ve ever come in printing to what it¹s like to paint." True spontaneity, creativity, experimentation and purity of color are all exemplified by this exciting medium. More information on this medium can be found in the exhibition catalog DAVID HOCKNEY – A RETROSPECTIVE, 1988, LACMA – pages 77-79. > top

Intaglio: (Etching, Engraving, Aquatint, Drypoint, Mezzotint) A printing process in which an image is incised or etched into a metal plate using a variety of techniques and tools. Ink is then applied to the recessed areas. The paper, which is dampened, is squeezed thorough a press under enormous pressure and receives ink from the incised marks. Unlike lithography, the finished impression is often raised slightly from the paper surface. > top

Lithograph: A printing process in which the image to be printed is drawn by the artist on a slab of limestone or a metal plate. This original artwork is then treated to receive ink while any blank areas within and around the image repel the ink. Paper is then laid onto the image under pressure and a print is created. > top

Mezzotint: Refer to Intaglio
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Mixed Media: A process where more than one medium is used. The "mix" can be fairly simple, or may be a complex process involving as many as four or five different artistic and/or printmaking techniques. > top

Printer's Proof: A print, usually in a numbered edition of 10 prints or less, created by the artist during printing for the express purpose of providing prints to the collaborating printmaker as a gift or as partial compensation for his or her services. Contrary to belief, printer's proofs should not command a price any higher than prints from the numbered edition.

Serigraph: (Screenprint, Silkscreen) A stenciling method in which the artist's image is transferred to paper by forcing ink through a fine mesh screen in which the background has been blocked. A separate stensil is required for each color within the print. This method, like the woodcut, involves the artist working on the areas that are not actually printed. > top

Screenprint: See Serigraph, above. > top

Silkscreen: See Serigraph, above. > top

Suite: A set of multiple prints related by common imagery or theme and often by technique. > top

Trial Proof: A print, usually a single, unique impression, created by the artist during printing to document image changes or as an experiment with color variations. > top

Woodcut: A method of relief printing in which wood, as opposed to stones or screens, is the printing element. A wide variety of tools are used by the artist to carve an image into woodblocks which are then inked and applied to paper. The finished prints are beautifully textured. Woodcuts are the first known prints. > top

Printmaking Terms (Relative to Edition)

Bon a Tirer: This is a French term which translates as "Good Pull". It denotes that the print that has just been pulled has been approved by the artist and can be used as a guide to pull the remaining prints of the edition. > top

Commemorative: 1.Prints made posthumously from the artist's original plates. 2.Limited edition items made to commemorate a specific date or event. > top

Edition Number: A fraction found on the bottom left hand corner of a print. The top number is the sequence in the edition; the bottom number is the total number of prints in the edition. The number appears as a fraction usually in the lower left of the print. For instance the edition number 25/50 means that it is print number 25 out of a total edition of 50. Contrary to what some galleries may profess, rarely does a lower number increase the potential quality or value of a print. > top

Hors Commerce: This French term literally translates as "before business." Originally an Hors Commerce print was used as the color key and printing guide which the printer would use to insure consistency of the print run. Hors Commerce pieces are designated by the letters H.C. written on the print itself. These pieces are usually proofs that are typically not for sale. > top

Monoprint: A one-of-a-kind print made by painting on a sheet of glass or metal, and transferring the still-wet painting to a sheet of paper. Enough of the original paint remains on the plate after the transfer so that the same or different colors can be reapplied to make subsequent prints, but no two prints will be exactly alike. > top

Paper: Archival prints are done on rag paper. It is PH-balanced, and it bends rather than breaking or cracking. Arches is the most commonly used brand-name of rag paper. If a print is done on Arches paper, you will probably be able to see the Arches watermark by holding the print up to the light. > top

Plate Signed: Prints in which the artist's signature is put onto the plate itself, and then transferred to the print through the same process as the rest of the design. > top

Pochoir: A stencil and stencil-brush process used to make multicolor prints, for tinting black and white prints, and for coloring reproductions and book illustrations, especially fine and limited editions. Pochoir, which is the French word for stencil, is sometimes called hand coloring or hand illustration. > top

Remarque: A sketch made by the artist, typically on the margin of a print, sometimes unrelated to the main composition. > top