Art 225B - Exam Studies [Vocab & Questions]

Romanticism

A Western cultural phenomenon, beginning around 1750 and ending about 1850, that gave precedence to feeling and imagination over reason and thought. More narrowly, the art movement that flourished from about 1800 to 1840.

incubus

A demon believed in medieval times to prey, often sexually, on sleeping women.

zoopraxiscope

A device invented by Eadweard Muybridge in the 19th century to project sequences of still photographic images; a predecessor of the modern motion-picture projector.

Impressionism

A late-19th-century art movement that sought to capture a fleeting moment, thereby conveying the elusiveness and impermanence of images and conditions.

Symbolism

A late-19th-century movement based on the idea that the artist was not an imitator of nature but a creator who transformed the facts of nature into a symbol of the inner experience of that fact.

Poussinistes

A member of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture during the early 18th century who followed Nicolas Poussin in insisting that form was the most important element of painting.

Modernism

A movement in Western art that developed in the second half of the 19th century and sought to capture the images and sensibilities of the age. This style of art goes beyond simply dealing with the present and involves the artist's critical examination of the premises of art itself.

Realism

A movement that emerged in mid-19th-century France. Realist artists represented the subject matter of everyday life (especially subjects that previously had been considered inappropriate for depiction) in a relatively naturalistic mode.

daguerreotype

A photograph made by an early method on a plate of chemically treated metal; developed by Louis J. M. Daguerre.

lithography

A printmaking technique in which the artist uses an oil-based crayon to draw directly on a stone plate and then wipes water onto the stone. When ink is rolled onto the plate, it adheres only to the drawing.

Neoclassicism

A style of art and architecture that emerged in the late 18th century as part of a general revival of interest in classical cultures. Neoclassical artists adopted themes and styles from ancient Greece and Rome.

Rococo

A style, primarily of interior design, that appeared in France around 1700. Rococo interiors featured lavish decoration, including small sculptures, ornamental mirrors, easel paintings, tapestries, reliefs, wall paintings, and elegant furniture. The term is derived from the French word rocaille (pebble)

divisionism/pointillism

A system of painting devised by the 19th-century French painter Georges Seurat. The artist separates color into its component parts and then applies the component colors to the canvas in tiny dots (points). The image becomes comprehensible only from a distance, when the viewer's eyes optically

odalisque

A woman in a Turkish harem.

Beaux-Arts

An architectural style of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in France. Based on ideas taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, it incorporated classical principles, such as symmetry in design, and included extensive exterior ornamentation.

wet-plate photography

An early photographic process in which the photographic plate is exposed, developed, and fixed while wet.

Fauvism

An early-20th-century art movement led by Henri Matisse. For the Fauves, color became the formal element most responsible for pictorial coherence and the primary conveyor of meaning.

local color

An object's true color in white light.

Impressionist

By moving away from illusionism in this painting, and using colors to flatten form and to draw attention to the canvas surface, Manet played an important role in the development of what movement?

prefabricated architecture

Construction using structural elements manufactured in advance and transported to the building site ready for assembly.

avant-garde

French, "advance guard" (in a platoon). Late- 19th- and 20th-century artists who emphasized innovation and challenged established convention in their work. Also used as an adjective.

fin-de-siècle

French, "end of the century." A period in Western cultural history from the end of the 19th century until just before World War I, when decadence and indulgence masked anxiety about an uncertain future.

femme fatale

French, "fatal woman." A destructive temptress of men.

Art Nouveau

French, "new art." A late-19th- and early-20th-century art movement whose proponents tried to synthesize all the arts in an effort to create art based on natural forms that could be mass produced by technologies of the industrial age. The movement had other names in other countries: Jugendstil in Austria and Germany

en plein air

French, "outdoor painting"

Fauves

French, "wild beasts."

calotype

From the Greek kalos, "beautiful." A photographic process in which a positive image is made by shining light through a negative image onto a sheet of sensitized paper.

Der Blaue Reiter

German, "the blue rider." An early-20th-century German Expressionist art movement founded by Vassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. The artists selected the whimsical name because of their mutual interest in the color blue and horses.

Die Brücke

German, "the bridge." An early-20th-century German Expressionist art movement under the leadership of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The group thought of itself as the bridge between the old age and the new.

George Washington

Greenough sculpted which contemporary statesman in the Neoclassical style by portraying him seminude and enthroned, as Phidias depicted Zeus in the famous lost statue?

Nabis

Hebrew, "prophet." A group of Symbolist painters influenced by Paul Gauguin.

The redesigning of Paris under Napoleon III

In Caillebotte's Paris: A Rainy Day, the setting is a junction of spacious boulevards, a result of what major urban initiative?

Expression

In his essay titled "Notes of a Painter," what did Henri Matisse describe as his primary goal as a painter in works such as Harmony in Red?

Neoclassical

Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii can be said to be a paragon of which style?

Velázquez

John Singer Sargent's family portrait Daughters of Edward Darley Boit shows the influence of his careful study of which painter?

camera lucida

Latin, "lighted room." A device in which a small lens projects the image of an object downward onto a sheet of paper.

wainscoting

Paneling on the lower part of interior walls.

Enlightenment

The 18th-century Western philosophy based on empirical evidence. The Enlightenment was a new way of thinking critically about the world and about humankind, independently of religion, myth, or tradition.

Japonisme

The French fascination with all things Japanese. This movement emerged in the second half of the 19th century.

Color

The Romantic sensibility evident in the energy of Joseph Mallord William Turner's landscapes and seascapes relies on the emotive power of which element of his painting style?

gleaning

The collection by peasants of wheat scraps left in the field after a harvest.

Rococo Style

The conclusion of the debate in the French Royal Academy between advocates of color and advocates of form resulted in the ascendance of which style?

Orientalism

The fascination on the part of Westerners with Oriental cultures, especially characteristic of the Romanticism movement in 19th-century European painting.

successive contrasts

The phenomenon of colored afterimages. When a person looks intently at a color (green, for example) and then shifts to a white area, the fatigued eye momentarily perceives the complementary color (red).

simultaneous contrasts

The phenomenon of juxtaposed colors affecting the eye's reception of each, as when a painter places dark green next to light green, making the former appear even darker and the latter even lighter.

Neo-Baroque

The revival of Baroque style in later, especially 19th-century, architecture.

Neo-Gothic

The revival of the Gothic style in architecture, especially in the 19th century

empiricism

The search for knowledge based on observation and direct experience.

optical mixture

The visual effect of juxtaposed complementary colors.

Expressionism

Twentieth-century art that is the result of the artist's unique inner or personal vision and that often has an emotional dimension. It contrasts with art focused on visually describing the empirical world.

Industrial Revolution

What event transformed the economies of continental Europe and North America in the 18th century?

persistence of vision

What illusionistic effect did Eadweard Muybridge's zoopraxiscope rely on to show his sequential images?

Thomas Eakins

Which American Realist artist who studied both painting and medicine believed that careful observation was a prerequisite for his art?

Mary Cassatt

Which American artist principally painted women and children with a combination of objectivity and genuine sentiment?

Franz Marc

Which German Expressionist artist frequently employed animals in artwork, believing them to be more pure than humans, and thus more appropriate vehicles for expressing inner truth?

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Which Neoclassical artist of the first part of the 19th century looked firmly to the arts of Greek antiquity for his subjects and compositions?

Gustave Courbet

Which Realist painter relies on a naturalistic style that does not romanticize or idealize the everyday lived realities that his contemporary subjects endured?

Caspar David Friedrich

Which Romantic artist was a leader in transcendental landscapes, a new painting genre of the 19th century?

Vincent Van Gogh

Which artist explored the capabilities of colors and distorted forms to express his emotions as he confronted nature?

Berthe Morisot

Which artist painted Summer's Day, a depiction of two well-dressed women in a boat, using the open brushwork and the plein air lighting characteristic of Impressionism?

Edgar Degas

Which artist studied the photography of others, but also used the camera consistently to make preliminary studies for his own work?

Paul Cezanne

Which artist, known for his still lifes, bathers, and landscape paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire, declared he wanted to "make of Impressionism something solid and enduring"?

Paris

Which city was the artistic center of the Rococo style?

Timothy O'Sullivan

Which early photographer used the new medium to produced documentary images of the immediate aftermath of Civil War battles?

Arcaded backdrop frames the composition

Which element in Napoleon Visiting the Plague-Stricken in Jaffa has the artist, Antoine-Jean Gros, adapted from Oath of the Horatii by his teacher, Jacques-Louis David?

Auguste Rodin

Which leading French sculptor of the later 19th century was known for a Realist sensibility and an interest in the effect of light on sculpted surfaces?

Eiffel Tower

Which structure was built for the great exhibition in Paris in 1889 and was originally seen as a symbol of modern Paris?

Napoleon Bonaparte

Who was named first consul of the French Republic after leading the French army on several campaigns?

Théodore Géricault

Who was the artist of the immense Romantic painting Raft of the Medusa, which took eight months to create?