Art Test #3

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 the fact

Poussiniste

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 elemtent of painting

Rubeniste

A member of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture during the early 18th century who followed Peter Paul Rubens in insisting that color 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. Modernist 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. 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

aquatint

A print resembling a watercolor, produced from a copper plate etched with nitric acid

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. Artists adopted style 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 Rococo derived from the French word rocaille (pebble) and referred to the small stones and shells used to decorate grotto interiors

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 blend the pigment dots. Sometimes referred to as divisionism

Grand Manner portraiture

A type of 18th-century portrait painting designed to communicate a person's grace and class through certain standardized conventions, such as the large scale of the figure relative to the canvas, the controlled pose, the landscape setting, and the low horizon line

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

Manifest Destiny

A widely held belief in the United States that its settlers were destined to expand across North America. The mission of the United States to redeem and remake the west in the image of agrarian America

odalisque

A woman in Turkish harem

plein air

An approach to painting very popular among the Impressionists, in which an artist sketches outdoors to achieve a quick impression of light, air, and color

Beaux Arts

An architectural style of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in France. 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

local color

An object's true color in white light

fete galante

French, "amorous festival". A type of Rococo painting depicting the outdoor amusements of French upper-class society

Fin-de-Siecle

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

femme savante

French, "learned woman". The term used to describe the cultured hostesses of Rococo salons

Art Nouveau

French, "new art." A late 19th century 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, Modernismo in Spain, and Stile Floreale in Italy

ancien regime

French, "old order". The term used to describe the political, social, and religious order in France before the Revolution at the end of the 18th century

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Refused to be limited to the contemporary scenes that strict Realists portrayed. Chose to represent fictional, historical, and fanciful subjects with a significant degree of convincing illusion. Wished to create fresh and sincere art, free from what its members considered the tired and artificial manner propogated in the academics by the successors of ...

Grand Tour

The 17th- and 18th-century custom of a traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-classyoung European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a chaperon, such as a family member) when they had come of age (about 21 years old)

The 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

sublime

The quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation

Post-Impressionism

The term used to describe the stylistically heterogeneous work of the group of late-19th-century painters in France, including van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, and Cezanne, who more systematically examined the properties and expressive qualities of line, pattern, form, and color than the Impressionists did

optical mixture

The visual effect of juxtaposed complementary colors