Abstract art: Often describes paintings and sculptures which do not have recognisable or easily recognisable subject-matter, and which do not attempt to 'describe' nature, To a lot of people, the phrase is synonymous with 'modem art' - although 'modem art' has in fact had just as much to do with figurative art (see figurative). The word 'abstract' is a clumsy way of saying that the paintings and sculptures stand as 'objects in their own right'. Often contrasted with realism or naturalism. In one sense, all art is abstract, in that it 'abstracts' visual material from the world as perceived by the artist.

Abstract Expressionism: First used to describe some of Kandinsky' s early abstract paintings (in Germany). the phrase is more usually associated with painters working in New York in the 1940s and 1950s such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Its distinguishing features are (a) self expression on a grand scale and (b) using the language of abstraction (i.e. expressionism through the medium of abstract art). Critic Harold Rosenberg. a champion of the style. described the artist's canvas as 'an arena to act in'.

Academic art: Originally a descriptive term. for art obeying academic 'rules’ or art originating from within the academy. it became in the late 19thC a term of criticism. and in the early 20thC a term of abuse (often contrasted with 'avant-garde' art);

today the critical meaning has persisted. although some Post-Modems artists have taken another look at 'academic' work. and some critics have attempted (with patchy results) to re-evaluate it.

Academy: the name originated with the garden near Athens where Greek philosopher Plato conducted his seminars, but took on a recognisably modem meaning when, in late 15thC Italy (especially Florence and Milan). the first art academies were founded - partly to help raise the status of visual artists. partly to provide a forum for discussion about the principles of art. In the 16thC they became establishments for the teaching of art (mainly drawing 'from the classical antique') and gradually took over from the guilds. In France in the mid-17thC the Academy of Painting and Sculpture became a powerful school for 'official' art. Academies reached England with the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768. In the 19thC, their position as arbiters of taste was questioned, as they stood against new art in most of its forms and became thoroughly commercialised. Ibis ultimately meant that the emphasis on figure drawing. and on a structured curriculum, came to be questioned too.

Acrylic paint: Actually acrylic vinyl polymer emulsion paint. this is a versatile synthetic paint which can be used (a) for thick application similar to oil painting and (b) for transparent watercolour style washes. It is quick drying, sticks fast to the surface. and seems to last. Associated in the 1960s with 'industrial' finishes.

Action painting: See Abstract Expressionism, of which this was a branch. Involves dripping, dribbling or throwing paint onto the surface of the canvas, as a way of mediating the workings of the unconscious mind in an unplanned way - like automatic writing the artist becomes an actor and the picture surface his (usually his) stage. Jackson Pollock is the best-known example.

Aerial perspective: A term said to have been coined by Leonardo da Vinci. to describe the attempt to make a two-dimensional surface appear three-dimensional, by using the way the atmosphere and the light affect how we see things in the distance. In painting terms, this involves tone and colour rather than line.

Aesthete: Person. especially in the late 19thC, who is reckoned to have a special understanding of taste for and sensitivity to things 'beautiful'.

Aesthetics: Originally ( I 8thC/19thC) the science of taste. today the philosophy of'the beautiful' its understanding and appreciation.

AlIa prima: From the Italian for 'at first' this denotes painting which does not rely on underpainting. but is completed in one session with colours that are applied directly.

Allegory: Where painting is concerned. this applies to subject-matter whose intellectual or moral implications go well beyond what is depicted; often associated with personifications (people representing ideas) or classical references (which the artist could assume his/her viewers would understand): both these types became staples of European art from the Renaissance onwards.

Analytical Cubism: .The second phase in the development of European Cubism, from c. 1909 to c. 1913, when artists (usually disciples of Paul Cezanne) re-interpreted natural forms in terms of multi-perspective geometric shapes. It was

preceded by a directly Cezannist phase, and succeeded by a third, from c. 1912-15. known as Synthetic Cubism.

Anamorphosis: Technique of painting or drawing an object that seems distorted when it is viewed head-on, but becomes recognisable when viewed from one particular angle or with some kind of correcting device..Ihe skull in Holbein's The Ambassadors (see section on Perspective) is the most famous example.

Anatomy. Physical structure of the human body, especially bones and muscles. Anatomical drawing was central to the training of some academies. as a way of teaching the depiction of balance and movement; as such, it continued on the art school curriculum until the middle of the 20thC.

Anti-art: Originally. a description of the Dadaists' mockery of establishment attitudes to and practice of art in the early 1920s (the Mona Lisa with a moustache, for example), this has been extended to cover all work which aggressively rejects the traditions of high art.

Antiquity. Usually applied to the era of the Greek and Roman civilisations, which ended with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the 5thC AD. The antique' applies to the objects (especially sculptures) of antiquity.

Applied art: As distinguished from the 'fine arts' this refers to the application of decoration to usef~1 objects (such as ceramic work. furniture, textile fabrics, jewellery and metalwork). In the late 19thC.

the British Arts and Crafts Movement re-defined the phrase to cover 'art workers' or artists working among the 'useful arts' (as William Morris called them): today. applied art (in the craft area) is also distinguished from design (in the mass-manufacturing areas).

Aquarelle: Painting which uses watercolour washes.

Armature: Metal framework - usually wire - used by sculptors as a skeleton on which to model clay or wax.

Armory Show: Influential exhibition of modern art held in a regimental armory in New York 1913.

which is credited with having introduced European Modernism to the United States.

Artefact: Today, any work of art or craft, but originally archaeological evidence of things made by people from earlier civilisations.

Art for art's sake: From the French '1' art pour l' art'. Fashionable in the I 880s and I 890s as a catchphrase meaning that art is above social considerations and is there purely for the benefit of art itself Artist's books: Work by artists in book form - as distinct from books about artists.

Artist's donkey: Low stand or chair, with drawing board at one end.

Artist's proof: Print made for the artist's own purposes. signed , AlP' and not numbered. Usually among the first 'pulls' off the plates, before a numbered limited edition is printed.

Ascribed or attributed to: When the artist who produced a work is not known for sure and scholars have suggested from evidence that it is the work of a specific person.

Assemblage: Work of art. from the early 20thC onwards. which has been assembled or bought together from ready-made or natural objects or materials - as distinct from material entirely created by the artist: often described as 'the transformation of non-art objects' Atelier: French for 'workshop' or 'studio', now in common use meaning arlist's studio.

Atmospheric perspective: See aerial perspective.

Avant-garde: French for 'vanguard' and originally - it is said - used for the military advanced guard.

At the dawn of Modernisrn in arl, came to mean a progressive experirnental minority responsible for innovative work far ahead of what was generally accepted.

Barbizon school: French school of naturalistic landscape painters centred on the village of Barbizon in the Forest of Fontainebleu near Paris, from the 1830s to the 1860s. Precursors of Impressionism, and pioneers of open-air painting.

Best-known artists: Jean Millet and Theodore Rousseau.

Baroque: Dominant style in western European art and architecture from late 16thC to mid- 18thC. Started in Rome, with the reassertion of Roman Catholicism in the Counter-Reformation. and then spread to northern Italy and other parts of Europe.

Its hallmarks were spectacle. theatricality, movement, ornamentation and the uniting of the arts in a common purpose - to elicit an emotional, sensual response from the viewer and a spiritual involvement as well. Highpoint: the sculptural work of Gianlorenzo Bernini. in Rome. in the period of High Baroque (c. 1630-80). French Baroque was more concerned with glorifying the state of King Louis XIV than the church. The finest non-Italian Baroque artist was probably Peter Paul Rubens, working from his base in Antwerp. Late Baroque is almost indistinguishable from Rococo.

Bas relief: Sculpture that projects only slightly from its background; low relief.

Bauhaus: The most famous 20thC school of art.

craft and design - dedicated to fusing all the arts founded in Weimar, Germany. in 1919, then moved to Dessau in 1925 and Berlin in 1932. Often seen as mainly significant for its contribution to design, its most lasting influence lay in the bringing together of artists (such as Kandinsky and Klee), architects and craftspeople. Closed by the Nazis in 1933 (by which time it had acquired a politically left-wing reputation).

Berliner Sezession: From the German 'Berlin Secession' : group of painters, who left the establishment Association of Berlin Artists in 1889 after a controversial exhibition of paintings by Eduard Munch.

Bestiary: Natural history book in the Middle Ages.

with references to real and fantastical beasts. and theological text: the images later influenced artists and architects.

Binder: Ingredient - oil for oil paint, gum arabic for watercolours - mixed with pigment to make the paint stick to a surface.

Bistre: Brown pigment made from soot. used as a brown wash for drawings and watercolours especially in the 16thC and 17thC.

Blaue Reiter, Der: German for 'the Blue Horseman'. describes a group of artists who were brought together by Kandinsky and Franz Marc. in Munich in 191 1, with the aim of exhibiting. writing and generally establishing Modernism (and its spiritual implications) in Germany. Died with the First World War.

Block printing: Priming by use of carved blocks of wood, metal or lino.

Book of hours: Devotional book of prayers, dating from the late Middle Ages, for use at holy 'hours' and often illuminated or decorated with embellished initials. patterns or illustrations.

Bottega: Italian for ,:shop' or 'workplace'. adapted to mean the workshop or studio of a master artist and in particular that portion of it used by pupils and assistants.

Broken colour: Technique of applying colour in small brushstrokes, that will blend when viewed at a distance.

Bronze: Easily worked metal, used for sculpture by the Ancient Greeks and Romans, which then went out of' favour in

the Middle Ages and was revived in Italy in the 15thC; it acquires a greenish patina over time - today achieved by chemical means.

Modem bronzes are usually made by the 'lost wax' (or cire perdue) process - which involves the making of a wax shell of the actual size of the hollow bronze sculpture, which is then melted away. the word is also used as a synonym for

'work cast in bronze'.

Brush drawing: Drawing in ink with a fine brush.

Brushstroke or brushwork: In oil painting. the marks made with brushes are like a signature, and produce an individual texture as well as an aesthetic value. Has been called 'one of the painter's most powerful tools in the creation of his own world'

Bust: A sculpture, the subject-matter of which 's a portrait of the head and shoulders of a figure.

Byzantine art: the art of Byzantium (the name of the Eastern Roman Empire with its capital city at Constantinople from 324 AD) which continued with interruptions. Notably the 'iconoclastic' age in the 8thC and 9thC - up to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Stylisation and the sense of 'monument' are its defining features; characters and stories from Christianity or from Imperial life. its subjects usually in mosaics and frescoes.

Cabinet painting: Small easel painting. rarely more than 1 metre wide and usually intended for the wall of a domestic home (especially in Holland in the 17thC).

Calligraphy: the art of fine handwriting or letter forming, which in China and Japan is as highly regarded as painting.

Camera obscura: Italian for 'dark room' - see section on Light; a box-like device that uses a lens

to reflect an object onto a flat surface, and was thus of great use to draughtspeople seeking accuracy, and topographical artists. A sophisticated 19thC development of it. using an adjustable prism to alter size. was called a camera lucida.

Canvas: Coarse cloth (of heavy fabric such as linen, hemp or cotton) on which an artist, especially an oil painter, makes a painting. Also used to describe the resulting work. Returned to favour in the 15thC. The fabric must first be stretched. then primed before use (today, artists can buy 'pre-stretched'). the weave. texture and flexibility can vary a great deal.

Cartoon: See section on Composition; Italian for 'big piece of paper'. A full size. exact, final stage drawing for a painting, ready for transferring to canvas or wall or tapestry - by squaring up or chalking on the back. or pouncing. Today, the work has come to mean a comic drawing. perhaps with a caption.

Catalogue: List of works of art, often accompanying an exhibition, which provides data on the works themselves, the artists. the materials and the owners. 'the catalogue raisonne is a complete. detailed, scholarly catalogue of an artist' s work.

Cave art: See The Artist at Work section.

Painting on the walls of caves. dating from the Stone Age. the best-known are in Altamira, Spain (discovered I 879). and Lascaux, southern France (discovered 1940). It has been speculated that they served a magical or ritual function.

Chalk: Soft limestone, sometimes used as a drawing material or mixed to make pastels and other crayons.

Charcoal: Soft, dark carbon substance (produced by charring willow or vine wood) used for drawing, especially preliminary drawings where easy erasing is useful.

Chiaroscuro: See section on Light; Italian word for 'light-shade':. the use and balance of light and shade in a paintmg, and in particular the use of strong contrasts.

Chromo-lumrismina: Name given by Georges Seurat to his depiction of light through small dots of colour, since known as Pointillism.

Classic: Originally meant that artworks were based on Greek and Roman examples; today seems to refer to anything worthy of note or study. or thought to be excellent.

Classicism: Art based on the analysis and understanding of classical examples.

Claude Glass: See section on Light; tinted. convex glass used by followers of Claude Lorraine to reflect the landscape in miniature and reduce colours to tones.

Collage: French for 'sticking' or , glueing'. used to describe an artwork made up, in whole or m part, of materials (such as paper or cloth) stuck onto paper or canvas. Pablo Picasso is said to have produced the first significant collage with Still Life with Chair (1912).

Colour. See section on Colour. has three basic attributes - hue, intensity and value. Since the Impressionists. and especially Claude Monet.

turned colour into subject-matter (rather than language), it has become more central to the history of art.

Colour circle or colour wheel: See section on Colour. circular guide to colour. first developed in the early 19thC. in which the individual colours of the spectrum are arranged in segments or wedges according to hue and saturation, with the complementary colours opposite each other.

Colour field painting: the application of colour across the entire canvas. which when viewed close-to, gives the impression of being engulfed in a 'field' of colour. Some New York artists from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s were its most famous practitioners.

Colourist: Artist who uses colour effectively, as a central feature of his/her work.

Complementary colour: See section on Colour.

Composition: See section on Composition.

Computer art: Art made by programming a computer to produce images or artworks, or by using the computer as a short-cut for visual calculation.

Conceptual art: Art where the idea. rather than the art object, is the most significant feature especially. in the 1960s. art which was critical of the art establishment (notably in America and Britain); the art becomes as much a documentary record of the thinking of the artist as an 'artwork' in the traditional sense. Marcel Duchamp, with his 'ready-mades' is claimed as the founding father.

Conservation: the preservation of works of art from the past and the ensuring that their physical or chemical state does not decline any more than it has to. Not the same as restoration. which involves intervening in such processes more than the conservator. Much conservation is preventive storage. environment. light levels, etc.

Constructivism: Mainly based in the Soviet Union, this post-revolutionary art movement constructed sculpture out of metal, glass. plastic. which stressed space rather than solidity, as well as monuments.

stage designs. and relief constructions based on the same principles. The key artists were Vladimir Tatlin. Antoine Pevsner and his brother Naum Gabo. In 1921, the movement collapsed in the

Soviet Union for politicaI reasons. but some practitioners moved to western Europe. The influence of the Constructivists on abstract scuIpture. on the use of industriaI methods (such as weIding) in making scuIpture. and on architecture has been profound. In fact. the word is used today erroneously - to mean aImost any kind of abstract scuIpture based on geometry and construction rather than the figure.

Content: The meaning of any artwork. as distinct from its subject-matter (which is usuaIly a part of the meaning). and as supported by, or integrated with, form. Often confused with subject-matter. and contrasted with fono - both erroneousIy.

Copy: DeIiberate remaking of a work O~ art. as distinct from a fake (which pretends to be the original) or a pastiche (which is in the styIe of the originaI). Before the age of mechanical reproduction. artists (or their assistants) would often produce copies for different cIients or colIectors.

The academies made copying old masters a centraI part of the art curricuIum.

Crayon: Today, refers to any wax-based drawing tool in stick form; but in the past the coIoured drawing tooI was made of dry pigment and chaIk.

Cross-hatching: Using parallel lines. close together, crossed at an angIe with other paraIIel lines to create shading effects on drawings or prints.

Hatching means simply shading by use of parallel lines.

Cubism: See section on Form; originaIly a reaction against Impressionism - with its emphasis on surface appearance - Cubism began with the experiments of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso from 1906 to 1909 (first exhibition with Cubist work. Paris. 1907). which emphasised not the surface appearance but the structure. position and

idea of the subject. In effect. this came to mean presenting several views of the same subject within the same pictorial space.lne term 'Cubism' was first used by an art critic to describe Braque' s Houses at L'Estaque (1908) but Picasso's Les Demoiselles d' Avignon ( 1907) had already used the multi-view approach for one of its figures (as well as displaying an enthusiasm for non-European, in this case African, art). Often confused with 'abstract art' in general, or taken as a synonym for 'modern art' Cubism was centrally concerned with subject-matter, and how to present it in intellectually as well as visually challenging ways.

See also under AnaIyticaI and Synthetic Cubism.

Dada: French for 'hobby horse'. Slavic for 'yes yes'. said to have been chosen from a dictionary at random with a penknife to describe a movement of refugee artists and writers who found themselves in Zurich in 1916 at the height of the carnage of the First World War. Their art was intended to be in praise of illogicality, absurdity. playfulness and chance happenings, and their mode of expression 'anti-art'. At an exhibition held in Cologne in 1920.

next to a lavatory, the viewers were invited to smash up the exhibits with axes - which they did.

Dada has been called 'a nihilistic precursor of Surrealism'. Marcel Duchamp, the poet Tristan Tzara and Jean (Hans) Arp were among the leaders.

More of a lifestyle than a style.

Decorative art: See applied art, only with more emphasis on the decorative and the ornamental. .

Depth: See sections on Perspective and Colour.

where the former is concerned. the extent of recession in a painting; where the latter, the extent

of a coIour's saturation.

Design and disegno: See section on Composition;

originally from the ItaIian for'drawing' which also had the connotation of'pIanning'.'inte"ding' and 'composing'. today. refers ~ with a capitaI 'D' - to the conception, planning and production of industriaI products.

De Stijl: Dutch for 'The StyIe' the name given to the work of architects. designers and artists Iinked with the magazine of the same titIe. edited by Theo van Doesburg and founded in Holland in 1917.

Committed to abstraction and the 'Ianguage of modernism' the movement's best-known practitioners were artist Piet Mondrian and designer Gerrit RietveId.

Diptych: Painting. usualIy an aItarpiece. made up of two hinged paneIs.]

Disegno: See under design.

Divisionism: Another name given by Georges Seurat to what is now caIIed Pointillism, based on the viewer's optical mixing of dots of coIour.

Draughtsman: SpeciaIist in the art or craft of drawing; today. usuaIIy describes those who make technical or mechanicaI drawings. .

Drawing: Representation on a flat surface with pen.

penciI. chaIk. crayon or paim. usuaIIy with an emphasis on Iine. Sometimes a preliminary stage towards a finished painting. sometimes a finished work in itself Today. the teno has been extended to 'drawing with light' and other three-dimensional methods.

Earth art: Artworks. especiaIIy of the 1960s which manipulated the naturaI environment andwhich were then photographed for exhibition sometimes with an ecological message. Robert Smithson's 1.500-foot-long rock jetty in Great Salt Lake was the best-known example.

Earth coIours: Pigments existing within the earth.

containing metal oxides. including ochres and umbers.

Easel: Upright stand used by artists to hold the canvas or panel; such easels range from permanent, stable studio rnodels to portable and desk models. Easel painting: Strictly, any painting made on an easel; usually applied to cabinet paintings.

Eclecticism:lne conscious borrowing of visual ideas from earlier sources, to recombine them in a harmonious whole; used to be a critical term. more recently a Post-Modernist compliment.

EcoIe des Beaux Arts: The French Academy (see under academy) established in 1648. closed during the French Revolution and re-formed in 1816 under the new name Academie des Beaux Arts. 'Beaux

arts' has sometimes been used as a synonym for , academic' or for traditional teaching methods.

Edition: Where printmaking is concerned, impressions made from a single set of printing plates. and issued as a set. Where books are concerned. all the issues of a book made from a single typesetting.

Egg tempera: Ternpera (paint made out of powdered pigments) which is bound together with egg yolk and/or white. From the 12thC to the rise 6f oil painting. the most significant of all painters' media.

Emulsion: A painter's medium or vehicle. formed by combining oil and water (which do not mix), plus an emulsifying agent such as egg yolk or gum or wax.

Encaustic painting: Painting where pigments are mixed with wax and applied to a surface (such as a wall) to which they are firmly stuck by heating with irons; they can then be polished. Greek murals and Egyptian mummy portraits were produced in this way.

Engraving: ole process. used by printmakers, ~ of cutting lines into a wood block or metal plate In order to make many copies or impressions of a printed work. Also the results of those processes.

Originally. the term was only applied to intaglio (Italian for 'cut in'~ on copper plate) printing, from the mid- 15thC onwards. But it has subsequently been extended to relief (including wood or lino engraving) and intaglio processes such as mezzotint (when the plate is scratched all over with small dots), aquatint (on a porous ground) and other printing processes. Engravings can be original works of art (where the artist is the engraver) or a means of reproduction (of a pre-existing work of art).

Environmental art: Art on a grand scale. involving the creation of a man-made environment (architecture, sculpture, light. sound or landscape) through which the viewer can walk. Best-known practitioner. the 'environmental sculptor' Christo.See the related earth art.

Etching: Method of printmaking where the metal (usually copper) plate is covered with resin (resistant to acid), a line is drawn on the plate with a needle exposing the copper. and the exposed parts are the ones which print: when the plate is immersed in acid. the acid eats into the exposed parts; the key factor is the control exerted by the artist over the immersion process. ole technique reached a high point in the 17thC, especially with Rembrandt. ole word is used to describe both the process and the result, like engraving.

Expressionism : Although the expression of emotion - as distinct from, or in preference to.

outward appearance - has been a feature of painting at least since the days of Matthias Grflnewald or El Greco, as an 'ism' the word is usually applied to art movements of the early part of the 20thC in northern Europe. Emotion is expressed through distortion and exaggeration of colour and shape and surface texture - aiming for maximum emotional impact. Fonnative influences were the late work of Vincent van Gogh, the paintings of Andre Derain (with their strong colours) and the hysterical, almost pathological work of Edvard Munch. The phrase 'self-expression' is often seen to be synonymous with 'modern art' - although much, probably more, of Modernism has been as concerned with reason and intellect. Sub-groups of Gennan Expressionism included Der Blaue Reiter. and the all-embracing tenn is usually prefixed today with an adjective:

'Gennan' , , Abstract' 'Neo-' Eye-level, or eye-lil;e: See ~ection on Perspective;

the perceived line, level with the artist's eye. which tells the viewer where the artist's perspective came from.

Facade: The front or face of a building.

Facsimile: An identical copy.

Fake: Copy of a work of art made with the intention of pretending to be the original. or by the original artist.

Fauves or Fauvism: French for 'wild beasts'. the

tenn was invented by a critic visiting the Pans Salon d' Automne in 1905. who - spotting a Renaissance-style bust among all the modern works commented: 'Aha! Donatello among the wild beasts.' Never really an organised grouping of artists. and only lasting about three years, the Fauves - following the lead of Henri Matisse and Andre Derain - specialised in pure strong colours.

direct application of paint and a rejection of the academic principles of proportion and composition.

But their highly individual work was linked more by friendship than style. In retrospect, Fauvism has been interpreted as a key stage in the development of 20thC painting (stressing the pictorial surface rather than the illusion of depth).

Feminist art: See section The Artist at Work;

following the exclusion of women from mainstream art history (i.e. from the guilds and academies), there have been since the 1960s several attempts to reclaim the traditions of women' s art from the centuries-long neglect of historians. At the same time. an art practice has emerged which is centrally concerned with the historical condition of women and with what it means to be 'woman made' Books with titles such as Old Mistresses and the The Subversive Stitch have significantly contributed to the debate. which has since become linked with Post-Modemism in general. Best-known practitioners include Judy Chicago (USA). Mary Kelly (GB) Cindy Sherman (USA - photographic work) and Barbara Kruger (USA - using billboard advertising).

Figurative: Often used of artworks that represent nature in some way, as distinct from abstracting from it. Also. in the more limited (and useful) sense of artworks based on the human figure.

Fine art: Has gained currency as a term since the early 19thC, to distinguish 'purely aesthetic' or 'non-useful' art practices from the crafts, or applied arts. decorative arts or design. ole distinction goes

back to the Renaissance obsession with establishing the status and nobility of the artist. Today, its most cryptic definition comes in. of all places, American customs and excise documents; the work of art should be completely 'useless' to count as fine art.

Fixative: Varnish applied to (today sprayed on) artworks to prevent smudging; usually to charcoal or pastel drawings.

Folk art: Art made by untrained, often peasant.practitioners - whose lively, colourful and 'naive' style has sometimes been taken up by artists from within the establishment.

Foreshortening: See section on Perspective;

creating the illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface, by applying the rules of perspective to a single object or figure or part of a figure, particularly at close quarters.

Form: See section on Form; the conceiving and bringing together of an artist's conception of his or her subject; the artist's way of seeing and the artist's ways of presenting that way of seeing.

Formalism: In the 1920s. a term of critical abuse for artists who 'withdrew' into abstraction and formal systems, away from the complexities of everday life. in contrast with the 'realists' The term has still not shed this connotation, althou~h the 'formal' approach to criticism was very fashionable in the 1940s and 1950s.

Found object: French is ohjet trouve For the Surrealists, an object found by chance, or stumbled on. could contain the aesthetic potential of a work of art: when exhibited. it became an ohjet trouve Frame: Solid border around a painting, intended visually to enhance as well as protect it. Today, the most effective frames are said to be thc ones which do not 'distract' from the painting - although this appears to he a fairly recent thought. In general, oil

paintings are not presented from behind glass within the frame. while watercolours and drawings are.

Fresco: Italian for 'fresh'. painting on a wall using pigments mixed with water, applied quickly and decisively to the plaster while it is still damp - so that colours are absorbed and remain fresh. Ihe process goes back to antiquity, but was revived in the 14thC in southern Europe (where the climate is more helpful to frescoes than in the north).

Frottage: French for 'rubbing'. technique of placing paper over objects or materials with raised surfaces and rubbing the paper with (usually) black lead. The Surrealists used frottage. to achieve effects of texture.

Futurism: See section on Motion; Italian art movement at its height from 1909 to the middle of the First World War. which attempted to produce artwork which was energetic enough to capture the 'machine age'. One of the most significant of the non-Parisian modern movements, Futurism sought to present machine and people in the act of motion (often through multiple images and use of diagonal lines) and to reject the art of the static old past. Ihe poet Filippo Marinetti published a Futurist Manifesto in 1909 and the sculptor Umberto Boccioni followed this with a Sculptor's Manifesto in 1912. Ihe carnage of the First World War helped to destroy the glamour of the machine. and the movement. but the die-hards developed an -unfortunate relationship with Mussolini and the Fascists in the 1920s.

Gallery painting: Large painting, which needs to be hung in the spacious surroundings of a gallery or museum.

Genre: French for 'type', 'variety'. small-scale painting which shows scenes from everyday domestic (often peasant) life rather than more exalted themes. for the benefit of middle-class patrons; also the word 'genre' means category or type of painting - for example landscape, marine or portrait - and has become an important word in the critic' s vocabulary .

Gesamtkunstwerk: Genoan for 'total work of art'.artwork which seeks to unify many different branches of the arts into a total experience. Where the Baroque era is concerned the word has been applied to the unifying of architecture and sculpture (e.g. Bernini). and in the Romantic era to the unifying of music and visual art.

Gesso: Absorbent ground (of chalk or gypsum) used as a base for tempera painting or some kinds of oil painting.

Gilding: ne application of gold leaf to the surface of a painting or other surface.

Glaze: The application of a thin transparent layer of oil paint over a solid dry layer in order to modify the tone and colour and give a luminious effect. Sometimes, varnish which has become discoloured over the ages is confused with a glaze. ne word also. and separately. applies to the process of covering a painting with glass in order to protect it.

Golden section: or cut or mean: See section on Proportion; geometrical proportion - going back to Plato and Euclid - often used by artists and architects consciously or unconsciously in the composition of their paintings and buildings. and interpreted as a 'universal law of hannony' in art and nature. ne proportion. basically, results from dividing a line so the shorter part is to the longer part as the longer is to the whole line (a ratio of

approx. 5:8). Why this particular ratio should be so attractive. so widespread and so apparently superior to others is a mystery.

Gothic art: Originally used to describe northern European architecture from the 12thC to the 16thC (a non-classical architecture). the term was extended. as a term of abuse. to apply to all the arts of that pre-Renaissance period. 'Gothic' was seen as the work of the Goths rather than 'the ancients' and therefore barbaric. An emphasis on verticals. such as pointed arches and rib-vaulting; carved decoration; elongation of form to express religious feeling; and brilliant colour - all were parts of the style. Above all. Gothic art was 'transcendental'.

dedicated to religious observance - and was thus downgraded by Renaissance humanists.

Gouache: Watercolour paint mixed with white pigments. making the paint opaque and giving it more weight and body (almost like oil paint in its effect. only duller).

Graffito or sgraffito: Italian for 'scratching'.

technique for decorating stuccoed walls, in which a layer of plaster is applied over a different coloured layer, and a design then scratched through the top layer. Popular in 16thC Italy. Ihe plural 'graffiti' applies to the drawing or scratching of words onto the surface of public walls - an illicit activity until the 1970s when. following the invention of the aerosol spray can, , graffiti' moved from public walls and New York subway trains into fashionable galleries. Ihen, when the art public rejected both the graffiti and the spray cans. it went back onto public walls again. Ihe best-known practitioner was New Yorker Keith Haring.

Grand manner: The depiction of the human figure in a noble. heroic or explicitly symbolic way, often within an historical scene. Popular in 17thC France.

Ground: ne basic primed surface of a painting.

suitable for receiving pigment; usually has to be white. smooth and absorbent. Also. the wax or varnish spread over the metal plate before an etching is made.

Guilds: See section on The Artist at Work:

associations of tradesmen, craftsmen, artists or other professionals, organised for the regulation and control of apprenticeship and good practice. In the pre-Renaissance period. all painters had to belong to one. and be apprenticed to a master (unless they served the ruling prince). In Giotto's time, in F]orence. painters belonged to the Medici e Speziali (the Doctors. and Apothecaries. Guild). Only a master could set up on his own. and to qualify as a master. the apprentice had to submit a masterpiece.

During the Renaissance, artists such as Leonardo and Michelangelo reacted against the guilds, while defining their new role as that of a gentleman of learning rather than a tradesman or craftsman.

Eventually, the guilds were superseded by academies.

Gum arabic: Binder used in watercolours made from the gum of the acacia tree (commonly associated with Arabia).

West, in the late 1950s, 1%0s and 1970s.

Halo or aureole: Circle of light surrounding a sacred figulle. as a symbol of holiness. When surrounding the head alone. known as a halo; when the whole body. known as a glory.

Happening: A live, one-off environmental artwork in various media which comes alive through the improvised participation of perfonoers and viewers.

Mappenings tended to happen in major cities of the history of the Greek Orthodox Church and remained

Hard-edge painting: American painting of the late 1950s and 1%0s, with surfaces treated as a single flat unit of colour with hard or sharp edges: as distinct from the lumpy, asymmetrical. random gestures of Abstract Expressionists. Best-known practitioners Ellsworth Kelly and Kenneth Noland.

Hatching: See cross-hatching.

Highlight: Bright areas of colour in a painting or drawing, intended to give the illusion of three-dimensionality. or to give particular emphasis to a portion of the work.

High Renaissance art: The high point. or climax.

of Renaissance painting and sculpture (c. 1490-1520) - especially evidenced by the work of Leonardo. Raphael and Michelangelo, which was said to have reached an 'ideal of harmony' by that time.

History painting: The depiction of scenes from history (especially ancient, mythological or Christian history) to embody intellectual concepts or moral lessons. Alberti. in the Renaissance.

thought istoria was the highest form of human art. a view which survived - in westem Europe - until the decline of the academic tradition and the rise of the art and design school. Only in the I 8thC. was contemporary or modem history included in this elevated category.

Horizon line: See section on Perspective; the horizontal line - sometimes ~here sky and earth appear to meet - which may be drawn across the pictorial space and corresponds to the artist's eye-level. The vanishing point is on the line.

employed by the day by a variety of masters.

Icon Greek for 'portrait' or 'image'. a sacred paneI painting of Christ or one of the saints, the conventions of which evolved early (5thC) in the unaltered until (in Russia) the 20thC. A broader meaning. covering the secular cult heroes and heroines of the modem age. has emerged since the 1960s.

Iconography: The study and analysis by art historians of images and symbols in works of art.

Illumination: Old French enluminer meant 'brighten', so the root of the word was the embellishment of written text with shiny gold and silver. But it later came to be applied to the decoration of all medieval manuscripts with embellished initials. pattems. borders or illustrations. ne art died out with the decline of the monasteries and the rise of printed books. It had survived since ancient Egyptian times.

Illusionism: Creating. by optical illusion. the appearance of reality in painting (the most famous example being the still-life trompe l'oeil); or making painted surfaces look as though they are covered in costly materials such as marble or onyx.

Illustration: Artwork accompanying a written text and interpreting it.

Impasto: Italian for 'mixture; thick colour'... paint applied thickly to a canvas or panel, somehmes with a palette knife. which leaves distinctive marks in the paint. ne word describes the thickness and.

latterly. the process as well.

Impressionism: See sections on Light and Colour;

the most significant 'ism' of 19thC European art.

which bridged the 'realist' tradition of the mid- 19thC and the modem movements of the

Journeyman: French10urnee for full day; a skilled craftsman of the guild who was no longer an apprentice but not yet a master, and who was

Junk sculpture: Sculpture using and reassembling the throwaway debris of industrial society, as a comment sometimes on waste, sometimes on traditional sculpture. The founding father was German artist Kurt Schwitters; best-known practitioner today. Eduardo Paolozzi (GB).

Kinetic art: See section on Motion; art, especially sculpture, which has mobile elements. moved by air or hand or mechanical power. Founding father said to be Marcel Duchamp. with his spinning bicycle wheel on a stool in 1913. Best-known practitioners are kinetic sculptors Alexander Calder (USA) and Jean Tinguely (Switzerland). The latter has specialised in self-destroying machines.

Kitsch: German verb verkitschen means to make cheap; this controversial word usually refers to low quality. mass-produced objects which aim for 'faked sensation and sentiment' (such as plastic Madonnas and 3D Last Supper postcards). Since the time of Pop art. however, definitive judgements on 'kitsch' have become more difficult to sustain, and since the 1970s irony and camp have entered the picture as well.

Land art: See earth art and environmental art.

Landscape: Emerged in the 17thC in Holland and France as a subject in its own right; before then.

landscape had usually provided a backdrop to the main action - although landscapes are to be found

in early Chinese and Roman art. In Holland (from where the word landskip came). the emphasis was on naturalism and the straightforward depiction of flat landscape scenes; in France. the emphasis was on 'idealised' or , golden age' landscapes (albeit closely observed ones as well) in the work of Claude Lorraine and Nicolas Poussin. The I 8thC British landscape tradition stressed tranquil scenes uncluttered by people. By the 19thC the related Dutch and British traditions had won the day. and culminated - indirectly - in the Impressionists. Today. landscape subjects remain by far the most popular subject for amateur and high-street artists.

and landscape reproductions outsell all others.

Lay-figure: Jointed wooden figure, originally to be draped with clothing in the portrait artist's studio (and life size). more recently superseded by smaller-scale manikins.

Laying-in: Drawing or painting in the overall design of a painting. before applying colour - the same, in effect, as underpainting.

Life drawing: Drawing the human figure, from a stationary human model (often nude).

Light sculpture: See section on Light; sculpture using sources of light as its basic material.

Best-known practitioner: Dan Flavin (USA).

Limited edition: In printmaking. an edition of prints each of which has a number on it. telling exactly when in the sequence it was pulled. When the edition has reached the required (limited) number of prints. the plate ~r block is destroyed or scoured.

Linear perspective: See section on Perspective;

type of perspective where the illusion of depth is created on the picture plane by the use of line.

Line drawing: Drawing based on line, rather than brush or wash, in which hatching effects provide

Literary arts: Art which draws its inspiration and subject~matter from literary texts. with an emphasis on story above all else.

Lithography: Printing process based on the principal that oil and water will never mix. The design is drawn onto a porous stone (often limestone) with a greasy crayon. w ater is then applied to the surface of the stone - and oily ink rolled across it; where the crayonned design repels the water, the ink will stay put. Paper is then pressed onto the stone, and the lithographic impression emerges. Lithography was invented in the late 18thC; a photo~mechanical variation on the process (offset lithography) is much more recent.

Living sculpture: Fonn of sculpture where artists pose as if they were flesh~and~blood statues, fashionable in the 1970s.

Local colour: See section on Colour; the basic colour of an object or area, unaffected by changes in the surrounding light. atmosphere, or by the colour of other nearby objects.

M Mahlstick or maulstick: Thin stick with a padded end which the painter uses as an ann support.

Manikin: Small~scale lay figure.

Mannerism: 'Ism' invented in the 1920s to describle a style which was at its height between the High Renaissance and Baroque in Europe (c. 1520-1620). The Italian word maniera was first used by Giorgio Vasari during the Renaissance to describe work which disobeyed the classical 'rules' of proportion and perspective by making intellectual rather than visual points; but by the end of the16thC Mannerism had become a virtuoso, highly ornate form of art - especially fond of vivid colours, elongated shapes and highly charged subject-matter. Much prized by the royal courts of the time. Best-known practitioner (middle period of Mannerism) was El Greco.

Maquette: French for 'small model'.

a kind of three-dimensional Sculptor~s sketch, modelled in clay or wax (originally terracotta) as a trial run - sometimes to show a patron. Also known as bozzetto (Italian for 'sketch').

Marine painting: Painting of sea scenes, often with a story element (battles, rescues and races) attached.

Dutch examples in the 17thC and British in the 19thC were the best known.

Masterpiece: Originally, the piece of work with which an apprentice of the guild becomes a master - by showing all-round competence; today, the term is applied to an artist's finest work or. even more generally, to any particularly fine work. Feminist art criticism has recently tried to challenge the language of 'old masters' by substituting 'old mistresses' (which, it has to be said, carries with it unfortunate associations). .

Medium: Liquid added to paint in order to make it flow more easily. Also, the material/process used by an artist (such as oils or watercolours). Also.liquid with which pigments in powder form are mixed to make a paint.

Miniature painting: Very small painting. usually a portrait, made on ivory, parchment or vellum, and in the 16thC - worn by courtiers as a memento of loved ones. Best-known practitioner was Nicholas Hilliard (GB). Probably originated with illuminated manuscripts.

Minimal art or Minimalism: Attempt. in late 1960s America, to strip painting and especially sculpture to their bare geometric essentials - beyond abstraction - and thus build bridges between art and the world beyond the gallery. Minimal artists relied on the simplest of forms, colours and textures and attempted to reject the personal and the expressive in their work; origins said to be De stijl. Bestknown practitioner Sol Lewitt (USA).

Mixed media: The combination of different materials, or media, in an artwork; performance works which also use a variety of media.

Mobile: See section on Motion; kinetic or moving sculpture made up of forms suspended on wires or strings which move with the air. Term first used by Marcel Duchamp in the 1930s to describe Alexander Calder' s work.

Modelling: Representation, or making sculptural forms in three dimensions, usually with clay or wax. Also, making two-dimensional surfaces look three-dimensional, by use of light and shade. colour and mass.

Modello or modelletto: Italian for 'sketch', or rather for a small, sometimes finished, version of a larger picture, to be shown to a patron.

Modern art: Usually taken to mean visual art which, following industralisation and urbanisation, gradually separated itself from the constraints of subject-matter and traditional rules and values, to become concerned with form, and even with the form of itself The process began in Europe in the mid- 19thC (when traditional sources of patronage dried up). It is chastening to note that visual art which still seems to be part of 'the shock of the new' and which is thought to be so 'modern', in fact predates the automobile.

Modernism: In art history, this 'ism' refers to the period from the 1870s through to the 1970s (when post-modernlsm took over), and in particular to the styles of art and the latest thinking about art within that period: a rejection of history, an obsession with the contemporary, a concern with structure as much as substance, an interest in technology and science and a parallel interest in spirituality - these were a few of their favourite things. At the time, practitioners were convinced that Modernism wasn't just a collection of 'styles' or 'fashions': it was the 'ism' to end them all. In retrospect, this was a mistake - although a century was a very long life-span.

Monochrome: Tones of a single colour; or a painting or print made in one colour only.

Mosaic: Decoration of walls and floors, from the ancient Greeks and Romans onwards, made of small pieces of coloured glass, stone, marble or ceramic set in a form of cement.

Multiculturalism: 1980s term to describe those writers and artists who reject the age-old elevation of the European visual tradition over all others, and who oppose art people who still insist on referring to the art of other cultures as , Also describes a view of primitive' or 'exotic' contemporary society, as'.

constmcted of many equally valid cultures.

MuraI: Painting either on a wall, attached to the surface of a wall or made on panels which are to become a wall.

among the best-known examples, all taken up by the art establishment of the day.

N

Narrative painting: Painting which tells a story.

Naturalism: The attempt to depict figures, objects and settings in a realistic (or unmediated or 'true to life') way, without stylisation, and without letting the object's surroundings get in the way. this usually resulted in work which was less"realistic' than work which aimed for a rather less restrictive view of nature. The term is sometimes applied to Dutch 17thC and even Renaissance painting.

Neo-Classicism: Style of art and architecture which, in reaction against the ornamental excesses of rococo and stimulated by recent archaeological discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum, took root in Europe (originally Rome) and America in the late 18thC. It involved a self-conscious, and scholarly, return to the ethics and aesthetics of classical antiquity: clarity, detail, classical motifs. based on close study and detailed knowledge of the originals.

This wasn't so much a reappraisal of antiquity as an imitation of it. Best-known practitioners included Jacques-Louis David (France), Benjamin West (USA), Antonio Canova and Giovanni Piranesi (Italy).

Neo-Expressionism: Term used in the early 1980s to describe 'new art' from Italy and Germany which was reacting against conceptual and anti-historical work, and against 'cool'.

Neo-Impressionism: A development out of Impressionism (but in fact very different), which involved rigorously applying the latest colour theories and theories of optical colour mixing often in the studio - to open-air subjects. Found in its strictest form in the works of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac.

Neo-Plasticism: Another name, in 'ism' form, for

Naive art: Vague term, applied to modern painters who - despite their lack of training or membership of the art world - have something visually valid to offer; maybe with bright colours and without a s~nse of perspective. Henri Rousseau (France), Grandma Moses (USA) and Alfred Wallis (GB), and De Stijl.

Neue Sachlicheit: German for 'new objectivity'.

movement which reacted against both Expressionism and Impressionism in 1920s Germany, by emphasising close and committed observation of the precise details of everyday life so close that it sometimes resembled Surrealism;

led by George Grosz and Otto Dix.

Non-objective art: Art which does not seek to depict an object or figure from the physical world, but which instead arranges surfaces, shapes forms and colours and in the process goes one step beyond abstraction.

Nude: Unclothed human figure. Art historians tend to distinguish between 'naked' (and ashamed) and 'nude' (and proud of it) and Bridget Riley (GB).

Outline: Drawing without shading or hatching which consists entirely of contours.

Overpainting: Layers of paint applied on top of an underlayer or preliminary layer, when the first layer has dried; useful for adding precision.

Oil paint: Paint made by mixing ground pigment with oil (usually linseed) as a binding agent. The earliest paintings to be made exclusively with oil paint were produced in the early 15thC when the medium was improved and popularised by Jan van Eyck (see section on Co10ur). Oil had in fact been used in paints for a very long time before it became a standard medium.

Old master. See masterpiece; sometimes used to describe any distinguished pre-modern painter, the term in fact applies to great visual artists active before 1700 (when guild masters still existed). and particularly to the Renaissance.

Op art or optical art: Vibrant 1960s paintings which create an illusion of movement, through the use of colour and pattern to create optical effects.

Best-known practitioners Victor Vasarely (France)

Painterly: (Originally German malerisch, meaning 'pertaining to a painter'); used by the early 20thC art historian Heinrich Wolfflin to mean painters who see form in terms of colour and tonal relationships which blend, rather than in terms of outline and line (who were known as 'linear' painters). Titian - loose, gestural, irregular - was said to epitomise the former, Botticelli the latter. Palette: Surface - traditionally of thin hardwood on which an artist lays out and mixes his or her colours; also the range of colours an artist or 'school' uses in a particular work.

Panel: Rigid painting surface of wood or metal, the support for most paintings betOre tbe rise of canvas in the early 15thC.

Papier colle: French for 'pasted paper'. artworks made of pieces of coloured paper or newspaper, cut out and glued to a support. In the early 1950s Henri Matisse (see section on Composition) called this 'drawing in colour'.

Pastels: Crayon sticks made of powdered pigments mixed with a gum binding agent; the word is also used to mean pale colours in general; also finished artworks made by using pastels. Works using pastels are called paintings rather than drawings because colour can be applied not in the form of line. but more thickly - like a kind of smooth painting.

Pastiche: French for 'imitation' . an attwork in the style of, or using assorted visual' ideas from, another artist - the ideas are 'recombined' as a work which could have been made by the original artist. Distinct from a forgery; more like a parallel or borrowed artwork.

Pediment: In classical and some Renaissance architecture, the triangular area immediately under the roof of a building -often embellished with sculpture. Also, similar triangular area over doors and windows.

Performance art or live art: Prearranged artworks performed in front of a live audience - originally, in the late 1960s, conceptual and critical, but more recently allied to new dance. drama. music and comedy and often made for video purposes.

Perspective: See section on Perspective; visual systems by which an illusion of depth is created by either linear or aerial atmospheric means, on a two-dimensional surface. and usually organised from a single point of view. Perspective becomes considerably more complicated when it involves more than one vanishing point, more than one.

eye-level. It has been, in the words of one commentator, 'one of the chief areas of study and a criterion of excellence in Western art for many centuries' in particular since its 'laws' were codified during the Renaissance.

Photomontage: Picture entirely constructed out of cut-out photographs, by the technique (montage) of combining or juxtaposing separate images into a coherent whole. Best-known practitioner: John Heartfield (Germany, 1920s).

Picture plane: Often used - erroneously - to describe the physical surface of a painting; the picture plane is in fact a mental construct - like an imaginary pane of glass through which the lines of sight and eye-lines pass, and through which all the pictorial elements are arranged. Alberti called it a 'window' separating the viewer from the picture itself In the era of'flatness' in painting (the late 1950s and 1960s), there was much discussion about the 'destruction of the picture plane', for the plane had become the picture itself Pigment: Colouring matter, which, when mixed with a binding agent, forms a paint.

Plastic arts: Strictly, art forms which require moulding or modelling (sculpture, ceramics), but can be used of all the visual (non-literary.non-musical) arts.

Plein air: French for 'open air'. strictly, art which captures the sense of being out of doors in natural light, although the phrase is often used for artworks actually painted in the open air.

Pointillism: Technique of applying small dots (or 'points') of separate colours to the canvas, which the viewer fuses into colour and form. See also Chromo-luminarism, Divisionism and Neo-Impressionism.

Pop art: Art movement of the 1950s and 1960s (especially strong in America and Britain), which derived its imagery from popular (or pop) culture and consumerism (comics. advertisements, films, industrial design, etc.). In Britain, a reaction against post-war austerity (Pop art has recently been called 'an aesthetic of plenty'), in America against the dominance of Abstract Expressionism (both the abstraction and the self-expression). Recently seen as the origin of post-modernism within the visual arts. Best-known practitioners: Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol (USA), Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton and Peter Blake (GB).

Portfolio: Portable carrying case for fIat works of art; also. a selection of an artist' s work (as in 'the artist's portfolio included.

Portraiture: Painting or sculpting likenesses of people (or animals) - historically , sometimes flattering (if the sitter happened to be a patron as well) and sometimes faithful, with 'warts and all'. The fmest portraits go beyond a skin-deep likeness to the sitter' s personality and even attitudes.

Poster paint: Popular name for highly coloured types of gouache, frequently used by children at school.

Post-Impressionism: 'Ism' coined by British critic Roger Fry in 1910, to describe the work of European artists Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin. Henri Matisse and others, who moved away from Impressionism in the years from c. 1885 to c. 1905 (although they still owed a profound visual debt to Impressionismi. In general, their work shared a renewed interest in subject-matter, and in the painting as decorative surface (rather than as directly inspired by nature). But they did not have much more in common, and Fry himself thought this particular 'ism' was a catch-all invented for exhibition purposes. .

Post-modernism: Fashionable term which aims to label the era following Modernism as not just 'after' Modernism but as profoundly different from Modernism: a return to figurative work and traditional styles; a culture of quotations from other artists; a breakdown of the barriers between 'high' and 'low' culture; a re-insertion of the v isual arts into the modern world of communication. All these are seen as important developments beyond Modernism (with its belief in progress. 'solutions'.

an end to history, and systems. Above aIl, Post-Modernism implies a new image for the artist;as a critic has written: 'What many term the Vincent Van Gogh model of the tormented artist has been replaced by the pre-modern ideal of the artist as a woman of the world a la Peter Paul Rubens, the wealthy Flemish 17thC artist and diplomat.' Pouncing: See section on Composition; technique for transferring the outline of a drawing or cartoon onto another surface, by pricking tiny holes along the outlines and then forcing a fine powder (or 'pounce', usually charcoal) through the holes to create a line of fine dots as aguide.

Predella: Base or lower tier of a large church altarpiece, which was often decorated with paintings or carvings.

Prehistoric art: Art dating from the palaeolithic, mesolithic and neolithic eras, usually known as the Stone Age.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: Group of mid-Victorian British artists (late 1840s and 1850s) who sought to recapture the 'purity' and 'brightness' of pre-Renaissance painting and to reject all 'overly scientific' developments in art; the word 'brotherhood' implied a medieval-style association.

Their work, especially that of John Everett Millais and Holman Hunt, was much admired by the northern industrialists of Britain made rich by the Industrial Revolution.

Primary colours: See section on Colour; the colours red. yellow and blue, from which theoretically all other colours can be made (and which in turn cannot be made by mixing others).

Priming: Applying a layer of, usually, white ground to a panel or canvas, in order to produce a smooth sealed surface.

Primitive art: Name given by early Modernists to the art of non-Western cultures or to prehistoric cultures. Although intended to be celebratory, the term today seems very condescending and even, at times, racist.

Print: Impression made by pressing an incised block or p}ate, or coated screen, which has been inked, onto a suitably receptive surface - such as paper.

Proof: Print made by an artist or printer to study, to make sure the process is working satisfactorily.

Proportion: See section on Proportion; the relation or ratio of one part to another or to the whole - often associated in the history of art since Renaissance times with the search for 'ideal beauty' and harmony in a work of art, and in particu}ar with the goIden section or mean.

Provenance: French for 'source' or 'origin'; the (where possible) documented history of the ownership of an artwork and sometimes of its attribution.

Putto pl. putti: Italian for 'small boy'. chubby, dimpled. often nude child who tends to have sprouted wings to fly around religious or allegorical paintings from the Renaissance onwards. Sometimes called a cherub, he seems at times to be related to Cupid.

figures 'as they really are', unadulterated by ideals or dogmas - and to choose everyday subjects;

sometimes means (since the }920s) determination to discover the structure hidden beneath surface appearances. French mid-19thC painter Gustave Courbet said that 'since 1 have never seen an angel, 1 could never paint one'.

Recession: The illusion of depth in a painting, created through perspective.

Reducing gIass: Lens ground to make objects or landscapes seem smaller - of which the Claude gIass is an example.

Relief: Image or motif which sticks out from a fixed background in carved or moulded sculpture and is therefore not free-standing. The image may stick out in high (alto). medium (mezzo) or low (bas) relief Renaissance: French for 'rebirth', like the Italian rinascimento; traditionally, the rebirth or revival of art and literature under the influence of Greek and Roman models in 14thC - 16thC Europe, which started in Italy. Giorgio Vasart used the label rinascita to describe this in 1550 - when it was still going on around him. Since the late 19thC, the term has been refined:

Renaissance (c. 1400-1500), when there was a new interest in 'man and his works' and in the search for principles and technical systems) and High Renaissance (c. 1500-27), covering the mature work of Leonardo, the early work of Michelangelo and the classical work of Raphael). The Renaissance also took root in northern Europe, with interesting effects from the mid 16thC onwards. One long-term result of the Renaissance in general was a definitive change in the status and role of the visual artist. But it has to be said that the Renaissance in general is not a particularly useful concept in art history any Quattrocento: Italian for 'four hundred'. the 15thC in Italian culture.

Ready-made: See found object; object existing in everyday life, and exhibited as a work of art. or part of a work of art (through assemblage).

ReaIism: Determination to depict objects and more.

Replica: Exact copy of an artwork which is made by. or under the supervision of, the original artist.

Representational art: Art with an immediately recognisable subject, depicted (or 'represented') in ways which seek to resemble a figure, landscape or object; often used synonymously with 'figurative' art. in that both are contrasted with Abstraction.

Reproduction: Mechanically produced copy of an original artwork - unlike replicas which are one-offs. There has been much debate about the effect of reproductions - especially those printed with great accuracy - on our perception of the originals.

Restoration: The attempt to return an artwork to its original condition, by 'restoring' it or touching it up - as distinct from conservation which aims to slow down as far as possible the process of decay.

Rococo: Probably from the French rocaille meaning 'grotto-work'. elegant and ornate European (especially French and southern German) art from c. 1715 to the 1750s. with an emphasis on curves (such as in scallop shells), pastel colours and light especially significant in interior decoration..Starting as a reaction against the ponderousness of the late Baroque, Rococo was superseded by the seriousness of Neo-Classicism.

Romanesque: Western European art - principally architecture - in the 11thC and 12thC. epitomised by massive pillared buildings (esp. church buildings) with rounded arches, plus much stone-carving in relief on columns and doorways, some of it (the vaults) a heritage from Roman art.

Romanticism: Reaction against the 'cold reasoning' and ordered universe of the European Enlightenment, which instead laid stress on emotion, imagination and mystery in the late 18thC. early 19thC. As much an attitude. or lifestyle, as an art movement, which placed a very high value on the individual (the modern concept o individual 'genius' dates from this period).

Favourite themes included scenes from literature, landscapes and seascapes (wild nature was preferre' to decadent cities), and historical episodes.

Although the approach and technique were sometimes innovative, the subject-matter was often more traditional, and even nostalgic. Best-known practitioners include: J.M.W Turner (GB), Eugene Delacroix and Theodore Gericault (France). Painter and printmaker William Blake - trying to sum up wrote: 'Genius begins when Rules end'; and it is true that the 'image' of the modern artist was born in this era of revolution and social change. Of course, all periods in art history have had 'romantic tendencies.

Royal Academy: Formal (though private, not state association of British artists in London, dating from 1768 - and still flourishing, as an art school and exhibiting body.

Royal College of Art: The first of the recognisably modern art and design schools, founded by the state in London, 1837.

Rubenisme: Faction of the French Academy in the late 17thC which promoted the importance of colour over line (after their hero Rubens), and paved the way for Rococo. The argument reached its high point with the work of Antoine Watteau (France).

Salon: Exhibition of painting and sculpture held annually in Paris. under the aegis of the French Royal Academy, the origins of which date back to 1667 but which reached its high point in the 18thC.

In the 19thC, independent groups of artists began to exhibit at their own salons in Paris - such as the Salon des Refuses of 1863 (Impressionists mainly) and the Salon des Independents (founded in 1884 by Georges Seurat and others).

School: Group of artists whose work is thought to have resemblances - through country of origin.

education apprenticeship, membership of a movement or shared influence.

Sculpture: Three-dimensional artwork created by carving, modelling or (more recently) constructing or arranging material.

Scumbling: Technique in oil painting. of applying a thin opaque layer over another layer, so that the lower layer remains partly visible - and a 'two-tone' effect is the result.

Secondary colours : The colours green. orange and purple. each the result of mixing two primary colours.

Semiotics, or semiology : The science of decoding signs and sign-systems; as applied to visual art, since the 1960s. the treatment of images as a kind of language (with its grammar - the rules - and usage. the particular contribution of the artist) which can be deconstructed into its component parts. Its aim is to 'break the flow' of communication, to encourage a questioning approach. So when 1970s and 1980s artists spoke of , deconstruction' they didn't mean tearing down their studios.

Serial art or seriality: Use of a single. repeated image in an artwork, or a series of artworks. as in the paintings of Andy Warhol (USA); also, series of exhibited artworks which have a 'serial' relationship - very fashionable in 1980s New York.

Sfumato: Italian for 'evaporate' or 'blend'; the transitions of tone from light to dark in a painting by gradual stages, as if seen through smoke or mist.

Leonardo promoted the technique, as a way of achieving visually the effect of'relief'.

Signature: An artist's name signed (or carved) on an artwork, usually providing evidence that the work is entirely by the hand of the artist who signs;

such a work is known, therefore, as an autograph.

Silkscreen printing: Method of colour printing by squeezing thick ink through a stencil (fixed on a piece of silk which is stretched over a frame) onto a piece of paper below - and using different stencils for separate colours. First developed at the beginning of this century Simultaneous contrast: ~e effect achieved by placing one colour next to another, especially its complementary .

Size: The use of a weak adhesive to fill up or seal the pores of canvas or paper before it is primed which protects the fibres (of a canvas) from direct contact with the paint.

Sketch: Preliminary or 'rough draft' drawing, painting or model - often rapid - made as a prelude to a fully fledged composition. For example, a landscape painter might make quick, spontaneous sketches of various lighting conditions or views. A pocket sketchbook was, from the Renaissance onwards, considered an essential part of an artist's equipment.

Socialist ReaIism: The official art of the Soviet Union in the Stalinist period from 1934 onwards when abstract art and all other kinds of 'formalism' were officially banned. Not to be confused with Social ReaIism, or the depiction of the plight of the poor and the dispossessed, in mid- 19thC realist painting (best-known examples: Gustave Courbet's

The Stonebreakers, and Van Gogh's early work). Today, neither Social, nor Socialist Realism is 'official' anywhere - although both are still practised by those who don't like the politics of Modernism or Post-Modernism. See also WPA Project.

Squaring up: A means of enlarging a small preliminary drawing to a bigger surface, by dividing both the drawing and the larger surface into squares and transferring the contents of each square from the smaller drawing to the larger surface.

Statue: Carved or modelled likeness of a person or animal. often displayed in a public place.

Still life: Painting, the subject-matter of which is inanimate (motionless, still) objects removed from their natural settings. Still life, although part of an ancient tradition, became a subject in its own right in 17thC Holland and reached its height in the work of Jean Baptiste Chardin (mid-18thC France) and Paul Cezanne (late-:19thC France). The academies came to use still life as a way of teaching form, and demonstrating technical skill.

Stipple: To build up or construct a drawing or painting out of many small dots, strokes and flicks.

Can be used of a print too.

Stretcher: Adjustable wooden frame. on which the painter stretches his or her canvas in order to provide a firm support behind the painting.

Studio of...: Artwork made by a student, apprentice or colleague of the artist whose style it resembles and possibly overseen by that artist.

Study: Carefully observed, and thorough, drawing of a detail (such as a leaf or a folded piece of fabric), made in preparation for a larger work.

Style: The characteristics - of technique, subject-matter, size and/or treatment - which distinguish the artworks by an individual artist, school, historical period or place. 'In the style of...' means that a work resembles an artist's style, but is not actually made by him/her. Some art historians tend to write of style' as if it exists independently of the artists - and the historical contexts - which produced it; in fact, of course, visual artists. even geniuses, cannot operate outside their own historical era.

Sublime: First isolated as a special aspect of aesthetics by the British philosopher Edmund Burke, in 1757 'sublime' is not the same as 'beautiful' for it has more to do with awe, grandeur and fear (such as an Alpine chasm, a waterfall, a volcano - which are awe-inspiring and frightening at the same time).

Support: The surface, or material, on which a painting is made - such as canvas. wood panel, board or paper; often, this surface has to be treated before the paint or ground is applied. See ground, priming, size. stretcher.

Surrealism: Art movement, originating in literature, which had a profound impact on visual art, poetry and drama in the second quarter of this century. Surrealism aimed for an outward and visible expression of what was in the unconscious mind (especially sex and dreams) - Sigmund Freud was a key influence. In the words of the first Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), written by the poet Andre Breton, the movement aimed to present 'thought, free from the exercise of reason, and every aesthetic or moral preoccupation' The 'improvised' forms of Surrealism - using swiftly made collages, or found objects (such as some work by Max Ernst and Jean Arp) - were consistent with these aims and eventually led towards Abstract Expressionism. The more 'finished' forms (such as the dream paintings of Salvador Dali and the conceptual games of Rene Magritte) influenced light to dark.

film. Tooth: The roughness or grain of a canvas.

television, photography and especially advertising. Transfer: See section on Composition; the movey Both were the progeny of Dada. of a visual image from one surface to another:

Synthetic cubism: The final phase of the Cubist techniques for this include squaring up, pouncing movement, from c. 1912 to 1915, when Picasso, using specially prepared papers (such as carbons o Braque and Juan Gris introduced or 'brought tracing paper) and, of course, printing. .

together' collage (pieces of newspaper, tickets, etc., Triptych: Hinged painting on panel, or carving, in sometimes next to their painted equivalents), three parts - usually an altarpiece. The central pan reintroduced colour and pattern and moved further is the largest, for it must accommodate the other towards abstraction. In general. Synthetic Cubism two folded in on their hinges; the smaller panels are used as many visual techniques as the artists could therefore usually painted on both sides. think up. Trompe l'oeil: French for 'deceives the eye', painting or detail in which still-life objects are painted so realistically and so deceptively that they appear to be three-dimensional and even touchable.

Tempera: Quick-drying painting medium, made by The word 'deceive' is apt in the context, for trompe mixing ground pigment with a binding agent (egg l'oeil is no more than a very clever piece of visual yolk, or egg yolk plus white of egg) and diluting conjuring. Dutch artists in the 17thC were with water. This was the most significant medium particularly skilled at it.

for painting on panel in Europe from the 12thC to the rise of oil paint in the I5thC. . U Tertiary colours: Colours made by mixing together two secondary colours. Ukiyo: Japanese for 'mirrors of the floating Texture: The surface treatment of an artwork, world'; popular Japanese art. in the form of colour which however is a central feature of its impact on woodblock prints. showing everyday scenes of the viewer. Where painting is concerned. sometimes people at work and at leisure, and landscapes - well referred to as the 'close-up zone'. known for bold, flat, almost formal designs (which

Tint: The changes or variations a colour undergoes 'read' as prints) and bright colours. Ukiyo-e was when mixed with a small quantity of another sought after from the mid-17thC onwards (when the colour. prints were in black and white) but got into its Tondo: Italian for 'round'; a circular painting, or colourful stride in the I 8THC. Hokusai (with his sculpture in relief; popular in late 15thC Florence. great landscape series around Mount Fuji, 1820s) Tone: The amount of light and shade - in other and Hiroshige were the best-known practitioners.

words, the value - in a colour; also the general The form had a dramatic influence on European effect of a painting resulting from transitions from painting from the mid- 19thC (Impressionists) onwards: the high point of printmaking.

Underpainting: See laying-in; the painting or drawing of a complete layer of composition and tone for an artwork (usually in monochrome grey) before colour is applied. Sometimes kept for effect in the finished artwork as well.

Value: The range of lightness or darkness in a colour; the relationships of tone in a painting.

Vanishing point: See section on Perspective; the point (or points) at which parallel lines appear to meet on the horizon line.

Varnish: Protective covering, or film, applied to paintings and sculptures - which is intended to protect the surface from damp and pollution, and sometimes to provide a 'finish' Vellum: Fine leather used for book-binding and when treated differently - for writing (when it is called parchment); best known in the history of art for its use in calligraphy and illumination.

Video art: Type of artwork which began in New York in the mid-1960s, made on videotape usually for viewing on a television screen. Since video is an electronic medium rather than a style, the results tend to be almost as varied as the artists using it. T~ generalise: as with Performance art, the early conceptual phase of the 1970s has given way to a Post-Modernist phase (using the mass media 'from within') in the late 1980s and 1990s. Rock and music videos sometimes owe a lot to video art (and more recently, vice versa).

Wall painting: See mural.

Warm colours: Colours such as red and yellow which seem 'warm' in a painting - and seem also to advance; contrasted with 'cool' colours such as the blues, which appear to recede.

Wash: Thin, transparent layer of diluted ink or watercolour, 'washed' horizontally over broad areas of a drawing. 20thC painters have adapted the wash technique to oil and acrylic works.

Watercolour: Pigment with a water-soluble binder which itself becomes soluble in water. Originally, the term applied to the technique of painting with watery washes of colour in late 18thC England where the paper 'shone' through the thin washes, or created highlights. 'Watercolour' of this type especially when used for landscape painting - was distinctively British as a tradition.

Woodcut: Print made from a block of wood which has been carved in relief; the parts not cut away are the parts which print. Woodcuts were used for book illustration from the 5thC to the 17thC in Europe, and reached their high point in the work of Albrecht DUrer. Still used by artists.

Workshop production: The mode of art production in the workshops of guild masters;

assistants and apprentices would work. as members of a team, on an artwork - each with a particular task. One might be a specialist in backgrounds, another in hands or feet, another in drapes of cloth.

and the master would provide the original design, the finishing touches and the signature (as a kind of 'corporate image' of the trusted workshop). Peter Paul Rubens managed to complete a staggering number of commissions by adopting this approach.

WPA Project: The Works Progress Administration Federal Arts Project in the mid- 1930s, set up by the United States government to help unemployed artists and designers (6,000 of them by 1936). The most distinctive work took the form of murals on and in government buildings, and photographs of working people in the Dustbowl. Many significant artists (such as Jackson Pollock and Ben Shahn) were given golden opportunities by the WPA Project, which is still a model of its kind.

Zeitgeist: This German word. meaning 'time spirit' or 'spirit of the age'. has entered the English language - to describe, in general terms, the apparent characteristics of an era. a time or a moment. It is a hard-to-pin-down, woolly concept (whose age? what else was going on? in what sense 'characteristic'? and so on), but sometimes surprisingly useful when discussing or describing the historical context for visual art.