Vocabulary (updated weekly)

avante garde: cutting edge - literally "advance guard" - refers to people or works that are experimental or innovative, pushing the boundaries/status quo.

materiality: refers to the materials used and seen in the item/artwork under discussion

monochromatic: tints or tones of one colour

symbolic: art characterized by the use of symbols or symbolism - standing/representing something else - meaning beyond the surface appearance

an essential property: some considered necessary and required - in art it may refer to line, shape, texture, color, value, etc.

pictorial space: the illusionary space in a piece of art (2 dimensional) that appears to recede backward into depth

critical theory: the examination and critique of society and culture - looks beyond the superficial in art and looks beyond it

pictorial structure: the 'architecture' of a piece of work, e.g. patterns, asymmetrical designs, etc.

optical colour mixing: when colours are not physically mixed to form other colours, but through a knowledge of how the eye perceives colours that site next to/overlap each other

motif: a repeated idea, pattern, image, or theme - across multiple works as well as within a piece

facets (in regards to cubism): fragments into which form was broken (analytical cubism - Picasso) - colour not of concern for them.

signatory: a signer of a document; bound by signed agreement

manifesto: a public declaration of principles/intentions; extreme themes (typical in modernism) addressing wider issues

non-representational (art): that which the artist does not supply in terms of context; thus the viewer must supply the context to understand it. The artist's thoughts go beyond the formal design elements - this type of work is usually on the idealistic/emotional end of the visual spectrum.

motif: something that the artist creates/shows in work again and again

woodcut print: The wood block is carefully prepared as a relief matrix, which means the areas to show 'white' are cut away with a knife, chisel, or sandpaper leaving the characters or image to show in 'black' at the original surface level. The block was cut along the grain of the wood. It is only necessary to ink the block and bring it into firm and even contact with the paper or cloth to achieve an acceptable print. The content would of course print "in reverse" or mirror-image, a further complication when text was involved. 

the tension of volume vs. flatness: a tension played upon by Cezanne, who combined the two properties in some (if not all) of his works - "This combining caused his paintings to have both flatness and three-dimensional space; the forms have both volume AND flatness. This combination causes a certain tension in his work - which is so perfectly resolved that the tension provides movement, and his resolution of the tension provides an eternal harmony. This combining of two types of space also accounts for his distortions of objects and perspective..."

traditional or classical architecture: architecture influenced by the ancient Greeks or Romans

colour field painting: is characterized primarily by large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas; creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane. The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes and action in favour of an overall consistency of form and process. 

action painting: a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist. 

prismatic: resembling the colors formed by refraction of light through a prism

orphism: The orphism movement was rooted in Cubism but moved toward a pure lyrical abstraction and representation of music, seeing painting as the bringing together of a sensation of bright and colors that were not related with the cubism movement. This movement is seen as the key in the revolution of Cubism to Abstraction. More concerned with the expression and significance of sensation, this movement retained recognizable subjects but was absorbed by increasingly abstract structures.

synesthesia:  A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.

pluralistic society: "This is any society in which citizens can legally and publicly hold multiple competing ethical views and are allowed to choose for themselves what ethical beliefs if any they wish to hold. It is often mistaken for a society which tolerates different ethical beliefs or groups of people and holds that all are equal, which is correctly identified as moral relativism, a logically invalid position held by [much] of the world today."

heuristic: experienced-based techniques for problem-solving

xenophobia: fear of foreign influences