Anjali Padmanaban

Vocab #9:

 

abstract: of or pertaining to the formal aspect of art, emphasizing lines, colors, generalized or geometrical forms, especially with reference to their relationship to one another.

 

biomorphism: a painted, drawn, or sculptured free form or design suggestive in shape of a living organism, especially an ameba or protozoan

 

cantilever: any rigid structural member projecting from a vertical support, especially one in which the projections great in relation to the depth, so that the upper part is in tension and the lower part in compression.

 

collage: a technique of composing a work of art by pasting on a single surface various materials not normally associated with one another, as newspaper clippings, parts of photographs, theater tickets, and fragments of an envelope.

 

documentary photography: usually refers to a popular form of photography used to chronicle significant and historical events.

 

ferroconcrete: reinforced concrete

 

frottage: a technique in the visual arts of obtaining textural effects or images by rubbing lead, chalk, or charcoal over paper laid on a granular or relief-like surface.

 

mobile: capable of moving or being moved readily.

 

Harlem Renaissance: a renewal and flourishing of black literary and musical culture during the years after World War I in the Harlem section of New York City.

 

ready-made: made for immediate use.

 

regionalism: a form of art or expression characteristic to a particular area.

 

action painting: also called tachism, a style of American abstract expressionist painting typified especially in the works of Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning in the 1940s, in which the furiously energetic and free application of the paint is seen as being expressive of the psychological and emotional state of the artist at the moment of creation.

 

assemblage: a sculptural technique of organizing or composing into a unified whole a group of unrelated and often fragmentary or discarded objects.

 

benday dots: The Ben-Day dots printing process, named after illustrator and printer Benjamin Henry Day, Jr., is a technique dating from 1879. Depending on the effect, color and optical illusion needed, small colored dots are closely spaced, widely spaced or overlapping.

 

color field: a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism

 

earthworks: an artistic work that consists of a large-scale alteration or modification of an area of land in a configuration designed by an artist or of an artist's sculptural installation, as in a museum or gallery of soil, rock, or similar elemental materials.

 

installation: an art exhibit often involving video or moving parts where the relation of the parts to the whole is important to the interpretation of the piece