Abstraction - Imagery which departs from representational accuracy, to a variable range of possible degrees, for some reason other than verisimilitude. Abstract artists select and then exaggerate or simplify the forms suggested by the world around them. The paintings of Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) and Georges Braque (French, 1882-1963) as well as the sculptures of Henry Moore (English, 1898-1987), Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975), and Jacques Lipchitz (Russian-American, 1891-1973) are examples of abstract art. Wassily Kandinsky, (Russian, 1866-1944), was one of the first creators of pure abstraction in modern painting. After successful avant-garde exhibitions, he founded the influential Munich group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider; 1911-1914), when his paintings became completely abstract. His forms evolved from fluid and organic to geometric and, finally, to pictographic.

Aesthetics or æsthetics - The branch of philosophy that deals with the nature and value of art objects and experiences. It is concerned with identifying the clues within works that can be used to understand, judge, and defend judgments about those works. Originally, any activity connected with art, beauty and taste, becoming more broadly the study of art's function, nature, ontology, purpose, and so on.

To postmodernists, these interests have largely been supplanted by questions of meaning and linguistically based investigations, such as those involving semiotics. They have used the term to indicate a certain imprecise distinction between art and life, or as a rough synonym for "artistic."

Art - For numerous reasons, a difficult word to define without starting endless argument! Many definitions have been proposed. At least art involves a degree of human involvement -- through manual skills or thought -- as with the word "artificial," meaning made by humans instead of by nature. Definitions vary in how they divide all that is artificial into what is and isn't art. The most common means is to rely upon the estimations of art experts and institutions.

Artists, museum curators, art patrons, art educators, art critics, art historians, and others involved with art change their ideas about it over time. Early in the twentieth century, for instance, artists expanded the definition of art to include such things as abstraction, collage, and readymades. Even in the second half of the twentieth century, the artworld expanded its definition of art to include textiles, costumes, jewelry, photography, video, concepts, and performances as art.

HIGH ART (CULTURE): Until recently, there has a distinction between high art (also called "high culture," fine art, or beaux-arts) and low art (also called "mass culture"). Where the former supposedly consisted of the meticulous expression in fine materials of refined or noble sentiment, the latter was the shoddy manufacturing in inferior materials of superficial kitsch. Moreover, the assumption always was that appreciation of the former depended on such things as intelligence, social standing, educated taste, and a willingness to be challenged. In contrast, the latter simply catered to popular taste, unreflective acceptance of realism, and a certain "couch potato" mentality. Although many earlier artists took inspiration from popular and folk art -- e.g., Gustave Courbet's appropriation of woodcuts -- the most systematic approaches towards blurring the differences between high and low art were taken by Cubism, Dada and Surrealism. Pop Art further weakened the distinction, and artists as various as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons and the Guerilla Girls, influenced strongly by the different branches of postmodern thought, seem have dealt it the final blow. We now find that formerly "high" artists are approaching mainstream celebrity status: for example, performance artist Laurie Anderson's song O Superman reached the top ten of the pop charts in England, video and camera artist William Wegman has appeared on The Tonight Show to promote a book of photographs, and both have done segments on Saturday Night Live. In spite of this, one still wonders if the distinction still exists, albeit in a slightly different form. Few would seriously argue that the droves who follow televised wrestling matches and afternoon soap operas have any genuine interest in contemporary art. It is even less likely that the millions who read supermarket tabloids or romance novels would ever choose to read advanced art criticism.

According to VCU art historian and author Howard Risatti, one distinguishing characteristic of art is that it is intended to serve, primarily, an intellectual need. This is opposed to Craft, which is intended to serve a functional/physical need.

art critic - Among those in art careers, a person who describes, analyzes, interprets, evaluates, and expresses judgments of the merits, faults and value of artworks.

art criticism - The description, analysis, evaluation, interpretation, and judgment of works of art. It is a common assumption that criticism is necessarily negative, when actually it can vary in degrees of positive as well as negative remarks. Critical methods vary considerably in their approaches to considering the forms, contents, and contexts of works of art.

There are several stages to critical analysis:

1. initial reaction (involving initial identification) to a work.
2. description (involving further identification) -- identifying subject matter and / or elements of art in a work.
3. analysis (open to even further identification) -- identifying order (organization) in a work -- how principles of art have been used to arrange the elements of art in a work.
4. interpretation (identifying meaning) -- the artist's expression / communication of feelings, moods, and ideas in a work.
5. evaluation (judgment) -- assessing the meaning and artistic merit in a work. See aesthetics.

concept - An idea, thought, or notion conceived through mental activity. The words concept and conception are applied to mental formulations on a broad scale.

conceptual art - Art that is intended to convey an idea or a concept to the perceiver, rejecting the creation or appreciation of a traditional art object such as a painting or a sculpture as a precious commodity. Conceptual Art emerged as a movement in the 1960s. The expression "concept art" was used in 1961 by Henry Flynt in a Fluxus publication, but it was to take on a different meaning when it was used by Joseph Kosuth (American, 1945-) and the Art & Language group (Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge, Michael Baldwin, Harold Hurrell, Ian Burn, Mel Ramsden, Philip Pilkington, and David Rushton) in England. For the Art & Language group, concept art resulted in an art object being replaced by an analysis of it. Exponents of Conceptual Art said that artistic production should serve artistic knowledge and that the art object is not an end in itself. The first exhibition specifically devoted to Conceptual Art took place in 1970 at the New York Cultural Center under the title "Conceptual Art and Conceptual Aspects." Because Conceptual Art is so dependent upon the text (or discourse) surrounding it, it is strongly related to numerous other movements of the last century.

Examples of Conceptual Art:

Sol LeWitt (American, 1928-), Wall Drawing #263 (A wall divided into sixteen equal parts with all one - two, three and four part combinations of lines in four directions.), 1975, black graphite on wall, dimensions variable, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY. LeWitt's work amounts to a plan or directions to the draftsperson who executes the work, much as an architect presenting plans to a builder. These directions call for dividing a wall into sixteen equal parts with all one, two, three and four part combinations of lines in four directions. The first row of this sixteen-square grid contains lines in the four basic directions-vertical, horizontal, and two diagonals- that establish a system upon which the rest of the drawing is based. Because LeWitt does not use an intermediary support, such as canvas or paper, in the final work, he de-emphasizes the materiality of the aesthetic object, giving priority to the idea behind the art work. As he wrote in 1967, "The idea becomes the machine that makes the art."

Mel Bochner (American, 1940-), To Count: Intransitive, 1972, soap on glass, dimensions variable, Sonnabend Gallery, NY. Having rubbed a window with a soap film, Bochner drew numbers onto the glass, transforming the window from a material through which to look into one at which to look. The piece cannot be moved, and so cannot be sold as an object. The work must instead be considered the manifestation of an idea, which could be again created elsewhere, any future incarnation necessarily made inexpensively and temporarily.

Lawrence Weiner (American, 1942-), Statement of Intent, 1969 and 1999, enamel on wall, dimensions variable, collection of the artist.

Joseph Kosuth (American, 1945-), One and Three Chairs, 1965, a folding chair, a photograph of a chair, and a photographic enlargement of a dictionary definition of a chair, 200 x 271 x 44 cm, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. One and Three Chairs is presented as having no function other as a clear definition of itself. Kosuth wrote the important article "Art after Philosophy," Studio International., 1969.

contemporary - Current, belonging to the same period of time. Usually referring to our present time, but can refer to being current with any specified time.

content - What a work of art is about; its subject matter. Content should not be confused with form (a work's physical characteristics) or context (a work's environment -- time, place, audience, etc.), although each of these effect each other, and a work's total significance. On the other hand, some feel that content is the meaning of a work beyond its subject matter-- denotations-- that it consists also of its connotations, levels of meaning which are not obviously apparent. Content has three levels of complexity. The first includes literal iconography; straightforward subjects and imagery, describable facts, actions, and/or poses. The second includes the basic genres , figurative meanings like those afforded by conventional signs and symbols , basic tropes, and/or performance qualities. The third represents the effect on the subject of form and context. (pr. con'tent)

“A good analogy for the difference between subject matter and content is to that of a film. Subject matter is to actors, sets, and dialogue as content is to the story that is being told.” Matthew Gehring, 2002.

context - The varied circumstances in which a work of art is (or was) produced and interpreted. There are three arenas to these circumstances, each of them highly complex. The first pertains to the artist: attitudes, beliefs, interests, values, intentions and purposes, education and training, and biography (including psychology). The second is the setting in which the work was produced: the apparent function of the work (to adorn, beautify, express, illustrate, mediate, persuade, record, redefine reality, or redefine art), religious and philosophical convictions, sociopolitical and economic structures, and even climate and geography. Third is the field of the work's reception and interpretation: the traditions it is intended to serve, the mind-set it adheres to (ritualistic, perceptual, rational, and emotive), and, perhaps most importantly, the color of the lenses through which the work is being scrutinized-- i.e., the interpretive mode (artistic biography, psychological approaches, political criticism, feminism, cultural history, intellectual history, formalism, structuralism, semiotics, hermeneutics, post-structuralism and deconstruction, reception theory, concepts of periodicity [stylistic pendulum swinging], and other chronological and contextual considerations. Context is much more than the matter of the artist's circumstances alone.

When you look at a painting in the nave of a church, with stained glass windows and prayer candles and parishioners kneeling in the pews, it's quite unlike viewing that paintingin a museum, where it is surrounded by informative wall texts, strolling visitors, a café and a gift shop. Go a step further, and imagine the same painting on a postcard that you take away, removing it to yet another container. When you see this painting reproduced on a T-shirt or mouse-pad, and think about how far it has traveled from its original context. Bertolt Brecht said of art that has been reproduced and transformed into a commodity: "...it will no longer stir any memory of the thing it once designated." Also see art history and art criticism.

craft - Technical skill, manual dexterity, considered apart from the fine arts, or from the cerebral, expressive, or aesthetic aspects of them. Also, any of the manual activities performed by artisans or craftpeople, as distinguished from the specific group of techniques that are practiced by artists in the making of fine art.

craftsmanship – refers to the quality of a work of art or craft. Quality is defined as an inherent or distinguishing characteristic of a person or a thing. Or, having a high degree of excellence. The quality of a thing tends to be better the more care its maker puts into its making.

critique - A critical review or discussion, especially, for our purposes, one dealing with works of art. Often refers to involving a group of art students in a discussion resulting in the assessment of those students' artwork. To review or discuss critically in order to sustain and nourish critical reflection. Unfortunately, to many the word "criticize" has a negative connotation. The word "critique", however, is invariably used more neutrally, or practically. With the focus on anything from a portion of a project that will be completed within the semester to a large body of recent works, a critique should advance the students' work, and convey a structure that will sustain the work long after graduation. Also see art criticism. (pr. cri-teek')

fabricate - In general, to make; to create. Often more specifically, to construct or assemble something.

figurative - Describes artwork representing the form of a human.

form - In its widest sense, total structure; a synthesis of all the visible aspects of that structure and of the manner in which they are united to create its distinctive character. The form of a work is what enables us to apprehend it. Form also refers to an element of art that is three-dimensional (height, width, and depth) and encloses volume. For example, a triangle, which is two-dimensional, is a shape, but a pyramid, which is three-dimensional, is a form. Cubes, spheres, pyramids, cone, and cylinders are examples of various forms. Also, all of the elements of a work of art independent of their meaning. Formal elements are primary features which are not a matter of semantic significance -- including color, dimensions, line, mass, medium, scale, shape, space, texture, value; and the principles of design under which they are placed-- including balance, contrast, dominance, harmony, movement, proportion, proximity, rhythm, similarity, unity, and variety.

formalism - An aesthetic and critical theory of art which places emphasis on form -- the structural qualities instead of either content (sometimes called literal or allegorical qualities) or contextual qualities. According to this point of view, the most important thing about a work of art is the effective organization of the elements of art through the use of the principles of design. Also known as structuralism, in the 1960s and early 1970s formalism was so entrenched as the most powerful critical approach, that artists frequently produced works that were particularly attentive to it, and even now some think of modernism as more or less synonymous with formalism

ges·ture
2 : a movement usually of the body or limbs that expresses or emphasizes an idea, sentiment, or attitude
3 : the use of motions of the limbs or body as a means of expression

grav·i·ty
2 : WEIGHT
3 a (1) : the gravitational attraction of the mass of the earth, the moon, or a planet for bodies at or near its surface

kitsch - Art characterized by vapidly sentimental, often pretentious poor taste. It is typically clumsy, repetitive, cheesy, and slickly commercial

LANGUAGE: Adherents to formalism held that language and visual art were completely incompatible. For example, one of the more quotable quotes of the minimalist generation was, "If I wanted to send a message, I'd call Western Union." The implication, of course, is that mere message-sending was beneath the dignity of formalist reductivism. Since the advent of postmodern thought, however, virtually every advanced discussion of art treats it as having very strong similarities with language, if not exact parallels. This is especially true of discourses influenced by deconstruction, Lacanian thought, linguistics, and semiotics. The idea actually predates postmodernism by decades. John Dewey said in Art and Experience in 1934, "Because objects of art are expressive [see expression theory, expressivity], they are a language. Rather they are many languages." Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art, first published in 1969, proposed four language functions for art -- representation, description, exemplification and expression -- which collectively prove that art had some cognitive merit. (See also nominalism.) It has been objected that visual art does not have anything like the set of grammatical rules that systematizes language, as is required in Iouri Lotman's definition of language as "any system of communication which uses signs arranged in a particular way" (La Structure du texte artistique). Some writers clarify the relationship with the notion that visual culture is "language-like," rather than a language per se. This allows John Gilmour, for example, to say in Picturing the World that an artist is a creative agent whose medium is really forms of cultural meaning and practice, not a subjective self simply unloading expression on the world. Following the lines of argument in Joseph Margolis's Art and Philosophy and Culture and Cultural Entities, Gilmour also points out that even language is only language-like, for the rules of grammar are only a sort of statistical common denominator of current practice. These rules become institutionalized and used as a mechanism of social control

line - A mark with length and direction(-s). An element of art which refers to the continuous mark made on some surface by a moving point. Types of line include: vertical, horizontal, diagonal, straight or ruled, curved, bent, angular, thin, thick or wide, interrupted (dotted, dashed, broken, etc.),blurred or fuzzy, controlled, freehand, parallel, hatching, meandering, and spiraling. Often it defines a space, and may create an outline or contour, define a silhouette; create patterns, or movement, and the illusion of mass or volume. It may be two-dimensional (as with pencil on paper) three-dimensional (as with wire) or implied (the edge of a shape or form).

mass - Refers to the effect and degree of bulk, density, and weight of matter in space; the area occupied by a form such as a building or sculpture. As opposed to plane and area, mass is three-dimensional

material - The substance or substances out of which something is or can be made. Examples include: clays, fibers, glass, papers, plastics, metals, pigments, stones, woods, etc. In body art the material might be the artist's body. In conceptual art there might be no material at all.

mat·ter
2 a : the substance of which a physical object is composed

metaphor - A situation in which a word or thing that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison. One thing conceived as representing another; a symbol

minimalism - A twentieth century art movement and style stressing the idea of reducing a work of art to the minimum number of colors, values, shapes, lines and textures. No attempt is made to represent or symbolize any other object or experience.
Modernism or modernism - An art movement characterized by the deliberate departure from tradition and the use of innovative forms of expression that distinguish many styles in the arts and literature of the late nineteenth and the twentieth century

narrative art - Art which represents elements of a story.

Genre and history painting are each types of narrative art. While genre paintings depict events of an everyday sort, history paintings depict famous events.

Modernists largely rejected narrative art in the 1950s and 1960s, though it has returned strongly since then, with artists embracing several means of presentation viewed by modernists as theatrical, and therefore inappropriate to the purity of art. These include video and performance art.

negative space - Empty space in an artwork, a void.
“Negative and positive space define one another. Each has as much to do with aesthetic value as the other.” Matthew Gehring, 2002.

opaque - Something that cannot be seen through; the opposite of transparent, although something through which some light passes would be described as translucent. (pr. oh-pake')

perception - The process of becoming aware through sight, sound, taste, smell, or touch; detection.

plane - Any flat level or surface.

positive space - Space in an artwork that is filled with something, such as lines, designs, color, shapes, or forms.

POSTMODERNISM: It is something of a gross oversimplification, considering that modernism and postmodernism are difficult concepts circulating in disputed territory, but it is safe to say at least that modernism tended to have faith in the perfectibility of mankind through technology and rationalistic planning. It is now felt that these were instruments of white European males interested only in maintaining their own hegemony, so the result was a certain homogeneity which disallowed cultural differences. Art which seemed to illustrate, foster or otherwise exemplify values like faith in perfectibility and rationalism was modernist art. In contrast, today's emphasis on the cultures of women, peoples of colour, and gays and lesbians might be seen as postmodernist by default. Examples of modernism include such things as Le Corbusier's house designs and Piet Mondrian's geometric abstraction, both of which were supposed not only to be aesthetic but, more importantly, to affect viewers in salutary ways. That the world could always supposedly be improved upon also led to two other characteristics of modernism in the arts: that art could progress, suggesting that the worst thing one could do would be to repeat something which had been done before, and that the way to progress in art was to focus on its only essential characteristic -- i.e., that painting would only be about painting, sculpture would only be about sculpture, etc., as in formalism. In contrast, postmodernism seems gleefully to assert that there is nothing new under the sun and that works which speak only about their essential characteristics really say nothing at all about the human condition. Colloquially, what is often simply described as "modern art" included types of work which actively critiqued modernist values, so while it might have been chronologically modern it was not modernist. In fact, what might be called anti-modernist art bears many of the characteristics of what we now call postmodernism. For example, neither Dada nor Surrealism had any faith in reason, preferred uncertainty, adapted imagery from other cultures and eras, and exploited irony, mockery and humour. (Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q, a reproduction of the Mona Lisa with a mustache and those letters applied summarily, is a prime example.) All of these traits appear in postmodernism. For example, in postmodern architecture we find allusions to illogical mixtures of historical building styles, many of the references turning the source on its ear in the same way as historical mannerism. See, for example, the use of the unexpected in James Stirling's Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart or Charles Moore's Piazza d'Italia in New Orleans. Because of its critical stance towards the certainty and homogeneity of modernist tradition, postmodernism is far too complex to characterize with one simple set of stylistic criteria. In any case, it is more a matter of any attitude which invokes an unconventional fusion or overt diversity of historical and/or cultural styles (e.g., David Salle), with particular emphasis on critique, irony or mockery (e.g., Guerilla Girls). Charles Jencks, for example, describes it as "characteristically double-coded and ironic..., [emphasizing] conflict and discontinuity of traditions, because this heterogeneity most clearly captures our pluralism." Linda Hutcheon asserts that postmodernism and parody are nearly synonymous. Warren Montag argues that "We act within a specific conjecture only to see that conjecture transformed beneath our feet, perhaps by our intervention itself, but always in ways that ultimately escape our intention or control, thereby requiring new interventions ad infinitum" (see Postmodernism and Its Critics, ed. E. A. Kaplan, for these and many other explanations). One of the better known proponents of postmodernism is Jean-François Lyotard, whose Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge offers lengthy meditations on the subject. In the introduction, for example, he defines it simply as "incredulity towards metanarratives," where "metanarrative" means the set of values and expectations underlying faith in reason and science. Elsewhere he argues that a postmodern work is not made according to preestablished rules and cannot therefore be judged by applying familiar categories of analysis; in fact, the very purpose of the work is to search for and create new sets of rules and categories.

pre·sen·ta·tion
c : something set forth for the attention of the mind

represent and representation - To stand for; symbolize. To depict or portray subjects a viewer may recognize as having a likeness; the opposite of abstraction. A representation is such a depiction.

scale - A proportion used in determining the dimensional relationship of a representation to that which it represents (its actual size), as in maps and architectural plans. Sometimes, proper proportion

sculpture - A three-dimensional work of art, or the art of making it. Such works may be carved, modeled, constructed, or cast. Sculptures can also be described as assemblage, in the round, and relief, and made in a huge variety of media.

semiotic or semiotics - Of or relating to semantics; a linguistic, or literary study of the meaning of forms-- signs and symbols and what they represent. It includes studies of iconography, iconology, and typology. It is strongly associated with postmodernism.

space - An element of art that refers to the distance or area between, around, above, below, or within things. It can be described as two-dimensional or three-dimensional; as flat, shallow, or deep; as open or closed; as positive or negative; and as actual, ambiguous, or illusory.

texture - An element of art which refers to the surface quality or "feel" of an object, its smoothness, roughness, softness, etc. Textures may be actual or simulated. Actual textures can be felt with the fingers, while simulated textures are suggested by the way the artist has painted certain areas of a picture. Words describing textures include: flat, smooth, shiny, glossy, glittery, velvety, soft, wet, gooey, furry, sandy, leathery, prickly, abrasive, rough, furry, bumpy, corrugated, and sticky.

time - A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future. Or, either a point or an interval in this continuum.

translucent - Allowing some light to pass through, but greatly obscuring the image of objects on the other side. A quality that is between transparent and opaque.

transparent - Allowing light to pass through so that objects can be clearly seen on the other side; the opposite of opaque. Window glass, cellophane and watercolors are usually transparent.

volume - Refers to the space within a form. Thus, in architecture, volume refers to the space within a building.