STYLES

Abstract Art: Not realistic, though the intention is often based on an actual subject, place, or feeling. Pure abstracion can be interpreted as any art in which the depiction of real objects has been entirely discarded and whose aesthetic content is expressed in a formal pattern or structure of shapes, lines and colors. When the representation of real objects is completely absent, such art may be called non-objective.

Abstract Expressionism: a 1940's New York painting movement based on Abstract Art. This type of painting is often referred to as action painting.

American Genre Painting: Usually paintings of the rural Midwest and west during the 1920s and 30s.

Art Deco: During the 1920s and 30s, artists used decorative motifs derived from French, African, Aztec, Chinese, and Egyptian cultures.

Art Nouveau: A style which evolved during the 1890s which used asymmetrical decorative elements derived from objects found in nature.

Ashcan School: A group of American painters and illustrators of the early 20th century, often known as The Eight. They were Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Luks, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, Maurice Prendergast, Arthur Davies, and Ernest Lawson. Their work depicted such subjects as the streets and inhabitants of big cities with a vigorous sense of realism.

Barbizon School: French landscape artists who worked near Barbizon, France between 1835 and 1870.

Bauhaus: A school of German art and design founded by Walter Gropius in 1919. The idea behind the Bauhaus style was based on simplified forms and unadorned functionalism. Followers of the Bauhaus style believed that elegantly designed items could be made for the masses using techniques and materials now industrially available. Although the school was closed by the Nazis in 1933, followers of the ideas of the Bauhaus school continued working in other countries.


Beaux-arts: A school of fine arts located in Paris which stressed the necessity of academic painting.

Contemporary Art: Generally defined as art which was produced during the second half of the twentieth century.

Constructivist Art (Constructivism) is a term used to define a type of totally abstract (non-representational) artwork that is very ordered and often minimal and geometric in style. The principles of constructivism theory are derived from three main movements from the early 20th century: Suprematism in Russia, De Stijl (Neo Plasticism) in Holland and the Bauhaus in Germany. These early movements were idealistic, seeking a new order in art and architecture that dealt with social and economic problems

Cubism: A revolutionary art movement between 1907 and 1914 in which natural forms were changed by geometrical reduction. Leading figures were Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.

De Stijl (Also called Neo Plasticism) Lead primarily by painters Piet Mondian and Theo van Doesberg, De Stijl was an art movement that advocated reduction of form and simplistic abstraction. Most compositions or subjects were reduced to rectangles, primary colors and black and white. Their ideas were published by van Doesberg in a journal titled "De Stijl" (1917-1928) and written as a manifesto title "Neo-Plasticism" in 1920. Their work exerted tremendous influence on the Bauhaus Style in Germany.

Expressionism: A concept of painting in which traditional adherence to realism and proportion is overridden by the intensity of an artist's emotional response to the subject.

Impressionism: A painting technique in which the artist concentrates on the changing effects of light and color. Often this style can be characterized by its use of discontinuous brush strokes and heavy impasto.

Genre: A form of realistic painting of people that depicts ordinary events. These paintings are not religious, historical, abstract or mythological.

Non-Objective Art: Not representing any object, figure, or element in nature, in any way; nonrepresentational.

Pop Art: A style derived from commercial art forms and characterized by larger than life replicas of items from mass culture. This style evolved in the late 1950s and was characterized in the 1960s by such artists as Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Claus Oldenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Larry Rivers, Robert Rauschenberg, George Segal, and Robert Indiana.

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