Glossary

Acrylic solution color
That rests from the mixture of two or more colored lights, the visual blending of separate spots of transmitted colored light.

Acrylite FF
(clear) sheet is a continuously manufactured crystal clear acrylic sheet, produced by CYRO’s proprietary technology. ACRYLITE FF sheet is a rigid, impact-resistant, weatherable, light weight thermoplastic offering excellent optical quality. Half the weight of glass with many times the impact resistance, ACRYLITE FF sheet offers the easy handling and processing of extruded sheet, along with the high optical characteristics and low stress levels expected of cast sheet products. ACRYLITE sheet products can be easily cut, routed, drilled, and cemented. This product has a significantly higher cost than glass but it makes the trouble free shipping of framed art possible.

Acrylite P-99
(non-glare) matte finish acrylic sheet, minimizes reflection for glare-free viewing. produced by CYRO’s proprietary technology. ACRYLITE P-99 sheet is a rigid, impact-resistant, weatherable, light weight thermoplastic offering excellent optical quality. Half the weight of glass with many times the impact resistance, ACRYLITE P-99 sheet offers the easy handling and processing of extruded sheet, along with the high optical characteristics and low stress levels expected of cast sheet products. ACRYLITE sheet products can be easily cut, routed, drilled, and cemented. This product has a significantly higher cost than regar non-glare glass but it makes the trouble free shipping of framed art possible.

Artist Enhanced
A term used to describe prints to which an artist has added color or washes after the piece has been printed. (See Hand-embellished)

Artist-Signed Stamp
A stamp signed by the artist and framed in combination with a stamp print.

Aesthetics

Afterimage
The visual impression that remains after the initial stimus is removed. Staring at a single intense hue may cause the cones, or color receptors, of the eye to become so fatigued that they perceive only the complement of the original hue when it has been removed.

Airbrush
A small-scale paint sprayer that allows the artist to control a fine mist of paint.

Analogous
colors or analogous hues Closely related hues, especially those in which we can see a common hue; hues that are neighbors on the color wheel, such as blue, blue-green, and green.

Aperture
In photography the camera lens opening and its relative diameter. Measured in f-stops, such as f/8, f/ I 1, etc. As the number increases, the size of the aperture decreases, thereby reducing the amount of light passing through the lens and striking the film.

Applied art
Art in which aesthetic values are used in the design or decoration of utilitarian objects.

Aquatint
An intaglio printmaking process in which value areas rather than lines are etched on the printing plate. Powdered resin is sprinkled on the plate and heated until it adheres. The plate is then immersed in an acid bath. The acid bites around the resin particles, creating a rough surface that holds ink. Also, a print made using this process.

Arabesque
Ornament or surface decoration with intricate curves and flowing lines based on plant forms.

Arcade
A series of arches supported by columns or piers. Also, a covered passageway between two series of arches or between a series of arches and a wall.

Arch
A curved structure designed to span an opening, usually made of stone or other masonry. Roman arches are semicircar; Islamic and Gothic arches come to a point at the top.

Armature
A rigid framework serving as a supporting inner core for clay or other soft scpting material.

Art Nouveau
A style that originated in the late 1880s, based on the sinuous curves of plant forms, used primarily in architectural detailing and the applied arts.

Assemblage
Scpture using preexisting, sometimes “found” objects that may or may not contribute their original identities to the total content of the work.

Asymmetrical
Without symmetry.

Atmospheric perspective
See Perspective

Automatism Automatic or unconscious action
Employed by Surrealist writers and artists to allow unconscious ideas and feelings to be expressed.

Avant
garde French for advance guard” or “vanguard.” Those considered the leaders (and often regarded as radicals) in the invention and application of new concepts in a given field.

Axis
An implied straight line in the center of a form along its dominant direction.

Abstract
Not realistic, though the intention is often based on an actual subject, place, or feeling. Pure abstraction 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
1940’s New York painting movement based on Abstract Art. This type of painting is often referred to as action painting.

Accent
Emphasis given to certain elements in a painting which makes them attract more attention. Details that define an object or piece of art.

Acrylic
A rapid drying paint which is easy to remove with mineral spirits; a plastic substance commonly used as a binder for paints.

Action Painting
Any painting style calling for vigorous physical activity; specifically, Abstract Expressionism. Examples include the New York School art movement and the work of Jackson Pollock.

Aerial Perspective
Capturing the earths atmosphere by using painting techniques that make distant objects appear to have less color, texture, and distinction.

Aesthetic Pertaining
to the beautif, as opposed to the usef, scientific, or emotional. An aesthetic response is an appreciation of such beauty.

Alkyd
Synthetic resin used in paints and mediums. As a medium works as a binder that encapsates the pigment and speeds the drying time.

Alla Prima Technique
in which the final surface of a painting is completed in one sitting, without under painting. Italian for “at the first”.

Analogous Colors
Colors that are closely related, or near each other on the color spectrum. Especially those in which we can see common hues.

Aquatint
A print produced by the same technique as an etching, except that the areas between the etched lines are covered with a powdered resin that protects the surface from the biting process of the acid bath. The granar appearance that rests in the print aims at approximating the effects and gray tonalities of a watercolor drawing.

Archival
Refers to materials that meet certain criteria for permanence such as lignin-free, pH neutral, alkaline-buffered, stable in light, etc.

Armature
A rigid framework, often wood or steel, used to support a scpture or other large work while it is being made.

Aerial Perspective
Capturing the earths atmosphere by using painting techniques that make distant objects appear to have less color, texture, and distinction.

Archival
Refers to materials that meet certain criteria for permanence such as lignin-free, pH neutral, alkaline-buffered, stable in light, etc.

Bas Relief
Scpture in which figures project only slightly from a background, as on a coin. Also known as low relief scpture.

Bauhaus
A design school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 in Germany. The Bauhaus attempted to achieve reconciliation between the aesthetics of design and the more commercial demands of industrial mass production. Artists include Klee, Kandinsky, and Feininger.

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

Binder
A substance in paints that causes particles of pigment to adhere to one another and to a support such as oil or acrylic.

Bronze
An alloy of copper and tin, sometimes containing small proportions of other elements such as zinc or phosphorus. It is stronger, harder, and more durable than brass, and has been used most extensively since antiquity for cast scpture. Bronze alloys vary in color from a silvery hue to a rich, coppery red. U.S. standard

Beam
The horizontal stone or timber placed across an architectural space to take the weight of the roof or wall above; also called a lintel.

Buttress
A support, usually exterior, for a wall, arch, or vat, that opposes the lateral forces of these structures. A flying buttress consists of a strut or segment of an arch carrying the thrust of a vat to a vertical pier positioned away from the main portion of the building. An important element in Gothic cathedrals.

Byzantine art
Styles of painting, design, and architecture developed from the fifth century A.D. in the Byzantine Empire of eastern Europe. Characterized in architecture by round arches, large domes, and extensive use of mosaic; characterized in painting by formal design, frontal and stylized figures, and a rich use of color, especially gold, in generally religious subject matter.

Brushwork
The characteristic way each artist brushes paint onto a support.

Burnishing
The act of rubbing greenware (clay) with any smooth tool to polish it, and tighten the surface.

Balance
An arrangement of parts achieving a state of equilibrium between opposing forces or influences. Major types are symmetrical and asymmetrical. See Symmetry

Barrel vat
See Vat

C alligraphy
In printing and drawing a free and rhythmic use of line to accentuate design. It is seen at its best in Japanese wood-block prints and Chinese scrolls. Also, fine, stylized handwriting using quills, brushes or pens with ink.

Canvas
Closely woven cloth used as a support for paintings.

Cartoon
A simple drawing with humorous or satirical content.

Casting
The process of making a scpture or other object by pouring liquid material such as clay, metal or plastic into a mold and allowing it to harden, thereby taking on the shape of the confining mold.

Ceramics
The art of making objects of clay and firing them in a kiln. Wares of earthenware and porcelain, as well as scpture are made by ceramists. Enamel is also a ceramic technique. Ceramic materials may be decorated with slip, engobe, or glaze, applied by any number of techniques. Scpture usually made by coil, slab, or other manual technique.

Chiaroscuro
In drawing, painting, and the graphic arts, chiaroscuro (ke-ra-skooro) refers to the rendering of forms through a balanced contrast between light and dark areas. The technique that was introduced during the Renaissance, is effective in creating an illusion of depth and space around the principal figures in a composition. Leonardo Da Vinci and Rembrandt were painters who excelled in the use of this technique.

Classical Style
In Greek art, the style of the 5th century B.C. Loosely, the term classical is often applied to all the art of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as to any art based on logical, rational principles and deliberate composition.

Coiling
A method of forming pottery or scpture from rolls of clay that are smoothed together to form the sides of a jar or pot.

Commission
To order an original work from an artist.

Commission Print
Also called ‘time-limited edition’ print. The number of orders received as of an established deadline date determines the edition size of this print.

Condition
A prints physical condition influences its market value. Condition typically is described as ranging from mint – completely undamaged and original – to “poor.” A poor-condition print may be creased, torn, water or tape-blemished, trimmed smaller than its original size or otherwise damaged.

Conservation Framing
Methods of mounting and framing that preserve a print in original mint condition. One important aspect of conservation framing is that all material in actual contact with the print contains no chemicals that might eventually damage the paper or the inked image: these materials are usually described as “acid-free”. UV protection is also considered in conservation framing.

Conservation Stamp Prints
Prints that have been reproduced for sale with conservation stamps. Sales of these stamps and prints often benefit conservation programs.

Countersignature
Signature of someone other than the artist that adds either additional authenticity or historical value to a limited-edition print.

Canvas Print
A reproduction in which an image is printed directly onto canvas. These prints can be produced using offset lithography, digital printing or other methods. Sometimes artists will add brush strokes directly onto the canvas after the piece has been printed.

Canvas Transfer
A reproduction in which inks are chemically lifted off a piece of paper and applied to a piece of canvas. Some processes can replicate the texture and appearance of an original painting.

Certificate of Authenticity
A warranty card or statement of authenticity of a limited edition print that records the title of the work, the artists name, the edition size and the prints number within the edition, the number of artists proofs and the release date. It is a guarantee that the edition is limited and that the image will not be published again in the same form.

Chromolithography
A color-printing process in which separate printing plates are used to apply each component color. Often called “four-color printing because the fl range of color tones are achieved with only four plates – red, blue, yellow and black.

Coated Paper
Paper manufactured with a thin surface coating of clay. This coating produces an extremely sharp, finely detailed image because it prevents ink from penetrating the paper fibers.

Collagraph Printmaking Technique
The Collagraph print is best described as a collage printmaking technique, where the image is composed from a variety of textured materials glued to a substrate and printed either in an intaglio or relief fashion.

Collage
A work of art made by pasting various materials such as bits of paper, cloth, etc. onto a piece of paper, board or canvas.

Color Field Painting
A style of painting prominent from the 1950s through the 1970s, featuring large fields or areas of color, meant to evoke an aesthetic or emotional response through the color alone.

Color Wheel
A circar grid that represents the colors based on color theory. This grid clearly shows the relationships colors have with each other (complimentary, opposite, etc.).

Complimentary Colors
Hues directly opposite one another on the color wheel and therefore assumed to be as different from one another as possible. When placed side by side, complementary colors are intensified; when mixed together, they produce a neutral (or gray) color.

Composition
The organization, design or placement of the individual elements in a work of art. The aim is to achieve balance and proportionality. Usually applied to two-dimensional art.

Conceptual Art
An art form in which the underlying idea or concept and the process by which it is achieved are more important than any tangible product.

Construction
An art work that is actually assembled or built on the premises where it is to be shown. Many constructions are meant to be temporary and are disassembled after the exhibition is over.

Conte
Initially it was a trade name for a brand of French crayons made from a unique compound of pigments with a chalk binder. Conte crayons are free from grease, making them acceptable for lithographic drawing.

Contemporary Art
Generally defined as art that has been produced since the second half of the twentieth century.

Content
The message conveyed by a work of art – its subject matter and whatever the artist hopes to convey by that subject matter.

Contour
A line that creates a boundary separating an area of space or object from the space around it.

Contrapposto
Literally, counterpoise. A method of portraying the human figure, especially in scpture, often achieved by placing the weight on one foot and turning the shoder so the figure appears relaxed and mobile. The rest is often a gracef S-curve.

Converging
Lines that go towards the same point.

Cool Colors
Those that suggest a sense of coolness. Blue , Green , Violet

Craftsmanship
Aptitude, skill, and manual dexterity in the use of tools and materials.

Cross-Hatching
An area of closely spaced lines intersecting one another, used to create a sense of three-dimensionality on a flat surface, especially in drawing and printmaking. See also hatching, stippling.

Cubism
A style of art pioneered in the early 20th century by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. In the most developed form of Cubism, forms are fragmented into planes or geometric facets, like the facets in a diamond; these planes are rearranged to foster a pictorial, but not naturalistic, reality; forms may be viewed simtaneously from several vantage points; figure and background have equal importance; and the colors are deliberately restricted to a range of neutrals.

Curvilinear
Stressing the use of curved lines as opposed to rectilinear which stresses straight lines.

Camera obscura
A dark room (or box) with a small hole in one side, through which an inverted image of the view outside is projected onto the opposite wall, screen, or mirror. The image is then traced. This forerunner of the modern camera was a tool for recording an optically accurate image.

Cantilever
A beam or slab projecting a substantial distance beyond its supporting post or wall; a projection supported at only one end.

Capital
In architecture, the top part, capstone, or head of a column or pillar.

Caricature
A representation in which the subject’s distinctive features are exaggerated.

Chiaroscuro
Italian for light-dark. The gradations of light and dark values in two-dimensional imagery; especially the illusion of rounded, three-dimensional form created through gradations of light and shade rather than line. Highly developed by Renaissance painters.

Classical
The art of ancient Greece and Rome. More specifically, Classical refers to the style of Greek art that flourished during the fifth century B.C. Any art based on a clear, rational, and regar structure, emphasizing horizontal and vertical directions, and organizing its parts with special emphasis on balance and proportion. The term classic is also used to indicate recognized excellence.

Closed form
A self-contained or explicitly limited form; having a resolved balance of tensions, a sense of calm completeness implying a totality within itself.

Cluster houses
Residential units laced close together in order to maximize the usable exterior space of the surrounding area, within the concept of single-family dwellings.

Coffer
In architecture, a decorative sunken panel on the underside of a ceiling.

Colonnade
A row of columns usually spanned or connected by beams (lintels).

Color field painting
A movement that grew out of Abstract Expressionism, in which large stained or painted areas or “fields of color evoke aesthetic and emotional responses.

Color wheel
A circar arrangement of contiguous spectral hues used in some color systems. Also called a color circle.

Complementary colors
Two hues directly opposite one another on a color wheel which, when mixed together in proper proportions, produce a neutral gray. The true complement of a color can be seen in its afterimage.

Composition
The bringing together of parts or elements to form a whole; the structure, organization, or total form of a work of art. See also design.

Conceptual art
An art form in which the originating idea and the process by which it is presented take precedence over a tangible product. Conceptual works are sometimes produced in visible form, but they often exist only as descriptions of mental concepts or ideas. This trend developed in the late 1960s, in part as a way to avoid the commercialization of art.

Content
Meaning or message contained and communicated by a work of art, including its emotional, intellectual, symbolic, thematic, and narrative connotations.

Curtain wall

cartoon
1. A humorous or satirical drawing. 2. A drawing completed as a fl-scale working drawing, usually for a fresco painting, mural, or tapestry.

Carving
A subtractive process in which a scpture is formed by removing material from a block or mass of wood, stone, or other material, using sharpened tools.

Casein
A white, tasteless, odorless milk protein used in making paint as well as plastics, adhesives, and foods.

Classical
The art of ancient Greece and Rome. More specifically, Classical refers to the style of Greek art that flourished during the fifth century B.C. Any art based on a clear, rational, and regar structure, emphasizing horizontal and vertical directions, and organizing its parts with special emphasis on balance and proportion. The term classic is also used to indicate recognized excellence.

Closed form
A self-contained or explicitly limited form; having a resolved balance of tensions, a sense of calm completeness implying a totality within itself.

Cluster houses
Residential units laced close together in order to maximize the usable exterior space of the surrounding area, within the concept of single-family dwellings.

Coffer
In architecture, a decorative sunken panel on the underside of a ceiling.

Colonnade
A row of columns usually spanned or connected by beams (lintels).

Color field painting
A movement that grew out of Abstract Expressionism, in which large stained or painted areas or “fields of color evoke aesthetic and emotional responses.

Color wheel
A circar arrangement of contiguous spectral hues used in some color systems. Also called a color circle.

Complementary colors
Two hues directly opposite one another on a color wheel which, when mixed together in proper proportions, produce a neutral gray. The true complement of a color can be seen in its afterimage.

Composition
The bringing together of parts or elements to form a whole; the structure, organization, or total form of a work of art. See also design.

Conceptual art
An art form in which the originating idea and the process by which it is presented take precedence over a tangible product. Conceptual works are sometimes produced in visible form, but they often exist only as descriptions of mental concepts or ideas. This trend developed in the late 1960s, in part as a way to avoid the commercialization of art.

Content
Meaning or message contained and communicated by a work of art, including its emotional, intellectual, symbolic, thematic, and narrative connotations.

Curtain wall
A non-load-bearing wall.

D ealers
Galleries, collectible shops or individuals who carry and sell artwork. Authorized dealers are those who, by signed agreement, carry and sell the artwork represented by certain print publishers.

Diptych (dip’tik)
A painting done in two separate panels. Each part is a complete work in itself, but when presented together they form a larger fly integrated work.

Digital Print
A reproduction in which a digital file of an original painting is printed by a special inkjet printer that sprays ink directly onto the surface of a substrate. These digital prints, sometimes called gicles or iris prints, can match the colors of the original with millions of possible hues. (See Gicle)

Distributor
A person or company responsible for marketing and selling prints and supplying prints to galleries. Sometimes the publisher and distributor are the same entity.

Dry Mount
Framing method in which a print is fastened to a stiff backing with non-liquid adhesive. Dry mounting is not recommended for prints of any value.

Dry Point
A free-hand drawing scratched or engraved on a metal plate with a sharp tool. The plate is inked and then wiped to remove all ink except what remains within the cut grooves. Paper is laid over the plate and the ink transferred to it using rollers under high pressure. Dry points are often incorrectly called “Etchings”.

Dada
A movement in art and literature, founded in Switzerland in the early twentieth century, which ridiced contemporary cture and conventional art. The Dadaists shared an antimilitaristic and antiaesthetic attitude, generated in part by the horrors of World War I and in part by a rejection of accepted canons of morality and taste. The anarchic spirit of Dada can be seen in the works of Duchamp, Man Ray, Hoch, Miro, and Picasso. Many Dadaists later explored Surrealism.

Design
Both the process and the rest of structuring the elements of visual form; composition.

De Stijl Dutch for “the style,”
a purist art movement begun in the Netherlands during World War I by Mondrian and others. It involved painters, scptors, designers, and architects whose works and ideas were expressed in De Stijl magazine. De Stijl was aimed at creating a universal language of form that wod be independent of individual emotion. Visual form was pared down to primary colors, plus black and white, and rectangar shapes. The movement was influential primarily in architecture.

Divisionism
See Pointillism

Dome
A generally hemispherical roof or vat. Theoretically, an arch rotated 360 degrees on its vertical axis.

Drypoint
An intaglio printmaking process in which lines are scratched directly into a metal plate with a steel needle. Also, the resting print.

Eclecticism
The practice of selecting or borrowing from earlier styles and combining the borrowed elements.

Edition
In printmaking, the total number of prints made and approved by an artist, usually numbered consecutively. Also, a limited number of mtiple originals of a single design in any medium.

Elevation
In architecture, a scale drawing of any vertical side of a given structure.

Encaustic
A painting medium in which pigment is suspended in a binder of hot wax.

Engraving
An intaglio printmaking process in which grooves are cut into a metal or wood surface with a sharp cutting tool called a burin or graver. Also, the resting print.

Entasis
In classical architecture, the slight swelling or bge in the center of a column, which corrects the illusion of concave tapering produced by parallel straight lines.

Etching
An intaglio printmaking process in which a metal plate is first coated with acid-resistant wax, then scratched to expose the metal to the bite of nitric acid where lines are desired. Also, the resting print.

Expressionism
The broad term that describes emotional art, most often boldly executed and making free use of distortion and symbolic or invented color. More specifically, Expressionism refers to individual and group styles originating in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See also Abstract Expressionism. eye level The height of the viewer’s eyes above the ground plane.

Editiond
The number of printed copies made of an original work. The standard phrase edition size therefore refers to the number of copies, not a prints physical dimensions. Edition size generally does not include artist proofs or any special edition copies that might be made, these special editions such as printers proofs, conservation editions, etc., are all numbered separately.

Etching
The process of rendering an image upon a metal plate by using nitric or other acid to dissolve portions of the metal surface. The image is transferred to paper in much the same manner as a dry point. Properly called a print or proof the resting copy is more commonly called an etching

F acade
In architecture, a term used to refer to the front exterior of a building. Also, other exterior sides when they are emphasized.

Fauvism
A style of painting introduced in Paris in the early twentieth century, characterized by areas of bright, contrasting color and simplified shapes. The name les fauves is French for “the wild beasts.”

Figure Separate
shape(s) distinguishable from a background or ground.

Fine art
Art created for purely aesthetic expression, communication, or contemplation. Painting and scpture are the best known of the fine arts.

Flamboyant
Any design dominated by flamelike, curvilinear rhythms. In architecture, having complex, flamelike forms characteristic of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Gothic style.

Flying buttress
See Buttress

Folk art
Art of people who have had no formal, academic training, but whose works are part of an established tradition of style and craftsmanship.

Foreshortening
The representation of forms on a two-dimensional surface by presenting the length in such a way that the long axis appears to project toward or recede away from the viewer.

Form
In the broadest sense, the total physical characteristics of an object, event, or situation.

Formalist
Having an emphasis on highly structured visual relationships rather than on subject matter or nonvisual content.

Format
The shape or proportions of a picture plane.

Fresco
A painting technique in which pigments suspended in water are applied to a damp lime-plaster surface. The pigments dry to become part of the plaster wall or surface.

Frontal
An adjective describing an object that faces the viewer directly, rather than being set at an angle or foreshortened.

Futurism
A group movement that originated in Italy in 1909. One of several movements to grow out of Cubism. Futurists added implied motion to the shifting planes and mtiple observation points of the Cubists; they celebrated natural as well as mechanical motion and speed. Their glorification of danger, war, and the machine age was in keeping with the martial spirit developing in Italy at the time.

Gesso
A mixture of glue and either chalk or plaster of Paris applied as a ground or coating to surfaces in order to give them the correct properties to receive paint. Gesso can also be built up or molded into relief designs, or carved.

Glaze
In ceramics, a vitreous or glassy coating applied to seal and decorate surfaces. Glaze may be colored, transparent, or opaque. In oil painting, a thin transparent or translucent layer brushed over another layer of paint, allowing the first layer to show through but altering its color slightly.

Gothic
Primarily an architectural style that prevailed in western Europe from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries, characterized by pointed arches, ribbed vats, and flying buttresses, that made it possible to create stone buildings that reached great heights.

Gouache
An opaque, water-soluble paint. Watercolor to which opaque white has been added.

Green belt
A strip of planned or protected open space, consisting of recreational parks, farm land, or unctivated land, often used to define and limit the boundaries of a community and prevent urban sprawl.

Ground
The background in two-dimensional works-the area around and between figures. Also, the surface onto which paint is applied.

Gicle
A term often used to describe prints or prints on canvas made using digital files and inkjet printers. (See Digital Print)

Glazing
Glass or acrylic set or made to be set in a frame that protects the artwork from light, dust and other environmental hazards. There are different levels of glazing, from lightweight acrylic and regar glass to more expensive specialty products like anti-glare and anti-reflective glazing.

Gouache (gwash)
A medium in which opaque pigments are mixed with water and a preparation of gum. Gouache is also used to describe a painting made with such pigments.

Ground
The surface upon which a painting is done – canvas, Masonite, and so on.

H and-embellished
A term used to describe prints to which an artist has added color or washes after the piece has been printed. (See Artist Enhanced)

Happening
An event conceived by artists and performed by artists and others, usually unrehearsed and without a specific script or stage.

Hard-edge
A term first used in the 1950s to distinguish styles of painting in which shapes are precisely defined by sharp edges, in contrast to the usually blurred or soft edges in Abstract Expressionist paintings.

Hatching
A technique used in drawing and linear forms of printmaking, in which lines are placed in parallel series to darken the value of an area. Cross-hatching is drawing one set of hatchings over another in a different direction so that the lines cross.

Hellenistic
Style of the last of three phases of ancient Greek art (300-100 B.C.), characterized by emotion, drama, and the interaction of scptural forms with the surrounding space.

Hierarchic proportion
Use of unnatural proportion to show the relative importance of figures.

High key
Exclusive use of pale or light values within a given area or surface.

Horizon line
In linear perspective, the implied or actual line or edge placed on a two- dimensional surface to represent the place in nature where the sky meets the horizontal land or water plane. The horizon line matches the eye level on a two-dimensional surface. Lines or edges parallel to the ground plane and moving away from the viewer appear to converge at vanishing points on the horizon line.

Hue
That property of a color identifying a specific, named wavelength of light such as green, red, violet, and so on.

Humanism
A ctural and intellectual movement during the Renaissance, following the rediscovery of the art and literature of ancient Greece and Rome. A philosophy or attitude concerned with the interests, achievements, and capabilities of human beings rather than with the abstract concepts and problems of theology or science

I con
An image or symbolic representation often with sacred significance.

Iconography
The symbolic meanings of subjects and signs used to convey ideas important to particar ctures or religions, and the conventions governing the use of such forms.

Impasto
In painting, thick paint applied to a surface in a heavy manner, having the appearance and consistency of buttery paste.

Impressionism
A style of painting that originated in France about 1870. Paintings of casual subjects, executed outdoors, using divided brush strokes to capture the mood of a particar moment as defined by the transitory effects of light and color. The first Impressionist exhibit was held in 1874.

Intaglio
Any printmaking technique in which lines and areas to be inked and transferred to paper are recessed below the surface of the printing plate. Etching, engraving, drypoint, and aquatint are all intaglio processes. See also print.

Intensity
The relative purity or saturation of a hue (color), on a scale from bright (pure) to dl (mixed with another hue or a neutral. Also called chroma.

Intermediate color
A hue between a primary and a secondary on the color wheel, such as yellow-green, a mixture of yellow and green.

International Style
An architectural style that emerged in several European countries between 1910 and 1920. Related to purism and De Stijl in painting, it joined structure and exterior design into a noneclectic form based on rectangar geometry and growing out of the basic function and structure of the building.

Image Size
Actual dimensions of a printed image. This refers only to the image itself and not to the size of the paper it is printed on.

International Editions
A series of prints/canvas that are distributed outside the country where the artist resides.

Issue Price
The original price of a limited edition print when first offered for retail sale.

Kinetic art
Art that incorporates actual movement as part of the design.

Kore Greek for “maiden.”
An Archaic Greek statue of a standing clothed young woman.

Kouros Greek for “youth.”
An Archaic Greek statue of a standing nude young male.

Linear perspective
See Perspective

Lintel
See Beam

Lithography
A planographic printmaking technique based on the antipathy of oil and Water. The image is drawn with a grease crayon or painted with tusche on a stone or grained aluminum plate. The surface is then chemically treated and dampened so that it will accept ink only where the crayon or tusche has been used.

Local color
The actual color as distinguished from the apparent color of objects and surfaces; true color, without shadows or reflections.

Logo Short for “logotype.”
Sign, name, or trademark of an institution, firm, or publication, consisting of letter forms borne on one printing plate or piece of type.

Loom
A device for producing cloth by interweaving fibers at right angles.

Low key
Consistent use of dark values within a given area or surface lumina The use of actual light as an art medium.

Linocut
An image cut into the surface of linoleum, usually, mounted on a block of wood. The surface is then inked, wiped, and the image transferred to paper by pressure.

Matting
Decorative board used in framing that provides contrast between the image and the moding. Most matting is acid-free and is an important part of the conservation framing technique.

Medallion
Cast-metal medallions sometimes are issued in conjunction with the publication of prints, especially stamp prints. Design of the medallion artwork usually duplicates some portion of the print. Such medallions can be gold-plated, silver, bronze or even pewter.

Medium
(plural: media) The material or technique used in creating a work of art. Oil paint, acrylic paint, watercolor, bronze, wood, and stone are all examples of artistic media.

Mint Stamp
An unsigned stamp framed with a copy of the print from which the stamp was made. (See Artist Signed Stamp)

Mixed Media
An artwork combing two or more artistic media – for example, scratchboard and paint, pencil and watercolor – bronze and wood.

Moding
A piece of wood, plastic, metal, or other material used to frame a piece of art.

Mannerism
A style that developed in the sixteenth century as a reaction to the classical rationality and balanced harmony of the High Renaissance; characterized by the dramatic use of space and light, exaggerated color, elongation of figures, and distortions of perspective, scale, and proportion.

Mass
Three-dimensional form having physical bk. Also, the illusion of such a form on a two-dimensional surface.

Mat Border
of cardboard or similar material placed around a picture as a neutral area between the frame and the picture.

Matte
A dl finish or surface, especially in painting, photography, and ceramics.

Medium
(pl. media or mediums) 1. A particar material along with its accompanying technique; a specific type of artistic technique or means of expression determined by the use of particar materials. 2. In paint, the fluid in which pigment is suspended, allowing it to spread and adhere to the surface.

Minimalism
A nonrepresentational style of scpture and painting, usually severely restricted in the use of visual elements and often consisting of simple geometric shapes or masses. The style came to prominence in the late 1960s.

Mixed
media Works of art made with more than one medium.

Mobile
A type of scpture in which parts move, often activated by air currents. See also kinetic art.

Modeling
Working pliable material such as clay or wax into three-dimensional forms. In drawing or painting, the effect of light falling on a three-dimensional object so that the illusion of its mass is created and defined by value gradations.

Modernism
Theory and practice in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, which holds that each new generation must build on past styles in new ways or break with the past in order to make the next major historical contribution. Characterized by idealism; seen as “high art,” as differentiated from popar art. In painting, most clearly seen in the work of the Post-Impressionists, beginning in 1885; in architecture, most evident in the work of Bauhaus and International Style architects, beginning about 1920.

Mode
A standard unit of measure in architecture. The part of a structure used as a standard by which the rest is proportioned.

Montage
1. A composition made up of pictures or parts of pictures previously drawn, painted, or photographed. 2. In motion pictures, the combining of separate bits of film to portray the character of a single event through mtiple views.

Mosaic
An art medium in which small pieces of colored glass, stone, or ceramic tile called tessera are embedded in a background material such as plaster or mortar. Also, works made using this technique.

Mural
A large wall painting, often executed in fresco.

Naive
art Art made by people with no formal art training.

Nave
The tall central space of a church or cathedral, usually flanked by side aisles negative shape A background or ground shape seen in relation to foreground or figure shapes.

Neoclassicism
New classicism. A revival of classical Greek and Roman forms in art, music, and literature, particarly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe and America. It was part of a reaction to the excesses of Baroque and Rococo art.

Neutrals
Not associated with any single hue. Blacks, whites, grays, and dl gray-browns. A neutral can be made by mixing complementary hues.

Nonobjective
See nonrepresentational and abstract art.

Nonrepresentational
Art without reference to anything outside itself-without representation. Also called nonobjective-without recognizable objects.

Numbered
Each copy of a limited edition print is marked with two numbers separated by a slash mark. The first number identifies the particar copy, and the second indicates edition size: 42/950, for instance, identifies print number 42 of a 950-copy edition. (See Artist Proof and Lithography)

Oil
Paint made of pigment mixed with oil usually linseed. The oil serves to keep the paint fluid for a period of time and then as a drying and hardening agent.

Open Edition
A print produced with no predetermined limit to the number of copies that might be made. Open edition prints may or may not be signed by the artist.

Original Lithograph
Original pieces of art created on the printing press by an artist or master printer who creates the master plates and executes the printing process. No original exists from which the prints are reproduced, and each print is an original work of art.

Original Painting
A one-of-a-kind image created by an artist that often sells for several thousands of dollars.

Original Prints
Prints, such as serigraphs or original lithographs, that are created without the use of photography. They are original because every print in an edition is created directly by the artist and may vary slightly from the other prints in the edition.

Overall Print Size
The physical dimensions of the paper upon which a print is made.

Offset printing
Planographic printing by indirect image-transfer from photomechanical plates. The plate transfers ink to a rubber-covered cylinder, which “offsets” the ink to the paper. Also called photo-offset and offset lithography.

Oil paint
Paint in which the pigment is held together with a binder of oil, usually linseed oil.

Opaque
Impenetrable by light; not transparent or translucent.

Open form
A form whose contour is irregar or broken, having a sense of growth, change, or unresolved tension; form in a state of becoming.

Optical color
mixture Apparent rather than actual color mixture, produced by interspersing brush strokes or dots of color instead of physically mixing them. The implied mixing occurs in the eye of the viewer and produces a lively color sensation.

Pastels
1. Sticks of powdered pigment held together with a gum binding agent. 2. Pale colors or tints.

Performance art
Dramatic presentation by visual artists (as distinguished from theater artists such as actors and dancers) before an audience, usually apart from a formal theatrical setting.

Perspective
A system for creating an illusion of depth or three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. Usually refers to linear perspective, which is based on the fact that parallel lines or edges appear to converge and objects appear smaller as the distance between them and the viewer increases. Atmospheric perspective (aerial perspective) creates the illusion of distance by reducing color saturation, value contrast, and detail in order to imply the hazy effect of atmosphere between the viewer and distant objects. Isometric perspective is not a visual or optical interpretation, but a mechanical means to show space and volume in rectangar forms. Parallel lines remain parallel; there is no convergence.

Perspective rendering
A view of an architectural structure drawn in linear perspective, usually from a three-quarter view or similar vantage point that shows two sides of the proposed building.

Photorealism
A style of painting that became prominent in the 1970s, based on the cool objectivity of photographs as records of subjects.

Pictorial space
In a painting or other two-dimensional art, illusionary space which appears to recede backward into depth from the picture plane.

Picture plane
The two-dimensional picture surface.

Photorealism
A style of painting that became prominent in the 1970s, based on the cool objectivity of photographs as records of subjects.

Pictorial space
In a painting or other two-dimensional art, illusionary space which appears to recede backward into depth from the picture plane.

Picture plane
The two-dimensional picture surface.

Positive shape
A figure or foreground shape, as opposed to a negative ground or background shape.

Post-and-beam system
(post and lintel) In architecture, a structural system that uses two or more uprights or posts to support a horizontal beam (or lintel) which spans the space between them.

Post-Impressionism
A general term applied to various personal styles of painting by French artists (or artists living in France) that developed from about 1885 to 1900 in reaction to what these artists saw as the somewhat formless and aloof quality of Impressionist painting. Post-Impressionist painters were concerned with the significance of form, symbols, expressiveness, and psychological intensity. They can be broadly separated into two groups, expressionists, such as Gauguin and Van Gogh, and formalists, such as C zanne and Seurat.

Post
Modern An attitude or trend of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, in which artists and architects accept all that modernism rejects. In architecture, the movement away from or beyond what had become boring adaptations of the International Style, in favor of an imaginative, eclectic approach. In the other visual arts, Post-Modern is characterized by an acceptance of all periods and styles, including modernism, and a willingness to combine elements of all styles and periods. Although modernism makes distinctions between high art and popar taste, Post-Modernism makes no such value judgments.

Prehistoric art
Art created before written history. Often the only record of early ctures.

Primary colors
Those hues that cannot be produced by mixing other hues. Pigment primaries are red, yellow, and blue; light primaries are red, green, and blue. Theoretically, pigment primaries can be mixed together to form all the other hues in the spectrum.

Prime
In painting, a first layer of paint or sizing applied to a surface that is to be painted.

Print (artist’s print)
A mtiple-original impression made from a plate, stone, wood block, or screen by an artist or made under the artist’s supervision. Prints are usually made in editions, with each print numbered and signed by the artist.

Proportion
The size relationship of parts to a whole and to one another.

Pastel
Ground-up pigment mixed with gum and formed into crayons used for drawing. Also denotes a soft, pale shade of any color and additionally, any work of art made with pastels.

Plein Air
Means “Open Air” or “Outdoors”. Often done quickly or on the spot. These paintings are usually less detailed and more impressionistic.

Portfolio
Prints by one artist that are grouped together and sold as a set.

Poster
A reproduction that is usually printed in unlimited quantities with a lower grade of paper and inks than limited- or open-edition prints.

Press Proof
(PP) Off press proofing can be usef in predicting quality of materials prior to production printing. Small quantities of ink and small sheet sizes can be studied quickly for physical and optical performance properties.

Publisher
A company whose business is to produce and market prints.

Registration
In color printmaking or machine printing, the process of aligning the impressions of blocks or plates on the same sheet of paper.

Reinforced concrete
(ferroconcrete) Concrete with steel mesh or bars embedded in it to increase its tensile strength.

Relief printing
A printing technique in which the parts of the printing surface that carry ink are left raised, while the remaining areas are cut away. Woodcuts and linoleum prints (linocuts) are relief prints.

Relief scpture
Scpture in which three-dimensional forms project from a flat background of which they are a part. The degree of projection can vary and is described by the terms high relief and low relief (bas-relief.)

Rag Paper
Paper containing a certain proportion of cotton fiber in its physical structure used for prints. The higher the cotton content the higher quality the paper. Remarque (re mark’) – small original drawing or sketch made by an artist in the margin of a print. Remarques originally were used to identify certain stages in the process of preparing a plate for printing: now, however, they represent means by which artists personalize prints.

Reproduction
An original work of art that has been replicated by photographic or other methods.

Restrikes
Additional prints made after the original edition has been exhausted.

Renaissance
Period in Europe from the late fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries, characterized by a renewed interest in human-centered classical art, literature, and learning. See also humanism. representational art Art in which it is the artist’s intention to present again or represent a particar subject; especially pertaining to realistic portrayal of subject matter. reproduction A mechanically produced copy of an original work of art; not to be confused with an original print or art print. rhythm The regar or ordered repetition of dominant and subordinate elements or units within a design. ribbed vat See vat.

Rococo
From the French rocaille meaning “rock work.” This late Baroque (c. 1715-1775) style used in interior decoration and painting was characteristically playf, pretty, romantic, and visually loose or soft; it used small scale and ornate decoration, pastel colors, and asymmetrical arrangement of curves. Rococo was popar in France and southern Germany in the 18th century.

Romanesque
A style of European architecture prevalent from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, with round arches and barrel vats influenced by Roman architecture and characterized by heavy stone construction.

Romanticism
1. A literary and artistic movement of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, aimed at asserting the validity of subjective experience as a countermovement to the often cold formas of Neoclassicism; characterized by intense emotional excitement and depictions of powerf forces in nature, exotic lifestyles, danger, suffering, and nostalgia. 2. Art of any period based on spontaneity, intuition, and emotion rather than carefly organized rational approaches to form.

Still life
A painting or other two-dimensional work of art representing inanimate objects such as bottles, fruit, and flowers. Also, the arrangement of these objects from which a drawing, painting, or other work is made.

Stupa
The earliest form of Buddhist architecture, probably derived from Indian funeral mounds.

Style
A characteristic handling of media and elements of form that gives a work its identity as the product of a particar person, group, art movement, period, or cture.

Stylized Simplified
or exaggerated visual form which emphasizes particar or contrived design qualities.

Subtractive color
mixture Combining of colored pigments in the form of paints, inks, pastels, and so on. Called subtractive because reflected light is reduced as pigment colors are combined. See additive color mixture.

Subtractive scpture
Scpture made by removing material from a larger block or form.

Support
The physical material that provides the base for and sustains a two-dimensional work of art. Paper is the usual support for drawings and prints; canvas and panels are supports in painting.

Surrealism
A movement in literature and the visual arts that developed in the mid1920s and remained strong until the mid1940s, growing out of Dada and automatism. Based upon revealing the unconscious mind in dream images, the irrational, and the fantastic, Surrealism took two directions: representational and abstract. Dali’s and Magritte’s paintings, with their uses of impossible combinations of objects depicted in realistic detail, typify representational Surrealism. Mir ‘s paintings, with their use of abstract and fantastic shapes and vaguely defined creatures, are typical of abstract Surrealism.

Symbol
A form or image implying or representing something beyond its obvious and immediate meaning.

Symmetry
A design (or composition) with identical or nearly identical form on opposite sides of a dividing line or central axis; formal balance.

Synthetic Cubism
See Cubism.

Scratchboard
Cardboard coated with chalk forms a smooth, glossy surface and is used as a ground for drawing or painting in ink. Parts of the image may then be scratched off with a pointed tool to create a variety of effects.

Secondary Market Value
The value of a print, determined by supply and demand, after all copies have been sold at original issue price. (See Issue Price)

Self-published
An artist who publishes and markets his or her own prints, often with the help of family. Some self-published artists also work with distributors.

Serigraph
A print created by using the process of using stencils made on tightly stretched silk. Ink is forced through the silk and onto paper to make copies of the image. The process frequently is called “Silksreening” and the prints are called “serigraphs” or “silkscreens.” Because each color requires a separate screen and a separate step in the printing process, serigraphs often come in small editions.

Serilith
As the name suggests, the combination of serigraphy and lithography.

Seriset
A seriset is similar to a serigraph. A serigraph is normally called a hand pled serigraph in that each silk screen is hand pled. A seriset is the same process but the screens are mechanically pled.

Signature
The artist’s signature applied to the original work as it appears in a print – or more frequently, the artist’s signature in pencil on each copy of a print.

Signed and Numbered (s/n)
A print bearing an original signature and copy/edition numbers.

Signed in the Plate
Refers to the artists signature on an original work as it appears in a print.

Signed Only (SO)
A print signed by the artist but not numbered. (See Open Edition)

Sold Out
Said of a limited edition print once it is no longer available at issue price and is being sold instead at secondary market prices.

Stamp Print
Limited edition print made from a work originally created as the design for a conservation stamp. Print and stamp customarily are framed together. (See Conservation Stamp Prints)

Substrate
The canvas, paper, or other material on which the image is printed.

Time-Limited Edition
An edition whose size is established by the number of orders a publisher receives during a set period of time. (See Commission Print)

Triptych (trip-tik)
A work of art done in three separate panels. (See Diptych)

Tempera
A water-based paint that uses egg, egg yolk, glue, or casein as a binder. Many commercially made paints identified as tempera are actually gouache.

Tessera
Bit of colored glass, ceramic tile, or stone used in a mosaic.

Texture
The tactile quality of a surface or the representation or invention of the appearance of such a surface quality.

Three-dimensional
Having height, width, and depth.

Throwing
The process of forming clay objects on a potter’s wheel.

Tint
A hue with white added.

Townhouse
One of a row of houses connected by common side walls.

Trompe
l’oeil French for “fool the eye.” A two-dimensional representation that is so naturalistic that it looks actual or real (three-dimensional.)

Truss
In architecture, a structural framework of wood or metal based on a triangar system, used to span, reinforce, or support walls, ceilings, piers, or beams.

Tunnel vat (barrel vat)
See Vat

Tusche
In lithography, a waxy liquid used to draw or paint images on a lithographic stone or plate.

Two-dimensional
Having the dimensions of height and width only.

Typography
The art and technique of composing printed materials from type.

Vanishing point
In linear perspective, the point on the horizon line at which lines or edges that are parallel appear to converge.

Vantage point
The position from which the viewer looks at an object or visual field; also called observation point or viewpoint.

Vat
A masonry roof or ceiling constructed on the principle of the arch. A tunnel or barrel vat is a semicircar arch extended in depth: a continuous series of arches, one behind the other. A groin vat is formed when two barrel vats intersect. A ribbed vat is a vat reinforced by masonry ribs.

Vehicle Liquid
emsion used as a carrier or spreading agent in paints.

Video Television
“Video” emphasizes the visual rather than the audio aspects of the television medium. The term is also used to distinguish television used as an art medium from general broadcast television.

Visualize
To form a mental image or vision; to imagine.

Volume
Synonym: mass

1. Space enclosed or filled by a three-dimensional object or figure.
2. The implied space filled by a painted or drawn object or figur

War
In weaving, the threads that run lengthwise in a fabric, crossed at right angles by the weft. Also, the process of arranging yarn or thread on a loom so as to form a warp.

Wash
A thin, transparent layer of paint or ink.

Watercolor Paint
that uses water-soluble gum as the binder and water as the vehicle. Characterized by transparency. Also, the resting painting.

Weft
In weaving, the horizontal threads interlaced through the warp. Also called woof.

Woodcut
A type of relief print made from an image that is left raised on a block of wood.