Art History & Terms

Cards · 50

Renaissance (Italian)

Leonardo da Vinci ('Mona Lisa'), Michelangelo ('Sistine Chapel ceiling'), Raphael ('The School of Athens').

Northern Renaissance

Jan van Eyck ('The Arnolfini Portrait'), Albrecht Dürer ('Melencolia I'), Hieronymus Bosch ('The Garden of Earthly Delights').

Mannerism

Parmigianino ('Madonna with the Long Neck'), El Greco ('The Burial of the Count of Orgaz'), Bronzino ('Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time').

Baroque

Caravaggio ('The Calling of Saint Matthew'), Gian Lorenzo Bernini ('The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa'), Peter Paul Rubens ('The Elevation of the Cross').

Chiaroscuro

Caravaggio ('Judith Beheading Holofernes'), Rembrandt van Rijn ('The Night Watch'). Technique using strong tonal contrasts between light and dark.

Dutch Golden Age

Johannes Vermeer ('Girl with a Pearl Earring'), Rembrandt ('The Night Watch'), Frans Hals ('The Laughing Cavalier').

Rococo

Jean-Honoré Fragonard ('The Swing'), François Boucher ('The Triumph of Venus'), Antoine Watteau ('The Embarkation for Cythera').

Neoclassicism

Jacques-Louis David ('The Oath of the Horatii'), Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ('The Grand Odalisque'), Antonio Canova ('Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss').

Romanticism

Caspar David Friedrich ('Wanderer above the Sea of Fog'), Eugène Delacroix ('Liberty Leading the People'), J.M.W. Turner ('The Fighting Temeraire').

Realism

Gustave Courbet ('The Stone Breakers'), Jean-François Millet ('The Gleaners'), Honoré Daumier ('The Third-Class Carriage').

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

John Everett Millais ('Ophelia'), Dante Gabriel Rossetti ('Beata Beatrix'), William Holman Hunt ('The Light of the World').

Impressionism

Claude Monet ('Impression, Sunrise'), Pierre-Auguste Renoir ('Bal du moulin de la Galette'), Edgar Degas ('The Dance Class').

En Plein Air

Claude Monet ('Water Lilies' studies), Camille Pissarro ('The Boulevard Montmartre at Night'). Practice of painting outdoor scenes directly on site.

Post-Impressionism

Vincent van Gogh ('The Starry Night'), Paul Cézanne ('Mont Sainte-Victoire'), Paul Gauguin ('Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?').

Pointillism / Divisionism

Georges Seurat ('A Sunday on La Grande Jatte'), Paul Signac ('The Port of Saint-Tropez'). Technique applying small dots of pure color.

Symbolism

Gustave Moreau ('The Apparition'), Odilon Redon ('The Cyclops'), Arnold Böcklin ('Isle of the Dead').

Art Nouveau

Gustav Klimt ('The Kiss'), Alphonse Mucha ('The Seasons' series), Antoni Gaudí ('Sagrada Família').

Fauvism

Henri Matisse ('Woman with a Hat'), André Derain ('Charing Cross Bridge'), Maurice de Vlaminck ('The River Seine at Chatou').

Expressionism (Die Brücke)

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner ('Street, Berlin'), Emil Nolde ('Dance Around the Golden Calf'), Karl Schmidt-Rottluff ('Houses at Night').

Expressionism (Der Blaue Reiter)

Wassily Kandinsky ('Composition VII'), Franz Marc ('The Large Blue Horses'), Paul Klee ('Twittering Machine').

Cubism (Analytic)

Pablo Picasso ('Portrait of Ambroise Vollard'), Georges Braque ('Violin and Candlestick'). Fractured forms and muted palettes.

Cubism (Synthetic)

Pablo Picasso ('Still Life with Chair Caning'), Juan Gris ('The Sunblind'). Introduced collage, text, and brighter colors.

Futurism

Umberto Boccioni ('Unique Forms of Continuity in Space'), Giacomo Balla ('Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash'), Gino Severini ('Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin').

Constructivism

Vladimir Tatlin ('Monument to the Third International'), Aleksandr Rodchenko ('Books' poster), El Lissitzky ('Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge').

Suprematism

Kazimir Malevich ('Black Square', 'White on White'), Olga Rozanova ('Green Stripe'). Focused on basic geometric forms and limited colors.

De Stijl / Neoplasticism

Piet Mondrian ('Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow'), Theo van Doesburg ('Counter-Composition V'), Gerrit Rietveld ('Red and Blue Chair').

Dada

Marcel Duchamp ('Fountain'), Hannah Höch ('Cut with the Kitchen Knife'), Man Ray ('The Gift'). Anti-art movement born in response to WWI.

Readymade

Marcel Duchamp ('Bicycle Wheel', 'Fountain'). Ordinary manufactured objects selected and modified as works of art.

Surrealism

Salvador Dalí ('The Persistence of Memory'), René Magritte ('The Treachery of Images'), Max Ernst ('The Elephant Celebes').

Precisionism

Charles Sheeler ('American Landscape'), Charles Demuth ('I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold'), Georgia O'Keeffe ('Radiator Building — Night, New York').

Social Realism

Grant Wood ('American Gothic'), Diego Rivera ('Detroit Industry Murals'), Ben Shahn ('The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti').

Mexican Muralism

Diego Rivera ('Man at the Crossroads'), José Clemente Orozco ('The Epic of American Civilization'), David Alfaro Siqueiros ('Echo of a Scream').

Abstract Expressionism (Action Painting)

Jackson Pollock ('Autumn Rhythm: Number 30'), Willem de Kooning ('Woman I'), Franz Kline ('Chief'). Gestural, physical brushwork.

Color Field Painting

Mark Rothko ('No. 61 (Rust and Blue)'), Helen Frankenthaler ('Mountains and Sea'), Barnett Newman ('Vir Heroicus Sublimis').

Art Informel / Tachisme

Jean Dubuffet ('Dhotel Nuancé d'Abricot'), Jean Fautrier ('Hostages' series), Pierre Soulages ('Painting, 202 x 143 cm, 1967').

Pop Art

Andy Warhol ('Marilyn Diptych'), Roy Lichtenstein ('Whaam!'), Richard Hamilton ('Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?').

Op Art

Victor Vasarely ('Zebra'), Bridget Riley ('Fall'), Richard Anuszkiewicz ('Deep Shadow'). Uses optical illusions to give sensations of movement.

Minimalism

Donald Judd ('Untitled (Stack)'), Frank Stella ('The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II'), Dan Flavin ('the nominal three (to William of Ockham))'.

Arte Povera

Jannis Kounellis ('Untitled (12 Horses)'), Michelangelo Pistoletto ('Venus of the Rags'), Mario Merz ('Giap's Igloo'). Used humble, non-traditional materials.

Conceptual Art

Joseph Kosuth ('One and Three Chairs'), Sol LeWitt ('Wall Drawings'), John Baldessari ('I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art'). Ideas take primacy over aesthetics.

Land Art / Earthworks

Robert Smithson ('Spiral Jetty'), Walter De Maria ('The Lightning Field'), Christo and Jeanne-Claude ('The Gates').

Performance Art

Marina Abramović ('The Artist Is Present'), Chris Burden ('Shoot'), Yves Klein ('Anthropométries of the Blue Epoch').

Feminist Art

Judy Chicago ('The Dinner Party'), Cindy Sherman ('Untitled Film Stills'), Barbara Kruger ('Your Body is a Battleground').

Photorealism

Chuck Close ('Big Self-Portrait'), Richard Estes ('Telephone Booths'), Audrey Flack ('Marilyn (Vanitas)'). Meticulous reproduction of photographs in paint.

Neo-Expressionism

Jean-Michel Basquiat ('Untitled (Boxer)'), Anselm Kiefer ('Margarethe'), Julian Schnabel ('The Walk Home'). Revived raw, emotive figurative painting in the 1980s.

Street Art / Urban Art

Keith Haring ('Crack is Wack'), Banksy ('Girl with Balloon'), Jean-Michel Basquiat ('SAMO' graffiti). Public interventions outside galleries.

Young British Artists (YBAs)

Damien Hirst ('The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living'), Tracey Emin ('My Bed'), Rachel Whiteread ('House').

Assemblage

Robert Rauschenberg ('Monogram'), Louise Nevelson ('Sky Cathedral'), Joseph Cornell ('Untitled (Soap Bubble Set)'). 3D art made from found items.

Trompe-l'œil

Pere Borrell del Caso ('Escaping Criticism'), Andrea Pozzo ('Apotheosis of Saint Ignatius'). Illusionistic technique designed to trick the eye into seeing 3D reality.

Gothic Art

Giotto di Bondone ('Scrovegni Chapel frescoes'), Duccio di Buoninsegna ('Maestà'), Simone Martini ('Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus').