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Showing 1–30 of 33 art terms

Art Term

Cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse)

Cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse) is a collaborative drawing approach first used by surrealist artists to create bizarre and intuitive drawings

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Art Term

Camden Town Group

The Camden Town Group were a British post-impressionist group founded by Walter Sickert in London in 1911

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Art Term

Canvas

Canvas is a strong, woven cloth traditionally used by artists as a support (surface on which to paint)

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Art Term

Capitalist realism

Capitalist realism was a movement formed in Düsseldorf in Germany in 1963 to challenge the dominating influence of American pop …

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Art Term

Caricature

A caricature is a painting, or more usually drawing, of a person or thing in which the features and form …

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Art Term

Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square)

Cercle et Carré was an artist group formed in Paris in 1929 which strongly supported new developments in abstract art …

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Art Term

Chalk

Chalk is a soft powdery white or off-white writing or drawing material in crayon form, generally used on a blackboard …

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Art Term

Charcoal

Charcoal is a black crumbly drawing material made of carbon and often used for sketching and under-drawing for paintings, although …

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Art Term

Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro is an Italian term which translates as light-dark, and refers to the balance and pattern of light and shade …

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Art Term

Círculo y Cuadrado

Círculo y Cuadrado is an artist group formed in Paris in 1929 which strongly supported new developments in abstract art …

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Art Term

Classicism

The term classicism is used to describe art that makes reference to ancient Greek or Roman style

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Art Term

CoBrA

CoBrA was an artist group formed in 1948 by artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam whose painting style was highly …

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Art Term

Collage

Collage describes both the technique and the resulting work of art in which pieces of paper, photographs, fabric and other …

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Art Term

Collective

Loosely defined, an art collective is a group of artists working together to achieve a common objective

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Art Term

Colour field painting

The term colour field painting is applied to the work of abstract painters working in the 1950s and 1960s characterised …

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Art Term

Comic strip art

Comic strip art is art that imitates the style, commercial printing techniques and subject matter of comic strips

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Art Term

Community art

Community art is artistic activity that is based in a community setting, characterised by interaction or dialogue with the community …

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Art Term

Complementary colours

Complementary colours are pairs of colours that contrast with each other more than any other colour, and when placed side-by-side …

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Art Term

Composition

Composition is the arrangement of elements within a work of art

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Art Term

Conceptual art

Conceptual art is art for which the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art …

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Art Term

Conceptual photography

Conceptual photography is photography that illustrates an idea

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Art Term

Concrete art

Concrete art is abstract art that is entirely free of any basis in observed reality and that has no symbolic …

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Art Term

Constructionism

Constructionism was an extension of constructivism in Britain from about 1950, with artists using naturally occurring proportional systems and rhythms …

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Art Term

Constructivism

Constructivism was a particularly austere branch of abstract art founded by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko in Russia around 1915

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Art Term

Contemporary art

The term contemporary art is loosely used to refer to art of the present day and of the relatively recent …

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Art Term

Conversation piece

A conversation piece is an informal group portrait popular in the eighteenth century, small in scale and showing people – …

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Art Term

Court

Court painters were artists employed by royal courts to paint portraits of the royal family and their courtiers

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Art Term

C-print

A C-print, also known as a C-type print or Chromogenic print, is a photographic print made from a colour negative …

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Art Term

Craft

Craft is a form of making which generally produces an object that has a function: such as something you can …

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Art Term

Creolisation

Originally a Caribbean concept, creolisation describes the mixing together of different people and cultures to become one

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