•  The Assessment of a Piece of Art
•  Art Styles
•  Media/Technique

- Painting
- Sculpture
- Graphic Art: Prints
- Drawing

The Assessment of a Piece of Art:

By Art Historian Dr. Phil H.G. Buschmann

Assessing a work of art depends largely on the ability to actually see, perceive and understand. It is important to see the diversity of shapes, which are the rudimentary part of an art work. For example geometric shapes such as the circle , the triangle and the square are the basics of painting-composition. Very much equal to geometric shapes is color. Color strongly influences the frame of mind, the mood and expression of comprehensive creation and variation. Many contemporary painters have used colors wildly and radically.

Art Styles:

Abstract Art
An abstract work of art; artistic content depends on internal form rather than pictorial representation. In its pure form, it can be interpreted as any art in which the depiction of real objects has been entirely discarded and its aesthetic content 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 school of painting that flourished after World War II until the early 1960s, characterized by the view that art is nonrepresentational and chiefly improvisational. New York has been its main center. Leading abstract expressionists: Pollock, de Kooning, Kline, Rothko, Motherwell, Gottlieb, Gorky…
Sculptors: David Smith, Lassaw

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

Art Deco
A decorative and architectural style of the period 1925-1940, characterized by geometric designs, bold colors, and the use of plastic and glass. Art deco, influenced by art nouveau, the Russian ballet, and Egyptian and Aztec styles, emphasized grace, the exotic and elegant chic.

Art Nouveau (Jugendstil)
A style of decoration and architecture of the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, characterized particularly by the depiction of leaves and flowers in flowing, sinuous lines. It was a European movement in the visual arts that spread to America and affected architecture and every kind of design. Outstanding exponent of this style is Gustav Klimt.

Aschan School
A group of U.S. painters of the early 20 th century who painted realistic scenes of everyday urban life. The work depicted such subjects as the streets and inhabitants of big cities with a vigorous sense of realism.

Barbizon School
A 19 th century group of landscape painters in France , among them Corot, Daubigny, Millet, and Rousseau.

Bauhaus
A style characteristic of a 20 th century German school of design, the aesthetic of which was influenced by and derived from techniques and materials employed especially in industrial fabrication and manufacture. Artists include Klee, Kandinsky, Feininger.

Caravaggisti
Artists influenced by "Caravaggio", Michelangelo Merisi (1571-1610), his dramatically contrasting dark-light effects. Painters of "night pictures" in the "dark manner", a manner known as tenebrism.

Contemporary Art
The art of late 20 th century and early 21 st century, both an outgrowth and a rejection of modern art. As the force and vigor of abstract expressionism diminished, new artistic movements and styles arose during the 1960s and 1970s to challenge and displace modernism in painting, sculpture, and other media. To be able to identify a contemporary painting as a valuable object, it is necessary to have fantasy, exhilaration and vision into the future.

Cubism
A school of painting and sculpture developed in Paris in the early 20 th century, tending through the geometrical reduction of natural forms to establish the work itself as a plastic fact independent of all imitative or representational intention. Leading figures: Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.

Dadaism
A western European artistic and literary movement (1916-1923) having as its program the discovery of authentic reality through the abolition of traditional cultural and aesthetic forms by a technique of comic derisions in which irrationality, chance and intuition were the guiding principle. Jean Arp, Max Ernst.

Eclectic
Used to describe a work or method of production that draws from a variety of traditions, styles or techniques.

Expressionism
A movement in the fine arts during the latter part of 19 th and early part of 20 th centuries. It originated in Europe and emphasized the objective expression of artist's inner experience through the use of conventional characters and symbols, the use of violent distortions and exaggerations in the service of heightened emotional expressiveness. It became very important in Germany , therefore, the term German expressionism. Expressionist painters: Edvard Munch, Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka, Kubin, Jean Arp, Feiniger, Kandinsky, Lehmbruck, Barlach.

Fauvism
Movement in French expressionist painting at the beginning of 20 th century. The term "Fauve"(wild beast) had particular reference to the brilliant, arbitrary, intense color and the direct, violent brushwork of the paintings. It had been the first explosion of the 20 th century art and it established a precedent for the whole series of revolutions in art that followed. Leading figure Henri Matisse.

Figurative Art
Art in which recognizable figures or objects are portrayed.

Futurism
Artistic and literary movement originating in Italy around 1910 and marked by an attempt to depict vividly the energetic and dynamic quality of contemporary life influenced by the motion and force of modern machinery. Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni.

Genre
A category of art distinguished by a definite style, form or content; especially a style of painting concerned with depicting scenes and subjects of common everyday life.

Impressionism
Impressionism was the most important movement in art in the 19 th century. Traditional linear forms of representation were abandoned and the nature of color and light thoroughly explored. Originating and developed in France during the 1870s, it is characterized chiefly by concentration on the general impression produced by a scene or an object and by the use of unmixed primary colors and small strokes to simulate actual reflected light, the concept of "pure painting". The Impressionists had been influenced by Japanese art. Leading figures: Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir, Pissaro, Cézanne, Sickert, Mancini.

Naïve Art
The style of naïve painting is characterized by a careful, simplifying approach, non-scientific perspective, bright colors, and often, an enchantingly literal depiction of imaginary scenes. Although not following any particular movement or aesthetic, naïve painters have works produced by artists who had no formal training. Some trained artists, however, have deliberately affected a naïve style.

Non-Objective Art
Artworks having no recognizable subject matter (not recognizable as such things as houses, trees, people, etc.) Also known as non-representational art.

Pointillism (also called Neo-Impressionism, Divisionism)
A method of painting developed in France in the 1880s in which tiny dots of color are applied to the canvas. When viewed from a distance, the points of color appear to blend together to make colors and to form shapes and outlines. Leading figure is Georges Seurat.

Pop Art
A form of art that depicts objects from everyday life and employs techniques of commercial art and popular illustration. A style derived 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.

Post-Impressionism
Evolved from impressionism, it embraced new formalist and expressionist concerns: flat, abstract planes, clearly defined linear contours, and intense colors. The period saw new modes of expressing meaning through symbolic devices, such as suggestion, allusion, and analogy. Influenced by Oriental sources: Japanese, Persian, Egyptian, Oceanic art. Leading figures: Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh.

Rayonism
A type of abstract or semi-abstract painting characterized by the fragmentation of forms into masses of slanting lines. It was practiced from 1912-1914 by some Russian painters.

Realism
The accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favor of a close observation of outward appearances. Leading figure is Gustave Courbet who is generally regarded as the father of modern painting.

Retinal Art
Art whose appeal is mainly or exclusively to the eye rather than to the mind.

Rubenism
The doctrine that color, rather than form, was the most important element in painting. A movement in 17 th century France which highly valued the coloristic brilliance and painterly style of Peter Paul Rubens, in reaction to Poussinisme, which highly valued the prominence of drawing and the linear style of Nicolas Poussin.

Structuralism
A school of art or of art criticism that advocates and employs a method of analyzing phenomena chiefly by contrasting the elemental structures in a system of binary opposition.

Surrealism
A 20 th century literary and artistic movement that attempts to express the workings of the subconscious by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter. Leading figures: Salvador Dali, Joan Mirò, Max Ernst, Jean Arp…

Symbolism
As a post-impressionist current, symbolism was an attempt to find a more intense means of artistic expression, a method of evoking the hidden side of life. Art was used to suggest eternal truths instead of representing everyday realities. Symbolists expressed their ideas and emotions indirectly through symbols, trying to suggest the nuances of the inner life. Painters most closely associated with symbolism: Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Ferdinand Hodler, Gabriel Rossetti.

The Nabis
The Nabis, or Prophets, a group of very young French painters, who were very interested in the applied and useful arts, and in particular made theater designs and posters. Bonnard, Toulouse-Lautrec.

Media/Technique:

Painting:

Acrylic Paint
A pigment in a plastic binder medium, mostly soluble in water, fast drying, very versatile and adheres to most surfaces. Less translucent than oil paint.

Airbrush
An airbrush uses compressed air to spray dyes or paints onto whatever surface the artist chooses. The effect is often very smooth graduation from one color or tone to another.

Collage
An artistic composition of materials and objects pasted over a surface, often with unifying lines and color.

Canvas
Canvas is a plain, natural fibre cloth that is stretched over a frame, thus producing a flat, solid surface on which to paint.

Day-Glo Colors
Also called fluorescent colors and neon colors, day-glo colors are especially bright, clean materials which can be much lighter than conventional colors. They can be found in a wide range of media, including oil and acrylic paints, inks, dyes, markers, crayons, etc.

"En plein air" Paintings
Paintings that have been executed outdoors, rather than in the studio. Plein air painting was taken up by the English painters Richard Parks Bonington and John Constable, and the French Barbizon School , and it became central to Impressionism.

Encaustic
A paint consisting of pigment mixed with beeswax and fixed with heat after its application; the art of painting with this substance.

Fresco
The art of painting by pressing earth colors dissolved into fresh plaster. A painting executed on plaster. The term is most commonly used for murals painted on a large scale.

Gesso
A preparation of plaster of Paris and glue used as a base for low relief or as a surface for painting.

Gouache
An opaque water-based paint. A painting executed in this manner.

Impasto
The application of thick layers of pigment to a canvas or other surface in painting.

Mixed Media
Works of art made with a variety of materials.

Mural
A very large image, such as a painting, mosaic, photograph, applied directly to a wall or ceiling.

Oil Painting
Oil paint is a powdered pigment that is held together with oil, usually linseed oil. Oil painting is a technique that can be used to create a huge range of effects and are traditionally used on canvas. They can have a matte, semi-matte or glossy finish.

Painterly
A painting technique in which forms are created with patches of color, exploiting color and tonal relationships. The opposite approach is known as linear, in which things are represented in terms of contour, with precise edges.

Photomontage
Photomontage applies the technique of collage to photographs. It is an important technique in surrealism and pop art.

Sfumato
In painting, the technique or blurring or softening sharp outlines by subtle and gradual blending (feathering) of one tone into another. The smoke like haziness of this effect lessens the perception that a still image is entirely still, instead lending a vague sense of movement.

Tempera
A painting medium in which pigment is mixed with water-soluble glutinous materials. Also called poster color, poster print.

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 an artist in the painting of different areas of the picture, often representing drapery, metals, rocks, hair, etc.

Watercolor
A paint composed of a water-soluble pigment, applied onto a white or faintly colored paper. In watercolor painting the paper plays an important role; the painter uses the white of the paper instead of a white paint, so the paper becomes an integral part of the color range.

Sculpture:

Bas-relief
A raised or indented sculptural shape or form that is always close to the surface plane and no part of the modeled form is undercut.

Carving
To make or form by or as if cutting; to decorate by cutting and shaping carefully.

Casting
Reproducing in plaster, bronze, or plastic, an original piece of sculpture made of clay, wax, or similar material.

Ceramic
An object made of clay and then fired.

Contrapposto
The position of a figure in painting or sculpture in which the hips and legs are turned in a different direction from that of the shoulders and head; the twisting of a figure on its own vertical axis.

Living Rock
Rock that is carved or in some other way used in its place, without moving it.

Plaster (Plaster of Paris or Gesso)
A mixture of powdered and heat-treated gypsum, which can be mixed with water, hardening to a smooth solid. A versatile medium in sculpture, can be either the material cast in a mold or the material of a mold, a material to be molded, or carved, or attached to something else.

Relief
Any sculptural artwork in which forms or figures project from a background that forms a surface plane.

Sculpture
Representation of figures and objects, in relief or in three dimensions. Sculpture is typically made in stone, marble, wood, clay, bronze, metal, precious metal, plaster or other hard materials.

Prints:

What is a print?
A print is a shape or mark made from a block or plate or other object that is covered with wet color (usually ink) and then pressed onto a flat surface, such as paper or textile. Most prints can be produced over and over again by re-inking the printing block or plate.

Aquagraph
A monoprint made by painting with a water medium on a metal, glass, or plastic plate and pulling one print from that plate. Additional colors can be made by aligning the paper to the plate design.

Aquatint
An intaglio, etching and tonal printing process in which a process in which a porous ground allows acid to penetrate to form a network of small dots in the plate, as well as the prints made by this process. Aquatint often resembles wash drawings.

Aquatint Mezzotint
In etching, a plate is first bitten in a solid aquatint, then a design is worked on top of the aquatint with a scraper and burnisher, producing a result similar to an ordinary mezzotint.

Chrome-Lithograph
A lithograph of no less than three colors. Each color is printed from a separate surface. Thus the image is made up of layers of color.

Dry Point
An intaglio technique like engraving in which the image is drawn on a metal plate with a needle, raising a ridge which prints a soft line.

Digital Imaging
Is an image that is created, manipulated and produced using a computer technology, including software programs and printers.

Edition
A printing of many images from one master work. Open editions are not numbered and have no maximum number to be issued. Limited editions are numbered in succession with a predetermined number of prints.

Embossed Print
Un-inked relief print in which dampened paper is pressed into recessed areas of a plate to produce a three dimensional impression.

Engraving
An intaglio process in which lines are cut into a metal plate and then filled with ink to transfer the image into paper. These prints are characterized by crisp definition and sharp, clean lines.

Etching
An intaglio process in which an image is scratched through an acid-resistant coating on a metal plate. The plate is then dipped in acid that etches into the exposed surface. Then the plate is covered with printers ink and then wiped hard with a cloth. Finally, the artist lays a damp piece of paper and passes the whole thing through a printing press. The paper is pressed into the inked grooves, transforming the image from the plate to the paper.

Gicleé
This is an electronic printing method. An image is scanned and digitally saved on computer This digital image is then sent to a high-resolution inkjet printer. The printer sprays countless miniscule droplets of ink onto the paper, producing an image characterized by its smooth, soft gradation of tone.

Graphic
Any work printed directly on paper from a plate or block.

Intaglio
Any technique in which an image is transferred onto paper from ink that is held in the incised or eaten into areas of a metal plate. Intaglio processes are including: engraving, etching, mezzotint, aquatint and dry point.

Linocut
A technique of printmaking in which an image is transferred to paper from a carved piece of linoleum. After carving the image, the artist applies oil-based inks to the surface of the linoleum, which is then pressed onto a piece of paper.

Limited Edition
A maximum number of a particular print that will ever be created. The edition size is fixed prior to printing; once an edition has sold out, no more will ever be made.

Lithograph
Print artwork that relies on the water-repellent properties of oil-based inks. An image is drawn onto a metal plate with an oil based crayon or a greasy ink. The image repels the water while attracting special lithographic inks that are applied with a roller. The inked image is then transferred into paper. Typically, many plates are used to create a lithograph, as each color or part of the image requires a different plate.

Mezzotint
An intaglio process in which the plate surface is roughened and then an image is created by smoothing the areas to be printed. The mezzotint printmaking process produces areas of tone, rather than lines (very much like aquatint).

Monoprint
A monoprint is a print made by any printing technique that the artist later alters. This can be by painting over it in part with watercolor, drawing into it with pastel, etc. Thus the monoprint is no longer part of the original limited edition of prints, it is unique and irreproducible.

Monotype
This is a technique in which the artist paints directly onto a metal plate with inks, often colored. The process has to be quick and decisive, as the freehand painting and passing of the painted block through the printing press must all take place before the ink has a chance to dry. The artist generally paints in reverse; starting with light colors and working towards dark ones. Each monotype is unique.

Serigraphy (Screen Painting, Silkscreen)
The process is a complex one in which the artist prepares a silk or nylon screen, and blocks out the areas where the paper is to be left blank. Thus the ink reaches the paper only through the areas that are to make up the image. The ink is carefully pushed through the screen onto the paper.

Woodcut
A process in which an image is cut or carved in relief on a wood block, often following the natural grain of the wood, which is then pressed onto a piece of paper.

Drawing:

Charcoal
Charcoal is carbonized wood, and is most commonly used for drawing on paper. These drawings are notably freer and often less detailed than pencil drawings.

Conté
Conté crayons are hard and non-greasy sticks of color. They are often broken by the artists and the flat side is used to shade large areas of color. The edge is used to draw hard and dark lines.

Graphite
Graphite, a mix of clay and carbon, is produced in various grades of hardness the harder the graphite the more accurate the line it can produce. Softer graphite can be smudged to produce larger areas and grades of shading, from hazy greys to deep black.

Outline Drawing
A diagram or silhouette made with one line defining the perimeter of a form, flat and two-dimensional.

Pastel
Pastel is a drawing material made out of pigment that is dissolved in resin or gum and formed into a crayon. It is usually used on paper. There are two major types of pastel, oil pastels that tend to be brighter and glossier, and chalk pastels that are softer colors and dryer.

Sketch
A quick drawing that loosely captures the appearance or action of a place or situation. Sketches are often done in preparation for larger, more detailed works of art.

Stippling
To draw, engrave or paint in dots or short touches.