GLOSSARY OF ART TERMS

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GLOSSARY OF ART TERMS

Edited by Mark Quinlan

Dada

An anarchic, artistic and intellectual movement originating in Switzerland during the Great War (1914-18). Its anti-war, anti-bourgeois, and absurdist positions espoused by disaffected artists, influenced by the poet Tristan Tzara, as well as their mocking condemnation of art that they felt sought only to slavishly imitate nature, parallelled the sympathies of several immigrant artists in New [...]

Danube School

A group of German landscape painters of the 16th century who often used their native landscape as the focus of their work.

Decorative Arts

This term applies to utilitarian objects or decorations for the home, such as teapots, furniture, light fittings, silver, or tiles, of particular historic, cultural, and aesthetic value.

Degenerate Art

The term applied to avant-garde art supressed by the Nazi regime in the period 1933-45. Much of it was burned by the Berlin Fire Brigade.

Der Blau Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was a group of artists founded in Munich in 1911 by Wassily Kandinsky after his painting Last Judgement was rejected for exhibition. History records that the name of the movement derived from the painting The Blue Rider produced by Kandinsky in 1903. It has also claimed that the name [...]

Design

The arrangement of the design elements to create a single effect. The organisation or composition of a work; the skilled arrangement of its parts. An effective design is one in which the elements of art and principles of design have been combined to achieve an overall sense of unity.

De Stijl

Dutch for ‘The Style’. A Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917 (also known as neoplasticism). Proponents of De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and [...]

Die Brücke

Founded in Dresden in 1905, Die Brücke (The Bridge) was a group of German expressionist artists after which the Brücke Museum in Berlin would be named. Founding members were Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Later members were Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein and Otto Mueller. The group had a major impact [...]

Dimensions

In art, dimensions are given in inches, followed by centimetres in parentheses; height precedes width. Specific explanation is given for certain objects (e.g., diameter for round objects, length at centre back for garments); if only one dimension is given without further clarification, it refers to height.

Diptych

An artwork having two panels either hinged together, or simply displayed as a pair. The works can be hung edge to edge or with some space between them depending on the intent. Works designed this way can be very striking and being a diptych offers an additional compositional element. See also triptych.

Disegno

From the Italian for drawing or design. In Renaissance art theory, the design of a painting seen in terms of drawing, which was seen to be the basis of all art. The term stressed not the literal drawing, but the concept behind the work. As disegno appeals to the intellect, it was considered far more [...]

Draughtmanship

The ability and skill to accurately portray a subject on a flat surface through the use of three-dimensional perspective, in order to convey a sense of credible depth as seen in real life. It has been considered the height of artistic accomplishment since Classical times and has always represented the cornerstone of all Western art [...]

Drawing

Essentially, drawing is a technique in which images are depicted on a flat surface by making lines, though drawings can also contain tonal areas, washes and other non-linear marks. Ink, pencil, crayon, charcoal and chalk are the most commonly used materials, but drawings can be made with or in combination with paint and any other wet [...]

Drypoint

An intaglio process closely related to engraving. The line is scratched directly into the copper plate with a drypoint needle, which throws up a ridge of metal know as a burr on both sides of the line. The curled copper burr holds a quantity of ink, which prints as a rich smudge. The resulting lines [...]

Dry Stroke

A technique of engraving, using a sharp-pointed needle that produces a furrowed edge resulting in a print with soft, velvety lines.

Dutch Italianates

Term conventionally used to refer to the school of Dutch painters and draughtsmen who were active in Rome for more than a hundred years, starting from the early 17th century. These artists produced mainly pastoral subjects bathed in warm southern light, set in an Italian, or specifically Roman, landscape. The origins of the use of [...]

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