Art terms
This glossary explains some of the techniques, mediums, art movements, and other terms you’ll encounter on our website, along with links to examples in the collection.
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Showing 41 of 336 art terms
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Calcium white
A white pigment often characterized by a warm tonality and significant transparency
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Calligraphy
Calligraphy is the art of creating handwritten text using highly stylized lettering. Its historical origins span millennia and many regions of the world,
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Calotype
William Henry Fox Talbot patented a photographic process in 1841 that led to a stable negative image. The process Though calotypes are soft and hazy, with visible paper fibers, the invention revolutionized image-making by making it possible to produce multiple prints from one negative image. It was also used as a means of making copies of drawings and documents. The process remained in use through the 1850s, when it was replaced by the albumen silver print.
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Cameraless photography
Cameraless photographs are created by manipulating light, radiation, and/or chemicals to leave an impression on photo-sensitive paper. Examples include
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Canvas
A closely woven, sturdy cloth of hemp, cotton, linen, or a similar fiber, frequently stretched over a frame and used as a surface for painting.
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Cartes-de-visite
Small photographs mounted to cardstock, patented in 1854. These “visiting” cards, most often featuring individual or celebrity portraits, were popularly
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Cast
(verb) To form a material, such as molten metal or plastic, into a particular shape by pouring or pressing into a mold; (noun) something formed in a mold;
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Celluloid
The first synthetic plastic material, developed in the 1860s and 1870s from a combination of camphor and nitrocellulose. Tough, flexible, and moldable,
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Charcoal
Among the earliest known drawing materials, charcoal sticks are produced by burning vines or twigs of wood in an airless atmosphere. The black tonality
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Chine collé
A technique, used in conjunction with printmaking processes such as etching or lithography, that results in a two-layered paper support: a tissue-thin
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Choreography
The art of creating and arranging a wide range of dance, from classical ballet to experimental performance; a work created by this art. A person who creates
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Chroma
The intensity of a given color
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Chromogenic print
The dominant photographic color process of the 20th century is made up of three gelatin layers containing cyan, magenta, and yellow organic dyes. Together,
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Cinématographe
A combination motion-picture camera, printer, and projector invented by French photographers, photographic equipment manufacturers, and brothers Auguste
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Cinematographer
The person who sets up both camera and lighting for each shot in a film, the cinematographer has a major influence over the look and feel of a shot or
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Cityscape
An artistic representation of a city or urban environment
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Classicism
The effort to match classical antiquity—and especially the art of the ancient Greeks and Romans—in artistic style, material, or subject matter. Classicism,
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Coating
Varnish applied after the painting has dried to unify its surface gloss. Coating often becomes yellow or gray with age.
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CoBrA
A European avant-garde movement active in the aftermath of World War II (from 1948 to 1951), whose name was derived from the first letters of the three
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Coding/programming
Coding is the method by which computer programmers, or coders, transmit instructions to computers. Coding transforms human language into the binary language
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Coenties Slip
For a brief period in the 1950s and ’60s, an out-of-the-way street at the southeastern edge of Manhattan hosted a community of artists whose work there Coenties Slip, named after 17th-century Dutch settlers, was originally part waterway for mooring boats and a major marketplace. By the 1950s, the neighborhood was transitioning from a maritime to a financial center. Drawn by cheap rents, open floor plans, and solitude, the artists lived and worked in former sailmaking and industrial lofts, and often incorporated objects scavenged from the demolition around them into their art. They never formed a movement; their diverse art encompasses abstraction and figuration; textiles, assemblage, film, painting––but they all had significant breakthroughs at Coenties Slip that changed the landscape of modern art, and supported each other’s need to be a part of but also apart from the cultural scene.
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Collage
Derived from the French verb coller, meaning “to glue,” collage refers to both the technique and the resulting work of art in which fragments of paper
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Collotype
A reproductive printmaking technique that is photographically based. Although collotype is increasingly rare, in the early 20th century it was employed
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Colored pencil
An implement for drawing that contains a rod of pigments or dyes, known as “colorants,” mixed with fillers (including kaolin, chalk, or talc), synthetic
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Color Field painting
A form of abstract painting that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, characterized by large areas of color, typically without strong tonal contrasts or a defined
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Combine
Term coined by Jasper Johns to describe a body of work by Robert Rauschenberg consisting of three-dimensional objects integrated into paintings. Rauschenberg
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Comic
A sequence of images that may or may not also contain words. This sequence is made up of several images, or self-contained sections, called “panels.” When Comics can vary in style and medium—some are made as drawings, while others are made up of paintings or even photographs. Traditionally, comics were made on paper using a variety of materials including graphite, colored pencil, pen, watercolor, and markers, and were published as books or strips in newspapers and magazines. Today, artists increasingly create comics digitally, using computers and tablets, and comics are frequently distributed via apps or websites.
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Commercially primed canvas
A canvas that has been primed before being sold
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Commercial photography
Years after Louis Daguerre invented and popularized the daguerreotype, By 1850, New York City alone was home to 77 studios. Among them was Matthew B. Brady’s “Gallery of Illustrious Americans” which photographed many of the country's prominent citizens, such as President Abraham Lincoln. As the 1800s ended, photography became even more inexpensive and accessible, making it possible for private individuals to keep and share images of their loved ones. In 1916, James Van Der Zee opened his Guarantee Photo Studio. There he took photos of Black Harlemites during the neighborhood’s historic Renaissance. Van Der Zee later photographed Black celebrities, like Jean-Michele Basquiat, until his death in 1983. Commercial photography's rise allowed many to fashion their self-image and capture important moments.
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Commission
To request, or the request for, the production of a work of art
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Conceptual art
In the 1960s, many artists experimented with art that emphasized ideas over objects and materials traditionally associated with art making. In 1967, Sol
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Concrete art
This term was first introduced in 1930 by Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg, who said that “nothing is more concrete, Max Bill, a Swiss artist and designer who was educated at the Bauhaus, became a founder and leader of the Concrete art movement in the later 1930s.
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Constructivism
Developed by the Russian avant-garde at the time of the October Revolution of 1917. Declaring that a post-Revolutionary society demanded a radically new
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Contact print
When light-sensitized paper is placed in direct contact with a negative and then exposed, the result is a contact print. A printing frame is often used
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Contrast
Photographs contain areas of brightness and darkness, regions of roughness and smoothness, and, at Contrast plays a vital role in helping our eyes understand what they see in a picture by defining the volume and edges of the objects they represent. Photographers can heighten or reduce contrast to manipulate the clarity of their images and the mood they convey.
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Cotton duck
Also called cotton canvas, cotton duck is a common support for painting. It is typically cheaper than linen and has a lighter and warmer color.
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Critical Design
A term first used by Anthony Dunne in his book, Hertzian Tales (1999), referring to an attitude toward design rather than a movement or method. It follows
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Cropping
In photography, editing, typically by removing the outer edges of the image.
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Cubism
Originally a term of derision used by a critic in 1908, Cubism describes the work of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and those influenced by them. Working
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Cyanotype
In 1842, the scientist and astronomer Sir John Herschel invented a new process for reproducing his notes.
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Cyclorama
A panoramic mural on the inner surface of a cylindrical space, which gives viewers the illusion that they are immersed in a 360-degree view of a (typically
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