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 20 of 335 art terms
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Dada
An artistic and literary movement formed in response to the disasters of World War I (1914–18) and to an emerging modern media and machine culture. Dada
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Daguerreotype
One of the first practical photographic processes, publicly announced in 1839 and named for the French artist/inventor Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre. A
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Dance
Dance is the rhythmic movement of the body to express a feeling or idea, usually accompanied by music.
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Decalcomania
A transfer technique, developed in the 18th century, in which ink, paint, or another medium is spread onto a surface and, while still wet, covered with
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Degenerate art
The term adopted by the Nazi regime to describe works deemed to be “an insult to German feeling.” An exhibition of the same name opened in Munich in 1937,
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Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)
Formed in 1911 in Munich as an association of painters and an exhibiting society led by Vasily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. Using a visual vocabulary of abstract
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Design
This term is most commonly associated with graphics, furniture, lighting, and products, but also encompasses a wide variety of related practices, including
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de Stijl
A term describing the abstraction pioneered by the Dutch journal De Stijl (The Style), founded in
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Diaspora
Can refer to the movement or dispersal of a group of people with a shared identity or homeland from one place to another, or to the group of people itself.
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Diazotype
A printmaking technique initially developed as an alternative to the blueprint, which it ultimately replaced, for the reproduction of maps, plans, etc.
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Die Brücke (The Bridge)
The artists’ group Die Brücke was established in 1905, a moment that is recognized as the birth of Expressionism. The affiliated artists often turned to
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Digital print
A general term for any print that incorporates digital technology into the creation of an image or its printing. Until the mid-1990s, most digital images
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Diptych
A work of art consisting of two sections or panels, usually hinged together.
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Direct Cinema
A method of documentary filmmaking developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the US and Canada, in which filmmakers sought to capture their subjects
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Documentary film
A genre encompassing nonfiction films intended to capture some aspect of reality, often for the purposes of instruction, education, or the development
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Documentary photography
A genre of photography that aims to objectively chronicle a subject or event
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Double exposure
In photography and filmmaking, a technique in which film is exposed twice to capture and merge two different images in a single frame.
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Drawing
A unique work of art, often on paper, made with dry or wet mediums including pencil, charcoal, chalk, pastel, crayon, pen, ink, watercolor, or oils. In
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Drypoint
An intaglio printmaking technique that creates sharp lines with fuzzy, velvety edges. A diamond-pointed needle is used to incise lines directly into a
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Dye transfer print
A full-color photographic printing process that was popular between the 1920s and the 1950s. In these prints, three layers of dye—cyan, magenta, and yellow—are
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