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 31 of 335 art terms
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Salted paper print
The earliest paper-based photographic material. So named because it was made by coating water containing a soluble salt onto a sheet of paper, which was
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Saturation
A saturated color has a wet appearance. Saturated colors are often lower value and higher chroma than unsaturated colors. A saturated color in paint may
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Score
A written notation of a musical or dance composition, which allows the work to be performed at a later date or by another performer. Composers interested
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Screenprint
A stencil-based printmaking technique in which the first step is to stretch and attach a woven fabric (originally made of silk, but now more commonly of
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Sculpture
A three-dimensional work of art made by a variety of means, including carving wood, chiseling stone, casting or welding metal, molding clay or wax, or
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Section Drawing
A section drawing (also called a section, or sectional drawing) depicts a structure as though it had been sliced in half or cut along an imaginary plane,
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Self-portrait
A representation of oneself made by oneself.
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Shade
In painting, a color plus black
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Shadow box
A shallow enclosing case usually with a glass front in which something is set for protection and display.
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Short
A short film. Today, any film running for 40 minutes or less and therefore not considered long enough to be a feature-length film.
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Silkscreen
A stencil-based printmaking technique in which the first step is to stretch and attach a woven fabric (originally made of silk, but now more commonly of
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Sketch
A rendering of the basic elements of a composition, often made in a loosely detailed or quick manner. Sketches can be both finished works of art or studies
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Skyscraper
A very tall building, often higher than 492 feet (150 meters). The term was first applied to steel-framed buildings of at least 10 stories in the late
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Social Realism
A movement that flourished between the two World Wars in response to the social and political turmoil and hardships of the period. Artists turned to realism
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Software
A set of coded instructions to direct the actions of a computer. Used by artists and designers to create everything from usable software like fonts and
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Solvent
A substance capable of dissolving another material. In painting, the solvent is a liquid that thins the paint.
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Sound effects
Sounds that are most often added during editing, rather than recorded at the time of filming. Sound effects take a number of different forms. For example,
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Sound-on-disc
A sound technology, first developed in the early 20th century, that became commercially viable in the late 1920s. In this system, music and dialogue were
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Sound-on-film
A sound technology, initially developed in the early 20th century, that became commercially viable in the late 1920s and eventually supplanted the sound-on-disc
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Soundscape
An audio recording composed of multiple sound clips that, once assembled and arranged, creates an environment that surrounds the listener. These sounds
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South Side Community Arts Center
Established in 1940, the South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC) emerged from the organizing of Black artists in Chicago beginning as early as 1932. These
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Special effect
An illusion created for movies and television using props, camerawork, computer graphics, etc.
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Stain
Paint thinned with solvent and applied to the canvas like a wash. Rather than remaining on the surface, a stain is absorbed into the canvas.
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Stencil
Produces an image or pattern by applying pigment to an intermediate object—usually a thin sheet of material such as paper, plastic, wood, or metal—with
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Stereograph
In the 1850s, stereographs became the first mass-produced images sold. When a card with two similar images side by side is viewed through a set of lenses,
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Still life
A representation of natural or manmade objects in any arrangement or combination an artist devises and in any medium.
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Street photography
A type of photography nearly as old as the medium itself, in which photographers seek their subjects on the streets and in public places, aiming to capture
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Studio Photography
An approach to photography that involves making pictures, chiefly portraits and still lifes, within the tightly controlled spatial environment of the photographer's
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Suprematism
A term coined by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich in 1915 to describe a new mode of abstract painting that abandoned all reference to the outside world.
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Surrealism
An artistic and literary movement led by French poet André Breton from 1924 through World War II. Drawing on the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud,
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Symbolism
An international avant-garde artistic movement that began in France and spread across Europe and North America during the last two decades of the 19th
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