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Abstract Expressionism
The dominant artistic movement in the 1940s and 1950s, Abstract Expressionism was the first to place New York City at the forefront of international modern art. The associated artists developed greatly varying stylistic approaches, but shared a commitment to an abstract art that powerfully expresses personal convictions and profound human values. They championed bold, gestural abstraction in all mediums, particularly large painted canvases.
Abstraction
Non-representational works of art that do not depict scenes or objects in the world or have discernable subject matter.
Academic
Of or relating to the conservative style of art promoted by an official academy.
Action painting
Art critic Harold Rosenberg coined the term “action painting” in 1952 to describe the work of artists who painted using bold gestures that engaged more of the body than traditional easel painting. Often the viewer can see broad brushstrokes, drips, splashes, or other evidence of the physical action that took place upon the canvas.
Acrollage
A technique, used in combining collage format to assemble canvas or paper/board paintings. Additional materials used in the composition are newspaper, magazine pages, and other papers, often rare. The process results in a multi-layered support, finished with an acrylic vanish/finish.
Allover painting
A canvas covered in paint from edge to edge and from corner to corner, in which each area of the composition is given equal attention and significance.
Appropriation
As an artistic strategy, the intentional borrowing, copying, and alteration of preexisting images, objects, and ideas.
Artifice
Deception or trickery.
Arts and Crafts movement
Informal movement in design and architecture that championed the unity of the arts, the experience of the individual craftsperson, and the qualities of materials and construction in the work itself. Emphasis was placed on simple, functional forms and the use of local materials and time-tested traditions of construction.
Assemblage
A three-dimensional work of art made from combinations of materials including found objects or non-traditional art materials.
Automatism
Strategies of writing or creating art that aimed to access the unconscious mind. The Surrealists, in particular, experimented with automatist techniques of writing, drawing, and painting.
Avant-garde
French for “advanced guard,” this term is used in English to describe a group that is innovative, experimental, and inventive in its technique or ideology, particularly in the realms of culture, politics, and the arts.