Week 1

Design Vocabulary

Materiality:Refer to the materials used and seen in the item/artwork under discussion

Monochromatic: Tints or tones of one colour

Symbolic: the use of symbols to convey meaning

Essential property: absolutely necessary, a fundamental or central element to the nature of an artwork

Pictorial space: The illusionary space in a painting/artwork that appears to recede backwards into depth from the picture plane.

Classicism: High regard for classical antiquity, seeks to be formal and restrained (Italian Renaissance).

Irony: one thing being deliberately contrary to another, usually used to emphasis its meaning.

Stylistic revivalism: the revival of a particular style.

Pluralistic society: a society in which two or more states, groups, principles, sources of authority etc... coexist.

Critical theory:the examination and critique of society

Pictorial structure:

Optical colour mixing:two colours placed next to each other, the eye naturally mixes them.

Colour field painting: usually abstract painting, where large fields of flat, solid colour is spread across or stained into the canvas

Action painting:in the moment, impulsive and spontaneous painting - dripped, splashed or smeared. sometimes called 'gestural abstraction'

Prismatic: elongated with parallel sides, like emerald, tourmaline

Orphism: French art movement developed and derived from Cubism, focusing more on the application of colour in painting and influenced by music. An exponent of this movement is Robert Delauney

Synasthesia:together, sensation

Motif: In art, a motif is a repeated idea, pattern, image or theme. Visual motifs are a language to communicate visual ideas.

Woodcut (with regard to Cubism):

Avante Garde: French for “in advance”; term used in all the arts to describe any work, style, or school that is considered in its own time to be radical, consciously breaking from previous tradition.

Signatory: Bond by a signed agreement

Manifesto: gives the means for expression, publication and recordings of ideas of the artist or art group

Non-represenational: art is art which is not based on external appearances; this covers several types of art – abstract, non objective, and decorative; as contrasted with representational art, which is art based on “real”imagery, whether actually existant or existant only in the artists..