“Mosaic: The technique of decorating walls, floors, etc., with designs formed by embedding small cubes (tesserae) of glass, ceramic, or marble in a fine cement. Though known by ancient artists, it was fully developed only in Byzantine and Roman art.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“Deconstruction: In architecture deconstruction is a more disruptive element within a postmodern zeitgeist. Architectural postmodernism often enacts a nostalgic reinvestment of meaning through the inclusion of historicizing references such as classical columns and ornamentation. Deconstructive architecture, on the other hand, seeks a deregulation of architectural meaning and function. Bernard Tschumi’s structures at the Parc de la Villette in Paris do away with the great synthesis of modern architecture: form follows function. Their playful uselessness is a travesty of the functionalist paradigm. See SEMIOTICS.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“Red-Figure Vase Painting: Technique and style of Greek vase painting developed bout 525 BC (after Black-Figure Vase Painting) and dominating the art of the 5th century B.C. Black glaze is painted around the forms and figures of the reddish-brown clay, with inner details painted in. The finest Greek wares are in the red-figure style.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“Iconography: The area of study dealing with the description of visual images and symbols. Art historian Erwin Panofsky first made the distinction between the identification of images (iconography) and the interpretation of their meaning (iconology). See ALLEGORY and REPRESENTATION.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged art/architecture/design
“Tintype: A photographic process in which a direct positive image is produced by a small, lightweight iron plate by a variation of the Collodion Wet Plate process. Popular until the late 19th century, especially with itinerant portrait photographers, who made and sold them cheaply. Also called ferrotype.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged art/architecture/design
“Sheffield Plate: Objects made during the second half of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries in England using a thin sheet of silver fused to a sheet of copper.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged art/architecture/design
“Halftone: In photoengraving, a process in which gradations of light (value) are obtained by manipulating the density of minute dots on the printing surface. The conversion of image to dots is achieved by photographing the subject through a special screen. Halftones have been in use since 1878.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
If you have any budding comic strip drafters, graphic novelists, or just kids who like to draw in your cohort (I’ve had quite a few over the years), then this reading on the comic strip Doonesbury and its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet might be of interest to them. In my experience, this reading has been high-interest material for a certain kind of student, especially once they’ve seen the strip itself–available in most daily newspapers and, of course, online. If you had told me that more than forty years after I was introduced to this strip in high school it would still be going strong in 2020, I don’t know if I would have believed it.
So, if nothing else, the topical nature of Doonesbury and its longevity, inextricably intertwined as they are, is an area for some critical inquiry.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Formalism: A central tenet of modernist art criticism that emphasized the importance of line, color, and space (significant form). Representational content was considered irrelevant in the eyes of formalist critics. Since formalism provided ‘objective’ methods for looking at all art whether Western or not, ancient or contemporary, it was thought of as egalitarian. But the advent of Pop Art necessitated a different analysis that went beyond the work itself and examined influences from popular culture. Postmodern approaches to art-making and criticism investigate both form and content, as well as the context of art and its role in society.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“Sgraffito: (It., scratched; pl. sgraffiti) A technique of decorating stuccoed surfaces, in which a layer of colored plaster is laid over a dry underlayer and then incised with designs while still damp—making use of the contrasting color of the underlayer. Also, a drawing or words hastily scratched or written on a wall.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
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