Art terms
Learn about the materials, techniques, movements, and themes of modern and contemporary art from around the world.
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Showing 13 of 351 art terms
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Games
A designed experience in which a set of rules balances chance and/or the skill of other participants with a player’s decisions. A game model laid out by the Danish game designer and theorist Jesper Juul balances the restrictions of successful game interfaces with the flexibility required for play: “1) a rule-based formal system; 2) with variable and quantifiable outcomes; 3) where different outcomes are assigned different values; 4) where the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome; 5) the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome; 6) and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable.” Games may be social in nature or solitary, but play is the focus in either scenario.
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Gelatin silver print (developing-out paper)
Formulated to react quickly when exposed to light, this paper contains silver halides in a gelatin binder. It is intended for handling in the controlled environment of a darkroom, printing with the aid of an enlarger, and requires chemical development to bring out the image in the print. Distinguished by their neutral, “black-and-white” tonality, gelatin silver papers first appeared in the 1880s, and became the most popular process of the 20th century thanks to their fast exposure times and relative ease of use.
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Gelatin silver printing-out-paper print (POP)
A process common from 1860 to 1940, printing-out-paper (POP) uses strong levels of ultraviolet sunlight to bring out a visible image, rather than the chemical development required by developing-out paper. These papers were contact printed, a method most often associated with 19th-century photography. Commercially prepared printing-out-papers are still made and printed today, although they are considered a specialty product.
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Generative art
Art that is created, in part or in whole, through the use of an autonomous system or computer code, and that often relies on elements of randomness or chance.
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Geometric abstraction
A form of abstract art that combines geometric, “hard-edge,” or linear forms. When geometric shapes are arranged in nonrepresentational space (i.e., the flat space of a canvas), and refer only to themselves rather than ideas or “real life,” they are sometimes called constructive or concrete.
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Gestural
Relating to methods of applying a medium, such as paint, to a surface, often with active or sweeping body movements.
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Glaze
A thin coat of transparent or translucent paint used to modify the tone of an underlying color. Glazes can alter the chroma, value, texture, and hue of a surface. They are composed of a large amount of binder or solvent mixed with a very small amount of pigment.
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Good Design
From the late 1930s through the 1950s, MoMA held a series of design exhibitions and initiatives that highlighted the democratizing potential of design objects. In these so-called Good Design shows, curators and designers invited audiences to explore that potential by featuring well-designed, relatively affordable, contemporary consumer products, from domestic furnishings and appliances to ceramics, glass, electronics, transport design, sporting goods, toys, and graphics.As a result, the concept of Good Design took hold well beyond the Museum. Scholars, designers, and consumers have come to understand “Good Design” as referring to practical, aesthetically pleasing objects that reflect values from the mid-20th century and beyond, and are largely intended to solve common problems and respond to changing human needs and concerns.
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Gouache
A water-based matte paint, sometimes called opaque watercolor, composed of ground pigments and plant-based binders, such as gum Arabic or gum tragacanth. The opacity of gouache derives from the addition of white fillers, such as clay or chalk, or a higher ratio of pigment to binder.
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Graphic design
Visual communication through the use of type, space, image, and color. Examples include printed materials like posters, books, and album covers, as well as film title sequences and digital works such as websites and interactive software.
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Graphite
A soft, greasy mineral form of carbon with a steel-gray to black metallic luster, used as a drawing material. Until the 18th century, natural lump graphite was placed in bone or wood holders for application. Since the 18th century, powdered graphite has been mixed with clay and fired to create the hard sticks used in pencils. Graphite can also be used as a powder and applied to a support with implements such as rags, fingers, or rolled paper stumps. Powdered graphite can also be mixed with water for brush application.
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Great Migration
A historic mass movement of over six million African Americans between 1910 and 1970, as migrants sought to escape the racial violence and limited economic mobility in the Southern United States under Jim Crow laws. Many traveled by train to Northern states, like New York, but others settled in the Midwest and West. Their motivations included job and expanded educational opportunities and reuniting with family. This had extraordinary impacts on nationwide demographic and cultural landscapes.
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Guerrilla television
During the 1960s and 1970s, groups of young artists, filmmakers, and activists based in the US and abroad experimented with newly available portable video cameras as an alternative to corporate television broadcasting. Often associated with countercultural movements of the time, video collectives like Raindance Corporation, TVTV (Top Value Television), Videofreex, Ant Farm, Not Channel Zero, Video Hiroba, and CADA emerged to oppose what they viewed as corporate, top-down media culture. Using new, more affordable video technologies like the Sony Portapak, artists promoted greater access to mass communication by documenting political upheavals on the streets and behind the scenes. These collectives championed video as a form of creative resistance and a medium for social change.
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