Art terms

Painting

A work of art made from paint applied to canvas, wood, paper, or another support.

Palette knife

A type of spatula typically used to mix paint on the palette, but sometimes also used to apply or remove paint from the canvas

Palladium print

Palladium prints are made on paper coated with the chemical element palladium. Introduced during World War I as a less-expensive alternative to platinum paper (which was in short supply), palladium prints were readily available throughout the 1930s. Palladium prints are characterized by their rich, warm tonal range.

Papier mâché

French for “chewed-up paper,” a technique for creating three-dimensional objects, such as sculpture, from pulped or pasted paper and binders such as glue or plaster.

Participatory art

When artists include members of the public in their creative process and encourage them to become co-authors of the work. The participatory art events known as happenings, for example, often incorporated elements of performance and improvisation.

Pastel

A soft drawing stick composed of finely ground pigment mixed with a gum tragacanth binder. Pastel sticks are often applied to a textured paper support. The pastel particles sit loosely on the surface of the paper and can be blended using brushes, fingers, or other soft implements. Pastels can also be dipped into water to create a denser mark on the paper or ground into a powder and mixed with water to create a paint that can be applied by brush. Because pastel drawings are easily smudged they are sometimes sprayed with fixative, a thin layer of adhesive.

Patina

A fine crust or film on bronze or copper, usually green or greenish-blue, formed by natural oxidation; the sheen on a surface, such as one made of wood, produced by age and use; a superficial exterior layer; a coating

Pencil

An implement for drawing or writing. Early pencils were composed of small fragments of natural graphite or soft metallic lead secured in wood or bone holders. A substitute for natural graphite was developed in the late 18th century and remains in use today. In this process a slurry of graphite and clay is extruded into rods called “leads” and are fired until hard. The amount of clay determines the hardness of the lead. Pencils with the most clay are the hardest and produce the lightest marks, while those with the least clay are the softest and produce the darkest marks.

Pepper’s Ghost

Originally a 19th-century parlor trick used in Victorian stagecraft and entertainment, the Pepper’s Ghost—named after British scientist and inventor John Henry Pepper—employs a light source and angled reflection to create an optical illusion. To achieve the effect, the stage gets divided into two areas: one that audience members can see and another that is hidden. Positioned at a 45-degree angle onstage, a plate of glass (or other similar surface) reflects a brightly lit object or person in the hidden room, which appears as a ghostly figure on the main stage. This method continues to be used in theater, concerts, and live performance, often incorporating digital projection instead of a “hidden room.” Most prominently, this technique has been used to simulate live performances by celebrities after their death, but the Pepper’s Ghost has also long fascinated contemporary artists, who have replicated or experimented with the technique in multimedia installation works.

Performance

An event that could include a diverse range of actions, movements, gestures, and choreography. Performance is often preceded by, includes, or is later represented through various forms of video, photography, objects, written documentation, or oral and physical transmission.

Period frames

Frames that relate to the period when the painting was made

Periodical

A magazine or newspaper published at regular intervals.

Perspective

Technique used to depict volumes and spatial relationships on a flat surface, as in a painted scene that appears to extend into the distance.

Photo essay

A photo essay is a form of visual storytelling that develops a narrative across a series of photographs. It originated during the late 1920s in German illustrated journals, initially presenting stories in the objective, distanced tone of news reporting. The photo essay gained wide popularity with the growth of photographically illustrated magazines such as VU (launched in Paris in 1928), LIFE (launched in New York in 1936), and Picture Post (launched in London in 1938). It is associated especially closely with LIFE, where the photo essay became a platform not only for informing readers, but for influencing their opinions. Through the middle decades of the 20th century, this visual format would be used to familiarize audiences with the transformations of a modernizing world, entertain them with slice-of-life stories, and introduce them to unfamiliar members of their society.

Photo-Secession

In 1902, a group of photographers banded together in protest against the conventional view of the medium as a mechanical tool. Calling themselves photo-secessionists, they were highly attuned to the technical craft of their work which they aligned with formal artistic concerns. The photographer and impresario Alfred Stieglitz championed these perspectives through a space at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City named the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, and later shortened to 291. The gallery argued for the crucial position of photographers in the development of modern art. Its exhibitions demonstrated the artistic merits of photographic approaches, and situated these pictures alongside inventive works of painting and sculpture. Stieglitz also edited a print quarterly, Camera Work, which disseminated photo-secessionists’ work through photogravures—a process by which photographs were transferred to a metal plate for printing. As the modernist impulse took root stateside, the gallery served as the American entry point for European artists like Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, and Constantin Brancusi.

Photobook

An artist’s book in which the art is photo-based. Photographers have been collecting their pictures in books since photography was invented. The term photobook is a more recent construction, and can be defined as a book in which photographs make a significant contribution to the content, though the sequence and placement of images, their relationship to text, and the scale and materiality are also of utmost importance to the maker. Though it can be made up of preexisting individual artworks, a photobook is often intended as a cohesive artistic expression.

Photogram

One of the earliest forms of photography, a photogram is a photograph produced without a camera, typically by placing an object directly onto a light-sensitive surface and exposing it to light. The resulting image often features outlines and forms of whatever object it reproduces. Nineteenth-century practitioners valued the process for its ability to render intricate details of scientific specimens. Throughout the 20th century and into the present, artists have used the process to render common objects strange, or to produce abstract imagery.

Photography

For much of the history of the medium, a photograph was defined as a chemical image rendered visible by the action of light on photosensitive compounds. Photographic images can be made on a variety of supports, such as paper, metal, glass, and plastic. More recently, this evolving practice has come to include visual data generated from scans of analog negatives, born-digital works, and images that only circulate digitally.

Photogravure

A general term for any metal-plate intaglio printing process in which the image has been transferred to the plate by photographic means. Acid is used to incise the image into the plate; the plate is then inked, wiped, and printed on a press.

Photojournalism

A type of journalism that uses photographs to tell a news story

Photomontage

A collage work that includes cut or torn and pasted photographs or photographic reproductions.

Photostat

A machine that makes quick duplicate positive or negative copies directly on the surface of prepared paper. Also, the resulting copies.

Pictograph

An image or symbol representing a word or a phrase

Pictorial

Picture-like and representational in quality

Pictorial space

The illusory space behind the picture plane of a painting

Pictorialism

An international movement comprised of loosely linked camera clubs and societies that sought to highlight the artistic possibilities of photography and argue that it was a fine art equal to painting, sculpture, and other traditional mediums. Active from the late 19th century to around 1914, the Pictorialists preferred romantic or idealized imagery, used soft focus, and framed or staged scenes according to the compositional principles of painting. In order to emphasize the artist’s hand and counter the argument that photography was an entirely mechanical medium, they often used labor-intensive darkroom processes to produce unique prints. Outside of the darkroom, they mounted international salons and exhibitions and published portfolios and journals, through which they further influenced how photography was discussed and regarded.

Pictures Generation

This was an unofficial group of artists who emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s in New York City. Though diverse in their approaches and subject matter, they were united by a common interest in using the tools of mass media to critique it, questioning notions of authorship, originality, and identity as a fixed entity. The group takes its name from an exhibition titled Pictures, organized by Douglas Crimp at Artists Space in New York in 1977. Although many artists associated with the Pictures Generation used photography, they also worked in performance, installation, film, and video in order to appropriate and critique images.

Pigment

Pigment is the colored portion of paint, often a finely ground powder that can be either natural or artificially produced.

Plan drawing

Plans or plan drawings are used to illustrate the layout and orientations of a structure. Plans typically depict a building or project site from an aerial view. With a plan, you are able to observe the different rooms, corridors, and entrances of a structure, as if looking through an “invisible” ceiling. Plan drawings can also depict multiple buildings in a proposed site and the proximities or relationships between those multiple buildings.

Plastic

A term applied to many natural and synthetic materials with different forms, properties, and appearances that are malleable and can be molded into different shapes or objects.

Platinum print

Platinum prints are prized for their rich tonal scale and durability. Created using a process based on the light sensitivity of a combination of iron oxalate and a platinum salt. After the sensitized paper is exposed, the print is developed and washed to remove residual chemicals, leaving a final image consisting of finely divided metallic platinum. Platinotype was the original platinum paper invented and marketed by William Willis, Jr., and his Platinotype Company of London.

Plein Air

Pochoir

French word for “stencil.” A method of applying colored paint, usually to paper, through cut-out areas of a thin material, such as paper, copper, or plastic, using tools such as a brush, dabber, or spray gun.

Pointillism

A painting technique developed by French artists Georges-Pierre Seurat and Paul Signac in which small, distinct points of unmixed color are applied in patterns to form an image.

Polaroid

The brand name of a point-and-shoot camera that uses a self-developing instant film to rapidly produce a photographic print. Instant film includes chemicals that begin working while the film is being ejected from the camera, and the picture is fully developed within minutes. A commercially available instant-print process (called the “Polaroid-Land” process) was first developed in 1947 by Edwin H. Land, who was supposedly inspired by a question from his three-year-old daughter while on a family vacation: “Why can’t I see the picture now?” Polaroids gained widespread popularity in the 1970s, but their usage was eventually impacted by the development of digital camera technologies, which also satisfied the urge to instantly see one’s photographs.

Pop art

A movement comprising initially British, then American artists in the 1950s and 1960s. Pop artists borrowed imagery from popular culture—from sources including television, comic books, and print advertising—often to challenge conventional values propagated by the mass media, from notions of femininity and domesticity to consumerism and patriotism. Their often subversive and irreverent strategies of appropriation extended to their materials and methods of production, which were drawn from the commercial world.

Popular culture

Cultural activities, ideas, or products that reflect or target the tastes of a broad swath of a society. Popular culture commonly includes—and is transmitted by— television, music, and film, books, periodicals, and but can even be movement or images circulated through one of those platforms or social media (like a dance on TikTok or a meme on Instagram).

Portfolio

A group of prints, often focused on a common theme, by a single artist or a group of artists, usually housed in a protective box or folder, and containing a title page and colophon.

Portrait

A representation of a particular individual, usually intended to capture their likeness or personality.For as long as people have been making art, they have been portraying themselves and others. Portraits can be literal, realistic representations or they can be interpretive, symbolic. By the turn of the 20th century, photography had become the most accessible and popular medium for portraiture. As though photography freed them from the burden of producing realistic depictions, many late-19th and early-20th-century artists began exploring new ways to represent people. Many artists sought to represent the character and psychology of their sitters; similarly, in their self-portraits, they aimed to communicate something of their innermost selves. If they were familiar with their sitter, they might seek to express their relationship to him or her. Their interest in the subjective and emotional, coupled with their desire to break with the traditions of the past, led these artists to make formal innovations that would radically alter the genre of portraiture.

Post-Impressionism

A term coined in 1910 by the English art critic and painter Roger Fry and applied to the reaction against the naturalistic depiction of light and color in Impressionism. Though Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat each developed their own distinctive styles, they were unified by an interest in expressing their emotional and psychological responses to the world through bold colors and expressive, often symbolic images. Post-Impressionism can be roughly dated from 1886 to 1905.

Postcards

In 1869 someone sent the first postcard, in Austria. Though it was initially considered improper and insecure, the postcard quickly grew in popularity, and was embraced as an inexpensive, casual way to stay connected to others in an increasingly fast-moving world. Trains and steamships fueled both the movement of and market for postcards. In 1893 the World Columbian Exposition, which hosted over 25 million people in Chicago, Illinois, presented the first souvenir postcards. By the early 1900s, new technology, like the No. 3 Folding Pocket Kodak Camera, made printing photographs directly onto greeting cards possible, making photographic postcards an accessible way to stay connected to those far away.

Poster

A large, usually printed placard, bill, or announcement, often illustrated, that is posted to advertise or publicize something, or used for decoration; an artistic work, often a reproduction of an original painting or photograph, printed on a large sheet of paper.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism refers to a reaction against modernism. It is less a cohesive movement than an approach and attitude toward art, culture, and society. Its main characteristics include anti-authoritarianism, or refusal to recognize the authority of any single style or definition of what art should be; and the collapsing of the distinction between high culture and mass or popular culture, and between art and everyday life. Postmodern art and architecture can be also characterized by a deliberate use of earlier styles and conventions, and an eclectic mixing of different artistic and popular styles and mediums.

Praxinoscope

A popular 19th-century optical toy, invented by a Parisian science teacher named Charles-Émile Reynaud, comprised of a cylinder fitted with a strip of paper printed with 12 sequential image frames. When the cylinder spins, a mirror fixed in its center reflects the images and makes them appear animated.

Prefabrication

In architecture, the assembly of buildings or their component parts at a location other than the construction site. Prefabricated units may include doors, stairs, window walls, wall panels, floor panels, roof trusses, room-sized components, and even entire buildings. While the concept and practice of prefabrication has been part of human experience for centuries, its modern sense dates from about 1905. This building method controls construction costs by economizing on time, wages, and materials.

Primary/secondary colors

A primary color is one that cannot be made from a combination of any other colors. The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. A secondary color is made by combining two primary colors. For example, the combination of the primary colors red and yellow makes the secondary color orange.

Primitive art

A term that has been used to refer to the art of various historical European periods and of non-Western societies. In the mid-19th century, it was primarily applied to 14th and 15th century Italian and Flemish art, which modern artists prized for what they saw as its simplicity, sincerity, and expressive power. Use of the term then broadened to encompass a range of non-Western art, sweeping from South America to Southeast Asia. At the beginning of the 20th century, European artists embraced African and Oceanic masks and statuary and the term came to be associated with work from these regions. Such work deeply impacted these artists, who perceived in it a physical directness and emotional charge that they found exciting and distinct. By the late 20th century the term, with its derogatory connotations, fell out of favor.

Print

A work of art on paper that usually exists in multiple copies. It is created not by drawing directly on paper, but through a transfer process. The artist begins by creating a composition on another surface, such as metal or wood, and the transfer occurs when that surface is inked and a sheet of paper, placed in contact with it, is run through a printing press. Four common printmaking techniques are woodcut, etching, lithography, and screenprint.

Printer

The specialized technician or establishment that provides expertise on printing and often collaborates with artists to make prints. The printer also executes the prints in an edition, following an example authorized by the artist.

Product design

The design of items intended to be manufactured, most often for specific utilitarian purposes. Examples include typewriters, kitchen appliances, and utensils.

Progressive Art Studio

Progressive art studios, sometimes called supportive art studios or disability art studios, are nonprofit organizations dedicated to supporting artists with mental health conditions and intellectual and developmental disabilities as they seek to build and sustain careers in the arts.Creative Growth, which opened in 1973 in Oakland, California, was the first progressive art studio in the United States. Started by Florence Ludins-Katz, an artist and teacher, and Elias Katz, a psychologist, Creative Growth established a creative community program structure “guided by the principle that art is fundamental to human expression.” Disability arts and social service organizations have expanded on this model and founded progressive art studios across the country.Progressive art studios champion artists in developing their artistic practices and pursuing self-sustaining careers. The studio environment is facilitated by staff, often artists themselves, who provide mentorship and support the artists in navigating the studio environment, taking ownership of their art-making process, building community with fellow artists, and exploring new mediums and creative ideas. Studios also provide art supplies and exhibition opportunities, and often act as galleries, selling the artists’ work and generating income for them.

Proof

A print that is not part of the regular numbered edition, including examples printed in advance of the edition, such as “trial proofs,” that are used to assess progress on the image; “working proofs” that the artist has modified with hand additions; as well as “artist’s proofs” and “printer’s proofs,” which are indistinguishable from the edition and reserved for artist and printer.

Propaganda

Any systematic, widespread dissemination or promotion of particular ideas, doctrines, practices, etc. intended to further one’s own cause or to damage an opposing one. Propaganda is often used to deceive a public or distort information. Propaganda may take many different forms, including public or recorded speeches, texts, films, and visual or artistic matter such as posters, paintings, sculptures, or public monuments.

Prototype

A preliminary model or release of a product built to test its viability, from which other versions are copied or developed.