Art terms
Learn about the materials, techniques, movements, and themes of modern and contemporary art from around the world.
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Showing 12 of 351 art terms
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Earthwork
Art that is made by shaping the land itself or by making forms in the land using natural materials like rocks or tree branches. Earthworks range from subtle, temporary interventions in the landscape to significant, sculptural, lasting alterations made with heavy earth-moving machinery. Some artists have also brought the land into galleries and museums, creating installations out of dirt, sand, and other materials taken from nature. Earthworks were part of the wider conceptual art movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Also called Land Art or Earth Art.
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Edition
A set of identical prints made from the same printing surface. Editions may be limited or unlimited in number. Often a certain number of prints—including artist’s proofs, printer’s proofs, and hors commerce (not for sale)—are made at the same time but kept apart from the numbered edition. Each print in a limited edition is usually numbered in the lower left margin. In an edition of 100, for example, they would be numbered 1/100, 2/100, etc.
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Elevation drawing
An elevation or elevation drawing is a two-dimensional representation of one side of a building or space. It can depict one of the building’s facades or an interior surface from a straight-on viewpoint. With an elevation, you are able to understand the material qualities of a project.
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Embossing
A method of printing the deeply incised areas of a metal printing plate without ink, which creates a raised impression on the paper. Small or shallow objects such as coins, nails, washers, etc. can also be affixed to a smooth printing surface before printing; under the pressure of a press. The dimensional features of the affixed elements are transferred to the paper as raised and recessed areas.
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Emulsion
A uniform mixture of oily substances and watery substances, which do not ordinarily mix. Artists may add an emulsifier, like egg yolk, to such emulsions as oil paint and water in order to encourage mixing and stabilization.
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Enamel paint
A type of paint made from fine pigments and resin that is formulated to be very fluid and that dries to a hard, glossy finish
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Engraving
An intaglio printmaking technique that creates a crisp, precise line that swells in the middle and tapers at the end. Lines are incised on a bare metal plate using a burin, a tool with a sharp, V-shaped blade. After inking, which fills only the incised lines, damp paper is placed on the plate and run through a press, forcing the paper into the incised lines to pick up the ink.
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Ephemera
Written, printed, or commercially produced materials not originally intended to be seen as independent artworks. These are often related to exhibitions, performances, creative efforts, and cultural movements. Ephemera, such as flyers or posters from a historic protest or concert, can help to broaden the understanding of specific moments in history, and are sometimes the only remaining documentation of important events or performances.
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Etching
An intaglio printmaking technique that creates thin, fluid lines whose effects can vary from graceful and serpentine to tight and scratchy. An etching needle, a fine-pointed tool, is used to draw on a metal plate that has been coated with a thin layer of waxy ground, making an easy surface to draw though. When the plate is placed in acid, the ground protects the areas it still covers, while the drawn lines expose the plate and are incised, or “bitten,” by the acid. After removing the coating, the plate is inked, filling only the incised lines. Damp paper is placed on the plate and run through a press, forcing the paper into the incised lines to pick up the ink.
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Exposure
To make an exposure, a photographer allows visible light or invisible radiation to land on a light-sensitive surface or digital sensor for a given amount of time. An action occurring early in the creation process of most photographs, the exposure can take many forms. In camera-based photography, it may involve removing a lens cap or releasing a shutter. In cameraless photography, light-sensitive material, such as film or photosensitized paper, is exposed directly to light. Early photo negatives had weak sensitivity to light, and exposures could last from several seconds to several minutes. For much of the 19th century, this limited photography to depicting motionless subjects, requiring those who posed for photographs to hold still for long periods. Technological advances would shorten exposure times enough that, by the 1880s, Étienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge could record crisp images of animals in motion. At the end of the 19th century, photographers began experimenting with lengthened exposures to create expressive photographs featuring softened and blurred images. A photograph can also combine two or more exposures in a single image, which are then laid on top of one another.
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Expressionism
Encompasses varying stylistic approaches that emphasize intense personal expression. Renouncing the stiff bourgeois social values that prevailed at the turn of the 20th century, and rejecting the traditions of the state-sponsored art academies, Expressionist artists turned to boldly simplified or distorted forms and exaggerated, sometimes clashing colors. As Expressionism evolved from the beginning of the 20th century through the early 1920s, its crucial themes and genres reflected deeply humanistic concerns and an ambivalent attitude toward modernity, eventually confronting the devastating experience of World War I and its aftermath.
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Exquisite corpse
A game in which each participant takes turns writing or drawing on a sheet of paper, folding it to conceal his or her contribution, and then passing it to the next player for a further contribution. The game gained popularity in artistic circles during the 1920s when it was adopted as a technique by artists of the Surrealist movement to generate collaborative compositions.
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