Terms and Techniques

General Terms

Architecture: Topic
Art of designing structures. The term covers the design of the visual appearance of structures; their internal arrangements of space; selection of external and internal building materials; design or selection of natural and artificial lighting systems.
Art: Topic
In the broadest sense, all the processes and products of human skill, imagination, and invention. In contemporary usage, definitions of art usually reflect art theory, and the term may encompass literature, music, drama, painting, and sculpture.
Composition: Topic
In art, the arrangement of elements within an artwork to give a desired effect, often described as pleasing (unified and appealing to the eye) or expressive (intended to evoke a particular mood, feeling, or idea).
Proportion: Topic
Relation of a part to the whole (usually expressed as a fraction or percentage).
Perspective: Topic
Realistic representation of a three-dimensional object in two dimensions.
Spectrum: Topic Page
Arrangement or display of light or other form of radiation separated according to wavelength, frequency, energy, or some other property.
Symmetry: Topic Page
Generally speaking, a balance or correspondence between various parts of an object; the term symmetry is used both in the arts and in the sciences.

Fine Arts

Drawing: Topic
The art of representation by use of lines or other marks. Traditional drawing media includes pencil, charcoal, pen and ink, chalk, and pastels, while more modern materials include coloured pencils, Conté crayons, wax crayons, and felt-tip pens, or markers.
Etching: Topic
The art of engraving with acid on metal; also the print taken from the metal plate so engraved.
Fresco: Topic
Mural painting technique using water-based paint on wet plaster that has been freshly applied to the wall.
Landscape Painting: Topic
Representation of inland scenery, such as a countryside view or city skyline; also a format of painting that is wider than its height.
Marine Painting: Topic
Paintings of the sea, coastline, or ships. Depictions of the sea go back at least as far as the ancient Greeks, who had close commercial and mythological links with the sea.
Panorama: Topic
A long painting stretched round the inside walls of circular buildings, intended to create the illusion of real scenery seen from a central vantage point (sometimes called a cyclorama).
Photography: Topic
Process for reproducing permanent images on light-sensitive materials by various forms of radiant energy, including visible light, ultraviolet, infrared, X-rays, atomic radiations, and electron beams.
Portraiture: Topic
The art of representing the physical or psychological likeness of a real or imaginary individual.
Sculpture: Topic
Art of producing in three dimensions representations of natural or imagined forms.
Still life: Topic Page
A pictorial representation of inanimate objects. The term derives from the 17th-century Dutch still-leven, meaning a motionless natural object or objects.

Aesthetics A-Z
Covers the key concepts, arguments, problems and figures in aesthetics and the philosophy of art.
Critical Terms for Art History
Offers a spirited reassessment of art history's methods and terminology.
Dictionary of Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon of Terms
Substantial and ambitious dictionary exploring the languages and cultures of visual studies. Provides the basis for understanding the foundations and motivations of current theoretical and academic discourse, as well as the different forms of visual culture that have come to organize everyday life.
The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Art Terms
An essential reference work embracing the vast vocabulary of art in all its forms. Contains over 2000 authoritative entries. Covers painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, the decorative, applied and graphic arts from all periods throughout the world up to the present day: there is even a table of the dynasties of Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, China, India and Japan.

Architectural Elements

Arch: Topic
The spanning of a wall opening by means of separate units assembled into an upward curve that maintains its shape and stability through the mutual pressure of a load and the separate pieces.
Buttress: Topic
Mass of masonry built against a wall to strengthen it.
Caisson: Topic
In engineering, a chamber, usually of steel but sometimes of wood or reinforced concrete, used in the construction of foundations or piers in or near a body of water.
Column
From The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Art Terms
A free-standing pillar, usually circular in section, and often built in accordance with one of the orders of architecture.
Cornice
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Molded or decorated projection that forms the crowning feature at the top of a building wall or other architectural element; specifically, the uppermost of the three principal members of the classic entablature, hence by extension any similar crowning and projecting element in the decorative arts.
Dome: Topic
A roof circular or (rarely) elliptical in plan and usually hemispherical in form, placed over a circular, square, oblong, or polygonal space.
Molding: Topic
In architecture, furniture, and decorative objects, a surface or group of surfaces of projecting or receding contours.
Spire: Topic Page
High, tapering structure crowning a tower and having a general pyramidal outline.
Tower: Topic Page
Structure, the greatest dimension of which is its height.
Tracery: Topic Page
Bands or bars of stone, wood, or other material, either subdividing an opening or standing in relief against a wall and forming an ornamental pattern of solid members and open spaces.
Vault: Topic Page
Ceiling over a room, formed in any one of a variety of curved shapes.
Window: Topic Page
In architecture, the casement or sash, fitted with glass, which closes an opening in the wall of a structure without excluding light and air.

Architectural Styles

Bauhaus: Topic
German school of art, design, and architecture founded in 1919 in Weimar by the architect Walter Gropius, who aimed to fuse art, design, architecture, and crafts into a unified whole.
Brutalism
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
architectural style of the late 1950s and 60s that arose in reaction to the lightness, polish, and use of glass and steel that had come to characterize the orthodox International style; the term is derived from the French béton brut [raw concrete].
Church Buildings: Topic
In architecture, a building designed as a place of worship for the Christian church community.
Functionalism
From The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of 20th Century Architecture
Architectural principle according to which the form of a building is to be derived from the function it is intended to fulfill; the schematic and technological aspect of architectural modernism (Rationalism), whose wider theoretical stance comprises also philosophical, political, social, economic, stylistic and symbolical questions.
Georgian architecture: Topic
It includes several trends in English architecture that were predominant during the reigns (1714–1830) of George I, George II, George III, and George IV.
Gothic Architecture: Topic
Style of architecture that flourished in Europe from the mid-12th century to the end of the 15th century.
Gothic Revival: Topic
Term designating a return to the building styles of the Middle Ages.
Green design
From The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Design Since 1900
Is a general design term that emerged in the late 1980s. An international surge of interest in ecological issues resulted from various man-made disasters (e.g., the leaks of radiation at Chernobyl and crude oil in Alaska) combined with the growing awareness of the accumulating effects on the environment of the industrial world (e.g., global warming).
International Style: Topic
Architectural style, an early and influential phase of the Modern Movement, originating in Western Europe in the 1920s but finding its fullest expression in the 1930s, notably in the USA.
Islamic Architecture: Topic
The architecture of the Muslim world, highly diverse but unified by climate, culture, and a love of geometric and arabesque ornament, as well as by the mobility of ideas, artisans, and architects throughout the region.
Norman Architecture: Topic
Style of architecture used in England in the 11th and 12th centuries, also known as Romanesque.
Organic architecture
From 100 Ideas that Changed Architecture
A work of architecture can be understood as possessing inner ‘laws’ - of geometry, structure, proportion and so on - that are conditioned by the specific circumstances of the choice of materials and site. This is analagous to an organism, which responds to both its inner constitution and its external circumstances.
Tudor style: Topic Page
Descriptive of the English architecture and decoration of the first half of the 16th cent., prevailing during the reigns (1485–1558) of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary I.
Vernacular architecture
From Encyclopedia of American Studies
According to architect Amos Rapoport ninety-five percent of the world's structures qualify as examples of vernacular buildings, if what is understood by the term are those structures that are not designed by professional architects.
Victorian architecture
From Dictionary of Architecture and Construction
The Revival and Eclectic architecture in 19th century Great Britain, named after the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901); also its American counterpart.