STYLE OF PAINTING

REALISM• Realism in the arts may be

generally defined as the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements.

Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet, 1854. Gustave Courbet.

IMPRESSIONISM• Impressionist painting characteristics

include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles. Claude Monet, Jardin à Sainte-Adresse, 1867

FUTURISM• Futurism (Italian: Futurismo) was an

artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the aeroplane and the industrial city.

Giacomo Balla, Abstract Speed + Sound, 1913–1914

CLASSICISM• The art of classicism typically seeks

to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint and compression we are simply objecting to the classicism of classic art"

Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii, 1786

AVANT-GARDE• The avant-garde are people or

works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics. The avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The Love of Zero, a 1927 film by

Robert Florey

ABSTRACT ART• Abstract art uses a visual language of

form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in

Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1874)

PRIMITIVISM• Primitivism is a Western art

movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics. Borrowings from primitive art has been important to the development of modern art.

Henri Rousseau, In a Tropical Forest Combat of a Tiger and a Buffalo, 1908-1909

ICON• An icon is a religious

work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches.

The Ladder of Divine Ascent

FOLK MUSIC • Folk music includes both

traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during the 20th century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th century but is often applied to music that is older than that. Some types of folk music are also called world music.

The American conception of "folk composition" has often drawn on Afro-American music.