John Baldessari

Two Whales (With People)

Abstract art is nonrepresentational, non-figurative art, often defined by what it is not. Abstraction can be traced back to the 19th century, when artists began to experiment with stylized forms, blurred lines and unusual proportions in lieu of realistic representations. Favored by Minimalists, Conceptual Artists, and Abstract Expressionists, abstract modes of expression are featured in works by many 20th century and contemporary artists.

Abstract Expressionism emerged in New York in the 1940s. Abstract Expressionism built on the Surrealist interest in automatism and subconscious creation, as artists such as Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still and Franz Kline, began to explore the expressive possibilities of pure abstraction. With important advocates, such as critic Clement Greenberg and patron Peggy Guggenheim, the movement quickly began to dominate the art world and define New...

Americana describes artifacts and representations of everyday life in America. These objects are generally portrayed nostalgically and celebrate the American way of life. Baseball, barbeques, and fireworks feature prominently in such representations.

Aquatint is a form of printing, often used in fine art limited edition prints. Particles of resin are applied to a plate (generally composed of copper or zinc), which then is treated with acid to corrode the metal and create negative space around pigment particles. These particles are then transferred onto paper or the final surface of the print. The effect is softer, and often...

An archival pigment print is a print that was made with pigments that show they have excellent archival qualities. Resilient to environmental elements that can erode, fade and shorten the life of a print, archival pigment printing has become popular amongst photographers and artists in the last few decades.

The Art Deco movement which occurred from approximately 1920 – 1935 ushered in the 20th century with geometric silhouettes and stylized designs. Shortened from art décoratif, art from this period was embraced for its bold designs and modern aesthetic and was synonymous with the luxury and excess of the Roaring Twenties. Unusual materials such as shagreen and ivory were often used, as well as high...

Art Nouveau developed as a response to mass production and industrialization in the late 1800s. With an emphasis on traditional craftsmanship, the movement sought to combine fine and decorative arts and as such encompassed the graphic arts, architecture, interior design as well as fine art. The style stems from 19th century botanical drawings and is characterized by whimsical stylized organic forms and sinuous patterns.

Assemblage is a composition composed of easily recognizable everyday objects. Though a few artists experimented with assemblage in the early 1900s, it was popularized in the 1960s by artist such as Robert Rauschenberg, Joseph Cornell and Louise Nevelson.

A setting using a thin bar of metal to hold a series of diamonds in place on either side.

Founded in Germany in 1919 by Walter Gropius, The Bauhaus was a school dedicated to art, architecture and design. The school was non-traditional and aimed to make equals of fine arts and design, as well as women and men. Classes were structured as workshops rather than studio training, celebrating form over function, humble materials and industrial design. The Bauhaus was built in Weimar and remained...

A blue chip artist is an artist who has received such renown that their work is in high demand and very unlikely to lose value.

A Chromogenic Print, also known as a C-Print, is a full-color photographic print developed from either a positive color transparency or a negative. The film or paper contains three layers of silver halide emulsion sensitized to red, green and blue wavelengths of light respectively. As the print is developed, the dye couplers in each layer are activated and produce a full-color print.

Collage is a technique that incorporates the use of found materials such as newspaper and magazine clippings, parts of photographs, other elements of material culture onto a two-dimensional surface. The term collage is derived from the French word coller: to stick. The first artwork considered by many that deliberately used collage is to Still Life with Chair Caning (1912), by Pablo Picasso. In it, he...

A style of painting embraced in the 1950s – 1960s that was a descendent of Abstract Expressionism. Unlike the gestural, brushy surfaces of Expressionism, Color Field Painting is characterized by large flat fields of solid color, embracing the two-dimensional forms they inhabit. Colors were often subtle and natural as opposed to bright synthetic colors embraced by commercialism. This movement was closely associated with Post-Painterly Abstraction:...

Conceptual Art was formed on the notion that ideas and knowledge are art, rather than formal characteristics. The concept takes precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. This movement called for a paradigmatic shift away from the notion of art as a fetishized and precious object. It rejected the presiding artistic hierarchy. Notable conceptual artists include Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner, Mel Bochner and Joseph Kosuth....

A diptych is an artwork made up of two separate parts or panels that are often hinged together.

An artist who is in the early stage of his/her career who has created a modest independent body of work and has caught the eye of an art critic and/or gallery, but has not yet established a solid reputation in the industry.

An international modernist movement in the arts that emerged in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Expressionist artists specifically sought to express meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality, but the term is commonly applied more widely to various avant-garde movements. Notable Expressionist artists include: Wassily Kandinsky, Georg Grosz, Paul Klee, Max Beckman and Otto Dix.

The first of the avant-garde movement that flourished in France at the beginning of the twentieth century. Fauve painters were the first to break away from older traditional methods of perception (i.e. Impressionism), and their style of depicting nature was characterized by bold, undistinguished brushstrokes and vibrant colors directly from the tube. Notable Fauve painters include: Henri Matisse, André Derain, Henri-Charles Manguin, Othon Friesz, Jean...

An international group of avant-garde artists active from the early 1960s to late 1970s who worked in a wide range of media that often required the participation of a spectator in order to be completed. Their activities included public concerts or festivals and the dissemination of innovative publications, including scores for electronic music, theatrical performances, ephemeral events, gestures and actions constituted from the individual’s everyday...

The term for any approach to the arts that emphasizes the autonomy or primacy of formal qualities—most commonly, compositional elements such as line, color and texture.

The gelatin silver process was introduced in 1885 and is still the most common process for making black and white photographs. Prints are created when silver salts are suspended in gelatin, an animal protein, and coated onto glass, flexible plastic or film, baryta paper, or resin-coated paper.

A movement in painting that originated in France in the 1860s and is characterized by a concern with depicting the visual impression of the moment—most notably the shifting effect of light and color—rather than specific details. Impressionist painters were viewed as radicals in their time and their independent exhibitions were initially met with harsh opposition since their free and visible brushstrokes violated the rules of...

An art form that was popularized in the late 1950s. Installation involves the creation of an enveloping aesthetic or sensory experience in a particular environment and often time involves active engagement by the viewer.

In the history of printing, the original methods of lithography were based on the repelling qualities of oil and water. In modern lithography, the design is drawn with a polymer coating onto an aluminum plate and then the image is transferred directly onto the printed page. A lithograph print of an artist’s work is an authorized copy of an original work created either by the...

As the term minimalist refers to anything stripped to its essentials, Minimalism refers to the movement in America in the 1960s and 1970s that emphasized art in its pure, pared-down form and often used industrial materials. In the aftermath of World War II, Minimalism developed out of the simplified rebellious spirit that emerged among artists in response to Abstract Expressionism. The term was used to...

Mixed-media refers to artwork in which more than one medium is used in its production. A two-dimensional artwork can be mixed-media if an artist uses a combination of pencil, inks, paints and collage and other materials. A three-dimensional work is often described as mixed-media when various forms of sculpture, visual, or audio sources are combined.

Narrative refers to artwork that tells a story, often as a sequence of events. Narrative art is seen in the early primitive cave-wall drawings, the Greek and Roman reliefs depicting the tales of Gods and heroes, and the traditional Renaissance paintings documenting historical scenes. It can be one part of a larger series of works, offering a segment of a larger whole, or it can...

Shortened from Optical Art, Op Art was a movement in the late 1960s that placed an emphasis on the viewer’s perceptual experience. The compositions and artists’ intentions of Op Art were similar to those of the Pop Art movement, including the use of flat colors, hard edges, and geometrical shapes and the ability to state and restate the same themes and variations. Bauhaus master Joseph...

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, or color as derived from another medium to a holding surface. Types of paints include oils, acrylics, watercolor, gouache, tempera, and spray paint. Additional tools and specific instruments are used depending on the pigment and surface. For example, tempera painting requires a binding element, traditionally egg, for the pigment to adhere to the surface and is often...

Photogravure is an intaglio printmaking process in which a positive transparency of a photographic negative is transferred onto a light sensitive gelatin coated copper plate. The plate and transparency are then exposed. The gelatin coating which did not receive light during the exposure is washed away, leaving a gelatin image that acts as a resist when the plate is etched with acid. Ink is then...

Photorealism refers to the style of painting meant to look like a photograph. A popular movement that spread throughout the United States in the late 1960s, Photorealism combines characteristics of the American Realists along with Pop Art references to American culture. Artists Chuck Close, Richard Estes, and Charles Bell led this movement with their large-scale paintings that so closely resemble a photographic print. The word...

Platinum printing is a delicate, lengthy photographic process that requires hand-coated printing paper, an image-size negative and exposure to sun or UV light. The deep tonal range from cool gray-blacks to split tones of brown coupled with the archival properties of the precious platinum metal make this process truly unique. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a favorite among the Pictorialists,...

Pochoir is a stenciling technique characterized by crisp brilliant color and clean lines that was popular in both the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements. Each piece would use from 20 to 250 unique stencils to apply color to a black and white collotype print from a photograph. This labor-intensive process eventually gave way to simpler printing techniques such silk screening. Many influential artists such...

Pop Art emerged in the 1950s as a challenge to the dominant ideas of Abstract Expressionism at the time. Recognizable for its graphic style and bold colors, Pop Art subverted the idea that art should be pure self-expression by suppressing the artist’s hand. Taking objects and imagery from banal consumer culture, such as comic books and advertisements, Pop Art became an unrelenting mirror for mass...

During World War II many influential European artists fled the continent seeking asylum and new beginnings in New York City. This meant that in the Post-War years, New York became the bustling center of artistic development. European artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst were now able to create with the support of vibrant institutions and patrons such as Peggy Guggenheim. Meanwhile,...

Postmodernism is used to define the group of movements such as Conceptual Art, Fluxus, Pop Art and Performance Art that emerged as a reaction to the concerns of purist and formal concerns of Modernism. Rather than seeking purity, Postmodern artists sought to destabilize the ideas of authenticity, hierarchy and progress in art. In defiance of Mies van der Rohe’s modernist mantra “less is more,” one...

A fine art print is an image produced by pressing a unique inked surface, such as an engraving, etching or woodcut, to a support such as paper of fabric. Though reproductions of the same image, each print is considered an original and will have slight variations due to the inking and printing process.

Also referred to as naturalism, Realism is the attempt to represent the world as precisely and truthfully as possible through an artistic medium. This style is exemplified by the works of 15th century Dutch painters such as Johannes Vermeer and Jan van Eyck. In the mid-19th century, the Realist movement began as rejection of the drama and stylization of Romanticism. In this movement, the demystification...