| Term | Definition |
| Renaissance 1300-1600 | early investigations (espec. by Giotto) into perspective |
| The High Renaissance 1495-152 | da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Raphael. The highest achievements in perspective, visual inquiry. |
| Realism 1850-1940 | Manet, Goya. Painted modern realistic scenes. |
| Impressionism 1860-193 | an art movement which concerned itself with an intense involvement with light- capturing the effect of light on objects and portraying this effect on canvas. Renoir, Degas, Monet |
| Fauvism 1910 | a short-lived movement concerned with the liberation of color and the formal structure of a work of art. Matisse |
| Expressionism 1905 | . The expressionists stress the artist's inner f eelings toward the world. This style was based mainly in Germany. famous example: Edvard Munch: "The Scream" |
| Cubism 1910 | Fathered by Picasso and Braque - the idea of capturing multiple points of view at once. |
| Futurism 1910 | Influenced by cubism, this movement strove to show speed, movement, the effects of industrializationf |
| Post Impressionism | not a movement but a group of important artists: Van Gogh, Gaugin, Seurat, Cezanne who built upon Impressionism, reintroducing form and line |
| Dada 1915 | antimilitaristic and anti-art attitude. These attitudes were generated by the horrors of World War I. Duchamp: Ready-mades "Urinal" |
| DeStijl 1920 | .Style of art promoting the use of geometric shapes and basic colors and based on the idea of universal harmony. Mondrian. |
| Surrealism 1920 | based upon dreams, the irrational and the fantastic. Salvador Dali. Could not have existed without Freudian psychology. |
| Abstract Expressionism 1940-1955. | A style of painting originating in the U.S. during the 1940's and 1950's. It is characterized by spontaneity, emotion, bold colors, and/or strong value contrast on very large canvases. Jackson Pollock. |
| Pop Art 1950 | A style of art in the 1960's; the subject matter was based on visual cliches, subject matter and impersonal style of popular mass media imagery. Andy Warhol. |
| Photorealism 1970s | Hyper-realistic painting 'just like a photograph'. |
| Conceptual Art | is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. |
| Performance Art | is art in which the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work. Also called 'happenings' |
| Installation Art | an artistic genre of site-specific, three-dimensional works designed to transform the perception of a space. |
| Web Art | is art which uses the Internet as its primary medium or platform. The Internet and its connections to the world are the basis of the work. Artists working this way are sometimes referred to as net artists. |
| Virtual Reality | The term is widely used to describe immersive virtual reality, installation art and video games. |
| Environmental Art | using large outdoor spaces as one's 'canvas for site-specific art. Christo. |
| Rococco Art 1700-1789. | was a domesticated from of the Baroque style-it was decorative, gay, ornamental and free--a style to glorify and glamorize the wealthy and noble classes |