Glossary

Terms:

Abstract Art
Art that does not imitate or directly represent external reality. Based on the theory that form, line and colour can be a visual language in themselves, without needing to refer to external realities.

Approach
The process of reflection throughout an artist's career that has an effect on everything he or she does or produces.

Appropriation
Refers to the use of borrowed elements in the creation of new work. The borrowed elements may include images, forms or styles from art history or from popular culture, or materials and techniques from non-art contexts. Since the 1980s the term has also referred more specifically to quoting the work of another artist to create a new work. The new work may or may not alter the original. In her work Foot, Angela Grauerholz appropriates the foot from a painting for use in her work.

Assemblage
Oeuvre using preexisting, sometimes "found" objects that may or may not contribute their original identities to the total content of the work.

Atelier Graff
Graff very quickly established a lasting reputation as one of the main centres of printmaking in Quebec. More than that, it was practically a community and without a doubt a philosophy of art. Graff's members were opposed to abstract art and developed a pop imagery laced with references to America and to Montreal folklore, revealing the issues of the day: affirmation of national identity, sexual liberation, feminism, joual (a dialect of Quebec French) and pop culture.

Automatism
In the arts, an act of creation which either allows chance to play a major role or which draws on the unconscious mind through free association, states of trance, or dreams. Automatism was fundamental to surrealism, whose practitioners experimented with automatic writing and automatic drawing, producing streams of words or doodles from the unconscious. It has been taken up by other abstract painters, such as the Canadian Automatistes, a group working in Montréal in the 1940s, and the abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock.

Canvas marouflé
Refers to the techniques of affixing canvas directly on a support such as wood, masonite or fabric instead of stretching it on a frame.

Chromogène
A chromogenic print is a color image on paper produced by a color negative. Sometimes referred to as a c-print or a dye coupler print this is the most common color printing process today.

Collage
From the French verb coller, to glue. A work made by gluing materials such as paper scraps, photographs, and cloth on to a flat surface.

Composition
The bringing together of parts or elements to form a whole; the structure, organization, or total form of a work of art.

Concept
The basic idea behind a creative project that guides the artist right up to the final product. Sometimes, artists exhibit their preparatory work, such as research, photographs and videos, along with the final result, or even the preparatory work on its own. For these artists, the idea and the process count as much as the result. The term process art is also used. Beyond Sweeties by Naomi London is a good example of this: the process of creating the work is just as important as the final execution of the paintings. The process is documented in letters, recipes and polaroid photos, which are also part of the work.

Conceptual Art
Art that is intended to convey an idea or a concept to the perceiver, rejecting the creation or appreciation of a traditional art object such as a painting or a sculpture as a precious commodity.Exponents of Conceptual Art said that artistic production should serve artistic knowledge and that the art object is not an end in itself. The first exhibition specifically devoted to Conceptual Art took place in 1970 at the New York Cultural Center under the title "Conceptual Art and Conceptual Aspects."Because Conceptual Art is so dependent upon the text (or discourse) surrounding it, it is strongly related to numerous other movements of the last century.

Curator
The person who is responsible for choosing the works and artists to be included in an exhibition, in keeping with the theme, which has been proposed either by the curator or the institution presenting the exhibition. He or she may be a museum curator, an art critic, a freelance curator or an academic. The curator often designs the layout of the exhibition, but may also be assisted by the exhibition designer, who chooses the colour of the walls, graphic elements and lighting.

Encaustic
Encaustic painting, also known as hot wax painting, involves using heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added. The liquid/paste is then applied to a surface — usually prepared wood, though canvas and other materials are often used.

Etching
The technique of reproducing a design by coating a metal plate with wax and drawing with a sharp instrument called a stylus through the wax down to the metal. The plate is put in an acid bath, which eats away the incised lines; it is then heated to dissolve the wax and finally inked and printed on paper. The resulting print is called the etching.

Figurative Art
A term used particularly in the modern period to indicate representational art, that is, art in which the artist's primary concern is still with recording the visible world.

Fine Art
Art created for purely aesthetic expression, communication, or contemplation. Painting and sculpture are the best known of the fine arts.

Folk Art
Art of people who have had no formal, academic training, but whose works are part of an established tradition of style and craftsmanship.

Foreshortening
The representation of forms on a two-dimensional surface by presenting the length in such a way that the long axis appears to project toward or recede away from the viewer.

Found Object
An object from outside an art context, displayed as art. Found Object an object found by an artist and exhibited with minimal alteration as a work of art. By isolating the object from its usual environment new ways of viewing it are suggested. )tate)

Fresco
A painting technique in which pigments are applied to wet plaster. The pigments bind with the drying plaster to form a very durable image.

Happening
Happening An event conceived by artists and performed by artists and others, usually unrehearsed and without a specific script or stage.

Hard-edge
A form of abstract painting characterized by clearly defined geometric shapes and often bright colors. A form of abstract painting characterized by clearly defined geometric shapes and often bright colours. The term was first used in the 1950s to describe astract painting that had neat surfaces, restrained use of form and use of full colours. American artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Kenneth Noland are two well-known American hard-edge painters. Canadian artists such as Guido Molinari and Claude Tousignant were influenced by the hard-edge technique and aesthetic.

In situ
A Latin expression meaning a work has been created “on site” and draws its meaning from the spatial, economic, environmental, political or symbolic dimension of its setting.

Installation
Mixed-media, multi-dimensional works that are created temporarily for a specific space or site, either indoors or outdoors. Installation usually means that the work is a one-off piece designed for a specific space. Usually the viewer can walk around the installation and be surrounded by the work rather than see it flat against the wall.

Label
The label or sign placed next to a painting or a sculpture, with information about the work: artist's name, dates of birth and death, medium, materials, date created, lender (which could be museum or a private collector), donor and museum identification number.

Lithography
A printmaking technique based on the antipathy of oil and water. The image is drawn with a grease crayon or painted with tusche on a stone or grained aluminum plate. The surface is then chemically treated and dampened so that it will accept ink only where the crayon or tusche has been used.

Medium (pl. media or mediums)
A specific type of artistic technique or means of expression determined by the use of particular materials.

Minimalism
A nonrepresentational style of sculpture and painting, usually severely restricted in the use of visual elements and often consisting of simple geometric shapes or masses. The style came to prominence in the late 1960s.

Mixed media
Works of art made with more than one medium.

Neo-Plasticism
A term adopted by the Durch painter Piet Mondrian to describe his own abstract paintings. Neo-Plasticist art is defined as art in which the basic elements of painting - colour, line form are used only in their purest, most fundamental state: only primary colours and non-colours, only squares and rectangles, only straight and horizontal or vertical lines. Artists such as Guido Molinari and Claude Tousignant were influenced by Neo-Plasticist ideas.

Op art
A twentieth century art movement and style in which artists sought to create an impression of movement on the picture surface by means of optical illusion. It is derived from, and is also known as Optical Art and Perceptual Abstraction. Guido Molinari and Claude Tousignant create works within this movement and aesthetic.

Photomechanical serigraphy (silkscreening)
A serigraphy or silkscreen technique in which an even layer of a photo sensitive emulsion is applied to the screen.

Plasticiens
The movement known as the “Plasticiens” emerged in Montreal in about 1955. In a manifesto made public at an exhibition at the Échouerie café, the artists who signed it, Jean-Paul Jérôme, Louis Belzile, Rodolphe de Repentigny and Fernand Toupin, repudiated objective abstract painting. They rejected the spontaneous, expressive aspect of painting to focus instead on geometric shapes, pure colours and two-dimensional space. In 1959, there was a second generation of Plasticiens led by Guido Molina and Claude Tousignant. Along with Jean Goguen and Denis Juneau, these artists did not really constitute a group but were drawn together by their interest in the colour dynamics.

Process Art
Process art emphasizes the “process” of making art rather than any predetermined composition or plan. the concepts of change and the concepts of change, improvisation, and the use of non-traditional materials such earth, water, wax, felt, and latex are important to this type of art. Artists working in this way often create erratic or irregular arrangements produced by actions such as cutting, hanging, and dropping, or organic processes such as growth, condensation, freezing, or decomposition.

Production
It is often written that an artist produces a piece rather than creating a work: the terms piece and work are used synoymously.

Quotation
Contemporary artists often make reference to earlier works from the history of art. In this case, it is said they are quoting from another work. They are not really taking inspiration from the work bu,t rather, integrating aspects of it into their own creation. To spot these quotations, you need to have a knowledge of art history. Visual artists are not the only ones who quote from other works: filmmakers do so as well. In Croix supremacist, Claude Tousignant makes reference to the painter Malevitch and the supremacist movement that asserts the supremacy of abstract shapes: the square, rectangle, circle, triangle and cross.

Relief
A form that stands out from the background in a work of art.

Salon style
A method of hanging paintingsdeveloped in the late 19th and early 20th century for arranging paintings at large European art exhibits to allow visitors the opportunity to view as many works as possible. Technically it means hanging paintings close together starting slight below eye-level and continuing up to the ceiling. The technique is often used by installation artists, such as Naomi London in her work, Beyond Sweeties.

Series
The artist explores all aspects of a subject -- thematic, aesthetic and material. The works are numbered so that they are easier to situate within the series.

Serigraphy (screen printing)
A printmaking technique in which stencils are applied to fabric stretched across a frame. Paint or ink is forced with a squeegee through the unblocked portions of the screen onto paper or other surface beneath.

Suprematism
A school and theory of geometric abstract art that originated in Russia in the early 20th century. The main idea behind this art was to reduce art to simple geometrical form. Claude Tousigant makes reference to this movement in his painting, La croix suprématiste.

Symmetry
A composition (or design) with identical or nearly identical form on opposite sides of a dividing line or central axis; formal balance.

Tachism
This word has a connotation of cause and effect and introduces the idea of an action in process. The organization of visual elements resembles the thought process of the artist in the creation of the artwork.

Traditional landscape painting
Paintings that feature an expanse of scenery that can be seen in a single view and represent that view in a realistic manner.

Trompe L’œil
A french term meaning "deception of the eye." It is applied to painting so photographically realistic that it may fool the viewer into thinking that the objects or scene represented are real rather than painted.

Untitled
Artists do not always provide an interpretation of their work, preferring to let viewers form their own ideas. Untitled by Dominque Blain, doesn't provide any direct information about the figures in the work, but the eloquent way she presents them ensures that viewers understand the subject.

Watercolour
A paints made with pigments dispersed in gum arabic, that uses water as a medium.