TASC Contemporary Art Practice flashcards
TASC Contemporary Art Practice · Build recall with a focused review session.
32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.
- Lean-over-fat rule
- In oil painting, each successive layer should contain more oil and less solvent than the one beneath it, preventing cracking, wrinkling, and poor adhesion as the film dries.
- Buon fresco
- Pigment applied to wet lime plaster; as the plaster sets, calcium hydroxide reacts with carbon dioxide to form calcium carbonate, permanently locking the color into the wall.
- Readymade
- A manufactured object selected and designated as art by an artist, shifting the source of meaning from craftsmanship to context, selection, and institutional framing.
- Site-specificity
- A condition in which an artwork's meaning and form depend on a particular location, so that relocation or removal alters or destroys the work's concept.
- Intaglio printing
- A printmaking family including etching, engraving, and drypoint, in which ink is held in incised grooves below the plate surface and transferred under high pressure to damp paper.
- Relief printing
- A process such as woodcut or linocut in which the uncut surface receives ink and prints, while recessed areas stay blank; the image appears reversed on the block.
- Additive versus subtractive color
- Additive color mixes light (RGB) and tends toward white; subtractive color mixes pigments or inks (CMY) and tends toward black.
- Atmospheric perspective
- A depth cue in which distant forms lose contrast and detail and shift toward the background's hue, mimicking the optical effect of atmosphere over long distances.
- Gestalt grouping
- Principles such as proximity, similarity, continuity, and closure that describe how viewers organize separate visual marks into unified perceived forms.
- Institutional critique
- An art practice that examines museums, galleries, funding structures, and markets as constitutive parts of an artwork's meaning rather than neutral background.
- Iconography and iconology
- Iconography identifies symbols and conventional subjects in an image; iconology interprets those symbols within their cultural, historical, and intellectual context.
- Intentional fallacy
- The critical position that an artwork's meaning is not fixed solely by the artist's stated intention, since viewers and institutions also shape interpretation.
- Appropriation
- The deliberate taking of recognizable existing imagery or objects into a new work, raising questions about authorship, originality, power, and credit.
- Lost-wax casting
- A bronze casting method in which a wax model is encased in a refractory mold, melted out, and replaced by molten metal, yielding a unique or editioned positive.
- Exposure triangle
- The interdependence of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO in photography; adjusting one requires compensating with another to maintain exposure while trading depth of field, motion blur, and noise.
- Chiaroscuro
- The modeling of three-dimensional form through gradations of light and dark; its extreme, high-contrast theatrical version is called tenebrism.
- Asymmetrical balance
- A composition achieving equilibrium through unequal visual weights, using size, color, placement, and complexity rather than mirror symmetry.
- Minimalism
- A 1960s movement using industrial materials, serial repetition, and reduced forms, emphasizing the viewer's bodily relationship to the object over expressive gesture.
- Performance art
- A practice in which the artist's body, action, and duration constitute the medium, with documentation raising questions about presence, authenticity, and reproducibility.
- Relational aesthetics
- A framework describing artworks as social encounters, services, or participatory systems, where human interaction rather than a discrete object is the primary medium.
- Salon des Refusés
- An 1863 exhibition in Paris of works rejected by the official Salon jury, exposing academic gatekeeping and marking a shift toward independent exhibition.
- Ukiyo-e influence
- Japanese woodblock prints, with flat color and asymmetrical composition, circulated through trade and world's fairs and shaped European Impressionist and Post-Impressionist practice.
- Droit de suite
- A resale royalty right entitling artists to a percentage of subsequent sales of their work, addressing equity in art market transactions.
- Fair use
- A four-factor legal balancing test considering purpose, nature of the work, amount used, and market effect; it is not automatic permission to use copyrighted material.
- Photogram
- A camera-less image made by placing objects directly on light-sensitive material and exposing it, producing a negative shadow form.
- Cyanotype
- An iron-based photographic process producing Prussian blue prints, developed simply in water and historically used for botanical and architectural documentation.
- Contrapposto
- A classical sculptural pose in which weight shifts onto one leg, producing counterbalancing tilts in hips and shoulders and a naturalistic sense of potential movement.
- Bauhaus
- A German school active 1919 to 1933 that integrated craft and industrial design, closing under political pressure and dispersing its faculty internationally.
- Creative placemaking
- An urban planning approach integrating arts into community development, which can revitalize neighborhoods but also accelerate gentrification and displacement.
- Disability aesthetics
- A framework treating access and bodily difference as creative and political concerns rather than accommodations added after a work is complete.
- Encaustic
- A painting technique using pigment suspended in beeswax and resin, fused with heat, producing a luminous surface sensitive to extreme temperature changes.
- Monotype
- A print made by painting or drawing on a plate and transferring the image to paper; because the image degrades immediately, no true edition exists.