Abbozzo -
Under painting in monochrome, used to indicate the general composition of a picture before its final colouring.
Serial Imagery -
The same image repeated several times, slight variations, in a painting or sculpture. The image chosen can be figurative (Andy Warhol) or abstract (Don Judd and other minimal sculptors).
http://www.foundwonders.com/art/illustrations/striking-advertising-imagery-serial-cut/
Abstract Illusionism -
A tendency in American Abstract painting of the late 1960's and 1970's in which forms and brush-strokes, normally experienced by the spectator as things lying flat on the canvas, are separated from it by various illusory devices (cast shadows, etc.) so that they seem to float in front of the picture plane. The term was first used c.1967.
Dwarf Gallery -
A low exterior wall passage, lit by an equally low arcade, usually just below the roof of a building. Met with in German and Lombardic romanesque architecture.
Calligraphic Painting -
1. Modern art, usually abstract and dating from the 1940's onwards, which puts the stress on the 'written' quality of the brush-stroke, with a consequent resemblance to oriental calligraphy.
2. Chinese and Japanese ink-painting, made with the same brush as for writing and built up from the same repertoire of strokes.
Balance -
The impression of equilibrium in a pictorial or sculptural composition. In order to achieve it, the forms are generally arranged about an axe. Balance depends both on the arrangement of forms (a small form which is further from the imagined fulcrum or point of rest may be a perfectly adequate counterweight to a large which is a much nearer the same point) and on colour (a dark form looks heavier than a light form of the same size, even though it will also look smaller.) It also depends on associative and physcological factors: For example, if the form is not abstract, but represents something the viewer knows to be heavy in reality, then he or she will experience it as heavy. Similarly, if it represents something the viewer thinks of as being particularly expressive - a face, for instance- he or she will automatically give it added importance, and therefore weight, when assessing the balance of the composition.
Body Art -
A type of action or happening, in which the artist uses his or her own body as the primary medium of expression. The term has been used from c.1967. Synonym: Living Sculpture.
Celtic Art -
The art produced by Celtic people in western europe from C. 450 BC to ADc.700, notable for its use of asymmetrical and curvilinear abstract ornament, often combined with zoomorphic decoration. It falls into two main phases: an earlier, which was produced on the continent and often called the la tene style (to the beginning of the AD), and a later confined to Britain and Ireland, from about AD 150, and often showing signs of contact with Roman art, Jewellery, Woodcarving, Pottery and Metal Work are some of the most typical products of Celtic Art.
Discharge Printing -
A method of decorating previously dyed textiles by printing the design with bleach, thus creating a white pattern against a coloured ground.
Embroidery -
A method decorating textiles with stitched threads in different patterns. (As opposed to tapestry where the design is woven into the fabrics.)
Earth Colours -
Pigments such as brown or yellow, which occur naturally in earth of clay and are usually metallic oxides. Chemically, they are the most stable of all pigments and therefore the least subject to change in the ageing process.
Tantra Art -
Tantra is a buddhist and hindu mystical cult focused on a vision of cosmic sexuality. The earliest surviving complete texts relating to it date from AD c.600. In different forms it is found almost throughout Asia- in China, Tibet, Nepal, Mongolia and Cambodia, but perhaps most characteristically in India. In its Hindu form it is based on the worship of Shakti, goddess of power or energy, and aims at an expansion of consciousness through contemplation of appropriate images of the gods (who are usually presented in their most violent and ferocious aspect), objects with a sexual connotation such as the Lingam, and abstract diagrams called yantras.
All terminology was taken from the book-
'The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Art Terms'
