LIBRARY

Art Words

An art glossary built around terms that appear in artwork descriptions on this site, growing little by little.

Index

  1. A
  2. B
  3. C
  4. D
  5. E
  6. F
  7. G
  8. H
  9. I
  10. J
  11. K
  12. L
  13. M
  14. N
  15. O
  16. P
  17. Q
  18. R
  19. S
  20. T
  21. U
  22. V
  23. W
  24. X
  25. Y
  26. Z
  27. 163 terms
Pastel
A powdered pigment shaped with a small amount of binder; valued for soft colour and gentle blending.
Panel
A hard support — wood or board — used in medieval and Renaissance panel painting and inherited by Philippine religious imagery.
Performance Art
Art that takes the artist's body and time directly as its material; deeply rooted in contemporary art since the 1970s.
Public Art
Works sited outside the museum, in public space; implies dialogue with a community.
Pictorialism
A late-19th to early-20th-century photographic movement that approached photography with painterly aesthetics.
Pinhole Camera
A primitive camera that forms an image through a pinhole rather than a lens; known for soft blur and long exposures.
Primitivism
An early-20th-century inclination drawing on non-Western forms; today its structural gaze is itself critically examined.
Print
An image transferred from a matrix to paper; covers both prints in printmaking and photographic prints.
Painting
The act and the artefact of building an image on a support with paint; a synthesis of material, technique, and subject.
Postmodern
A current since the 1970s that affirms plurality, citation, and fragmentation against a singular modernist progress.
Pop Art
A 1950s–60s movement that absorbed mass-consumer imagery, shaking the boundary between advertising and fine art.
Portrait
A painting or photograph of a specific sitter; in the Philippines, Amorsolo's portraits are emblematic.