Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions.
Color printing or colour printing is the reproduction of an image or text in color. Any natural scene or color photograph can be optically and physiologically dissected into three primary colors, red, green and blue, roughly equal amounts of which give rise to the perception of white, and different proportions of which give rise to the visual sensations of all other colors. The additive combination of any two primary colors in roughly equal proportion gives rise to the perception of a secondary color. For example, red and green yields yellow, red and blue yields magenta, and green and blue yield cyan. Only yellow is counter-intuitive. Yellow, cyan and magenta are merely the "basic" secondary colors: unequal mixtures of the primaries give rise to perception of many other colors all of which may be considered "tertiary".
Neo-Impressionism is a term coined by French art critic Félix Fénéon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat. Seurat's most renowned masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, marked the beginning of this movement when it first made its appearance at an exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris. Around this time, the peak of France's modern era emerged and many painters were in search of new methods. Followers of Neo-Impressionism, in particular, were drawn to modern urban scenes as well as landscapes and seashores. Science-based interpretation of lines and colors influenced Neo-Impressionists' characterization of their own contemporary art. The Pointillist and Divisionist techniques are often mentioned in this context, because they were the dominant techniques in the beginning of the Neo-impressionist movement.
The term composition means "putting together". It can be thought of as the organization of the elements of art according to the principles of art. Composition can apply to any work of art, from music through writing and into photography, that is arranged using conscious thought.
Mattes are used in photography and special effects filmmaking to combine two or more image elements into a single, final image. Usually, mattes are used to combine a foreground image with a background image. In this case, the matte is the background painting. In film and stage, mattes can be physically huge sections of painted canvas, portraying large scenic expanses of landscapes.
Divisionism, also called chromoluminarism, was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colors into individual dots or patches which interacted optically.
Dichroic glass is glass which can display multiple different colors depending on lighting conditions.
Elements of art are stylistic features that are included within an art piece to help the artist communicate. The seven most common elements include line, shape, texture, form, space, color and value, with the additions of mark making, and materiality. When analyzing these intentionally utilized elements, the viewer is guided towards a deeper understanding of the work.
A glaze is a thin transparent or semi-transparent layer on a painting which modifies the appearance of the underlying paint layer. Glazes can change the chroma, value, hue and texture of a surface. Glazes consist of a great amount of binding medium in relation to a very small amount of pigment. Drying time will depend on the amount and type of paint medium used in the glaze. The medium, base, or vehicle is the mixture to which the dry pigment is added. Different media can increase or decrease the rate at which oil paints dry.
Reverse painting on glass is an art form consisting of applying paint to a piece of glass and then viewing the image by turning the glass over and looking through the glass at the image. Another term used to refer to the art of cold painting and gilding on the back of glass is verre églomisé, named after the French decorator Jean-Baptiste Glomy (1711–86), who framed prints using glass that had been reverse-painted. In German it is known as Hinterglasmalerei.
Stephen Knapp was an American artist best known for his use of the medium of lightpainting. A native of Worcester, Massachusetts, he gained an international reputation for large-scale works of art held in museums, public, corporate, and private collections, which are executed in media as diverse as light, kiln-formed glass, metal, stone, mosaic, and ceramic.
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts also involve aspects of visual arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the visual arts are the applied arts such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design and decorative art.
Lumia is a form of art that uses light; originally associated with music but was later associated with painting. The term was coined by a twentieth-century artist, Thomas Wilfred. In the early twentieth century, artists began to promote colors and light together in their works. Wilfred worked towards establishing lumia as a new form of art, but the medium has yet to achieve popular recognition.
Gisela Colon is an American international contemporary artist who has developed a unique vocabulary of Organic Minimalism, breathing lifelike qualities into reductive forms. Operating at the intersection of art and science, Colon is best known for meticulously creating light-activated sculptures through industrial and technological processes. Drawing from aerospace and other scientific realms, Colon utilizes innovative sculptural materials such as carbon fiber and optical materials of the 21st century, to generate her energetic sculptures. Colon's gender-fluid sculptures disrupt the traditional view of the masculine minimal object, by embodying qualities of energy, movement and growth, through a merger of industrial with the organic.
Soledad Salamé is a Chilean artist, known for her multimedia installations, which focus on the connection between art, science, nature, and technology.
Ray Howlett is an American artist primarily associated with the light and space movement. He is known as one of the pioneers of infinity light sculptures.
Maureen McQuillan is a New York-based contemporary artist, who, though primarily a painter, has worked in a range of mediums that include drawing, painting, camera-less photography, and sculptural installation. Across disciplines, she uses color and flowing line to create her complexly patterned abstractions.
French Gothic stained glass windows were an important feature of French Gothic architecture, particularly cathedrals and churches built between the 12th century and 16th century. While stained glass had been used in French churches in the Romanesque period, the Gothic windows were much larger, eventually filling entire walls. They were particularly important in the High Gothic cathedrals, most famously in Chartres Cathedral. Their function was to fill the interior with a mystical colored light, representing the Holy Spirit, and also to illustrate the stories of the Bible for the large majority of the congregation who could not read.
Light in painting fulfills several objectives, both plastic and aesthetic: on the one hand, it is a fundamental factor in the technical representation of the work, since its presence determines the vision of the projected image, as it affects certain values such as color, texture and volume; on the other hand, light has a great aesthetic value, since its combination with shadow and with certain lighting and color effects can determine the composition of the work and the image that the artist wants to project. Also, light can have a symbolic component, especially in religion, where this element has often been associated with divinity.
