Abstract:  Art or imagery that is not concerned with accurately representing a subject.

Avant-garde:  French for vanguard.  Artists and movements that stand at the cutting-edge of artistic production, often in opposition to established ideas and traditions.

Circa:  Approximately.  If an artwork was made in circa 1800, it was created around 1800.

Contrast:  A large difference between two things, as in colors or shapes.

Elements of art:  Refer to the things that an artist can use to create art, usually color, value, line, shape, form, texture, and space.  (see also Principals of Art)

Emphasis:  Any forcefulness that gives importance to some feature or features of an artwork; something singled out, stressed, or drawn attention to for aesthetic impact.

Medium:  The material or technique used by an artist to produce a work of art.

Modernism:  Movement of the late 19th-20th centuries during which artists made a deliberate departure from the traditional art of the past.  Modernist artists were intersted in experimenting with new types of paints and media, in creating and expressing abstractions and fantasies, rather than representing something in the external world.

Movement:  In an artwork where there is no motion, movement refers to an implied motion created by the arrangement of the elements of art.  Using lines, textures, and shapes, an artist can cause the eye to move over the work in different ways.

Perspective:  The technique artists use to project an illusion of the three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional surface.

Principles of art:  The different ways the elements of art can be used in a work of art.  They include balance, emphasis, harmony, variety, movement, rhythm, and proportion.

Texture:  The surface characteristic of visual materials, actual or simulated.  Actual textures can be felt with the fingers, while simulated textures are suggested by the way the artist has painted certain areas of the picture.
 

Source for terms:  The ArtLex On-Line Dictionary
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