Art class

I think art will never loose its sheen. Art is always going to live. It lives in the collective consciousness of people. Art knows no age, no religion and no landscape. Art can be anything from an object that evokes an aesthetic reaction-a sense of beauty, appreciation, harmony, and pleasure; or an event which exudes quality, production, expression, or realm of what is beautiful or of more than ordinary significance. I guess all of us are so busy in our candy-floss romances for all things mundane that what starts as a fascination in the concrete of our urban jungles, often reaches an alto in upscale malls and dies in some tasteless cinema. That is our love for junk music and obscene graphics. We seem to have lost that touch -- the feel of real art. I have culled a short glossary of art and I hope all my pals and readers start loving art as much as I am trying to!

Abstract art
Art that departs significantly from natural appearances. Forms are modified or changed to varying degrees in order to emphasize certain qualities or content.

Acrylic
A clear plastic used as a binder in paint and as a casting material in sculpture.

Avant garde

Avant (French) The van or advanced guard of an army. Experimental stuff outside the usual boundaries. Highly independent film that is often the forerunner of a new artistic genre

Baroque
The seventeenth-century period in Europe characterized in the visual arts by dramatic light and shade, turbulent composition, and exaggerated emotional expression.

Conceptual art
An art form in which the originating idea and the process by which it is presented take precedence over a tangible product. Conceptual works are sometimes produced in visible form, but they often exist only as descriptions of mental concepts or ideas. This trend developed in the late 1960s, in part as a way to avoid the commercialization of art.

Fine art
Art created for purely aesthetic expression, communication, or contemplation. Painting and sculpture are the best known of the fine arts.

Renaissance
Period of European history at the close of the Middle Ages and the rise of the modern world; a cultural rebirth from the 14th through the middle of the 17th centuries. It literally means rebirth: the revival of learning and culture. Renaissance is a french word and is often used to describe the period in the arts and architecture, from the beginning of the 15th century - usually marked by the work of Masaccio - through to the early to mid-16th century, culminating in the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo. During this period, artists work was informed by the art and architecture of the ancient Greeks and Romans and through the study of nature. Renaissance is a term usually restricted to work produced in Italy during this period, especially in the cities of Florence, Rome, and Venice.

Impressionism
A style of painting that originated in France about 1870. Paintings of casual subjects, executed outdoors, using divided brush strokes to capture the mood of a particular moment as defined by the transitory effects of light and color. The first Impressionist exhibit was held in 1874.

Fresco
A painting technique in which pigments suspended in water are applied to a damp lime-plaster surface. The pigments dry to become part of the plaster wall or surface.

Oil paint
Paint in which the pigment is held together with a binder of oil, usually linseed oil.

Sameer Bhat