AP ART HISTORY
Summer Assignments
These assignments will be graded for the first marking period.
1. Visit a New York Art Museum
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Metropolitan Museum of Art – 5th Ave. and 82nd Street
Guggenheim Museum – 5th Ave at 89th Street
Whitney Museum of Art – 53rd between 5th and 6th Ave
Museum of Modern Art – 11 West 53rd Street
Write a short museum report (3 typed pages.) Include the following info:
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Name of museum or gallery
Brief overview of exhibitions visited
Favorite area of museum and reason for the choice
Choose two works of art from two different time periods/styles that especially
interested you and write a critical analysis comparing those two works of art. It will be
a subjective critical analysis, so compare and contrast the two works from a perspective
of your own aesthetic criteria, research is not necessary. Try to make the comparison of
two works from two different time periods so that you can look for a common theme.
2. Study the glossary that’s attached and online and prepare to take a first week quiz on
those terms. To find the glossary online, go to the Paramus School District website,
click on Summer Reading 2014, go to grades 9-12, click on AP Summer assignment,
and find AP Art History.
3. Complete The Annotated Mona Lisa Assignment attached. It is an assignment created to
give you some insight into the art history timeline. You will be creating flash cards for
this, so you will have to purchase some 5 x 7 inch flash cards.
4. Read the introduction and chapters 1/2/3 in Gardner’s “Art Through the Ages”. We
will be getting right into these chapters once we come back from vacation.
5. ***Extra Credit reading…read one of the following books over the summer and write a
one page critique of the book. Be ready to discuss the book with me.
• Brunelleschi’s Dome, Ross King
• The Judgment of Paris, Ross King
• Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, Ross King
• The Lost Battles: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and the Artistic Duel That
Defined the Renaissance, Jonathan Jones
• Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, Gail Levin
• Sargeant’s Daughters, A Biography of a Painting, Erica Hirschler
• Leonardo, The Artist and the Man, Serge Bramly
• The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe
• Nothing If Not Critical: Essays on Art and Artists, Robert Hughes
• The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes
The Annotated Mona Lisa Assignment
1. Read the Introduction in The Annotated Mona Lisa, Carol Strickland: How To Look At Art
(Mona Lisa).
2. Read the Prehistoric chapter through the Baroque chapter (pages 1-65) and select ONE
Artwork from each time period and make a flash card (preferably 5 x 7) for each. Include the
following points for each: Artist, title, location, size, medium, and purpose. Make a
sketch as well, but don’t spend too much time on it, stick figures are okay. Look at the format
below… You should have a flash card for every period from the Prehistoric up to the Baroque
by the end of this assignment….
Artist
Title
Location
Size
Medium/Material
Purpose
Make a
sketch of the
work
ART PERIOD
Front of flash card
Back of flash card
Art Periods
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Paleolithic/Neolithic
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Early Renaissance
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Egyptian
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Italian Renaissance (High)
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Mesopotamian
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Northern Renaissance/German Renaissance
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Greek
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Mannerism and Late Renaissance
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Roman
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Italian Baroque
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Pre-Columbian Art
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Flemish Baroque
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African
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Dutch Baroque
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Byzantine
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English Baroque
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Romanesque
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Spanish Baroque
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Gothic
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French Baroque
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Renaissance
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Rococo
Glossary
This glossary includes not only words and art terms found in the text but
also those that a student is likely to encounter in general readings on art.
Abstract – Art that avoids the appearance of objects in order to explore the unseen
nature of things. Often called nonobjective or nonrepresentational art.
Abstract Expressionism – A twentieth-century movement in abstract art that seeks to
realize the emotional impact of the parts of a painting such as color, composition and
texture. Begun by Kandinsky in 1913 in Germany, brought to its fullest development
by such Americans as Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline following World War II.
Aerial/Atmospheric Perspective – A system for indicating depth in a painting by using
more neutral hues for background colors and making distant objects appear less clear
and detailed.
Altarpiece – A religious picture painted, carved or both that sits upon a church’s altar.
Arabesque – A complicated intertwined design of flowers, plants, or other organic
motifs loosely based on Arabian or Morrish designs.
Avant-Garde – Artists and their works that reflect the latest ideas and styles in any
given period. Frequently in opposition to establish or academic styles.
Assemblage – An artwork constructed from existing objects.
Baroque – An artistic period from approximately 1600 to 1750 in Europe. In painting,
the style was aristocratic, decorative, and boldly theatrical, though other trends existed
at the same time. The paintings of Rubens and the sculpture of Bernini are the most
typical works of the Baroque.
Barrel vault – A vault is a roof or a ceiling. A barrel vault that is, in effect, a deep arch
or an uninterrupted series of arches.
Bauhaus – A school of architecture in Germany in the late 1920’s under the leadership
of Walter Gropius.
Biomorphic – An adjective used to describe forms that resemble or suggest shapes
found in nature.
Byzantine – The art style that coincides with the Byzantine Empire that created it.
Located primarily in Southeastern Europe, the empire and its style lasted from the
fourth until the fifteenth century. Primarily religious art, it is characterized by brilliant
color in paintings, mosaics and book illustrations by a flat, highly stylized figures.
Religious icons are typical works of the Byzantine period. The style continues today in
the religious art of the Eastern Orthodox faiths.
Calligraphy – Handwriting that is practiced as an art. It is an important and highly
respected art in several Eastern traditions.
Cantilever – A beam or structure that is anchored at one end and projects horizontally
beyond its vertical support.
Carolingian – Art associated with the reign of Charlemagne in the ninth century of
Northern Europe.
Cartoon – A complete full-sized drawing of a planned painting which is then
transferred to a wall or wood panel to guide the artist in the development of his
picture.
Caryatid – A column carved to represent a woman.
Celtic – Art associated with the Celtic peoples of Northern Europe. Interpreting
Christian themes within Pagan art traditions, the highly intricate, decorative Celtic style
of seventh and eighth century Ireland became the first recognizable medieval art style.
Chiaroscuro – The use of lights and darks for modeling and creating dimension in a
picture. The works of Leonardo da Vinci are outstanding examples of chuaroscuro
paintings.
Chiastic stance – Meaning “X” stance where the artist poses the human figure in an art
work so that body axes oppose one another (left shoulder relaxed, right leg relaxed,
right shoulder tense, left leg tense). Spearbearer is a good example of this.
Classic – Ancient Greek art, particularly that of the Golden Age of the fifth century BC.
More broadly, the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. Applied to any art that
draws upon the appearance or spirit of the art of ancient Greece.
Clerestory – A row of windows in the upper part of a wall.
Collage – A picture, abstract or otherwise, made by pasting pieces of various materials
such as newspaper, cloth, or photographs on a flat surface.
Color Wheel – A wheel shaped diagram that illustrates the relationships between
primary, secondary, and complementary colors.
Complementary Colors – A pair of colors that offer the greatest contrast one to
another. They lie opposite each other on the color wheel of color theory.
Contrapposto – The relaxed natural pose, or weight shift, first introduced in Greek
sculpture in 480 BCE. First used in Kritios Boy, contrapposto separates Classical from
Archaic Greek statuary.
Corbelled vault – A vault formed by the piling of stone blocks in horizontal courses,
cantilevered inward until the two walls meet in an arch. The Lion’s Gate at Mycenae
provides an excellent example of a corbelled vault and a relieving triangle.
Crypt – A vaulted space usually located under the apse of a church. Because a crypt is
wholly or partly underground, it is not found in the nave elevation of the church.
Cubism – The approach of some early twentieth century artists in Paris in which
objects are represented as simplified geometric shapes.
Dadaism – Post World War I art movement that sought to negate culture by making
fun of serious art. Forerunner of surrealism.
Diptych – An altarpiece constructed of two hinged panels, originally opened to show
the interior paintings only on feast days.
Earth Works – Movement of the 1970’s that rejects gallery and museum display. Earth
works artists create projects in nature, wrapping an area of rocky coast with plastic
and hanging plastic sheeting across a canyon are two well-publicize examples.
Created out-of-doors and subject to wind and storms, the projects seldom last long so
that all that remains are photos of such earth works.
Ecorche – A figure painted or sculpted to show the muscles of the body as if without
skin. Pollaiuolo’s Battle of the Ten Nudes is a famous example of an engraving that
uses ecorche.
Enamel – A technique in which powdered glass is applied to a metal surface in a
decorative design.
Encaustic – A technique that uses colored, melted wax for creating a picture. The
resulting picture is very permanent, retaining its fresh appearance for centuries.
Entablature – In Classical architecture, the part of the building above the columns and
below the roof. The entablature of a Classical temple includes the architrave, frieze
and cornice.
Etching – A graphic process in which the artist cuts his image into a metal plate. The
lines on the plate are then eaten away by acid in which it is immersed, which in turn
will hold ink and then transferred to paper by a press. From this one plate many
impressions of the picture are able to be printed.
Expressionism – The work of an artist who wishes to display emotion and meaning in
his picture. He will often depart from realistic rendering in order to emphasize feeling.
Fauve – The French word for “wild beast”. This name was applied to the work of a
group of painters in Paris in 1905. Though each had very individualistic approaches to
their work, all emphasized brilliant color to some degree. Mantisse and Rouault were
prominent among the Fauve artists.
Foreshortening – Rendering an object so that it appears to angled back into the
picture.
Fresco – A picture painted on a plaster wall. When the picture is painted while the
plaster is still wet, it is known as the True Fresco. If painted after the plaster has
dried, the pictured is called Dry Fresco. The dry fresco isn’t as permanent as the true
fresco.
Frieze – In Classical architecture, a frieze is a continuous horizontal band of sculptural
decoration. The Ionic frieze in the Parthenon depicts the Panathenaic Procession.
Futurism – A movement, mainly Italian, at the time of the first World War, that
declared the influence of the machine on twentieth century culture. Frequently
introducing the impression of rapid motion in their works.
Genre – In painting, genre refers to realistic pictures with ordinary people in everyday
situations.
Gesso – A fine-grained plaster applied to a wood panel in Gothic and Renaissance
painting. The Gresso became the surface upon which an artist painted.
Glaze – A thin, transparent or semitransparent layer applied over a color to alter it
slightly.
Gothic – The climax of medieval European culture lasting from about 1150 to 1500 AD.
Most Gothic art has a religious motivation. In the fifteenth century, trends toward
more worldly subjects begin to appear.
Gouache – An opaque, heavy watercolor paint. Its effects produce a picture less wet
appearing and strong in color and detail than an ordinary watercolor.
Graphics – Any of the several printmaking techniques (woodcut, lithography,
engraving, etching) in which the artist works directly on the wood block, metal plate,
or lithographic stone that does the printing.
Grisaille – A picture painted with various shades of gray and has the appearance of
stone sculpture.
Groin vault – Vault formed at the point at which two barrel vaults intersect at right
angles. Groin vaults are one of the characteristic features of Gothic cathedrals.
Ground – Generally, any substance spread on a surface to prepare it for a painting.
Also, the wax material used to prepare a metal plate for etching.
Hierarchical scale – The representation of more important figures as larger than less
important ones.
Hieroglyphics – Stylized picture used as a symbol in a system of writing. Often
appears together with other pictures in an ancient art such as that of Egypt or
Mesopotamia.
Hue – Color, or more exactly, the specific color, such as red hue.
Hypostyle – A hall with a roof supported by rows of columns. The Temple of Amon-Re
at Karnak has an enormous hypostyle hall.
Icon – A picture of a religious personality painted upon a wood panel which becomes
an object for veneration. Most often associated with Byzantine art.
Iconoclasm – A movement in the Byzantine Empire that favored banning and
destroying images.
Idealized – In art, rendering something as one thinks it should appear rather than how
it actually does appear. For example, a figure might be idealized to conform to a
person’s or culture’s idea of what is beautiful.
Illumination – A manuscript page decorated with bright colors, even gold and silver.
This was a high art in the Middle Ages.
Impasto – Heavy and thick application of paint upon a canvas.
Impressionism – A style of painting that concentrates upon the effect of light on
objects. Painted with broken areas of color, dabs and dashes of paint, an
impressionist painting has a hazy, atmospheric quality to it. Most popular in the last
two decades of the nineteenth century, its purist practitioner was the Frenchman
Claude Monet.
Japonisme – The French fascination with all things Japanese. Japonisme emerged in
the second half of the nineteenth century. The Impressionists and Post-Impressionists
were particularly impressed with the use of bold contour lines, flat areas of color, and
cropped edges in Japanese woodblock.
Kore – An Archaic Greek statue of a standing, draped female.
Kouros – An Archaic Greek statue of a standing nude male.
Linear Perspective – A perspective system built on the observation that parallel lines
appear to converge upon a single point when they recede into the distance. This
system, developed in the early fifteenth century, was used extensively by Italian
Renaissance artists.
Lithography – One of the graphic arts which the artist draws with a wax crayon or ink
upon a fine-grained stone or metal plate. He is then able to take many impressions of
his original drawing through a printing process based on the fact that water and oil do
not mix.
Local Color – The true color of an object in white light.
Mannerism – A middle sixteenth century painting style based on high Renaissance
ideas but which emphasized distortion of forms an vagueness of spatial relationships.
Parmigianino and El Greco have mannerist characteristics in their work.
Medieval – Art and culture of the Middle Ages - in Europe from about the year 1000 to
AD 1425. It’s fair to extend this date bracket several centuries in either direction
depending on the country or interpretation under consideration. Medieval art is almost
wholly religious. It is often deeply emotional. It’s the product of a spiritual mind
rather than a logical one.
Medium – The material with which an artist works. For example, watercolor is a
painting medium.
Mihrab – A semicircular niche set into the qibla wall of a mosque.
Monochrome – Picture created from a single color.
Mosaic – Pictures or decorations made by fitting together small pieces of different
colored stone or glass. Mosaics were an important part of Byzantine architectural
decoration and are to be found in ancient Greek and Roman art.
Mudrah – In Buddhist and Hindu iconography, a stylized and symbolic hand gesture.
Mural – A wall painting.
Naturalism – Art in which the artist has remained as faithful as he/she can to what
he/she sees. This term is sometimes interchanged with realism.
Neoclassic – Modern periods or styles that draw upon the ancient classic art of Greece
and Rome for inspiration. Neoclassic styles dominated European and American art in
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
Non-objective (non-representational) – A work in which no recognizable object
appears. This term is felt by some to be more accurate than is the word “abstract” for
much twentieth century art.
Oil – A painting made from oil paint, a material in which color pigments are held in an
oil solution. In Western art since the Renaissance, oils are thought to be the most
important creative products of artists.
Orthogonal – A line imagined to be behind and perpendicular to the picture plane. The
orthogonals in a painting appear to recede toward a vanishing point.
Pagoda – A multistoried Chinese tower, usually associated with a Buddhist temple,
having a multiplicity of projecting eaves.
Pastel – Picture made from a high grade colored chalk of the same name. It was a
popular medium in the French Rococo period and later with some of the French
Impressionist artists. Also refers to the light tones of colors, such as pink which is the
pastel of red.
Pediment – In Classical architecture, the triangular section of a temple roof often
decorated with sculpture.
Pendentive – The concave triangular section of a vault that forms the transition
between a square or polygonal space and the circular base of a dome. Pendentives
enabled Byzantine architects to construct the dome for Hagia Sophia.
Perspective – Any system that gives a two dimensional surface, such as a canvas or
sheet of paper, the illusion of three dimensions. Linear, diminishing size and
atmospheric are all types of perspective.
Photomontage – A composition made by pasting together pictured or parts of pictures,
especially photographs.
Pieta – An artistic representations of Mary mourning over the body of the crucified
Christ.
Pigment – The colored powders that in different forms or mixed with various liquids
become the media of art. For example, pigments mixed with linseed oil become oil
paints.
Polptych – An altarpiece of more than three panels.
Pop Art – An American art movement of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s that made art
objects out of common, commercial subjects such as produce cans, comic strips and
magazine advertisements. Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein were prominent in this
movement.
Post Impressionism – Art trends developing out of Impressionism in France, from
which many twentieth century movements developed. Retaining the bright colors of
Impressionism, a strong sense of structure was developed. Cezanne, Gauguin, and
Van Gogh were important post-impressionist artists.
Pueblo – A communal multistoried dwelling made of stone or adobe brick by the Native
Americans of the Southwest.
Quattrocento – Literally “the 1400’s”. Hence, the fifteenth century Italian Art.
Realism – Art that emphasizes the true or natural appearance of things. This is also
the name of several movements that adopt this approach to art, particularly of the
mid-nineteenth century movement led by Gustave Courbet.
Register – One of a series of rows in a pictorial narrative. For excellent examples of
registers, see the Standard of Ur and Palette of Narmer.
Renaissance – European cultural period following the Middle Ages. Beginning in
Florence about 1425, it spread throughout Italy and into Northern Europe by 1500.
Inspired by the ancient culture of Greece and Rome, the Renaissance reacted against
much of the spiritualism of the Middle Ages that preceded it. “Humanism” might be
used as a single word to describe the spirit of the Renaissance. Giants of art such as
Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Durer were men of the Renaissance. Historically ending
about 1600, its’ spirit and influence carried for centuries afterward.
Repousse – A technique in which a relief is formed on the front by hammering a metal
plate from the back. The funerary masks discovered at Mycenae were created using
the repousse technique.
Rococo – The late Baroque style of the first half of the eighteenth century, which is
even more decorative and elaborate than the Baroque style itself. Though associated
with France, it is also to be seen in Southern German and Austrian art. Some English
trends of the eighteenth century are of a Rococo spirit. Watteau and Boucher were
leading artists of this style.
Romantic – Art that seeks to escape from realities of life. Employs emotion, imagery
and sensual responses rather than logic to its making. Also, the name of the artistic
movement in the nineteenth century that emphasized this sort of approach.
Sfumato – A hazy, soft overtone in the rendering of the figures of a painting. Seen in
the work of Leonardo da Vinci and those who followed his manner of painting.
Stupa – A large, mound shaped Buddhist shrine.
Stylized – An art object in which its parts (color, shape, texture, and so forth) have
been exaggerated beyond their natural appearance. The more these exaggerations
are emphasized, the more stylized the work becomes.
Surrealism – A twentieth century movement that sought to portray the world of the
subconscious or dreams through art. Max Ernst and Joan Miro were associated with
this movement. This term can be applied to artists of other centuries. Bosch and
Goya, for example, who created art of a similar spirit could be considered surreal.
Symbol – Use of an object to represent something other than what it really is. The
white flower that represents the Virgin in many Gothic and Renaissance paintings is an
example of a symbol.
Tempera – A painting medium in which the pigment is held in solution by egg yolk or a
thinned glue substance. Egg tempera was used extensively in Gothic painting prior to
1425 and in Early Italian renaissance painting.
Tesserae – The pieces of stone or glass with which an artist creates a mosaic.
Triptych – An altarpiece with a main center panel and two hinged wings. The wings
can be closed to cover and protect the central panel.
Trompe L’Oeil – A painting in which an artist’s sole aim is to give the illusion of
complete three dimensional realism and two dimensional surfaces. He will often use
optical tricks to heighten his effect.
Tympanum – The lunette shaped space above the portals of Romanesque and Gothic
churches.
Ukiyo-e – Japanese for “pictures of a floating world”. A style of Japanese genre
painting that influenced nineteenth century Western art.
Vanishing Point – The point on the horizon toward which parallel lines seem to
converge in the system of linear perspective.
Watercolor – A painting medium in which pigments are held in solution by water. In
the past century, watercolor has become a major painting technique.
Woodcut – A graphic process in which the artist prints his impressions from a wood
block. The block is prepared by cutting away the white portions of the intended
picture, leaving raised the lines that are to be inked and then printed.