Key Terms & Concepts
What does tenebrism mean?
Dramatic light and dark contrast to heighten emotion (Caravaggio).
What does Baroque art try to make you feel?
Awe, emotion, and spiritual intensity.
What is an axis mundi?
A sacred center linking heaven and earth.
Who sculpted St. Teresa in Ecstasy, and why is it dramatic?
Bernini; it stages a spiritual vision like theater
What does “form follows function” mean?
Structure should express use — modernist design principle.
What is modernité, according to Baudelaire?
Finding beauty in the fleeting, everyday life of the modern world.
What values define Neoclassicism?
Order, morality, civic virtue, and rational form
How did the Spanish use architecture to assert dominance in the Americas?
By building cathedrals directly over Indigenous temples.
What did Goya expose in The Third of May 1808?
The horror and human cost of war — emotional modernity.
How does the Empire State Building embody modernity?
Steel, verticality, and optimism of progress.
What is transculturation?
The blending of European and Indigenous forms into hybrid colonial art.
How does Romanticism challenge Enlightenment ideals?
By emphasizing emotion, imagination, and the sublime over reason.
How does Hokusai’s Great Wave reflect global modernity?
Combines Japanese printmaking with Western perspective and maritime trade.
Why did Manet’s Olympia scandalize Paris?
She confronted viewers with modern sexuality and class realities.
How does Nightlife by Archibald Motley visualize Black modern life?
Through color, rhythm, and joy.
What is automatism? And which movement used it?
Creating spontaneously to reveal the unconscious.
How does Realism differ from Impressionism?
Realism = social truth and labor; Impressionism = optical truth and sensation.
Colonial Baroque in Minas Gerais—how did Aleijadinho transform European motifs?
He blended European Baroque curves with local stone, flora, and Afro-Brazilian motifs
How does Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon break from tradition?
It fractures form and borrows from African masks — birth of modern abstraction.
What does Augusta Savage’s Harp symbolize?
Hope, harmony, and collective voice during the Depression.
What is Indigenismo?
Mexican movement celebrating Indigenous culture as national identity.
How does Surrealism connect inner psychology with politics?
By using dream imagery to critique rational modern society.
How does primitivism differ from Indigenismo?
Primitivism appropriates non-Western forms; Indigenismo reclaims them as identity.
How do Rivera and Douglas each use murals to tell history?
Rivera = Marxist, industrial; Douglas = African diaspora, rhythmic symbolism.
From Baroque to Harlem, how does art show changing ideas of power and progress?
Art evolves from divine spectacle to social self-representation — redefining what it means to be modern.