Guyla - A Glossary of Art Terminology

Macramé: Long cords knotted to form a pattern. This is an old craft revived to great popularity in the 1960s and 1970s.

Maculate: Stained; blotched; spotted;. Or, defiled; impure. The opposite of immaculate.

Magenta: A color also known as fuchsia and hot pink; a moderate to vivid purplish red, named after the town of Magenta, in northwest Italy. One of the primary colors.

Magna: Paint in the form of pigment ground in an acrylic resin with solvents and plasticizer. They are miscible with turpentine as well as mineral spirits. They dry rapidly, leaving a mat finish.

Magnitude: Greatness in size or significance.

Mahlstick: A long, light stick used by painters to rest and steady the brush hand while at work, conserving the arm's strength, and protecting the painting's surface.

Main Case: Mother mold.

Majolica or Maiolica: A type of earthenware which originated during the Renaissance. It is coated with a tin glaze which produces the effect of a rich, enameled surface. Majolica is often lustered. Although the name majolica is derived from Majorca (an island east of Spain from which Italy imported early specimens from Islamic Spain), the name is often reserved for Italian examples.

Malleable: Capable of being shaped or formed, whether by hand or with tools; plastic, pliable, pliant, ductile. Materials especially considered malleable are moist clay, warm wax, and molten glass and metals.

Mallet: A wooden hammer used to apply force to chisels in wood carving.

Mandala: Any of various radial geometric designs symbolic of the universe, traditionally used in Hinduism and Buddhism as an aid to meditation.

Mandorla: A gloriole or glory when it surrounds the entire figure of God, Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a saint with a large oval of radiant light . Mandorla is the Italian word for almond. When it surrounds the head only, it is called a halo or nimbus. It indicates divinity or holiness.

Manifesto: In art, a public declaration or exposition in print of the theories and directions of a movement. The manifestos issued by various individual artists or groups of artists, in the first half of the twentieth century served to reveal their motivations and raisons dâetre and stimulated support for or reactions against them.

Maquette: Small preliminary model or study, often in clay or plaster, done for a sculpture.

Marbling: Mottling or streaking that resembles the veined texture of marble. To mottle or streak with colors and veins in imitation of marble. Such painting on hard surfaces, such as furniture and architecture is sometimes called faux-marble, a craft revived in the 1980s. It may also refer to the application of oil paints floated on water onto paper. Marbled paper was commonly used as endpapers in books bound in the nineteenth century.

Margin: An edge and the area immediately beside it. A border.

Marginalia: Notes in the margin or margins of a page in a book, sketchbook, or sheets of paper. Drawing in the margins or borders of prints is called remarque.

Marionette: In puppetry, a small, complete figure, usually of a person or animal and made of wood, that is moved from above by strings that are attached to its jointed arms, legs, and body.

Marouflage: A painting done on canvas and then cemented to a wall or panel.

Marquetry: Inlays of wood into wood or surface veneers of wood used to form a pictorial image; as related to parquetry, which forms a geometric design.

Mars Pigments: Artificial iron oxide pigments, yielding strong tints from yellow through brown to violet.

Mask: Any 2 or 3-dimensional representation of a face.

Masonite®: A trademark used for a type of fiberboard employed as a surface for painting. It is dark brown, with one side that is very smooth, and the other bearing the texture of an impressed wire screen. Gesso is commonly applied to Masonite as a ground. Masonite can be quite permanent.

Mass: Three dimensional form, often implying bulk, density and weight. The effect and degree of bulk, density, and weight of matter in space; the area occupied by a form such as a building or sculpture. Also, the illusion of such a form on a two-dimensional surface.

Mass Media: A means of communication to a large population or a mass of people. These generally include newspapers, magazines, radio, or television.

Master: Someone whose teachings or doctrines are accepted by followers. In the old apprenticeship system, an artist of great and exemplary skill, whose followers might be called apprentices or disciples.

Mastic: A gum or resin obtained from certain coniferous trees, used in varnish, employed as a medium, as an adhesive, or as a sealing agent.

Mat: Border of cardboard or similar material placed around a picture as a neutral area between the frame and the picture.

Matboard: A mat that is typically cut from a heavy cardboard. Matboard serves two very important functions in the overall framing of a picture. First and foremost it protects the artwork and second it showcases and enhances the subject being framed. It is important to protect works of art on paper, photographs, and other framed objects from direct contact with glass. Matboard provides a barrier from the airborne pollutants, moisture, acids and other damaging impurities that can impact the life of the framed piece. Matboard when used correctly also leads your eye into the artwork, enhancing the overall effect. Whenever a work's presentation or storage environment should be of archival quality, be sure to use acid-free matboard. It is more expensive, but is much less likely to discolor artworks over time.

Material: The substance or substances out of which something is or can be made. Examples include: clays, fibers, glass, papers, plastics, metals, pigments, stones, woods, etc. In body art the material might be the artist's body. In conceptual art there might be no material at all.

Matte: A dull finish or surface, especially in painting, photography, and ceramics.

Matting Tools: Punches with patterned striking faces (often criss-crossed or granulated) used in chasing to texture metal surfaces after casting.

Mature: To bring to or to be in a state of stable solidity or hardness. Said of plasters, clays, glazes, some plastics, and other substances. Sometimes the change occuring is a chemical one, as with gypsum plaster. With ceramic or glazed work, high enough temperatures must be reached that these materials vitrify.

Maturing Point: The temperature at which all gases are driven out of clay. And the temperature at which powdered glaze or enamel fuses.

Maul: A wooden club used to strike a wood carving chisel. A maul is shaped from a single piece of wood taken from the base of a young tree.

Mauve: Pale bluish purple.

Media: The plural form of medium.

Medium: The material or technique used by an artist to produce a work of art. It may also refer to the solvent with which powdered pigments are mixed to make paint of the proper consistency. The binder for a paint, such as oil. During painting, the pigment that is being used to get the required color has to be suspended in some liquid. This liquid is called the medium. For example, an oil painting would mean when linseed oil is used as the medium. Medium also refers to the substance used by an artist for giving expression to his art. Like, a sculptor uses stone as his medium of expression. An expressive art form, such as painting, drawing, or sculpture. The plural form is media.

Middle Ground: The part of an artwork that lies between the foreground (nearest to the viewer) and the background.

Mineral Spirits: A petroleum distillate used as a paint thinner substituting for turpentine. It is known as white spirits.

Miniature: A work of art made on a greatly reduced scale. Often refers to a portrait painted on paper, ivory or porcelain.

Mixed Media: Descriptive of art that employs Using two or more artistic media combined in a single composition, for example, watercolor and ink or charcoal and acrylic or a work that combines paint, natural materials (wood, pebbles, bones), and man made items (glass, plastic, metals) into a single image or piece of art.

Mobile: A type of sculpture in which parts move, often activated by air currents. Also referred to as kinetic art.

Model: The preliminary form of a sculpture, often finished in itself but preceding the final casting or carving. Also, can be the person who poses for an aritst.

Modeling: In sculpture, shaping a form in some plastic material, such as clay, wax, or plaster into three-dimensional forms. In drawing, painting, or printmaking, the illusion of three-dimensionality on a flat surface created by simulating effects of light and shadow.

Modeling Clay: A nonhardening substance used for modeling sculptures-- for sketches, models for casting, and by students. It is plastic (in the sense of being workable). It cannot be used for permanent work (unlike ceramic water-based clays, it is never fired or glazed). Although it becomes less useful as its oil either dries or is absorbed from it (making it brittle) or as it picks up impurities, but it can be reused for many years if kept relatively clean. Even new it can vary greatly in quality. Most common varieties are made of clay mixed with petroleum greases, oils (typically linseed oil), and a pigment. It softens as it is modeled by the hands (because of their warmth), pieces joined to each other by pressing them together and blending with fingertips.

Modeling Tools: Tools for working with or modeling clay.

Modern: Refers to recent times or the present, or the sense of something being contemporary or up-to-date, recently developed or advanced in style, technique, or technology. Sometimes this refers to something being innovative or experimental.

Moderne: Striving to be modern in appearance or style but lacking taste or refinement; pretentious.

Module: A basic unit of which the dimensions of the major parts of a work are multiples, and is a principle sometimes used in sculpture and other art forms.

Mohs Scale of Hardness or Mohs Scale: A scale, named for mineralogist Friedrich Mohs (German, 1773-1839), for classifying stones based on relative hardness, determined by the ability of harder minerals to scratch softer ones.

Mola: A type of appliqué design traditionally made by the Cuna Indians (of the San Blas de Cuna Islands, off the coast of Panama) in which several layers of cloth are sewn together and the top layers are cut and turned to show the colors underneath.

Mold: A hollow form for shaping or casting a fluid or plastic medium, such as clay, plaster, plastic or molten metal. In papermaking, the lower screen that holds the pulp - the upper frame is called a deckle.

Monochromatic: Having only one color. Descriptive of work in which one hue, perhaps with variations of value and intensity, predominates.

Monogram: A design composed of one or more letters, typically the initials of a name, used as an identifying mark.

Monograph: A nonfiction book on a specific, often limited subject; most likely about the work of one artist.

Monolith: A stone, either decorated or not decorated, erected as a single slab or shaft.

Monoprint: One of a series of prints in which each has some differences of color, design, texture, or other attributes applied to an underlying common image.

Monotype: A one-of-a-kind print made by painting on a sheet or slab of glass and transferring the still-wet painting to a sheet of paper held firmly on the glass by rubbing the back of the paper with a smooth implement, such as a large hardwood spoon. The painting may also be done on a polished plate, in which case it may be either printed by hand or transferred to the paper by running the plate and paper through an etching press.

Montage: A picture composed of other existing illustrations, pictures, photographs, newspaper clippings, etc. that are arranged so that the combine to create a new or original image. Also sometimes referred to as collage.

Monumental: In art criticism, any work of art of grandeur and simplicity, regardless of its size, although it often connotes great size.

Mood: An overall feeling or emotion associated with a work of art.

Mordant: In etching, a bath of either an acid or a diluted acid in which a plate or a piece of glass to be etched is placed.

Mosaic: An art form in which small pieces of tile, glass, or stone are fitted together and embedded into a background to make a pattern or image. Often used for floor and wall decorations. Also, works made using this technique.

Mother Mold: In casting, a mold outside of another mold. A mother mold is generally composed of two pieces which surround the sections of a piece mold. Sometimes called main case.

Mother-of-Pearl: The pearly, iridescent internal layer of certain mollusk shells, used as an inlay or veneer in jewelry, furniture, and other decorative objects.

Motif: Any figure or design, when used either as the central element in a work or is repeated to create a decorative pattern or is a recurrent thematic element in any work.

Mottling: The appearance of spots or blotches of color in paint or on paper.

Movement: A principle of design that refers to the arrangement of parts in a drawing to create a slow to fast flow of the eye through the work. In Art History or Art Criticism, the term is used to refer to certain stylistic tendencies or a certain group of associated painters working in a similar vein.

Mucilage: Gum or any viscous substance derived from plants. May refer to a type of adhesive made with such ingredients.

Mural: A large painting or decoration either executed directly on a wall or done separately and affixed to it. Any large-scale wall decoration done in painting, fresco, mosaic, or other medium. From the Latin word for wall, murus.

Muse or Muses: Generally referring to a guiding spirit or source of inspiration.

Museum: A building, institution or place devoted to the conservation, study, exhibition, acquisition, and educational interpretation of objects having artistic, historical or scientific value. The word Museum is derived from the Latin muses, meaning "a source of inspiration," or "to be absorbed in one's thoughts."

Mutable: Subject to change.

Myth: A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the world view of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society.

Mythology: A body or collection of myths belonging to people and addressing their origin, history, deities, ancestors and heroes.

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