Expressing Art.

The article presents information on the contemporary art terms. A solid grasp of key terms can make reading and conversing about contemporary art easier and more rewarding. Fortunately, a growing body of print and online resources now exists to help diligent wordsmiths say what they mean. Even in the popular press much of the writing about contemporary art is, in a word, periphrastic. Nonetheless, a certain amount of terminology is inevitable in discussions of more recent art. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, bursts of extraordinary artistic innovation periodically sprouted whole crops of new words.