art

american art styles

American art styles vary as much as Americans do. A brief description of several of the most common styles follows:

Abstract: This type of art does not depict the world as seen through the natural eye, but seeks to express emotions through color and shapes.

Animation/Comics: This art form creates a sequence of cartoon drawings to tell a story.

Expressionism: Rather than making a painting look exactly like what it represents, expressionist artists try to express their feelings about they paint.

Fantasy: This category of art relies on imagination to depict creatures, worlds and environments that do not actually exist.

Impressionism: Impressionists use bold colors and sparse detail to portray a scene as if the observer just glanced at it quickly.

Native American: Created by the Native American Indians, this type of art reflects not only their culture, but their harmonious relationship with nature and their strong beliefs in family ties and unity.

Pop Art: Short for Popular Art, this style of art gets its inspiration from advertising and popular entertainment and uses bold, brash colors.

Post-Impressionism: While these artists still use the same bold colors, distinctive brushstrokes and real-life subject matter as the impressionists, they tend to distort or emphasize geometric forms and don’t always use natural colors.

Primitivism: This style of art looks like a child’s work with simple lines and two-dimensional subjects.

Realism: Artists who use this art form seek to portray things exactly as they appear in real life.

Surrealism: Based on dreams, these paintings portray familiar objects in strange or mysterious ways with the intent of causing the viewer to look at things in a different way and perhaps change their perspective.