speaking topics / art terms
Art Terms speaking topics
28 real topics. Every one is sourced and deep enough to talk about for 10-15 minutes. Click one to see its detail page, or practice in the app.
- How does the golden ratio shape composition in painting and architecture, and is it truly a universal rule of beauty or just a myth?
- What do the skulls, candles, and wilting flowers in vanitas still lifes want to remind the viewer of?
- When the principle 'less is more' strips a work down to its barest form, what does Minimalism ask of the viewer?
- How does ekphrasis, the tradition of describing an artwork in words, turn the act of describing the visual into an art of its own?
- What are the differences between engraving, etching, and woodcut, and why did Rembrandt love etching so much?
- How does one-point linear perspective work, and why did Renaissance painters see it as a revolution?
- How does atmospheric perspective, rendering distant things hazier and bluer, create depth in Renaissance painting?
- What is a pentimento, and how do these traces of a painter changing their mind help us understand old paintings?
- Why is negative space sometimes as important in a design as the figure itself?
- What is the difference between tenebrism and chiaroscuro, and why do some painters choose a scene that is almost entirely dark?
- Why is the contrapposto stance so important in sculpture, and how does it link Donatello to ancient Greek statuary?
- Why did Mannerism favor elongated figures and strange compositions, and how does Parmigianino's 'Madonna with the Long Neck' exemplify this?
- What new possibilities did painters gain when oil paint replaced tempera in the Renaissance?
- How does the wet-on-wet technique work in watercolor, and why is it so hard to control yet so mesmerizing in effect?
- How do the light and layered glazes in Vermeer's 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' give the painting its depth?
- What is trompe-l'oeil, and how do painters manage to make a flat surface look like real space?
- What is compositional balance in a painting, and how do painters use triangular structures and the foreground-background relationship to guide our gaze?
- How do the stained glass windows of Gothic cathedrals turn light into an experience that is at once architectural and religious?
- How does alla prima, the technique of finishing a painting in a single sitting, give a picture its freshness?
- What is the fresco technique, and how did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling onto wet plaster?
- How do the movement, drama, and theatrical light of Baroque art reveal themselves in Bernini's sculptures?
- How does the contrast of warm and cool colors change the feeling and the sense of space in a painting?
- What value do sketches and studies hold as a window into an artist's thinking, and why do they sometimes feel more alive than the finished work?
- How do tiny pieces of stone and glass create the shimmering images of mosaic art, as in the mosaics of Ravenna?
- Why does the reverse perspective of Byzantine icons work on a logic exactly opposite to Western perspective?
- What is impasto, and how does Van Gogh create such a sense of motion with thick strokes of paint in 'The Starry Night'?
- What is the sfumato technique Leonardo da Vinci used in the 'Mona Lisa', and how does it make the features of the face look so soft?
- How did Renaissance painters' study of cadavers to learn anatomy heighten the realism of their works?