P

Pala d'altare

Papiers Collé - "A variety of collage which consists specifically of incorporating pieces of decorative paper in a picture. The technique was inventd by Braque in 1913 when he used in a still life pieces of wall-paper simulating wood graining which he had seen in a shop in Avignon . . . . "[Osborne, Harold, editor. The Oxford C ompanion to Twentieth-Century Art. Oxford University Press. 1988.]

Panorama

Pantograph - "An instrument known since the 17th century, for copying a drawing on a larger or smaller scale. By a simple system of levers the outline of the original work traced with a point attached to one arm can be repeated on to another surface by a drawing instrument attached to another arm.[Osborne, Harold, editor. The Oxford C ompanion to Twentieth-Century Art. Oxford University Press. 1988.]

School of Paris

Pastel Manner

Pastiche [or Pasticcio]

Die Pathetiker

Patina

Peep-show Box

Peinture à l'essence

Pendentive

Pentimento

Perceptual Abstraction - "'Term sometimes used to cover several schools of abstract art which succeeded Abstract Expressionism, such as Colour Field Painting, Hard Edge painting, Minimal Art and some forms of Op Art. The term indicated the switch which had taken place from emphasis upon expressive and painterly qualities to perceptual clarity and precision with emotionally neutralized content."[Osborne, Harold, editor. The Oxford C ompanion to Twentieth-Century Art. Oxford University Press. 1988.]

Performance Art

Pergamene School

Phalanx

Photographic Realism - "'A style of realistic painting, also called Hyperrealism and Superrealsim, which came into vogue in the late 1960s. A painting was made to resemble the impression of a sharply focused photograph, the sharpness and precision of detail being evenly distributed over the whole with no subordination in deference to variations of psychological interest. [See also the Zebra Group][Osborne, Harold, editor. The Oxford C ompanion to Twentieth-Century Art. Oxford University Press. 1988.]

Photomontage

Physics as Tool [Gottlieb, Carla. Beyond Modern Art. New York: E.P. Dutton. 1976]

Picturesque

Pietà

Pietra dura

Piling School

Pinprickt Picturers

Plaquette

Plateresque

Les Plasticiens

Playing

Plein Air

Pointillism

Pointing

Polychromre

Polyptych

L'art pompier

School of Pont-Aven

Pop Art

Post-Impressionism

Postmodernism

Post-Painterly Abstraction

Pouncing

Precisionism - "A movement in the art of the U.S.A. from c. 1915 whose distinguishing feature was the application of quasi-Cubist techniques of abstraction to the depiction of everyday and preferably industrial subjects. For this reason the movement was also known as Cubist-Realism. And because of the sharp lucidity of treatment adopted by most of the artists, in many ways akin to that of Wadsworth and Nash in England, their hard outlines, solid shadows and slick, impersonal surfaces, they were also known as Immaculates. The style involved a fairly advanced degree of 'dehumanization' in favour of the attempt to endow comonplace and industrial subjects with epic or heroic character. . . ."[Osborne, Harold, editor. The Oxford C ompanion to Twentieth-Century Art. Oxford University Press. 1988.]

Predella - "A subsidiary picture forming an appendage to a larger one, especially a small painting or series of paintings beneath an altarpiece."[Osborne, Harold, editor. The Oxford C ompanion to Twentieth-Century Art. Oxford University Press. 1988.]

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Primary Structures

Primitive

Productivist Movement

Programmed Art

Proto-Renaissance

Proun

Public Works of Art Project [See Federal Art Project]

Pulsa - "A group of seven artists from New Haven, Conn., formed to collaborate in producing 'light environments' which depended on chance stimuli in the environment acting reciprocally with computer programming and weather conditions to creat zones of pulsating light, sound and heat. They took part in the 'Spaces' exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1969."[Osborne, Harold, editor. The Oxford C ompanion to Twentieth-Century Art. Oxford University Press. 1988.]

Purism

Puteaux Group