isms and -ism - "Isms" are distinctive doctrines, systems, or theories, and in the art world they typically signify art movements or styles. The suffix (word fragment added at the end of a word to modify its meaning) "-ism" marks a word as one signifying a doctrine, theory, or system of principles; or an attitude strongly in favor of or against a given group; a distinctive or characteristic trait; an action, process, or practice; a characteristic behavior or quality; a state or condition resulting from an excess of something specified.

Examples of art world -isms of the first kind -- doctrines, theories, systems of principles:

• Abstract Expressionism
• aestheticism
• classicism and Neoclassicism
• Cubism or cubism, Orphism,
• deformalism
• existentialism
• expressionism and Expressionism
• formalism
• Futurism
• humanism
• Impressionism (including French, American, and variants of other regions -- thus "American Impressionism"), Neo-Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism
• Luminism
• Mannerism
• Minimalism and Post-Minimalism
• Modernism, modernism and postmodernism
• multiculturalism
• Naturalism, naturalism
• Realism, realism, photorealism, social realism, and socialist realism
• Romanticism
• structuralism and post-structuralism
• Surrealism

Examples of isms of the second kind -- signifying an attitude strongly in favor of or against a given group:

• Afrocentrism
• androcentrism
• anthropocentrism
• ethnocentrism
• Eurocentrism
• humanism
• lookism
• Orientalism or orientalism
• sexism (see feminism and feminist art and gender issues)

 

Does anyone use the words "Americocentrism," "Francocentrism," "Italocentrism," etc.? And why not "NewYorkocentrism," "arcticocentrism," or even "Antarticocentrism"?! Anyone want to further the use or coinage of these words?!

Also see culture, xenophilia, and xenophobia.

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