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pictorialism

American  
[pik-tawr-ee-uh-liz-uhm, -tohr-] / pɪkˈtɔr i əˌlɪz əm, -ˈtoʊr- /

noun

  1. Fine Arts. the creation or use of pictures or visual images, especially of recognizable or realistic representations.

  2. emphasis on purely photographic or scenic qualities for its own sake, sometimes with a static or lifeless effect.

    The movie's self-conscious pictorialism makes it little more than a travelogue.


Other Word Forms

Etymology

Origin of pictorialism

First recorded in 1865–70; pictorial + -ism

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

Vidor emphasized the faces of his characters, Sarris wrote, rather than pictorialism and spectacle.

From New York Times Oct. 27, 2022

Her way is short on pomp in her exquisite calligraphic musical pictorialism.

From Los Angeles Times Jul. 23, 2021

But even Spano’s advocacy could not save the work’s Technicolor pictorialism from sounding a bit too much like John Williams, but without the memorable melodies.

From Washington Post Nov. 19, 2017

Raised in the anarchist-utopian community of Home on Puget Sound, Haffer explored forms from pictorialism to surrealism in her work.

From Seattle Times Dec. 20, 2011

High reliefs largely preclude this kind of pictorialism.

From "History of Art, Volume 1" by H.W. Janson

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