Gag Art 
An infrequently used name for POP ART.

Gallery Picture
A large painting. Normally one in which the figures are life-size or larger and which must therefore be hung in spacious surroundings.

Gamboge
A clear, transparent yellow, it is obtained from the yellow gum-resin from a variety of trees grown in India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Gamboge is not suitable for oil painting but is effective in gilding and watercolor because of its transparency.

Garzone
An artist's young apprentice.

Genre
Genre Painting portrays scenes from daily life, usually having a narrative quality and often making a moral point. Dutch seventeenth-century artists, such as Jan Steen, Jan Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch, first used this type of subject matter. In American painting, the word genre was first used in the mid 19th century to describe works that showed daily life, usually as it applied to Manifest Destiny or expanding America. Exemplary artists of that time include William Sidney Mount and Thomas Waterman Wood. In the last quarter of the 19th century, genre painting included many "hearth and home" subjects, and among those artists were Seymour Joseph Guy, Edward Lamson Henry, John Joseph Brown and Enoch Wood Perry.

Geometric Shapes*
Shapes created by exact mathematical law.

Gesso
A GROUND made of gypsum or chalk mixed with water or glue to provide a dense, brilliantly white absorbent surface for TEMPERA and some types of OIL PAINTING. The SUPPORT is usually a panel and is prepared with several coats of gesso before painting begins. The first, coarse undercoat is called gesso grosso; the final, fine surface coat is known as gesso sottile.

Giclee
A French word pronounced 'zheeclay,' it is is derived from the verb gicler meaning to splash. This new medium is a blend of art and technology that produces copies with a higher resolution and broader color range than such other methods as lithography or serigraphy. 

Gilding
The process of covering surfaces with gold leaf. Applied to a tacky base of gold size (glue) or thick oil varnish, then burnished.

Giverny, France: Art Colony
The longest-lasting of the turn-of-the-century art colonies of western culture. The origins of the Giverny colony date to 1887, when a small band of artists, including Willard Metcalf, Louis Ritter, Theodore Wendel, and John Leslie Breck "discovered" the
village. Claude Monet (by then, known to the American artists through both Parisian and American exhibitions) had settled there in 1883, and was receptive at first but soon tired of the invasion. The first group of artists painted primarily landscapes, and the second group focused on depicting family life, especially the female figure in the intimacy of the artist's own garden or private interior setting. World War I (1914) marked the end of an era for the art colony. 

Glaze*
A very thin, transparent colored paint applied over a previously painted surface to alter the appearance and color of the surface. In ceramics, washes applied to the clay body which, when fired to temperature, vitrify to form a thin, usually colored, glass layer.

Glazing
1. The process of applying a thin layer of oil paint over opaque, dry layers to modify the tone, produce highlights and a sense of transparency. Generally, a dark color is applied over a lighter one. It is a technique which was commonly used by the old
masters and which cannot be employed in alla prima painting. Rigorous restoration of a picture can remove the glaze. 2. In pottery, the transparent glassy coating made from silicates and fired in a kiln, which both decorates and protects the clay surface. 3.The process of covering a picture with glass to protect it. 

Golden Section
A proportion, also known as the Golden Mean, which has been employed for centuries by artists in the composition of paintings. The proportion is the result of the division of a line so that the shorter section is to the longer as the longer is to the whole. This works out to a ratio of .618 to 1, or approximately 5 to 8. There is no known reason why this ratio should be superior to any other, yet it is one which is regularly found in nature, from the number of leaves on a plant's stem to the graduated widths of the  curves which make up a shell's spiral. The name Golden Section was first used in the
nineteenth century, but the proportion itself dates back to the work of the Greek mathematician, Euclid. In the early fifteenth century the Italian mathematician, Luca Pacioli, wrote a book on the subject called Divina Proportione, which was illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci. This influential work led to the widespread use of the Golden Section by many Renaissance and later artists.

Gothic*
A style of architecture and art dominate in Europe from the 12th to the 15th century. Gothic architecture features pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and often large areas of stained glass.

Gouache
Watercolor made opaque by the addition of white pigments and sometimes with a glue BINDER. It is also known as BODY COLOR. Unlike transparent watercolor, gouache does not allow whiteness of the paper to show through the paint. It should also be noted that it lightens considerably in drying.

Graffiti Art
An art form most popular during the 1970s and 1980s, but still alive today. The word graffiti is the plural word for �scratch� in Italian. The actual practice of graffiti goes back to the Egyptians, but was not thought of as an art form until the 1970s when the art world saw the work of street teens in the New York subways. Some shows and artists were acknowledged, but the interest faded when the raw street art arrived into the
galleries of New York.

Grand Central Gallery 
Formed in 1922 by artists led by Edmund Greacen, it became a pioneer artists' cooperative, a non-profit gallery in New York City where they could keep their work on ongoing exhibition. Businessmen provided the capital; artists paid their dues with
artwork, and later traveling exhibitions went out from its location on the top floor of Grand Central station

Graphic arts
Those arts in which lines, marks, or characters are impressed on a flat surface, usually paper. These include drawing, engraving, etching, lithography, etc., but also reproductive processes such as printing, when they are more than utilitarian.

Greek cross
Cross with arms of equal length. Often used as the basis for churches having a centralized plan, especially in Byzantine architecture.

Greenware*
Unfired pottery or sculpture

Grisaille
A MONOCHROME painting executed entirely in shades of gray. A grisaille may be done as a finished painting or as an UNDERPAINTING. See also EN CAMAIEU.

Ground
A coating suitable for holding pigments; it is applied to the canvas or other support.

Group of Seven
A Canadian nationalistic art movement formed in 1911 by James Edward Hervey Macdonald and Lawren Harris. They imbued the group with a sense of historical lineage and the importance of painting Canadian subjects. Other members were Arthur Lismer, Alexander Young (A.Y.) Jackson, Frank Johnston, Franklin Carmichael, and Frederic Horsman Varley. In 1913, Harris put up most of the money for the Studio Building of Canadian Art to house studios for members of the Group. 

Guild of Boston Artists
An association founded in 1914 of painters and sculptors whose criteria for membership was having been trained in the Boston area and whose work, regardless of medium, met certain standards of excellence. These standards focused on careful, realistic modeling, and dedication to traditional craftsmanship and technique over modernist experimentation. Most of the 42 founding members had studied together at the Boston School of the Museum of the Fine Arts with well-known teachers Edmund Tarbell, Frank Benson, Philip Hale, and William Paxton. Early members included Lilla Cabot Perry, Marguerite Stuber Pearson, and Lilian Westcott Hale. The Association is located on Newbury Street in Boston where yearly exhibitions are held.

Gum Arabic
The BINDER used in watercolors, made from the gum of the acacia tree, and traditionally associated with Arabia.