pictorialism

[ pik-tawr-ee-uh-liz-uhm, -tohr- ]

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 Words From

• pic·tori·al·ist noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of pictorialism¹

First recorded in 1865–70; pictorial + -ism

Example Sentences

The first sequence of Edward Berger’s new German-language adaptation of Remarque’s novel announces about as loudly as possible that it’s on the side of pictorialism and spectacle.

From New York Times

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

From New York Times

First came her association with Pictorialism, in which photographs aspired to a visual relationship with traditional painting.

From Los Angeles Times

Composition, surface texture, traditional subject range, obvious manipulation and hand-crafting — Pictorialism prized the making of a picture over merely taking one, which doubters complained was all a camera could ultimately do.

From Los Angeles Times

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

From Los Angeles Times