Frottage is a method of reproducing a texture or relief design by laying paper over it and rubbing it with some sort of drawing utensil. The technique was developed by Max Ernst in 1925. Inspired by an ancient wooden floor, the patterns and graining of which suggested strange images to him, he captured these by laying sheets of paper on the floor and then rubbing over them with a soft pencil.

The Blue Period refers to the works produced by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso between 1901 and 1904 when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. According to the artist himself, this period was an artistic response to his depression over the death of Carlos Casagemas, a friend who shot himself because of an unrequited love for Germaine Pichot who was later depicted in Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. "I began to paint in blue," he wrote, "when I realized that Casagemas had died."

Assemblage is an artistic form or medium similar to collage and usually created on a defined substrate that consists of three-dimensional elements projecting out of or from the substrate. It typically uses found objects, but is not limited to these materials.

A diptych is any work of art with two parts attached at a hinge. a Triptych is essentially the same thing with three parts and two hinges.

While living and working in Montmartre, Auguste Renoir employed Suzanne Valadon as a model, who posed for Dance at Bougival (1883) and The Large Bathers (1884-87). She modeled for over 10 years for many different artists and studied their techniques. Eventually, Valadon became a famous painter herself and was the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.

Kurt Schwitters, father of installation art and a pioneer in fusing collage and abstraction, invented the term Merz when creating a collage with the German word Kommerz (commerce) and subsequently used it to describe his particular style of Dada.

Antoine Watteau is credited with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes, scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with a theatrical air. Some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian comedy and ballet.

Bulletism is shooting ink at a blank piece of paper. The result is a type of ink blot. The artist can then develop images based on what is seen. Salvador Dalí claimed to have invented this technique, however Leonardo da Vinci wrote centuries earlier that "just as one can hear any desired syllable in the sound of a bell, so one can see any desired figure in the shape formed by throwing a sponge with ink against the wall."

The male surrealists almost never saw their female counterparts as capable artists, forcing the female surrealists to find ways of working within the restrictions of the surrealist's misconceived notion of women, while still trying to refute it. Varo does this through her images of women in confined spaces. She died at the height of her career from a heart attack in Mexico City.

Whistler's Mother is exhibited in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, having been bought by the French state in 1891. It is one of the most famous works by an American artist outside the United States. It has been variously described as an American icon and a Victorian Mona Lisa.