How to Put Art Into Words

Sometimes you know you love a song, painting, poem, photograph or performance, but you can’t explain why. “It was beautiful.” “It was interesting.” “It was really good.” None of those are wrong. They’re just verdicts, not descriptions.

There are hundreds of words that describe what art makes you see, hear, think and feel. Learning a working set of them lets you talk about art with far more precision, and, more usefully, it changes what you notice while you’re experiencing it.

1. Words for Art That Feels Beautiful

“Beautiful” is a fine word that has been asked to do too much work. These alternatives each carry a different kind of beauty.

• striking, immediately catches your attention
• exquisite, extremely beautiful and carefully made
• elegant, graceful, refined and pleasing
• radiant, seeming to glow with beauty or energy
• ethereal, extremely delicate, light or otherworldly
• mesmerizing, so fascinating that it’s difficult to look or listen away
• stunning, extremely impressive or beautiful
• breathtaking, so impressive that it creates a powerful reaction

2. Words for Art That Makes You Feel Something

This group names the emotional effect, what the work does to you rather than what it looks or sounds like.

• moving, causing strong emotion
• poignant, creating a strong feeling of sadness, tenderness or reflection
• heart-wrenching, causing intense sadness
• uplifting, making you feel happier or more hopeful
• comforting, creating a feeling of emotional ease
• unsettling, making you feel slightly disturbed or uncomfortable
• haunting, remaining powerfully in your mind, often in a beautiful or disturbing way
• evocative, bringing strong feelings, memories or images to mind
• visceral, creating a strong instinctive or bodily reaction
• cathartic, providing emotional release

3. Words for Music

“The song sounds good” tells a listener nothing. These words describe melody, texture, production and intent.

• melodic, having a pleasant or memorable melody
• harmonic, characterized by pleasing combinations of musical notes
• rhythmic, having a strong or noticeable rhythm
• atmospheric, creating a distinctive mood or environment
• dreamlike, resembling the strange or soft quality of a dream
• hypnotic, repetitive or absorbing in a fascinating way
• soulful, expressing deep emotion
• lush, rich and full in sound
• minimalist, deliberately using relatively few elements
• experimental, exploring unusual techniques, structures or sounds
• raw, emotionally direct and relatively unpolished
• intimate, creating a feeling of personal closeness
• cinematic, expansive or dramatic enough to resemble a film soundtrack

4. Words for Paintings, Photography and Visual Art

• vivid, intensely bright, clear or powerful
• muted, deliberately soft or subdued
• textured, having noticeable visual or physical surface qualities
• dynamic, suggesting movement, activity or energy
• balanced, having elements arranged harmoniously
• minimalist, using simplicity and relatively few elements
• ornate, highly decorated and detailed
• abstract, representing ideas or qualities rather than depicting reality literally
• figurative, representing recognizable objects or people
• surreal, strange and dreamlike
• immersive, making you feel surrounded or deeply involved
• provocative, deliberately causing thought, discussion or reaction

5. Words for Poetry

• lyrical, expressive in a beautiful, musical way
• vivid, creating strong mental images
• introspective, examining one’s own thoughts and emotions
• meditative, deeply thoughtful and contemplative
• symbolic, using things to represent larger ideas
• metaphorical, communicating ideas through comparisons or representations
• rhythmic, having a noticeable pattern or flow
• sparse, deliberately using relatively few words
• eloquent, expressing ideas beautifully and effectively
• raw, emotionally direct and exposed
• ambiguous, deliberately open to more than one interpretation

6. Words for the Mood of Art

Instead of saying “it has a vibe,” identify the atmosphere. Mood words are the fastest upgrade to how you talk about art.

• melancholic, quietly and thoughtfully sad
• nostalgic, creating longing or affection for the past
• eerie, strangely frightening
• ominous, suggesting that something bad may happen
• serene, peaceful and calm
• whimsical, playfully unusual or imaginative
• romantic, emotionally associated with love, beauty or idealism
• dreamlike, strange, soft or unreal like a dream
• somber, serious, dark and subdued
• brooding, dark, serious and emotionally intense
• playful, lighthearted and fun
• tender, gentle and emotionally warm

7. Words for Art That Makes You Think

• thought-provoking, encouraging serious thought
• challenging, requiring the audience to think or reconsider something
• provocative, intentionally producing a strong reaction
• subversive, challenging established ideas or expectations
• satirical, using humor or exaggeration to criticize something
• philosophical, exploring fundamental questions about life, knowledge, existence or values
• layered, containing multiple meanings or levels of interpretation
• nuanced, containing subtle distinctions and complexity
• complex, containing many interconnected ideas or elements

8. Words for Originality

• original, noticeably different from existing work
• inventive, showing creativity in developing new ideas
• innovative, introducing new methods, styles or ideas
• unconventional, intentionally different from what is usual
• experimental, testing unfamiliar approaches
• distinctive, having a recognizable individual quality
• idiosyncratic, having a highly individual or unusual character
• genre-defying, difficult to place within one established genre

9. Words for Art You Don’t Like

You can be precise, and fair, without simply calling something bad. Each of these names a specific failure.

• derivative, too strongly influenced by existing work
• predictable, developing in an expected way
• repetitive, repeating elements excessively
• incoherent, difficult to understand because the parts don’t connect clearly
• overwrought, excessively elaborate or emotional
• clichéd, relying too heavily on overused ideas
• superficial, appearing to lack depth
• disjointed, lacking a smooth or logical connection between parts
• monotonous, lacking enough variation to remain interesting
• underdeveloped, containing ideas that could have been explored further

10. Describe More Than Whether You Liked It

When you’re experiencing art, a handful of questions will pull the right vocabulary out of you.

• What does it make me feel?
• What mood does it create?
• What immediately catches my attention?
• Does it feel familiar or unusual?
• Is it simple or complex?
• Is it polished or raw?
• Does it remind me of something?
• Does its meaning feel obvious or ambiguous?
• Does it change the longer I experience it?

11. Build Your Art Vocabulary

When you experience something you like, choose three words for it. Three is enough to force a decision and small enough to do in your head.

Then ask the question that does the real work: why did I choose those words? Being able to answer it is how you move from simply experiencing art to describing it.

The Vocabaura Method

Don’t stop at “I like it”, ask what you like about it. Don’t stop at “it made me sad”, ask what kind of sadness. Don’t stop at “it looks strange”, ask how it is strange. Surreal? Eerie? Abstract? Unconventional? Dreamlike? Unsettling?

The more words you know, the more precisely you can describe what you’re experiencing. Every Word, Understood.