A visitor to an art museum today may, in the space of a few minutes, be confronted by renaissance angels, fearsome tribal masks, a canvas of geometric shapes, impressionist views of sunny afternoons, photorealist paintings of Californian diners, or artworks that are only typewritten sheets of instructions, as artist and teacher John Parks notes in his introduction. What unifies these efforts as "art," and why is art a universal impulse around the world? Here Parks gives us the pocketable guide he would give to his own students, defining 100 artistic principles, approaches, and ideas from Abstraction to Video Art with succinct descriptions and color illustrated examples.