Academic art school teaches a style called Classical Realism. This style of drawing and painting produced under the influence of European art academies or universities.

Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des beaux-arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and the art that followed these two movements in the attempt to synthesize both of their styles, and which is best reflected by the paintings of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Suzor-Coté, Thomas Couture, and Hans Makart.

In this context it is often called "academism", "academicism", "L'art pompier", and "eclecticism". The art influenced by academies and universities in general is also called "academic art".