Jackson Pollack began his career as an expressionist painter, using representative shapes and traditional methods. Beginning in the late 40s, however, Pollack began using the technique of "drip painting," which involved laying the canvas on the floor and splattering liquid paint on it from above. This produced paintings that were extremely abstract, but vivid and emotional, which garnered Pollack worldwide acclaim.

Marcel Duchamp was a member of the global Dada movement, a school of artists from Zurich, Paris, Cologne, Berlin, and New York between 1916 and 1925. Kahlo, Ernst, and Miró were all members of the Surrealist movement, which occurred during the same era and employed a mixture of psychoanalysis, mysticism, and symbolism to reveal unconscious thoughts.

"Provenance" is exclusive to art, whereas "ancestry" applies to people and "record" is less specific; provenance is essential to prove the legitimacy and authenticity of both modern and older paintings. (This question is not limited to the scope of twentieth and twenty-first century art, but has arguably become more important in this period.)

Art Nouveau was an art style that surged to popularity in Europe and the US during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its forms and figures could be described as natural, organic, or flowing. Its general style was a very different from the bold, geometrical shapes of its successor, the Art Deco style.

The main subject of the painting is placed in front of a series of canvases, indicating the painting's setting is in an artist's studio. Being placed somewhat easily into such a setting indicates that the subject is an artist, with the exact nature of those canvases looking like the artist's work, indicating a self-portrait. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner frequently returned to self-portraits throughout his career, often with female models placed with him.

Image is in the public domain, accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kirchner_-_Selbstbildnis_als_Soldat.jpg

Silkscreen printing is an old form of printing, but received a boost in the mid-twentieth century when advances in more quickly placing ink onto a canvas became possible. The artist who most enthusiastically adopted the method was Andy Warhol. Silkscreen printing allowed Warhol to quickly copy multiple images in different, usually bright, colors on one canvas. This very effect is captured by the dozens of images of Marilyn Monroe that Warhol printed in his Marilyn Diptych of 1962.

Cubism is typically involves an abstract representation of a subject into various geometric shapes, each from a different perspective.

Image is in the public domain, accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1913_Popova_Das_Modell_anagoria.JPG

Impasto is a painting technique in which thick layers of paint are used and create real texture and depth in the painting, often leaving visible brushstrokes.

Image is in the public domain, accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh#/media/File:Vincent_van_Gogh_-_Self-Portrait_-_Google_Art_Project_(719161).jpg

Abstraction is a style of art that reduces shapes and appearances to basic yet recognizable forms. For example, a stick figure is an abstraction of a human being. The form of the human figure is greatly reduced to its most basic components, but it still recognizable. Generally you can think of it as the opposite of naturalism, a style that seeks to reproduce the forms of things as they appear in nature.  

Piet Mondrian was a Dutch artist who was the leading figure among a group of artists in different media who sought a style that was elemental in its construction, known as De Stijl, or "The Style." Mondrian's painting developed into featuring thick black lines intersecting the canvas at right angles to form rectangles on the painting. Inside these rectangles were blocks of color only in the three primary colors.