HISTORY OF ART

(WESTERN ART)
'Western Art' is the portrayal, in two or
three dimensions, of the history, people,
landscape and wildlife of the area
confined to the western regions of North
America, in a highly realistic or realistic
impressionist style and is inextricably
linked to the culture of the
American West.

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 A Concise Timeline of WESTERN ART
HISTORY
Post-
Renaissance impressionism Contemporary
Rococo Romanticism Cubism Art Deco art
1300–1600 1720–1780 1886–1905 1907–1914 1909–1939 1946 — present
1780–1880

Impressionism
Medieval Expressionism Futurism Abstract
Baroque Neoclassicism 1860–1890
Art 1905–1930 1910–1930 Expressionism
1600–1730 1750–1830
from around 1940s
4AD to 1300

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MEDIEVAL ART
from around 4AD to 1300
✣ Medieval Art
From around 4AD to 1300, this era is a broad category that includes many
artistic styles and periods, from early Christian and Byzantine, Anglo-
Saxon and Viking, Carolingian, Ottonian, Romanesque, and Gothic.
During the medieval period, the various secular arts were unified by the
Christian church and the sacred arts associated with it.

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 Painting on the wall of an early Christian
catacomb showing Moses (or Peter?) striking a
rock to get water. Cimabue, Crucifix, 1288

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Renaissance
1300–1600
✣ Renaissance
✣ Approximately covering the years 1300–1600, the
Renaissance saw a blossoming of all of the arts, in
painting, sculpture, music and architecture. From Italy to
the Netherlands, the Renaissance combined a revival of
Classical learning from ancient Greece and Rome with an
increased awareness of nature and a more individualistic
view of man.

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The Birth of Venus (c.1485) by Sandro Botticelli.
Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

Raphael, The School of Athens,

1511
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Baroque
1600–1730
 ✣ Baroque
✣ Following the Renaissance, the dominate style of art took a more ornate and often
extravagant turn. Covering the years between around 1600–1730, art and architecture
combined the classical idealism of the Renaissance with a greater emphasis on drama,
with artists seeking to evoke emotional states, using strong colour schemes and
employing swirling spirals and upward diagonals.
✣ Heavily sponsored by the Catholic church, Baroque art is intimately related to the
Counter-Reformation movement.
✣ Key artists included:
✣ Caravaggio 1571–1610
✣ Peter Paul Rubens 1577–1640
✣ Gian Lorenzo Bernini 1598–1680
✣ Diego Velázquez 1599–1660

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Lot and his Daughters (c. 1614) by
Peter Paul Rubens. Private
Collection. Caravaggio, The Calling of St
Matthew, 1600

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Rococo
1720–1780
 ✣ Rococo
✣ Roughly spanning 1720–1780, the Rococo was in many ways an extension of the
Baroque, pushing the decorative and theatrical aspects of art with an emphasis on
asymmetry, curved forms and bright colours.
✣ Originating in France during the reign of Louis XV (1715–1774), it is especially
characterised by the combination of painting, sculpture and architecture into a unified
scheme, applying to both interior design and the decorative arts.
✣ Key artists included:
✣ Giovanni Battista Tiepolo 1796–1770
✣ François Boucher 1703–1770
✣ Jean-Honoré Fragonard 1732–1806
.

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 Antoine Watteau, Embarkation for
Cythera, 1718.

Venus and Amor (1742) by François

Boucher. Gemäldegalerie,Berlin.

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Neoclassicism
1750–1830
✣ Neoclassicism
✣ Neoclassicism was a “return to order” following the ornamental extravagances of
Rococo. Approximately covering 1750–1830, artists and architects sought to revive
the symmetry and precision of the Renaissance era, drawing inspiration from the
“classical” art and culture of classical antiquity.
✣ In architecture, buildings took on the look of classical temples from the Greek and
Roman periods, with columns and pediments becoming widespread. In the fine arts,
Neoclassicism was characterized by a strong sense of inner harmony, clarity and
restraint within the picture.
✣ Key artists included:
✣ Jacques-Louis David 1748–1825
✣ Antonio Canova 1757–1822
✣ Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1780–1867

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 Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon
Crossing the Alps, 1801

The Death of Marat (1793) by Jacques-

Louis David. Royal Museums of Fine Arts
of Belgium
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Romanticism
1780–1880
✣ Romanticism
An important style in the modern history of art, Romanticism saw the emergence of a
new conception of art as an expression of the individual artist and an “authentic”
response to the world of sensory experience, especially its vastness and
unpredictability of nature.
✣ Covering the era 1780–1880, Romanticism also fostered a preoccupation with the idea
of “genius”, emphasising the notion of personal inspiration and subjective experience
in making sense of the world, and as such foregrounded the view of the artist as a
brilliant creator.
✣ Key artists included:
✣ Caspar David Friedrich 1774–1840
✣ J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851
✣ John Constable 1776–1837
✣ Eugène Delacroix 1798–1863

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 William Blake, The Ghost of a Flea, 1820.

The hiker above the sea of fog

(c. 1817) by Caspar David Friedrich.
Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
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Impressionism
1860–1890
✣ Impressionism
✣ Spanning roughly 1860–1890 and perhaps the most well-known of all artistic styles,
Impressionism emerged in the second half of the 19th century in Paris as style that responded to
the increased pace of urban life.
✣ It was anti-academic is style, characterised by lively brushstrokes and a bright colour palette.
Artists took to painting out of doors and spontaneously — en plein air — rather than in a studio
from sketches. Many impressionist subjects were landscapes and scenes of everyday life,
placing attention on the transient effects of sunlight as much as on the subjects themselves.
✣ Key artists included:
✣ Claude Monet 1840–1926
✣ Edgar Degas 1834–1917
✣ Camille Pissarro 1830–1903
✣ Auguste Renoir 1841–1919
✣ Paul Cezanne 1839–1906

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 Claude Monet, Impression,
Sunrise, 1899

Camille Monet on a Garden Bench

(1873) by Claude Monet.
Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Post-impressionism
1886–1905
✣ Post-impressionism
✣ A mainly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, Post-
impressionism was — arguably — a natural evolution from Impressionism, with the
artists continuing to use vivid colors, a thick brushstrokes and real-life subject matter, but
also expressive of their emotional and psychological responses to the world through
distorted forms and unnatural colour schemes.
✣ The term was coined in 1910 by the English art critic Roger Fry, and applies less to a
close-knit group and more to an array of separate artists who were each inspired by the
Impressionists in their own ways.
✣ Key artists included:
✣ Paul Cezanne 1839–1906
✣ Vincent van Gogh 1853–1890
✣ Paul Gauguin 1848– 1903
✣ George Seurat 1859–1891
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 Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon
on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1886

Wheat Field with Cypresses (1889) by

Vincent van Gogh.
Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Expressionism
1905–1930
✣ Expressionism
✣ Originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century, Expressionism followed
from the Post-Impressionist, with artists seeking to depict not objective reality but rather a
subjective, emotional charged responses to a rapidly changing world.
✣ Expressionist paintings tended to be bold and brisk, roughly hewn, with vivid, sometimes
lurid colours, expressing a dual theme of celebration and disfiguration. These artists
offered a new version of beauty, one that saw virtue in the free-spirited means of colour
and unvarnished texture.
✣ Key artists included:
✣ Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1880–1938
✣ Wassily Kandinsky 1866–1944
✣ Paul Klee 1878–1940
✣ Edvard Munch 1863–1944

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Landscape with Factory Chimney (1910) by Wassily
Kandinsky. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New Edvard Munch, The Dance of Life, 1900
York..

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Cubism
1907–1914
✣ Cubism
✣ Cubism was a highly influential art style that was invented in around 1907–08 by artists
Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Taking inspiration from the Post-impressionist Paul
Cezanne, the artists began painting subjects in fragmented forms in such a way that
suggested multiple viewpoints simultaneously.
✣ The characteristics of Cubism are intersecting planes of light and overlapping forms,
showing an object from several sides, and from above and below, breaking conventional
ideas about visual perception.
✣ Key artists included:
✣ Pablo Picasso 1881–1973
✣ Georges Braque 1882–1963
✣ Juan Gris 1887–1927

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Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910, by Pablo
Georges Braque, Violin and Palette, 1909
Picasso. Oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago.

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Futurism
1910–1930
✣ Futurism
✣ Spanning the year from 1910–1930, Futurism took its lead from Cubism as a style of
painting and sculpture that forwent conventional depictions of reality in favour of
fractured forms that expressed the idea of the dynamism, the energy and movement, of
modern life.
✣ Occurring mainly in Italy, Futurism had its own peculiar features as an art movement. It
celebrated speed, technology, youth and modern objects such as the car and the industrial
city.
✣ Key artists included:
✣ Filippo Tommaso Marinetti 1876–1944
✣ Giacomo Balla 1871–1958
✣ Umberto Boccioni 1882–1916
✣ Gino Severini 1883–1966

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 Primavera Umbria
Elasticity (1912) by Umberto Boccioni. Museo Gerardo Dottori, 1923
del Novecento, Milan.
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Art Deco
1909–1939
✣ Art Deco
✣ Covering approximately 1909–1939, Art Deco also emphasised the motion and thrill of
the modern, mechanised world, this time applied to mass-produced fashion and
individually crafted luxury items.
✣ Playful, luxurious and exotic, Art Deco overturned traditional elegance in preference for a
highly stylised and geometric style that symbolized wealth and sophistication. Art Deco
was influential across fashion, advertising and architecture.
✣ Key artists included:
✣ Tamara de Lempicka 1898–1980
✣ Alphonse Mucha 1860–1939
✣ William Van Alen 1883–1954

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F. Champenois Imprimeur-Editeur
(1897) Alphonse Mucha. Private
The Green Turban, 1930
Collection.
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Abstract Expressionism
1940s
✣ Abstract Expressionism
✣ Originating in 1940s America, Abstract Expressionism took its inspiration from European painters
working in abstraction, such as Wassily Kandinsky. It tended to reject all recognisably realistic forms
and used colour and texture as the primary tool for expression.
✣ Most famous among them is Jackson Pollock, who made many of his paintings by laying the canvas
on the floor of his studio and dripping paint in swirls and spirals, creating a chaotic and mesmerising
field of visual activity. Other artists used free-flowing, gestural painted brushmarks, producing
paintings that were heavily reliant on spontaneity and intuition.
✣ Key artists included:
✣ Jackson Pollock 1912–1956
✣ Mark Rothko 1903–1970
✣ Willem de Kooning 1904–1997
✣ Barnett Newman 1905–1970
✣ Lee Krasner 1908–1984

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Multiform (1948) by Mark Rothko. National Gallery of Woman V by Willem de Kooning , 1953
Australia (NGA), Canberra, Australia.

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Contemporary art
1946 — present
✣ Contemporary art
✣ Contemporary art is really a catch-all term for all art that has come after the Second World War. As
such, it encompasses many themes and styles, and takes us up to the present day.
✣ It is impossible to sum up Contemporary art in just a few lines: anyone who has stepped inside a
modern gallery in the last few decades will know that if contemporary art is anything, then it is a
place where rules are perpetually broken.
✣ Contemporary art tends to treat everything as open question, including our news, our politicians, our
institutions, our culture, and our grand narratives. Change is everywhere about us, so our perspectives
must continue to change too. Contemporary art has these ideas at its heart.
✣ Key artists include:
✣ Cindy Sherman born 1954
✣ Judy Chicago born 1939
✣ Damien Hirst born 1965
✣ Jeff Koons born 1949

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Puppy (1992) Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and
by Jeff Koons. Bubbles, 1988

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