WESTERN ART

HISTORY
Prepared by: Ms. Lyka Asay
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this lesson, the learners should be able to:

1. Discuss how art was used by prehistoric people to depict everyday life;
2. Identify the central themes of prehistoric art;
3. Identify the major periods in Western art history;
4. Compare and contrast the artworks produced during the different time periods and
art movements; and
5. Discuss the importance of art to the development of Western culture.
6. Differentiate modern art and contemporary art;
7. Show the interrelation of prehistoric arts, Western arts, modern art and
contemporary art;
 A. ART IN EARLY CIVILIZATIONS

• Stone Age is a term used to describe a period of history when stones were used to
make tools for survival.
• The unearthing of archeological artifacts and remains provides modern society a
glimpse of the beliefs, practices, and activities of early civilizations.
 PRE-HISTORIC ART

• Paleolithic Art is a product of climate change.

• Artworks can be considered ornamental but there is little
evidence to fully back up this notion, that early humans
created these cave paintings for that very purpose.
• Neolithic art has developed especially when life for the early
humans has become more stable.
EGYPTIAN ART
Three periods:
1. Old- religion was bound to the
afterlife.
2. Middle- a shift in the political
hierarchy
3. New Kingdoms- Monuments and
sculptures were still linked with
death and reverence for the
deceased.

• Art should be something religious

and spiritual.
B. ART OF EMERGING EUROPE
FOUR PERIODS:

1. Geometric Period (900-700 BC)- geometric shapes and patterns have taken the
spotlight in most of the artworks.
2. Archaic Period (700-480 BC) - placed importance on human figures. This was
primarily a result of Greece’s trading activities with other civilizations.
B. ART OF EMERGING
EUROPE
FOUR PERIODS:

3. Classical Period (480-323 BC)- created during a "golden

age", human statues became so heroically proportioned.
Reflective of Greek Humanistic belief in the nobility of man
and, perhaps, a desire to look a bit like gods.
4. Hellenistic Art (323-31 BC)- Greek sculptors had mastered
carving marble. They were so technically perfect that they
began to sculpt impossibly heroic humans.
Ancient Rome:

• The Romans were fond of the Greeks and their achievements in the arts. The
fusion of Greek and Roman cultures can be seen in most Roman artworks.
Middle Ages:

• Since the Church was the most important figure, the most important products of
the early Middle Ages would have to be copies of the Christian scriptures.
 Renaissance Art:
• During the Renaissance Period,
artists valued the “individual” as a
subject of arts. The influence of
humanism shifted the focus of some
artworks during the Renaissance
Period to empower the “individual.”
Most artworks emphasized
naturalism, which was also an
influence of humanism since there
was a great emphasis on the
proportionality of the human body.
Mannerism:

• Mannerism was a period in art history,

which was a product of the Renaissance
Period. During the Renaissance, artists
would observe nature and try their best to
emulate it based on their observations
Baroque and Rococo Art:
• Baroque is thought to have emerged from the Italian word barocco, which
was used by Medieval philosophers to refer to an “obstacle in schematic
logic.” Barocco later became a term for any contorted idea or complex
thought process.
• Chiaroscuro- the use of intense light and dark contrast in fine art
painting
• Baroque art characteristics- radiant colors, sources of hidden light, and
experiments with contrasting surface textures.
Baroque
 Baroque and Rococo Art:

• Rococo represented “secular high fashion.”

• The Rococo art movement, which primarily
came about through interior decoration,
• Pastels replacing Baroque’s vivid light and
shadow; light became present and scattered,
not hidden.
 Baroque and Rococo Art:

• Rococo paintings often show jovial

scenes of society’s elite, whether at home
or out frolicking in open green pastures.
• Symbols of play, romance, beauty, sex
and mythology are often apparent in
artworks of the period
Neoclassicism:

• Neoclassicism was a movement in Europe that transpired during the late 18th and
early 19th centuries.
• It was the dominant art movement that time which basically aimed to revive and
rekindle the influences of Greek and Roman into art and architecture.
• Defined stylistically by its use of straight lines, minimal use of color, simplicity of
form and, of course, an adherence to classical values and techniques.
 Romanticism:

• Romanticism can be seen as a

rejection of the precepts of order,
calm, harmony, balance,
idealization, and rationality that
typified Neoclassicism in
particular.
• Romanticists have highlighted
heroic elements into their work.
 Romanticism:

• Romanticism emphasized the

individual, the subjective, the
irrational, the imaginative, the
personal, the spontaneous, the
emotional, the visionary, and the
transcendental.
Contemporary Art:

• Contemporary art was heavily driven by ideas and theories, and even the
blurring of notions of what is and can be considered as “art”.
• Reeling after the war, one of the early movements was abstract
expressionism (early 1940s to mid-1960s) which took the basic tenets of
abstraction and combined with it with gestural techniques, mark-making,
and a rugged spontaneity in its visual articulation.

• Creating energy was at the center of "op art" or optical art (early 1960s
onward), which relied on creating an illusion to inform the experience of the
artwork using color, pattern, and other perspective tricks that artists had on
their sleeves.
Minimalism
• Minimalism cropped up in the early 1960s in New York, and saw artists testing
the boundaries of various media. It was seen as an extreme type of abstraction that
favored geometric shapes, color fields, and the use of objects and materials that
had an “industrial” sparse.
 Pop art

• First emerged in the 1950s but found

its footing in the 1960s. It drew
inspiration, sources, and even
materials from commercial culture,
making it one of the most identifiable
and relatable movements in art history.
 Photorealism:
• The resurgence of figurative art, where realistic depictions is a choice, is a proof
how varied and fragmented postmodernism is. In photorealism, a painstaking
attention to detail is aimed, without asserting an artist’s personal style.
Conceptualism:

• As opposed to celebrating commodities as references to real life, conceptualism

fought against the idea that art is a commodity.