Art History/ Movement

PREHISTORIC ART
• A term that refers to Stone Age, Paleolithic, and Neolithic art and
artifacts, literally referring to the time before recorded history.
• As the first building blocks of art history, prehistoric artifacts provide
crucial insights into the origin of image- and craft-making; they take
the form of tools and small objects, as well as a select few
architectural ruins.
• Art from this period was a powerful form of communicating
information between tribes and generations; 
 PREHISTORIC ART

Cupules Stone Age lions

The oldest cultural watching prey. Chauvet Cave, Ardèche Gorge,
phenomenon, Chauvet Cave
France
found throughout the Franco-Cantabrian
cave art from Wall Painting with Horses,
prehistoric Rhinoceroses, and Aurochs, ca.
the Late Aurignacian.
world, the cupule 30000 BCE -28000 BCE Venus of Willendorf
ca.30,000 BCE
remains one of the One of the famous Venus
least understood Figurines
of the Upper Paleolithic.
types of rock art.
ca. 25,000 BCE
 PREHISTORIC ART

Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire,

Tassili-n-Ajjer, Nigeria
Section of rock-wall painting, ca.
5000-2000 B.C.
England, United Kingdom
Lascaux Cave Painting, Lascaux
Stonehenge, ca. 2750-1500 B.C.
France
ca. 15,000-17,000 BCE
 CLASSICAL PERIOD
• Classical Art encompasses the cultures of Greece and Rome and
endures as the cornerstone of Western civilization.
• Including innovations in painting, sculpture, decorative arts, and
architecture, Classical Art pursued ideals of beauty, harmony, and
proportion, even as those ideals shifted and changed over the
centuries.
• While often employed in propagandistic ways, the human figure and
the human experience of space and their relationship with the gods
were central to Classical Art.
 PREHISTORIC ART
Greek

The Parthenon (447 - 432 BCE)

Artist: Ictinus and Callicrates
Laocoön and His Sons (27 BCE - 68 CE)
Artist: Agesandro, Athendoros, and
Polydoros
The Hirschfeld Krater, mid-
8th century BC, from the
late Geometric period,  
National Archaeological
Museum, Athens.
 CLASSICAL PERIOD
Rome

Pantheon (113 -125 CE)

Roman copy 120-50 BCE
of original by Polycleitus,
Doryphoros (Spear-
Bearer) c. 440 BCE (120- Venus de Milo (130 -100 BCE)
50 BCE) Artist: Alexandros of Antioch
 MEDIEVAL PERIOD
• Medieval art in Europe grew out of the artistic heritage of the Roman
Empire and the iconographic traditions of the early Christian church.
Icon- the production or study of the religious images, called "icons", in
the Byzantine and Orthodox Christian tradition
• These sources were mixed with the vigorous "barbarian" artistic
culture of Northern Europe to produce a remarkable artistic legacy.
• The history of medieval art can be seen as the history of the interplay
between the elements of classical, early Christian and "barbarian"
art. 
 MEDIEVAL PERIOD

The small private Wilton

Byzantine monumental Scenes of courtly love on Diptych for Richard II of
Church mosaics are a lady's ivory mirror-case. England, c. 1400, with
one of the great Paris, 1300–1330. stamped gold backgrounds
achievements of and much ultramarine.
medieval art. These are The jewelled cover of the Codex
from Monreale in Sicily  Aureus of St. Emmeram, c. 870,
from the late 12th a Carolingian Gospel book.
century.
 RENAISSANCE PERIOD
• Produced during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries in Europe under the
combined influences of an increased awareness of nature, a revival of
classical learning, and a more individualistic view of man.
• Scholars no longer believe that the Renaissance marked an abrupt break
with medieval values, as is suggested by the French word renaissance,
literally “rebirth.”
• Historical sources suggest that interest in nature, humanistic learning,
and individualism were already present in the late medieval period and
became dominant in 15th- and 16th-century Italy concurrently with social
and economic changes such as the secularization of daily life, the rise of a
rational money-credit economy, and greatly increased social mobility.
 RENAISSANCE PERIOD

The Last Judgement (1541)

The Birth of Venus (1486) Michelangelo Buonarroti
Sandro Botticelli

Sistine Madonna
(1512)
Raphael

Assumption of the Virgin (1518)

Titian
 RENAISSANCE PERIOD

The Last Supper (1498) – Leonardo da Vinci

The Creation of Adam (1512) – Michelangelo Mona Lisa (1517) – Leonardo da Vinci
 THE FINE ART PERIOD
• In European academic traditions, fine art is art developed primarily
for aesthetics or beauty, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which
also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwork.
• In the aesthetic theories developed in the Italian Renaissance, the highest art
allowed the full expression and display of the artist's imagination, unrestricted by
any of the practical considerations involved in, for instance, making and
decorating a teapot.
• It was also considered important that making the artwork did not involve dividing
the work between different individuals with specialized skills, as might be
necessary with a piece of furniture, for example.
• Even within the fine arts, there was a hierarchy of genres based on the amount of
creative imagination required, with history painting placed higher than still life.
 THE FINE ART PERIOD
Baroque Period (c. 1600 – 1700)
• The Baroque style is described as emotional, realistic, and dynamic.
• Baroque painters saw a canvas as a stage where they painted dramatically.
• Standing in front of Family Group with its large, dark canvas and stiffly posed
figures is like standing in front of a stage at the opening of a performance.
• Baroque paintings are full of movement, exuberant colors, and dramatic
contrast of light and dark.
• Artists worked hard to manipulate their medium to achieve a realistic effect
in their art.
• Subjects were viewed as participants or actors chosen by the artist on a
stage that extended beyond the canvas.
 THE FINE ART PERIOD
Baroque Period (c. 1600 – 1700)

The Calling of St Matthew

(1599-1600)
Caravaggio
Le debarquement de Marie de Las Meninas (1656)
Médicis au port de Marseille le 3 Diego Velázquez
November (c. 1622-1625)
Peter Paul Rubens
 THE FINE ART PERIOD
Rococo Period (c. 1700 – 1776)
• Rococo was a decorative, elaborate art most often seen in French
architecture and sculpture.
• Painting was often considered frivolous-looking and characterized by
fluidity, curving lines, and lustrous colors.
• Favorite subjects for Rococo artists were the courtly lifestyles and
playful love lives of the aristocracy.
 THE FINE ART PERIOD
Rococo Period (c. 1700 – 1776)
Triumph of Venus (1740)
François Boucher
The Meeting (from the “Loves of
the Shepherds”)(1771–72)
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Charles III Dining Before the
 Marie Antoinette in
Court (c. 1775)
a Court Dress (1778)
Luis Paret y Alcázar
Élisabeth Louise
Vigée-Le Brun
 THE FINE ART PERIOD
Neo-Classicism Period (c. 1750 – 1850)
• Europeans in the 1700s were fascinated with the ancient city of Pompeii frozen in
time by natural disaster.
• Discoveries such as Pompeii revitalized interest in the Classical art of Ancient
Greece and Rome, which could be used to promote universal ideas such as
courage and patriotism.
• By the late 1700s, the Age of Enlightenment spurred discovery, technology, and
scientific thought in a movement toward Classical ideals.
• Neoclassicism changed art techniques as well. Though they continued contrasting
light and dark colors in a way similar to Baroque artists, Neoclassicists stopped
using vibrant color and busy compositions. Instead, they focused on line and
symmetry, using formulas of set proportions and exact perspective.
 THE FINE ART PERIOD
Neo-Classicism Period (c. 1780 – 1820)

Monticello (1772-1809)
Thomas Jefferson

Oath of the Horatii (1784) Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, Pointing

Jacques Louis David to her Children as Her Treasures (c. 1785)
Angelica Kauffman
 THE FINE ART PERIOD
Romanticism Period (c. 1780 – 1830)
• At the end of the 18th century and well into the 19th, Romanticism quickly
spread throughout Europe and the United States to challenge the rational
ideal held so tightly during the Enlightenment.
• The artists emphasized that sense and emotions - not simply reason and
order - were equally important means of understanding and experiencing the
world.
• Romanticism celebrated the individual imagination and intuition in the
enduring search for individual rights and liberty.
• Its ideals of the creative, subjective powers of the artist fueled avant-garde
movements well into the 20th century.
 THE FINE ART PERIOD
Romanticism Period (c. 1780 – 1830)

Bonaparte Visits the Plague Stricken in

The Nightmare (1781) Jaffa (1804) The Third of May 1808 (1814)
Henry Fuseli Antoine Jean Gros Francisco Goya
 MODERNISM IN THE 19TH CENTURY
• Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and
changes, arose from enormous transformations in Western society during
the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
• Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of
modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed by the
horror of World War I.
• Modernism was essentially based on a utopian vision of human life and
society and a belief in progress, or moving forward.
• It assumed that certain ultimate universal principles or truths such as those
formulated by religion or science could be used to understand or explain
reality.
 MODERNISM IN THE 19TH CENTURY
Impressionism (c. 1872-1892)
• Impressionism can be considered the first distinctly modern movement in painting.
• Developing in Paris in the 1860s, its influence spread throughout Europe and
eventually the United States.
• Its originators were artists who rejected the official, government-sanctioned
exhibitions, or salons, and were consequently shunned by powerful academic art
institutions.
• In turning away from the fine finish and detail to which most artists of their day
aspired, the Impressionists aimed to capture the momentary, sensory effect of a
scene - the impression objects made on the eye in a fleeting instant.
• To achieve this effect, many Impressionist artists moved from the studio to the
streets and countryside, painting en plein air.
 MODERNISM IN THE 19TH CENTURY
Impressionism (c. 1872-1892)

Paris Street, Rainy Day (1877)

Gustave Caillebotte
Vetheuil in the Fog (1879)
Claude Monet
Girl with a Hoop (1885)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
 MODERNISM IN THE 19TH CENTURY
Post-Impressionism (c. 1880-1914)
• Post-Impressionism encompasses a wide range of distinct artistic
styles that all share the common motivation of responding to the
opticality of the Impressionist movement.
• The movement ushered in an era during which painting transcended
its traditional role as a window onto the world and instead became a
window into the artist's mind and soul.
• The far-reaching aesthetic impact of the Post-Impressionists
influenced groups that arose during the turn of the 20th century, like
the Expressionists, as well as more contemporary movements, like the
identity-related Feminist Art.
 MODERNISM IN THE 19TH CENTURY
Post-Impressionism (c. 1880-1914)

The Dream (1910)

Vision After the Sermon (1888) Henri Rousseau
Paul Gauguin
The Scream (1893)
Edvard Munch
Portrait of Doctor Gachet (1890)
Vincent van Gogh
 MODERNISM IN THE 19TH CENTURY
Neo-Impressionism (c. 1984-1935)
• In the latter part of the 19th century, Neo-Impressionism foregrounded the science
of optics and color to forge a new and methodical technique of painting that
eschewed the spontaneity and romanticism that many Impressionists celebrated.
• Relying on the viewer's capacity to optically blend the dots of color on the canvas,
the Neo-Impressionists strove to create more luminous paintings that depicted
modern life.
• With urban centers growing and technology advancing, the artists sought to
capture people's changing relationship with the city and countryside.
• Many artists in the following years adopted the Neo-Impressionist technique of
Pointillism, the application of tiny dots of pigment, which opened the door to
further explorations of color and eventually abstract art.
 MODERNISM IN THE 19TH CENTURY
Neo-Impressionism (c. 1984-1935)

La Récolte des Foins, Éragny (1887)

Camille Pissarro Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic
La Dame à la Robe Blanche with Beats and Angles, Tones, and Tints,
(Woman in White) (1886-1887) Portrait of Félix Fénéon (1890)
Albert Dubois-Pillet Paul Signac
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
• Defined as a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media
technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation,
virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, video games, computer robotics, 3D
printing, and art as biotechnology. 
• New Media is a term that is usually been used to any content available on-
demand through the Internet, accessible on any digital device, usually
containing interactive user feedback and creative participation.
• A defining characteristic of new media is a dialogue or interaction.
• Although the new media are not exclusively related to new media art (since
it’s much more important for social and cultural changes in contemporary
society), new media created a space for new contemporary art practices.
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Fauvism (c. 1899-1908)
• Fauvism, the first 20th-century movement in modern art, was initially inspired by
the examples of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Paul
Cézanne.
• The Fauves ("wild beasts") were a loosely allied group of French painters with
shared interests. Several of them, including Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet,
and Georges Rouault, had been pupils of the Symbolist artist Gustave Moreau and
admired the older artist's emphasis on personal expression.
• Matisse emerged as the leader of the group, whose members shared the use of
intense color as a vehicle for describing light and space, and who redefined pure
color and form as means of communicating the artist's emotional state.
• In these regards, Fauvism proved to be an important precursor
to Cubism and Expressionism as well as a touchstone for future modes of
abstraction.
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Fauvism (c. 1899-1908)

Pinède à Cassis (Landscape) (1907)

André Derain

Paysage à La Ciotat (1907); Othon Friesz

Le Viaduc à L'Estaque (1908)

Georges Braque
La Danse (1910); Henri Matisse
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Expressionism (c. 1905-1933)
• Expressionism emerged simultaneously in various cities across
Germany as a response to a widespread anxiety about humanity's
increasingly discordant relationship with the world and accompanying
lost feelings of authenticity and spirituality.
• In part a reaction against Impressionism and academic art,
Expressionism was inspired most heavily by the Symbolist currents in
late-19th-century art. Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and James
Ensor proved particularly influential to the Expressionists,
encouraging the distortion of form and the deployment of strong
colors to convey a variety of anxieties and yearnings.
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Expressionism (c. 1905-1933)

Large Blue Horses (1911)

Franz Marc
Der Blaue Reiter (1903)
Wassily Kandinsky

Street, Berlin (1913); Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Expressionism (c. 1905-1933)
• Cubism developed in the aftermath of Pablo Picasso's shocking 1907 Les Demoiselles
d'Avignon in a period of rapid experimentation between Pablo Picasso and Georges
Braque.
• Drawing upon Paul Cezanne’s emphasis on the underlying architecture of form, these
artists used multiple vantage points to fracture images into geometric forms.
• Rather than modelled forms in an illusionistic space, figures were depicted as
dynamic arrangements of volumes and planes where background and foreground
merged.
• The movement was one of the most groundbreaking of the early-20 th century as it
challenged Renaissance depictions of space, leading almost directly to experiments
with non-representation by many different artists.
• Artists working in the Cubist style went on to incorporate elements of collage and
popular culture into their paintings and to experiment with sculpture.
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Expressionism (c. 1905-1933)

Tea Time (1911)

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon Jean Metzinger
(1907)
Pablo Picasso Maquette for Guitar (1912)
Violin and
Pablo Picasso
Palette (1909)
Georges Braque
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Dada (c. 1916-1924)
• Dada was an artistic and literary movement that began in Zürich, Switzerland.
• It arose as a reaction to World War I and the nationalism that many thought had
led to the war.
• Influenced by other avant-garde movements - Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism,
and Expressionism - its output was wildly diverse, ranging from performance art
to poetry, photography, sculpture, painting, and collage.
• Dada's aesthetic, marked by its mockery of materialistic and nationalistic
attitudes, proved a powerful influence on artists in many cities, including Berlin,
Hanover, Paris, New York, and Cologne, all of which generated their own groups.
• The movement dissipated with the establishment of Surrealism, but the ideas it
gave rise to have become the cornerstones of various categories of modern and
contemporary art.
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Dada (c. 1916-1924)

Fountain (1917) Cut with a Kitchen Knife

Marcel Duchamp Dada through the Last
Weimar Beer Belly Merzpicture 46A. The
Ici, C'est Stieglitz (Here, Cultural Epoch of Skittle Picture (1921)
This is Stieglitz) (1915) Germany (1919) Kurt Schwitters
Francis Picabia Hannah Höch
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Surrealism (c. 1924-1966)
• The Surrealists sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of
the imagination.
• Disdaining rationalism and literary realism, and powerfully influenced by
psychoanalysis, the Surrealists believed the rational mind repressed the power of the
imagination, weighing it down with taboos.
• Influenced by Karl Marx, they hoped that the psyche had the power to reveal the
contradictions in the everyday world and spur on revolution.
• Their emphasis on the power of personal imagination puts them in the tradition
of Romanticism, but unlike their forebears, they believed that revelations could be
found on the street and in everyday life.
• The Surrealist impulse to tap the unconscious mind, and their interests in myth and
primitivism, went on to shape many later movements, and the style remains
influential to this today
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Surrealism (c. 1924-1966)

Carnival of Harlequin (1924-25)

Joan Miró

The Persistence of Memory (1931)

Salvador Dali

The Human Condition (1933)

Object in Fur (1936) René Magritte
Meret Oppenheim
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Abstract Expressionism (c. 1943-1965)
• It was somehow meant to encompass not only the work of painters who
filled their canvases with fields of color and abstract forms, but also those
who attacked their canvases with a vigorous gestural expressionism.
• Still Abstract Expressionism has become the most accepted term for a group
of artists who held much in common.
• All were committed to art as expressions of the self, born out of profound
emotion and universal themes, and most were shaped by the legacy
of Surrealism, a movement that they translated into a new style fitted to the
post-war mood of anxiety and trauma.
• In their success, these New York painters robbed Paris of its mantle as leader
of modern art, and set the stage for America's dominance of the
international art world.
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Abstract Expressionism (c. 1943-1965)

Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) (1950)

Jackson Pollock

1957-D-No. 1 (1957) Clyfford Still

Chief (1950) Franz Kline

Vir heroicus sublimis (1950-51)

Barnett Newman
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Pop Art (c. Mid 1950s- Late 1970s)
• Pop art started with the New York artists Andy Warhol, Roy
Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and Claes Oldenburg, all of whom drew on
popular imagery and were actually part of an international phenomenon.
• Following the popularity of the Abstract Expressionists, Pop's reintroduction
of identifiable imagery (drawn from mass media and popular culture) was a
major shift for the direction of modernism.
• The subject matter became far from traditional "high art" themes of
morality, mythology, and classic history; rather, Pop artists celebrated
commonplace objects and people of everyday life, in this way seeking to
elevate popular culture to the level of fine art.
• Perhaps owing to the incorporation of commercial images, Pop art has
become one of the most recognizable styles of modern art.
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Pop Art (c. Mid 1950s- Late 1970s)

President Elect (1960-61) James Rosenquist

Drowning Girl
(1963)
Roy Lichtenstein
I Was a Rich Man's
Plaything (1947) Campbell's Soup I (1968)
Eduardo Paolozzi Andy Warhol
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Optical Art (c. 1964- Present)
• Artists have been intrigued by the nature of perception and by optical effects
and illusions for many centuries. They have often been a central concern of
art, just as much as themes drawn from history or literature.
• In the 1950s these preoccupations, allied to new interests in technology and
psychology, blossomed into a movement. 
• OpticalArt or Op Art typically employs abstract patterns composed with a
stark contrast of foreground and background - often in black and white for
maximum contrast - to produce effects that confuse and excite the eye.
• To many, it seemed the perfect style for an age defined by the onward march
of science, by advances in computing, aerospace, and television. But art
critics were never so supportive of it, attacking its effects as gimmicks, and
today it remains tainted by those dismissals.
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Optical Art (c. 1964- Present)

Structural Constellation (1913)

Josef Albers
Four Self-Distorting Grids (1965)
Blaze (1964) Bridget Riley
François Morellet
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Photorealism (c. Early 1960s- Present)
• The name Photorealism (also known as Hyperrealism or Superrealism) was coined
in reference to those artists whose work depended heavily on photographs, which
they often projected onto canvas allowing images to be replicated with precision
and accuracy.
• The exactness was often aided further by the use of an airbrush, which was
originally designed to retouch photographs.
• The movement came about within the same period and context as Conceptual
art, Pop art, and Minimalism and expressed a strong interest in realism in art, over
that of idealism and abstraction.
• Among several male practitioners of Photorealism there is an interest in themes of
machinery and objects of industry such as trucks, motorcycles, cars, and even
gumball machines, whereas Audrey Flack, the sole female practitioner, infuses her
works with greater emotionality and the transience of life.
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Photorealism (c. Early 1960s- Present)

World War II (Vanitas) (1977-78)

McDonalds Pickup (1970) Audrey Flack
Self-Portrait (1967-68) Ralph Goings
Chuck Close
The Woman Eating (1971)
Duane Hanson
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Minimalism (c. Early 1960s- Late 1960s)
• Minimalism emerged in New York in the early 1960s among artists who
were self-consciously renouncing recent art they thought had become stale
and academic.
• The new art favored the cool over the "dramatic": their sculptures were
frequently fabricated from industrial materials and emphasized anonymity
over the expressive excess of Abstract Expressionism.
• Painters and sculptors avoided overt symbolism and emotional content, but
instead called attention to the materiality of the works.
• By the end of the 1970s, Minimalism had triumphed in America and Europe
through a combination of forces including museum curators, art dealers,
and publications, plus new systems of private and government patronage.
 NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS
Minimalism (c. Early 1960s- Late 1960s)

Untitled (mirrored cubes) (1965/71) Lever (1966) White Cubes (1991)

The X (1965) Ronald Bladen
Robert Morris Carl Andre Sol LeWitt
 ACTIVITY
Topic: Corona Virus Disease 2019 or CoViD-19
Materials: Anything that will suit your style and concept

 Choose one art movement and create your own art.

 Follow the art style employed in the art movement.
 The topic is broad in context so you can either create an art depicting
the spread of CoViD-19, the effect of the virus to the environment,
the image of the virus itself, the people affected by it, etc.
 Make it original and creative!
 ACTIVITY
Topic: Corona Virus Disease 2019 or CoViD-19
Materials: Anything that will suit your style and concept

 Upload your work in the album for this activity.

 Caption the work with the Title, the art movement you chose, and a
brief explanation.
 Don’t forget to include your signature in your artwork.