WESTERN ART HISTORY

It’s A Timeline!
FROM THIS TO THIS!!!!!
 What is Western Art?
The term largely describes the art from
Western Europe, but is also used as a general
category for forms of art that are now
geographically widespread but have their
roots in Europe.
PREHISTORIC ART (-40,000-4,000 BC)
PREHISTORIC ART (-40,000-4,000 BC)
• Produced in preliterate prehistoric cultures.
• Earliest human artifacts showing evidence of
workmanship with artistic purpose dates back to
40,000 years ago in the Upper Paleothetic era.
• Many indigenous peoples from around the world
continue to produce artistic works distinctive to their
geographical area and culture.
Hall of Bulls,
Lascaux Caves,
France
 ANCIENT ART
30,000 BC – AD 400
 ANCIENT ART 30,000 BC – AD 400
• Refers to the many types of art produced by the
advanced cultures of ancient societies with some
form of writing, such as those of ancient China,
India, Mesopotamia, Persia, Palestine, Egypt,
Greece, and Rome.
Woman of Willendorf
c. 22,000 BCE
 MEDIEVAL ART (AD 500 – AD 1400)
• Medieval art in Europe grew out of artistic heritage of
the Roman Empire and this iconographic traditions of
the early Christian church.
• Produced mostly large numbers of sculpture,
illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, metalwork,
and mosaics.
RENAISSANCE (1400 – 1600)
 RENAISSANCE (1400 – 1600)
• The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural,
artistic, political and economic “rebirth” following the Middle
Ages.
• This period promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy,
literature and art. Some of the greatest thinkers, authors,
statesmen, scientists and artists in human history thrived
during this era while global expansion opened up new lands
and cultures to European commerce.
• The Renaissance is credited with bridging the gap between
the Middle Ages and modern-day civilization.
David,
Michaelangelo
The School of Athens,
Raphael
The Last Supper,
Leonardo da Vinci
MANNERISM (1530)
 MANNERISM (1530)
• Named after maniera, an Italian term for “style” or “manner”, and
refers to a stylized, exaggerated approach to painting and sculpture.
• Early Renaissance artists had looked to antiquity for inspirations
• High Renaissance is characterized by naturalistic figures and a
mathematically precise use of perspective.
• Late Renaissance or Mannerism soon followed. The artists sought to
exaggerate Renaissance principles, resulting in work that favors self-
expressionism over the pursuit of idealism.
Madonna with Long Neck,
Parmigianino
Primavera, Botticelli
Autumn, Giuseppe Arcimboldo Spring, Giuseppe Arcimboldo
BAROQUE PERIOD (1600 – 1750)
 BAROQUE PERIOD (1600 – 1750)
• Baroque art above all reflected the religious tensions of the age,
notably the desire of the Catholic Church in Rome to reassert itself in
the wake of the Protestant Reformation.
• Tend to be large-scale works of public art, such as monumental wall-
paintings and huge frescoes for the ceilings and vaults of palaces and
churches.
• Portrayed a strong sense of movement, using swirling spirals and
upward diagonals, and strong sumptuous colour schemes in order to
dazzle and surprise.
David with the Head
of Goliath,
Caravaggio
Judith Beheading Holofernes,
Artemisia Gentileschi
Massacre of the Innocents, Peter Paul Rubens
ROCOCO (1699 – 1780)
 ROCOCO (1699 – 1780)
• Originated in France! Derived from the word rocaille, which denoted
the shell-covered rock work that was used to decorate artificial
grottoes.
• Designed to be lighter and more intimate style of decoration for new
resident nobles in Paris.
• Architecture was decorated with delicate interlacing of curves and
countercurves.
• Light pastels, ivory white, and gold were predominant colors.
Mezzetin,
Antoine Watteau
Blind Man’s Bluff,
Jean-Honore Fragonard
Ballroom ceiling of the Ca Rezzonico with ceiling by Giovanni Battista Crosato
NEOCLASSICISM
(1750 – 1850)
 NEOCLASSICISM (1750 – 1850)
• The 18th century Age of Enlightenment brought artists who wanted
their artwork and architecture to mirror and carry the same set of
standards as the idealized works of the Greeks and Romans.
• Brought a general revival of classical thought that mirrored what was
going on in political and social arenas of the time, leading to the
French Revolution.
• Architecture was based of the principles of simplicity, asymmetry, and
mathematics.
The Oath of the Horatii, Jacques-Louis David
The Death of Socrates, Jacques-Louis David
The Apotheosis of Homer
ROMANTICISM (1780 – 1850)
 ROMANTICISM (1780 – 1850)
• 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
• Romanticism embraced the struggles for freedom and equality and
the promotion of justice. Painters began using current events and
atrocities to shed light on injustices in dramatic compositions that
rivaled the more staid Neoclassical history paintings accepted by
national academies.
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog,
Caspar David Friedrich
The Course of Empire Destruction, Cole Thomas
Liberty Leading the People,
Eugène Delacroix
Grand Canal, Joseph Mallord William Turner
REALISM (1848 – 1900)
 REALISM (1848 – 1900)
• Realism is recognized as the first modern movement in art, which rejected
traditional forms of art, literature, and social organization as outmoded in
the wake of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
• Realism revolutionized painting, expanding conceptions of what
constituted art.
• Painters replaced the idealistic images and literary conceits of traditional
art with real-life events, giving the margins of society similar weight to
grand history paintings and allegories.
• Broadly considered the beginning of modern art. Literally, this is due to its
conviction that everyday life and the modern world were suitable subjects
for art.
A

A Burial at Ornans , Gustave Courbet

American Gothic,
Grant Wood
The Gleaners, Jean-François Millet
MPRESSIONISM
(1865 – 1885)
 IMPRESSIONISM (1865 – 1885)
• 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.
• Its originators were artists who rejected the official, government-
sanctioned exhibitions, or salons, and were consequently shunned by
powerful academic art institutions.
Spring and Boating,
Édouard Manet
Claude Monet
POST-IMPRESSIONISM (1885 – 1910)
 POST-IMPRESSIONISM (1885 – 1910)
• 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.
• Symbolic and highly personal meanings were particularly important to
Post-Impressionists such as Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh.
• Their early leanings toward abstraction paved the way for the radical
modernist exploration of abstraction that took place in the early-20th
century.
Mont Sainte-Victoire
Seen from Bellevue,
Paul Cézanne
Still life, drapery, pitcher
and fruit bowl
Paul Cézanne
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat
The Starry Night, Vincent van Gogh
Self Portrait 14
Vincent van Gogh
EXPRESSIONISM (1905 – 1920)
 EXPRESSIONISM (1905 – 1920)
• 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.
• The arrival of Expressionism announced new standards in the creation
and judgment of art. Art was now meant to come forth from within
the artist, rather than from a depiction of the external visual world,
and the standard for assessing the quality of a work of art became the
character of the artist's feelings rather than an analysis of the
composition.
The Scream
Evard Munch
Large Blue Horses, Franz Marc
View of Ceret, Chaim Soutine
CUBISM (1907 – 1914)
 CUBISM (1907 – 1914)
• 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-20th
century as it challenged Renaissance depictions of space, leading
almost directly to experiments with non-representation by many
different artists.
• The artists abandoned perspective, which had been used to depict
space since the Renaissance, and they also turned away from the
realistic modeling of figures.
Les Femmes d'Alger, Pablo Picasso
La Tasse (The Cup), Georges Braque
SURREALISM (1917 – 1950)
 SURREALISM (1917 – 1950)
• 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.
The Son of Man
René Magritte
The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM (1940 –
1950)
 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM (1940 –
1950)
• Encompasses 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.
• 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.
• Having matured as artists at a time when America suffered
economically and felt culturally isolated and provincial, the Abstract
Expressionists were later welcomed as the first authentically
American avant-garde.
Jackson Pollock
Willem de Kooning
Mark Ruthko
POP ART (1950s – 1960s)
 POP ART (1950s – 1960s)
• Draws on popular imagery.
• Reintroduction of identifiable imagery (drawn from mass media and
popular culture) was a major shift for the direction of modernism.
• Pop artists celebrated commonplace objects and people of everyday
life, in this way seeking to elevate popular culture to the level of fine
art.
Campbell’s Soup Cans, Andy Warhol
Happy Tears
Roy Lichtenstein
CONTEMPORARY ART (1970 – Present)
CONTEMPORARY ART (1970 – Present)
• Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse,
and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic
combination of materials, methods, concepts, and subjects that
continue the challenging of boundaries that was already well
underway in the 20th century.
• Contemporary art is part of a cultural dialogue that concerns larger
contextual frameworks such as personal and cultural identity, family,
community, and nationality.
Bouquet of Tulips
Jeff Koons
The Guerilla Girls
Sun Tunnels, Nancy Holt