The history of painting reaches back in time to artifacts from pre-historic humans, and spans all cultures.
Also see articles: Painting, Western painting, History of art, Eastern art history, Outline of painting history.
Pre-historyEastern painting
Krishna embraces Gopîs, Gîtâ-Govinda-manuscript, 1760-1765.
Floating Figures Dancing, a mural of c. 850.
Wild Pig Hunt, c. 1540.
Chand Bibi Hawking, Deccan style, 18th century
A Lady Listening to Music, c. 1750.
Rasamañjarî manuscript of the Bhânudatta (erotic treatise), 1720.
Mural fragment of a lady with a parasol, c. 700.
Bahsoli painting of Radha and Krishna in Discussion, c. 1730.
Bahsoli painting of Maharaja Sital Dev of Mankot in Devotion, c. 1690.
Portrait of Ibrahim Adil Shah II (1580-1626) of Bijapur, 1615.
The Throne of the Wealth, Nujûm-al-' Ulûm-manuscript, 1570.
Elephant and cub out of the stable of the Moghul ruler, 17th century.
Mihrdukht Shoots an Arrow Through a Ring, 1564-1579.
Portrait of the Govardhân Chand, Punjab style, c. 1750.
Demon-King of Lanka, 1920.
Ravana kills Jathayu; the captive Sita despairs.
Akbar and Tansen Visit Haridas in Vrindavan, Rajasthan style, c. 1750.
A man with children, Punjab style, 1760.
Râdhâ arrests Krishna, Punjab style, 1770.
Rama and Sita in the Forest, Punjab style, 1780.
South Asian painting
Main article: Indian painting Indian painting
The earliest Indian paintings were the rock paintings of prehistoric times, the petroglyphs as found in places like the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, and some of them are older than 5500 BC. Such works continued and after several millennia, in the 7th century, carved pillars of Ajanta, Maharashtra state present a fine example of Indian paintings, and the colors, mostly various shades of red and orange, were derived from minerals.
Ajanta Caves in Maharashtra, India are rock-cut cave monuments dating back to the second century BCE and containing paintings and sculpture considered to be masterpieces of both Buddhist religious art
Madhubani painting is a style of Indian painting, practiced in the Mithila region of Bihar state, India. The origins of Madhubani painting are shrouded in antiquity, and a tradition states that this style of painting originated at the time of the Ramayana, when King Janak commissioned artists to do paintings at the time of marriage of his daughter, Sita, with Sri Rama who is considered to be an incarnation of the Hindu god lord Vishnu.
Rajput painting, a style of Indian painting, evolved and flourished, during the 18th century, in the royal courts of Rajputana, India. Each Rajput kingdom evolved a distinct style, but with certain common features.
Rajput paintings depict a number of themes, events of epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, Krishna's life, beautiful landscapes, and humans. Miniatures were the preferred medium of Rajput painting, but several manuscripts also contain Rajput paintings, and paintings were even done on the walls of palaces, inner chambers of the forts, havelies, particularly, the havelis of Shekhawait.
The colors extracted from certain minerals, plant sources, conch shells, and were even derived by processing precious stones, gold and silver were used. The preparation of desired colors was a lengthy process, sometimes taking weeks. Brushes used were very fine.
Mughal painting is a particular style of Indian painting, generally confined to illustrations on the book and done in miniatures, and which emerged, developed and took shape during the period of the Mughal Empire 16th -19th centuries).
Tanjore painting is an important form of classical South Indian painting native to the town of Tanjore in Tamil Nadu. The art form dates back to the early 9th century, a period dominated by the Chola rulers, who encouraged art and literature. These paintings are known for their elegance, rich colors, and attention to detail. The themes for most of these paintings are Hindu Gods and Goddesses and scenes from Hindu mythology. In modern times, these paintings have become a much sought after souvenir during festive occasions in South India.
The process of making a Tanjore painting involves many stages. The first stage involves the making of the preliminary sketch of the image on the base. The base consists of a cloth pasted over a wooden base. Then chalk powder or zinc oxide is mixed with water-soluble adhesive and applied on the base. To make the base smoother, a mild abrasive is sometimes used. After the drawing is made, decoration of the jewellery and the apparels in the image is done with semi-precious stones. Laces or threads are also used to decorate the jewellery. On top of this, the gold foils are pasted. Finally, dyes are used to add colors to the figures in the paintings.
During British rule in India, the crown found that Madras had some of the most talented and intellectual artistic minds in the world. As the British had also established a huge settlement in and around Madras, Georgetown was chosen to establish an institute that would cater to the artistic expectations of the royals in London. This has come to be known as the Madras School. At first traditional artists were employed to produce exquisite varieties of furniture, metal work, and curios and their work was sent to the royal palaces of the Queen.
Unlike the Bengal School where 'copying' is the norm of teaching, the Madras School flourishes on 'creating' new styles, arguments and trends.
The Bengal School of Art was an influential style of art that flourished in India during the British Raj in the early 20th century. It was associated with Indian nationalism, but was also promoted and supported by many British arts administrators.
The Bengal School arose as an avant garde and nationalist movement reacting against the academic art styles previously promoted in India, both by Indian artists such as Ravi Varma and in British art schools. Following the widespread influence of Indian spiritual ideas in the West, the British art teacher Ernest Binfield Havel attempted to reform the teaching methods at the Calcutta School of Art by encouraging students to imitate Mughal miniatures. This caused immense controversy, leading to a strike by students and complaints from the local press, including from nationalists who considered it to be a retrogressive move. Havel was supported by the artist Abanindranath Tagore, a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore painted a number of works influenced by Mughal art, a style that he and Havel believed to be expressive of India's distinct spiritual qualities, as opposed to the "materialism" of the West. Tagore's best-known painting, Bharat Mata (Mother India), depicted a young woman, portrayed with four arms in the manner of Hindu deities, holding objects symbolic of India's national aspirations. Tagore later attempted to develop links with Japanese artists as part of an aspiration to construct a pan-Asianist model of art.
The Bengal School's influence in India declined with the spread of modernist ideas in the 1920s. In the post-independence period, Indian artists showed more adaptability as they borrowed freely from european styles and amalgamated them freely with the Indian motifs to new forms of art. While artists like Francis Newton Souza and Tyeb Mehta were more western in their approach, there were others like Ganesh Pyne and Maqbool Fida Hussain who developed thoroughly indigenous styles of work. Today after the process of liberalization of market in India, the artists are experiencing more exposure to the international art-scene which is helping them in emerging with newer forms of art which were hitherto not seen in India. Jitish Kallat had shot to fame in the late 90s with his paintings which were both modern and beyond the scope of generic definition. However while artists in India in the new century are trying out new styles, themes and metaphors, it would not have been possible to get such quick recognition without the aid of the business houses which are now entering the art field like they had never before.
History
Peonies, by Yun Shouping (1633-1690), Chinese
Ma Lin, 1246 AD, Chinese
Luoshenfu, by Gu Kaizhi (344-406 AD), Chinese
Chinese, 16th century
Portrait of Night-Shining White, by Han Gan, Chinese, 8th century
Spring Outing of the Tang Court, by Zhang Xuan, Chinese, 8th century
The Xiao and Xiang Rivers, by Dong Yuan (c. 934-962 AD), Chinese
Tao Yuanming, by Chen Hongshou (1598-1652), Chinese
Eighty-Seven Celestials, by Wu Daozi (685-758), Chinese
Golden Pheasant and Cotton Rose, by Emperor Huizong of Song (r.1100-1126 AD), Chinese
Listening to the Guqin, by Emperor Huizong of Song (1100-1126 AD), Chinese
A Man and His Horse in the Wind, by Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322 AD), Chinese
A tanuki (raccoon dog) as a tea kettle, by Katsushika Hokusai (1760—1849), Japanese
Genji Monogatari, by Tosa Mitsuoki (1617–1691), Japanese
Emperor Sun Quan in the Thirteen Emperors Scroll and Northern Qi Scholars Collating Classic Texts, by Yan Liben (c. 600-673 AD), Chinese
Chinese, anonymous artist of the 12th century Song Dynasty
Portrait of the Zen Buddhist Wuzhun Shifan, 1238 AD, Chinese
Ladies Playing Double Sixes, by Zhou Fang (730-800 AD), Chinese
Paradise of the Buddha Amitabha, 8th century, Chinese
Chinese, 10th century
Shukei-sansui (Autumn Landscape), Sesshu Toyo, (1420-1506), Japanese
A White-Robed Kannon, Bodhisattva of Compassion, by Kanō Motonobu (1476-1559), Japanese
A screen painting depicting people playing Go, by Kanō Eitoku (1543-1590), Japanese
Pine Trees, six sided screen, by Hasegawa Tohaku (1539-1610), Japanese
Scroll calligraphy of Bodhidharma, "Zen points directly to the human heart, see into your nature and become Buddha", Hakuin Ekaku (1686 to 1769), Japanese
Hanging scroll 1672, Kanō Tanyū, (1602-1674), Japanese
Nanban ships arriving for trade in Japan, Japanese, 16th century
Ike no Taiga, (1723-1776), Fish in Spring, Japanese
Maruyama school, Pine, Bamboo, Plum, six-fold screen, Maruyama Ōkyo (1733–1795), Japanese
Rimpa school, "Autumn Flowers and Moon," Sakai Hoitsu, (1761-1828), Japanese
Katsushika Hokusai, The Dragon of Smoke Escaping from Mt Fuji, Japanese
Miyagawa Isshō, untitled Ukiyo-e painting, Japanese
Nihonga style, Tomioka Tessai, (1837-1924)Two Divinities Dancing, 1924, Japanese
Shin hanga style Hiroshi Yoshida, (1876-1950), watercolour of Mount Fuji, Japanese
An underworld messenger, a Korean painting from the Joseon Dynasty
After Rain at Mt. Inwang, by Korean artist Cheong Seon (1676–1759)
Court portrait of Emperor Shenzong of Song (r. 1067-1085), Chinese
An illustrated sutra from the Nara period, Japanese, 8th century.
Children Playing, by Su Han Chen, c. 1150, Chinese
Ladies making silk, a remake of an 8th century original by Zhang Xuan by Emperor Huizong of Song, early 12th century, Chinese
China, Japan and Korea have a strong tradition in painting which is also highly attached to the art of calligraphy and printmaking (so much that it is commonly seen as painting). Far east traditional painting is characterized by water based techniques, less realism, "elegant" and stylized subjects, graphical approach to depiction, the importance of white space (or negative space) and a preference for landscape (instead of human figure) as a subject. Beyond ink and color on silk or paper scrolls, gold on lacquer was also a common medium in painted East Asian artwork. Although silk was a somewhat expensive medium to paint upon in the past, the invention of paper during the 1st century AD by the Han court eunuch Cai Lun provided not only a cheap and widespread medium for writing, but also a cheap and widespread medium for painting (making it more accessible to the public).
The ideologies of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism played important roles in East Asian art. Medieval Song Dynasty painters such as Lin Tinggui and his Luohan Laundering [1] (housed in the Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art) of the 12th century are excellent examples of Buddhist ideas fused into classical Chinese artwork. In the latter painting on silk (image and description provided in the link), bald-headed Buddhist Luohan are depicted in a practical setting of washing clothes by a river. However, the painting itself is visually stunning, with the Luohan portrayed in rich detail and bright, opaque colors in contrast to a hazy, brown, and bland wooded environment. Also, the tree tops are shrouded in swirling fog, providing the common "negative space" mentioned above in East Asian Art.
In Japonisme, late 19th century artists like the Impressionists, Van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Whistler admired traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e artists like Hokusai and Hiroshige and their work was influenced by it.
See also Chinese painting, Japanese painting, Korean painting.
East Asian painting
The earliest Indian paintings were the rock paintings of prehistoric times, the petroglyphs as found in places like the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, and some of them are older than 5500 BC. Such works continued and after several millennia, in the 7th century, carved pillars of Ajanta, Maharashtra state present a fine example of Indian paintings, and the colors, mostly various shades of red and orange, were derived from minerals.
Ajanta Caves in Maharashtra, India are rock-cut cave monuments dating back to the second century BCE and containing paintings and sculpture considered to be masterpieces of both Buddhist religious art
Madhubani painting is a style of Indian painting, practiced in the Mithila region of Bihar state, India. The origins of Madhubani painting are shrouded in antiquity, and a tradition states that this style of painting originated at the time of the Ramayana, when King Janak commissioned artists to do paintings at the time of marriage of his daughter, Sita, with Sri Rama who is considered to be an incarnation of the Hindu god lord Vishnu.
Rajput painting, a style of Indian painting, evolved and flourished, during the 18th century, in the royal courts of Rajputana, India. Each Rajput kingdom evolved a distinct style, but with certain common features.
Rajput paintings depict a number of themes, events of epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, Krishna's life, beautiful landscapes, and humans. Miniatures were the preferred medium of Rajput painting, but several manuscripts also contain Rajput paintings, and paintings were even done on the walls of palaces, inner chambers of the forts, havelies, particularly, the havelis of Shekhawait.
The colors extracted from certain minerals, plant sources, conch shells, and were even derived by processing precious stones, gold and silver were used. The preparation of desired colors was a lengthy process, sometimes taking weeks. Brushes used were very fine.
Mughal painting is a particular style of Indian painting, generally confined to illustrations on the book and done in miniatures, and which emerged, developed and took shape during the period of the Mughal Empire 16th -19th centuries).
Tanjore painting is an important form of classical South Indian painting native to the town of Tanjore in Tamil Nadu. The art form dates back to the early 9th century, a period dominated by the Chola rulers, who encouraged art and literature. These paintings are known for their elegance, rich colors, and attention to detail. The themes for most of these paintings are Hindu Gods and Goddesses and scenes from Hindu mythology. In modern times, these paintings have become a much sought after souvenir during festive occasions in South India.
The process of making a Tanjore painting involves many stages. The first stage involves the making of the preliminary sketch of the image on the base. The base consists of a cloth pasted over a wooden base. Then chalk powder or zinc oxide is mixed with water-soluble adhesive and applied on the base. To make the base smoother, a mild abrasive is sometimes used. After the drawing is made, decoration of the jewellery and the apparels in the image is done with semi-precious stones. Laces or threads are also used to decorate the jewellery. On top of this, the gold foils are pasted. Finally, dyes are used to add colors to the figures in the paintings.
During British rule in India, the crown found that Madras had some of the most talented and intellectual artistic minds in the world. As the British had also established a huge settlement in and around Madras, Georgetown was chosen to establish an institute that would cater to the artistic expectations of the royals in London. This has come to be known as the Madras School. At first traditional artists were employed to produce exquisite varieties of furniture, metal work, and curios and their work was sent to the royal palaces of the Queen.
Unlike the Bengal School where 'copying' is the norm of teaching, the Madras School flourishes on 'creating' new styles, arguments and trends.
The Bengal School of Art was an influential style of art that flourished in India during the British Raj in the early 20th century. It was associated with Indian nationalism, but was also promoted and supported by many British arts administrators.
The Bengal School arose as an avant garde and nationalist movement reacting against the academic art styles previously promoted in India, both by Indian artists such as Ravi Varma and in British art schools. Following the widespread influence of Indian spiritual ideas in the West, the British art teacher Ernest Binfield Havel attempted to reform the teaching methods at the Calcutta School of Art by encouraging students to imitate Mughal miniatures. This caused immense controversy, leading to a strike by students and complaints from the local press, including from nationalists who considered it to be a retrogressive move. Havel was supported by the artist Abanindranath Tagore, a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore painted a number of works influenced by Mughal art, a style that he and Havel believed to be expressive of India's distinct spiritual qualities, as opposed to the "materialism" of the West. Tagore's best-known painting, Bharat Mata (Mother India), depicted a young woman, portrayed with four arms in the manner of Hindu deities, holding objects symbolic of India's national aspirations. Tagore later attempted to develop links with Japanese artists as part of an aspiration to construct a pan-Asianist model of art.
The Bengal School's influence in India declined with the spread of modernist ideas in the 1920s. In the post-independence period, Indian artists showed more adaptability as they borrowed freely from european styles and amalgamated them freely with the Indian motifs to new forms of art. While artists like Francis Newton Souza and Tyeb Mehta were more western in their approach, there were others like Ganesh Pyne and Maqbool Fida Hussain who developed thoroughly indigenous styles of work. Today after the process of liberalization of market in India, the artists are experiencing more exposure to the international art-scene which is helping them in emerging with newer forms of art which were hitherto not seen in India. Jitish Kallat had shot to fame in the late 90s with his paintings which were both modern and beyond the scope of generic definition. However while artists in India in the new century are trying out new styles, themes and metaphors, it would not have been possible to get such quick recognition without the aid of the business houses which are now entering the art field like they had never before.
History
Peonies, by Yun Shouping (1633-1690), Chinese
Ma Lin, 1246 AD, Chinese
Luoshenfu, by Gu Kaizhi (344-406 AD), Chinese
Chinese, 16th century
Portrait of Night-Shining White, by Han Gan, Chinese, 8th century
Spring Outing of the Tang Court, by Zhang Xuan, Chinese, 8th century
The Xiao and Xiang Rivers, by Dong Yuan (c. 934-962 AD), Chinese
Tao Yuanming, by Chen Hongshou (1598-1652), Chinese
Eighty-Seven Celestials, by Wu Daozi (685-758), Chinese
Golden Pheasant and Cotton Rose, by Emperor Huizong of Song (r.1100-1126 AD), Chinese
Listening to the Guqin, by Emperor Huizong of Song (1100-1126 AD), Chinese
A Man and His Horse in the Wind, by Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322 AD), Chinese
A tanuki (raccoon dog) as a tea kettle, by Katsushika Hokusai (1760—1849), Japanese
Genji Monogatari, by Tosa Mitsuoki (1617–1691), Japanese
Emperor Sun Quan in the Thirteen Emperors Scroll and Northern Qi Scholars Collating Classic Texts, by Yan Liben (c. 600-673 AD), Chinese
Chinese, anonymous artist of the 12th century Song Dynasty
Portrait of the Zen Buddhist Wuzhun Shifan, 1238 AD, Chinese
Ladies Playing Double Sixes, by Zhou Fang (730-800 AD), Chinese
Paradise of the Buddha Amitabha, 8th century, Chinese
Chinese, 10th century
Shukei-sansui (Autumn Landscape), Sesshu Toyo, (1420-1506), Japanese
A White-Robed Kannon, Bodhisattva of Compassion, by Kanō Motonobu (1476-1559), Japanese
A screen painting depicting people playing Go, by Kanō Eitoku (1543-1590), Japanese
Pine Trees, six sided screen, by Hasegawa Tohaku (1539-1610), Japanese
Scroll calligraphy of Bodhidharma, "Zen points directly to the human heart, see into your nature and become Buddha", Hakuin Ekaku (1686 to 1769), Japanese
Hanging scroll 1672, Kanō Tanyū, (1602-1674), Japanese
Nanban ships arriving for trade in Japan, Japanese, 16th century
Ike no Taiga, (1723-1776), Fish in Spring, Japanese
Maruyama school, Pine, Bamboo, Plum, six-fold screen, Maruyama Ōkyo (1733–1795), Japanese
Rimpa school, "Autumn Flowers and Moon," Sakai Hoitsu, (1761-1828), Japanese
Katsushika Hokusai, The Dragon of Smoke Escaping from Mt Fuji, Japanese
Miyagawa Isshō, untitled Ukiyo-e painting, Japanese
Nihonga style, Tomioka Tessai, (1837-1924)Two Divinities Dancing, 1924, Japanese
Shin hanga style Hiroshi Yoshida, (1876-1950), watercolour of Mount Fuji, Japanese
An underworld messenger, a Korean painting from the Joseon Dynasty
After Rain at Mt. Inwang, by Korean artist Cheong Seon (1676–1759)
Court portrait of Emperor Shenzong of Song (r. 1067-1085), ChineseAn illustrated sutra from the Nara period, Japanese, 8th century.
Children Playing, by Su Han Chen, c. 1150, Chinese
Ladies making silk, a remake of an 8th century original by Zhang Xuan by Emperor Huizong of Song, early 12th century, Chinese
China, Japan and Korea have a strong tradition in painting which is also highly attached to the art of calligraphy and printmaking (so much that it is commonly seen as painting). Far east traditional painting is characterized by water based techniques, less realism, "elegant" and stylized subjects, graphical approach to depiction, the importance of white space (or negative space) and a preference for landscape (instead of human figure) as a subject. Beyond ink and color on silk or paper scrolls, gold on lacquer was also a common medium in painted East Asian artwork. Although silk was a somewhat expensive medium to paint upon in the past, the invention of paper during the 1st century AD by the Han court eunuch Cai Lun provided not only a cheap and widespread medium for writing, but also a cheap and widespread medium for painting (making it more accessible to the public).
The ideologies of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism played important roles in East Asian art. Medieval Song Dynasty painters such as Lin Tinggui and his Luohan Laundering [1] (housed in the Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art) of the 12th century are excellent examples of Buddhist ideas fused into classical Chinese artwork. In the latter painting on silk (image and description provided in the link), bald-headed Buddhist Luohan are depicted in a practical setting of washing clothes by a river. However, the painting itself is visually stunning, with the Luohan portrayed in rich detail and bright, opaque colors in contrast to a hazy, brown, and bland wooded environment. Also, the tree tops are shrouded in swirling fog, providing the common "negative space" mentioned above in East Asian Art.
In Japonisme, late 19th century artists like the Impressionists, Van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Whistler admired traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e artists like Hokusai and Hiroshige and their work was influenced by it.
See also Chinese painting, Japanese painting, Korean painting.
East Asian painting
Main article: Chinese painting Chinese painting
Main article: Japanese painting Japanese painting
see article Western painting
Western painting
Also see Ancient art
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt, Queen Nefertari
Ancient Egypt, papyrus
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Greek art
Knossos
Roman art, Pompeii
Roman art
Roman art
Roman art
Roman art
Roman art
Roman art
Ancient Egypt, a civilization with very strong traditions of architecture and sculpture (both originally painted in bright colours) also had many mural paintings in temples and buildings, and painted illustrations to papyrus manuscripts. Egyptian wall painting and decorative painting is often graphic, sometimes more symbolic than realistic. Egyptian painting depicts figures in bold outline and flat silhouette, in which symmetry is a constant characteristic. Egyptian painting has close connection with its written language - called Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Egyptians also painted on linen, remnants of which survive today. In fact painted symbols are found amongst the first forms of written language, and religion.
To the north of Egypt was the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete. The wall paintings found in the palace of Knossos are similar to that of the Egyptians but much more free in style. Around 1100 B.C., tribes from the north of Greece conquered Greece and the Greek art took a new direction.
Ancient Greece had great painters, great sculptors (though both endeavours were regarded as mere manual labour at the time), and great architects. The Parthenon is an example of their architecture that has lasted to modern days. Greek marble sculpture is often described as the highest form of Classical art. Painting on pottery of Ancient Greece and ceramics gives a particularly informative glimpse into the way society in Ancient Greece functioned. Black-figure vase painting and Red-figure vase painting gives many surviving examples of what Greek painting was. Some famous Greek painters on wooden panels who are mentioned in texts are Apelles, Zeuxis and Parrhasius, however no examples of Ancient Greek panel painting survive, only written descriptions by their contemporaries or later Romans. Zeuxis lived in 5-6 BC and was said to be the first to use sfumato. According to Pliny the Elder, the realism of his paintings was such that birds tried to eat the painted grapes. Apelles is described as the greatest painter of Antiquity for perfect technique in drawing, brilliant color and modeling.
Roman art was influenced by Greece and can in part be taken as a descendant of ancient Greek painting. However, Roman painting does have important unique characteristics. The only surviving Roman paintings are wall paintings, many from villas in Campania, in Southern Italy. Such painting can be grouped into 4 main "styles" or periods Almost the only painted portraits surviving from the Ancient world are a large number of coffin-portraits of bust form found in the Late Antique cemetery of Al-Fayum. Although these were neither of the best period nor the highest quality, they are impressive in themselves, and give an idea of the quality that the finest ancient work must have had. A very small number of miniatures from Late Antique illustrated books also survive, and a rather larger number of copies of them from the Early Medieval period.
Egypt, Greece and Rome
Cotton Genesis a miniature of Abraham meeting Angels
Byzantine art
Byzantine art
Byzantine art, Mosaic
Limbourg Brothers
Limbourg Brothers
Book of Hours
Book of Hours
Carolingian
Carolingian Saint Mark
Giottino
Vitale da Bologna
Simone Martini
Cimabue
Giotto
Giotto
The rise of Christianity imparted a different spirit and aim to painting styles. Byzantine art, once its style was established by the 6th century, placed great emphasis on retaining traditional iconography and style, and has changed relatively little through the thousand years of the Byzantine Empire and the continuing traditions of Greek and Russian Othodox icon-painting. Byzantine painting has a particularly hieratic feeling and icons were and still are seen as a reflection of the divine. There were also many wall-paintings in fresco, but fewer of these have survived than Byzantine mosaics. In general Byzantium art borders on abstraction, in its flatness and highly stylised depictions of figures and landscape. However there are periods, especially in the so-called Macedonian art of around the 10th century, when Byzantine art became more flexible in approach.
In post-Antique Catholic Europe the first distinctive artistic style to emerge that included painting was the Insular art of the British Isles, where the only surviving examples (and quite likely the only medium in which painting was used) are miniatures in Illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Kells. These are most famous for their abstract decoration, although figures, and sometimes scenes, were also depicted, especially in Evangelist portraits. Carolingian and Ottonian art also survives mostly in manuscripts, although some wall-painting remain, and more are documented. The art of this period combines Insular and "barbarian" influences with a strong Byzantine influence and an aspiration to recover classical monumentality and poise.
Walls of Romanesque and Gothic churches were decorated with frescoes as well as sculpture and many of the few remaining murals have great intensity, and combine the decorative energy of Insular art with a new monumentality in the treatment of figures. Far more miniatures in Illuminated manuscripts survive from the period, showing the same characteristics, which continue into the Gothic period.
Panel painting becomes more common during the Romanesque period, under the heavy influence of Byzantine icons. Towards the middle of the 13th century, Medieval art and Gothic painting became more realistic, with the beginnings of interest in the depiction of volume and perspective in Italy with Cimabue and then his pupil Giotto. From Giotto on, the treatment of composition by the best painters also became much more free and innovative. They are considered to be the two great medieval masters of painting in western culture. Cimabue, within the Byzantine tradition, used a more realistic and dramatic approach to his art. His pupil, Giotto, took these innovations to a higher level which in turn set the foundations for the western painting tradition. Both artists were pioneers in the move towards naturalism.
Churches were built with more and more windows and the use of colorful stained glass become a staple in decoration. One of the most famous examples of this is found in the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. By the 14th century Western societies were both richer and more cultivated and painters found new patrons in the nobility and even the bourgeoisie. Illuminated manuscripts took on a new character and slim, fashionably dressed court women were shown in their landscapes. This style soon became known as International style and tempera panel paintings and altarpieces gained importance.
Middle Ages
Fra Angelico
Filippo Lippi
Andrea Mantegna
Masaccio The Expulsion Of Adam and Eve from Eden, before and after restoration
Paolo Uccello
Leonardo Da Vinci
Raphael
Michelangelo
Albrecht Durer
Giovanni Bellini
Titian
Sandro Botticelli
Giorgione
Jan van Eyck
Hans Holbein the Younger
El Greco
The Renaissance is said by many to be the golden age of painting. Roughly spanning the 14th through the mid 17th century. In Italy artists like Paolo Uccello, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Andrea Mantegna, Filippo Lippi, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, and Titian took painting to a higher level through the use of perspective, the study of human anatomy and proportion, and through their development of an unprecedented refinement in drawing and painting techniques.
Flemish, Dutch and German painters of the Renaissance such as Hans Holbein the Younger, Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Matthias Grünewald, Hieronymous Bosch, and Pieter Brueghel represent a different approach from their Italian colleagues, one that is more realistic and less idealized. The adoption of oil painting whose invention was traditionally, but erroneously, credited to Jan Van Eyck, (an important transitional figure who bridges painting in the Middle Ages with painting of the early Renaissance), made possible a new verisimilitude in depicting reality. Unlike the Italians whose work drew heavily from the art of ancient Greece and Rome, the northerners retained a stylistic residue of the sculpture and illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages.
Renaissance painting reflects the revolution of ideas and science (astronomy, geography) that occur in this period, the Reformation, and the invention of the printing press. Dürer, considered one of the greatest of printmakers, states that painters are not mere artisans but thinkers as well. With the development of easel painting in the Renaissance, painting gained independence from architecture. Following centuries dominated by religious imagery, secular subject matter slowly returned to Western painting. Artists included visions of the world around them, or the products of their own imaginations in their paintings. Those who could afford the expense could become patrons and commission portraits of themselves or their family.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, panel paintings which could be hung on walls and moved around at will, became increasingly popular for both churches and private houses, rather than fresco wall-paintings or paintings incorporated into on permanent structures, such as altarpieces. The High Renaissance gave rise to a stylized art known as Mannerism. In place of the balanced compositions and rational approach to perspective that characterized art at the dawn of the sixteenth century, the Mannerists sought instability, artifice, and doubt. The unperturbed faces and gestures of Piero della Francesca and the calm Virgins of Raphael are replaced by the troubled expressions of Pontormo and the emotional intensity of El Greco.
Baroque and Rococo
also see main articles Impressionism, Post Impressionism, Hudson River School
Jacques-Louis David 1787
John Constable 1802
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres 1862
Eugène Delacroix, 1830
Francisco de Goya 1814
Théodore Géricault 1819
Caspar David Friedrich c.1820
J. M. W. Turner 1838
Gustave Courbet 1849-1850
Albert Bierstadt 1886
Camille Corot c.1867
Claude Monet 1872
Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1876
Edgar Degas 1876
Édouard Manet 1882
Vincent van Gogh 1889
Paul Gauguin 1897-1898
Georges Seurat 1884-1886
Ralph Albert Blakelock 1885
Paul Cézanne 1906
After the decadence of Rococo there arose in the late 18th century an ascetic neo-classicism, best represented by such artists as Jacques Louis David and his heir Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Ingres' work already contains much of the sensuality, but none of the spontaneity, that was to characterize Romanticism. This movement turned its attention toward landscape and nature as well as the human figure and the supremacy of natural order above mankind's will. There is a pantheist philosophy (see Spinoza and Hegel) within this conception that opposes Enlightenment ideals by seeing mankind's destiny in a more tragic or pessimistic light. The idea that human beings are not above the forces of Nature is in contradiction to Ancient Greek and Renaissance ideals where mankind was above all things and owned his fate. This thinking led romantic artists to depict the sublime, ruined churches, shipwrecks, massacres and madness.
Romantic painters turned landscape painting into a major genre, considered until then as a minor genre or as a decorative background for figure compositions. Some of the major painters of this period are Eugene Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, J. M. W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich and John Constable. Francisco de Goya's late work demonstrates the Romantic interest in the irrational, while the work of Arnold Böcklin evokes mystery. In the United States the Romantic tradition of landscape painting was known as the Hudson River School. Important painters of that school include Thomas Cole, Frederick Church, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, and John Frederick Kensett among others. Luminism was another important movement in American landscape painting related to the Hudson River School.
The leading Barbizon School painter Camille Corot painted sometimes as a romantic, sometimes as a Realist who looks ahead to Impressionism. A major force in the turn towards Realism at mid-century was Gustave Courbet. In the latter third of the century Impressionists like Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, and Edgar Degas and the slightly younger post-Impressionists like Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat, along with Paul Cezanne lead art up to the edge of modernism.
19th century: Neo-classicism, Romanticism, Impressionism
Also see: Modern Art, Modernism, Contemporary art,. The heritage of painters like Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Seurat was essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century Henri Matisse and several other young artists revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive, landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism. Pablo Picasso made his first cubist paintings based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cube, sphere and cone.
20th century Modern and Contemporary
Henri Matisse 1909, late Fauvism
Pablo Picasso 1907, early Cubism
Georges Braque 1910, Analytic Cubism
Henri Rousseau 1910 Primitive Surrealism
Wassily Kandinsky 1913, birth of Abstract Art
Giorgio de Chirico 1914, pre-Surrealism
Robert Delaunay, 1911, Orphism
Fernand Leger 1919, Synthetic Cubism, Tubism
Marc Chagall 1911, Expressionism and Surrealism
Franz Marc 1912, Der Blaue Reiter
Francis Picabia 1916, Dada
Max Ernst 1923, early Surrealism
The heritage of painters like Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Seurat was essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century Henri Matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubist Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy and Maurice de Vlaminck revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive, landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism - (as seen in the gallery above). Pablo Picasso made his first cubist paintings based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cube, sphere and cone. With the painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 1907, (see gallery) Picasso dramatically created a new and radical picture depicting a raw and primitive brothel scene with five prostitutes, violently painted women, reminiscent of African tribal masks and his own new Cubist inventions. Analytic cubism (see gallery) was jointly developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque from about 1908 through 1912. Analytic cubism, the first clear manifestation of cubism, was followed by Synthetic cubism, practised by Braque, Picasso, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, Marcel Duchamp and countless other artists into the 1920s. Synthetic cubism is characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces, collage elements, papier collé and a large variety of merged subject matter.
During the years between 1910 and the end of World War I and after the heyday of cubism, several movements emerged in Paris. Giorgio De Chirico moved to Paris in July 1911, where he joined his brother Andrea (the poet and painter known as Alberto Savinio). Through his brother he met Pierre Laprade a member of the jury at the Salon d'Automne, where he exhibited three of his dreamlike works: Enigma of the Oracle, Enigma of an Afternoon and Self-Portrait. During 1913 he exhibited his work at the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d'Automne, his work was noticed by Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire and several others. His compelling and mysterious paintings are considered instrumental to the early beginnings of Surrealism. (see gallery)
In the first two decades of the 20th century and after cubism, several other important movements emerged; Futurism (Balla), Abstract art (Kandinsky), Der Blaue Reiter), Bauhaus, (Kandinsky) and (Klee), Orphism, (Robert Delaunay and František Kupka), Synchromism (Morgan Russell), De Stijl (Mondrian), Suprematism (Malevich), Constructivism (Tatlin), Dadaism (Duchamp, Picabia, Arp) and Surrealism (De Chirico, André Breton, Miró, Magritte, Dalí, Ernst). Modern painting influenced all the visual arts, from Modernist architecture and design, to avant-garde film, theatre and modern dance and became an experimental laboratory for the expression of visual experience, from photography and concrete poetry to advertising art and fashion. Van Gogh's painting exerted great influence upon 20th century Expressionism, as can be seen in the work of the Fauves, Die Brücke (a group led by German painter Ernst Kirchner), and the Expressionism of Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine and others..
Wassily Kandinsky a Russian painter, printmaker and art theorist, one of the most famous 20th-century artists is generally considered the first important painter of modern abstract art. As an early modernist, in search of new modes of visual expression, and spiritual expression, he theorized as did contemporary occultists and theosophists, that pure visual abstraction had corollary vibrations with sound and music. They posited that pure abstraction could express pure spirituality. His earliest abstractions were generally titled as the example in the (above gallery) Composition VII, making connection to the work of the composers of music. Kandinsky included many of his theories about abstract art in his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Robert Delaunay was a French artist who is associated with Orphism, (reminiscent of a link between pure abstraction and cubism). His later works were more abstract, reminiscent of Paul Klee. His key contributions to abstract painting refer to his bold use of color, and a clear love of experimentation of both depth and tone. At the invitation of Wassily Kandinsky, Delaunay and his wife the artist Sonia Delaunay, joined The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter), a Munich-based group of abstract artists, in 1911, and his art took a turn to the abstract. Still other important pioneers of abstract painting include Czech painter, František Kupka and Synchromism, an art movement founded in 1912 by American artists Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell that closely resembles Orphism.
Pioneers
Kasimir Malevich 1916 Suprematism
Amadeo Modigliani 1917 Symbolism and Expressionism
Stanton MacDonald-Wright 1920, Synchromism
Piet Mondrian 1921 De Stijl
Otto Dix, 1926 German Expressionism
Stuart Davis American Modernism 1922
Charles Demuth, 1928 American Precisionism (proto Pop Art)
Paul Klee 1928, Bauhaus
Thomas Hart Benton 1920, Regionalism
Grant Wood 1930 Social Realism
Rene Magritte 1928-1929 Surrealism
Salvador Dalí 1931, Surrealism (super-realism)
Max Beckmann 1938-1940 Expressionism
Wassily Kandinsky Composition X 1939 Geometric abstraction
Arshile Gorky 1929-1936 pre Abstract Expressionism
Pablo Picasso Guernica 1937 protest against Fascism
Piet Mondrian's art was intimately related to his spiritual and philosophical studies. In 1908 he became interested in the theosophical movement launched by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in the late 19th century. Blavatsky believed that it was possible to attain a knowledge of nature more profound than that provided by empirical means, and much of Mondrian's work for the rest of his life was inspired by his search for that spiritual knowledge. Other major pioneers of early abstraction include Russian painter Kasimir Malevich, who after the Russian Revolution in 1919, and after pressure from the Stalinist regime in 1924 returned to painting imagery and Peasants and Workers in the field,
Between the Wars
Frida Kahlo 1940, Latin American Symbolism
Edward Hopper 1942, American Scene painting
Andrew Wyeth 1948, Realism
Adolph Gottlieb 1949, Pictograph
Barnett Newman, Onement 1, 1948, Color Field - Abstract Expressionism
Francis Bacon 1953, British Expressionism
Willem De Kooning 1952-1953 Figurative Abstract Expressionism
Jackson Pollock 1950 Abstract Expressionism
Franz Kline 1954 Action painting
Clyfford Still 1957 Color Field - Abstract Expressionism
Hans Hofmann 1959-1960 Abstract Expressionism and Geometric abstraction
Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110
The 1940s in New York City heralded the triumph of American Abstract expressionism, a modernist movement that combined lessons learned from Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Surrealism, Joan Miró, Cubism, Fauvism, and early Modernism via great teachers in America like Hans Hofmann and John D. Graham. American artists benefited from the presence of Piet Mondrian, Fernand Leger, Max Ernst and the Andre Breton group, Pierre Matisse's gallery, and Peggy Guggenheim's gallery The Art of This Century, as well as other factors.
Post-Second World War American painting called Abstract expressionism included artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Clyfford Still, Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, and Franz Kline, among others. American Abstract expressionism got its name in 1946 from the art critic Robert Coates. It is seen as combining the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism, the Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism.
Technically Surrealism was an important predecessor for Abstract expressionism with its emphasis on spontaneous, automatic or subconscious creation. Jackson Pollock's dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the floor is a technique that has its roots in the work of André Masson. Another important early manifestation of what came to be abstract expressionism is the work of American Northwest artist Mark Tobey, especially his "white writing" canvases, which, though generally not large in scale, anticipate the "all over" look of Pollock's drip paintings.
Additionally, Abstract expressionism has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, rather nihilistic. In practice, the term is applied to any number of artists working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles, and even applied to work which is not especially abstract nor expressionist. Pollock's energetic "action paintings", with their "busy" feel, are different both technically and aesthetically, to the violent and grotesque Women series of Willem de Kooning (which are figurative paintings) and to the serenely shimmering blocks of color in Mark Rothko's work (which is not what would usually be called expressionist and which Rothko denied was abstract), yet all three are classified as abstract expressionists.
Abstract Expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of the early twentieth century such as Wassily Kandinsky. Although it is true that spontaneity or of the impression of spontaneity characterized many of the abstract expressionists works, most of these paintings involved careful planning, especially since their large size demanded it. An exception might be the drip paintings of Pollock.
Why this style gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s is a matter of debate. American Social realism had been the mainstream in the 1930s. It had been influenced not only by the Great Depression but also by the Social Realists of Mexico such as David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. The political climate after World War II did not long tolerate the social protests of those painters. Abstract expressionism arose during World War II and began to be showcased during the early 1940s at galleries in New York like The Art of This Century Gallery. The late 1940s through the mid 1950s ushered in the McCarthy era. It was after World War II and a time of political conservatism and extreme artistic censorship in the United States. Some people have conjectured that since the subject matter was often totally abstract, Abstract expressionism became a safe strategy for artists to pursue this style. Abstract art could be seen as apolitical. Or if the art was political, the message was largely for the insiders. However those theorists are in the minority. As the first truly original school of painting in America, Abstract expressionism demonstrated the vitality and creativity of the country in the post-war years, as well as its ability (or need) to develop an aesthetic sense that was not constrained by the European standards of beauty.
Although Abstract expressionism spread quickly throughout the United States, the major centers of this style were New York City and California, especially in the New York School, and the San Francisco Bay area. Abstract expressionist paintings share certain characteristics, including the use of large canvases, an "all-over" approach, in which the whole canvas is treated with equal importance (as opposed to the center being of more interest than the edges. The canvas as the arena became a credo of Action painting, while the integrity of the picture plane became a credo of the Color field painters.
In Europe there was the continuation of Surrealism, Cubism, Dada and the works of Matisse. Also in Europe, Tachisme (the European equivalent to Abstract expressionism) took hold of the newest generation. Serge Poliakoff, Nicolas de Staël, Georges Mathieu, Vieira da Silva, Jean Dubuffet, Yves Klein and Pierre Soulages among others are considered important figures in post-war European painting.
Eventually abstract painting in America evolved into movements such as Neo-Dada, color field painting, Post painterly abstraction, Op Art, hard-edge painting, Minimal art, shaped canvas painting, Lyrical Abstraction, Neo-expressionism and the continuation of Abstract expressionism. As a response to the tendency toward abstraction imagery emerged through various new movements, notably Pop Art.
Towards Mid Century
Jasper Johns 1954-55 pre-Pop Art
Robert Rauschenberg 1963, Neo-Dada
Roy Lichtenstein, 1963 Pop Art
Andy Warhol 1962, Pop Art (repetition)
Alex Katz 1970, Pop Art
David Hockney 1967, English Pop Art
Richard Diebenkorn 1963, Bay Area Figurative Movement
Fairfield Porter 1971-1972, East coast Figurative painting
Pop Art in America was to a large degree initially inspired by the works of Jasper Johns, Larry Rivers, and Robert Rauschenberg. Although the paintings of Gerald Murphy, Stuart Davis and Charles Demuth during the 1920s and 1930s set the table for Pop Art in America. In New York City during the mid 1950s Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns created works of art that at first seemed to be continuations of Abstract expressionist painting. Actually their works and the work of Larry Rivers, were radical departures from abstract expressionism especially in the use of banal and literal imagery and the inclusion and the combining of mundane materials into their work. The innovations of Johns' specific use of various images and objects like chairs, numbers, targets, beer cans and the American Flag; Rivers paintings of subjects drawn from popular culture such as George Washington crossing the Delaware, and his inclusions of images from advertisements like the camel from Camel cigarettes, and Rauschenberg's surprising constructions using inclusions of objects and pictures taken from popular culture, hardware stores, junkyards, the city streets, and taxidermy gave rise to a radical new movement in American art. Eventually by 1963 the movement came to be known worldwide as Pop Art.
Pop-Art is exemplified by artists: Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Wayne Thiebaud, James Rosenquist, Jim Dine, Tom Wesselmann and Roy Lichtenstein among others. Pop art merges popular and mass culture with fine art, while injecting humor, irony, and recognizable imagery and content into the mix. In October 1962 the Sidney Janis Gallery mounted The New Realists the first major Pop Art group exhibition in an uptown art gallery in New York City. Sidney Janis mounted the exhibition in a 57th Street storefront near his gallery at 15 E. 57th Street. The show sent shockwaves through the New York School and reverberated worldwide. Earlier in the fall of 1962 an historically important and ground-breaking New Painting of Common Objects exhibition of Pop Art, curated by Walter Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum sent shock waves across the Western United States.
Earlier in England in 1958 the term "Pop Art" was used by Lawrence Alloway to describe paintings that celebrated consumerism of the post World War II era. This movement rejected Abstract expressionism and its focus on the hermeneutic and psychological interior, in favor of art which depicted, and often celebrated material consumer culture, advertising, and iconography of the mass production age.The early works of David Hockney and the works of Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi were considered seminal examples in the movement.
While in the downtown scene in New York City's East Village 10th Street galleries artists were formulating an American version of Pop Art. Claes Oldenburg had his storefront, and the Green Gallery on 57th Street began to show Tom Wesselmann and James Rosenquist. Later Leo Castelli exhibited other American artists including the bulk of the careers of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and his use of Benday dots, a technique used in commercial reproduction. There is a connection between the radical works of Duchamp, and Man Ray, the rebellious Dadaists - with a sense of humor; and Pop Artists like Alex Katz, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and the others.
While throughout the 20th century many painters continued to practice landscape and figurative painting with contemporary subjects and solid technique, like Milton Avery, John D. Graham, Fairfield Porter, Edward Hopper, Balthus, Francis Bacon, Nicolas de Staël, Andrew Wyeth, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Philip Pearlstein, David Park, Nathan Oliveira, David Hockney, Chuck Close, Susan Rothenberg, Eric Fischl, Vija Celmins and Richard Diebenkorn.
Pop Art, Neo Dada and Realism
Helen Frankenthaler 1952, Color Field painting
Josef Albers 1965, Geometric abstraction
Richard Anuszkiewicz, 1985 Op Art
Morris Louis 1960 Minimalism-Color field
Frank Stella 1967, Shaped Canvas
Gene Davis 1964, Washington Color School
Ronald Davis 1968, Abstract Illusionism
Ronnie Landfield, 1968, Lyrical Abstraction
Color Field painting clearly pointed toward a new direction in American painting, away from abstract expressionism. Color Field painting is related to Post-painterly abstraction, Suprematism, Abstract Expressionism, Hard-edge painting and Lyrical Abstraction.
Color Field painting sought to rid art of superflous rhetoric. Artists like Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Morris Louis, Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Larry Zox, and others often used greatly reduced references to nature, and they painted with a highly articulated and psychological use of color. In general these artists eliminated recognizable imagery. Certain artists quoted references to past or present art, but in general color field painting presents abstraction as an end in itself. In pursuing this direction of modern art, artists wanted to present each painting as one unified, cohesive, monolithic image.
Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland, Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman, Ronald Davis, Neil Williams, Robert Mangold, Charles Hinman, Richard Tuttle, David Novros, and Al Loving are examples of artists associated with the use of the shaped canvas during the period beginning in the early 1960s. Many Geometric abstract artists, minimalists, and Hard-edge painters elected to use the edges of the image to define the shape of the painting rather than accepting the rectangular format. In fact, the use of the shaped canvas is primarily associated with paintings of the 1960s and 1970s that are coolly abstract, formalistic, geometrical, objective, rationalistic, clean-lined, brashly sharp-edged, or minimalist in character. The Andre Emmerich Gallery, the Leo Castelli Gallery, the Richard Feigen Gallery, and the Park Place Gallery were important showcases for Color Field painting, shaped canvas painting and Lyrical Abstraction in New York City during the 1960s. There is a connection with post-painterly abstraction, which reacted against abstract expressionisms' mysticism, hyper-subjectivity, and emphasis on making the act of painting itself dramatically visible - as well as the solemn acceptance of the flat rectangle as an almost ritual prerequisite for serious painting. During the 1960s Color Field painting and Minimal art were often closely associated with each other. In actuality by the early 1970s both movements became decidedly diverse.
Another related movement of the late 1960s Lyrical Abstraction is a term that was originally coined by Larry Aldrich (the founder of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield Connecticut) in 1969 to describe what Aldrich said he saw in the studios of many artists at that time. Lyrical Abstraction is a type of freewheeling abstract painting that emerged in the mid-1960s when abstract painters returned to various forms of painterly, pictorial, expressionism with a predominate focus on process, gestalt and repetitive compositional strategies in general.
Lyrical Abstraction shares similarities with Color Field Painting and Abstract Expressionism especially in the freewheeling usage of paint - texture and surface. Direct drawing, calligraphic use of line, the effects of brushed, splattered, stained, squeegeed, poured, and splashed paint superficially resemble the effects seen in Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting. However the styles are markedly different. Setting it apart from Abstract Expressionism and Action Painting of the 1940s and 1950s is the approach to composition and drama. As seen in Action Painting there is an emphasis on brushstrokes, high compositional drama, dynamic compositional tension. While in Lyrical Abstraction there is a sense of compositional randomness, all over composition, low key and relaxed compositional drama and an emphasis on process, repetition, and an all over sensibility.
During the 1960s and 1970s artists as powerful and influential as Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, Phillip Guston, Lee Krasner, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Richard Diebenkorn, Josef Albers, Elmer Bischoff, Agnes Martin, Al Held, Sam Francis, Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler, Gene Davis, Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland, Joan Mitchell, Friedel Dzubas, and younger artists like Brice Marden, Robert Mangold, Sam Gilliam, Sean Scully, Pat Steir, Elizabeth Murray, Larry Poons, Walter Darby Bannard, Larry Zox, Ronnie Landfield, Ronald Davis, Dan Christensen, Joan Snyder, Ross Bleckner, Archie Rand, Susan Crile, and dozens of others produced vital and influential paintings.
During the 1960s and 1970s, there was a reaction against abstract painting. Some critics viewed the work of artists like Ad Reinhardt, and declared the 'death of painting'. Artists began to practice new ways of making art. New movements gained prominence some of which are: Postminimalism, Earth art, Video art, Installation art, arte povera, performance art, body art, fluxus, mail art, the situationists and conceptual art among others.
New abstraction from the 1950s through the 1980s
Philip Guston 1972, pre-Neo-expressionism
Susan Rothenberg 1979, Neo-expressionism
Eric Fischl 1981, Figurative Neo-expressionism
Anselm Kiefer 1983, European Neo-expressionism
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was also a return to painting that occurred almost simultaneously in Italy, Germany, France and Britain. These movements were called Transavantguardia, Neue Wilde, Figuration Libre, Neo-expressionism and the School of London respectively. These painting were characterized by large formats, free expressive mark making, figuration, myth and imagination. All work in this genre came to be labeled neo-expressionism. Critical reaction was divided. Some critics regarded it as driven by profit motivations by large commercial galleries. This type of art continues in popularity into the 21st century, even after the art crash of the late 1980s.
Neo-expressionism was a style of modern painting that emerged in the late 1970s and dominated the art market until the mid-1980s. It developed in Europe as a reaction against the conceptual and minimalistic art of the 1970s. Neo-expressionists returned to portraying recognizable objects, such as the human body (although sometimes in a virtually abstract manner), in a rough and violently emotional way using vivid colours and banal colour harmonies.
Painting still holds a respected position in contemporary art. Art is an open field no longer divided by the objective versus non-objective dichotomy. Artists can achieve critical success whether their images are representational or abstract. What has currency is content, exploring the boundaries of the medium, and a refusal to recapitulate the works of the past as an end goal.
Neo Expressionism
Anselm Kiefer, 1990
Ronnie Landfield, 1999
Yan Pei-Ming, 2005 Contemporary painting from China
At the beginning of the 21st century Contemporary painting and Contemporary art in general continues in several contigious modes, characterized by the ideas of pluralism, globalism and International decentralization. Artists from China, and other parts of Asia, as well as Europe and the Americas have produced new and interesting paintings. The "crisis" in painting and current art and current art criticism today is brought about by pluralism. There is no consensus as to a representative style of the age. There is an anything goes attitude that prevails; an "everything going on", and consequently "nothing going on" syndrome; except for an aesthetic traffic jam, with no firm and clear direction, with every lane on the artistic superhighway filled to capacity. Consequently magnificent and important works of art continue to be made albeit in a wide variety of styles.
Hard-edge painting, Geometric abstraction, Hyperrealism, Photorealism, Expressionism, Minimalism, Lyrical Abstraction, Pop Art, Op Art, Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, Monochrome painting, Neo-expressionism, Collage, Intermedia painting, Assemblage painting, Computer art painting, Postmodern painting, Neo-Dada painting, Shaped canvas painting, environmental mural painting, traditional figure painting, Landscape painting, Portrait painting, are a few continuing and current directions in painting at the beginning of the 21st century.
Contemporary painting into the 21st Century
Yahyâ ibn Mahmûd al-Wâsitî, Iraq, 1237
Yahyâ ibn Mahmûd al-Wâsitî, Iraq, 1237
Syrischer Maler, 1315 Metropolitan Museum of Art
Ilkhanid Shahnameh, ca. 1330-1340, Smithsonian
Behzād, 1494-45, British Museum
Persian miniature painting, CE 1550
Reza Abbasi, 1609
Razmnama, 1616, British Museum
Two Lovers by Reza Abbasi, 1630
Persian miniature Harun al-Rashid in Thousand and One Nights
Reza Abbasi, 1620
Adam and Eve, Safavid Iran, c. 1550 AD.
A painting depicting Abû Zayd, 1335 AD.
A scene from the book of Ahmad ibn al-Husayn ibn al-Ahnaf, showing two galloping horsemen, 1210 AD.
The angel Isrâfîl, Iraq, 1280 AD.
The Clerk, Iraq, 1287.
An ornamental Quran, by al-Bawwâb, 11th century AD.
Mehmet II, from the Sarai Albums of Istanbul, Turkey, 15th century AD.
Maiden in a fur cap, by Muhammad 'Alî, Isfahan, Iran, mid 17th century.
Youth and Suitors, Mashhad, Iran, 1556-1565 AD.
The depiction of humans, animals or any another figurative subjects is forbidden within Islam to prevent believers from idolatry so there is no religiously motivated painting (or sculpture) tradition within Muslim culture. Pictorial activity was reduced to Arabesque, mainly abstract, with geometrical configuration or floral and plant-like patterns. Strongly connected to architecture and calligraphy, it can be widely seen as used for the painting of tiles in mosques or in illuminations around the text of the holy Koran and other books. In fact abstract art is not an invention of modern art but it is present in pre-classical, barbarian and non-western cultures many centuries before it and is essentially a decorative or applied art. Notable illustrator M.C. Escher was influenced by this geometrical and pattern based art. Art Nouveau (Aubrey Beardsley and the architect Antonio Gaudi) re-introduced abstract floral patterns into western art.
Note that despite the taboo of figurative visualization, some muslim countries did cultivate a rich tradition in painting, though not in its own right, but as a companion to the written word. Iranian or Persian art, widely known as Persian miniature, concentrates on the illustration of epic or romantic works of literature. Persian illustrators deliberately avoided the use of shading and perspective, though familiar with it in their pre-islamic history, in order to abide by the rule of not creating any life-like illusion of the real world. Their aim was not to depict the world as it is, but to create images of an ideal world of timeless beauty and perfect order.
In present days, painting by art students or professional artists in arab and non-arab muslim countries follow the same tendencies of Western culture art.
See also Islamic art. See also Persian miniature. See also Arabesque.
Islamic painting
Oriental historian Basil Gray believes "Iran has offered a particularly unique [sic] art to the world which is excellent in its kind".
Caves in Iran's Lorestan province exhibit painted imagery of animals and hunting scenes. Some such as those in Fars Province and Sialk are at least 5,000 years old.
Painting in Iran is thought to have reached a climax during the Tamerlane era when outstanding masters such as Kamaleddin Behzad gave birth to a new style of painting.
Paintings of the Qajar period, are a combination of European influences and Safavid miniature schools of painting such as those introduced by Reza Abbasi. Masters such as Kamal-ol-molk, further pushed forward the European influence in Iran. It was during the Qajar era when "Coffee House painting" emerged. Subjects of this style were often religious in nature depicting scenes from Shia epics and the like.
Iran
Also see Aboriginal art, Art of Australia Australia
A Kĩkũyũ woman in traditional dress. Ceremonial Face Painting.
Dogon, circumcision cave, with paintings Mali c. contemporary
see article Western painting
Western painting
Also see Ancient art
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt, Queen Nefertari
Ancient Egypt, papyrus
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Greek art
Knossos
Roman art, Pompeii
Roman art
Roman art
Roman art
Roman art
Roman art
Roman art
Ancient Egypt, a civilization with very strong traditions of architecture and sculpture (both originally painted in bright colours) also had many mural paintings in temples and buildings, and painted illustrations to papyrus manuscripts. Egyptian wall painting and decorative painting is often graphic, sometimes more symbolic than realistic. Egyptian painting depicts figures in bold outline and flat silhouette, in which symmetry is a constant characteristic. Egyptian painting has close connection with its written language - called Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Egyptians also painted on linen, remnants of which survive today. In fact painted symbols are found amongst the first forms of written language, and religion.
To the north of Egypt was the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete. The wall paintings found in the palace of Knossos are similar to that of the Egyptians but much more free in style. Around 1100 B.C., tribes from the north of Greece conquered Greece and the Greek art took a new direction.
Ancient Greece had great painters, great sculptors (though both endeavours were regarded as mere manual labour at the time), and great architects. The Parthenon is an example of their architecture that has lasted to modern days. Greek marble sculpture is often described as the highest form of Classical art. Painting on pottery of Ancient Greece and ceramics gives a particularly informative glimpse into the way society in Ancient Greece functioned. Black-figure vase painting and Red-figure vase painting gives many surviving examples of what Greek painting was. Some famous Greek painters on wooden panels who are mentioned in texts are Apelles, Zeuxis and Parrhasius, however no examples of Ancient Greek panel painting survive, only written descriptions by their contemporaries or later Romans. Zeuxis lived in 5-6 BC and was said to be the first to use sfumato. According to Pliny the Elder, the realism of his paintings was such that birds tried to eat the painted grapes. Apelles is described as the greatest painter of Antiquity for perfect technique in drawing, brilliant color and modeling.
Roman art was influenced by Greece and can in part be taken as a descendant of ancient Greek painting. However, Roman painting does have important unique characteristics. The only surviving Roman paintings are wall paintings, many from villas in Campania, in Southern Italy. Such painting can be grouped into 4 main "styles" or periods Almost the only painted portraits surviving from the Ancient world are a large number of coffin-portraits of bust form found in the Late Antique cemetery of Al-Fayum. Although these were neither of the best period nor the highest quality, they are impressive in themselves, and give an idea of the quality that the finest ancient work must have had. A very small number of miniatures from Late Antique illustrated books also survive, and a rather larger number of copies of them from the Early Medieval period.
Egypt, Greece and Rome
Cotton Genesis a miniature of Abraham meeting Angels
Byzantine art
Byzantine art
Byzantine art, Mosaic
Limbourg Brothers
Limbourg Brothers
Book of Hours
Book of Hours
Carolingian
Carolingian Saint Mark
Giottino
Vitale da Bologna
Simone Martini
Cimabue
Giotto
Giotto
The rise of Christianity imparted a different spirit and aim to painting styles. Byzantine art, once its style was established by the 6th century, placed great emphasis on retaining traditional iconography and style, and has changed relatively little through the thousand years of the Byzantine Empire and the continuing traditions of Greek and Russian Othodox icon-painting. Byzantine painting has a particularly hieratic feeling and icons were and still are seen as a reflection of the divine. There were also many wall-paintings in fresco, but fewer of these have survived than Byzantine mosaics. In general Byzantium art borders on abstraction, in its flatness and highly stylised depictions of figures and landscape. However there are periods, especially in the so-called Macedonian art of around the 10th century, when Byzantine art became more flexible in approach.
In post-Antique Catholic Europe the first distinctive artistic style to emerge that included painting was the Insular art of the British Isles, where the only surviving examples (and quite likely the only medium in which painting was used) are miniatures in Illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Kells. These are most famous for their abstract decoration, although figures, and sometimes scenes, were also depicted, especially in Evangelist portraits. Carolingian and Ottonian art also survives mostly in manuscripts, although some wall-painting remain, and more are documented. The art of this period combines Insular and "barbarian" influences with a strong Byzantine influence and an aspiration to recover classical monumentality and poise.
Walls of Romanesque and Gothic churches were decorated with frescoes as well as sculpture and many of the few remaining murals have great intensity, and combine the decorative energy of Insular art with a new monumentality in the treatment of figures. Far more miniatures in Illuminated manuscripts survive from the period, showing the same characteristics, which continue into the Gothic period.
Panel painting becomes more common during the Romanesque period, under the heavy influence of Byzantine icons. Towards the middle of the 13th century, Medieval art and Gothic painting became more realistic, with the beginnings of interest in the depiction of volume and perspective in Italy with Cimabue and then his pupil Giotto. From Giotto on, the treatment of composition by the best painters also became much more free and innovative. They are considered to be the two great medieval masters of painting in western culture. Cimabue, within the Byzantine tradition, used a more realistic and dramatic approach to his art. His pupil, Giotto, took these innovations to a higher level which in turn set the foundations for the western painting tradition. Both artists were pioneers in the move towards naturalism.
Churches were built with more and more windows and the use of colorful stained glass become a staple in decoration. One of the most famous examples of this is found in the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. By the 14th century Western societies were both richer and more cultivated and painters found new patrons in the nobility and even the bourgeoisie. Illuminated manuscripts took on a new character and slim, fashionably dressed court women were shown in their landscapes. This style soon became known as International style and tempera panel paintings and altarpieces gained importance.
Middle Ages
Fra Angelico
Filippo Lippi
Andrea Mantegna
Masaccio The Expulsion Of Adam and Eve from Eden, before and after restoration
Paolo Uccello
Leonardo Da Vinci
Raphael
Michelangelo
Albrecht Durer
Giovanni Bellini
Titian
Sandro Botticelli
Giorgione
Jan van Eyck
Hans Holbein the Younger
El Greco
The Renaissance is said by many to be the golden age of painting. Roughly spanning the 14th through the mid 17th century. In Italy artists like Paolo Uccello, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Andrea Mantegna, Filippo Lippi, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, and Titian took painting to a higher level through the use of perspective, the study of human anatomy and proportion, and through their development of an unprecedented refinement in drawing and painting techniques.
Flemish, Dutch and German painters of the Renaissance such as Hans Holbein the Younger, Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Matthias Grünewald, Hieronymous Bosch, and Pieter Brueghel represent a different approach from their Italian colleagues, one that is more realistic and less idealized. The adoption of oil painting whose invention was traditionally, but erroneously, credited to Jan Van Eyck, (an important transitional figure who bridges painting in the Middle Ages with painting of the early Renaissance), made possible a new verisimilitude in depicting reality. Unlike the Italians whose work drew heavily from the art of ancient Greece and Rome, the northerners retained a stylistic residue of the sculpture and illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages.
Renaissance painting reflects the revolution of ideas and science (astronomy, geography) that occur in this period, the Reformation, and the invention of the printing press. Dürer, considered one of the greatest of printmakers, states that painters are not mere artisans but thinkers as well. With the development of easel painting in the Renaissance, painting gained independence from architecture. Following centuries dominated by religious imagery, secular subject matter slowly returned to Western painting. Artists included visions of the world around them, or the products of their own imaginations in their paintings. Those who could afford the expense could become patrons and commission portraits of themselves or their family.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, panel paintings which could be hung on walls and moved around at will, became increasingly popular for both churches and private houses, rather than fresco wall-paintings or paintings incorporated into on permanent structures, such as altarpieces. The High Renaissance gave rise to a stylized art known as Mannerism. In place of the balanced compositions and rational approach to perspective that characterized art at the dawn of the sixteenth century, the Mannerists sought instability, artifice, and doubt. The unperturbed faces and gestures of Piero della Francesca and the calm Virgins of Raphael are replaced by the troubled expressions of Pontormo and the emotional intensity of El Greco.
Baroque and Rococo
also see main articles Impressionism, Post Impressionism, Hudson River School
Jacques-Louis David 1787
John Constable 1802
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres 1862
Eugène Delacroix, 1830
Francisco de Goya 1814
Théodore Géricault 1819
Caspar David Friedrich c.1820
J. M. W. Turner 1838
Gustave Courbet 1849-1850
Albert Bierstadt 1886
Camille Corot c.1867
Claude Monet 1872
Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1876
Edgar Degas 1876
Édouard Manet 1882
Vincent van Gogh 1889
Paul Gauguin 1897-1898
Georges Seurat 1884-1886
Ralph Albert Blakelock 1885
Paul Cézanne 1906
After the decadence of Rococo there arose in the late 18th century an ascetic neo-classicism, best represented by such artists as Jacques Louis David and his heir Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Ingres' work already contains much of the sensuality, but none of the spontaneity, that was to characterize Romanticism. This movement turned its attention toward landscape and nature as well as the human figure and the supremacy of natural order above mankind's will. There is a pantheist philosophy (see Spinoza and Hegel) within this conception that opposes Enlightenment ideals by seeing mankind's destiny in a more tragic or pessimistic light. The idea that human beings are not above the forces of Nature is in contradiction to Ancient Greek and Renaissance ideals where mankind was above all things and owned his fate. This thinking led romantic artists to depict the sublime, ruined churches, shipwrecks, massacres and madness.
Romantic painters turned landscape painting into a major genre, considered until then as a minor genre or as a decorative background for figure compositions. Some of the major painters of this period are Eugene Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, J. M. W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich and John Constable. Francisco de Goya's late work demonstrates the Romantic interest in the irrational, while the work of Arnold Böcklin evokes mystery. In the United States the Romantic tradition of landscape painting was known as the Hudson River School. Important painters of that school include Thomas Cole, Frederick Church, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, and John Frederick Kensett among others. Luminism was another important movement in American landscape painting related to the Hudson River School.
The leading Barbizon School painter Camille Corot painted sometimes as a romantic, sometimes as a Realist who looks ahead to Impressionism. A major force in the turn towards Realism at mid-century was Gustave Courbet. In the latter third of the century Impressionists like Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, and Edgar Degas and the slightly younger post-Impressionists like Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat, along with Paul Cezanne lead art up to the edge of modernism.
19th century: Neo-classicism, Romanticism, Impressionism
Also see: Modern Art, Modernism, Contemporary art,. The heritage of painters like Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Seurat was essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century Henri Matisse and several other young artists revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive, landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism. Pablo Picasso made his first cubist paintings based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cube, sphere and cone.
20th century Modern and Contemporary
Henri Matisse 1909, late Fauvism
Pablo Picasso 1907, early Cubism
Georges Braque 1910, Analytic Cubism
Henri Rousseau 1910 Primitive Surrealism
Wassily Kandinsky 1913, birth of Abstract Art
Giorgio de Chirico 1914, pre-Surrealism
Robert Delaunay, 1911, Orphism
Fernand Leger 1919, Synthetic Cubism, Tubism
Marc Chagall 1911, Expressionism and Surrealism
Franz Marc 1912, Der Blaue Reiter
Francis Picabia 1916, Dada
Max Ernst 1923, early Surrealism
The heritage of painters like Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Seurat was essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century Henri Matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubist Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy and Maurice de Vlaminck revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive, landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism - (as seen in the gallery above). Pablo Picasso made his first cubist paintings based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cube, sphere and cone. With the painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 1907, (see gallery) Picasso dramatically created a new and radical picture depicting a raw and primitive brothel scene with five prostitutes, violently painted women, reminiscent of African tribal masks and his own new Cubist inventions. Analytic cubism (see gallery) was jointly developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque from about 1908 through 1912. Analytic cubism, the first clear manifestation of cubism, was followed by Synthetic cubism, practised by Braque, Picasso, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, Marcel Duchamp and countless other artists into the 1920s. Synthetic cubism is characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces, collage elements, papier collé and a large variety of merged subject matter.
During the years between 1910 and the end of World War I and after the heyday of cubism, several movements emerged in Paris. Giorgio De Chirico moved to Paris in July 1911, where he joined his brother Andrea (the poet and painter known as Alberto Savinio). Through his brother he met Pierre Laprade a member of the jury at the Salon d'Automne, where he exhibited three of his dreamlike works: Enigma of the Oracle, Enigma of an Afternoon and Self-Portrait. During 1913 he exhibited his work at the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d'Automne, his work was noticed by Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire and several others. His compelling and mysterious paintings are considered instrumental to the early beginnings of Surrealism. (see gallery)
In the first two decades of the 20th century and after cubism, several other important movements emerged; Futurism (Balla), Abstract art (Kandinsky), Der Blaue Reiter), Bauhaus, (Kandinsky) and (Klee), Orphism, (Robert Delaunay and František Kupka), Synchromism (Morgan Russell), De Stijl (Mondrian), Suprematism (Malevich), Constructivism (Tatlin), Dadaism (Duchamp, Picabia, Arp) and Surrealism (De Chirico, André Breton, Miró, Magritte, Dalí, Ernst). Modern painting influenced all the visual arts, from Modernist architecture and design, to avant-garde film, theatre and modern dance and became an experimental laboratory for the expression of visual experience, from photography and concrete poetry to advertising art and fashion. Van Gogh's painting exerted great influence upon 20th century Expressionism, as can be seen in the work of the Fauves, Die Brücke (a group led by German painter Ernst Kirchner), and the Expressionism of Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine and others..
Wassily Kandinsky a Russian painter, printmaker and art theorist, one of the most famous 20th-century artists is generally considered the first important painter of modern abstract art. As an early modernist, in search of new modes of visual expression, and spiritual expression, he theorized as did contemporary occultists and theosophists, that pure visual abstraction had corollary vibrations with sound and music. They posited that pure abstraction could express pure spirituality. His earliest abstractions were generally titled as the example in the (above gallery) Composition VII, making connection to the work of the composers of music. Kandinsky included many of his theories about abstract art in his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Robert Delaunay was a French artist who is associated with Orphism, (reminiscent of a link between pure abstraction and cubism). His later works were more abstract, reminiscent of Paul Klee. His key contributions to abstract painting refer to his bold use of color, and a clear love of experimentation of both depth and tone. At the invitation of Wassily Kandinsky, Delaunay and his wife the artist Sonia Delaunay, joined The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter), a Munich-based group of abstract artists, in 1911, and his art took a turn to the abstract. Still other important pioneers of abstract painting include Czech painter, František Kupka and Synchromism, an art movement founded in 1912 by American artists Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell that closely resembles Orphism.
Pioneers
Kasimir Malevich 1916 Suprematism
Amadeo Modigliani 1917 Symbolism and Expressionism
Stanton MacDonald-Wright 1920, Synchromism
Piet Mondrian 1921 De Stijl
Otto Dix, 1926 German Expressionism
Stuart Davis American Modernism 1922
Charles Demuth, 1928 American Precisionism (proto Pop Art)
Paul Klee 1928, Bauhaus
Thomas Hart Benton 1920, Regionalism
Grant Wood 1930 Social Realism
Rene Magritte 1928-1929 Surrealism
Salvador Dalí 1931, Surrealism (super-realism)
Max Beckmann 1938-1940 Expressionism
Wassily Kandinsky Composition X 1939 Geometric abstraction
Arshile Gorky 1929-1936 pre Abstract Expressionism
Pablo Picasso Guernica 1937 protest against Fascism
Piet Mondrian's art was intimately related to his spiritual and philosophical studies. In 1908 he became interested in the theosophical movement launched by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in the late 19th century. Blavatsky believed that it was possible to attain a knowledge of nature more profound than that provided by empirical means, and much of Mondrian's work for the rest of his life was inspired by his search for that spiritual knowledge. Other major pioneers of early abstraction include Russian painter Kasimir Malevich, who after the Russian Revolution in 1919, and after pressure from the Stalinist regime in 1924 returned to painting imagery and Peasants and Workers in the field,
Between the Wars
Frida Kahlo 1940, Latin American Symbolism
Edward Hopper 1942, American Scene painting
Andrew Wyeth 1948, Realism
Adolph Gottlieb 1949, Pictograph
Barnett Newman, Onement 1, 1948, Color Field - Abstract Expressionism
Francis Bacon 1953, British Expressionism
Willem De Kooning 1952-1953 Figurative Abstract Expressionism
Jackson Pollock 1950 Abstract Expressionism
Franz Kline 1954 Action painting
Clyfford Still 1957 Color Field - Abstract Expressionism
Hans Hofmann 1959-1960 Abstract Expressionism and Geometric abstraction
Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110
The 1940s in New York City heralded the triumph of American Abstract expressionism, a modernist movement that combined lessons learned from Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Surrealism, Joan Miró, Cubism, Fauvism, and early Modernism via great teachers in America like Hans Hofmann and John D. Graham. American artists benefited from the presence of Piet Mondrian, Fernand Leger, Max Ernst and the Andre Breton group, Pierre Matisse's gallery, and Peggy Guggenheim's gallery The Art of This Century, as well as other factors.
Post-Second World War American painting called Abstract expressionism included artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Clyfford Still, Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, and Franz Kline, among others. American Abstract expressionism got its name in 1946 from the art critic Robert Coates. It is seen as combining the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism, the Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism.
Technically Surrealism was an important predecessor for Abstract expressionism with its emphasis on spontaneous, automatic or subconscious creation. Jackson Pollock's dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the floor is a technique that has its roots in the work of André Masson. Another important early manifestation of what came to be abstract expressionism is the work of American Northwest artist Mark Tobey, especially his "white writing" canvases, which, though generally not large in scale, anticipate the "all over" look of Pollock's drip paintings.
Additionally, Abstract expressionism has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, rather nihilistic. In practice, the term is applied to any number of artists working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles, and even applied to work which is not especially abstract nor expressionist. Pollock's energetic "action paintings", with their "busy" feel, are different both technically and aesthetically, to the violent and grotesque Women series of Willem de Kooning (which are figurative paintings) and to the serenely shimmering blocks of color in Mark Rothko's work (which is not what would usually be called expressionist and which Rothko denied was abstract), yet all three are classified as abstract expressionists.
Abstract Expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of the early twentieth century such as Wassily Kandinsky. Although it is true that spontaneity or of the impression of spontaneity characterized many of the abstract expressionists works, most of these paintings involved careful planning, especially since their large size demanded it. An exception might be the drip paintings of Pollock.
Why this style gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s is a matter of debate. American Social realism had been the mainstream in the 1930s. It had been influenced not only by the Great Depression but also by the Social Realists of Mexico such as David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. The political climate after World War II did not long tolerate the social protests of those painters. Abstract expressionism arose during World War II and began to be showcased during the early 1940s at galleries in New York like The Art of This Century Gallery. The late 1940s through the mid 1950s ushered in the McCarthy era. It was after World War II and a time of political conservatism and extreme artistic censorship in the United States. Some people have conjectured that since the subject matter was often totally abstract, Abstract expressionism became a safe strategy for artists to pursue this style. Abstract art could be seen as apolitical. Or if the art was political, the message was largely for the insiders. However those theorists are in the minority. As the first truly original school of painting in America, Abstract expressionism demonstrated the vitality and creativity of the country in the post-war years, as well as its ability (or need) to develop an aesthetic sense that was not constrained by the European standards of beauty.
Although Abstract expressionism spread quickly throughout the United States, the major centers of this style were New York City and California, especially in the New York School, and the San Francisco Bay area. Abstract expressionist paintings share certain characteristics, including the use of large canvases, an "all-over" approach, in which the whole canvas is treated with equal importance (as opposed to the center being of more interest than the edges. The canvas as the arena became a credo of Action painting, while the integrity of the picture plane became a credo of the Color field painters.
In Europe there was the continuation of Surrealism, Cubism, Dada and the works of Matisse. Also in Europe, Tachisme (the European equivalent to Abstract expressionism) took hold of the newest generation. Serge Poliakoff, Nicolas de Staël, Georges Mathieu, Vieira da Silva, Jean Dubuffet, Yves Klein and Pierre Soulages among others are considered important figures in post-war European painting.
Eventually abstract painting in America evolved into movements such as Neo-Dada, color field painting, Post painterly abstraction, Op Art, hard-edge painting, Minimal art, shaped canvas painting, Lyrical Abstraction, Neo-expressionism and the continuation of Abstract expressionism. As a response to the tendency toward abstraction imagery emerged through various new movements, notably Pop Art.
Towards Mid Century
Jasper Johns 1954-55 pre-Pop Art
Robert Rauschenberg 1963, Neo-Dada
Roy Lichtenstein, 1963 Pop Art
Andy Warhol 1962, Pop Art (repetition)
Alex Katz 1970, Pop Art
David Hockney 1967, English Pop Art
Richard Diebenkorn 1963, Bay Area Figurative Movement
Fairfield Porter 1971-1972, East coast Figurative painting
Pop Art in America was to a large degree initially inspired by the works of Jasper Johns, Larry Rivers, and Robert Rauschenberg. Although the paintings of Gerald Murphy, Stuart Davis and Charles Demuth during the 1920s and 1930s set the table for Pop Art in America. In New York City during the mid 1950s Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns created works of art that at first seemed to be continuations of Abstract expressionist painting. Actually their works and the work of Larry Rivers, were radical departures from abstract expressionism especially in the use of banal and literal imagery and the inclusion and the combining of mundane materials into their work. The innovations of Johns' specific use of various images and objects like chairs, numbers, targets, beer cans and the American Flag; Rivers paintings of subjects drawn from popular culture such as George Washington crossing the Delaware, and his inclusions of images from advertisements like the camel from Camel cigarettes, and Rauschenberg's surprising constructions using inclusions of objects and pictures taken from popular culture, hardware stores, junkyards, the city streets, and taxidermy gave rise to a radical new movement in American art. Eventually by 1963 the movement came to be known worldwide as Pop Art.
Pop-Art is exemplified by artists: Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Wayne Thiebaud, James Rosenquist, Jim Dine, Tom Wesselmann and Roy Lichtenstein among others. Pop art merges popular and mass culture with fine art, while injecting humor, irony, and recognizable imagery and content into the mix. In October 1962 the Sidney Janis Gallery mounted The New Realists the first major Pop Art group exhibition in an uptown art gallery in New York City. Sidney Janis mounted the exhibition in a 57th Street storefront near his gallery at 15 E. 57th Street. The show sent shockwaves through the New York School and reverberated worldwide. Earlier in the fall of 1962 an historically important and ground-breaking New Painting of Common Objects exhibition of Pop Art, curated by Walter Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum sent shock waves across the Western United States.
Earlier in England in 1958 the term "Pop Art" was used by Lawrence Alloway to describe paintings that celebrated consumerism of the post World War II era. This movement rejected Abstract expressionism and its focus on the hermeneutic and psychological interior, in favor of art which depicted, and often celebrated material consumer culture, advertising, and iconography of the mass production age.The early works of David Hockney and the works of Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi were considered seminal examples in the movement.
While in the downtown scene in New York City's East Village 10th Street galleries artists were formulating an American version of Pop Art. Claes Oldenburg had his storefront, and the Green Gallery on 57th Street began to show Tom Wesselmann and James Rosenquist. Later Leo Castelli exhibited other American artists including the bulk of the careers of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and his use of Benday dots, a technique used in commercial reproduction. There is a connection between the radical works of Duchamp, and Man Ray, the rebellious Dadaists - with a sense of humor; and Pop Artists like Alex Katz, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and the others.
While throughout the 20th century many painters continued to practice landscape and figurative painting with contemporary subjects and solid technique, like Milton Avery, John D. Graham, Fairfield Porter, Edward Hopper, Balthus, Francis Bacon, Nicolas de Staël, Andrew Wyeth, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Philip Pearlstein, David Park, Nathan Oliveira, David Hockney, Chuck Close, Susan Rothenberg, Eric Fischl, Vija Celmins and Richard Diebenkorn.
Pop Art, Neo Dada and Realism
Helen Frankenthaler 1952, Color Field painting
Josef Albers 1965, Geometric abstraction
Richard Anuszkiewicz, 1985 Op Art
Morris Louis 1960 Minimalism-Color field
Frank Stella 1967, Shaped Canvas
Gene Davis 1964, Washington Color School
Ronald Davis 1968, Abstract Illusionism
Ronnie Landfield, 1968, Lyrical Abstraction
Color Field painting clearly pointed toward a new direction in American painting, away from abstract expressionism. Color Field painting is related to Post-painterly abstraction, Suprematism, Abstract Expressionism, Hard-edge painting and Lyrical Abstraction.
Color Field painting sought to rid art of superflous rhetoric. Artists like Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Morris Louis, Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Larry Zox, and others often used greatly reduced references to nature, and they painted with a highly articulated and psychological use of color. In general these artists eliminated recognizable imagery. Certain artists quoted references to past or present art, but in general color field painting presents abstraction as an end in itself. In pursuing this direction of modern art, artists wanted to present each painting as one unified, cohesive, monolithic image.
Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland, Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman, Ronald Davis, Neil Williams, Robert Mangold, Charles Hinman, Richard Tuttle, David Novros, and Al Loving are examples of artists associated with the use of the shaped canvas during the period beginning in the early 1960s. Many Geometric abstract artists, minimalists, and Hard-edge painters elected to use the edges of the image to define the shape of the painting rather than accepting the rectangular format. In fact, the use of the shaped canvas is primarily associated with paintings of the 1960s and 1970s that are coolly abstract, formalistic, geometrical, objective, rationalistic, clean-lined, brashly sharp-edged, or minimalist in character. The Andre Emmerich Gallery, the Leo Castelli Gallery, the Richard Feigen Gallery, and the Park Place Gallery were important showcases for Color Field painting, shaped canvas painting and Lyrical Abstraction in New York City during the 1960s. There is a connection with post-painterly abstraction, which reacted against abstract expressionisms' mysticism, hyper-subjectivity, and emphasis on making the act of painting itself dramatically visible - as well as the solemn acceptance of the flat rectangle as an almost ritual prerequisite for serious painting. During the 1960s Color Field painting and Minimal art were often closely associated with each other. In actuality by the early 1970s both movements became decidedly diverse.
Another related movement of the late 1960s Lyrical Abstraction is a term that was originally coined by Larry Aldrich (the founder of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield Connecticut) in 1969 to describe what Aldrich said he saw in the studios of many artists at that time. Lyrical Abstraction is a type of freewheeling abstract painting that emerged in the mid-1960s when abstract painters returned to various forms of painterly, pictorial, expressionism with a predominate focus on process, gestalt and repetitive compositional strategies in general.
Lyrical Abstraction shares similarities with Color Field Painting and Abstract Expressionism especially in the freewheeling usage of paint - texture and surface. Direct drawing, calligraphic use of line, the effects of brushed, splattered, stained, squeegeed, poured, and splashed paint superficially resemble the effects seen in Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting. However the styles are markedly different. Setting it apart from Abstract Expressionism and Action Painting of the 1940s and 1950s is the approach to composition and drama. As seen in Action Painting there is an emphasis on brushstrokes, high compositional drama, dynamic compositional tension. While in Lyrical Abstraction there is a sense of compositional randomness, all over composition, low key and relaxed compositional drama and an emphasis on process, repetition, and an all over sensibility.
During the 1960s and 1970s artists as powerful and influential as Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, Phillip Guston, Lee Krasner, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Richard Diebenkorn, Josef Albers, Elmer Bischoff, Agnes Martin, Al Held, Sam Francis, Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler, Gene Davis, Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland, Joan Mitchell, Friedel Dzubas, and younger artists like Brice Marden, Robert Mangold, Sam Gilliam, Sean Scully, Pat Steir, Elizabeth Murray, Larry Poons, Walter Darby Bannard, Larry Zox, Ronnie Landfield, Ronald Davis, Dan Christensen, Joan Snyder, Ross Bleckner, Archie Rand, Susan Crile, and dozens of others produced vital and influential paintings.
During the 1960s and 1970s, there was a reaction against abstract painting. Some critics viewed the work of artists like Ad Reinhardt, and declared the 'death of painting'. Artists began to practice new ways of making art. New movements gained prominence some of which are: Postminimalism, Earth art, Video art, Installation art, arte povera, performance art, body art, fluxus, mail art, the situationists and conceptual art among others.
New abstraction from the 1950s through the 1980s
Philip Guston 1972, pre-Neo-expressionism
Susan Rothenberg 1979, Neo-expressionism
Eric Fischl 1981, Figurative Neo-expressionism
Anselm Kiefer 1983, European Neo-expressionism
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was also a return to painting that occurred almost simultaneously in Italy, Germany, France and Britain. These movements were called Transavantguardia, Neue Wilde, Figuration Libre, Neo-expressionism and the School of London respectively. These painting were characterized by large formats, free expressive mark making, figuration, myth and imagination. All work in this genre came to be labeled neo-expressionism. Critical reaction was divided. Some critics regarded it as driven by profit motivations by large commercial galleries. This type of art continues in popularity into the 21st century, even after the art crash of the late 1980s.
Neo-expressionism was a style of modern painting that emerged in the late 1970s and dominated the art market until the mid-1980s. It developed in Europe as a reaction against the conceptual and minimalistic art of the 1970s. Neo-expressionists returned to portraying recognizable objects, such as the human body (although sometimes in a virtually abstract manner), in a rough and violently emotional way using vivid colours and banal colour harmonies.
Painting still holds a respected position in contemporary art. Art is an open field no longer divided by the objective versus non-objective dichotomy. Artists can achieve critical success whether their images are representational or abstract. What has currency is content, exploring the boundaries of the medium, and a refusal to recapitulate the works of the past as an end goal.
Neo Expressionism
Anselm Kiefer, 1990
Ronnie Landfield, 1999
Yan Pei-Ming, 2005 Contemporary painting from China
At the beginning of the 21st century Contemporary painting and Contemporary art in general continues in several contigious modes, characterized by the ideas of pluralism, globalism and International decentralization. Artists from China, and other parts of Asia, as well as Europe and the Americas have produced new and interesting paintings. The "crisis" in painting and current art and current art criticism today is brought about by pluralism. There is no consensus as to a representative style of the age. There is an anything goes attitude that prevails; an "everything going on", and consequently "nothing going on" syndrome; except for an aesthetic traffic jam, with no firm and clear direction, with every lane on the artistic superhighway filled to capacity. Consequently magnificent and important works of art continue to be made albeit in a wide variety of styles.
Hard-edge painting, Geometric abstraction, Hyperrealism, Photorealism, Expressionism, Minimalism, Lyrical Abstraction, Pop Art, Op Art, Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, Monochrome painting, Neo-expressionism, Collage, Intermedia painting, Assemblage painting, Computer art painting, Postmodern painting, Neo-Dada painting, Shaped canvas painting, environmental mural painting, traditional figure painting, Landscape painting, Portrait painting, are a few continuing and current directions in painting at the beginning of the 21st century.
Contemporary painting into the 21st Century
Yahyâ ibn Mahmûd al-Wâsitî, Iraq, 1237
Yahyâ ibn Mahmûd al-Wâsitî, Iraq, 1237
Syrischer Maler, 1315 Metropolitan Museum of Art
Ilkhanid Shahnameh, ca. 1330-1340, Smithsonian
Behzād, 1494-45, British Museum
Persian miniature painting, CE 1550
Reza Abbasi, 1609
Razmnama, 1616, British Museum
Two Lovers by Reza Abbasi, 1630
Persian miniature Harun al-Rashid in Thousand and One Nights
Reza Abbasi, 1620
Adam and Eve, Safavid Iran, c. 1550 AD.
A painting depicting Abû Zayd, 1335 AD.
A scene from the book of Ahmad ibn al-Husayn ibn al-Ahnaf, showing two galloping horsemen, 1210 AD.
The angel Isrâfîl, Iraq, 1280 AD.
The Clerk, Iraq, 1287.
An ornamental Quran, by al-Bawwâb, 11th century AD.
Mehmet II, from the Sarai Albums of Istanbul, Turkey, 15th century AD.
Maiden in a fur cap, by Muhammad 'Alî, Isfahan, Iran, mid 17th century.
Youth and Suitors, Mashhad, Iran, 1556-1565 AD.
The depiction of humans, animals or any another figurative subjects is forbidden within Islam to prevent believers from idolatry so there is no religiously motivated painting (or sculpture) tradition within Muslim culture. Pictorial activity was reduced to Arabesque, mainly abstract, with geometrical configuration or floral and plant-like patterns. Strongly connected to architecture and calligraphy, it can be widely seen as used for the painting of tiles in mosques or in illuminations around the text of the holy Koran and other books. In fact abstract art is not an invention of modern art but it is present in pre-classical, barbarian and non-western cultures many centuries before it and is essentially a decorative or applied art. Notable illustrator M.C. Escher was influenced by this geometrical and pattern based art. Art Nouveau (Aubrey Beardsley and the architect Antonio Gaudi) re-introduced abstract floral patterns into western art.
Note that despite the taboo of figurative visualization, some muslim countries did cultivate a rich tradition in painting, though not in its own right, but as a companion to the written word. Iranian or Persian art, widely known as Persian miniature, concentrates on the illustration of epic or romantic works of literature. Persian illustrators deliberately avoided the use of shading and perspective, though familiar with it in their pre-islamic history, in order to abide by the rule of not creating any life-like illusion of the real world. Their aim was not to depict the world as it is, but to create images of an ideal world of timeless beauty and perfect order.
In present days, painting by art students or professional artists in arab and non-arab muslim countries follow the same tendencies of Western culture art.
See also Islamic art. See also Persian miniature. See also Arabesque.
Islamic painting
Oriental historian Basil Gray believes "Iran has offered a particularly unique [sic] art to the world which is excellent in its kind".
Caves in Iran's Lorestan province exhibit painted imagery of animals and hunting scenes. Some such as those in Fars Province and Sialk are at least 5,000 years old.
Painting in Iran is thought to have reached a climax during the Tamerlane era when outstanding masters such as Kamaleddin Behzad gave birth to a new style of painting.
Paintings of the Qajar period, are a combination of European influences and Safavid miniature schools of painting such as those introduced by Reza Abbasi. Masters such as Kamal-ol-molk, further pushed forward the European influence in Iran. It was during the Qajar era when "Coffee House painting" emerged. Subjects of this style were often religious in nature depicting scenes from Shia epics and the like.
Iran
Also see Aboriginal art, Art of Australia Australia
A Kĩkũyũ woman in traditional dress. Ceremonial Face Painting.
Dogon, circumcision cave, with paintings Mali c. contemporary
Main article: African art Africa
At the start of the twentieth century, artists like Picasso, Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Modigliani became aware of, and inspired by, African art. In a situation where the established avant garde was straining against the constraints imposed by serving the world of appearances, African Art demonstrated the power of supremely well organised forms; produced not only by responding to the faculty of sight, but also and often primarily, the faculty of imagination, emotion and mystical and religious experience. These artists saw in African Art a formal perfection and sophistication unified with phenomenal expressive power.
Sources
Outline of painting history
History of art
Western painting
History painting
Art periods
List of painters
Painting
Hierarchy of genres
Self portrait
Annunciation (van Eyck, Washington)
At the start of the twentieth century, artists like Picasso, Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Modigliani became aware of, and inspired by, African art. In a situation where the established avant garde was straining against the constraints imposed by serving the world of appearances, African Art demonstrated the power of supremely well organised forms; produced not only by responding to the faculty of sight, but also and often primarily, the faculty of imagination, emotion and mystical and religious experience. These artists saw in African Art a formal perfection and sophistication unified with phenomenal expressive power.
Sources
Outline of painting history
History of art
Western painting
History painting
Art periods
List of painters
Painting
Hierarchy of genres
Self portrait
Annunciation (van Eyck, Washington)
No comments:
Post a Comment