The Story of Art History

Art history is a vague concept that has been constructed in order to study the progress of painting, sculpture, architecture, and other visual arts throughout the course of known world history. Similar to regular history courses, the study of art uses visual, tactile, spatial and aural expression to examine a work of art within its proposed time period. While art history is ambiguous, we can acknowledge that it does not consist of simply listing all the art movements and placing them onto a timeline to look at. In fact, it involves studying historical artworks from these artistic movements, objectively placing them within a period of time, and using the information found to enhance the knowledge we already know of not just art but world history itself.

Art history involves following the progression of artistic works that, upon analysis, accurately reflect the culture and civilization at its creation. Throughout history, art has taken countless forms and served even more purposes for the artist and wider society; it continuously evolves and shifts. The history of art stretches back more than 30, 000 years and from our knowledge, has a relatively simple timeline: Prehistoric and Ancient art; the Medieval World; Renaissance and Mannerism; Baroque to Neo-Classicism; Romanticism to Symbolism; and The Modern Age.

Prehistoric and Ancient Art:

Prehistoric and Ancient Art was not necessarily an art movement like Pop Art or Impressionism; it can roughly be defined as a period of mankind’s artistic development that predates writing and printing making that generally embraced painting and sculpture. While contemporary art is made for aesthetic pleasure as well as social, political and cultural commentary, in the past, art was made with a household function; ranging from scared, ritualistic, or talismanic purposes. For a wide range of ancient artworks that have been discovered, the purpose of their creation remains unknown to this day, however, throughout time art has always had an emotionally charged impact. Further these artworks have stood against the test of time, making it difficult for historians to truly grasp their details and origins and it is only the toughest sculptures and paintings that lasted the tens of thousands of years with enough pigment and clarity for historians to study them accurately.

While it may seem so, prehistoric and ancient art was not simple. Art from Prehistoric and Ancient history actually embodied similar imagery and subject matter as our modern culture; due to the emergence and dispersion of homo sapiens from Africa, Europe, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas, art revealed a quest for beauty and illustrations of their world and beliefs. Recognizable art from this time period dates from around 38,000 BC in Europe, Africa, Australia and South America.

To our knowledge, Paleolithic artists from this time had five colours to choose from: yellow, red, brown, black and white. However, in many cases, artworks have lost their pigmentation over time and we will never truly know what the original looked like or if these were the colours used. Approximately 70 per cent of all the known prehistoric and ancient artworks have been attributed to hunter-foragers, 13 per cent to herders and stock raisers, and 17 per cent to people with an organized economy (farmers, livestock breeders, and the like). Of all these known works, there are five distinct motifs that have been discovered: human figures, animals, tools and weapons, rudimentary local maps, and symbols or ideograms. These motifs have been found on portable objects such as work engraved, sculpted or clay molded, as well as immovable surfaces such as rock, paintings and engravings.

The Medieval World:

The Middle Ages was a period of economic and social delay in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean that is said to have lasted between the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century and the birth of the Renaissance in the 14th century. This thousand-year era amassed a multitude of artistic styles and periods that were unified by the Christian church and the sacred arts associated with it. This period included early Christian and Byzantine, Anglo-Saxon and Viking, Insular, Carolingian, Ottonian, Romanesque, and Gothic artistic styles and periods. However, while the exact stylistic and chronological divisions of the Medieval are highly debated topics, it is generally accepted that the sequence followed through these distinct art periods: Early Medieval Art, Romanesque Art, and Gothic art.

Medieval art was significantly different from classical or Renaissance art; it was creative, sophisticated, and rich in feeling. Due to the overwhelming power of the Catholic church during this time, religion was the most powerful subject in Medieval art; rather than using their art as a celebration of the natural human form, the human form was used as a means of expressing spiritual values. One of the key transformations between Medieval Art and classical art style or periods is its stylistic love of bright, expensive materials that was seen in richly ornamented liturgical objects and illuminated manuscripts that are key to studying Medieval art history.

Renaissance and Mannerism:

The period of defined as the Renaissance and Mannerism consisted of the rediscovery and revival of ancient Roman and Greek artistic styles, and the naturalistic ideals that accompanied them. During the Middle Ages, art did not necessarily forget classical ideals, but it was not until the 15th century that the ideals became a widely accepted model for artistic inspiration rather than a sporadic influence for artists such as Nicola Pisano. This new inspiration paralleled the enthusiasm of Renaissance writers and scholars. Due to the fall of the Roman Empire, the capital of this new artistic era was Florence, rather than Rome. This was due to the fact that after the 5th century, Rome had been quenched into a shell of a city that was completely detached from its former self.

By the mid-13th century, Florence was prosperous; it was the center of banking and the woolen industry where its wealth manifested rich individuals who frequently commissioned artworks as a show of their wealth and status. In addition to the growing realism in Renaissance and Mannerist art, artists became to revisit interests in antiquity, which can be seen through the works of artists such as Pisanello and Botticelli, who advanced the traditional portrait and invigorated classical subject matter based on mythology and allegory.

Baroque to Neo-Classicism:

The Baroque traces back to the Latin word ‘barracco’ roughly translating to “rough or imperfect pearl”; therefore, the Baroque has been characterized by this translation to refer to art that is fundamentally exuberant and ornate. This over-the-top art style and period begun when the Church decided that they needed to appeal to the common public and lead art away from the idealistic qualities of the Renaissance. This need for drama and awe kept artisans and architects busy for almost an entire century with the task of building and creating opulent and excessively detailed art, design and architecture. Along with art, this design and architecture of the seventeenth century showcased this lavish scale that was known to inspire a sense of awe in viewers.

The Rococo was a small, light-hearted period between the Baroque and Neo-Classicism. Although, looking back on the Rococo, we can acknowledge that it was opulent and extravagant in its own way, this period intended to counteract the extravagance of the Baroque through its own form of ‘delicacy’. Art of the Rococo, in contrast to the Baroque, was intended to focus on fluidity, floral motifs, grace, and femininity.

Neo-Classicism was then in part another counteraction against the obsessiveness of Rococo. Classicism and Neo-Classicism are two terms that are often used interchangeably; they indicate historical traditions and/or aesthetic attitudes based upon the art of Greek and Roman antiquity. Classicism refers to the art produced in antiquity and/or later art inspired by antiquity; Neoclassicism refers to art that was created later but was still inspired by antiquity. In relation to its aesthetic attitude, Neo-Classicism involves harmony, clarity, restraint, universality and idealism – all characteristics commonly associated with Greek and Roman antiquity.

Neo-Classicists believed that by promoting “Poussinitste” painting (referring to taking inspiration from French painter Nicolas Poussin) was rational, and therefore morally correct in their time; that art was supposed the be intelligent, not sensuous and elegant. Neo-Classicists wanted to express a rationality and seriousness that reflected their social, cultural and political issues such as the first French Revolution in 1789. Neo-Classicism is said to signify moderation and rational thinking through their new and politically-charged connection to Classical tradition.

Romanticism to Symbolism:

As common knowledge dictates, the 19th century was a period of rapid social and technological change that was indefinitely fused into the arts; artists became willing to experiment and explore their minds for innovative ideas that ultimately led to a variety of styles and techniques over the next century. Napoleon Bonaparte was a primary figure during this century, who swept armies across Europe, completely changing the social, political and cultural course of thousands of people. His leadership inspired brutally honest and realistic depictions of the world that artists such as Casper David Friedrich saw around themselves.

Bonaparte’s ambitions fueled the disappearance of Neo-Classicism, and his defeat inspired the emergence of Romanticism. Romanticism was a huge, wide-ranging movement that lasted well into the 20th century. Considered both an attitude and intellectual orientation, Romanticism characterized works from the period of late 18th to mid-19th century that were seen as a rejection of Classicist ideals of order, rationality, harmony and idealization in order to accentuate the individual, the imaginative, the emotional and the spontaneous.

During this period, artists such as Gustav Courbet and other Realists began to rebel against the art establishment in an attempt to challenge the traditional conventions that were taught in art schools of the time. Artists no longer wanted to focus on “artificial” subjects, idealized figures and ornate poses, they wanted to use technological accomplishments to their advantage; industrialization allowed for revolutionized working practices while new railways provided easy access to the countryside, fueling later interest in outdoor painting. However, above all, the invention of the camera was a major influence on 19th century art.

While the invention of the camera initially had mixed reviews, by the mid-1870s, Impressionists began to absorb themselves into the process with Nadar, the most famous photographer of the time. As the technical qualities and abilities of photography improved, there was less demand for paintings that were detailed and realistic because photographs provided real-time images of subjects. Artists wanted to use photography to influence their viewers, taking inspiration from artists such as Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige. Throughout the 19th century, artists used their technological advancements to discover new, innovative forms of communicating colour, composition and process. This laid the groundworks for the Modernist era.

The Modern Age:

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 intensified the 19th centuries questioning and rejection of long-standing traditional ideals. During the Nazi regime in World War II, the strange, avant-garde and abstract art that encompassed Modernism was banned in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. In relation to art, design and architecture, the term “Modernism” is used primarily to describe movements that had a diverse and unpredictable range of ideologies and beliefs; Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, just to name a few. Abstract art was just the beginning, where artists such as Wassily Kandinsky believed that art could help change the world. However, many artists had differing opinions, where the horrors of the World Wars made them angry and resentful rather than hopeful for a better world. .

The Dada movement was possibly one of the most radical movements formed against the social, political and cultural issues occurring in the 20th century, as it went beyond stylistic innovation and actually questioned the meaning and value of art in their modern age. Dada then gave way to Surrealism, where artists, like Dadaists, had such an engraved way of life that craved to release the power of the unconscious mind and thereby oppose the unnecessary rationalism and materialism of the modern world. Compared to Dada, Surrealism was for less radical, and attempted to counteract the issues in a positive way. Surrealist artits were skillful, and their strange imagery influenced the world, and artists, even when they disagreed with their way of life.

As the Nazi regime grew and World War II was well under way, many European artists fled across the Atlantic, and their stimulating presence helped make New York the art capital of the world over Paris. The Emergence of Abstract Expressionism illustrated that the US was the worlds leader in painting for the first time in history; the movement was huge, and inspired offshoots and reactions against its emotionalism in the form of, for example, the childishness and satire seen in Pop Art and the calming clarity of Minimalism.

Conceptual Art began in the 1960s, when the idea that the idea was more significant and impactful than the actual completed artwork. Therefore, art began to depart from not only traditional subject matter, but traditional materials and methods such as Land Art, Performance Art, and new video and digital technologies. While painting, sculpture and other traditional forms continued to evolve alongside these new means, the 20th century saw an overwhelming change in every aspect of life.