Acrylic PAINT

SUN SET BY Anuradha Raja

I have been painting for 5 years. All my paintings reflect nature’s wonderful colors. The rustle of the wind, tinkling of raindrops, colors of the sky, the greens of the lands, all speak a common language. A language that has no boundaries, knows no countries. They reverberate happiness and peace

New Leonardo da Vinci painting 'discovered'

Art experts believe a new portrait by Leonardo da Vinci may have been discovered thanks to a 500-year-old fingerprint.
A Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress, the painting which has been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Photograph: Christie's
The small picture of a young woman in profile was previously believed to be a German work from the early 19th century and has changed hands in recent years for around £12,000.
But a growing number of leading Leonardo scholars agree the work is almost certainly by the Renaissance figurehead because it appears to have his fingerprint on it. Carbon dating and infrared analysis of Leonardo's techniques back up the theory.
If the scholars are correct, it will be the first major work by Leonardo to be identified for 100 years and will be worth tens of millions of pounds.
Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at Oxford University, is so convinced the portrait is a Leonardo that he has written an as yet unpublished 200-page book about it.
Kemp said he first thought the find was "too good to be true – after 40 years in the Leonardo business I thought I'd seen it all".
But gradually, "all the bits fell into place like a well-made piece of furniture. All the drawers slotted in," he told the Times.
The fingerprint, which corresponds to the tip of the index or middle finger, was found by Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal-based forensic art expert, when he examined images taken of the portrait by the revolutionary multispectral camera. Multi-spectral analysis can capture light from frequencies beyond the visible light range, such as infrared, allowing the extraction of information that the human eye fails to capture.
Biro believed the fingerprint, which was found near the top left corner of the work, was "highly comparable" to a fingerprint on Leonardo's St Jerome in the Vatican, the Antiques Trade Gazette reported.
The magazine said infrared analysis showed "significant" stylistic parallels with those in Leonardo's Portrait of a Woman in Profile in Windsor Castle and showed the work was made by a left-handed artist, as Leonardo is known to have been.
Drawn in ink and chalks, the beautiful young woman's costume and elaborate hairstyle reflected Milanese fashion of the late 15th century, and carbon analysis was consistent with that dating, the magazine reported.
Kemp believed that "by a process of elimination", the fresh-faced teenager could be Bianca Sforza, the daughter of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan from 1452-1508, and his mistress Bernardina de Corradis.
Kemp said he thought the portrait, which measures 33cm x 22cm (13in x 9in), must date from around 1496 when, aged 13 or 14, the Bella Principessa married the Duke's army captain, Galeazzo Sanseverino, a patron of Leonardo's. She died four months after the wedding.
It would be Leonardo's first known portrait of the princess, although he painted two of the duke's mistresses Cecilia Gallerani and Lucrezia Crivelli.
The picture was sold at Christie's in New York in 1998, in an Old Master Drawings sale as a Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress, catalogued as German, early 19th century, with an estimate of $12,000-$16,000.
It sold for $19,000 (£12,000) and later went for a similar sum to Canadian-born collector Peter Silverman, in 2007.
Silverman believed there was more to the portrait and delved into the matter after a discussion last year with Dr Nicholas Turner, formerly the keeper of prints and drawings at the British Museum.
Silverman told the Times that when he first saw the picture, "my heart started to beat a million times a minute. I immediately thought this could be a Florentine artist. The idea of Leonardo came to me in a flash."
The portrait is due to go on display in an exhibition in Sweden next year.

Hyacinthe Kuller Baron Paintings

"Red Hooded Asparas"
Asparas are the essence of the female.
Hyacinthe Baron in this painting captures
the longing, the hope,
the expectation
and the "Beauty of the Female Spirit.

Acrylic, Oil on canvass
Metallic gold and silver

Cadmium red and Alizaron Crimson
3'x4'

Hyacinthe Kuller Baron Paintings

Three Women With Flowers
The good and the evil...
The three aspects of the female Captured in this painting by Hyacinthe Baron
in a symbiotic relationship.
Oil and Acrylic on canvas
Metallic gold and silver
3'x4'

Hyacinthe Kuller Baron Paintings

"Cassandra...Aspara Aspect"

There are four aspects of the Aspara. In this recent painting Hyacinthe Baron imparts the beauty of Cassandra. The Aspara aspect inspires the soul of the lover and the poet.
Oil on canvas
3'x4'
Mixed media, metallics
Marble Dust

SOME WATER COLOR WORKS

Ingrid Simons Works

Cynthia Dempsey

Its called"EARLY RISER"



Its called" HIDDEN RETREAT"



Its called "A PEACEFUL TIME"

Light on the Familiar: The Paintings of Scott Prior

The University Gallery of University of Massachusetts Amherst is honored to host Light on the Familiar: The Paintings of Scott Prior from January 29 through March 17, 2000. The exhibition is a retrospective selection of 45 of Prior's paintings completed between 1971 and 1999 and includes examples of his early surreal paintings and more recent paintings of the people, interiors, places and objects that are most familiar to him. Light on the Familiar was organized by the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts where it was on view last fall. An opening reception for the exhibition's showing at the University Gallery will be held on Friday, January 28th from 5 to 7 p.m. and the artist will be present. Scott Prior will give a slide lecture about his work on Wednesday, February 9 at 7:30 p.m. in the University Gallery. (right: Barbeque in Winter, 1998, oil on linen, 28 x 22 inches, Collection of Leslie and Stephen Shatz)
Light on the Familiar is the first major exhibition of Prior's work to be presented in the Pioneer Valley, his home since 1967 when he came to Amherst to attend the University of Massachusetts. Prior is a 1971 graduate of the University's department of art from which he received a B.F.A in printmaking. After college he settled in the area and taught himself to paint, finding a supportive artistic community among the so-called "Valley Realists": Randall Deihl, Robin Freedenfeld, Gregory Gillespie, the late Frances Cohen Gillespie and Jane Lund. As the exhibition's curator Rachel Rosenfield Lafo suggests in her catalogue essay, the realist style has found great acceptance in the Valley, perhaps because the area is largely populated by writers, academics, small presses, book artists and illustrators who are naturally receptive to literary art. (left: Sand Box and Hollyhocks, 1980, oil on canvas, 54 x 42 inches, Collection of Robert and Esta Epstein)
Prior's early surreal paintings combine realistically painted passages with odd and often humorous objects. The real and invented images are rendered in minute detail, and show Prior's absorption of the techniques and style of Renaissance painting which he combines with contemporary subject matter. After 1980 Prior's interests turned to depicting natural phenomena - light as it bathes or illuminates places and things, time of day, and the change of seasons. Prior has said about his landscapes and still lifes painted in the 1980s and 1990s that he has been "...particularly interested in depicting solitude and light. Solitude because it can be illuminating. And light because it is like God's voice, the way it touches and plays over all things." Prior works from both photographs and life. After his marriage to Nanette Vonnegut in 1981 he began to incorporate portraits of real rather than invented people into his work. His family and their domestic surroundings have inspired a body of work that includes the interiors, still lifes and landscapes of his daily life. Prior captures the sense of intimacy and tranquility that exists in the space of the everyday lives of the people he loves.
The University Gallery, located on the lower level of the Fine Arts Center, is open to the public from Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. The Gallery is also open during evening performances held in the Concert Hall of the Fine Arts Center.

Giffin Art work

A few weeks ago we had our first snowfall of the season and it was absolutely beautiful. The way the landscape changed overnight was very dramatic. I latched onto my camera and went out to explore the area around the house. I had been attracted at once from the window of my studio to the snow on the bank on the other side of the river. I immediately went down and as the light began to permeate the cloud cover a soft yellow light began to shine through the alders on the opposite side of the river and wash across the water surface. I loved the interplay of reflection of the alders and the warming sunlight. It appeared as an impressionist painting. I shot a series of photos and immediately came up to my studio to address this image with it fresh in my mind’s eye. I had luckily stretched a canvas only a day or two earlier. The dimensions are 28″ x 42″ (seems to be a popular size for me as of late). I began painting with my eye set upon the still fresh image in my head and this painting fell from my brush.
Recently I was in Toronto removing my paintings from an exhibit that had been on of my work for a few weeks. While I was there I spoke with the artist that was setting up the next show. He commented to me that my paintings “looked as though I had breathed the paint onto the surface of the canvas.” I felt that was an appropriate statement because at times it feels that way when I am painting. It is a pleasure to do and a pleasure to share with you.

Christopher Terry: Recent Paintings

Terry Rodgers.... The Apotheosis Of Pleasure

Terry Rodgers is a realist known for his contemporary character studies. While his earlier paintings often contemplated personal and family relationships in brightly lit outdoor settings wrought with pale, intense, high-keyed colors, his recent paintings conjure up aVague Inferencesvision of the private nightlife of America’s privileged youth.

Van Gogh's Cypress and Wheatfield

In 1888, when city life and living with his brother proved too much, Van Gogh left Paris and went to Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. He was impressed with the local landscape and hoped to found an art colony. He decorated a "yellow house" and created a celebrated series of yellow sunflower paintings for this purpose. Only Paul Gauguin, whose simplified colour schemes and forms (known as synthetism) attracted van Gogh, followed his invitation. The admiration was mutual, and Gauguin painted van Gogh painting sunflowers. However their encounter ended in a quarrel. Van Gogh suffered a mental breakdown and cut off part of his left ear, which he gave to a startled prostitute friend. Gauguin left in December 1888.
One of Vincent's famous paintings, the Bedroom in Arles of 1888, uses bright yellow and unusual perspective effects in depicting the interior of his bedroom. The boldly vanishing lines are sometimes attributed to his changing mental condition. The only painting he sold during his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, was created in 1888. It is now on display in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, Russia.
Van Gogh now exchanged painting dots for small stripes. He suffered from depression, and in 1889 on his own request Van Gogh was admitted to the psychiatric center at Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole in Saint Remy de Provence, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. During his stay here the clinic and its garden became his main subject. Pencil strokes changed again, now into swirls.
In May 1890 Vincent left the clinic and went to the physician Paul Gachet, in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, where he was closer to his brother Theo, who had recently married. Gachet had been recommended to him by Pissarro; he had treated several artists before. Here van Gogh created his only etching: a portrait of the melancholic doctor Gachet. His depression aggravated, and on July 27 of the same year, at the age of 37, after a fit of painting activity, van Gogh shot himself in the chest. He died two days later, with Theo at his side, who reported his last words as "La tristesse durera toujours" (French: "The sadness will last forever"). He was buried at the cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise; Theo, unable to come to terms with his brother's death, died 6 months later and, at his wife's request, was buried next to Vincent.
It would not take long before Vincent's fame grew higher and higher. Large exhibitions were organized soon: Paris 1901, Amsterdam 1905, Cologne 1912, New York 1913 and Berlin 1914.
Van Gogh's life forms the basis for Irving Stone's biographical novel Lust for Life.
Notable Works
•(1885) The Potato Eaters
•(1888) Bedroom in Arles
•(1888) Cafe Terrace at Night
•(1888) The Red Vineyard
•(1889) The Starry Night
•(1889) Irises
•(1889) Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers
•(1889) Portrait de l'artiste sans barbe
•(1890) Portrait of Doctor Gachet

vincent van goghs painting

Painting Title: Cafe Terrace at Night 1888
Oil on Canvas, 81 x 65.5cm - 31 x 26 Inches (approx)
Vincent van Gogh
Famous Dutch artist - Post Impressionist painter

About the Cafe Terrace at Night Painting
Vincent van Gogh painted several night scenes and became fascinated with depicting the stars (most famously with his Starry Night paintings) and the light effects of the night. Van Gogh has achieved an effect of luminosity with the use of contrasting colors and tones. The darks compliment the lights, the blues intensify the oranges, and the purples bring out the yellows.

Van Gogh wrote about the Cafe Terrace at Night painting in a letter to his sister, saying "Here you have a night painting without black, with nothing but beautiful blue and violet and green and in this surrounding the illuminated area colors itself sulfur pale yellow and citron green. It amuses me enormously to paint the night right on the spot. Normally, one draws and paints the painting during the daytime after the sketch. But I like to paint the thing immediately.
It is true that in the darkness I can take a blue for a green, a blue lilac for a pink lilac, since it is hard to distinguish the quality of the tone. But it is the only way to get away from our conventional night with poor pale whitish light, while even a simple candle already provides us with the richest of yellows and oranges."

The cafe still exists today and is a popular destination for those following the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh.

PAINTINGS OF WILLIAM MORRIS

MARY CASSATT (1844-1926)

Born Mary Stevenson Cassatt on May 22, 1844, in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. Mary Cassatt was the daughter of a well-to-do real estate and investment broker, and her upbringing reflected her family’s high social standing. Her schooling prepared her to be a proper wife and mother and included such classes as homemaking, embroidery, music, sketching and painting. During the 1850s, the Cassatt's took their children abroad to live in Europe for several years.

Though women of her day were discouraged from pursuing a career, Mary Cassatt enrolled in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts at age 16. Not surprisingly, she found the male faculty and her fellow students to be patronizing and resentful of her attendance. Cassatt also became frustrated by the curriculum’s slow pace and inadequate course offerings. She decided to leave the program and move to Europe where she could study the works of the Old Masters firsthand on her own.

Despite her family’s strong objections (her father declared he would rather see his daughter dead than living abroad as a "bohemian"), Mary Cassatt left for Paris in 1866. She began her study with private art lessons in the Louvre, where she would study and copy masterpieces. She continued to study and paint in relative obscurity until 1868, when one of her portraits was selected at the prestigious Paris Salon, an annual exhibition run by the French government. With her father’s disapproving words echoing in her ears, Cassatt submitted the well-received painting under the name Mary Stevenson.

In 1870, soon after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Mary Cassatt reluctantly returned home to live with her parents. The artistic freedom she enjoyed while living abroad was immediately extinguished upon her return to the outskirts of Philadelphia. Not only did she have trouble finding proper supplies, but her father refused to pay for anything connected with her art. To raise funds, she tried to sell some of her paintings in New York to no avail. When she tried again to sell them through a dealer in Chicago, the paintings were tragically destroyed in a fire in 1871.

In the midst of these obstacles, Mary Cassatt was contacted by the archbishop of Pittsburgh, who wanted to commission her to paint copies of two works by the Italian master Correggio. Cassatt accepted the assignment and left immediately for Europe where the originals were on display in Parma, Italy. With the money she earned from the commission, she was able to resume her career in Europe. The Paris Salon accepted her paintings for exhibitions in 1872, 1873 and 1874, which helped secure her status as an established artist. She continued to study and paint in Spain, Belgium, and Rome, eventually settling permanently in Paris.

Though she felt indebted to the Salon for building her career, Mary Cassatt began to feel increasingly constrained by its inflexible guidelines. No longer concerned with what was fashionable or commercial, she began to experiment in new directions. Her new work drew criticism for its bright colors and unflattering accuracy of its subjects. During this time, she drew courage from painter Edgar Degas, whose pastels inspired her to press on in her own direction. "I used to go and flatten my nose against that window and absorb all I could of his art," she once wrote to a friend. "It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it."

Her admiration for Degas would soon blossom into a strong friendship, and Mary Cassatt exhibited 11 of her paintings with the Impressionists in 1879. The show was a huge success both commercially and critically, and similar exhibits were staged in 1880 and 1881. Shortly thereafter marked a dormant period for Mary Cassatt, who was forced to withdraw from the art world to care for her ill mother and sister. Her sister died in 1882, but after her mother regained her health, Mary was able to resume painting.

While many of her fellow Impressionists were focused on landscapes and street scenes, Mary Cassatt became famous for her portraits. She was especially drawn to women in everyday domestic settings, especially mothers with their children. But unlike the Madonnas and cherubs of the Renaissance, Cassatt’s portraits were unconventional in their direct and honest nature. Commenting in American Artist, Gemma Newman noted that "her constant objective was to achieve force, not sweetness; truth, not sentimentality or romance."

Mary Cassatt's painting style continued to evolve away from Impressionism in favor of a simpler, more straightforward approach. Her final exhibition with the Impressionists was in 1886, and she subsequently stopped identifying herself with a particular movement or school. Her experimentation with a variety of techniques often led her to unexpected places. For example, drawing inspiration from Japanese master printmakers, she exhibited a series of colored prints, including Woman Bathing and The Coiffure, in 1891.

Soon after, Mary Cassatt began taking an interest in young American artists. She also sponsored fellow Impressionists and encouraged wealthy Americans to support the fledgling movement by purchasing artwork. She became an advisor to several major collectors with the stipulation that their purchases would eventually be passed on to American art museums.

A 1910 trip to Egypt with her brother Gardner and his family would prove to be a turning a point in Mary Cassatt’s life. The magnificent ancient art made her question her own talent as an artist. Soon after their return home, Gardner died unexpectedly from an illness he contracted during the journey. These two events deeply affected Cassatt’s physical and emotional health, and she was unable to paint again until around 1912. Three years later, she was forced to give up painting altogether as diabetes slowly stole her vision. For the next 11 years, until her death on June 14, 1926, Mary Cassatt lived in almost total blindness, bitterly unhappy to be robbed of her greatest source of pleasure.

THE STARRY NIGHT BY VAN GOGH

THE DUTCH POST IMPRESSIONISMIST VINCENT VAN GOGH DRAW THIS PAINTING. HE WAS CALLED A MAD GINIOUS AND HIS FAVORITE COLOR WAS YELLOW. SINCE 1941 THIS PAINTING HELD AT MUSEUM OF MODERN ART IN NEW YORK CITY.

RENAISSANCE TIME PERIOD

WHAT HAPPEND AT THIS PERIOD:
Is it true that "European history is still firmly divided among antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the modern era," and that therefore "the Renaissance occupies no space of its own in the history curriculum [of German universities]" as Professor Karant-Nunn has argued? The problem, it seems, is that German historians have largely abandoned the term "Renaissance" to denote the period between the Middle Ages and the modern era, using instead the term "early modern period" (Fruhe Neuzeit), a term whose perimeters are variously defined as extending from the close of the Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century, or to the French Revolution, or even to the end of the old Reich in 1806. The justification for arguing for a macro-epoch, one distinct from the Middle Ages and the modern period, in favor of the traditional terms such as Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque, and Enlightenment, is seen in the unity of the period. Klaus Garber, the direct or of Interdisziplinares Institut fur Kulturgeschichte der Fruhen Neuzeit, argues that during the early modern period the ancient and medieval traditions were productively appropriated and transformed. Such unity is also found in the continuous reception of antiquity from humanism to classicism; in the development of the various Christian confessions and their system of norms; in the rise of the modern state with its reception of Roman law; in the development of a system of world economy;...

CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY:
Classical antiquity (also the classical era or classical period) is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.
It is conventionally taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Greek poetry of Homer (8th–7th century BC), and continues through the rise of Christianity and the decline of the Roman Empire (5th century). It ends with the dissolution of classical culture at the close of Late Antiquity (AD 300-600), blending into the Early Middle Ages (AD 500-1000).
Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many disparate cultures and periods. "Classical antiquity" typically refers to an idealized vision of later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe's words, "the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome!"
The civilization of the ancient Greeks has been immensely influential on the language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, science, art and architecture of the modern world, fueling the Renaissance in Western Europe and again resurgent during various neo-classical revivals in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Greece:
The classical period of Ancient Greece, corresponds to most of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. (i.e. from the fall of the Athenian tyranny in 510 BC to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC).
In 510, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow their king, the tyrant Hippias, son of Peisistratos. Cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy conducted by Isagoras.
The Greco-Persian Wars (499-449 BC), concluded by the Peace of Callias resulted in the dominant position of Athens in the Delian League, which led to conflict with Sparta and the Peloponnesian League, resulting in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), ending in a Spartan victory.
Greece entered the 4th century under Spartan hegemony. But by 395 BC the Spartan rulers removed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost her naval supremacy. Athens, Argos, Thebes, and Corinth, the latter two formerly Spartan allies, challenged Spartan dominance in the Corinthian War, which ended inconclusively in 387 BC. Then the Theban generals Epaminondas and Pelopidas won a decisive victory at Leuctra (371 BC). The result of this battle was the end of Spartan supremacy and the establishment of Theban hegemony. Thebes sought to maintain its position until finally eclipsed by the rising power of Macedon in 346 BC.
Under Philip II, (359–336 BC), Macedon expanded into the territory of the Paionians, Thracians, and Illyrians. Philip's son Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) managed to briefly extend Macedonian power not only over the central Greek city-states, but also to the Persian empire, including Egypt and lands as far east as the fringes of India. The classical period conventionally ends at the death of Alexander in 323 BC and the fragmentation of his empire, divided among the Diadochi.


Roman :
The republican period of Ancient Rome began with the overthrow of the Monarchy c.509 BC and lasted over 450 years until its subversion, through a series of civil wars, into the Principate form of government and the Imperial period. During the half millennium of the Republic, Rome rose from a regional power of the Latium to the dominant force in Italy and beyond. The unification of Italy under Roman hegemony was a gradual process, brought about in a series of conflicts of the 4th and 3rd centuries, the Samnite Wars, Latin War, and Pyrrhic War. Roman victory in the Punic Wars and Macedonian Wars established Rome as a super-regional power by the 2nd century BC, followed up by the acquisition of Greece and Asia Minor. This tremendous increase of power was accompanied by economic instability and social unrest, leading to the Catiline conspiracy, the Social War and the First Triumvirate, and finally the transformation to the Roman Empire in the latter half of the 1st century BC.
Ancient Rome contributed greatly to the development of law, war, art, literature, architecture, and language in the Western world, and its history continues to have a major influence on the world today.
Determining the precise end of the Republic is a task of dispute by modern historians;[6] Roman citizens of the time did not recognize that the Republic had ceased to exist. The early Julio-Claudian "Emperors" maintained that the res publica still existed, albeit under the protection of their extraordinary powers, and would eventually return to its full Republican form. The Roman state continued to call itself a res publica as long as it continued to use Latin as its official language.
Rome acquired imperial character de facto from the 130s BC with the acquisition of Cisalpine Gaul, Illyria, Greece and Iberia, and definitely with the addition of Iudaea, Asia and Gaul in the 1st century BC. At the time of the empire's maximal extension under Trajan (117 AD), Rome controlled the entire Mediterranean as well as Gaul, parts of Germania and Britannia, the Balkans, Dacia, Asia Minor, the Caucasus and Mesopotamia.
Culturally, the Roman Empire was significantly hellenized, but also saw the rise of syncratic "eastern" traditions, such as Mithraism, Gnosticism, and most notably Christianity. The empire began to decline in the crisis of the third century.




MIDDLE AGES:
The Renaissance (from French Renaissance, meaning "rebirth"; Italian: Rinascimento, from re- "again" and nascere "be born")was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historic era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform, this is a very general use of the term.
As a cultural movement, it encompassed a revival of learning based on classical sources, the development of linear perspective in painting, and gradual but widespread educational reform. Traditionally, this intellectual transformation has resulted in the Renaissance being viewed as a bridge between the Middle Ages and the Modern era. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man".
There is a general, but not unchallenged, consensus that the Renaissance began in Tuscany in the 14th century. Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors including the social and civic peculiarities of Florence at the time; its political structure; the patronage of its dominant family, the Medici; and the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy following the Fall of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.
The Renaissance has a long and complex historiography, and there has been much debate among historians as to the usefulness of Renaissance as a term and as a historical delineation. Some have called into question whether the Renaissance was a cultural "advance" from the Middle Ages, instead seeing it as a period of pessimism and nostalgia for the classical age,while others have instead focused on the continuity between the two eras. Indeed, some have called for an end to the use of the term, which they see as a product of presentism – the use of history to validate and glorify modern ideals. The word Renaissance has also been used to describe other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century.

Art periods

1 Medieval art
2 Renaissance
3 Renaissance to Neoclassicism
4 Romanticism
5 Romanticism to Modern Art
6 Modern art
7 Contemporary art


Medieval art
c. 200 - c. 1430 Medieval art

Early Christian art
Byzantine art
Norse art
Celtic art
Anglo-Saxon art
Mosan art
Migration Period art
Pre-Romanesque art
Romanesque art
Gothic art
International Gothic
Sienese School

Renaissance
Renaissance c. 1300 - c. 1602

Italian Renaissance - late 14th century - c. 1600 - late 15th century - late 16th century
Renaissance Classicism
Early Netherlandish painting - 1400 - 1500

Renaissance to Neoclassicism
Mannerism and Late Renaissance - 1520 - 1600
Baroque - 1600 - 1730
Dutch Golden Age painting - 1585 – 1702
Flemish Baroque painting - 1585 – 1700
Rococo - 1720 - 1780
Neoclassicism - 1750 - 1830

Romanticism
Romanticism -1790 - 1880

Nazarene movement - c. 1820 - late 1840s
The Ancients - 1820s - 1830s
Purismo - c. 1820 - 1860s
Düsseldorf school - mid-1820s - 1860s
Hudson River school - 1850s - c. 1880
Luminism (American art style) - 1850s – 1870s

Romanticism to Modern Art
Norwich school - 1803 - 1833, England
Biedermeier - 1815 - 1848, Germany
Photography - Since 1825
Realism - 1830 - 1870, began in France
Barbizon school - c. 1830 - 1870, France
Peredvizhniki - 1870, Russia
Hague School - 1870 - 1900, Netherlands
American Barbizon school - United States
Spanish Eclecticism - 1845 - 1890, Spain
Macchiaioli - 1850s, Tuscany, Italy
Metarealism - 1870, Russia
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood - 1848 - 1854, England

Modern art
Modern art - late 19th century - c. 1970

Note: The countries listed are the country in which the movement or group started. Most modern art movements were international in scope.

Russian avant-garde - 1890 - 1930, Russia/Ukraine/Soviet Union
Impressionism - 1863 - 1890, France
American Impressionism 1880, United States
Cos Cob Art Colony 1890s, United States
Heidelberg School late 1880s, Australia
Luminism (Impressionism)
Arts and Crafts movement - 1880 - 1910, United Kingdom
Tonalism - 1880 - 1920, United States
Symbolism (arts) - 1880 - 1910, France/Belgium
Russian Symbolism 1884 - c. 1910, Russia
Aesthetic movement 1868 - 1901, United Kingdom
Post-impressionism - 1886 - 1905, France
Pointillism 1880s, France
Les Nabis 1888 - 1900, France
Fauvism - 1904 - 1909, France
Cloisonnism c. 1885, France
Synthetism late 1880s - early 1890s, France
School of Paris early 20th century, France
Neo-impressionism 1886 - 1906, France
Art Nouveau - 1890 - 1914, France
Vienna Secession (or Secessionstil) 1897, Austria
Jugendstil Germany, Scandinavia
Modernisme - 1890 to 1910, Catalan
Art à la Rue 1890s - 1905, Belgium/France
Young Poland 1890 - 1918, Poland
Mir iskusstva 1899, Russia
Hagenbund 1900 - 1930, Austria
Expressionism - 1905 - 1930, Germany
Die Brücke 1905 - 1913, Germany
Der Blaue Reiter 1911, Germany
Bloomsbury Group - 1905 - c. 1945, England
Cubism - 1907 - 1914, France
Analytic Cubism 1909, France
Orphism - 1912, France
Purism - 1918 - 1926
Cubo-Expressionism 1909 - 1921
Ashcan School 1907, United States
Jack of Diamonds (artists) 1909, Russia
Futurism (art) - 1910 - 1930, Italy
Cubo-Futurism 1912 - 1915, Russia
Rayonism 1911, Russia
Synchromism 1912, United States
Universal Flowering 1913, Russia
Vorticism 1914 - 1920, United Kingdom
Biomorphism 1915 - 1940s
Suprematism 1915 - 1925, Russia/Ukraine/Soviet Union
Dada - 1916 - 1930, Switzerland
Proletkult 1917 - 1925, Soviet Union
Productivism after 1917, Russia
De Stijl (Neoplasticism) 1917 - 1931, Holland
Pittura Metafisica 1917, Italy
Arbeitsrat für Kunst 1918 - 1921
Bauhaus - 1919 - 1933, Germany
UNOVIS 1919 - 1922, Russia
Others group of artists 1919, United States
American Expressionism c. 1920 -
Precisionism c. 1920, United States
Surrealism Since 1920s, France
Acéphale France
Lettrism 1942 -
Les Automatistes 1946 - 1951, Canada
Devetsil 1920 - 1931
Group of Seven 1920 - 1933, Canada
Harlem renaissance 1920 - 1930s, United States
American scene painting c. 1920 - 1945, United States
New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) 1920s, Germany
Constructivism (art) 1920s, Russia/Ukraine/Soviet Union
Art Deco - 1920s - 1930s, France
Grupo Montparnasse 1922, France
Soviet art 1922 - 1986, Soviet Union
a. r. group 1929 - 1936
Northwest School (art) 1930s - 1940s, United States
Social realism, 1929, international
Socialist realism - c. 1930 - 1950, Soviet Union/Germany
Abstraction-Création 1931 - 1936, France
Allianz (arts) 1937 - 1950s, Switzerland
Art and Freedom 1939 - mid-1940s
Abstract Expressionism - 1940s, Post WWII, United States
Action painting United States
Color field painting
Lyrical Abstraction
COBRA (avant-garde movement) 1946 - 1952, Denmark/Belgium/Holland
Tachisme late-1940s - mid-1950s, France
Abstract Imagists United States
Arte Madí 1940s
Art informel mid-1940s - 1950s
Outsider art (Art brut) mid-1940s, United Kingdom/United States
Vienna School of Fantastic Realism - 1946, Austria
The Concretists early 1950s -
Neo-Dada 1950s, international
International Typographic Style 1950s, Switzerland
Soviet Nonconformist Art 1953 - 1986, Soviet Union
Russian Non-Conformist Russia/Ukraine
Pop Art mid-1950s, United Kingdom/United States
Situationism 1957 - early 1970s, Italy
Magic realism 1960s, Germany
Minimalism - 1960 -
Art and Language 1968, United Kingdom
Op Art 1964 -
Post-painterly abstraction 1964 -
Hard-edge painting 1960s, United States

Contemporary art
(Note: there is overlap with what is considered "contemporary," "postmodern," and "modern art.")

Contemporary art - present
Digital art 1990 - present
Postmodern art - present
Modernism - present
New realism 1960 -
Performance art - 1960s -
Fluxus - early 1960s - late-1970s
Conceptual art - 1960s -
Graffiti 1960s-
Junk art 1960s -
Psychedelic art early 1960s -
Lyrical Abstraction mid-1960s -
Process art mid-1960s - 1970s
Arte Povera 1967 -
Photorealism - Late 1960s - early 1970s
Land art - late-1960s - early 1970s
Post-minimalism late-1960s - 1970s
Installation art - 1970s -
Neo-expressionism late 1970s -
Figuration Libre early 1980s
Metaphorical realism
Young British Artists 1988 -
Rectoversion 1991 -
Transgressive art
Synaesthesia events
Neoism 1979
Deconstructivism
Battle Elephants 1984
Massurrealism 1992 -
Stuckism 1999 -
Remodernism 1999 -
Maximalism

Monkeys as Judges of Art, 1889, Gabriel von Max.


Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of visual art.

Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty. One of criticism's goals is the pursuit of a rational basis for art appreciation.

The variety of artistic movements has resulted in a division of art criticism into different disciplines, each using vastly different criteria for their judgements. The most common division in the field of criticism is between historical criticism and evaluation, a form of art history, and contemporary criticism of work by living artists.

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1874) by James McNeill Whistler

Despite perceptions that art criticism is a much lower risk activity than making art, opinions of current art are always liable to drastic corrections with the passage of time. Critics of the past are often ridiculed for either favoring artists now derided (like the academic painters of the late 19th Century) or dismissing artists now venerated (like the early work of the Impressionists). Some art movements themselves were named disparagingly by critics, with the name later adopted as a sort of badge of honor by the artists of the style (e.g. Impressionism, Cubism), the original negative meaning forgotten.

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1874) by James McNeill WhistlerSome critics are unable to adapt to new movements in art and allow their opinions to override their objectivity, resulting in inappropriately dated critique. John Ruskin famously compared one of James McNeill Whistler's paintings, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, to "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face".

Artists have often had an uneasy relationship with their critics. Artists usually need positive opinions from critics for their work to be viewed and purchased; unfortunately for the artists, only later generations may understand it.


History:

Origins
Though critiques of art may have its origins in the origins of art itself, art criticism as a genre is credited to have acquired its modern form by the 18th C.

The first writer to acquire an individual reputation as an art critic in 18th C. France was La Font de Saint-Yenne who wrote about the Salon of 1737 and wrote primarily to entertain while including anti-monarchist rhetoric in his prose.

The 18th C. French writer Denis Diderot is usually credited with the invention of the modern medium of art criticism. Diderot's "The Salon of 1765" was one of the first real attempts to capture art in words. According to art historian Thomas E. Crow, "When Diderot took up art criticism it was on the heels of the first generation of professional writers who made it their business to offer descriptions and judgments of contemporary painting and sculpture. The demand for such commentary was a product of the similarly novel institution of regular, free, public exhibitions of the latest art." [Published in Diderot on Art I, p.x]

A dominating figure in 19th century art criticism was French poet Charles Baudelaire, whose first published work was his art review Salon of 1845, which attracted immediate attention for its boldness. Many of his critical opinions were novel in their time, including his championing of Delacroix and Courbet. When Manet's famous Olympia (1865), a portrait of a nude courtesan, provoked a scandal for its blatant realism, Baudelaire worked privately to support his friend.

Pre-World War II:
Bloomsbury Group members Roger Fry and Clive Bell were notable English pre-war art critics. Fry introduced post-impressionism to the country, and Bell was one of the founders of the formalist approach to art. Herbert Read championed modern British artists such as Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.

In the U.S, Clement Greenberg first made his name as an art critic with his essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch, first published in the journal Partisan Review in 1939.


Post-World War II:
As in the case of Baudelaire in the 19th century, the poet-as-critic phenomenon appears once again in the 20th, when French poet Apollinaire becomes the champion of cubism. Later, French writer and hero of the Resistance André Malraux writes extensively on art, going well beyond the limits of his native Europe. Interestingly, his conviction that the vanguard in Latin America lay in Mexican muralism (Orozco, Rivera and Siqueiros) changes after his trip to Buenos Aires in 1958. After visiting the studios of several Argentine artists in the company of the young Director of the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires Rafael Squirru, Malraux declares the new vanguard to lie in Argentina's new artistic movements. Worthy of note is the fact that Squirru, a poet-critic of renown himself who became Cultural Director of the OAS in Washington D.C. during the Sixties, was the last to interview the well-nigh forgotten Edward Hopper before his death, creating a revival which consecrated the American artist once and for all time.

In the 1940s there were not only few galleries (The Art of This Century) but also few critics who were willing to follow the work of the New York Vanguard. There were also a few artists with a literary background, among them Robert Motherwell and Barnett Newman who functioned as critics as well.

As surprising as it may be, while New York and the world were unfamiliar with the New York avant-garde, by the late 1940s most of the artists who have become household names today had their well established patron critics: Clement Greenberg advocated Jackson Pollock and the Color field painters like Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb and Hans Hofmann. Harold Rosenberg seemed to prefer the action painters like Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. Thomas B. Hess, the managing editor of Art News, championed Willem de Kooning.

The new critics elevated their proteges by casting other artists as "followers" or ignoring those who did not serve their promotional goal.

As an example, in 1958, Mark Tobey "became the first American painter since Whistler (1895) to win top prize at the Biennale of Venice. New York's two leading art magazines were not interested. Arts mentioned the historic event only in a news column and Art News (Managing editor: Thomas B. Hess) ignored it completely. The New York Times and Life printed feature articles."

Barnett Newman, a late member of the Uptown Group wrote catalogue forewords and reviews and by the late 1940s became an exhibiting artist at Betty Parsons Gallery. His first solo show was in 1948. Soon after his first exhibition, Barnett Newman remarked in one of the Artists' Session at Studio 35: "We are in the process of making the world, to a certain extent, in our own image." Utilizing his writing skills, Newman fought every step of the way to reinforce his newly established image as an artist and to promote his work. An example is his letter in April 9, 1955, "Letter to Sidney Janis: ---It is true that Rothko talks the fighter. He fights, however, to submit to the philistine world. My struggle against bourgeois society has involved the total rejection of it."

Strangely the person thought to have had most to do with the promotion of this style was a New York Trotskyist, Clement Greenberg. As long time art critic for the Partisan Review and The Nation, he became an early and literate proponent of abstract expressionism. Artist Robert Motherwell, well heeled, joined Greenberg in promoting a style that fit the political climate and the intellectual rebelliousness of the era.

Clement Greenberg proclaimed Abstract Expressionism and Jackson Pollock in particular as the epitome of aesthetic value. It supported Pollock's work on formalistic grounds as simply the best painting of its day and the culmination of an art tradition going back via Cubism and Cézanne to Monet, in which painting became ever 'purer' and more concentrated in what was 'essential' to it, the making of marks on a flat surface.

Jackson Pollock's work has always polarised critics. Harold Rosenberg spoke of the transformation of painting into an existential drama in Pollock's work, in which "what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event". "The big moment came when it was decided to paint 'just to paint'. The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value--political, aesthetic, moral."

One of the most vocal critics of Abstract expressionism at the time was New York Times art critic John Canaday. Meyer Shapiro, and Leo Steinberg were also important art historians of the post-war era who voiced support for Abstract expressionism. During the early to mid sixties younger art critics Michael Fried, Rosalind Krauss and Robert Hughes (critic) added considerable insights into the critical dialectic that continues to grow around Abstract expressionism.

Other people, such as British comedian/satirist Craig Brown, have been astonished that decorative 'wallpaper', essentially brainless, could gain such a position in art history alongside Giotto, Titian and Velázquez.