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.

Contemporary art

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.



The physical and rational certainties of the clockwork universe depicted by the 18th-century Enlightenment were shattered not only by new discoveries of relativity by Einstein[2] and of unseen psychology by Freud,[3] but also by unprecedented technological development accelerated by the implosion of civilisation in two world wars. The history of twentieth century art is a narrative of endless possibilities and the search for new standards, each being torn down in succession by the next. Thus the parameters of Impressionism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, etc cannot be maintained very much beyond the time of their invention. Increasing global interaction during this time saw an equivalent influence of other cultures into Western art, such as Pablo Picasso being influenced by African sculpture. Japanese woodblock prints (which had themselves been influenced by Western Renaissance draftsmanship) had an immense influence on Impressionism and subsequent development. Then African fetish sculptures were taken up by Picasso and to some extent by Matisse.

Modernism, the idealistic search for truth, gave way in the latter half of the 20th century to a realisation of its unattainability. Relativity was accepted as an unavoidable truth, which led to the Postmodern period, where cultures of the world and of history are seen as changing forms, which can be appreciated and drawn from only with irony. Furthermore the separation of cultures is increasingly blurred and it is now more appropriate to think in terms of a global culture, rather than regional cultures.

Post-ancient Western art & Post-ancient Eastern art

The interior of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey.

In Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages, the dominance of the church insisted on the expression of biblical truths. There was no need to depict the reality of the material world, in which man was born in a "state of sin", especially through the extensive use of gold in paintings, which also presented figures in idealised, patterned (i.e."flat") forms.

The Renaissance is the return yet again to valuation of the material world, and this paradigm shift is reflected in art forms, which show the corporeality of the human body, and the three dimensional reality of landscape.



Eastern art has generally worked in a style akin to Western medieval art, namely a concentration on surface patterning and local colour (meaning the plain colour of an object, such as basic red for a red robe, rather than the modulations of that colour brought about by light, shade and reflection). A characteristic of this style is that the local colour is often defined by an outline (a contemporary equivalent is the cartoon). This is evident in, for example, the art of India, Tibet and Japan.

Religious Islamic art forbids iconography, and expresses religious ideas through geometric designs instead. However, there are many Islamic paintings which display religious themes and scenes of stories common among the three main monotheistic faiths of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai.

Ancient art

So-called "Grande Ludovisi" sarcophagus, with battle scene between Roman soldiers and Germans. The main character is probably Ostilianus, Emperor Decius' son (d. 252 CE). Proconnesus marble, Roman artwork, ca. 250 CE.


The period of ancient art began when ancient civilizations developed a form of written language.

The great traditions in art have a foundation in the art of one of the six great ancient civilizations: Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, India, or China. Each of these centers of early civilization developed a unique and characteristic style in their art. Because of their size and duration these civilizations, more of their art works have survived and more of their influence has been transmitted to other cultures and later times. They have also provided us with the first records of how artists worked.

Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic distinguishing features (i.e. Zeus' thunderbolt).

Earliest known art

Venus of Willendorf


The oldest surviving art forms include small sculptures and paintings on rocks and in caves. There are very few known examples of art that date earlier than 40,000 years ago, the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic period. People often rubbed smaller rocks against larger rocks and boulders to paint pictures of their everyday life, such as hunting wild game. A mammoth sculpture found in a German cave was dated to approximately 35,000 years ago.[1]

One of the most famous examples, the so-called Venus of Willendorf (which is now being called "Woman from Willendorf" in contemporary art history texts) is a sculpture from the Paleolithic era, which depicts a woman with exaggerated female attributes. This sculpture, carved from stone, is remarkable in its roundness instead of a flat or low-relief depiction. Early Aegean art, although it dates from a much later period, shares some of the same abstract figurative elements.

Prehistoric art objects are rare, and the context of such early art is difficult to determine. Prehistoric, by definition, refers to those cultures which have left no written records of their society. The art historian judges early pieces of art as objects in their own right, with few opportunities for comparison between contemporaneous pieces. Interpretation of such early art must be done primarily in the context of aesthetics tempered by what is known of various hunter-gatherer societies still in existence.


Aurochs on a cave painting in Lascaux, France.

Study of art history

The Sakyamuni Buddha, by Zhang Shengwen, c. 1173-1176 AD, Chinese Song Dynasty period.



Study of the history of art is a relatively recent phenomenon; prior to the Renaissance, the modern concept of "art" did not exist, and art was used to refer to workmanship by generally anonymous tradespeople.

The viewpoint of the art historian is a significant input into the defining parameters which are employed. For example, during the early Victorian era, the quattrocento artists were considered inferior to those of the High Renaissance—a notion subsequently challenged by the Pre-Raphaelite movement. There has since been a trend, dominant in most modern art history, to see all cultures and periods from a neutral point of view, with a tendency to shy away from value judgements. Thus, for example, Australian Aboriginal art would not be deemed better or worse than Michelangelo by typical Modernist art historians—just different.

Analysis has also evolved into studying the "political" use of art, rather than reserving analysis to the aesthetic appreciation of its craftsmanship or beauty. It is believed there is always an intent and a philosophy behind art, and an effect achieved by it. Thus, for example, the considerable employment by the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Middle Ages can be contrasted or compared with "Soviet propaganda", the manifestation of social structure through 19th-century portraiture, an anarcho-religious vision exemplified by Van Gogh, etc. What may once have been viewed simply as a masterpiece is now deconstructed into an economic, social, philosophical, and cultural manifestation of the artist's world-view, philosophy, intentions and background.

There are different ways of structuring a history of art. The following is one which is commonly used, based primarily on time, but within that creating subdivisions based on place and culture. Other views are somewhat disputed, still, even today there are many forms of structuring a history of art.