HISTORY OF (WESTERN) PAINTING
1. GOTHIC, the rebirth of Art
The Gothic style began with the architecture of the 12th century at the the height of the Middle Ages, when Europe was putting the memory of the ‘Dark Ages’ behind it and moving into a radiant new area of prosperity and confidence.
The Gothic era opens a new chapter in the history of art, one which marks the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and the beginning of secular painting.
In contract to the Middle Ages, whose imagery remained rooted exclusively in the realms of the hereafter, the artists of the Gothic era drew their inspiration from life itself and in so doing found a new truth.
Their discovery of a new physical world simultaneously led them to a more joyfull vision of reality which placed greater emphasis upon feeling.
The Gothic era in painting spanned more than 200 years, starting in Italy and spreading to the rest of Europe. Towards the end of this period there were some artists in parts of the North who resisted Renaissance influences and kept to the Gothic tradition. As a result, the end of the Gothic timeline overlaps with both the Italian and the Northern Renaissance timelines.
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Giotto’s Nativity: Birth of Jesus fresco from 1304-06
Giotto Di Bondone 1266(?) Colle di Vespignano (near Florence)-1377 Florence Famous painters Gothic style: |
2. EARLY RENAISSANCE, European painting in the 15th century
Early Renaissance painting bridges the period of European art history between the art of the Middle Ages and the art of the Renaissance. During the Early Renaissance, painting rose to a position of primacy amongst its fellow disciplines for the first time in history of Western art.
A new relationship was born between the work of art and the spectator: the painting no longer sought merely to fulfil a function, but issued its own challenge to the person before it.
Two regions of Europe were particularly artistically active during this period: northern Europe (essentially Flanders) and Italy. The Renaissance is considered to have reached northern Europe in the 16th century. Thus, most of the Early Renaissance works in northern Europe were produced between 1420 and 1550.
Amongst the great innovations of this new era were the exploration of perspective and proportion, a new understanding of portraiture, as the likeness of an individual, and the beginnings of landscape painting.
The works of art of this period feature mainly religious themes (the Church was the main client of these artists), but also some purely figurative themes.
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Van Eyck: Ghent Altarpiece 1432
Jan van Eyck before c 1395 Maaseik (Limburg Belgium) – 1441 Bruges Famous painters Early Renaissance: |
3. RENAISSANCE and MANNERISM, European painting in the 16th century
From the 15th to the 16th centuries, Western European culture flourished, thanks in part to the astonishing achievements of such Renaissance artists as Da Vinci, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo, and Mannerist painters including El Greco, Pontormo, and Tintoretto.
In the painting of the Renaissance, Western art reached its absolute zenith. The new intellectual horizons opened up by the natural sciences and the great voyages of discovery, together with the religious tensions of the era and its political and social unrest -all were reflected in painting. The real and the ideal, the secular and the sacred, ecstatic absorption and coll scepticism flourished side by side. In Florence, the cradle of the Renaissance, artists pursued ancient classical ideals of harmony and naturalism, and in architecture, forms of perfection and grandeur.
It was Leonardo da Vinci who took the decisive step by abandoning the balance which had previously been maintained between colour and line, and choosing instead to modulate his contours by means of colour. Raphael and Michelangelo followed his example and created forms which would set the standards for the whole of Europe.
Mannerism, a phrase coined in the 20th-century, is what happened artistically during the ‘Late’ Renaissance (otherwise known as the years between Raphael’s death and the beginning of the Baroque phase in 1600). Mannerism also represents Renaissance art going out, as they say, not with a bang but, rather, a (relative) whimper.
The stunning volume follows these two key movements in art history, providing authoritative background from a top scholar, rich cultural context, and a wealth of exquisite reproductions of period paintings, sculptures, churches and palazzos.
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Michelangelo: The Creation of Adam 1508-1512
Michelangelo , 1475 Caprese (Tuscany) – 1564 Famous Renaissance and Mannerism painters: |
4. BAROQUE, the painting of the 17th century in Italy, France, England, Germany and Spain
The Baroque style began as somewhat of a continuation of the Renaissance. Later however, scholar of the time began to see the drastic differences between the two styles as the Renaissance style gave way to Baroque art.
The age of the Baroque, between absolutism and the Enlightenment, is acknowledged as the last all-European style. Long regarded as merely an eccentric offshoot of the Renaissance, Baroque present a complex and dynamic variety of forms and expression in stark contrast to the controlled moderation of Neoclassicism.
Baroque art crosses vast regional divides. It may seem confussing, for example, to label two such different artists as Rembrandt and Bernini as Baroque; yet despite differences, their work has certain Baroque elements in common, such as a preoccupation with the dramatic potential of light.
The Baroque artists were particularly focussed on natural forms, spaces, colors, lights, and the relationship between the obeserver and the literary or portrait subject in order to produce a strong, if muted, emotional experience.
Baroque art tends to focus on Saints, the Virgin Mary, and other well known Bible stories. Religious painting, history painting, allegories, and portraits were still considered the most noble subjects, but landscapes, still life, and genre scenes rapidly gained notoriety.
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[LEFT]Velázquez: The Needle Woman, ca. 1640
Diego Velázquez de silva, 1599 Seville -1660 [RIGHT]Murillo: A Girl and her Duenna, ca. 1670 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, 1617 Seville – 1682 Seville. Famous Baroque painters: |
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5. BAROQUE, in the Netherlands
The history of the present day Netherlands is rooted in its conflict with Spain in the 17th-century. Catolic Spain had controlled the Netherlands since 1555. Since the Dutch embraced the Protestant Reformation, their fight for freedom waged against Spain from 1568 to 1648 was religious as well as political. This defining era in their history also created an environment conducive to new modes of artistic production. Unlike their Flemish counterparts, the Calvinistic Dutch shunned artistic ornamentation in their churches, thus forcing artists to look outside the church for commissions and patronage.
Fortunately, a surge in economic prosperity through the banking, commerce, and shipping industries accompanied the Netherlands’ political and religious independence. The resulting growth of a wealthy middle class produced patrons able and eager to buy art for their homes and public buildings. Artists began to specialize in particular subject matter. such as biblical and historical scenes, still life, interior architectural scenes, landscapes, portraits, and scenes of everyday life (genre painting), some of which had hitherto see little or no development.
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Rembrandt: De Nachtwacht 1642.
Rembrandt van Rijn: 1606 Leiden – 1669 Amsterdam
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6. ROCOCO and NEOCLASSICISM, the painting in the 18th century
Rococo and Neoclassicism existed at the same time in Europe. They were in direct opposition to each other. The word Rococo comes from the French and refers to the delicate scroll of the seashell. The main characteristic of Rococo was its conspicuous ornamentation. Neoclassicism refers to a style of art based on the classic ideals of Greek and Roman art.
In Rococo, the sublimity of the Baroque gives way to a more relaxed style of almost whimsical ease. Sentiment and emotion prevail over reason. Yet the ‘fetes galantes’ and pastoral idyll, the sophisticated elegance and amorous trysts are often little more than theatrical settings, serenely elegiac dreams behind which there lurks an awareness of paradise lust.
The centres of Rococo painting were Paris, Venice and London. In stark contrast to Rococo stands the crisp, cool Neoclassicism of David, while in Spain Goya’s work plums the very depths of human existence, heralding the dawn of a new era.
Rococo emphasized prettiness and pleasentness. It mirrored the life of the French upper class before the revolution. The most important characteristic of Rococo is decoration. It embraces design that is asymmetrical and based on irregular lines, curves, counter curves and light rhythms.
Neo Classicism. The French Academy was founded in the 17th century to serve as a guardian and purifier of French intellectual life. In the visual arts the Academy controlled art, education and exhibitions. The Academy set the ‘official’ standards’ for taste and style. In protest against the superficiality of the Rococo era the Academy sponsored a return to the classic ideals based on Greek and Roman models. French public opinion endorsed this view at the time the French Revolution when anything that reminded them of the court was rejected.
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Goya: The Nude Maja. ca 1800-05
Goya (y lucientes), Francisco (José) de: 1746 Fuendetodos – 1828 Bordeaux
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7. ROMANTICISM AND REALISM, paintings in the 19th century
In the 19th century, for the first time, it was bourgeoisie who determined the content and form of art throughout Europe.
Major works by the French artists Géricault, Delacroix and Courbet were no longer dedicated to the glory of religious and secular power, but to heroic renderings of the nation and its people, workers, peasants and even artists.
Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement in the history of ideas that originated in late 18th century Western Europe. It stressed strong emotion-which now might include trepidation, awe and horror as esthetic experiences- the individual imagination as a critical authority, which permitted freedom within or even from classical notions of form in art, and overturning of previous social conventions, particularly the position of the aristocracy.
Romanticism is also noted for its elevation of the achievements of what it perceived as heroic individuals and artists. It followed the Enlightenment period and was in part inspired by a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms from the previous period, as well as seeing itself as the fulfillment of the promise of that age.
Realism is commonly defined as a concern for fact or reality and rejection of the impractical and visionary. However, the term is used, with varying meanings, in several of the liberal arts; particularly painting, literature, and philosophy. It is also used in international reactions. Realism is everyday people, doing everyday things in everyday life.
Realism began as a reaction to Romanticism, in which subjects were treated idealistically. Realist tended to discard theatrical drama and classical forms of art to depict commonplace or ‘realistic themes’.
| [ROMANTICISM] Turner: The Blue Rigi, 1842 | [REALISM] Courbet: The Calm Sea, 1869 | |
| Joseph Mallord William Turner: 1775 London – 1851 | Gustave Courbet: 1819 Ornans – 1877 La-Tour-de-Peilz (Swiss) | |
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Famous Romanticism and Realism painters: |
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8. IMPRESSIONISM, ART NOUVEAU and JUGENSTIL, painting from 1860 to 1910
Impressionism has hold a vast impact on the world as it evoked the first artistic revolution since the Renaissance and enabled people to see their world with new eyes. the movement itself began in 1867 when a group of artists started painting in a style which rebelled against the traditional French academic style of painting and the drama of Romanticism.
Impressionism is a modern 19th century painting style one which interprets the effects of light on colour in the open air and captures a moment in time which its short brush strokes. This new found style was received unfavourably at first; however, its popularity soon grew across the world and is widely accepted today.
The very fact that so many different terms are associated with the period-Salon painting, Impressionism, Pointillism, Historicism, Pre-Raphaelites, Jugenstil, Art Nouveau and Belle Epoque- bears witness to the sheer variety of artistic movements.
Art Nouveau (or “New Art”) is a multi-disciplinary art movement encompassing art, architecture, and design originating in Paris and Vienna in the late 19th, early 20th centuries, but which quickly became an international art movement.
Art noveau is characterized by the use of flowing and undulating curves and floral- and plant-inspired forms.
Art noveau had many other names in various countries: Jugenstil (Germany, Stile Liberty (Italy), Modernista (Spain) and Sezessionstil (Austria).
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Monet: Camille Monet and Child in the Artist’s Garden in Argenteuill, 1875
Claude Monet, 1840 Paris – 1925 Giverny (near Paris) Famous Impressionism, Art Nouveau and Jugenstil painters: |
9. CLASSICAL MODERNISM, painting in the first half of the 20th century
Modernism has philosophical antecedents that can be traced to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment but is rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.
Many modernists believed that by rejecting tradition they could dsicover radically new ways of making art. The Classical Modernism evolved within the atmosphere of tension generated by the dichotomy between figurative and non-figurative art, realistic portrayal and abstraction. Changing perceptions of society brought in their wake new perceptions of form, space, light, time and movement.
Abstract artists, taking their examples from the Impressionists, as well as Paul Cézanne and Edvard Much, began with the assumption that color and shape formed the essential characteristics of art, not the depiction of the natural world. Wassily Kadinsky, Piet Mondriaan, and Kazimir Malevich all believed in redefining art as the arrangement of pure color.
Artists such as Gustav Klimt, Picasso, Matisse, Mondriaan, and the movements Les Fauves, Cubism and the Surrealists represent various strains of Modernism in the visual arts.
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[LEFT] Piet Mondriaan, 1872 Amersfoort – 1944 New York
[RIGHT] Pablo Picasso, 1881 Málaga-1973 Mougins, Friendship 1908 Famous Classical Modernism painters: Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Modigliani, Kadinsky, Chagall, Mondriaan, Klee, |
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10. CONTEMPORARY PAINTING, new movements in painting since 1945
Contemporary paintings are produced after the Second World War up to the present times.Contemporary painting is also called modern paintings. It is of exquisite style and represents modern art.
Contemporary painting reveals new techniques, new materials, new pictorial forms emerging in parallel or in sequence. It spans a range from abstraction to realism, from purist stylizations to the monumentalization of trivia, from tongue-in-cheeck revelations of subculture to sober and even visionary presentations of political or personal traum.
In the USA, Pollock and de Kooning developed free abstraction to its zenith. Their abstract expressionism has its lyrical counterpart in European informel or Tachisme.
Two mainstreams in contemporary painting are:
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The CoBrA group. The CoBrA artist came from Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands, and the first letters of the capital cities of these countries were used to form the group’s name.
They saw more originality and vitality in the pictures by children and the mentally ill than in classic canon of art history and accordingly, they called for a break with all aesthetic norms in total liberation of thought. |
Karel Appel, 1921 Amsterdam – 2006 Zurich Famous Contemporary painters: |
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Pop Art. Pop Art is a term coined by the critic Lawrence Alloway (1926-1990.)
In the 60s’, the American variant of Pop Art achieved a degree of popularity unparalleds by any previous art movement. Pop Art derived its inspiration and motifs from the world of mass consumer society, industrial mass production, the consumer -oriented and taste- defining influences of advertising and the media. Andy Warholl (1928-1978) who was the most famous representative of Pop Art, staged spectacular public appearances along the lines of advertising campaigns, thereby creating a true symbiosis of personality and work. Andy Warhol, Shot Blue Marilyn, 1964 Andy Warhol (Andrej Warhola) 1928 Pittsburgh – 1987 New York |