Art historians understand that art is more than just a record of past culture; rather, it actively encodes ideas about power and propaganda, race and gender relations, cross-cultural contact, discrimination and resilience. Art provides us with a powerful means of visual communicating ideas visually.
So-called A-Level History of Art courses are far too often neglected in schools; according to JCQ data from 2014, only 17 state schools and 15 sixth form colleges offered A-level history of art as an academic course offering.
The Renaissance
Art history isn’t simply about studying paintings from the 15th century; it’s also about understanding our world today. From great European paintings to spectacular African masks and modern gold jewelry pieces, art history teaches us about cultures, traditions, and forces that shape our lives.
Renaissance art saw numerous developments. Leonardo da Vinci perfected aspects of painting (such as lighting, linear and atmospheric perspective, foreshortening and foreshortening) which had preoccupied his early Renaissance predecessors, while also pioneering new ones (such as dissecting cadavers to better understand human anatomy) which continued to influence 19th and 20th-century painters. Giorgio Vasari produced the first true history of art with Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects which highlighted art’s progression – something which became vitally important later on for future art historians.
The Baroque
After the Counter-Reformation, Catholic churches realized that one effective way to motivate followers of Protestantism to switch religions was by stirring people’s passions through art. Baroque style used drama, sensuality and movement to inspire intense emotional responses among its viewers compared to Renaissance art which featured simple forms.
Peter Paul Rubens brought the lively energy and sensuality of Baroque painting to religious, classical, and historical subjects; similarly, Gian Lorenzo Bernini used light-dark contrasts in his pieces to tell a narrative story.
Baroque art blurred the boundaries between painting, sculpture and architecture; using real or implied movement, bold realism and depth and dramatic lighting for its works. This art would eventually influence music and theater performances across Europe before evolving into more refined rocaille or Rococo styles that became increasingly popular until mid to late eighteenth century France and central Europe.
The Enlightenment
Your donations make art history more accessible! Throughout the Enlightenment era, art began exploring subject matter that resonated more directly with middle class audiences and moved away from Baroque-era scenes characterized by elaborate scenes and extravagant goldwork.
Romanticism was an art period that celebrated nature, individualism, and intuition; its creation was in response to dissatisfaction with Neoclassical movement and Industrial Revolution.
The Enlightenment was a period that heralded a shift toward science, inspiring a surge in both art and music during an era of change that resulted in grand, triumphant pieces. The period saw an awakening in humankind’s natural behavior which could be directly expressed through paint or sheet music – creating art with great impact that resonated across continents and generations.
The Romanticism
Romantics used various techniques to express their emotional imagery. For instance, Theodore Gericault painted his terrifying depiction of The Raft of Medusa using intense lighting and strong contrasts between line and shadow.
Romantic artists were drawn to subjects which challenged the traditional historical and mythological subject matter found in conventional figurative art, including death scenes or people fleeing war. Romantics weren’t afraid to depict raw realities – like those from nature that can often go overlooked when creating traditional representational paintings – by showing life unvarnished, such as suffering or flight from conflicts.
Romanticism borrowed heavily from Neoclassicism’s mathematical and rationalist elements of classical art but added dramatic flourishes that revitalized its “feel.” This movement later evolved into Realism due to journalism’s growing importance and interest in accurately portraying everyday life.
The Impressionism
Impressionist artists disproved traditional artistic conventions with their bold brushstrokes and quick compositions, portraying fleeting optical sensations such as sunlight glinting off water or raindrops pelting a tree; or an out-of-focus train passing by.
They exhibited their works independently from official annual Salon competitions and established themselves as a collective group, taking their name from Claude Monet’s painting “Impression, Sunrise”.
Monet, August Renoir, Edgar Degas and Berthe Morisot all pooled their resources in 1874 for a collective exhibition that showcased their work collectively. Although their styles differed considerably, each Impressionist shared an aesthetic intent of depicting fleeting moments of modern life through representational work. Influenced not just visually by these artists but also music (notably that of Claude Debussy) and literary prose (such as Emile Zola’s descriptive writing), these artists laid the foundation for modernism itself.
The Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism was like the cool older sibling who came along and revolutionized everything. It extended Impressionists’ use of bold colors while pushing beyond their limitations with new techniques, with artists like Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin pioneering new ways of depicting emotion through color and form while exploring deeper meanings like church steeples or Breton Women in the Meadow.
Post-Impressionism took the philosophy of Impressionism and turned it inward towards artists themselves, asking whether art should reflect external reality or depict them instead. They explored more abstract styles and brushwork which later influenced Fauvist, Cubist and Expressionist movements.
The Cubism
At approximately 1910-1912, artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque began to experiment with Cubism. By using multiple vantage points and geometric fracturing of forms to rethink how painting depicted space. Instead of modeling figures as Renaissance tradition dictated, they showed them instead as dynamic arrangements of planes arranged dynamically into planes that combined background and foreground into one cohesive scene.
Understanding this movement, its influences, and how it evolved is of vital importance for students of art history.
The Surrealism
Surrealism was born out of World War I’s horrors and was one of the first art movements to integrate politics with art-making. Surrealists like Andre Breton took inspiration from Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud’s political theories and psychological insight respectively, while also exploring automatic writing techniques which surfaced images from their subconscious minds.
Artists such as Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte created surrealist works with dreamlike scenes that conjured uncanny aspects of reality. Non-Europeans could explore symbolic traditions within their cultures with ease, like Wifredo Lam who included elements of Surrealism into his depictions of Afro-Cuban ritual Santeria.
Art history helps individuals gain a deeper appreciation for art that dates back centuries. This can be accomplished via an object-oriented approach which emphasizes color, line, shape and texture; biographical perspectives which examine an artist’s life and influences; or iconographic examination which looks for recognisable symbols present in pieces of artwork.
The Abstract Expressionism
Abstract Expressionism (AbEx) has never been an ideal term, encompassing both action painters like Pollock and de Kooning as well as color field painters like Rothko. But these artists shared a commitment to art as self-expression that conveyed emotions through new visual languages on monumental scales.
Their breakthroughs were inspired by Surrealism’s legacy, which encouraged artists to explore their unconscious and tap into archetypes and symbols. Furthermore, they found inspiration from European avant-garde artists fleeing Nazi Germany such as Arshile Gorky with gestural brush strokes painting biomorphic shapes while Hans Hofmann employed dynamic abstract painting creating the impression of spontaneity to achieve spontaneity-inducing paintings that allowed for greater freedom within art versus being limited by tradition; both artists wanted to unleash their imaginations while unleashing art’s power!
The Pop Art
Pop art emerged between the 1950s and 1970s, with most prominent examples emerging in Britain and America. Pop artists explored popular media imagery and commercial culture such as soup cans, road signs, celebrity photos and brand name logos as inspiration for their works.
These artists favored realism, everyday imagery and heavy doses of irony or satire over Abstract Expressionism’s emphasis on personal symbolism and painterly looseness.
Andy Warhol’s iconic, larger-than-life portraits of celebrities and mass-produced goods became iconic examples of this style, while other pop artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, and James Rosenquist used techniques such as silkscreening to downplay the idea that paintings were handcrafted – they also promoted post-World War II manufacturing and media boom through depictions of modern consumer goods.