Art History by Vania Czumak

Paleolithic Cave Art

30,000 BCE

Paleolithic cave art was found in European caves and dates as far back as the Ice Age. It was roughly 40,000 to 14,000 years ago. Pictured here is the Lascaux cave art.

Mesolithic Art

10,000 BCE

Mesolithic Art refers to all art that was made during the period of time between the end of the Paleolithic Ice Age and the beginning of farming.

Neolithic Art

8000 BCE

Neolithic art was created by societies who had abandoned the semi-nomadic lifestyle of hunting and gathering food in favor of farming and animal husbandry

Early Dynasty Egyptian Art

3500 BCE

The value of balance expressed as symmetry.

Sumerian Art

3000 BCE

Made by Sumerian people who lived in now Southern Iraq. Sumerian Art is about the relationship between people, Gods, plants and animals.

Minoan Art

2800 BCE

"Produced by the Minoan civilization. The largest collection of Minoan art is in the museum at Heraklion.
Since wood and textiles have decomposed, the best-preserved (and most instructive) surviving examples of Minoan art are its pottery, palace architecture (with frescos which include landscapes), stone carvings and intricately-carved seal stones". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_art

Middle Kingdom Egyptian Art

2133 BCE

"The cultural principles set out at the beginning of Egyptian civilization and codified during the Old Kingdom were reimagined, including the ideology of kingship, the organization of society, religious practices, afterlife beliefs, and relations with neighboring peoples. These transformations are attested to in architecture, sculpture, painting, relief decoration, stelae, jewelry, personal possessions, and literature". https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/mking/hd_mking.htm

Babylonian Art

1900 BCE

"Artists in ancient Babylon used materials around them to make art. They carved massive stele out of stone and created baked clay tablets and tiny cylinder seals. Many of these art objects included writing in cuneiform, and they often served religious or official purposes" https://study.com/academy/lesson/ancient-babylonian-art.html

Phoenecian Art

1500 BCE

Best known for their work on small decorative objects, Phoenician artists skillfully blended influences from neighboring cultures to produce a unique artistic heritage that has only relatively recently been brought out of the shadow of a wider Syrian art history.

Assyrian Art

900 BCE

"The characteristic Assyrian art form was the polychrome carved stone relief that decorated imperial monuments. The precisely delineated reliefs concern royal affairs, chiefly hunting and war making." https://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/arts/visual/europe-pre-1599/assyrian-art

Luristan Art

700 BCE

"They represent the art of a nomadic or transhumant people, for whom all possessions needed to be light and portable, and necessary objects such as weapons, finials (perhaps for tent-poles), horse-harness fittings, pins, cups and small fittings are highly decorated over their small surface area". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luristan_bronze

Archaic Art

700 BCE

"Archaic period, in history and archaeology, the earliest phases of a culture; the term is most frequently used by art historians to denote the period of artistic development in Greece from about 650 to 480 bc, the date of the Persian sack of Athens. Archaic period."https://www.britannica.com/art/Archaic-period

Early Iron Age Art (Etruscan)

675 BCE

Iron Age Art (c.1100-200 BCE) History, Characteristics. ... It witnessed the widespread use of iron and iron tools, resulting in greater prosperity and a huge upsurge in metalwork, especially around the eastern Mediterranean.

Classical Art (Greek)

480 BCE

Ancient Greek art has as main characteristic have a high aesthetic idealism, is not a natural and direct reality representation, but an idyllic and perfect vision of the artistic mind instead, that is perceived and depicted by them in their different artwork platforms

Macedonia Dynasty Egypt

332 BCE

The period of Byzantine art, during the reign of Macedonian dynasty.

Helenistic Art (Greek)

323 BCE

"Hellenistic art is the art of the Hellenistic period generally taken to begin with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and end with the conquest of the Greek world by the Romans, a process well underway by 146 BCE, when the Greek mainland was taken, and essentially ending in 30 BCE with the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt following the Battle of Actium" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_art

Qin dynasty (China)

221 BCE

"Although shortlived, the Qin Dynasty will always be celebrated in Chinese art for at least one achievement - its role in creating the multi-figure terracotta sculpture known as The Terracotta Army, an extraordinary set of military warriors designed to protect the Qin emperor in the afterlife". http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/east-asian-art/qin-dynasty.htm

Early Roman Empire Art

27 BCE

"Ancient Roman art is a very broad topic, spanning almost 1,000 years and three continents, from Europe into Africa and Asia. The first Roman art can be dated back to 509 B.C.E., with the legendary founding of the Roman Republic, and lasted until 330 C.E. (or much longer, if you include Byzantine art). Roman art also encompasses a broad spectrum of media including marble, painting, mosaic, gems, silver and bronze work, and terracottas, just to name a few." (Kahn Academy)

Yayoi (Japan)

200

"The Yayoi period (弥生時代 Yayoi jidai), dated 1,000 BC – 300 AD, started at the beginning of the Neolithic in Japan, continued through the Bronze Age, and towards its end crossing into the Iron Age" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_period

Three Kingdoms Period (China)

220

Started with the end of the Han dynasty. From 220-280 AD.

Late Roman Empire Art

235

Roman art refers to the visual arts made in Ancient Rome and in the territories of the Roman Empire. Roman art includes architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work. Luxury objects in metal-work, gem engraving, ivory carvings, and glass are sometimes considered in modern terms to be minor forms of Roman art,

Gupta period (Indian Subcontinent)

320

"Art of Gupta era : golden age of India. ... A typical Gupta structure are chaitya halls and viharas for Buddhist monks in the form of a monastery. The painted murals in the interiors of these caves are now world famous. Stone figures, terracotta reliefs have also been created during the Gupta period". https://deccanviews.wordpress.com/2017/05/23/art-of-gupta-era-golden-age-of-india/

Early Style Celtic Art

450

Difficult to define but comes from the people known as Celts who spoke the Celtic language in Europe

Mayan (Mexico)

800

Ancient Maya art refers to the material arts of the Maya civilization, an eastern and south-eastern Mesoamerican culture that took shape in the course of the later Preclassic Period (500 BCE to 200 CE).https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Maya_art

Aksum (Africa)

1000

"Aksum was a wealthy African trading empire from the first through the eighth centuries. A hub between the Hellenic, Arabic, and African worlds, it encompassed the northeastern highland regions of present-day Ethiopia and Eritrea, and extended as far east as Southern Arabia during its height". https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aksu_3/hd_aksu_3.htm

Mideival Art

1200

The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000 years of art in Europe, and at times the Middle East and North Africa. It includes major art movements and periods, national and regional art, genres, revivals, the artists' crafts, and the artists themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_art

Renaissance

1400

Renaissance art is the painting, sculpture and decorative arts of the period of European history, emerging as a distinct style in Italy in about 1400, in parallel with developments which occurred in philosophy, literature, music, science and technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_art

Venecian

1600

The Bellinis and their peers developed a particularly Venetian style of painting characterized by deep, rich colors, an emphasis on patterns and surfaces, and a strong interest in the effects of light.

Baroque

1700

"The Baroque style is characterized by exaggerated motion and clear detail used to produce drama, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, dance, and music. Baroque iconography was direct, obvious, and dramatic, intending to appeal above all to the senses and the emotions". https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-arthistory/chapter/the-baroque-period/

English Figurative Painting

1850

Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork (particularly paintings and sculptures) that is clearly derived from real object sources and so is, by definition, representational. The term is often in contrast to abstract art:

Realism

1860

Realism, sometimes called naturalism, in the arts is generally the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, or implausible, exotic, and supernatural elements

Symbolism

1900

Symbolism is the practice or art of using an object or a word to represent an abstract idea. An action, person, place, word, or object can all have a symbolic meaning.

Abstract Art

1909

Abstract art is art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead use shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effect.

Neo-plasticism

1920

Neo-plasticism is a term adopted by the Dutch pioneer of abstract art, Piet Mondrian, for his own type of abstract painting which used only horizontal and vertical lines and primary colours

Magic Realism

1925

a literary or artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of dream or fantasy.

Art Deco

1936

"Art Deco, sometimes referred to as Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture and design that first appeared in France just before World War I. Art Deco influenced the design of buildings, furniture, jewelry, fashion, cars, movie theatres, trains, ocean liners, and everyday objects such as radios and vacuum cleaners" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco

Abstract expressionism

1950

Abstract expressionism is the term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning in the 1940s and 1950s. It is noted by gestural brushis -strokes or mark-making, and the impression of spontaneity.

Postmodernist Art

1970

"Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art

Contemporary Art

2000

Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic combination of materials, methods, concepts, and subjects.