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Period: 30,000 BCE to 2500 BCE
Stone Age
Cave painting, fertility goddesses, megalithic structures. Famous works:
Lascaux Cave Painting, Woman of Willendorf, Stonehenge -
Period: 3500 BCE to 539 BCE
Mesopotamian
Warrior art and narration in stone relief. Famous works:
Standard of Ur, Gate of Ishtar, Stele of Hammurabi’s Code. -
Period: 3100 BCE to 30 BCE
Egyptian
Art with an afterlife focus: pyramids and tomb painting. Famous works:
Imhotep, Step Pyramid, Great Pyramids, Bust of Nefertiti. -
Period: 850 BCE to 31 BCE
Greek and Hellenistic
Greek idealism: balance, perfect proportions; architectural
orders(Doric, Ionic, Corinthian). Famous works:
Parthenon, Myron, Phidias, Polykleitos, Praxiteles -
Period: 653 BCE to
Indian, Chinese, and Japanese
Serene, meditative art, and Arts of the Floating World. Famous works:
Gu Kaizhi, Li Cheng, Guo Xi, Hokusai, Hiroshige -
Period: 500 BCE to 476
Roman
Roman realism: practical and down to earth; the arch. Famous works:
Augustus of Primaporta, Colosseum, Trajan’s Column,
Pantheon. -
Period: 476 to 1453
Byzantine and Islamic
Heavenly Byzantine mosaics; Islamic architecture and amazing
maze-like design. Famous works:
Hagia Sophia, Andrei Rublev, Mosque of Córdoba, the
Alhambra -
Period: 500 to 1400
Middle Ages
Celtic art, Carolingian Renaissance, Romanesque, Gothic Famous works:
St. Sernin, Durham Cathedral, Notre Dame, Chartres, Cimabue,
Duccio, Giotto -
Period: 1400 to 1550
Early and High Renaissance
Rebirth of classical culture Famous works:
Ghiberti’s Doors, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Botticelli,
Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael -
Period: 1430 to 1550
Venetian and Northern Renaissance
The Renaissance spreads north- ward to France, the Low
Countries, Poland, Germany, and England Famous works:
Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Dürer, Bruegel, Bosch, Jan van
Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden -
Period: 1527 to 1580
Mannerism
Art that breaks the rules; artifice over nature Famous works:
Tintoretto, El Greco, Pontormo, Bronzino, Cellini -
Period: to
Baroque
Splendor and flourish for God; art as a weapon in the religious
wars Famous works:
Reubens, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Palace of Versailles -
Period: to
Neoclassical
Art that recaptures Greco-Roman grace and grandeur Famous works:
David, Ingres, Greuze, Canova -
Period: to
Romanticism
The triumph of imagination and individuality Famous works:
Caspar Friedrich, Gericault, Delacroix, Turner, Benjamin
West -
Period: to
Realism
Celebrating working class and peasants; en plein air
rustic painting Famous works;
Corot, Courbet, Daumier, Millet -
Period: to
Impressionism
Capturing fleeting effects of natural light Famous works:
Monet, Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, Cassatt, Morisot, Degas -
Period: to
Post-Impressionism
A soft revolt against Impressionism Famous works:
Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Seurat -
Period: to
Fauvism and Expressionism
Harsh colors and flat surfaces (Fauvism); emotion distorting
form Famous work;
Matisse, Kirchner, Kandinsky, Marc -
Period: to
Cubism, Futurism, Supremativism, Constructivism, De Stijl
Pre– and Post–World War 1 art experiments: new
forms to express modern life Famous works:
Picasso, Braque, Leger, Boccioni, Severini, Malevich -
Period: to
Dada and Surrealism
Ridiculous art; painting dreams and exploring the
unconscious Famous works:
Duchamp, Dalí, Ernst, Magritte, de Chirico, Kahlo -
Period: to
Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art
Post–World War II: pure abstraction and expression
without form; popular art absorbs consumerism Famous work:
Gorky, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Warhol, Lichtenstein -
Period: to
Postmodernism and Deconstructivism
Art without a center and reworking and mixing past styles Famous works:
Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman, Anselm Kiefer, Frank Gehry,
Zaha Hadid