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Period: 50,000 BCE to 8000 BCE
Paleolithic
The art and culture from this period were the work of the homo sapiens, who hunted using sticks and stone weapons. People on this era were nomads and lived in communities. The objects found from this age were mostly for useful purposes, like weapons such as daggers, harpoons and blowguns: in that way, art was a concept that was not grasped yet . -
15,000 BCE
Manifestations of art
in the Lascaux Caves, in France, for example, where some paintings of animals, humans and signs can be found -
Period: 10,000 BCE to 4000 BCE
Archaic Era
Archaic Era is usually referred to the time in every culture in which they started leaving their nomadic ways and begin to being sedentary. This is attributed to the end of the Ice Age and, by that, the disappearance of big animals, such as the mammoth. The Archaic period is an interesting time of improving environmental conditions, resulting in a rich environment for humans to live in. Native American populations increased at least five-fold over Paleoindian times. -
Period: 8000 BCE to 4000 BCE
Mesolithic
Mesolithic era was not a very important for the evolution of art. It is considered to be like a bridge between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The most significant aspects on this period were the ending of the Ice Age and the development of agriculture and fishing as important activities. -
4000 BCE
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is well known for creating the firsts monumental temples, irrigation systems, governments based on the city-states structure and the cuneiform writing system -
4000 BCE
HInduism
Dharma: The meaning of this word is “natural word”, meaning the natural order of the things. Is there something that organize and order all of the things. Artha means “wealth” or “property”. It refers to the search of having material things. Kama was the god of love in the Indian mythology. This word refers to the emotions that we feel on Earth, making us attached to this life. Moksha: the definition of this word is “freedom” -
Period: 4000 BCE to 2000 BCE
Neolithic
The art expression on this time was strongly influenced by the changes in the social organization: people started settling down and the architecture began to be an important mean of expression. Big stones were arranged in certain shapes because of religious beliefs; these rocks are referred as megaliths. There are megaliths in Spain, Italy, Ireland and Britain, among other places. -
3200 BCE
Ancient Egypt
In Africa appeared one of the greatest civilizations of all time: Egypt. Settled near the Nile (meaning “river”) river, Egyptians made a lot of contributions to art and society, the pyramids, the mummifications process, the Sphinx and their temples -
Period: 2500 BCE to 250
Preclassic era
Complex religious system, Textile and fabrics production, the trade and commerce emerged, produciton of pottery, created villages then turned into towns, agriculture settled. -
550 BCE
Persian
The columns from Persians were modelled after Greek columns, according to Essential Humanities. In a capital (the superior part of a column) from a Hall of the palace of King Artaxerxes, you can observe a lot of the motifs from the Persians, this is often called Persian animal capital. A Persian sculpture is located in the Shapur cave, where it was the city of Bishapur, which is now in ruins. In this place there is the statue of a king Shapur I, It is called a colossal statue because is huge -
500 BCE
Greece
Greeks thought that their temples were the places in where gods lived. As you know, for the literature and the stories from the periods, the Greek gods look like human beings. The Acropolis of Athens, in which the Parthenon is standing, is on a hill that rises above 500 feet. One of the most representative things about the Greek architecture were the different columns style. -
247 BCE
First china dyansty and the beginning of taoism
When the army of Qin Shi Huang conquered six other kingdoms (Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao and Wei), the Qin dynasty was considered as the first dynasty with an emperor (Qin himself). This dynasty lasted from 247 to 210 BC. After the Qin dynasty, the modern period of the Chinese civilization started with the Han dynasty. Taoism, the philosophical and religious system that intended to create peace with the “Tao", made a huge influence in the way of Chinese government -
27 BCE
Rome
One of the most influential civilization, for the Roman Empire, was Greece. Art had local styles, but it was influenced by the Greeks. Created counterparts for their gods, copying the Greek pantheon and iconography. Roman art was commemorative, realistic, narrative and history-based. Romans tried to preserve the specific features of their subjects in the portraits. -
1 CE
Early christianism
Jesus of Nazareth lived 33 years, Jesus, according to the Christian tradition, is the son of God that came to the Earth to save all the people from their sins. Jesus is attributed with a lot of miracles, including turning water into wine, walking over the water, healing sick people and coming back from the death. the last supper that he had with his disciples, in which he announced he was going to be betrayed; his crying in the garden of Gethsemane before his execution, and the Crucifixion. -
Period: 250 to 1000
Classic Era
Population density increased, ceremonial centers emerged, new agricultural techniques, development of various arts, new social, economical, political and religious structures created. -
667
Byzantine
One of the characteristics of Byzantine art was that the way in which constructions were made in a way they served the purpose of adoring their god. Like the basilicas, the architecture and mosaics in the Byzantin art also give a message. a way of making a difference between the Early Christian and the Byzantine art is considering that the first one appeals more to realism and the latter is more spiritual in the terms of what it transmits and symbolizes. -
Period: 1150 to 1450
Gothic
Ribbed Vaults
Piers
Flying Buttresses
Pointed Arches
Stained-Glass Windows -
Period: 1400 to
Renaissaince
Anthropocentrism, naturalism, perspective and individualism. A characteristic of architecture was the preoccupation of how to build churches. They believed that the circle was the perfect form. For painting they used new themes, materials and techniques, perspective and a vanishing point. Sculpture: Use of different materials like bronze and marble. Different themes were addressed; not only religious, but also mythological and profane. Medieval themes were represented in an allegorical way. -
Period: 1492 to
New Spain and its cultural shock
Identity is frequently related to geographical location and a specific sense of place, a place which may be characterized by a distinctive climate, and particular geographical, cultural, linguistic, architectural, social, and other characteristics. Notions of identity also rely on memory -of a shared past, a particular place- and the creation, and retention, of a coherent symbolic repertoire of signs -
Period: 1500 to
Barroque
It reacts against the Renaissance. The images depicted are direct and obvious (there are less space for allegories or metaphors, although sometimes allegories are used, Everything is exaggerated and with a lot of ornamentation. The characters portrayed seem to be like in the middle of an action: usually, images transmit a sense of movement. The viewer is invited to participate in the scene.Sometimes characters are looking directly to the spectator. The emotions portrayed are intense. -
Barroque in America
Its peak was in the XVII century, when the conquest of Spain was already settled and people could focus on art and culture.
Architecture, painting, music, and literature were the most important art.Other minors or not so popular arts, like ceramic and silverware, also flourish in those times.There was an abandonment of the Greek and Latin influence in the buildings. Religious artworks, with ecclesiastic tones, were the ones that prevalence in the paintings.
Music was also created for the Church. -
Period: to
Romanticism
The romantic French artists created a new subjectivity in which one can tell or even “feel” what the character is feeling. Their emotions would be very intense and sometimes exaggerated. In painting, German many of the themes relate to humans looking landscapes and feeling inferior.Man can’t dominate the nature.There was a man in England. He was great in literature and painting. He mix two arts in some of his works. For example, he illustrated The Bible and the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. -
Neoclassicism in America
Neoclassicism tried to return to the classic forms of the Greeks and Latins, with a relaxed sense of order and proportion, instead of the exaggerated ways of Baroque. the School of Engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. This place is a masterpiece of Latin American neoclassicism and a majestic monument of elegant forms and exact proportions where light, space and functionality merge, is one of the most outstanding constructions within Mexican architecture -
Neoclassicism
The Neoclassicism period lasted from the late eighteenth century until the early nineteenth century. Paris and Rome were the capital cities of art in Europe. The French Revolution, with its values of freedom, equality and fraternity, needed to express its struggle through art. It found in the neoclassicism a perfect style to do it. The Neoclassicism was also a very intellectual period: during this time, one of the most ambitious projects in human knowledge was created. -
Period: to
Realism
The most important country to embrace Realism was France. In painting, artists would try to recreate reality in the most objective possible way. The Pre-Raphaelites, sometimes called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They took that name because of their philosophy on paintings: they tried to achieve what the painters before Raphael were doing, in England. Some of the most representative painters from that period are Eduardo Rosales or Francisco Pradilla Ortiz -
Cubism
Picasso and Braque invented specific shapes and characteristic details that would represent the whole object or person”. Figures, as we normally see them, are going to be dissolved into geometrical shapes, so, for example, a head can have the shape of a square or a series of circles overlapped. -
Surrealism
The elements of the painting are depicted in a magical way or like if the painting was a dream: illogical in our way of perception but logical in a dream.
Rationality had no place in Surrealism.
In literature, Surrealism created “automatic writing”, in which authors wrote words without thinking about them, liberating the conscience of the chains of logic and grammatical structure.
André Bretton wrote the Surrealist Manifesto in which he talked about the aims of the surrealism movement -
Fauvism
The most representative artists in this movement were Raoul Dufy (1877-1953), André Derain (1880-1954) and especially Henri Matisse (1869-1954). In their paintings, you can look the intense use of color, predominating sometimes over the draw and the lines. Paintings look very simple but show the capacity of the artist to generate emotions in the viewer. -
Abstract expressionism
The figurative is forgotten: now the art is more about the expression of the artist than about the creation of a pure and clean piece of work.
Artists, in general, were disappointed about the world and their attitude was pessimistic. Authors like albert camus would create a literature in which characters show indifference through the things that happen in life..
The colors and lines are very expressive: it is not a story or a moment that is told, but a process of the artist. -
Pop art
The procedures to create art are not unique anymore: the products are created in series, destroying the idea that the work of art is an original piece that must be preserved in museums. In Pop Art must of times there is no original work.
The themes are very simplified, works are colorful in order to catch the attention of the viewer. This kind of strategy is based in those made by publicity.
Formats are big and colors are limited. -
MInimalism
is a movement that reduces the elements of art to its base, normally in a geometrical way like a cube or a pyramid. The appearance of the paintings and sculptures are very clear and simple, making it an easily recognizable form of art. Some of the characteristics of this movement