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ANCIENT & CLASSICAL ART
KEY DATES: 15000 BC / 400 BC-200AD / 350 AD-450AD

Ancient - There are few remaining examples with early art often favouring drawing over colour. Work has been found recently in tombs, Egyptian frescoes, pottery and metalwork.
Classical - Relating to or from ancient Roman or Greek architecture and art. Mainly concerned with geometry and symmetry rather than individual expression.

Byzantine - A religious art characterised by large domes, rounded arches and mosaics from the eastern Roman Empire in the 4th Century.

MEDIEVAL & GOTHIC
KEY DATES: 400AD

Medieval - A highly religious art beginning in the 5th Century in Western Europe. It was characterised by iconographic paintings illustrating scenes from the bible.
Gothic - This style prevailed between the 12th century and the 16th century in Europe. Mainly an architectural movement, Gothic was characterised by its detailed ornamentation most
noticeably the pointed archways and elaborate rib vaulting.
First developed in France, Gothic was intended as a solution to the inadequacies of Romanesque architecture. It allowed for cathedrals to be built with thinner walls and it became
possible to introduce stained glass windows instead of traditional mosaic decorations. Some of the finest examples of the style include the cathedrals of Chartres, Reims and Amiens. The
term was also used to describe sculpture and painting that demonstrated a greater degree of naturalism.
ART
MOVEMENTS

* RENAISSANCE *
     KEY DATES: 1300s

This movement began in Italy in the 14th century and the term, literally meaning rebirth, describes the revival of interest in the artistic achievements of the Classical world. Initially in a
literary revival Renaissance was determined to move away from the religion-dominated Middle Ages and to turn its attention to the plight of the individual man in society. It was a time
when individual expression and worldly experience became two of the main themes of Renaissance art.  
The movement owed a lot to the increasing sophistication of society, characterised by political stability, economic growth and cosmopolitanism. Education blossomed at this time, with
libraries and academies allowing more thorough research to be conducted into the culture of the antique world.
In addition, the arts benefited from the patronage of such influential groups as the Medici family of Florence, the Sforza family of Milan and Popes Julius II and Leo X. The works of
Petrarch first displayed the new interest in the intellectual values of the Classical world in the early 14th century and the romance of this era as rediscovered in the Renaissance period
can be seen expressed by Boccaccio.
Leonardo da Vinci was the archetypal Renaissance man representing the humanistic values of the period in his art, science and writing. Michelangelo and Raphael were also vital figures
in this movement, producing works regarded for centuries as embodying the classical notion of perfection. Renaissance architects included Alberti, Brunelleschi and Bramante.
Many of these artists came from Florence and it remained an important centre for the Renaissance into the 16th century eventually to be overtaken by Rome and Venice. Some of the
ideas of the Italian Renaissance did spread to other parts of Europe, for example to the German artist Albrecht Dürer of the 'Northern Renaissance'. But by the 1500s Mannerism had
overtaken the Renaissance and it was this style that caught on in Europe.


* MANNERISM *
   KEY DATES: 1520-1600

Artists of the Early Renaissance and the High Renaissance developed their characteristic styles from the observation of nature and the formulation of a pictorial science. When
Mannerism matured after 1520(The year Raphael died), all the representational problems had been solved. A body of knowledge was there to be learned. Instead of nature as their
teacher, Mannerist artists took art. While Renaissance artists sought nature to find their style, the Mannerists looked first for a style and found a manner.
In Mannerist paintings, compositions can have no focal point, space can be ambiguous, figures can be characterized by an athletic bending and twisting with distortions, exaggerations,
an elastic elongation of the limbs, bizarre posturing on one hand, graceful posturing on the other hand, and a rendering of the heads as uniformly small and oval. The composition is
jammed by clashing colors, which is unlike what we've seen in the balanced, natural, and dramatic colors of the High Renaissance. Mannerist artwork seeks instability and restlessness.
There is also a fondness for allegories that have lascivious undertones.


* BAROQUE *
    KEY DATES: 1600s

Baroque Art emerged in Europe around 1600, as an reaction against the intricate and formulaic Mannerist style which dominated the Late Renaissance. Baroque Art is less complex,
more realistic and more emotionally affecting than Mannerism.
This movement was encouraged by the Catholic Church, the most important patron of the arts at that time, as a return to tradition and spirituality.
One of the great periods of art history, Baroque Art was developed by Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci, and Gianlorenzo Bernini, among others. This was also the age of Rubens,
Rembrandt, Velázquez, and Vermeer.
In the 18th century, Baroque Art was replaced by the more elegant and elaborate Rococo style.


* ROCOCO *
KEY DATES: 1700s

Throughout the 18th century in France, a new wealthy and influential middle-class was beginning to rise, even though the royalty and nobility continued to be patrons of the arts. Upon
the death of Louis XIV and the abandonment of Versailles, the Paris high society became the purveyors of style. This style, primarily used in interior decoration, came to be called
Rococo. The term Rococo was derived from the French word "rocaille", which means pebbles and refers to the stones and shells use to decorate the interiors of caves. Therefore, shell
forms became the principal motif in Rococo. The society women competed for the best and most elaborate decorations for their houses. Hence the Rococo style was highly dominated by
the feminine taste and influence.
Francois Boucher was the 18th century painter and engraver whose works are regarded as the perfect expression of French taste in the Rococo period. Trained by his father who was a
lace designer, Boucher won fame with his sensuous and light-hearted mythological paintings and landscapes. He executed important works for both the Queen of France and Mme. de
Pompadour, Louis XV's mistress, who was considered the most powerful woman in France at the time. Boucher was Mme. de Pompadour's favorite artist and was commissioned by her for
numerous paintings and decorations. Boucher also became the principal designer for the royal porcelain factory and the director of the Gobelins tapestry factory. The Vulcan Presenting
Venus with Arms for Aeneas is a template for a tapestry made by this factory.
Characterized by elegant and refined yet playful subject matters, Boucher's style became the epitome of the court of Louis XV. His style consisted of delicate colors and gentle forms
painted within a frivolous subject matter. His works typically utilized delightful and decorative designs to illustrate graceful stories with Arcadian shepherds, goddesses and cupids playing
against a pink and blue sky. These works mirrored the frolicsome, artificial and ornamented decadence of the French aristocracy of the time.
The Rococo is sometimes considered a final phase of the Baroque period.


* NEO-CLASSICAL *
      KEY DATES: 1750-1880

A nineteenth century French art style and movement that originated as a reaction to the Baroque. It sought to revive the ideals of ancient Greek and Roman art. Neoclassic artists used
classical forms to express their ideas about courage, sacrifice, and love of country. David and Canova are examples of neo-classicists.


* ROMANTICISM *
    KEY DATES: 1800-1880
Romanticism was basically a reaction against Neoclassicism, it is a deeply-felt style which is individualistic, beautiful, exotic, and emotionally wrought.
Although Romanticism and Neoclassicism were philosophically opposed, they were the dominant European styles for generations, and many artists were affected to a greater or lesser
degree by both. Artists might work in both styles at different times or even mix the styles, creating an intellectually Romantic work using a Neoclassical visual style, for example.
Great artists closely associated with Romanticism include J.M.W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich, John Constable, and William Blake.
In the United States, the leading Romantic movement was the Hudson River School of dramatic landscape painting.
Obvious successors of Romanticism include the Pre-Raphaelite movement and the Symbolists. But Impressionism, and through it almost all of 20th century art, is also firmly rooted in the
Romantic tradition.


* PRE-RAPHAELITES *
  KEY DATES: 1848-1920s

This movement was originally founded in 1848 by Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. The name was decided upon as the group aimed to rediscover the painting styles of artists
working earlier than the time of Raphael. The group, initially comprising Rossetti, his brother William, James Collinson, the sculptor Thomas Woolner as well as Hunt and Millais,
specialised in detailed studies of medieval scenes strong on elaborate symbolism and noble themes.         
Controversy tainted the group early on with commentators believing their name implied that they were superior artists to Raphael, but the influential critic John Ruskin supported them
and ensured their success. However, after Millais' 'Ophelia' (1850-1851) was exhibited to great acclaim at the Academy Exhibition the group dissolved.
Rossetti, together with William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones formed an alternative Brotherhood based in Oxford, specialising in the depiction of pale, ethereal beauties, while Millais
and Hunt went their separate ways but continued working according to the original ideas of the movement.
Pre-Raphaelitism was highly successful during the Victorian era and continued into the early 20th century with artists such as Maxwell Armfield and Frank Cadogan Cowper before
becoming out-moded in the 1920s.


* ART & CRAFTS MOVEMENT *
                 KEY DATES: 1850s

The Victorian style of heavily ornamented interiors displaying many pieces of furniture, collections of small ornamental objects, and surfaces covered with fringed cloths prevailed in
middle-class homes in England and America during the latter half of the 19th century. In both countries, techniques of mass production promoted the use of reproductions in many
different styles. William Morris, the British poet, artist and architect rejected this opulence in favor of simplicity, good craftsmanship, and good design. The Arts & Crafts Movement was
born.
To the proponents of Arts & Crafts, the Industrial Revolution separated humans from their own creativity and individualism; the worker was a cog in the wheel of progress, living in an
environment of shoddy machine-made goods, based more on ostentation than function. These proponents sought to reestablish the ties between beautiful work and the worker, returning
to an honesty in design not to be found in mass-produced items. Architecture, furniture, and the decorative arts became the focus of the movement.


* SYMBOLISM *
KEY DATES: 1885-1910

Symbolism began as a reaction to the literal representation of subjects preferring to create more suggestive and evocative works. It had its roots in literature with poets such as
Baudelaire believing ideas and emotions could be conveyed not only through the meaning of words but also in their sound and rhythm.
The styles of the Symbolist painters varied considerably, but they shared many of the same themes particularly a fascination with the mystical and the visionary. The erotic, the perverse,
death and debauchery were also regular interests for the Symbolists. The leading figures of the movement included the two French men, Odilon Redon and Paul Gauguin, but Symbolism
was not limited to France with other practitioners including the Norwegian Edvard Munch, the Austrian Gustav Klimt and the British Aubrey Beardsley.
The movement also known as Synthetism flourished from around 1885 and continued until 1910. It was an important move away from the naturalism of the Impressionists and showed a
preference for feeling over intellectualism. A number of sculptors were also involved including the Belgian Georg Minne and the Norwegian Gustav Vigeland. In Symbolism's faith in the
power of expressivity possible in a colour or a line, the movement is crucial in understanding the development of the abstract arts in the 20th century.


* REALISM *
KEY DATES: 1830-1870

Realism, also known as the Realist school, was a mid-nineteenth century art movement and style in which artists discarded the formulas of Neoclassicism and the theatrical drama of
Romanticism to paint familiar scenes and events as they actually looked. Typically it involved some sort of sociopolitical or moral message, in the depiction of ugly or commonplace
subjects. Daumier, Millet and Courbet were realists.


* IMPRESSIONISM *
    KEY DATES: 1867-1886

A French 19th century art movement which marked a momentous break from tradition in European painting. The Impressionists incorporated new scientific research into the physics of
colour to achieve a more exact representation of colour and tone.
The sudden change in the look of these paintings was brought about by a change in methodology: applying paint in small touches of pure colour rather than broader strokes, and
painting out of doors to catch a particular fleeting impression of colour and light. The result was to emphasise the artist's perception of the subject matter as much as the subject itself.
Impressionist art is a style in which the artist captures the image of an object as someone would see it if they just caught a glimpse of it. They paint the pictures with a lot of color and most
of their pictures are outdoor scenes. Their pictures are very bright and vibrant. The artists like to capture their images without detail but with bold colors. Some of the greatest
impressionist artists were Edouard Manet, Camille Pissaro, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot and Pierre Auguste Renoir.
Manet influenced the development of impressionism. He painted everyday objects. Pissaro and Sisley painted the French countryside and river scenes. Degas enjoyed painting ballet
dancers and horse races. Morisot painted women doing everyday things. Renoir loved to show the effect of sunlight on flowers and figures. Monet was interested in subtle changes in the
atmosphere.
While the term Impressionist covers much of the art of this time, there were smaller movements within it, such as Pointillism, Art Nouveau and Fauvism.
Pointilism was developed from Impressionism and involved the use of many small dots of colour to give a painting a greater sense of vibrancy when seen from a distance. The equal size
dots never quite merge in the viewer's perception resulting in a shimmering effect like one experiences on a hot and sunny day. One of the leading exponents was Seurat to whom the
term was first applied in regard to his painting 'La Grand Jette' (1886).
Seurat was part of the Neo-Impressionist movement which included Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Signac. The word Divisionism
describes the theory they followed while the actual process was known as pointillism.The effects of this technique, if used well, were often far more striking than the conventional
approach of mixing colours together.
The Neo-Impressionist movement was brief yet influential. The term Divisionism was also the name of an Italian version of Neo-Impressionism in the 1890s and early 1900s, and one can
trace a line to Futurism which was founded in 1909.


* POST IMPRESSIONISM *
           KEY DATES: 1880-1920

Post-Impressionism in Western painting, movement in France that represented both an extension of Impressionism and a rejection of that style's inherent limitations. The term Post-
Impressionism was coined by the English art critic Roger Fry for the work of such late 19th-century painters as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec, and others. All of these painters except van Gogh were French, and most of them began as Impressionists; each of them abandoned the style, however, to form his
own highly personal art. Impressionism was based, in its strictest sense, on the objective recording of nature in terms of the fugitive effects of colour and light. The Post-Impressionists
rejected this limited aim in favour of more ambitious expression, admitting their debt, however, to the pure, brilliant colours of Impressionism, its freedom from traditional subject matter,
and its technique of defining form with short brushstrokes of broken colour. The work of these painters formed a basis for several contemporary trends and for early 20th-century
modernism. The Post-Impressionists often exhibited together, but, unlike the Impressionists, who began as a close-knit, convivial group, they painted mainly alone. Cézanne painted in
isolation at Aix-en-Provence in southern France; his solitude was matched by that of Paul Gauguin, who in 1891 took up residence in Tahiti, and of van Gogh, who painted in the
countryside at Arles. Both Gauguin and van Gogh rejected the indifferent objectivity of Impressionism in favour of a more personal, spiritual expression. After exhibiting with the
Impressionists in 1886, Gauguin renounced “the abominable error of naturalism.” With the young painter Émile Bernard, Gauguin sought a simpler truth and purer aesthetic in art; turning
away from the sophisticated, urban art world of Paris, he instead looked for inspiration in rural communities with more traditional values. Copying the pure, flat colour, heavy outline, and
decorative quality of medieval stained glass and manuscript illumination, the two artists explored the expressive potential of pure colour and line, Gauguin especially using exotic and
sensuous colour harmonies to create poetic images of the Tahitians among whom he would eventually live. Arriving in Paris in 1886, the Dutch painter van Gogh quickly adapted
Impressionist techniques and colour to express his acutely felt emotions. He transformed the contrasting short brushstrokes of Impressionism into curving, vibrant lines of colour,
exaggerated even beyond Impressionist brilliance, that convey his emotionally charged and ecstatic responses to the natural landscape.
In general, Post-Impressionism led away from a naturalistic approach and toward the two major movements of early 20th-century art that superseded it: Cubism and Fauvism, which
sought to evoke emotion through colour and line.

* NABIS *
 KEY DATES: 1888-1899

A Parisian group of Post-Impressionist artists and illustrators who became very influential within the field of graphic art.
Their emphasis on design was shared by the parallel Art Nouveau movement. Both groups also had close ties to the Symbolists.
The core of Les Nabis was Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Ker Xavier Roussel, Félix Vallotton, and Édouard Vuillard.


* FAUVISM *
KEY DATES: 1905-1908

The first of the major avant-garde movements in European 20th century art, Fauvism was characterised by paintings that used intensely vivid, non-naturalistic and exuberant colours.
The style was essentially expressionist, and generally featured landscapes in which forms were distorted. The Fauves first exhibited together in 1905 in Paris. They found their name
when a critic pointed to a renaissance-like sculpture in the middle of the same gallery as the exhibition and exclaimed derisively 'Donatello au milieu des fauves!' ('Donatello among the
wild beasts!'). The name caught on, and was gleefully accepted by the artists themselves.
The movement was subjected to more mockery and abuse as it developed, but began to gain respect when major art buyers, such as Gertrude Stein, took an interest. The leading artists
involved were Matisse, Rouault, Derain, Vlaminck, Braque and Dufy. Although short-lived (1905-8), Fauvism was extremely influential in the evolution of 20th century art.


 * ART NOUVEAU *
       KEY DATES: late 1800s

This describes a decorative style popular from the last decade of the 19th century to the beginning of the First World War. It was characterised by an elaborate ornamental style based
on asymmetrical lines, frequently depicting flowers, leaves or tendrils, or in the flowing hair of a female. It can be seen most effectively in the decorative arts, for example interior design,
glasswork and jewellery. However, it was also seen in posters and illustration as well as certain paintings and sculptures of the period.
The movement took its name from La Maison de l'Art Nouveau in Paris, a shop keen to promote modern ideas in art. It was influenced by the Symbolists most obviously in their shared
preference for exotic detail, as well as by Celtic and Japanese art. Art Nouveau flourished in Britain with its progressive Arts and Crafts movement, but was highly successful all around
the world.
The leading exponents included the illustrators Aubrey Beardsley and Walter Crane in England; the architects Henry van de Velde and Victor Horta in Belgium; the jewellery designer
René Lalique in France; the painter Gustav Klimt in Austria; the architect Antonio Gaudí in Spain; and the glassware designer Louis C. Tiffany and the architect Louis Sullivan in the
United States. Its most common themes were symbolic and frequently erotic and the movement, despite not lasting beyond 1914 was important in terms of the development of abstract art.



 * ART DECO *
 KEY DATES: 1920-1930

An art movement involving a mix of modern decorative art styles, largely of the 1920s and 1930s, whose main characteristics were derived from various avant-garde painting styles of the
early twentieth century. Art deco works exhibit aspects of Cubism, Russian Constructivism and Italian Futurism-- with abstraction, distortion, and simplification, particularly geometric
shapes and highly intense colors--celebrating the rise of commerce, technology, and speed.
The growing impact of the machine can be seen in repeating and overlapping images from 1925; and in the 1930s, in streamlined forms derived from the principles of aerodynamics.
The name came from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs Industriels et Modernes, held in Paris, which celebrated living in the modern world.
It was popularly considered to be an elegant style of cool sophistication in architecture and applied arts which range from luxurious objects made from exotic material to mass produced,
streamlined items available to a growing middle class.



 *  MODERNISM *
   KEY DATES: 1890-1940

Modernism was characterised by the deliberate departure from tradition and the use of innovative forms of expression that distinguish many styles in the arts and literature of the late
nineteenth and the twentieth century. Modernism refers to this period's interest in new types of paints and other materials, in expressing feelings and ideas, in creating abstractions and
fantasies, rather than representing what is real. This kind of art requires its audience to observe carefully in order to get some facts about the artist, his intentions, and his environment,
before forming judgments about the work. Paul Cézanne is often called the 'Father of Modernism'.
REPRESENTATIVE ARTISTS:  Paul Cezanne  Edouard Manet


 *  EXPRESSIONISM *
         KEY DATES: 1905-1925

A term used to denote the use of distortion and exaggeration for emotional effect, which first surfaced in the art literature of the early twentieth century. When applied in a stylistic sense,
with reference in particular to the use of intense colour, agitated brushstrokes, and disjointed space. Rather than a single style, it was a climate that affected not only the fine arts but also
dance, cinema, literature and the theatre.
Expressionism is an artistic style in which the artist attempts to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in him. He
accomplishes his aim through distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy and through the vivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic application of formal elements. In a broader sense
Expressionism is one of the main currents of art in the later 19th and the 20th centuries, and its qualities of highly subjective, personal, spontaneous self-expression are typical of a wide
range of modern artists and art movements.
Unlike Impressionism, its goals were not to reproduce the impression suggested by the surrounding world, but to strongly impose the artist's own sensibility to the world's representation.
The expressionist artist substitutes to the visual object reality his own image of this object, which he feels as an accurate representation of its real meaning. The search of harmony and
forms is not as important as trying to achieve the highest expression intensity, both from the aesthetic point of view and according to idea and human critics.
Expressionism assessed itself mostly in Germany, in 1910. As an international movement, expressionism has also been thought of as inheriting from certain medieval artforms and, more
directly, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and the fauvism movement.
The most well known German expressionists are Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Lionel Feininger, George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein; the Austrian
Oskar Kokoschka, the Czech Alfred Kubin and the Norvegian Edvard Munch are also related to this movement. During his stay in Germany, the Russian Kandinsky was also an
expressionism addict.
REPRESENTATIVE ARTISTS: Georges Rouault, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele  Franz Marc, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Edvard Munch, Marc Chagall  



  * DER BLAUE REITER *
                  KEY DATES: 1911

Formed in response to the increasing conservatism of the Neue Künstlervereinigung (NKV), the Blaue Reiter's aim was simply to ensure exhibition space for artist's dedicated to
unrestricted freedom of expression. The name derived from a drawing by Wassily Kandinsky that appeared on the cover of the Almanac featuring a blue horseman; blue happened also
to be Franz Marc's favourite colour and, along with Kandinsky, the horse was a particularly favoured subject.
Established in December 1911 by Kandinsky, Marc and Gabriele Münter their first show was entitled 'First Exhibition by the Editorial Board of the Blue Rider' and was launched to
coincide with the last show by the NKV in the same gallery in Munich. It featured some 43 artists including Albert Bloch, Robert Delaunay, Elizabeth Epstein, August Macke and Henri
Rousseau. The second exhibition opened in 1912 again in Munich but this time was on a grander scale, showing 315 works by 31 artists, among whom were Picasso, Braque, Klee and
Goncharova.
Although only two exhibitions took place under the Blaue Reiter name, Kandinsky, Marc, Macke and Klee went on to exhibit together at the influential 'First German Salon d'Automne' in
Berlin at the Sturm Gallery in 1913. Although short-lived, the Blaue Reiter represented the pinnacle of German Expressionist painting. It also served to promote individual expression and
to break free from any artistic restraints. These words from Nietzsche sum up the group's modus operandi, "Who wishes to be creative must first blast and destroy accepted values."



  *  BAUHAUS *
  KEY DATES: 1919-1930s

A school of art, design and architecture founded in Germany in 1919. Bauhaus style is characterized by its severely economic, geometric design and by its respect for materials.
The Bauhaus school was created when Walter Gropius was appointed head of two art schools in Weimar and united them in one. He coined the term Bauhaus as an inversion of
'Hausbau' - house construction.
Teaching at the school concentrated on functional craftsmanship and students were encouraged to design with mass-produced goods in mind. Enormously controversial and unpopular
with right wingers in Weimar, the school moved in 1925 to Dessau.
The Bauhaus moved again to Berlin in 1932 and was closed by the Nazis in 1933. The school had some illustrious names among it's teachers, including Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger,
Wassily Kandinsky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Marcel Breuer. Its influence in design of architecture, furniture, typography and weaving has lasted to this day - the look of the modern
environment is almost unthinkable without it.



  * CUBISM *
KEY DATES: 1908-1914

The Cubist art movement began in Paris around 1907. Led by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, the Cubists broke from centuries of tradition in their painting by rejecting the single
viewpoint. Instead they used an analytical system in which three-dimensional subjects were fragmented and redefined from several different points of view simultaneously.
The movement was conceived as 'a new way of representing the world', and assimilated outside influences, such as African art, as well as new theories on the nature of reality, such as
Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
Cubism is often divided into two phases - the Analytic phase (1907-12), and the Synthetic phase (1913 through the 1920s). The initial phase attempted to show objects as the mind, not
the eye, perceives them.
The Synthetic phase featured works that were composed of fewer and simpler forms, in brighter colours. Other major exponents of Cubism included Robert Delaunay, Francis Picabia,
Jean Metzinger, Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Léger.
REPRESENTATIVE ARTISTS: Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, Piet Mondrian, Sir Jacob Epstein, Juan Gris  



 *  DADA *
KEY DATES: 1916-1920s

An international movement among European artists and writers between 1915 and 1922, characterised by a spirit of anarchic revolt. Dada revelled in absurdity, and emphasised the role
of the unpredictable in artistic creation.
It began in Zürich with the French poet Tristan Tzara thrusting a penknife into the pages of a dictionary to randomly find a name for the movement. This act in itself displays the
importance of chance in Dada art. Irreverence was another key feature: in one of Dada's most notorious exhibitions, organised by Max Ernst, axes were provided for visitors to smash the
works on show.
While perhaps seeming flippant on the surface, the Dada artists were actually fuelled by disillusionment and moral outrage at the unprecedented carnage of World War One, and the
ultimate aim of the movement was to shock people out of complacency.
Among the leading Dadaists were Marcel Duchamp (whose Mona Lisa adorned with moustache and goatee is a Dada classic), George Grosz, Otto Dix, Hans Richter and Jean Arp. The
movement had a strong influence on Pop Art, which was sometimes called neo-Dada.
REPRESENTATIVE ARTISTS: Hans Arp, Johannes Baader, Hugo Ball, Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield ...



  * FUTURISM *
  KEY DATES:1909-1944

An Italian avant-garde art movement that took speed, technology and modernity as its inspiration, Futurism portrayed the dynamic character of 20th century life, glorified war and the
machine age, and favoured the growth of Fascism.
The movement was at its strongest from 1909, when Filippo Marinetti's first manifesto of Futurism appeared, until the end of World War One. Futurism was unique in that it was a self-
invented art movement.
The idea of Futurism came first, followed by a fanfare of publicity; it was only afterwards that artists could find a means to express it. Marinetti's manifesto, printed on the front page of Le
Figaro, was bombastic and inflammatory in tone - "set fire to the library shelves... flood the museums" - suggesting that he was more interested in shocking the public than exploring
Futurism's themes.
Painters in the movement did have a serious intent beyond Marinetti's bombast, however. Their aim was to portray sensations as a "synthesis of what one remembers and of what one
sees", and to capture what they called the 'force lines' of objects.
The futurists' representation of forms in motion influenced many painters, including Marcel Duchamp and Robert Delaunay, and such movements as Cubism and Russian Constructivism.



 * SURREALISM *
    KEY DATES: 1920-1930s

A literary and art movement, dedicated to expressing the imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and convention. Surrealism inherited its anti-        
rationalist sensibility from Dada, but was lighter in spirit than that movement. Like Dada, it was shaped by emerging theories on our perception of reality, the most obvious influence being
Freud's model of the subconscious.
Founded in Paris in 1924 by André Breton with his Manifesto of Surrealism, the movement's principal aim was 'to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into
an absolute reality, a super-reality'. Its roots can be traced back to French poets such as Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire and Lautreamont, the latter providing the famous line that
summed up the Surrealists' love of the incongruous; "Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table."
The major artists of the movement were Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, René Magritte and Joan Miró. Surrealism's impact on popular culture can still be felt today, most visibly in advertising.



* CONSTRUCTIVISM *
          KEY DATES: 1915-1940s

Constructivism was an invention of the Russian avant-garde that found adherents across the continent. Germany was the site of the most Constructivist activity outside of the Soviet
Union (especially as home to Walter Gropius's Bauhaus, a progressive art and design school sympathetic to the movement) but Constructivist ideas were also carried to other art
centers, like Paris, London, and eventually the United States.
The international character of the movement was proven by the various origins of its artists. Naum Gabo, Antoine Pevsner, and El Lissitzky brought Constructivism from the Soviet Union
to the West. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy came to Germany from Hungary, Theo van Doesburg from the Netherlands. Ben Nicholson was the most prominent English Constructivist. Josef Albers
and Hans Richter encountered the movement in their native Germany but were also instrumental in its international dissemination.
Constructivist art is marked by a commitment to total abstraction and a wholehearted acceptance of modernity. Often very geometric, it is usually experimental, rarely emotional. Objective
forms which were thought to have universal meaning were preferred over the subjective or the individual. The art is often very reductive as well, paring the artwork down to its basic
elements. New media were often used. Again, the context is crucial: the Constructivists sought an art of order, which would reject the past (the old order which had culminated in World
War I) and lead to a world of more understanding, unity, and peace. This utopian undercurrent is often missing from more recent abstract art that might be otherwise tied to
Constructivism.



 * ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM *
                         KEY DATES: 1940-1960s

Emerging in the 1940s in New York City and flourishing in the Fifties, Abstract Expressionism is regarded by many as the golden age of American art. The movement is marked by its use
of brushstrokes and texture, the embracing of chance and the frequently massive canvases, all employed to convey powerful emotions through the glorification of the act of painting itself.
Some of the key figures of the movement were Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline. Although their works vary greatly in style, for
example the sprawling pieces of Pollock at one end of the spectrum and the brooding works of Rothko at the other, yet they all share the same outlook which is one of freedom of
individual expression.
The term was originally used to describe the work of Kandinsky but was adopted by writers in the Fifties as a way of defining the American movement, although the practitioners, disliking
being pigeonholed, preferred the term New York School.
The movement was enormously successful both critically and commercially. The result was such that New York came to replace Paris as the centre for contemporary art and the
repercussions of this extraordinarily influential movement can still be felt thirty years after its heyday.



 *  HARLEM RENAISSANCE *
                  KEY DATES: 1920-1930s

From 1920 until about 1930 an unprecedented outburst of creative activity among African-Americans occurred in all fields of art. Beginning as a series of literary discussions in the lower
Manhattan (Greenwich Village) and upper Manhattan (Harlem) sections of New York City, this African-American cultural movement became known as "The New Negro Movement" and
later as the Harlem Renaissance. More than a literary movement and more than a social revolt against racism, the Harlem Renaissance exalted the unique culture of African-Americans
and redefined African-American expression. African-Americans were encouraged to celebrate their heritage and to become "The New Negro," a term coined in 1925 by sociologist and
critic Alain LeRoy Locke.
One of the factors contributing to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance was the great migration of African-Americans to northern cities (such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.
C.) between 1919 and 1926. In his influential book The New Negro (1925), Locke described the northward migration of blacks as "something like a spiritual emancipation." Black urban
migration, combined with trends in American society as a whole toward experimentation during the 1920s, and the rise of radical black intellectuals — including Locke, Marcus Garvey,
founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and W. E. B. Du Bois, editor of The Crisis magazine — all contributed to the particular styles and unprecedented success
of black artists during the Harlem Renaissance period.



 *  POP ART *
  KEY DATES:1950-1960s

This movement was marked by a fascination with popular culture reflecting the affluence in post-war society. It was most prominent in American art but soon spread to Britain. In
celebrating everyday objects such as soup cans, washing powder, comic strips and soda pop bottles, the movement turned the commonplace into icons.
Pop Art is a direct descendant of Dadaism in the way it mocks the established art world by appropriating images from the street, the supermarket, the mass media, and presents it as art
in itself.
Artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg took familiar objects such as flags and beer bottles as subjects for their paintings, while British artist Richard Hamilton used
magazine imagery. The latter's definition of Pop Art - "popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business" - stressed its
everyday, commonplace values.
It was Andy Warhol, however, who really brought Pop Art to the public eye. His screen prints of Coke bottles, Campbell's soup tins and film stars are part of the iconography of the 20th
century. Pop Art owed much to dada in the way it mocked the established art world. By embracing commercial techniques, and creating slick, machine-produced art, the Pop artists were
setting themselves apart from the painterly, inward-looking tendencies of the Abstract Expressionist movement that immediately preceded them. The leading artists in Pop were Andy
Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Roy Hamilton, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg.



* OP ART *
KEY DATES: 1960s

Op Art or Optical Art is the term used to describe paintings or sculptures which seem to swell and vibrate through their use of optical effects. The movement's leading figures were Bridget
Riley and Victor Vasarely who used patterns and colours in their paintings to achieve a disorientating effect on the viewer.
The sculptors Eric Olsen and Francisco Sobrino used layers of different coloured perspex to create a similar illusion of distortion. The artists used established ideas on perceptive
psychology but needed to use maximum precision to gain the results they intended.
Op Art is a form of abstract art and is closely connected to the Kinetic and Constructivist Art movements.
It was fashionable in the United States and Europe in the 1960s and 1970s but was greeted with a certain degree of scepticism by the critics.
After 'The Responsive Eye' exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1965 the term became a household name and the style was soon appropriated by fashion designers
and high street stores.



* MINIMALISM *
      KEY DATES: 1962

Minimal Art emerged as a movement in the 1950s and continued through the Sixties and Seventies. It is a term used to describe paintings and sculpture that thrive on simplicity in both
content and form, and seek to remove any sign of personal expressivity. The aim of Minimalism is to allow the viewer to experience the work more intensely without the distractions of
composition, theme and so on.
There are examples of the Minimalist theory being exercised as early as the 18th century when Goethe constructed an Altar of Good Fortune made simply of a stone sphere and cube.
But the 20th century sees the movement come into its own. From the 1920s artists such as Malevich and Duchamp produced works in the Minimalist vein but the movement is known
chiefly by its American exponents such as Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Ellsworth Kelly and Donald Judd who reacted against Abstract Expressionism in their stark canvases, sculptures and
installations.
Minimal Art is related to a number of other movements such as Conceptual Art in the way the finished work exists merely to convey a theory, Pop Art in their shared fascination with the
impersonal and Land Art in the construction of simple shapes. Minimal Art proved highly successful and has been enormously influential on the development of art in the 20th century.



* NEO-EXPRESSIONISM *
          KEY DATES: 1980s

A diverse art movement that dominated the art market in Europe and the United States during the early and mid-1980s. Neo-Expressionism comprised a varied assemblage of young
artists who had returned to portraying the human body and other recognizable objects, in reaction to the remote, introverted, highly intellectualized abstract art production of the 1970s.
The movement was linked to and in part generated by new and aggressive methods of salesmanship, media promotion, and marketing on the part of dealers and galleries.
Neo-Expressionist paintings themselves, though diverse in appearance, presented certain common traits. Among these were: a rejection of traditional standards of composition and
design; an ambivalent and often brittle emotional tone that reflected contemporary urban life and values; a general lack of concern for pictorial idealization; the use of vivid but jarringly
banal colour harmonies; and a simultaneously tense and playful presentation of objects in a primitivist manner that communicates a sense of inner disturbance, tension, alienation, and
ambiguity (hence the term Neo-Expressionist to describe this approach). Among the principal artists of the movement were the Americans Julian Schnabel and David Salle, the Italians
Sandro Chia and Francesco Clemente, and the Germans Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz. Neo-Expressionism was controversial both in the quality of its art products and in the highly
commercialized aspects of its presentation to the art-buying public.


*  POST MODERNISM *
         KEY DATES: 1960-present

The name given to a wide range of cultural phenomena, to characterise a move away from the 'highbrow' seriousness of modernism, preferring a more eclectic and populist approach to
creativity.
The term came into common use in the 1970s. It is used both as a 'stylistic' term and also as a period designation.
Paintings that have been described as Postmodernist include the work of Stephen McKenna and Carlo Maria Mariani, also selected works by Peter Blake and David Hockney.
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