ART HISTORY
In Latin, Art means "skill" or "craft".
But this we may say is a broad definition of art.
In the modern use of the word art we commonly understood it to be the skill and technique that is used to produce an aesthetic result or object.
In history, before the the 13th century in Europe, artists were seen to belong to the lower caste.
These days art is seen as a high-status activity that is often associated with wealth.
The exact origins of art history are unkown, but sculptures and paintings from the upper paleo-lithic starting roughly 40,000 years ago have ben discovered.
Much of early Art History can be found in the major ancient civilizations of China, Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia, Rome and India.
These civilizations also kept records on art and how the artists worked.
During the Byzantine and Gothic art periods of the Western Middle Ages, art focused on the expression of Biblical forms.
The western Renaissance showed us art based on the material world.
The emphasis in Indian art was on painted sculptures and dance.
Chinese art emphasized bronzework, jade carving, pottery and calligraphy.
The western Age of enlightenment in the 18th century showed us new directions in art history again.
This lead to the Romantic art period that showed us the emotional side and individuality of people.
The late 19th century brought with it a whole range of art movements from symbolism to fauvism.
Pre-historic Art:
The earliest figurine discovered was in Morocco dating between 500,000 and 300,000 BC, during the Middle Acheulean period.
The finding in France of the Mask of La Roche-Cotard, suggests Neanderthal man may have developed a form art tradition.
Archeological evidence of art found in Japan, suggests the Jomon people were the first to develop pottery sometime in history around the 11th millennium BC.
Mesolithic statues of Lepenski Vir at the Iron Gate, Serbia and Montenegro date to the 7th millennium BC.
Megalithic monuments found in the British isles date to the 5th millennium BC.
The bushman rock paintings in South Africa have been dated to the period 8000 BC.
Baroque Art
Conceptual Art
Romanesque
Gothic
Renaissance
Rococo
Neoclassicism
Romanticism
Realism
Pre-Raphaelite
Post-Impressionism
Abstract Expressionism
Fauvism
Cubism
Futurism
Dada
Surrealism
Pop Art
Graffiti Art
History of Sculpture
Wood Block Printing
Ansel Adams
Aubrey Beardsley
Justin Bua
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Georges Braque
Leonetto Cappiello
Paul Cezanne
Mary Cassatt
Salvador Dalí Biography
Edgar Degas
Willem de Kooning
Robert Delaunay
Sir Anthony van Dyck
Jean Honoré Fragonard
Thomas Gainsborough
Heinrich Hofmann
Edward Hopper
Wassily Kandinsky
Claude Lorrain
David Jacques Louis
Georgia O'Keeffe
Giovanni Paolo Pannini
Camille Pissarro
Pablo Picasso Biography
Jackson Pollock Biography
Cornelis van Spaendonck
George Stubbs
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Claude-Joseph Vernet
Andrew Wyeth
Didier Lourenco
Leonardo da Vinci
Raphael
Rembrandt
Jan Vermeer
Jack Vettriano
Mondrian Piet
Joan Miro
Theodore Gericault
Rene Magritte
Andy Warhol
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Maurits Cornelis Escher
Alberto Giacometti
Juan Gris
Augustus Edwin John
Paul Klee
Yves Klein
Kathe Kollwitz
Dame Laura Knight
Fernand Leger
Amedeo Modigliani
Mark Rothko
Emile Bernard
Pierre Bonnard
Sandro Botticelli
John Constable
Jean Cocteau
Marc Chagall
Gustave Courbet
Eugene Delacroix
Andre Derain
Raoul Dufy
Le Corbusier
William Powell Frith
Paul Gauguin
Keith Haring
Barbara Hepworth
Tamara De Lempicka
William Morris
Georges Seurat
Gustav Klimt Biography
The Raft of the Medusa Painting