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.
Romanesque
Gothic
Renaissance
Baroque
Rococo
Neoclassicism
Romanticism
Realism
Pre-Raphaelite
Impressionism
Post-Impressionism
Abstract Expressionism
Fauvism
Cubism
Futurism
Dada
Surrealism
Pop Art
Claude-Joseph Vernet
Wassily Kandinsky
Jean Honoré Fragonard
Cornelis van Spaendonck
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Aubrey Beardsley
Georges Braque
Paul Cezanne
Mary Cassatt
Willem de Kooning
Robert Delaunay
Sir Anthony van Dyck
Claude Monet
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Heinrich Hofmann
Giovanni Paolo Pannini
David Jacques Louis
Pablo Picasso
Andrew Wyeth
George Stubbs
Edward Hopper
Georgia O'Keeffe
Thomas Gainsborough
Leonetto Cappiello
Justin Bua
Edgar Degas
Vincent Van Gogh
Salvador Dalí
Didier Lourenco
Leonardo da Vinci
Rembrandt
Jan Vermeer
Jack Vettriano
Raphael
Claude Lorrain
Mondrian Piet
Ansel Adams
Joan Miro
Theodore Gericault
Rene Magritte
Jackson Pollock
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
William Powell Frith
Paul Gauguin
Keith Haring
Barbara Hepworth
Gustav Klimt
Le Corbusier
Tamara De Lempicka
William Morris
Georges Seurat