Professor Ballate's Class

1 Prehistoric Art

2012-01-05T11:09:00.000-08:00

Woman from Dolni Vestonice. 29,000 BCE

The woman from Dolni Vestonice is a Venus figurine, a ceramic statuette of a nude female figure dated to 29 000 – 25 000 BP (Gravettian industry), which was found at a Paleolithic site in the Moravian basin south of Brno. This figurine, together with a few others from nearby locations, is the oldest known ceramic in the world, predating the use of fired clay to make pottery. It has a height of 111 millimetres (4.4 in), and a width of 43 millimetres (1.7 in) at its widest point and is made of a clay body fired at a relatively low temperature.  The paleolithic settlement of Dolní Věstonice in Moravia, Czech Republic, has been under systematic archaeological research since 1924, initiated by Karel Absolon. In addition to the Venus figurine, figures of animals – bear, lion, mammoth, horse, fox, rhino and owl – and more than 2 000 balls of burnt clay have been found at Dolní Věstonice. The figurine was discovered on 13 July 1925 in a layer of ash, broken into two pieces. Once on display at the Moravian Museum in Brno, it is now only rarely accessible to the public. A tomograph scan in 2004 found a fingerprint of a child estimated at between 7 and 15 years of age, fired into the surface; the child who handled the figurine before it was fired is considered to be an unlikely candidate for its maker.

The woman from Ostrava.

27,000 BCE
This miniature female torso, less than 5 cm in height, carved in haematite, comes from the Gravettian camp site of Ostrava-Petrkovice in in Moravia, the Czech Republic. Age 27 000 years BP. It seems incredibly modern, almost cubic in style, and the pubic triangle looks like the bottom half of a modern bikini.

The statue was discovered in 1953 by archaeologist Bohuslav Klima, under a mammoth tooth in a pit cutting through the floor of an oval house, this female figure was deliberately carved to represent just the body without head or limbs. The slim figure with hour glass shape has a slightly prominent stomach suggesting the early stages of pregnancy of a prima gravida (woman in her first pregnancy - Don). The breasts are small and firm and the incised sexual triangle disproportionately large. 46 mm high, 15 mm wide, 14 mm thick.

Woman from Willendorf. 24,000 BCE

The Venus of Willendorf, also known as the Woman of Willendorf, is an 11 cm (4.3 in) high statuette of a female figure estimated to have been made between 24,000 and 22,000 BCE. It was discovered in 1908 by archaeologist Josef Szombathy at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the city of Krems. It is carved from an oolitic limestone that is not local to the area, and tinted with red ochre. The "Venus of Willendorf is now in the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna.

After a wide variety of proposed dates, following a revised analysis of the stratigraphy of its site in 1990, the figure has been estimated to have been carved 24,000–22,000 BCE. Very little is known about its origin, method of creation, or cultural significance.

The purpose of the carving is the subject of much speculation. It never had feet and does not stand on its own. The apparent large size of the breasts and abdomen, and the detail put into the vulva, have led scholars to interpret the figure as a fertility symbol. The figure has no visible face, her head being covered with circular horizontal bands of what might be rows of plaited hair, or a type of headdress. She was thought to be very healthy given her weight and size.

The nickname, urging a comparison to the classical image of "Venus," is now controversial. According to Christopher Witcombe, "the ironic identification of these figurines as 'Venus' pleasantly satisfied certain assumptions at the time about the primitive, about women, and about taste". Catherine McCoid and LeRoy McDermott hypothesize that the figurines may have been created as self-portraits.

Her great age and pronounced female forms quickly established the Venus of Willendorf as an icon of prehistoric art. She was soon included in introductory art history textbooks where she quickly displaced other previously used examples of Paleolithic art. Being both female and nude, she fitted perfectly into the patriarchal construction of the history of art. As the earliest known representation, she became the “first woman,” acquiring a sort of Ur-Eve identity that focused suitably, from a patriarchal point of view, on the fascinating reality of the female body.

Cave paintings

Cave Paintings (40,000 - 10,000 BC)

Cave art consists of engraved or painted works on open air rocks or on the floors, walls and ceilings of caves, some of them in deep and almost inaccessible crannies. They were created during the Upper Palaeolithic period (40,000 to 10,000 BC), and the best were done by what we call the Magdalenians (from the name of a site), peoples who flourished in Europe from 18,000 to 10,000 BC. Such works have a unity, and can be described as the Magdalenian art system, the first in human history. it was also the longest, lasting for more than two thirds of the total time when humans have produced art.

In any history of art, then, the Magdalenian system must occupy a place of importance. Alas, of all the forms of art practised on the planet, it is the one about which we know the least. But our knowledge is by no means derisory, bearing in mind that the first cave art was only discovered in the 186os, and it was not until 1902 that it was accepted as a fact by anthropologists and art historians. By the end of the twentieth century, there were 277 agreed examples in Europe, 142 in France, 108 in Spain, 21 in Italy, 2 in Portugal, 2 in Germany and 2 in the Balkans. Unfortunately, most of these works of art are extremely fragile. When a cave is 'opened', and the conditions which enabled paintings to survive are altered, deterioration can be rapid. The superb paintings found at Bédeilhac in the Pyrenees during the First World War disappeared completely within six months of the cave's discovery. Thus except in places where expensive air conditioning has been installed, caves are no longer open to the public. Even the Altamira Cave in Spain, finest of them all, is now open only to small parties for brief periods. Scholars themselves find it difficult to gain admission. Some of these works are photographed but the camera gives a poor idea of their nature and quality. Some are difficult to see anyway: the best part of Altamira has to be studied lying down. Hence inaccessibility is a real and growing obstacle to unlocking the secrets of the Magdalenian art system.

Lascaux cave

Cave art portrays human hands; large numbers of animals in different activities, including various species, such as the woolly rhinoceros, which are now extinct, and a few which were extinct even at the time they were painted; geometric figures and signs. Humans are also portrayed but these instances are rare. Next we come to methods and materials. The earliest and most rudimentary images are finger drawings in soft clay on the rock surface, the artist following the example of claw marks made by animals. Then came engraving, by far the commonest method, using flakes of sharp flint and in some cases stone picks. Different types of rocks, and rock formations, were used to give variety, add colour and produce depth, so that some of these engravings are akin to sculptural low reliefs. Fine engraving is rare and late. Clay engraving on the cave floors has usually been obliterated by the feet of modern visitors, but some good examples survive. Finally, and most impressively, we get painting. The first colours were red, iron oxide (hematite, a form of red ochre) and black (manganese dioxide), though black from juniper or pine carbons has also been discovered. White from kaolin or mica was used occasionally. The only other colours available to Magdalenian painters were yellow and brown.

Altamira Bison

Cave of Altamira - 1880

The first example of cave art to be discovered.
Its special relevance comes from the fact that it was the first cave in which prehistoric cave paintings were discovered.

2 Egyptian

2012-01-05T11:08:00.000-08:00

Egyptian art

Giza Pyramids.

10 pyramids in the Giza plateau

Pyramid of Khufu

Pyramid of Kafre

Portrait of Hesire

Symbolic elements were widely used and strict laws were applied, Colossal scale sculpture became the most important symbol of divinity in Egypt. The pictures found in Egyptian tombs were connected with the idea of afterlife, they drew from memory, according to strict rules which ensured that everything that had to go into the picture would stand out in perfect clarity.

Bust of Nefertiti, Thutmose. Egyptian Museum of Berlin.

3 Greece Art

2012-01-05T11:07:00.002-08:00

Greece Art

Venus de Milo, Alexandros of Antioch

Victory of Samothrace

Veiled and masked dancer

Riace Warrior

Hermes and the Infant, Praxiteles

Aphrodite of Knidos, Praxiteles

Doryphoros, Polykletos

Dying Gaul

Discobolo

4 Etruscan

2012-01-05T11:06:00.000-08:00

The art of the Etruscan

The art of the inhabitants of Etruria, central Italy, a civilization that flourished 8th–2nd centuries BC. The Etruscans produced sculpture, painting, pottery, metalwork, and jewellery. Etruscan terracotta coffins (sarcophagi), carved with reliefs and topped with portraits of the dead reclining on one elbow, were to influence the later Romans and early Christians.

Apollo of Veii

Most examples of Etruscan painting come from excavated tombs, whose frescoes depict scenes of everyday life, mythology, and mortuary rites, typically in bright coloursand a vigorous, animated style. Scenes of feasting, dancing, swimming, fishing, and playing evoke a confident people who enjoyed life to the full, and who even in death depicted themselves in a joyous and festive manner. The decline of their civilization, in the shadow of Rome's expansion, is reflected in their later art, which loses its original joie de vivre and becomes sombre.

5 Roma

2012-01-05T11:05:00.000-08:00

Priapos

Of the paintings, which survive from the Roman classical world, many are frescoes from the area of Campania around Naples. Campania includes Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other towns whose buildings, paintings, and sculptures were preserved by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79.

The Romans painted directly on the walls of their rooms, and also on portable panels. In Third and Fourth Style wall paintings, we can even see imitations of portable paintings - these are paintings of paintings, as it were. Domestic interiors were claustrophobic - windowless and dark - so the Romans used painted decoration to visually open up and lighten their living spaces.

Wall paintings at Pompeii provide valuable insights into Roman erotic art in the mid-1st century BC. In the House of the Vettii lies a representation of a deity weighing his enormous phallus with a pair of scales counterbalanced with fruit and crops.

Fourth Style appears in Pompeii following the earthquake of 62 AD, and continues in the Roman world well into the second century AD. Style IV is heterogeneous, and incorporates elements from all of the earlier styles. Architecture becomes more realistic, and the wall tends to open up again, but not so far as in Style II. Developing from Style III, paintings are given an illusion of portability by being set into trompe-l'oeil aediculae, screens, and tapestries. Further developments include the imitation of stage backgrounds, and an "intricate" style consisting of arabesques on white ground, as in Nero's Domus Aurea in Rome.

Oculus of The Pantheon

The Pantheon

Pont du Gard

Column of Trajan

Colosseum

Technical elements of Roman painting include the fresco technique; brightly colored backgrounds; division of the wall into multiple rectangular areas ("tic-tac-toe" design); multi-point perspective; and trompe-l'oeil effects.

Arch of Constantine

The art of fresco as practiced in Classical times was described by Vitruvius (De Architectura) and Pliny The Elder (Naturalis Historia.) A wall was prepared by the application of 1-3 coats of mortar (lime and sand) followed by 1-3 coats of lime mixed with finely powdered marble; colored pigments were applied while the wall was still damp. Sometimes tempera and liquid wax were added after the wall had dried.

6 Medieval

2012-01-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

In the Gothic period, colors symbolized important elements; blue signified heaven and fidelity and white, purity.

Intellectual life in the Romanesque period involved the establishment of the first universities in the cities of Bologna; Paris; Oxford; Cambridge. In its own day, the Gothic style was called the “modern” style.

Piazza dei Miracoli, Pisa.

7 Renaissance

2012-01-05T11:03:00.000-08:00

Venus of Urbino, Titian.

School of Athens, Raphael.

Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo.

Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci.

Mona Lisa (La Gioconda or Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo) It is a painting in oil on a poplar panel, completed circa 1503–1519. It is on permanent display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris

Leonardo Da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503 or 1504 in Florence, Italy. According to Da Vinci's contemporary, Giorgio Vasari, "...after he had lingered over it four years, left it unfinished...." It is known that such behavior is common in most paintings of Leonardo who, later in his life, regretted "never having completed a single work".

He is thought to have continued to work on Mona Lisa for three years after he moved to France and to have finished it shortly before he died in 1519. Leonardo took the painting from Italy to France in 1516 when King François I invited the painter to work at the Clos Lucé near the king's castle in Amboise. Most likely through the heirs of Leonardo's assistant Salai, the king bought the painting for 4,000 écus and kept it at Château Fontainebleau, where it remained until given to Louis XIV. Louis XIV moved the painting to the Palace of Versailles. After the French Revolution, it was moved to the Louvre.

David, Michelangelo.

On August 16, 1501, Michelangelo was given the official contract to undertake this challenging new task. He began carving the statue early in the morning on Monday, September 13, a month after he was awarded the contract. He would work on the massive biblical hero for more than two years.

On January 25, 1504, when the sculpture was nearing completion, Florentine authorities had to acknowledge there would be little possibility of raising the more than 6-ton statue to the roof of the cathedral.

Michelangelo's David differs from previous representations of the subject in that the Biblical hero is not depicted with the head of the slain Goliath, as he is in Donatello's and Verrocchio's statues. Most scholars consider that the work depicts David before his battle with Goliath.

Michelangelo's David pose is unlike that of any earlier David; Donatello and Verrocchio had both represented the hero standing victorious over the head of Goliath, and Andrea del Castagno had shown the boy in mid-swing, even as Goliath's head rested between his feet, but no earlier Florentine artist had omitted the giant altogether. The contrast between his intense expression and his calm pose perhaps suggests that David is represented after he has made the decision to fight Goliath but before the battle has actually taken place.

In 1504 David was installed next to the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio. It took four days to move the statue the half-mile from Michelangelo's workshop into the Piazza della Signoria.

The Pietà, Michelangelo.

Michelangelo’s Pietà (or Rondanini Pietà) is one of the great tomb markers in the Vatican.

Pietà is one of Michaelangelo’s great nonfinito works. The structure is pyramidal, and the vertex coincides with Mary's head. The statue widens progressively down the drapery of Mary's dress, to the base, the rock of Golgotha. The figures are quite out of proportion, owing to the difficulty of depicting a fully-grown man cradled full-length in a woman's lap. Much of Mary's body is concealed by her monumental drapery, and the relationship of the figures appears quite natural. Michelangelo's interpretation of the Pieta was far different from those previously created by other artists, as he sculpted a young and beautiful Mary rather than an older woman around 50 years of age.

Il Cenacolo or L'Ultima Cena, Leonardo da Vinci.

The Last Supper measures 450 × 870 centimeters (15 feet × 29 ft) and covers an end wall of the dining hall at the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. The theme was a traditional one for refectories, although the room was not a refectory at the time that Leonardo painted it. The main church building had only recently been completed (in 1498), but was remodeled by Bramante, hired by Ludovico Sforza to build a Sforza family mausoleum. The painting was commissioned by Sforza to be the centerpiece of the mausoleum. The lunettes above the main painting, formed by the triple arched ceiling of the refectory, are painted with Sforza coats-of-arms. Leonardo began work on The Last Supper in 1495 and completed it in 1498.

Sophisticated patrons, like the Medici, appreciated allusions to ancient Greek and Roman literature and commissioned Botticelli to paint mythological subjects, like the Birth of Venus.

Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli.

David, Donatello.

In the early part of the 15th -century, the Italian painter Masaccio provided new direction for Florentine painting.

With the bronze David, Donatello reintroduced the life-size nude, once so evident in the ancient world.

Scholars do not know the circumstances surrounding the creation of Donatello’s bronze David.

In 15th-century Italy, wealthy families, such as the Medici in Florence, were powerful and influential patrons of the arts.

Gate of Paradise, Lorenzo Ghibirti.

In 1425 Lorenzo Ghiberti was commissioned to design a pair of bronze doors for The Battistero of San Giovanni in Florence. He labored on the task for 27 years, fashioning a masterpiece that Michelangelo called "truly worthy to be the Gates of Paradise" for its remarkable beauty and grandeur.

Sculptor, painter, draftsman, architectural consultant, stained-glass designer, entrepreneur, author of a treatise on the arts, and the first artist to write an autobiography, Ghiberti could honestly declare in his Commentaries that "few things of importance were made in our city that were not designed or devised by my hand.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1476-1564) is reported to have called the Baptistery's eastern doors the Gates of Paradise, a reference to heaven's beatific entrance. The essays in Gary Radke's catalogue justify the Italian High Renaissance master's legendary praise of Lorenzo's Ghiberti's work some five centuries later.

Dome at the Cathedral of Florence (Dome of Heaven)

Brunelleschi designed the Dome at the Cathedral of Florence, symbolically represents the Dome of Heaven.

The governing body for the city of Florence met in the Palazzo Della Signoria.

Saint Luke was the patron saint of painters.

Cennino Cennini’s Il Libro dell’Arte (The Book of Art) instructs the artist in the technique of painting as well as the proper lifestyle for the artist.

The Cathedral of Florence is also known as San Giovanni.

Santa Maria del Fiore, Cathedral of Florence.

8 Post Renaissance

2012-01-05T11:02:00.000-08:00

Saint Theresa of Avila in Ecstasy, Bernini.

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music. The style started around 1600 in Rome, Italy and spread to most of Europe.
The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent, in response to the Protestant Reformation, that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement. The aristocracy also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art as a means of impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control. Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence.

Incredulity of st Thomas, Caravaggio.

The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, El Greco.

El Greco (1541 – April 7, 1614) was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" (The Greek) was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, ΔομήνικοςΘεοτοκόπουλος (Doménikos Theotokópoulos).
El Greco was born on Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the centre of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before traveling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings.
El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism.

Perseus with the Head of Medusa, Benvenuto Cellini.

Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it. Mannerism is notable for its intellectual sophistication as well as its artificial (as opposed to naturalistic) qualities.
Benvenuto Cellini (3 November 1500 – 13 February 1571) was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, painter, soldier and musician, who also wrote a famous autobiography. Besides his works in gold and silver, Cellini executed sculptures of grander scale. The most distinguished of these is the bronze group of Perseus with the Head of Medusa, a work (first suggested by Duke CosimoI de Medici) now in the Loggia dei Lanzi at Florence, his attempt to surpass Michelangelo's David and Donatello's Judith and Holofernes. The casting of this work caused Cellini much trouble and anxiety, but it was hailed as a masterpiece as soon as it was completed.
Cellini was one of the most important artists of Mannerism.

9 Modern Art

2012-01-05T11:01:00.000-08:00

Lucian Freud, Sleeping by the lion carpet

Lucian Freud, Sue-tilley

Lucian Freud, at the studio with the Queen

Lucian Freud, Nude-With-Leg-Up

Lucian Freud, Leigh Bowery

Lucian Freud, at the studio with Leigh Bowery

Lucian Freud, Reflection selfportrait

Christo and Jeanne-Claude make temporary site-specific artworks.

Ana Mendieta

Lucio Fontana

Arte Povera was centered in Italy

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe 1962

Andy Warhol, Autoritratto

Jackson Pollock

Willen da Kooning, Woman

Mark Rothko, no-8-1952

Alfred Stieglitz was the chief proponent of European Modern art in America

Miró exhibited with the Surrealists from the beginning and embraced biomorphic abstraction.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain 1917

Marcel Duchamp, LHOOQ

Marcel DuChamp, Nude Staircase

Amadeo Modigliani, Red Nude 1917

Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian, Broadway

Henry Matisse, Blue Nude I 1952

Henry Matisse, Dance

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Mary Cassatt

Cezanne, Apples

Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh, A Pair of Shoes

Édouard Manet, Olympia

Édouard Manet, Le déjeunersur l'herbe 1863.

Napoleon III developed the Salon des Refusés for artists rejected from the official Salon.

Gustave Courbet, Autoritratto

Gustave Courbet, The Artist's Studio 1855

Antoine-Jean Gros

Jacques Louis David, The Death of Marat

Jacques Louis David, Oath of the horatii-1784

MODERN ART

Although modern sculpture and architecture are reckoned to have emerged at the end of the 19th century, the beginnings of modern painting can be located earlier. The date perhaps most commonly identified, as marking the birth of modern art is 1863, the year that Édouard Manet exhibited his painting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe in the Salon des Refusés in Paris. Earlier dates have also been proposed, among them 1855 (the year Gustave Courbet exhibited The Artist's Studio) and 1784 (the year Jacques-Louis David completed his painting The Oath of the Horatii. In the words of art historian H. Harvard Arnason: "Each of these dates has significance for the development of modern art, but none categorically marks a completely new beginning .... A gradual metamorphosis took place in the course of a hundred years.”

DESCRIPTIONS OF MAJOR MODERN ART MOVEMENTS

Impressionism: A painting movement of sometimes varying styles which began in mid-19th century France, including such artists as Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, Morisot, Cezanne (in his early years), and the American painter, Mary Cassatt. The group practiced plein air painting (working from life mostly out-of-doors), wanting to capture modern life in a spontaneous, direct manner. Impressionism also at times included breaking up the picture surface into small dabs of broken color, rather than blended, smooth surfaces, which the viewer would merge together when looking at the painting.

Post-Impressionism: Not really a movement in the usual sense, but a description of painting which followed Impressionism in France, and was influenced by it, but evolved beyond it. Post-Impressionism generally existed in the 1880's, and included artists such as Cezanne, Gauguin, Seurat, and Van Gogh, and tended to be less naturalistic than Impressionism, seeing the picture surface more as a flat plane than an illusion of depth. This thinking led toward the 20th century notion of painting as essentially colors and forms on a flat surface, rather than the imitation of objective reality. Seurat and others began the Pointillist movement, which carried the color and optical ideas of the Impressionists to an almost scientific extreme, consisting of tiny dots of color.

Symbolism: A literary as well as a visual art movement, in the 1890's in Europe, particularly France, which included the painter Odilon Redon. A group of painters was influenced by Symbolist ideas, and also carried further the ideas of the Post-Impressionists, such as Gauguin. Painters influenced by Symbolist ideas, calling themselves the Nabis (French for 'prophets'), included Pierre Bonnard and Vuillard. The Symbolists were also influenced by Art Nouveau (with its curvilinear quality), and carried forward the notion of painting being colors and shapes on a flat surface, rather than "objective" reality. There was also a tendency toward dreamlike imagery, such as Gauguin's and Redon's.

Fauvism: Also a movement of loosely connected French painters, of the first years of the 20th century, which included Matisse and Derain. The main emphasis in Fauvism was on color - bright, free use of arbitrary (independent of objective reality) color (les fauves meant 'wild beasts,' a term coined by those critical of the paintings). The shapes were also not confined to objective reality, and showed strong exuberance of spirit.

Cubism: A new structural and spatial organization in painting (and sculpture), begun in France following Fauvism, in the first years of the 20th century, by Picasso and Braque, which was inspired by African sculpture and Cezanne's paintings, among other influences. Cubism dealt mainly with space - the disintegration of traditional illusionistic space in art, and the beginning of pictorial space, which again was based on the notion that a painting is not an illusion of three dimensions, but has its own two-dimensional reality which overrides the depiction of depth. There was also a tendency toward flattening images as geometrical shapes, and the notion of multiple perspectives, as opposed to the previous one vantage point of Renaissance space. Other artists, such as Gris and Feininger, followed Picasso and Braque, and spelled out their cubist theories in writing.

Abstraction: Abstraction (in painting and sculpture) was not really a movement per se, but an idea which took root in the 1890's in Europe, came to fruition around 1910, and continues to be a viable tradition today. Some of the first abstractionists included Kandinsky and Mondrian. They believed that art does not exist to depict external reality, anymore than music exists to imitate the sounds of nature. Abstract art modifies or distorts objective reality (nature), as opposed to "non-objective" art, which refers to art which exists independently of, and is not based on, external reality. Kandinsky's essay, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, recounts his passage from more conventional painting to his ideas on the higher ideals of abstract art.

Dada: Dada was a European precursor to Surrealism, and included artist Marcel Duchamp. The dadaist movement extended to both visual art and literature. It was an anti-movement born in the second decade of the 20th century, and affected by the disillusionment after World War I. Dadaism was out to shock, to shake up conventions, to be anti-art, to question the very definitions of art. The most famous example of dada is Duchamp's entry into the 1917 Society of Independent Artists exhibition in New York - a 'found' urinal displayed with his pseudonym of "R Mutt." (Duchamp was way ahead of his time, and is considered the first exponent of conceptual art, a movement of the late 20th century.) Dada expressed itself in the forms of collage and sculpture, among others.

Surrealism: Some of the members of Dada went on to create the Surrealistic movement of the 1920's, which was also a literary movement, in Europe. Surrealistic painters had wildly divergent styles, but some of the elements they had in common were: the effect of the subconscious and dreams in art; the importance of the element of chance in art; the idea of an absolute, or 'super-reality' in art. The most famous exponent of Surrealism was Salvador Dali; other Surrealists were Joan Miro, Max Ernst, and Rene Magritte.

Abstract Expressionism: A mainly American movement of artists who came together informally, Abstract Expressionism began in the 1940's, influenced by European abstraction and Surrealism. Many emigre artists from World War II Europe and before came to America and became major influences on artists here before, during and after World War II, including Max Ernst, Mondrian, Arshile Gorky, Leger and Hans Hoffman. Major figures of Abstract Expressionism were Willem de Kooning (who came from Holland in the 1920's), Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. Stylistically, there was a wide range, from the large drip paintings of Pollock to the geometric abstraction of Newman, and the soft color field paintings of Rothko, and the painterly work of de Kooning. Common elements included a certain spiritual nature of the work, the elements of chance and the unconscious, and the absence or distortion of objective reality. The movement was at its height during the early 1950's; several sculptors can also be considered abstract expressionist, such as Reuben Nakian.

Expressionism: Mainly centered in early 20th century Germany, with loosely connected painters, Expressionism was also found in other places and even other times (James Ensor, Edvard Munch, and Van Gogh are considered to be three precursors of Expressionism). It can be considered to be the German version of Fauvism. As well as being a movement, expressionism is also a characteristic applied to any art which holds as its primary focus the expression of emotion, as opposed to a description of external reality. Stylistic tendencies include bright or even garish color, sharply linear, or dark and brooding quality, black and white woodcuts. Kirchner and Emil Nolde can be characterized as Expressionists.

Pop Art: Also an American (and non-organized) movement, Pop is well-known as a late 1950's, early 1960's art movement. A reaction to Abstract Expressionism and the new consumer culture in the United States, Pop's early figures were Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol; Claes Oldenburg is a Pop sculptor. Pop artists generally wanted to make art that was 'cool' as opposed to the strong emotion of Abstract Expressionism; that avoided Abstract Expressionism's tendency to serious artistic individualism to instead divorce the artist's personality from the work. Everyone is familiar with Warhol's Soup Cans, and other images taken from advertising and the contemporary world. Styles of Pop ranged from painterly to hard-edge, but generally had a certain 'deadpan' attitude.

Op Art: Generally a minor (and not organized) movement of painters, Op art came to prominence following Pop art in 1960's America, although artists had been creating works using optical effects since the 1930's. It focused on a strictly visual exploration of the inter-relatedness of colors and other optical effects in painting, often resulting in striking and dramatic effects that also were illusionary in terms of depth (optical illusion). The best known of the Op artists was Victor Vasarely; Josef Albers is sometimes considered to be an Op artist, but I feel his work, though dealing with the interaction of colors, was more of an intense lifetime study of color, rather than a superficial interest in optical effects.

Earth, or Environmental Art: This international movement began in the 1970's, and used the natural world as its material and content, generally making large 'earthworks'. Environmental artists work as individuals, rather than as part of an organized art movement. Coming from Europe to America, Christo and Jeanne-Claude are the best known environmental artists (they work as partners). They create temporary works that are a combination of natural and manmade, often involving large numbers of workers to construct their projects. Examples of their work: In Japan and California, a series of large umbrellas in the landscape; a miles-long and tall running fence in California; a "wrapped" building in an urban setting, such as their covering of the Reichstag in Germany. There is a conceptual, or idea, sense to their work, and generally a poetic and art-for-all quality. Other earthworks consist of natural materials, such as large rocks, arranged in patterns over a large and perhaps isolated area, such as Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson.

Minimalism: Not an organized movement, minimalism began in the 1960's, predominantly in the United States. Its main thesis is "less is more," perhaps a reaction against the highly emotional nature of Abstract Expressionism. Large sculptures and paintings consist of bare geometric forms - squares, cubes, sometimes in more complex arrangements, and often limited in color. Donald Judd's minimalist sculpture consists of large, heavy cube forms. Although it can be a sterile form of expression in the hands of an artist of limited depth, Judd's cubes express a forceful finality and strength, and are an expression of our times in terms of the lessening influence of the natural world, and more influence from our industrial, geometric environment; and within this ascetic parameter, minute variations in treatment, composition, and color can become much more apparent and meaningful. The painter Agnes Martin works in an austere geometric abstraction, which is also luminous in muted color and expression.

Conceptual Art: Not an organized movement, Conceptual art can be thought to have begun in the early 20th century with Marcel Duchamp of the European dada movement (see above), but its official genesis was the 1960's. Basically, conceptual art places its emphasis on the idea of the work of art as its primary identity, rather than the object itself. This idea is as old as Plato, meaning that the idea of an object is more real than the actual object (the chair can be destroyed, but the idea of the chair is eternal and immutable). There is perhaps a contemporary addition of the notion that art is not a commodity, as so much else in our society is, but rather a non-saleable idea. Conceptual art, as is much art in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, is an international movement, and comes in many forms and mediums, sometimes being an act or acts done by an artist, that may or may not result in a physical object. Conceptual art can sometimes be very cerebral in nature. Good examples of conceptual artists are Ann Hamilton and Christian Boltanski, whose work contains poetic and powerful ideas on the nature of reality.

Installation Art: Not a movement per se, installation art consists of very large, mainly three-dimensional, collections of objects and forms, often filling a large gallery or museum space. Entire environments can be created (or re-created), often evocatively. One of the first installation artists was Kienholz, an American artist first known in the 1960's, and loosely connected with the Pop artists. He created large three-dimensional groupings of objects, such as smashed-up cars, etc., with an air of violence, or perhaps death, but also an element of tongue-in-cheek. Some of his later work contained elements from such institutions as prisons or state mental hospitals, perhaps with social comment in mind. Another installation artist beginning in the 1960's was George Segal, who made white plaster casts from real people, and placed them in contemporary mundane settings, such as a man putting letters on a movie marquee, reflecting the poetry of the mundane. Artists since have created many site-specific installations, meaning that the work was conceived to fit physically and aesthetically in a given area. One contemporary sculptor and installation artist is Judy Pfaff.