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• Western Art Movements


  • Old Masters Period
  • Modernism Era
  • Postmodernism Era
• Western art tells a story about a people, time, and culture
• As humans, we tend to use metaphors and symbols to represent important messages, items, and events
• Western art is no different, as there are many unique and rich stories hidden beneath the art form's history
• The Three Brides (1893) by Jan Toorop


  • The painter uses silhouettes of brides as symbols of three states of the soul
• Art influences society and is a vehicle for social change

  It changes opinions, instills values and translates experiences across space and time
• The "Madonna Litta"


  • Depicts the Virgin Mary breastfeeding Christ and illustrates motherly love
  • The blue cloak of Mary symbolizes the Church and her red dress is a symbol of the passion of Christ

  
• Western painting is in general distinguished by its concentration on the representation of the human figure, whether in the heroic context of antiquity or the religious context of the early Christian and medieval world
• The Archangel Gabriel (The Golden-Haired Angel) 12th Century Russian icon


  • Tempera on wood panel, Novgorod School of Byzantine style icon-painting
• Western Art Movements Approximately 4 AD to Present


  • Medieval
  • Renaissance
  • Baroque
  • Rococo
  • Neoclassicism
  • Romanticism
  • Realism
  • Impressionism
  • Post-Impressionism
  • Expressionism
  • Art Nouveau
  • Cubism
  • Futurism
  • Dadaism
  • Surrealism
  • Bauhaus
  • Abstract Expressionism
  • Pop Art
  • Minimalism
  • Art Deco
• From around 4 CE to 1300, the Old Masters era is a broad category that includes many artistic styles and periods, from early Christian and Byzantine, Anglo-Saxon and Viking, Carolingian, Ottonian, Romanesque, and Gothic
• During the medieval period, the various secular arts were unified by the Christian church and the sacred arts associated with it
• Medieval art


  • Included a large number of fresco paintings, which involved the method of mural painting, and this was completed on wet lime plaster
  • Different types can be roughly classified into fresco, panel, and iconography painting
• Renaissance


  Combined influences of an increased awareness of nature, a revival of classical learning, and a more individualistic view of man
• The Renaissance marked an abrupt break with medieval values, as is suggested by the French word renaissance, literally "rebirth"
• The Renaissance movement were focused in nature, humanistic learning and individualism
• Raffaello Sanzio popularly known as Raphael painted the "Sistine Madonna" in 1512


  • The painting shows Mother Mary holding baby Jesus in her hands with Saint Barbara and Saint Sixtus on both her sides and two cherubs beneath her

  
• Baroque


  Refers to a cultural and art movement that characterized Europe from the early seventeenth to mid-eighteenth century
• Baroque emphasizes dramatic, exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted, detail
• Due to its exuberant irregularities, Baroque art has often been defined as being bizarre, or uneven
• "Judith Slaying Holofernes", c. 1612–1613 by Artemesia Gentileschi


  • As the ancient story relates, Assyrian king Nebuchadnezzar sent his general Holofernes to besiege the Jewish city of Bethulia. Judith, described as a beautiful young widow, resolves to save her people by slaying Holofernes herself. After reciting a long prayer to God, she dons her finest clothes in order to seduce him.
• Gian Lorenzo Bernini, "The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa" is a 1647-1652 sculpture


  • Depicts Teresa of Ávila, a Spanish Carmelite nun and saint, swooning in a state of religious ecstasy, while an angel holding a spear stands. It is located at Cornaro Chapel of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.
• 'The Rape of Proserpina' is a large Baroque marble group sculpture by Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, executed between 1621 and 1622


  • Bernini was only 23 years old at its completion.
• Baroque architecture


  • A style that emerged in Italy in the late-16th century
  • A more theatrical version of Renaissance architecture, with dramatic lighting and color, illusory effects such as trompe l'oeil, and designs that played games with architectural features, sometimes leaving them seem incomplete
• Baroque architecture is well known for its extravagance and over-the-top style, and is still a familiar sight in many European cathedrals and palaces
• The term can also applied to music, and there are many recognizable examples of forms
• Baroque began as a Catholic reaction to the conservative style of Protestant religious buildings, and visual excess was actively encouraged
• St. Peter's Square by Architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1664


  • An iconic example of Baroque theatricality
• Rococo


  • An artistic period that emerged in France and spread throughout the world
  • The word is a derivative of the French term 'rocaille' which means 'rock and shell garden ornamentation'
  • Rococo was primarily influenced by the Venetian School's use of color, erotic subjects, and Arcadian landscapes
• Jean-Antoine Watteau "La Surprise", A Couple Embracing While a Figure Dressed as mezzetin Tunes a Guitar, 1718-1719


  • Watteau invented a new genre called 'fêtes galantes', which were scenes of courtship parties
• 'Apollo and Daphne' a Rococo painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1744


  • It depicts drama that occurs between Apollo, god of music and poetry, and Daphne, a virginal nymph. The artist was likely inspired by the classical sculpture Apollo Belvedere (circa 2nd century CE) as well as the ancient Roman poet Ovid's rendition of the myth.
• Jean-François de Troy, "The Declaration of Love" (1731)


  • These celebrated pendants exemplify a genre of painting known as tableaux de mode (paintings of fashionable society) established by the artist himself in order to reject religious or mythological subjects. The artist somehow achieved aesthetic mode of interior decoration, clothing, etiquette, and social mores.
• Architect François de Cuvilliés The Amalienburg Palace, 1739, Munich, Germany


  • Rococo Chairs by Louis Delenouis, 131-1792
  • Rococo Vase with panel painting by John Donaldson, 1763
• Neoclassicism


  • A Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity
  • Neoclassicism is a revival of the many styles inspired directly from the classical period, which coincided and reflected the developments in philosophy and other areas of the Age of Enlightenment, and was initially a reaction against the excesses of the preceding Rococo style
• Neoclassicism painting


  • Characterized by clarity of form, sober colors, shallow space, strong horizontal and verticals that render that subject matter timeless (instead of temporal as in the dynamic Baroque works), and classical subject matter (or classicizing contemporary subject matter)
• The Birth of Venus, 1879 by William-Adolphe Bouguereau


  • The painting is considered as the artist's one of most famous Neoclassical paintings. Depicting the origin story of Venus from Roman Mythology.
• Neoclassical architecture


  • Characterized by grandeur of scale, simplicity of geometric forms of Greek especially Doric order or Roman detail, dramatic use of columns, and a preference for blank walls
  • The new taste for antique simplicity represented a general reaction to the excesses of the Rococo style
• The Petit Trianon mansion, considered to be royal architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel's masterpiece


  • Completed in 1768, it provided Louis XV and his new mistress the Comtesse Du Barry with the privacy which was so sorely lacking at the palace
• Antonio Canova's Paolina Borghese (Pauline Bonaparte) as Venus Victrix, 1805–07


  • She is shown naked, lightly draped, and reclining sensuously on a couch, both a charming contemporary portrait and an idealized antique Venus
• Neoclassicism


  • Doric order or Roman detail
  • Dramatic use of columns
  • Preference for blank walls
  • Reaction to excesses of Rococo style