Art Timeline

After the industrial revolution (1760-1860), in the mid of 19th Century, rapid change took place in
manufacturing, transport and technology significantly affected the life of the people;
manufacturing, transport and technology made such great advancement to the consciousness
of the people which led to people demanding for an urban architecture, applied art and design.
Two of the major developments in this period were 1) John Rand invented the collapsible tin
paint tube and 2) photography was made. This gave birth to the now known as “impressionism”
which greatly affected how the artists painted the world around them and the way artists created
their art. Departing from the traditional way of involving religion and Greek mythology, the artists
started to diversify their artworks to ‘meaningful’ portraits and landscapes.

Impressionism Fauvism Expressionism Surrealism Contemporary

1870 - 1890 1905 -1910 1905 -1925 1924 Art
1950-Present

COURSE MATERIAL
Gardner’s Art through the Ages: A Concise Western History, Third Edition; Art in Focus, Mittler
(2006); A Histroy of Art History, Wood (2019); Art and Thought (2003); The Social History
of Art, Third Edition, Hauser (2005)

Impressionism

Impressionism was developed in France during the late 19th and 20th centuries. (1867-1886).
Due to the result of a chaotic transformation from the industrial revolution, which made the world
seem unstable and insubstantial, Impressionism was developed (in France during the late 19th
and 20th centuries, 1867-1886). As the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
observed in his 1860 essay The Painter of Modern Life: “Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive,
the contingent.” Impressionist built upon the departing of the realists from the traditional
mythological and religious themes.

Tired of displaying realistic artworks, and due to the invention of photography, impressionist
attempted to show the ‘real’. In which the artist started to involve their perspective of the world.
Artists started to manipulate the:

 distinctive color palette;

 focused on the use of light;
 painted more the still life depictions of everyday life;
 tone;
 texture as an end-in-themselves;
 Minimized perspectival depth so that the viewer would look at the surface patterns and
relationships of the picture;
 Introduced the ‘creative cropping’ like in photographs but they made it appear natural;
and
 Usually finishes their painting outdoors to capture the natural light.
Impressionist Painters:

Impression:
Sunrise
Claude
Monet. 1872.
Oil on canvas,
1′ 7 1–2 ″ × 2′
11–2″.
Musée
Marmottan,
Paris.

 Claude Monet – his painting ‘Impression: Sunrise’ became revolutionary and actually
gave birth to impressionism. This exhibition became controversial because he did not
disguise the brushstrokes and did not blend the pigment to appear a smooth tonal
 gradation and an optically accurate scene in comparison to realistic depiction of
artworks. Monet bridged the connection of the artist and his work. Impressions is the
ground of the artists in actualizing their perception of the world; may be objective
perception or solely subjective responses or an interaction between the two. They were
sensations—the artists’ subjective and personal responses to nature.

Pierre-auguste
renoir, Le
Moulin de la
Galette, 1876.
Oil on canvas,
4′ 3″ × 5′ 8″.
Musée
d’Orsay, Paris.

 Pierre-Auguste Renoir – modern and industrialized Paris pave the way for an ample
leisure time for the Parisians. In Renoir’s famous painting Le Moulin de la Galette
(1876), showed the Parisian dance hall. It depicted the lively and energetic crowd in
which showed dancing and socializing people that enable the viewers to hear the sound
of that casual occasion that Parisian typically enjoyed.

Renoir’s painting of this popular Parisian dance hall is dappled by sunlight and shade,
artfully blurred into the figures to produce just the effect of floating and fleeting light the
Impressionists cultivated.

Fauvism

In 1905 a group of young painters exhibited canvases so simplified in design and so shockingly
bright in color that a startled Critic Louis Vauxcelles (1870–1943), described the artists as wild
beasts (fauves). Their desire was to develop an art having directness of Impressionism but with
use of intense color (in comparison with impression paintings which uses low intensity value of
color) for expressive ends. Fauves liberated hue from its descriptive function and explored the
effects of the uses of different colors in portraying emotions.

Henri Matisse, Red

Room (Harmony in
Red), 1908–1909.
Oil on canvas, 5′
11″ × 8′ 1″.
State Hermitage
Museum, Saint
Petersburg.

 Henri
Matisse - The dominant figure of the Fauve group was Henri Matisse (1869–1954), who
believed color could play a primary role in conveying meaning and focused his efforts on
developing this notion.
Matisse believed painters should choose compositions and colors that express their
feelings. Here, the table and the wall seem to merge because they are the same color
and have identical patterning.

Expressionism

The use of bold and striking color appealed to German Expressionists. Although color played
vital role in expressionism in the early 20th century, the expressiveness is also seen in the
distortedness, ragged outlines and frantic brushstrokes.
 Hernst Ludwig KircHner, Street,
Dresden,
1908 (dated 1907). Oil on
canvas, 4′ 111–4 ″ × 6′ 6 7–8 ″.
Museum of Modern Art, New
York.

 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner- German Expressionist (die brücke) group, under the leadership
of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, gathered in Dresden in 1905. The members thought of
themselves as the bridge (hence, the name) between the old and the new, perfecting a
better age. They protested the hypocrisy and materialistic decadence of those in power.
Kirchner focused more on the negative effects of industrialization and the alienation of
individuals in the cities.
Kirchner’s perspective distortions, disquieting figures, and color choices reflect the
influence of the Fauves and of Edvard Munch (fig. 13-16), who made similar expressive
use of formal elements.

Vassily
KandinsKy,
Improvisation
28 (second
version), 1912.
Oil on canvas,
3′ 7 7–8″ × 5′ 3
7–8 ″.
Solomon
R.Guggen
heim
Museum, New
York
  Vassily Kandinsky- A second major group of the German Expressionists- Der Blaue
Reiter (The Blue Rider), under the leadership of Kadisnky and his founding partner
Franz Marc selected the name of their group for the reason that they both like color blue
and horses. The Bridge group produced paintings that captures the artist’s feelings in
visual form and at the same time eliciting visceral message to the viewers.
Kandinsky believed artists must express their innermost feelings by orchestrating color,
form, line, and space. He was one of the first artists to explore complete abstraction in
paintings he called Improvisations.

Surrealism

Sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of our imagination. Cultural
Movement expressed through art which took away from rationalism. The movement represented
a reaction against what its members saw as the destruction wrought by the “rationalism” that
had guided European culture and politics in the past and that had culminated in the horrors of
World War I (1914-1918, Sarajevo Bosnia- Hungary). Surrealism was a means of reuniting
conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and
fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in “an absolute reality, a surreality.” –
Andre Breton, The Surrealist Manifesto, 1924). Heavily adapted from Sigmund Freud’s concept
of the unconscious which Breton saw it as the origin of the imagination.

Pop Art

Pop art movement aimed to haze the boundaries between "high" art and "low" culture. Although
Pop art incorporates a wide variety of work with very different attitudes and postures, much of it
is somewhat emotionally removed.  Pop artists seemingly embraced the post-World War II
manufacturing and the booming of media. Commercial Art.

Just What Is It That Makes Today's

Homes So Different, So Appealing?
Richard Hamilton, 1956