We looked through the timeline of styles of paintings in class with examples from each time period.
Renaissance
An example of this style is painting’s by Titian, this one is called Bacchus and Ariadne. Renaissance painting use allegories, they tell a story, another feature of these paintings is that they have Greek God’s in them.
Gothic
In the gothic period we quite often don’t know the names of the artists. They normally tell biblical stories as they were painted for churches. A lot of the paintings tend to look similar in style.
Fortunately we know the name of the artist who created this second painting it was an artist called Matthias Stom. It shows the verses in 1 Samuel 28:7-25.
Baroque
Baraque paintings are normally really busy and have mythological content, they consist of Greek gods. The paintings want to show power, specifically religious power and splendour. An example of this is Rubens, this painting is called the Judgement of Paris:
Rococo
This style is largely theatrical, it’s painted with a ‘soft focus’ where everything dissolves away into light. These paintings have a feminine feel to them because of the diffused glow. They often have a slight comical aspect to them, as you can see in this painting by Fragonard; as the woman swings the man can see up her skirt.
Neo Classical
The Neo Classical period began in the 18th Century, it continued the theatrical feel, however the idea behind it was to make art more serious, it was the new classicism. As you can see in this painting names The Oath of the Horatii by Jacques Louis David, they try to realign themselves with the Romans. The concept behind this particular painting is aligning yourself with liberty is worth the sacrifice, of course this was a Roman view point.
Victorian
Britain didn’t really have an art style, they were influenced by so many different countries from past invasions that they just had a mixture of all these different styles. Therefore they decided to invent their own style, they wanted to write a British style into British history. The style they invented was a scientific, analytical, almost photorealistic image. I looked at art by the Pre Raphelite Brotherhood, he majority of the paintings depict the ‘dream women’ as shown below:
Art Nouveau
This began in the 1900s, with the idea of everything looking ‘alive’. This style could even be described as organic because it depicts nature and growth, everything is curvy, hair is made to look like the stalks of a plant.
Here I looked an artist called Mucha, this is an advert for cigarettes, you can see how the curves of her hair attract your attention because they look alive.
Art Deco
Twenty years on from Art Nouveau came Art Deco, this is based on machine aesthetics, making everything look mechanical as everything has a purpose and a job. This painting is created by an artist called Tamara de Lempicka, here you can see that the woman is made to look like a robot.
Modernism
This consists of abstract symbols, here the artist completely removes the subject and instead uses blocks of colour. Here’s an example of Suprematism:
A famous example of modernism is the red wedge (shown below), this shows the Bolsheviks (the red arrow) who are defeating their opponents, The White Movement in the Russian Civil War.
Modernist Movements
Impressionism – examples of this include Monet, one of his famous paintings ‘The Water-Lily Pond’ is shown below:
Post Impressionism – an example of this is Vincent van Gogh, shown below is one of his paintings called ‘Starry Night’:
Expressionism – Edvard Munch created the painting below, called ‘The Scream’, it’s a popular example of expressionism:
Decadent Art – this was art shown by Hitler that mocked modernism.
Cubism – an example of this is Picasso, this one is called ‘Weeping Woman’:
Futurists – an example of this is Tullio Crali’s painting Bombardamento Aereo:
Fauvism – Andre Derain painted the picture below of Henri Matisse, this is an example of fauvism:
Post Modern
Fluxists – an example of a fluxist is Yoko Ono, fluxists are an international network of artists who blended artistic styles in the 1960s.
YBA’s – Young British artists, examples of these are Tracey Emmet (left) and Damien Hirst (right):
Siobhan Baxter 