26 Facts About Western art

European Western art is arranged into a number of stylistic periods, which, historically, overlap each other as different styles flourished in different areas.

European prehistoric Western art is an important pWestern art of the European cultural heritage.

Prehistoric Western art history is usually divided into four main periods: Stone Age, Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age.

Prehistoric Celtic Western art comes from much of Iron Age Europe and survives mainly in the form of high-status metalwork skillfully decorated with complex, elegant and mostly abstract designs, often using curving and spiral forms.

Minoan Western art is marked by imaginative images and exceptional workmanship.

Related searches

Minoan Western art has a variety of subject-matter, much of it appearing across different media, although only some styles of pottery include figurative scenes.

Early Christian Western art grew out of Roman popular, and later Imperial, Western art and adapted its iconography from these sources.

Migration period Western art is a general term for the Western art of the "barbarian" peoples who moved into formerly Roman territories.

Byzantine Western art's crowning achievement were the monumental frescos and mosaics inside domed churches, most of which have not survived due to natural disasters and the appropriation of churches to mosques.

Romanesque Western art refers to the period from about 1000 to the rise of Gothic Western art in the 12th century.

Romanesque Western art is vigorous and direct, was originally brightly coloured, and is often very sophisticated.

Gothic Western art is a variable term depending on the craft, place and time.

The Western art of painting textures with great realism evolved at this time.

Baroque Western art took the representationalism of the Renaissance to new heights, emphasizing detail, movement, lighting, and drama in their search for beauty.

Additionally, the emphasis that Baroque Western art placed on grandeur is seen as Absolutist in nature.

Baroque Western art can be seen as a more elaborate and dramatic re-adaptation of late Renaissance Western art.

Rococo Western art was even more elaborate than the Baroque, but it was less serious and more playful.

Rococo Western art contrasted the Baroque as it often refused symmetry in favor of asymmetrical designs.

The movement was in pWestern art influenced by the Renaissance, which itself was strongly influenced by classical Western art.

Nevertheless, a defining moment for Neoclassicism came during the French Revolution in the late 18th century; in France, Rococo Western art was replaced with the preferred Neoclassical Western art, which was seen as more serious than the former movement.

Romantic Western art was about individual feelings, not common themes, such as in Neoclassicism; in such a way, Romantic Western art often used colours in order to express feelings and emotion.

Similarly to Neoclassicism, Romantic Western art took much of its inspiration from ancient Greek and Roman Western art and mythology, yet, unlike Neoclassical, this inspiration was primarily used as a way to create symbolism and imagery.

Romantic Western art takes much of its aesthetic qualities from medievalism and Gothicism, as well as mythology and folklore.

However, the Surrealists themselves have objected to the study of surrealism as an era in Western art history, claiming that it oversimplifies the complexity of the movement, misrepresents the relationship of surrealism to aesthetics, and falsely characterizes ongoing surrealism as a finished, historically encapsulated era.

Recent developments in Western art have been characterised by a significant expansion of what can now deemed to be Western art, in terms of materials, media, activity and concept.

Related searches

Postmodernism in Western art, which has grown since the 1960s, differs from Modernism in as much as Modern Western art movements were primarily focused on their own activities and values, while Postmodernism uses the whole range of previous movements as a reference point.