• https://courses.lumenlearning.

com/boundless-arthistory/chapter/visual-elements/
• https://www.dummies.com/education/art-appreciation/art-history-timeline/
• https://www.oxfordartonline.com/page/cubism

15th century
Mellozo da Forti
Angel part of a
fresco 1480

Hans Memling
1490
 Art History
• “There is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.”

• “The trouble about beauty is that tastes and standards of what is beautiful vary so much.”

• “What is true of beauty is also true of expression. In fact, it is often the expression of a figure in the painting which makes
us like or loathe the work”

• Gombrich, 1999
• Art and art expression has changed through time and will continue to change through time
• School of art – a group of artists whose paintings show a general similarity of style because of a particular shared
influence
• Still for all style of some painters are so individualistic that they don’t always fall within a school – and art books defer of
what the different schools and differences between schools
• A period could have one school or several school (this is the case in modern art because of the variety and variation)
• Reality: artists will continue to make art, learning from each other, influencing each other yet individualistic and changing all
the time.

Separating the schools

Main separation:
Ancient and Medieval Art 3000 BC to 1300 AD
Traditional Art 1300 – 1850
Modern Art 1850 onwards

Note that different cultures had different styles and continues to change from the first time that man took coloured earth and
created forms and designs
The first art work
Aborigines Art
Carolingian Art
 ISLAMIC ART
• Islamic art is not art of a specific religion, time, place, or of a single
medium . Instead it spans some 1400 years, covers many lands and
populations, and includes a range of artistic fields including
architecture, calligraphy , painting, glass, ceramics , and textiles,
among others.
• Islamic religious art differs from Christian religious art in that it is non-
figural because many Muslims believe that the depiction of the human
form is idolatry , and thereby a sin against God, forbidden in the
Qur’an. Calligraphy and architectural elements are given important
religious significance in Islamic art.
• Islamic art developed from many sources: Roman, early Christian art,
and Byzantine styles ; Sassanian art of pre-Islamic Persia; Central Asian
styles brought by various nomadic incursions, and Chinese influences
appear on Islamic painting, pottery , and textiles.
 Carolingian art
• Carolingian art comes from the Frankish Empire from about 780 to 900
CE, during the reign of Charlemagne and his immediate heirs. This
period is popularly known as the Carolingian Renaissance .
• Carolingian paintings show an attempt to conform to Charlemagne’s
desire to revive the Roman Empire under a Christian banner.
• Some fragmentary frescoes have survived, allowing art historians to
theoretically conceptualize Carolingian painting. Examples of surviving
fragments include those at the Abbey of Saint John at Müstair and Saint
Benedikt at Mals.
• Mosaics , created by assembling small pieces of colored glass, stone,
pigments , and other materials, were created in Charlemagne’s Palatine
Chapel. Examples of well-preserved surviving frescoes can be found at
Charlemagne’s Palatine Chapel at Aachen and Germigny-des-Prés.
• Humanism influenced the Renaissance periods in Germany, France,
England, the Netherlands, and Poland. There were also other
national and localized movements, each with different
characteristics and strengths.
• Northern painters in the 16th century increasingly looked to Rome
for influence, and became known as the Romanists . The High
Renaissance art of Michelangelo and Raphael and the stylistic
tendencies of Mannerism also had a great impact on their work.
• Although Renaissance humanism and the large number of surviving
classical artworks and monuments in Italy encouraged many Italian
painters to explore Greco-Roman themes, Northern Renaissance
painters developed other subject matters, such as landscape and
genre painting.
 Protestant Revolution
• Art that portrayed religious figures or scenes followed Protestant
theology by depicting people and stories accurately and clearly
and emphasized salvation through divine grace, rather than
through personal deeds, or by intervention of church bureaucracy.
• Reformation art embraced Protestant values , although the
amount of religious art produced in Protestant countries was
hugely reduced. Instead, many artists in Protestant countries
diversified into secular forms of art like history painting ,
landscapes, portraiture, and still life .
• The Protestant Reformation induced a wave of iconoclasm , or the
destruction of religious imagery , among the more radical
evangelists.
 MANNERISM

• Mannerism encompasses a variety of approaches influenced by, and

reacting to, the harmonious ideals associated with artists such as
Leonardo da Vinci, Rapheal, and early Michelangelo.

• Where High Renaissance art emphasizes proportion, balance, and ideal

beauty, Mannerism exaggerates such qualities, often resulting in
compositions that are asymmetrical or unnaturally elegant.

• The style is notable for its intellectual sophistication as well as its artificial
(as opposed to naturalistic) qualities.
• This artistic style privileges compositional tension and instability rather
than the balance and clarity of earlier Renaissance painting. Mannerism in
literature and music is notable for its highly florid style and intellectual
sophistication.
At the time, a backlash against the conservative Protestant Reformation was
compelled by the Catholic Church to re-establish its importance and grandeur
within society. Artists followed suit by reviving Renaissance ideals of beauty,
infusing into the era's artwork, music, and architecture a revived nod to classicism
further enhanced by a new exuberant extravagance and penchant for the ornate.
This highly embellished style was coined Baroque and became marked by its
innovative techniques and details, delivering a lush new visual language into what
had been a relatively toned down period for art.
• Baroque brought images for religious worship back into the public eye after being
banned for their glorification of the ethereal and ideal. The movement's leaders
professed that art should be easily understood and strongly felt by common
people with the effect of encouraging piety and an awe for the church.
This dynamic painting depicts the Biblical story of the pious widow
Judith and her attendant Abra as they behead the struggling
Assyrian general Holofernes. When Holofernes besieged and
threatened to destroy her city, Judith adorned herself and went out
to meet him on the pretext of offering information. Intending to
seduce her, he invited her into his tent for dinner but as the Bible
says, "was so enchanted with her that he drank far more wine than
he had drunk on any other day in his life." Taking a sword, Judith
beheaded him and returned with his head in a basket to the city,
where she was acclaimed as a hero. Unlike traditional depictions
which emphasized Judith's beauty and delicacy and portrayed Abra
as an observing witness, this work innovatively emphasizes the
women's strength, their expressions conveying determined resolve,
as they work together, sleeves rolled up, to do a difficult but
necessary task. The intense physicality and violence of the depiction,
as art historian Esperança Camara wrote, "to this day...strikes its
viewers with both revulsion and awe at the skill of the artist who so
convincingly transformed paint into blood."
• Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion
and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and
nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was
partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the aristocratic
social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the
scientific rationalization of nature—all components of
modernity.
• It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and
literature, but had a major impact on historiography
, education, the social sciences, and the natural sciences.
• It had a significant and complex effect on politics, with
romantic thinkers influencing liberalism, radicalism,
conservatism and nationalism.
Realism, in the arts, the accurate, detailed,
unembellished depiction of nature or of
contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative
idealization in favour of a close observation of
outward appearances. As such, realism in its
broad sense has comprised many artistic
currents in different civilizations.
Post-Impressionism is a term used to describe
the reaction in the 1880s against
Impressionism. It was led by Paul Cézanne,
Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Georges
Seurat. The Post-Impressionists rejected
Impressionism’s concern with the spontaneous
and naturalistic rendering of light and color.
Instead they favored an emphasis on more
symbolic content, formal order and structure.
Similar to the Impressionists, however, they
stressed the artificiality of the picture.
rejection of portraying the
outer visible world. Instead,
Expressionist artists sought to
communicate the universal
condition of humanity’s inner
spiritual being.

Expressionism is an umbrella term that refers to

international movements in art, architecture,
literature, music, dance and theater that
flourished between c. 1905 and c. 1920,
especially in Germany. It is also a broad term
used to describe works that are inspired by an
artist’s personal inner vision and contain a
strong emotional component. In the early 20th
century, however, profound unrest and
disillusionment with the forces of
modernization characterized much of the
ideology of artists involved with Expressionism.
Heralded as one of the
most original and
influential artistic
movements of the 20th
century, Cubism
aggressively challenged
Western conceptions of
pictorial representation.

The early Cubist works of Picasso and Braque

assaulted Renaissance ideals of perspective
and illusionism by breaking up the picture
surface into a series of planes, signs and
shifting viewpoints. Volume was rendered in
flat planes instead of using tonal modeling and
three-dimensionality was indicated by showing
multiple viewpoints simultaneously.
ELEMENTS OF ART
Lines
• Actual lines are lines that are physically present, existing as solid connections between one or more points.
• Implied line refers to the path that the viewer ‘s eye takes as it follows shapes, colors, and forms along any given path.
• Straight or classic lines provide stability and structure to a composition and can be vertical, horizontal, or diagonal on a
work’s surface.
• Expressive lines refer to curved marks that increase the sense of dynamism of a work of art.
• The outline or contour lines create a border or path around the edge of a shape, thereby outlining and defining it. “Cross
contour lines” delineate differences in the features of a surface.
• Hatch lines are a series of short lines repeated in intervals, typically in a single direction, and are used to add shading and
texture to surfaces, while cross-hatch lines provide additional texture and tone to the image surface and can be oriented in
any direction.
 Value: use of light and dark
• In painting, value changes are achieved by adding black or white to a color.
• Value in art is also sometimes referred to as ” tint ” for light hues and “shade” for dark hues.
• Values near the lighter end of the spectrum are termed “high-keyed” while those on the darker end are called “low-keyed.”
• In two-dimensional art works, the use of value can help to give a shape the illusion of mass or volume .
• Chiaroscuro was a common technique in Baroque painting and refers to clear tonal contrasts exemplified by very high-keyed
whites, placed directly against very low-keyed darks.

In two-dimensional artworks, the use of value can help to give

a shape the illusion of mass or volume. It will also give the
entire composition a sense of lighting. High contrast refers to
the placing of lighter areas directly against much darker ones,
so their difference is showcased, creating a dramatic effect.
High contrast also refers to the presence of more blacks than
white or grey. Low-contrast images result from placing mid-
range values together so there is not much visible difference
between them, creating a more subtle mood.

Chiaroscuro, which means literally “light-dark” in Italian,

refers to clear tonal contrasts exemplified by very high-keyed
whites, placed directly against very low-keyed darks.
Candlelit scenes were common in Baroque painting as they
effectively produced this dramatic type of effect. Caravaggio
used a high contrast palette in such works as The Denial of St.
Peter to create his expressive chiaroscuro scene.
 Colour
• In the visual arts, color theory is a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impacts of specific color
combinations.

• Color theory first appeared in the 17th century, when Isaac Newton discovered that white light could be passed through a
prism and divided into the full spectrum of colors.
• The spectrum of colors contained in white light are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo , and violet.
• Color theory divides color into the ” primary colors ” of red, yellow, and blue, which cannot be mixed from other pigments,
and the “secondary colors” of green, orange, and violet, which result from different combinations of the primary colors.
• Primary and secondary colors are combined in various mixtures to create tertiary colors.
• Complementary colors are found opposite each other on the color wheel and represent the strongest contrast for those
particular two colors.
• complementary color:A color which is regarded as the opposite of another on the color wheel (i.e., red and green, yellow
and purple, and orange and blue).
• value:The relative darkness or lightness of a color in a specific area of a painting or other visual art.
• primary color:Any of three colors which, when added to or subtracted from others in different amounts, can generate all
other colors.
• tint:A color considered with reference to other very similar colors. Red and blue are different colors, but two shades of
scarlet are different tints.
• gradation:A passing by small degrees from one tone or shade, as of color, to another.
• hue:A color, or shade of color.
 Texture
• Visual texture refers to an implied sense of texture that the artist creates through the use of various artistic elements such
as line , shading, and color.
• Actual texture refers to the physical rendering or the real surface qualities we can notice by touching an object.
• Visible brushstrokes and different amounts of paint will create a physical texture that can add to the expressiveness of a
painting and draw attention to specific areas within it.
• It is possible for an artwork to contain numerous visual textures but still remain smooth to the touch.
 Shape and Volume
Shape refers to an area in a two-dimensional space that is defined by edges; volume is three-dimensional, exhibiting height,
width, and depth.
• “Positive space ” refers to the space of the defined shape or figure.
• “Negative space” refers to the space that exists around and between one or more shapes.
• A ” plane ” in art refers to any surface area within space.
• ” Form ” is a concept that is related to shape and can be created by combining two or more shapes, resulting in a three-
dimensional shape.
• Art makes use of both actual and implied volume .
• Shape, volume, and space, whether actual or implied, are the basis of the perception of reality.
 Time and Motion
• Motion, a principle of art, is a tool artists use to
organize the artistic elements in a work; it is employed
in both static and time-based mediums.
• Techniques such as scale and proportion are used to
create the feeling of motion or the passing of time in
static a visual piece.
• The placement of a repeated element in different area
within an artwork is another way to imply motion and
the passing of time.
• Visual experiments in time and motion were first
produced in the mid-19th century, and the
photographer Eadweard Muybridge is well-known for
his sequential shots.
• The time-based mediums of film, video, kinetic
sculpture , and performance art employ time and
motion by their very definitions.
• Motion, or movement, is considered to be one of the
“principles of art”; that is, one of the tools artists use
to organize the artistic elements in a work of art.
Motion is employed in both static and in time-based
mediums and can show a direct action or the intended
path for the viewer ‘s eye to follow through a piece.
• Techniques such as scale and proportion are used to
create the feeling of motion or the passing of time in
static visual artwork. For example, on a flat picture
plane , an image that is smaller and lighter colored
than its surroundings will appear to be in the
background. Another technique for implying motion
and/or time is the placement of a repeated element in
different areas within an artwork.
African Art