Art Periods in Modern

European History

Renaissance• Based on rationality, admiration of

classicism, a secular approach to the world.

• Innovations include oil paint, use of point perspective, shading, use of an outside source of light.

Mannerism• More subjective and

emotional. • Mannerism reflects the

troubled time of the reformation vs. Catholic counter reformation

• Abandonment of perspective, or very elongated exaggerated limbs, dark shadows.

• El Greco, Titian, late Michelangelo.

Baroque• More realistic than mannerism.• Grand, elaborate, formal, and

emotional.• Tied to grandeur of the church or

monarchs.• Rubens, Velazquez, Bach, Handel,

Opera, Milton, late Shakespeare, Cervantes.

Rococo• Elaborate but

lighter, almost dainty.

• Mainly the 1700s.• Watteau,

Fragonard• Great patron was

Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour.

Realism•Netherlands•Fans Hals, Jan Vermeer, Rembrandt.

•Still life, everyday scenes, spiritual side of life reflected in faces.

Neoclassicism•Late 1700s.•Tied to the Enlightenment.•Use of the arch, simple forms..•Paintings: Statuesque, simple,

balanced, clear, less emotion.

Romanticism• Objections to the Enlightenment’s

emphasis on reason, form, and the classics.

• Themes of nature, simple life.• Gothic images or exotic images.• Music: ballads, folk songs• Writers: Keats, Shelley, Lord Byron.

Realism• Romanticism considered too sentimental.

• Later 1800s.

• Art intended to push for social reform– realistic depiction of life and its problems.

• Gustave, Courbet, Daumier, Millet.

• Literature: Balzac, Flaubert, Dickens.

Naturalism

• Mid 18th century literary movement.

• Scientific description of nature and the mind.

• Zola, Stephen Crane, Ibsen.

Symbolism

• Literary movement that suggested rather than named.

• Mallamè

Impressionism• Pleasant scenes rather than social

comment, abandon line, perspective, and studio light.

• Attempt to capture a fleeting moment in time.

• Monet, Degas, Renoir.

Post-Impressionism• Turning away from impressionism

because it lacked form and discipline.• This movement was only united in

rejecting impressionism.• Expressed chaos and complexity of the

machine age.• Importance of line.• Beginnings of the modern art movement.• Cezanne, Seurat, Gaugin, Van Gogh,

Toulouse-Latrec.

Cubism• Use of shape to suggest reality.

• Movement toward abstraction.

• Picasso, Braque.

Expressionism• Use of strong color and line to show

emotion and lack of order in the human mind.

• Influence of African masks and images (and influence of Imperialism)

• Matisse, Munch, Van Gogh.

Abstract expressionism

• Purely abstract, emotionally associative design of shapes and colors.

• Kandinsky, New York school.

• Reflection of modern times—post World War I

Surrealism• Psychological paintings, sometimes very

realistic, that reveal the inner mind.

• Dali, Klee, Miro, Chagall.

• Again, reflection of Freudian concepts and the scars that World War I and II have on the world psyche.