The Origins of Abstraction

Start between 1910 and 1920)
To ''abstract'' means to draw away from, to separate, not to refer to something particular anymore. A movement of conscious and methodical destruction of particular and recognizable in appearance. Artistic elimination of rational visual association. In a way it is synthetical purification and intensification of colours, forms and ideas that leads to creation of artwork that either resembles a direct print of a soul that refused to undergo rational filters of mind and cognoscence, or a quasi-scientific, almost mathematical picture that looks so rational it''s difficult to believe how irrational it actually is.
The art historians are still out, trying to determine who was the first abstract painter. Whatever is the case, the abstract painting sprang up at the same moment, and in the several places simultaneously: in Moscow and Petersburg (Rayonism, Constructivism...), Netherlands (De Stijl) Paris (Cubism), Munich (Bauhaus)...

Pop Art

1950''s to 1960''s - Pop Art is a style of art which explores the everyday imagery that is so much a part of contemporary consumer culture. Common sources of imagery include advertisements, consumer product packaging, celebrity photographs, and comic strips.

Leading Pop artists include Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roy Lichtenstein.

Neoclassical Art

Mid-18th Century to Early-19th Century - Neoclassical Art is a severe and unemotional form of art harkening back to the grandeur of ancient Greece and Rome. Its rigidity was a reaction to the overbred Rococo style and the emotional charged Baroque style. The rise of Neoclassical Art was part of a general revival of interest in classical thought, which was of some importance in the American and French revolutions.

Important Neoclassicists include the architects Robert Smirke and Robert Adam, the sculptors Antonio Canova,Jean-Antoine Houdon and Bertel Thorvaldsen, and painters J.A.D. Ingres, Jacques-Louis David and Anton Raphael Mengs.

Around 1800, Romanticism emerged as a reaction against Neoclassicism. It did not really replace the Neoclassical style so much as act as a counterbalancing influence, and many artists were influenced by both styles to a certain degree.

Neoclassical Art was also a primary influence on 19th-century Academic Art.

Gothic Art

Gothic Art is the style of art produced in Northern Europe from the middle ages up until the beginning of the Renaissance. Typically rooted in religious devotion, it is especially known for the distinctive arched design of its churches, its stained glass, and its illuminated manuscripts.

In the late 14th century, anticipating the Renaissance, Gothic Art developed into a more secular style known as International Gothic. One of the great artists of this period is Simone Martini.

Although superseded by Renaissance art, there was a Gothic Revival in the 18th and 19th centuries, largely rooted in nostalgia and romanticism.

Cubism

Cubism was developed between about 1908 and 1912 in a collaboration between Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Their main influences are said to have been Tribal Art (although Braque later disputed this) and the work of Paul Cezanne. The movement itself was not long-lived or widespread, but it began an immense creative explosion which resonated through all of 20th century art.

The key concept underlying Cubism is that the essence of an object can only be captured by showing it from multiple points of view simultaneously.

Cubism had run its course by the end of World War I, but among the movements directly influenced by it were Orphism, Precisionism, Futurism, Purism, Constructivism, and, to some degree, Expressionism.

Contemporary Realism

Contemporary Realism is the straightforward realistic approach to representation which continues to be widely practiced in this post-abstract era. It is different from Photorealism, which is somewhat exaggerated and ironic and conceptual in its nature.

Contemporary Realists form a disparate group, but what they share is that they are literate in the concepts of Modern Art but choose to work in a more traditional form. Many Contemporary Realists actually began as abstract painters, having come through an educational system dominated by an professors and theorists dismissive of representational painting.

Among the best-known artists associated with this movement are William Bailey, Neil Welliver and Philip Pearlstein. There is an identifiable "group" of Contemporary Realists, but we have used a fairly loose definition to allow inclusion of a larger number of 20th-century realists.

The Italian Renaissance