The oldest known artworks date back over 40,000 years to the Upper Paleolithic period, including cave paintings, sculptures, and engraved shells. Many ancient civilizations developed unique artistic styles, including Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, China, Greece, and Rome. In the Middle Ages, Western art focused on religious subjects and ideals, while Islamic art emphasized geometry, calligraphy, and architecture. During the Renaissance, art placed a new importance on realistic human forms and perspective. Later artistic periods included Romanticism's focus on emotion and individuality, as well as 19th century movements like Impressionism.
The oldest known artworks date back over 40,000 years to the Upper Paleolithic period, including cave paintings, sculptures, and engraved shells. Many ancient civilizations developed unique artistic styles, including Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, China, Greece, and Rome. In the Middle Ages, Western art focused on religious subjects and ideals, while Islamic art emphasized geometry, calligraphy, and architecture. During the Renaissance, art placed a new importance on realistic human forms and perspective. Later artistic periods included Romanticism's focus on emotion and individuality, as well as 19th century movements like Impressionism.
The oldest known artworks date back over 40,000 years to the Upper Paleolithic period, including cave paintings, sculptures, and engraved shells. Many ancient civilizations developed unique artistic styles, including Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, China, Greece, and Rome. In the Middle Ages, Western art focused on religious subjects and ideals, while Islamic art emphasized geometry, calligraphy, and architecture. During the Renaissance, art placed a new importance on realistic human forms and perspective. Later artistic periods included Romanticism's focus on emotion and individuality, as well as 19th century movements like Impressionism.
The oldest known artworks date back over 40,000 years to the Upper Paleolithic period, including cave paintings, sculptures, and engraved shells. Many ancient civilizations developed unique artistic styles, including Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, China, Greece, and Rome. In the Middle Ages, Western art focused on religious subjects and ideals, while Islamic art emphasized geometry, calligraphy, and architecture. During the Renaissance, art placed a new importance on realistic human forms and perspective. Later artistic periods included Romanticism's focus on emotion and individuality, as well as 19th century movements like Impressionism.
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History
Main article: History of art
Venus of Willendorf, circa 24,000–22,000 BP
Back of a Renaissance oval basin or dish, in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art The oldest documented forms of art are visual arts, [28] which include creation of images or objects in fields including today painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and other visual media. Sculptures, cave paintings, rock paintings and petroglyphs from the Upper Paleolithic dating to roughly 40,000 years ago have been found,[29] but the precise meaning of such art is often disputed because so little is known about the cultures that produced them. In 2014, a shell engraved by Homo erectus was determined to be between 430,000 and 540,000 years old.[30] A set of eight 130,000 years old white-tailed eagle talons bear cut marks and abrasion that indicate manipulation by neanderthals, possibly for using it as jewelry.[31] A series of tiny, drilled snail shells about 75,000 years old—were discovered in a South African cave.[32] Containers that may have been used to hold paints have been found dating as far back as 100,000 years.[33]
Cave painting of a horse from the Lascaux caves, circa 16,000 BP
Many great traditions in art have a foundation in the art of one of the great ancient civilizations: Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, China, Ancient Greece, Rome, as well as Inca, Maya, and Olmec. Each of these centers of early civilization developed a unique and characteristic style in its art. Because of the size and duration of these civilizations, more of their art works have survived and more of their influence has been transmitted to other cultures and later times. Some also have provided the first records of how artists worked. For example, this period of Greek art saw a veneration of the human physical form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty, and anatomically correct proportions.[34] In Byzantine and Medieval art of the Western Middle Ages, much art focused on the expression of subjects about Biblical and religious culture, and used styles that showed the higher glory of a heavenly world, such as the use of gold in the background of paintings, or glass in mosaics or windows, which also presented figures in idealized, patterned (flat) forms. Nevertheless, a classical realist tradition persisted in small Byzantine works, and realism steadily grew in the art of Catholic Europe.[35] Renaissance art had a greatly increased emphasis on the realistic depiction of the material world, and the place of humans in it, reflected in the corporeality of the human body, and development of a systematic method of graphical perspective to depict recession in a three-dimensional picture space.[36]
The stylized signature of Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman
Empire was written in Islamic calligraphy. It reads "Mahmud Khan son of Abdulhamid is forever victorious". The Great Mosque of Kairouan in Tunisia, also called the Mosque of Uqba, is one of the finest, most significant and best preserved artistic and architectural examples of early great mosques. Dated in its present state from the 9th century, it is the ancestor and model of all the mosques in the western Islamic lands.[37] In the east, Islamic art's rejection of iconography led to emphasis on geometric patterns, calligraphy, and architecture.[38] Further east, religion dominated artistic styles and forms too. India and Tibet saw emphasis on painted sculptures and dance, while religious painting borrowed many conventions from sculpture and tended to bright contrasting colors with emphasis on outlines. China saw the flourishing of many art forms: jade carving, bronzework, pottery (including the stunning terracotta army of Emperor Qin[39]), poetry, calligraphy, music, painting, drama, fiction, etc. Chinese styles vary greatly from era to era and each one is traditionally named after the ruling dynasty. So, for example, Tang dynasty paintings are monochromatic and sparse, emphasizing idealized landscapes, but Ming dynasty paintings are busy and colorful, and focus on telling stories via setting and composition.[40] Japan names its styles after imperial dynasties too, and also saw much interplay between the styles of calligraphy and painting. Woodblock printing became important in Japan after the 17th century. [41] Painting by Song dynasty artist Ma Lin, circa 1250. 24.8 × 25.2 cm The western Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century saw artistic depictions of physical and rational certainties of the clockwork universe, as well as politically revolutionary visions of a post-monarchist world, such as Blake's portrayal of Newton as a divine geometer,[42] or David's propagandistic paintings. This led to Romantic rejections of this in favor of pictures of the emotional side and individuality of humans, exemplified in the novels of Goethe. The late 19th century then saw a host of artistic movements, such as academic art, Symbolism, impressionism and fauvism among others.[43] [44]
