Here are the trends, characteristics, and key artists for artistic trends from Renaissance art to Surrealism
Renaissance
Place: Begins in Italian city-states like Florence, but spreads North
Connected to: Europe is recovering from the Black Death, Italian city-states are wealthy because of trade and the rise of the banking industry.
Renaissance Art Characteristics:
Renaissance artists:
Italian Northern
Baroque Characteristics:
Rococo Characteristics:
Neoclassical Art Characteristics:
Romantic Characteristics:
Impressionism
Impressionism Characteristics:
Cubism
Cubism Characteristics:
Surrealism Characteristics:
Place: Begins in Italian city-states like Florence, but spreads North
Connected to: Europe is recovering from the Black Death, Italian city-states are wealthy because of trade and the rise of the banking industry.
Renaissance Art Characteristics:
- Perspective- create the illusion of depth on a flat 2D surface
- Chiaroscuro-blending of light and shade
- Linear – flat/rigid figures arranged on a horizontal line
- Classical forms – inspired by Greeks and Romans
Renaissance artists:
Italian Northern
- Jan van Eyck – The Arnolfini Wedding
- Albrecht Durer – woodcuts and self portraits
- Hans Holbein the Younger – the portraits of Henry VIII and Thomas More
Baroque Characteristics:
- Tenebrism- Dramatic use of light and Dark
- Focus on Dramatic Moments
- Everyday people portrayed, and NOT in an idealized form
- Architecture includes large scale and ornate decorations (think Versailles)
Rococo Characteristics:
- Reached popularity during the reign of Louis XV (1715-1774)
- Light-hearted….”Nobles at play”
- Light colored pastels
- Architecture – highly decorated interior ceilings
Neoclassical Art Characteristics:
- Supplanted Rococo in the 1780s
- Key figures depicted as classical heroes
- Portrayed virtues of self-sacrifice and devotion to the state
- Emphasized Greek ideals of restraint, simplicity, and symmetry
- Jacques-Louis David- Oath of Horatii
- Jean-Antoine Houdon – Voltaire Seated
- Thomas Jefferson – Monticello
Romantic Characteristics:
- First half of the 19th century (Industrial Revolution?)
- The primacy of emotion – rejected reason (The Enlightenment) and stressed emotion, intuition, and feelings
- Looked to medieval period for models of chivalrous heroes, miraculous events and unsolved mysteries as opposed to looking to the classical age (like the Enlightenment)
- Prefer to contemplate the beauty of nature: raging rivers, storms, mountains veiled in mist. This is contrary to the view of nature as a well ordered machine (like how Enlightenment thinkers saw it).
- Caspar David Friedrich – Wanderer Above the Mist
- Eugene Delcroix – Liberty Leading the People
- John Constable- the Hay Wain
- Victor Hugo- The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Miserables
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust
- Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm- Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Impressionism
Impressionism Characteristics:
- Captured a moment in time (slice of life)
- Interested in the fleeting activities of light and color
- Depicted leisure activities of the Parisian bourgeoisie (Middle Class)
- Claude Monet- Impression Sunrise, Gare St.-Lazare
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir- Le Bal Au Moulin de la Galette, Lunchion of the Boating Party
Cubism
Cubism Characteristics:
- Presented multiple views of the same object
- Fragmented forms into flat, jagged shapes
- Portrayed flat, two-dimensional space without traditional linear perspective
Surrealism Characteristics:
- Depicts the world of the unconscious minds as revealed in dreams and fantasies
- Reveals the influence of Freudian psychology
- Strange objects and symbols that express the inner mind