Art History and All That
The definitive Story of Art
By Amanda Hallay
'Starry, Starry Night - Paint your palette blue and grey...'
(Gombrich, eat your heart out!)
Art started about 100 million years ago during the Jurassic Period (also known as the ‘Ice Age’), when primitive man painted dinosaurs such as the Tyrannosaurus Rex on cave walls. Prior to this, man had not been tall enough to paint. 65 million years ago, a meteor hit New Mexico, generating enough heat to melt the ice, and man discovered that beneath the frozen tundra, there was iron.
This marks the start of The Iron Age, and art became focused on ‘The Belt Buckle.’ Intricately carved in swirling designs drawn from nature, ‘The Belt Buckle’ acted much as a modern-day canvas to Neolithic man, enrapturing his imagination for the next twenty-five thousand years.
Needless to say, with this fervor for ‘Belt Buckles’, iron soon became in short supply, and Neolithic man was forced to dig deeper into the ‘tundra’ (ancient word for ‘land.’) Nature has a way of rewarding those who survive it, and these deep diggers were rewarded with gold. This marked the beginning of The Gold Age, with the glistening remains of crowns and swords probably belonging to the legendary King Arthur found buried in a ship at Sutton Coldfield.
Meanwhile, in Greece, we see the beginnings of the world’s first, real society; the Greeks. They invented architecture and sculpture, building great temples of the three ‘orders;’ Doric, Corinthian and Iconic. A pious and philosophical people, the elegance and grace of their buildings are best exemplified by The Pantheon on top of Mt. Olympus. Greek architecture is known as Classicism.
Circa 70,000 b.c, the Greeks were invaded by the Romans, who copied the Greek way of building but added arches. This architecture is called (this is a ‘no brainer!’) Romanesque.
The Romans ruled Europe for the next 80,000 years – their art spreading both eastward to Constantinople (known at the time as ‘Istanbul’), and westward to Britain, where beautiful mosaic remains proof that it was the Romans who invented floors.
Ask any schoolboy the one historical date he knows, and he is sure to answer: 1066. This marks the Fall of Rome, when the pillaging Vikings ravaged Pompeii. Although the Vikings have a bad reputation, these ‘Horsemen’ (as they were known) brought with them to Europe their own artistic vision. ‘Shipheads’ carved of precious ivory and taking the form of swirling designs drawn from nature were the main source of Viking expression.
Led by their fierce leader Leif Ericson, The Viking Empire would have probably lasted as long as Rome had they not been invaded themselves by a terrible foe from France. The Goths ravaged and pillaged Viking Europe, burning ‘shipheads’ and excommunicating Leif Ericson.
This marks the start of (another ‘no brainer’!) Gothic Art.
The most beautiful and impressive of Medieval architecture, Gothic Art is exemplified by its flying buttresses and ripped vaults. William the Conqueror (known as ‘William The Bastard’ because he was so fierce) invaded Normandy and, upon seeing the new ‘Gothic’ style, took it back to England with him. St. Paul’s Cathedral is the best example of English Gothic.
The next ‘big phase’ of art is Baroque (or ‘Re-Birth’), when painters such as Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphaël and Boccioni competed for the patronage of The King of Italy, their triumphs culminating in the spectacular Sistine Chapel.
Northern Europe was seeing its own ‘rebirth;’ Brussels and Luxembourg saw artists such as Jan Van Dyck producing beautiful altar pieces based on Greek mythology. Working with a mixture of pure pigment and scrambled eggs, their work involved such scenes as ‘The Deportation of Christ’ and ‘The Virgin Entombed.’
During the 16th Century, Europe saw the rise of religious discontent. The invention of the printing press and the publication of The Guggenheim Bible saw an increase in unemployment of monks, who revolted, pillaging and burning their monasteries. This is known as The Restoration. Henry VIII went to war with Italy when the Pope refused to let him marry Anne Bolyne, the outcome being the invention of Catholicism, as preached by Calvin and Martin Luther King.
Martin Luther King did not believe that religious subjects should be depicted in art, which inspired artists to find new ways to express themselves pictorially. Portraits and still lifes were invented, giving painters the opportunity of expressing themselves in new and exciting ways. This period is called Expressionism.
After Baroque, the focus of art suddenly shifted to France, where Expressionism found a great ally in the form of Louis XVI, who hired Bernini to design a spectacular chateau at Versailles. The ‘dynamism’ and ‘linear and counter-linear’ curves of Expressionist Architecture is best exemplified at Versailles, with the gardens hosting a myriad of fountains. Fountains were the main focus of artistic expression during this period, and can be found in Paris, Rome, Prague, Vienna and Versailles. As Samuel Peypy’s wrote at the time, ‘When a man is tired of fountains, he is tired of life.’ This can also be applied to Versailles.
The 17th and 18th century artist was not only interested in fountains and Versailles; painters such as Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard gave the world wonderful canvases depicting courting couples standing near fountains at Versailles. The delicate palettes and themes drawn from Greek mythology and Versailles inspired the name for this period; Romanticism.
At the beginning of the 19th Century, people got fed up with frivolity of the Romantic period and turned to more spiritual ventures, mixing religion with nature, striving to ‘Satirize the Sacred and Sacrilege the Satirical.’ Huge canvases with swirling designs drawn from nature were popular in this period, with artists such as Peter Blake (who was also a poet; you probably know his most famous opus, ‘If’) and – a little later – Constable Turner (a former policeman) personifying nature with paintings of ‘Dark, Satanic Mills’ and Queen Victoria.
Now that Art was no longer confined to religious subjects, there had to be some sort of ‘control’ so that people knew what was good and what they were supposed to like best. The ‘Hierarchy of Genre’ was invented at The Saloon, with ‘Still Life’ at the top and ‘History Painting’ at the bottom. Many talented artists had their work rejected by The Saloon, which prompted some of them to ‘break out’ of the system and do their ‘own thing.’
This is called Impressionism, and it was revolutionary. Prior to Impressionism, ‘line’ was very important to Art; lines had to be drawn with a ruler and coloring-in wasn’t allowed to ‘spill over.’ Impressionism changed all that, with artists such as Monet (sometimes spelt ‘Manet’) intentionally trying to aggravate The Saloon by making his canvases as blurry as possible.
The movement of ballerinas across a stage appears ‘blurry’ to the naked eyes, and it was Degas who seized upon this theme and put it to good effect in many of his ‘ballerina’ pictures.
As well as making things blurry, Impressionists also liked steam. Steam had just been discovered, and many Impressionist canvases show train stations, factories and kettles. The Impressionists were the first artists to use ‘vantage point,’ and hoped to capture arbitrary moments of modernity with ‘vantage point.’ And steam.
Caillbot wasn’t as successful as the other Impressionist painters; this was probably due to the fact that – whilst he also embraced steam and used ‘vantage point’ – he was actually quite neat and none of his coloring-in spilled over.
Post-Impressionism came next, and the main aim of artists was to ‘Render Invisible the Visible.’ Even the swiftest look at canvases by such luminaries as Gaugin and his friend Van Gogh show how successful they were in their vision. Cezanne was their other friend, and he didn’t want to ‘Render Invisible the Visible;’ he preferred doing fruit bowls and villages, although it has been argued that because you can’t really tell that they’re fruit bowls and villages, he too ‘Rendered Invisible the Visible.’
The Post-Impressionists split up when Gaugin went to Jamaica, leaving his best friend Van Gogh lonely and depressed. He cut off his ear and bled to death in one of the cornfields he had ‘rendered invisible.’ His tortured life and miserable death started what is known as ‘The Poor Vincent’ myth, so-called because he never sold a painting in his life and was therefore always very ‘poor.’
However, posthumous fame found Vincent, and his ‘Sunflowers’ is the most expensive thing in the world and now belongs to Bill Gates.
The next big movement in Art was Fauvism (from the French, ‘Fauve,’ meaning ‘wild dog’). The Fauves (Matisse especially) sought a ‘Primitive,’ ‘Accordion’ view of the world, and so they intentionally painted badly to be ‘primitive’ and ‘accordion.’
At around the same time, Germany gave birth to some Art. This took the form of German Expressionism, headed by Die Blau Rieter and Die Brucke (from the German, ‘Brucke,’ meaning ‘wild dog.’) German Expressionism is a bit like Fauvism but with bigger hands. (The Fauvists couldn’t do hands at all, which is why the figures in most of their paintings have ‘stumps.’ This is thought to be ‘accordion.’)
After Fauvism came Cubism, which is one of Art’s great misnomers; cubism had nothing to do with Cubes. It was a movement conceived by Picasso and Braque which set about to celebrate the movement, dynamism and ‘electricity’ of 20th Century Life. My favorite Picasso quote is culled from his First Cubist Manifesto of 1909: “We had been up all night, my friends and I,” he wrote (although he was probably only speaking about ONE friend, Braque), “under the Oriental lamps with their pierced copper domes starred like our souls – for from them too burst the trapped lightning of an electric heart.”
This just says it all.
Not everyone in the early 20th Century shared Picasso’s love of modernity. Balla, Carra, Severini and Botticelli – the Italian Futurists – set out to pictorially shun all aspects of modern life, hoping to return Italy to its Renaissance glory. The City Rises by Botticelli places at least five horses in the center of the canvas, indicative of the Futurists wish to return to a simpler, more ‘accordion’ way of life. Carra’s Funeral of the Anarchist’s Gala showed that no matter how much fun anarchists might have, they are sure to fail (to ‘have a funeral’) in the end.
Dadaism came out of Germany and Austria (although it also came out of France and New York) and was all about ‘absurdity’ and ‘happenstance.’ The Dadaists liked to cut up books and find rubbish on the street. When they weren’t cutting up books and looking for rubbish, they did collages (from the French ‘colère’, meaning ‘anger’).
WWII put a stop to Art for a decade or so (the materials which make up oil paint (oil and paint) were needed for munitions and tanks), but with the of D-Day celebrations came a whole new look at ‘Art.’ New York became the focus of Art during the ‘50s, with the so-called ‘Abstract Impressionists’ doing paintings that bravely didn’t look like anything.
Jackson Pollock (known cheekily as ‘Jack the Ripper’) threw paint around (paint was not rationed in America) and produced wonderful canvases full of drips. His friend Clifford Stills (who later went on to form Crosby, Still’s and Nash and thus start ‘Pop Art’), still preferred to paint with no dripping at ALL. So much did he dislike dripping that his canvases are more or less one color (with no drips and no ‘line,’ let alone ‘coloring-in’).
‘Pop Art’ exploded onto the Art Scene in the Swinging Sixties, when artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstien and (in England) William Blake (who was also a poet) bought things from their local supermarket and turned them into Art. They did this because everything had already been ‘done,’ and so they had to find things that nobody else had painted yet.
They ran out of things to paint in the early Seventies.
During the last part of the 20th Century, there was nothing left to paint. Artists had to do ‘body art’ instead. This involved cutting a sheep up. Another variant on this theme was to videotape someone cutting a sheep up. Sheep and videotape has been the main ‘thrust’ of Art for the past fifteen years, so much so that science (always influenced by Art) has had to start cloning sheep to keep up with the demand.
Now that we bravely enter the first Millennium, where will Art take us?
(ATTENTION ART HISTORY STUDENTS: Feel free to cut and paste any part of this article for your own, pressing term-paper needs. It’s yours for the taking. Believe me.)
