About the Book
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 246. Chapters: History of painting, Modernism, Situationist International, Psychology of art, Gertrude Stein, American modernism, Color Field, Art Deco, Abstract expressionism, Art Nouveau, Lyrical Abstraction, Cubism, Late modernism, Anti-art, Symbolism (arts), Futurism, Minimalism, Arts and Crafts movement, Abstract art, New York School, Leningrad School of Painting, Degenerate art, Art intervention, Pop art, Monochrome painting, List of avant-garde artists, Modern sculpture, Horace Day, Belle Epoque, American realism, Constructivism (art), Soviet Nonconformist Art, Manes Union of Fine Arts, Photorealism, Primitivism. Excerpt: The history of painting reaches back in time to artifacts from pre-historic humans, and spans all cultures. It represents a continuous, though periodically disrupted tradition from Antiquity. Across cultures, and spanning continents and millennia, the history of painting is an ongoing river of creativity, that continues into the 21st century. Until the early 20th century it relied primarily on representational, religious and classical motifs, after which time more purely abstract and conceptual approaches gained favor. Developments in Eastern painting historically parallel those in Western painting, in general, a few centuries earlier. African art, Islamic art, Indian art, Chinese art, and Japanese art each had significant influence on Western art, and, eventually, vice-versa. Initially serving utilitarian purpose, followed by imperial, private, civic, and religious patronage, Eastern and Western painting later found audiences in the aristocracy and the middle class. From the Modern era, the Middle Ages through the Renaissance painters worked for the church and a wealthy aristocracy. Beginning with the Baroque era artists received private commissions from a more educated and prosperous middle class. Finally in the west the idea of "art for art's sake" began to find expression in the work of the Romantic painters like Francisco de Goya, John Constable, and J.M.W. Turner. During the 19th century the rise of the commercial art gallery provided patronage in the 20th century. The oldest known paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet in France, claimed by some historians to be about 32,000 years old. They are engraved and painted using red ochre and black pigment and show horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, mammoth or humans often hunting. There are examples of cave paintings all over the world-in France, India, Spain, Portugal, China, Australia etc. Various conjectures have been made as to the meaning these paintings had to the people that made them. Prehistoric men may have
