Western art began with early humans drawing in caves. Over thousands of years, Western art techniques evolved from simple, crude cave paintings to detailed realism with linear perspective. Artists used many techniques and media to depict the world around them. Classical sculptors created beautiful images of the human figure with marble. Art techniques developed as different types of art materials became available. Modern artists work with unlimited varieties of materials and techniques.
Prehistoric Art
During the Stone age, artists drew and painted on the walls and ceilings of caves. They made pictures of animals and hunting scenes. They painted with their fingers or with simple brushes made of vegetable fibers or animal hairs. They attempted to represent what they saw with crude materials on rock surfaces.
Classical Art
Ancient Greek art and sculpture developed in Greece around 600 B.C. Artists began painting scenes in murals and panels. Later, classical Greek artists focused on the human form as the primary subject and sculptors often worked in stone or bronze. Painters started to use linear perspective, which involved the attempt to show depth in a scene on a two-dimensional surface such as a panel.
Hellenistic Art
After the death of Alexander the Great, artists began using a more expressive style. Painters represented dramatic, heroic scenes. Painters of the Hellenistic period created mosaic art to represent battle scenes. Artists began to use modeling techniques with light and shade. Landscape painting originated during this period. Human figures still dominated, but the background landscapes were becoming more noticeable. Sculptures started using more naturalistic subjects, such as ordinary people and animals.
Dark Ages
Byzantine art developed around 450 A.D. Artists painted on panels and made mosaic art. They painted religious icons. Christianity became a primary subject of artists as they began to make illuminated Bible texts. They made intricate manuscripts with decorative illustrations and miniature pictures.
European Revival
Artists focused on religious murals and began using stained glass during the European revival period, around 800. They also painted with tempera on wood panels. Artists began using oil paints on panels for the first time.
Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance occurred primarily in Florence, Rome and Venice. Michelangelo was a Renaissance sculptor who worked with marble. Leonardo Da Vinci, a Renaissance painter, sculptor and inventor, worked in a variety of materials. Art involved religious or mythological subjects. Artists like Raphael began doing art that was less stylized, and more skilled and lifelike.
Mannerism
Religious paintings starting around 1530 were still prevalent. Academic art, also called the Old Masters style, began in the Academy of Art in Florence. Students drew copies of ancient Greek sculptures. They also copied plaster casts of sculptures by Michelangelo and Raphael. After drawing for several years, students were allowed to use color, but the color was limited and subdued.
Baroque Art
During the Baroque era, artists made more colorful paintings and their styles became more realistic. They did portraits, still life and landscapes. Later, during the Roccoco art period, the art was light and decorative.
Romanticism
Romanticism of the 1800s celebrated the ideals of the French Revolution. Artists such as William Blake, JMW Turner, Thomas Cole, and John Constable, began painting and drawing on machine made paper.
Modern Art
In the late 1880s, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissaro and others developed the techniques of painting light as it is seen in landscapes. They used loose brushstrokes and dabs of delicate colors. This was called Impressionism. Later, Georges Seurat began using small dots of colors painted next to each other. This was known as Pointillism. During the Post-Impressionism period, Paul Cezanne, Paul Gaughin and Vincent Van Gogh painted in avant-garde styles using vibrant colors and slightly abstracted figures. Henri Matisse, a Fauvist artist, worked with bright, primary colors and abstracted figures. Around 1908, Cubism art began when Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque made abstract, two-dimensional paintings. Art was no longer required to be representational. After that, Post-modern artists attempted to use many new media, materials and techniques, often questioning what art is.
