From Prehistoric to Modern

Historical Development of Painting

• The history of painting dates back to pre-historic times and spans all cultures.

• The oldest known paintings are approximately 40,000 years old and can be found in various locations around the world.

• The meaning of prehistoric paintings remains largely unknown, but they may have represented animistic beliefs or served practical purposes.

• Eastern and Western painting developed concurrently, with influences from various cultures and religions.

• Painting initially served utilitarian and religious purposes, and later found audiences in the aristocracy and middle class.

• Chinese painting is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world and was initially ornamental before artists began to represent the world around them.

• Japanese painting is highly refined and encompasses a wide variety of genre and styles, with a long history of synthesis and competition between native aesthetics and imported ideas.

• Korean painting began around 108 B.C. and evolved into various styles characterized by landscapes, Buddhist themes, and celestial observation.

• Traditional East Asian painting is characterized by water-based techniques, stylized subjects, and a preference for landscape as a subject.

• Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism played important roles in East Asian art.

• Classical Chinese landscape painting is accredited largely to the Eastern Jin Dynasty artist Gu Kaizhi, and portrait painting reached its classical age maturity during the Ming Dynasty.

• The Yuan Dynasty became one of the most vibrant and abundant eras for Chinese artwork, with many Confucian-educated Chinese turning to the arts of painting and theatre.Overview of Asian Painting Styles

• Classical Chinese painting continued into the early modern Qing Dynasty, with realistic portrait paintings.

• Oil painting techniques began entering China in the 19th century, becoming prevalent among Chinese artists in the early 20th century.

• Japanese painting developed through a long history of synthesis and competition between native Japanese aesthetics and adaptation of imported ideas.

• Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and 20th centuries.

• Korean painting began around 108 B.C., characterized by a combination of Korean-style landscapes, facial features, and Buddhist-centered themes.

• Indian paintings historically revolved around religious deities and kings, with variations from large frescoes of Ajanta to the intricate Mughal miniature paintings.

• The Bengal School of art arose as an avant-garde and nationalist movement reacting against academic art styles previously promoted in India.

• Modern Indian art typically shows the influence of Western styles, but is often inspired by Indian themes and images.

• Indonesian cave paintings are the oldest known, with the oldest undisputed examples of figurative cave paintings close to 35,000 years old.

• The oldest known surviving paintings in the Philippines are the rock art found in caves and on rock shelters on the island of Palawan.

• Thai painting has a strong Buddhist influence, with many temples featuring murals depicting the life of Buddha and Buddhist stories.

• Vietnamese painting is heavily influenced by Buddhism and Confucianism, with many works featuring landscapes, people, and historical events.

• Singaporean painting is a diverse mix of styles, influenced by the country's multicultural society and its history of colonization.A Brief History of Painting

• Painting has been an art form for thousands of years, with examples found in caves in Indonesia dating back at least 43,900 years.

• Indonesian paintings include decorative art based on natural motifs, wood carvings, and paintings depicting legends and religious scripts.

• Filipino painting is an amalgamation of cultural influences, with early examples found in pottery, tattoos, and elaborate designs in the arts and architecture.

• Byzantine art is characterized by its hieratic feeling and emphasis on retaining traditional iconography and style, while also evolving over the course of the Byzantine Empire.

• The Renaissance was a cultural movement spanning the 14th to mid-17th century, characterized by the study of classical sources, scientific advances, and a new way of painting established in the Low Countries.

• Italian Renaissance painting emphasized the ideal and was characterized by precision in drawing, while the Venetian school was less concerned with precision and more focused on color and effect.

• Flemish, Dutch, and German painters of the Renaissance were more realistic and less idealized in their approach.

• Genre painting became popular among Northern painters.

• The Baroque period was characterized by grandeur, drama, and theatricality, with artists such as Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Velázquez.

• Impressionism, which emerged in the 19th century, emphasized the effect of light and color, with artists such as Monet and Renoir.

• Modern art movements include Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism.

• Contemporary painting continues to evolve and encompass a wide range of styles and techniques.A Brief History of Western Painting

• The High Renaissance gave rise to a stylized art known as Mannerism characterized by instability, artifice, and doubt.

• Baroque painting is associated with the cultural movement of Absolutism and the Counter Reformation, characterized by great drama, rich, deep color, and intense light and dark shadows.

• Rococo followed as a lighter extension of Baroque, often frivolous and erotic, epitomized by religious and mythological paintings in the Grand Manner.

• Neo-classicism turned its attention toward landscape and nature, as well as the human figure and the supremacy of natural order above mankind's will.

• Romanticism saw landscape painting as an important genre to express the vanity of mankind in opposition to the grandeur of nature.

• Impressionists eschewed allegory and narrative in favor of individualized responses to the modern world, sometimes painted with little or no preparatory study, relying on deftness of drawing and a highly chromatic palette.

• Post-Impressionists led art to the edge of modernism, with Vincent van Gogh predicting Expressionism and Fauvism, and Paul Cézanne seen as a precursor of 20th-century art.

• Symbolist painters mined mythology and dream imagery for a visual language of the soul, seeking evocative paintings that brought to mind a static world of silence.

• At the beginning of the 20th century, Fauvism revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive, landscapes and figure paintings.

• Pablo Picasso made his first cubist paintings based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cube, sphere and cone.

• The 20th century brought various movements such as Expressionism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism.

• Contemporary painting has become diverse and difficult to define, with artists exploring new techniques, styles, and themes.

• Despite the challenges of the digital age, painting continues to be a relevant and significant art form.

Test your knowledge of the historical development of painting with this comprehensive quiz. From prehistoric cave paintings to contemporary art, this quiz covers a wide range of topics including Eastern and Western painting, classical Chinese landscape painting, Japanese ukiyo-e prints, Indian miniature paintings, and much more. See how much you know about the major art movements and styles such as Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Modernism. Challenge yourself and expand your knowledge of