   #copyright

Western painting

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Art

   Jan Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, known as the "Mona Lisa of the
   North" 1665-1667
   Jan Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, known as the "Mona Lisa of the
   North" 1665- 1667
   Édouard Manet, The Balcony 1868
   Édouard Manet, The Balcony 1868

   The history of Western painting represents a continuous, though
   disrupted, tradition from Antiquity. Until the early 20th century it
   relied primarily on representational and Classical motifs, after which
   time more purely abstract and conceptual modes gained favour.

   Developments in Western painting historically parallel those in Eastern
   painting, in general a few centuries later. African art, Islamic art,
   Indian art, Chinese art, and Japanese art each had significant
   influence on Western art, and, eventually, vice-versa.

   Initially serving religious patronage, Western painting later found
   audiences in the aristocracy and the middle class. From 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. By the
   19th century painters became liberated from the demands of their
   patronage to only depict scenes from religion, mythology, portraiture
   or history. The idea " art for art's sake" began to find expression in
   the work of painters like Francisco de Goya, John Constable, and J.M.W.
   Turner.

   Western painting's zenith takes place in Europe, during the Renaissance
   in conjunction with the refinement of drawing, use of perspective,
   ambitious architecture, tapestry, stained glass, sculpture, and the
   period before and after the advent of the printing press. Following the
   depth of discovery and the complex of innovations of the Renaissance
   the rich heritage of Western painting (from the Baroque to Contemporary
   art) continues into the 21st century.

Pre-history

   Lascaux, aurochs

   Lascaux, unicorn

   Lascaux

   Lascaux

   Lascaux

   Cave Painting

   Cosquer cave, painted bison

   Spanish cave painting of Bulls

   The history of painting reaches back in time to artifacts from
   pre-historic humans, and spans all cultures. 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 who made them. Prehistoric men may have painted
   animals to "catch" their soul or spirit in order to hunt them more
   easily, or the paintings may represent an animistic vision and homage
   to surrounding nature, or they may be the result of a basic need of
   expression that is innate to human beings, or they may be recordings of
   the life experiences of the artists and related stories from the
   members of their circle.

Western painting

Egypt, Greece and Rome

   Ancient Egypt

   Ancient Egypt, Queen Nefertari

   Knossos

   Ancient Egypt, papyrus

   Greek art

   Roman art, Pompeii

   Roman art

   Boy from Al-Fayum, 2nd century.

   Ancient Egypt, a civilization with strong traditions of architecture
   and sculpture (both originally painted in bright colours), had many
   mural paintings in temples and buildings, and painted illustrations to
   papyrus manuscripts. Egyptian wall painting and decorative painting is
   often graphic, sometimes more symbolic than realistic. Egyptian
   painting depicts figures in bold outline and flat silhouette, in which
   symmetry is a constant characteristic. Egyptian painting has close
   connection with its written language - called Egyptian hieroglyphs. The
   Egyptians also painted on linen, remnants of which survive today.
   Painted symbols are found amongst the first forms of written language.

   To the north of Egypt was the Minoan civilization on the island of
   Crete. The wall paintings found in the palace of Knossos are similar to
   those of the Egyptians but much more free in style.

   Around 1100 B.C., tribes from the north of Greece conquered Greece and
   its art took a new direction. The culture of Ancient Greece is
   noteworthy for its outstanding contributions to the visual arts.
   Painting on pottery of Ancient Greece and ceramics gives a particularly
   informative glimpse into the way society in Ancient Greece functioned.
   Many fine examples of Black-figure vase painting and Red-figure vase
   painting still exist. Some famous Greek painters who worked on wood
   panels and are mentioned in texts are Apelles, Zeuxis and Parrhasius;
   however, no examples of Ancient Greek panel painting survive, only
   written descriptions by their contemporaries or later Romans. Zeuxis
   lived in 5-6 BC and was said to be the first to use sfumato. According
   to Pliny the Elder, the realism of his paintings was such that birds
   tried to eat the painted grapes. Apelles is described as the greatest
   painter of Antiquity, and is noted for perfect technique in drawing,
   brilliant colour, and modeling.

   Roman art was influenced by Greece and can in part be taken as
   descendant from ancient Greek painting. However, Roman painting does
   have important unique characteristics. The only surviving Roman works
   are wall paintings, many from villas in Campania, in Southern Italy.
   Such painting can be grouped into 4 main "styles" or periods and may
   contain the first examples of trompe-l'oeil, psuedo-perspective, and
   pure landscape. Almost the only painted portraits surviving from the
   Ancient world are a large number of coffin-portraits of bust form found
   in the Late Antique cemetery of Al-Fayum. Although these were neither
   of the best period nor the highest quality, they are impressive in
   themselves, and suggest the quality of the finest ancient work. A very
   small number of miniatures from Late Antique illustrated books also
   survive, as well as a rather larger number of copies of them from the
   Early Medieval period.

Middle Ages

   Cotton Genesis A miniature of Abraham Meeting Angels

   Byzantine art

   Byzantine icon, 6th century

   Byzantine art mosaics in Ravenna

   Insular art 7th century

   Limbourg Brothers

   Book of Hours

   Book of Hours

   Carolingian

   Carolingian Saint Mark

   Giottino

   Vitale da Bologna

   Simone Martini

   Cimabue

   Giotto

   Jan van Eyck, self-portrait?, 1433

   The rise of Christianity imparted a different spirit and aim to
   painting styles. Byzantine art, once its style was established by the
   6th century, placed great emphasis on retaining traditional iconography
   and style, and has changed relatively little through the thousand years
   of the Byzantine Empire and the continuing traditions of Greek and
   Russian Othodox icon-painting. Byzantine painting has a particularly
   hieratic feeling and icons were and still are seen as a reflection of
   the divine. There were also many wall-paintings in fresco, but fewer of
   these have survived than Byzantine mosaics. In general Byzantium art
   borders on abstraction, in its flatness and highly stylised depictions
   of figures and landscape. However there are periods, especially in the
   so-called Macedonian art of around the 10th century, when Byzantine art
   became more flexible in approach.

   In post-Antique Catholic Europe the first distinctive artistic style to
   emerge that included painting was the Insular art of the British Isles,
   where the only surviving examples (and quite likely the only medium in
   which painting was used) are miniatures in Illuminated manuscripts such
   as the Book of Kells. These are most famous for their abstract
   decoration, although figures, and sometimes scenes, were also depicted,
   especially in Evangelist portraits. Carolingian and Ottonian art also
   survives mostly in manuscripts, although some wall-painting remain, and
   more are documented. The art of this period combines Insular and
   "barbarian" influences with a strong Byzantine influence and an
   aspiration to recover classical monumentality and poise.

   Walls of Romanesque and Gothic churches were decorated with frescoes as
   well as sculpture and many of the few remaining murals have great
   intensity, and combine the decorative energy of Insular art with a new
   monumentality in the treatment of figures. Far more miniatures in
   Illuminated manuscripts survive from the period, showing the same
   characteristics, which continue into the Gothic period.

   Panel painting becomes more common during the Romanesque period, under
   the heavy influence of Byzantine icons. Towards the middle of the 13th
   century, Medieval art and Gothic painting became more realistic, with
   the beginnings of interest in the depiction of volume and perspective
   in Italy with Cimabue and then his pupil Giotto. From Giotto on, the
   treatment of composition by the best painters also became much more
   free and innovative. They are considered to be the two great medieval
   masters of painting in western culture. Cimabue, within the Byzantine
   tradition, used a more realistic and dramatic approach to his art. His
   pupil, Giotto, took these innovations to a higher level which in turn
   set the foundations for the western painting tradition. Both artists
   were pioneers in the move towards naturalism.

   Churches were built with more and more windows and the use of colorful
   stained glass become a staple in decoration. One of the most famous
   examples of this is found in the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. By
   the 14th century Western societies were both richer and more cultivated
   and painters found new patrons in the nobility and even the
   bourgeoisie. Illuminated manuscripts took on a new character and slim,
   fashionably dressed court women were shown in their landscapes. This
   style soon became known as International style and tempera panel
   paintings and altarpieces gained importance.

Renaissance and Mannerism

   Fra Angelico

   Filippo Lippi

   Andrea Mantegna

   Masaccio The Expulsion Of Adam and Eve from Eden, before and after
   restoration

   Paolo Uccello

   Leonardo Da Vinci

   Raphael

   Michelangelo

   Albrecht Dürer

   Giovanni Bellini

   Titian

   Sandro Botticelli

   Giorgione

   Jan van Eyck

   Hans Holbein the Younger

   El Greco

   The Renaissance (French for 'rebirth'), a cultural movement roughly
   spanning the 14th through the mid 17th century, heralded the study of
   classical sources, as well as advances in science which profoundly
   influenced European intellectual and artistic life. In Italy artists
   like Paolo Uccello, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca,
   Andrea Mantegna, Filippo Lippi, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Sandro
   Botticelli, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raphael,
   Giovanni Bellini and Titian took painting to a higher level through the
   use of perspective, the study of human anatomy and proportion, and
   through their development of an unprecedented refinement in drawing and
   painting techniques.

   Flemish, Dutch and German painters of the Renaissance such as Hans
   Holbein the Younger, Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Matthias Grünewald,
   Hieronymous Bosch, and Pieter Brueghel represent a different approach
   from their Italian colleagues, one that is more realistic and less
   idealized. The adoption of oil painting (whose invention was
   traditionally, but erroneously, credited to Jan Van Eyck), made
   possible a new verisimilitude in depicting reality. Unlike the
   Italians, whose work drew heavily from the art of ancient Greece and
   Rome, the northerners retained a stylistic residue of the sculpture and
   illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages.

   Renaissance painting reflects the revolution of ideas and science
   (astronomy, geography) that occurred in this period, the Reformation,
   and the invention of the printing press. Dürer, considered one of the
   greatest of printmakers, states that painters are not mere artisans but
   thinkers as well. With the development of easel painting in the
   Renaissance, painting gained independence from architecture. Following
   centuries dominated by religious imagery, secular subject matter slowly
   returned to Western painting. Artists included visions of the world
   around them, or the products of their own imaginations in their
   paintings. Those who could afford the expense could become patrons and
   commission portraits of themselves or their family.

   In the 16th century, movable pictures which could be hung easily on
   walls, rather than paintings affixed to permanent structures, came into
   popular demand .

   The High Renaissance gave rise to a stylized art known as Mannerism. In
   place of the balanced compositions and rational approach to perspective
   that characterized art at the dawn of the sixteenth century, the
   Mannerists sought instability, artifice, and doubt. The unperturbed
   faces and gestures of Piero della Francesca and the calm Virgins of
   Raphael are replaced by the troubled expressions of Pontormo and the
   emotional intensity of El Greco.

Baroque and Rococo

   Caravaggio

   Peter Paul Rubens

   Jan Vermeer

   Rembrandt van Rijn

   Diego Velazquez

   Nicolas Poussin

   Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

   Antoine Watteau

   Jean-Honoré Fragonard

   François Boucher

   Thomas Gainsborough

   Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin

   During the period beginning around 1600 and continuing throughout the
   17th century, painting is characterized as Baroque. Among the greatest
   painters of the Baroque are Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Rubens, Velazquez,
   Poussin, and Vermeer. Caravaggio is an heir of the humanist painting of
   the High Renaissance. His realistic approach to the human figure,
   painted directly from life and dramatically spotlit against a dark
   background, shocked his contemporaries and opened a new chapter in the
   history of painting. Baroque painting often dramatizes scenes using
   chiaroscuro light effects; this can be seen in works by Rembrandt,
   Vermeer, Le Nain and La Tour. The Flemish painter Antony Van Dyck
   developed a graceful but imposing portrait syle that was very
   influential, especially in England.

   The prosperity of seventeenth century Holland led to an enormous
   production of art by large numbers of painters who were mostly highly
   specialised and painted only genre scenes, landscapes, Still-lifes,
   portraits or History paintings. Technical standards were very high, and
   Dutch Golden Age painting established a new repertoire of subjects that
   was very influential until the arrival of Modernism.

   During the 18th century, Rococo followed as a lighter extension of
   Baroque, often frivolous and erotic. The French masters Watteau,
   Boucher and Fragonard represent the style, as do Giovanni Battista
   Tiepolo and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin who was considered by some as
   the best French painter of the 18th century - the Anti-Rococo.
   Portraiture was an important component of painting in all countries,
   but especially in England, where the leaders were William Hogarth in a
   blunt realist style, and Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds in
   more flattering styles influenced by Van Dyck.

19th century: Neo-classicism, Romanticism, Impressionism, Hudson River School

   Jacques-Louis David 1787

   John Constable 1802

   Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres 1862

   Eugène Delacroix, 1830

   Francisco de Goya 1814

   Théodore Géricault 1819

   Caspar David Friedrich c. 1820

   J. M. W. Turner 1838

   Gustave Courbet 1849- 1850

   Albert Bierstadt 1886

   Camille Corot c. 1867

   Claude Monet 1872

   Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1876

   Edgar Degas 1876

   Édouard Manet 1882

   Vincent van Gogh 1888

   Vincent van Gogh 1889

   Paul Gauguin 1897- 1898

   Georges Seurat 1884- 1886

   Paul Cézanne 1906

   After Rococo there arose in the late 18th century, in architecture, and
   then in painting severe neo-classicism, best represented by such
   artists as David and his heir Ingres. Ingres' work already contains
   much of the sensuality, but none of the spontaneity, that was to
   characterize Romanticism. This movement turned its attention toward
   landscape and nature as well as the human figure and the supremacy of
   natural order above mankind's will. There is a pantheist philosophy
   (see Spinoza and Hegel) within this conception that opposes
   Enlightenment ideals by seeing mankind's destiny in a more tragic or
   pessimistic light. The idea that human beings are not above the forces
   of Nature is in contradiction to Ancient Greek and Renaissance ideals
   where mankind was above all things and owned his fate. This thinking
   led romantic artists to depict the sublime, ruined churches,
   shipwrecks, massacres and madness.

   Romantic painters turned landscape painting into a major genre,
   considered until then as a minor genre or as a decorative background
   for figure compositions. Some of the major painters of this period are
   Eugene Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, J. M. W. Turner, Caspar David
   Friedrich and John Constable. Francisco de Goya's late work
   demonstrates the Romantic interest in the irrational, while the work of
   Arnold Böcklin evokes mystery and the paintings of Aesthetic movement
   artist James McNeill Whistler evoke both sophistication and decadence.
   In the United States the Romantic tradition of landscape painting was
   known as the Hudson River School. Important painters of that school
   include Thomas Cole, Frederick Church, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran,
   and John Frederick Kensett among others. Luminism was another important
   movement in American landscape painting related to the Hudson River
   School.

   The leading Barbizon School painter Camille Corot painted sometimes as
   a romantic, sometimes as a Realist who looks ahead to Impressionism. A
   major force in the turn towards Realism at mid-century was Gustave
   Courbet. In the latter third of the century Impressionists like Édouard
   Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred
   Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, and Edgar Degas and the slightly
   younger post-Impressionists like Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin,
   Georges Seurat, and Paul Cezanne lead art up to the edge of modernism.

20th century

   Henri Matisse 1908, Fauvism

   Pablo Picasso 1907, early Cubism

   Georges Braque 1910, Analytic Cubism

   Giorgio de Chirico 1914, pre- Surrealism

   Wassily Kandinsky 1913, birth of Abstract Art

   Kasimir Malevich 1916, Suprematism

   Piet Mondrian 1921, De Stijl

   Paul Klee 1922, Bauhaus

   Marcel Duchamp 1915- 1923, Dada

   Max Ernst 1923, early Surrealism

   Rene Magritte 1928- 1929, Surrealism

   Salvador Dali 1931, Surrealism (super-realism)

   Grant Wood 1930, American Social Realism, Regionalism

   Frida Kahlo 1940, Latin America Symbolism

   Edward Hopper 1942, American Scene painting

   Francis Bacon 1953, British Expressionism

   Willem De Kooning 1952- 1953, Figurative Abstract Expressionism

   Jackson Pollock 1950, Abstract Expressionism

   Franz Kline 1954, Action Painting

   Clyfford Still 1957, Abstract Expressionism/ Colour Field painting

   Helen Frankenthaler 1952, early Colour Field painting

   Robert Rauschenberg 1963, Combine

   Richard Diebenkorn 1963, Bay Area Figurative Movement

   Fairfield Porter 1971- 1972, East Coast Figurative painting

   Roy Lichtenstein 1963, Pop Art

   Andy Warhol 1962, Pop Art (use of repetition)

   David Hockney 1967, English Pop Art

   Josef Albers 1965, Geometric abstraction

   Frank Stella 1967, Shaped Canvas

   Gene Davis 1964, Washington Colour School

   Ronald Davis 1968, Abstract Illusionism

   Ronnie Landfield 1971, Lyrical Abstraction

   Philip Guston 1973, pre- Neo-expressionism

   Susan Rothenberg 1979, Neo-expressionism

   Eric Fischl 1981, Figurative Neo-expressionism

   Anselm Kiefer 1983, European Neo-expressionism

   The heritage of painters like Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Seurat
   was essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of
   the 20th century Henri Matisse and several other young artists
   revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild," multi-colored,
   expressive, landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called
   Fauvism. 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.

   After cubism several movements emerged; Futurism ( Balla), Abstract (
   Kandinsky, Der Blaue Reiter), Bauhaus ( Klee), De Stijl ( Mondrian),
   Suprematism ( Malevich), Constructivism ( Tatlin), Dadaism ( Duchamp,
   Arp) and Surrealism ( De Chirico, Miró, Magritte, Dalí, Ernst). Modern
   painting influenced all visual arts, from architecture to design and
   became an experimental laboratory in which artists stretched the limits
   of this medium to his extreme. Additionally, Van Gogh's painting had
   great influence in Expressionism which can be seen in Die Brücke, a
   group lead by German painter Ernst Kirchner and in Edvard Munch or Egon
   Schiele's work.

   In the USA during the period between World War I and World War II
   painters tended to go to Europe for recognition. Artists like Marsden
   Hartley, Patrick Henry Bruce, Gerald Murphy and Stuart Davis, created
   reputations abroad. In New York City, Albert Pinkham Ryder and Ralph
   Blakelock were influential and important figures in advanced American
   painting between 1900 and 1920. During the 1920s photographer Alfred
   Stieglitz exhibited Georgia O'Keefe, Arthur Dove, Alfred Henry Maurer,
   Charles Demuth, John Marin and other artists including European Masters
   Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin, Henri Rousseau, Paul Cezanne, and Pablo
   Picasso, at his gallery the 291.

   During the 1930s and the Great Depression, Surrealism, late Cubism, the
   Bauhaus, De Stijl, Dada, and colorist painters like Henri Matisse and
   Pierre Bonnard characterized the European art scene. While in America
   American Scene painting and the Social Realism and Regionalism
   movements that contained both political and social commentary dominated
   the art world. Artists like Ben Shahn, Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood,
   George Tooker, John Steuart Curry, Reginald Marsh, and others became
   prominent. In Latin America the muralist movement with Diego Rivera,
   David Siqueiros, José Orozco, Pedro Nel Gómez and Santiago Martinez
   Delgado and the Symbolist paintings by Frida Kahlo was a renaissance of
   the arts for the region, with a use of colour and historic, and
   political messages.

   Post- Second World War American painting called Abstract expressionism
   included artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Arshile
   Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Clyfford Still, Adolph Gottlieb,
   Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, and Franz Kline, among others.
   Jackson Pollock 1950, Abstract Expressionism
   Jackson Pollock 1950, Abstract Expressionism

   American Abstract expressionism got its name in 1946 from the art
   critic Robert Coates. It is seen as combining the emotional intensity
   and self-denial of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative
   aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism, the
   Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism. Additionally, it has an image of being
   rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, rather
   nihilistic. In practice, the term is applied to any number of artists
   working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles, and even
   applied to work which is not especially abstract nor expressionist.
   Pollock's energetic " action paintings", with their "busy" feel, are
   different both technically and aesthetically, to the violent and
   grotesque Women series of Willem de Kooning (which are figurative
   paintings) and to the serenely shimmering blocks of colour in Mark
   Rothko's work (which is not what would usually be called expressionist
   and which Rothko denied was abstract), yet all three are classified as
   abstract expressionists.

   In Europe there was the continuation of Surrealism, Cubism, Dada and
   the works of Matisse. Also in Europe, Tachisme (the European equivalent
   to Abstract expressionism) took hold of the newest generation. Serge
   Poliakoff, Nicolas de Staël, Georges Mathieu, Vieira da Silva, Jean
   Dubuffet, Yves Klein and Pierre Soulages among others are considered
   important figures in post-war European painting.

   Abstract painting in America evolved into movements such as Neo-Dada,
   colour field painting, Post painterly abstraction, Op Art, hard-edge
   painting, Minimal art, shaped canvas painting, Lyrical Abstraction,
   Neo-expressionism and the continuation of Abstract expressionism. As a
   response to the tendency toward abstraction imagery emerged through
   various new movements.

   Pop-Art is exemplified by artists: Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, James
   Rosenquist, Jim Dine, Tom Wesselmann and Roy Lichtenstein among others.
   Pop art merges popular and mass culture with fine art, while injecting
   humor, irony, and recognizable imagery and content into the mix. In
   1962 the Sidney Janis Gallery mounted The New Realists the first major
   Pop Art group exhibition in an uptown art gallery in New York City.
   Sidney Janis mounted the exhibition in a 57th Street storefront near
   his gallery at 15 E. 57th Street. The show sent shockwaves through the
   New York School and reverberated worldwide. Earlier in England in 1958
   the term "Pop Art" was used by Lawrence Alloway to describe paintings
   that celebrated consumerism of the post World War II era. This movement
   rejected Abstract expressionism and its focus on the hermeneutic and
   psychological interior, in favour of art which depicted, and often
   celebrated material consumer culture, advertising, and iconography of
   the mass production age. The early works of David Hockney and the works
   of Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi were considered seminal
   examples in the movement. While in the downtown scene in New York's
   East Village 10th Street galleries artists were formulating an American
   version of Pop Art. Claes Oldenburg had his storefront, and the Green
   Gallery on 57th Street began to show Tom Wesselmann and James
   Rosenquist. Later Leo Castelli exhibited other American artists
   including the bulk of the careers of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein
   and his use of Benday dots, a technique used in commercial
   reproduction. There is a connection between the radical works of
   Duchamp, and Man Ray, the rebellious Dadaists - with a sense of humor;
   and Pop Artists like Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and
   the others.

   While throughout the 20th century many painters continued to practice
   landscape and figurative painting with contemporary subjects and solid
   technique, like Fairfield Porter, Edward Hopper, Balthus, Francis
   Bacon, Lucian Freud, Philip Pearlstein, David Hockney, Chuck Close,
   Susan Rothenberg, Eric Fischl, Vija Celmins and Alex Katz.

   During the 1960s and 1970s, there was a reaction against painting.
   Critics like Douglas Crimp viewed the work of artists like Ad
   Reinhardt, and declared the 'death of painting'. Artists began to
   practice new ways of making art. New movements gained prominence some
   of which are: Postminimalism, Earth art, Video art, Installation art,
   arte povera, performance art, body art, fluxus, mail art, the
   situationists and conceptual art among others.

   However during the 1960s and 1970s abstract painting continued to
   develop in America through varied styles. Neo-Dada, Colour field
   painting, Lyrical Abstraction, Op art, hard-edge painting, Abstract
   Illusionism, minimal painting, and the continuation of Abstract
   expressionism as well as other new movements.

   Colour Field painting initially referred to a particular type of
   abstract expressionism, especially the work of Mark Rothko, Clyfford
   Still, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell and Adolph Gottlieb. Art
   critic Clement Greenberg perceived Colour Field painting as related to
   but different from Action painting. During the early to mid-1960s
   Colour Field painting was the term used to describe artists like Jules
   Olitski, Kenneth Noland, and Helen Frankenthaler, whose works were
   related to second generation abstract expressionism, and to younger
   artists like Larry Zox, and Frank Stella, - all moving in a new
   direction. Artists like Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann,
   Morris Louis, Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Larry
   Zox, and others often used greatly reduced references to nature, and
   they painted with a highly articulated and psychological use of color.
   In general these artists eliminated recognizable imagery. During the
   1960s Colour Field painting and Minimal art were often closely
   associated with each other. In actuality by the early 1970s both
   movements became decidedly diverse.

   Neo-Dada is also a movement that started 1n the 1950s and 1960s and was
   related to Abstract expressionism. Featuring the emergence of combined
   manufactured items, with artist materials, moving away from previous
   conventions of painting. This trend in art is exemplified by the work
   of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, whose "combines" in the 1950s
   were forerunners of Pop Art and Installation art, and made use of the
   assemblage of large physical objects, including stuffed animals, birds
   and commercial photography. Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Larry
   Rivers, John Chamberlain, Claes Oldenburg, George Segal, Jim Dine, and
   Edward Kienholz among others were important pioneers of both
   abstraction and Pop Art; creating new conventions of art-making; they
   made acceptable in serious contemporary art circles the radical
   inclusion of unlikely materials as parts of their works of art.

   Another related movement of the late 1960s Lyrical Abstraction is a
   term that was originally coined by Larry Aldrich (the founder of the
   Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield Connecticut) in 1969 to
   describe what Aldrich said he saw in the studios of many artists at
   that time. It is also the name of an exhibition that originated in the
   Aldrich Museum and traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art and
   other museums throughout the United States between 1969 and 1971.

   During the 1960s and 1970s artists as powerful and influential as
   Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, Phillip Guston, Lee Krasner, Cy
   Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer
   Bischoff, Agnes Martin, Al Held, Sam Francis, Ellsworth Kelly, Morris
   Louis, Helen Frankenthaler, Gene Davis, Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland,
   Joan Mitchell, Friedel Dzubas, and younger artists like Brice Marden,
   Robert Mangold, Sam Gilliam, Sean Scully, Elizabeth Murray, Larry
   Poons, Walter Darby Bannard, Larry Zox, Ronnie Landfield, Ronald Davis,
   Dan Christensen, Joan Snyder, Ross Bleckner, Archie Rand, Susan Crile,
   and dozens of others produced vital and influential paintings.

   In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was also a return to painting
   that occurred almost simultaneously in Italy, Germany, France and
   Britain. These movements were called Transavantguardia, Neue Wilde,
   Figuration Libre, Neo-expressionism and the School of London
   respectively. These painting were characterized by large formats, free
   expressive mark making, figuration, myth and imagination. All work in
   this genre came to be labeled neo-expressionism. Critical reaction was
   divided. Some critics regarded it as driven by profit motivations by
   large commercial galleries. This type of art largely disappeared after
   the art crash of the late 1980s.

   Painting still holds a respected position in contemporary art. Art is
   an open field no longer divided by the objective versus non-objective
   dichotomy. Artists can achieve critical success whether their images
   are representational or abstract. What has currency is content,
   exploring the boundaries of the medium, and a refusal to recapitulate
   the works of the past as an end goal.

Contemporary painting in the 21st century

     * to be continued

   At the beginning of the 21st century Contemporary painting and
   Contemporary art in general continues in several contigious modes,
   characterized by the idea of pluralism. The " crisis" in painting and
   current art and current art criticism today is brought about by
   pluralism. There is no consensus as to a representative style of the
   age. There is an anything goes attitude that prevails; an "everything
   going on," and consequently "nothing going on" syndrome; except for an
   aesthetic traffic jam, with no firm and clear direction, with every
   lane on the artistic superhighway filled to capacity. Consequently
   magnificent and important works of art continue to be made albeit in a
   wide variety of styles.

   Hard-edge painting, Geometric abstraction, Hyperrealism, Photorealism,
   Expressionism, Minimalism, Lyrical Abstraction, Pop Art, Op Art,
   Abstract Expressionism, Colour Field painting, Monochrome painting,
   Neo-expressionism, Collage, Intermedia painting, Assemblage painting,
   Computer art painting, Conceptual art painting, Postmodern painting,
   Neo-Dada painting, Shaped canvas painting, environmental mural
   painting, traditional figure painting, Landscape painting, Portrait
   painting, are a few continuing and current directions in painting at
   the beginning of the 21st century.
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