Artistic characteristics of western art in different periods

Western art (English: Western art) is dominated by western plastic arts, including painting, sculpture, architecture and so on.

1. Slave society era

Entering the slave society, those ancient civilizations have written a glorious chapter in the history of human art.

The sculptures in Mesopotamia (that is, the area between the Euphrates River and the Tigris River, also known as the two river basins), such as the code of hammurabi relief in the kingdom of Babylon and the sculptures in the kingdom of Assyria, are extremely realistic and full of intense dynamics.

Huge pyramid buildings in ancient Egypt, portraits carved according to the forehead law and mysterious and magnificent sphinx.

Freedom and democracy in ancient Greece created buildings, sculptures and paintings with democratic ideas, among which many handsome and elegant sculpture images remain in the world, such as Milos discus thrower and Venus. Especially charming.

Roman art inherited the tradition of ancient Greece, but Roman art was more pragmatic. The huge Colosseum and Pantheon are outstanding representatives of ancient Roman architecture. Pompeii frescoes buried by Vesuvius ash for more than 700 years/kloc-0 show us the unique features of ancient Roman painting.

2. Feudal social era

Since 476 AD, European history has entered the feudal Middle Ages. Restricted by Christianity, medieval art did not pay attention to the real description of the objective world, but emphasized the expression of the so-called spiritual world. The high development of architecture is the greatest achievement of medieval art. Byzantine churches, Romanesque churches and Gothic churches all have their own artistic creativity. Combined with religious buildings, sculptures, mosaics and murals have also made certain achievements.

3. European Renaissance

14-16th century European Renaissance art, with the aim of adhering to realistic methods and embodying humanistic thoughts, created a brand-new art that best conforms to the realistic humanity under the banner of tracing back the artistic spirit of ancient Greece and Rome.

Italian Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael were the Theory of Three Represents of Renaissance art. Leonardo da Vinci is both an artist and a scientist. His masterpieces The Last Supper and Mona Lisa are considered to be the first in the world famous paintings. Michelangelo, on the other hand, left a model work that best represented the artistic level in the heyday of the Renaissance in sculpture, painting and architecture. The characters he created are majestic and strong, with extraordinary verve. Raphael is the most successful with his beautiful and elegant image of the Virgin. His Madonna is lofty and ordinary, and is regarded as the embodiment of beauty and goodness, which fully embodies the ideal of humanism.

4.17th century period

Baroque art appeared in Europe in the17th century, originated in Italy and was popular all over Europe. It is characterized by the pursuit of passion and sense of movement, emphasizing gorgeous decoration. This style is embodied in painting, sculpture and architecture. Rubens of Flanders is a representative figure of baroque painting, and his passionate and colorful paintings have a lasting influence on western painting. Contemporary realistic masters, such as Rembrandt in the Netherlands and Velazquez in Spain, also have baroque characteristics to some extent.

5.18th century period

Rococo style rose in France in the18th century, and then spread to other European countries. Rococo art is characterized by the pursuit of fineness and exquisiteness. Representative painters are Watto, Boucher and fragonard. With the arrival of the French bourgeois revolution in 1789, progressive artists revived the heroic spirit of ancient Greece and Rome again and launched the neoclassical art movement. Its representative painters are David and Angel of France. Romanticism rose with the decline of neoclassicism. Medusa's Raft in Jericho, France, is regarded as the pioneering work of romantic painting, but the main leader of this movement is Delacroix. His paintings are full of strong colors, bold and unrestrained pen, and full of strong passion. His representative works include Shio Island Massacre and Free Guide. Luther's La Marseillaise and Carpau's Dance are outstanding romantic sculptures.

6.19th century period

/kloc-the middle of the 0/9th century was a period of prosperity for realistic art. French painter Courbet is an advocate of realism. His masterpiece "The Funeral of Onan" is a "human comedy" in painting, while "Masonry" profoundly reveals social contradictions and shows the author's sympathy for the working people. Miller, a hardworking and simple farmer painter, praised the hard-working farmers with mellow and sincere feelings. Du Miai, a political satirist, has created a large number of prints and oil paintings with profound thoughts and exaggerated images. Kohl Huizhi, a German female printmaker, created a series of copperplate and lithograph prints reflecting the workers' movement and peasant revolution with her social democratic thoughts and distinctive personal style. Russian critical realism produced outstanding painters, such as Lie Bin and Surikov. The works of French sculptor Rodin also have certain realistic characteristics.

Impressionism came into being in France in the late19th century. This school of painting appeared with an innovative attitude, opposed the outdated artistic concepts and rules of the classical academic school at that time, and was inspired by modern optics and chromatics, paying attention to expressing the effect of light in painting. Representative painters include Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, pissarro and Sisley. After impressionism, new impressionism (represented by Seurat and Sinek) and post-impressionism (represented by Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin) appeared. In fact, post-impressionism and impressionism are not the same in artistic opinions, or even completely opposite. Among them, Gao Hua focuses on its strong emotions, bright colors and bold lines. Gauguin's paintings have symbolic meaning and decorative lines and colors. French painter Cezanne (1839- 1906) is a representative figure of post-impressionism. He pursued the form of expression all his life, and made new innovations in the use of color and modeling, while his paintings pursued geometric structure, so he was known as the "father of modern art". The source of his paintings is nature, people and the real world he lives in, not the stories and myths of the past.

7.20th century to present.

Since the 20th century, modern art has shown a variety of schools and styles. 1905 Fauvism painting, represented by Matisse, emphasizes the simplicity and plainness of form and pursues the decoration of the picture. 1908 cubist painting, represented by Braque and Picasso, inherited Cezanne's molding law and decomposed natural objects into geometric blocks, thus fundamentally breaking away from the visual laws and spatial concepts of traditional painting. With the establishment of 1905 German Bridge Society and 1909 German blue rider Society, expressionism, as an important school, entered the painting world, focusing on expressing the painter's subjective spirit and inner feelings. 1909, there was a futuristic art movement in Italy. This school of painters was keen on using cubism to decompose objects to express moving objects and feelings. The works of abstract art were produced around 19 10, and their representative painters were Russian painter Kandinsky and Dutch painter mondriaan, who represented lyric abstraction and geometric abstraction respectively.

Dadaism emerged during the First World War. This school of artists not only opposed war, authority and tradition, but also denied art itself and everything. Duchamp painted a beard on Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and regarded the urinal as a work of art, which is the embodiment of Dadaism. With the decline of Dadaism, surrealism appeared on this basis. Based on Bergson's intuitionism, Freud's psychoanalysis and dream psychology, this school of painters tries to express the unconscious and subconscious world. His paintings often combine concrete details and fictional artistic conception to express dreams and hallucinations. Representative painters are Ernst, Margaret, Xia, Dali, Miro and so on.

The abstract Expressionism painting, represented by Pollock and De Cunin, produced in the United States after the Second World War, integrated the characteristics of abstraction and expressionism, and emphasized the freedom and automaticity of painter's action.

Pop art, which sprouted in Britain in the early 1950s and flourished in the United States in the mid 1950s, inherited the spirit of Dadaism. In his works, a lot of waste, commercial posters, movie advertisements and various newspaper pictures are used for collage and combination, so it is also named New Dadaism. Representative figures are American painters John, Lawson Parker, Warhol and so on.

Surrealism (or photographic realism) movement, which rose in 1970s, is characterized by objective reproduction and realistic description by using photographic results. Representative painters are Close and Perstan, among which Andre and Hansen are the most famous sculptors. Besides the above, occasional art and earth art can be classified into the category of modern art, and many of his artistic activities have gone beyond the category of fine arts.