The Movement of Art in history of mankind

It seam's that all art can be traced back to the Palaeolithic times. Art is simply the process of mark making ordered in such a manner that it documents a subject. The most primitive form of this idea is cave paintings, these where a form of semiotics in which the 'maker' arranged to tell a story, basic yet affective. The objective form can be seen in such representations like the 'buffalo'. So hence, art it seems was created. But what to the art we see today, well in my studies i have come to conclude that it was such civilisations like the Greeks and the Egyptians that created culture. Before these great super powers came to be, humankind existed to survive and survived to exist. Its not until you create a perfect civilisation that such things like war, science, art and culture will be invented, purely out of boredom. When humans have the perfect environment, and a strong healthy community their is no more need to survive to exist, so out of boredom they find future inspiration to fulfill the power of knowledge that man wants to hold, thus, culture was created. Culture is the integrated pattern of human knowledge, its sole existence created belief, and a behaviour that made man hold the power of symbolism to capture the imagination. This in early practice was still a documentation (and indeed, that is the idea of it today). In the early movements of Art AD the idea was to document biblical and political episodes that represent symbolic events within history. This for many hundreds of years dominated what the artisan and apprentice practiced, and it is noted that up until the camera obscurer, this was the main subject. In my years of studying art i have noticed that the invention of the camera changed how we documented history, the use of art as a documenting process ceased to exist. Therefor the purpose of art changed its direction, not looking at what is going on but why.


This whole process (AD) was documented through movements that represent the idea of how imagination changed through the ages.





Byzantine Art.


Byzantine Art (330 CE-1450) heavily had an oriental influence, this in inturn had a dramatic impact on Italian art in the fourteenth centurary. It was an idealistic look at religion, in which 'iconoclasm' was born which basicaly means the subtle interplay between religiouse worship and its portrayal in art form. This was the early idea that 'god is in the detail' (later on it became the notion, less is more. a principle of design). This seems to be the start of art as we now know it.





Through this came the outburst of art schools, these where the places in which artisans explored religeouse meaning, to note them would be to form a list, but the idea of this writting is not to list movements but to brake down the structure and understanding of the 'Why' in which art explores human nature.





The word Art itself does not have a direct deffinition, but you can relate it strongly to the word Artificial, wich is something made by man, and not by nature.


So on this notion i have discuvered that Art is the 'Artificial interpritation of ones imagination', this stongly jumps to Modernism and the idea behind most of the late 19th and 20th centurary art.


In relation to this, i have studied the more recognised movements that highlight the use of imagination. This brings me to the 1400's and onwards to the present day.





Renaissance 1400-1800.


The Renaissance and Higher Renaissance was the hight of culutral integraty during the middle ages. It was a total Re-birth of culture and the ideology of man. Strongly looking at Science, enviroment and philosaphy, it drew away from the religouse outcomes of earlyer art and started to look more into the idea of hope and false sense of beliefe, with the introduction of more science outruling most of the christian beliefs more and more artists started to paint romantic visions of life around them, mainly documenting key points during this time period.


1600-1800, The Birth of Oil painting as a movement. By this time artists had started a trend of using oil upon canvas and wood boards, these became highly fashionable with the higher class's in the western world.


Art then reverted back to the original idea of it merely documenting what is going on around them. Most of the later paintings portrayed the owner, in all ther glory, using strong semiotics to symbolise there power and wealth. This went on until the ivention of the camera, wich could do exactly the same but in less time and more accuratly.





The Birth of Romanticism 1800-1880.