This is the first page of a website on art history, including the early years. This site will be devoted to presenting information on the history of art, and other topics related to art, in both text and image form.
The goal is to create a resource that serves as both a repository for information about artists and artworks, and a place for people to discuss all manner of subjects related to art.
The site will include sections on painting, sculpture, architecture, music, performance (acting, dancing), film and video art, objects of popular culture, crafts (such as glass making or printmaking), photography and collage.
Other sections will have more general themes: museums, biographies of artists and others involved in the arts, galleries and exhibitions.
There will also be pages devoted to explaining technical terms in layman’s terms (for example: what is “pentimenti,” when are prints “reproductions,” etc.).
Art is one of the most influential things in our culture. It has shaped the way that people behave and think for a very long time, and continues to do so today. Art is used as a source of inspiration for many things; fashion, movies, writing, and even music. It is often used in advertising to persuade people to buy a product or service.
One of the most interesting questions about art is how it came about. Who was the first person to create art? Was it a man or a woman? Where did they make their art? And what kind of art did they make? These are all questions that have no definite answer because there is no real history of art.
In this blog I hope to answer these questions as well as many others in an attempt to uncover the history of art. This blog will not only include paintings, but also sculptures and even other forms of art like music and writing. I hope that you will join me on this journey through history as we explore the origins of one of the most influential aspects in our culture today!
I thought I would post here about the history of art, and then others could add to it. I’ll also add some links to other blogs that do the same thing.
The first question is “when was art invented?” The usual answer is “about 30,000 years ago,” but that’s not what I think. The technique of drawing on cave walls didn’t stop at 30,000 years ago. It continued until it was replaced by writing. The early drawings are only the beginning of a long history of human art, spanning at least 30,000 years.
But when was art invented? There’s a more interesting question: what is art? What makes something art rather than decoration? This is less obvious than you might think. Decoration is something we notice, but not something we study as part of history or anthropology. But when we try to define this boundary between decoration and art, the first thing we notice is that all cultures have an interest in decoration; even our own culture has a strong interest in decoration. It’s just not considered high-class, so we don’t talk about it much.
And that raises another question: why do humans find decoration interesting? In the early days humans were hunting animals (for food) and gathering plants (
Art has been with us since the dawn of history. From the time when prehistoric people painted on cave walls, to today’s modern art museums, we can trace a continuous history of artwork through the ages.
We will study the great artists and their famous works: what they created, why they did it, and how they did it. We will look at the different styles in which art has been created, from primitive to modernism; and at how art has been displayed and preserved over time.
Our study of history’s greatest works of art will help us to understand and appreciate what our ancestors were thinking as they produced this great cultural legacy for us to enjoy today.
Rainbow Art is a blog about the history of art. It is meant to be fun, interesting and informative. There is also some history here, but this blog is not a source for historical facts. I give sources to all my facts in the blog posts and encourage everyone to do their own research. My goal with this blog was to try to explain how art evolved over time, not just focus on one period of art or artist.
The idea for Rainbow Art came from an assertion that I often hear that there are no good artists now, because everything has already been done. I wanted to show that this isn’t true by showing how many different styles of art were created throughout history. Unfortunately, with so many different styles of art, it’s impossible to show them in one post. So I’ve decided to break it down into several parts and then combine them later into a single post.
-1st – History of Art: How did humans create art? This section will cover the beginning of mankind through the Renaissance era up until around 1910 AD.-2nd – Modern Art: This section will cover the modern art movement from 1910-1960.-3rd – Pop Art: This section will cover the pop art movement from 1960-present.-4th – Conclusion:
Art has been a part of human life since the beginning. The earliest human-made objects are also the most artful.
Before humans made representative art, they made decorative art. Their jewelry, adornments, and tools were richly decorated. For example, the beads of ancient peoples like the Mimbres or Osage Indians or early Europeans were elaborately carved and painted; flint arrowheads were carefully shaped in distinctive ways…
Representational art is more difficult to pin down than decorative art. It encompasses everything from cave paintings to the Sistine Chapel and everything in between. Representational art can be divided into two categories: naturalistic art (which depicts what we see in nature) and non-naturalistic (which depicts something that we do not see).
Terracotta warriors, Chinese, Qin dynasty, 210 BC – 210 AD
It is common to speak of the physical sciences as the heir of classical art and literature, and the humanities as their bastard child. Such a view, however, strikes me as both simplistic and wrongheaded.
I say simplistic because it ignores the extent to which scientific and artistic endeavor are deeply intertwined even today. The history of scientific discovery is inextricably linked with that of artistic innovation.
The history of modern science is intimately tied up with that of art. In the sixteenth century, Galileo was an accomplished painter and violinist; later, he suspected that mathematics might be a more congenial medium for understanding nature than either art or music. Elements of Newton’s Principia Mathematica read like abstract paintings, while his Opticks contains numerous references to music. Even Darwin’s language in The Origin of Species has a distinctly poetical flavor:
And it is not probable that any innate differences in mind have been brought into play; but that those large and conspicuous modifications, whether due to variation or sexual selection, which have given rise to male courtship on the one hand and female choice on the other have been preserved or rejected according to the standard of beauty set by each breed as approved by each respective female.
Scientific theory can be seen as a way
