Western Art in 30 Minutes: Renaissance to New Media

I. Classical and early modern art

1. Renaissance
   • Period: 14th–17th century
   • Key features: emphasis on perspective and anatomy, the revival of Greco-Roman culture, and humanism.
   • Major figures: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael.
2. Post-Impressionism
   • Period: late 19th century
   • Key features: bold colour inherited from Impressionism, with greater attention to subjective feeling and underlying structure.
   • Major figures: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne.
3. Expressionism
   • Period: early 20th century
   • Key features: intense expression of inner emotion, with exaggerated colour and distorted form.
   • Major groups: Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter.
4. Fauvism
   • Period: early 20th century
   • Key features: bold, intuitive use of colour, free from the demands of naturalistic representation.
   • Major figure: Matisse.
5. Cubism
   • Period: 1907–1920s
   • Key features: rejection of traditional perspective; objects are broken down and reassembled as geometric forms.
   • Major figures: Picasso, Braque.

II. The avant-garde and the rise of modernism (first half of the 20th century)

1. Futurism
   • Key features: celebration of speed, technology and modern urban life.
   • Centred in Italy and frequently entangled with political ideology.
2. Dadaism
   • Key features: anti-art, anti-rational, anti-traditional, with an emphasis on chance and absurdity.
   • Originated in Zurich during the First World War.
3. Surrealism
   • Key features: exploration of the unconscious and the dream world, influenced by Freud.
   • Major figures: Dalí, Magritte.
4. Constructivism (essentially synonymous with the Chinese term “jiangou zhuyi”)
   • Origin: Russia, 1910s
   • Key features: art in the service of society and industry; emphasis on structure, function and geometric form.
   • Major figures: Tatlin, Lissitzky.

III. Post-war movements (mid- to late 20th century)

1. Post-War Modernism
   • A general label for the various styles that carried modernism forward after 1945, including Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and others.
2. Tachisme
   • A French movement that emphasises spontaneous brushwork and stains of colour. The European counterpart of Abstract Expressionism.
   • Closely related to Action Painting.
3. Pop Art
   • Period: 1950s–60s
   • Key features: drawn from mass culture and consumer society, quoting imagery from advertising, comics and similar sources.
   • Major figures: Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein.

IV. Contemporary and new media art

1. Contemporary Art
   • Roughly the art produced from the 1980s to the present — pluralistic, cross-disciplinary and often anti-traditional.
   • Key features: engagement with social issues, use of new media, and emphasis on the concept behind the work.
2. Conceptual and Performance Art
   • The “idea” takes precedence over the “object”; action itself becomes the work.
   • Major figures: Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramović.
3. Video Art
   • Art made with the moving image as its medium; emerged in the 1960s.
   • Major figure: Nam June Paik.
4. Experimental Video Art
   • A stronger emphasis on formal experimentation, technical innovation and dialogue with the language of cinema.
   • Often takes the form of video installation or interactive work.
5. Performance Video Art
   • The combination of performance art with video technology, where the recording either documents the work or forms part of it.

Cross-currents and connections:

• French Impressionism: the starting point of modern art, with its focus on light, shadow and perception of colour, exerted a profound influence on Post-Impressionism.
• Constructivism (in either of its common Chinese renderings) emphasises industrial form and a pragmatic outlook.
• Dadaism → Surrealism → Performance and Conceptual Art form a continuous lineage built on the primacy of ideas and the rejection of convention.
• Tachisme and Abstract Expressionism can be read as the two major forms of post-war painting driven by emotion.