UNIT 1 THE DEVELOPMENT OF ART THROUGH DIFFERENT ERAS
PART ONE
Key unit competence: To be able to describe the key points in the
evolution of Art through ages and carryout an appreciation of techniquesand works of renowned Artists in Africa and the world in general.
i) Modern Art
Modern Art means works produced during the approximate period 1870-
1970. Modern art is renowned for its avant-garde aesthetic and celebrated
for its forward-thinking artists. Developing over the course of roughly 100
years, it incorporates many major art movements and has inevitably seen a
diverse range of styles.
In order to trace modern art’s remarkable evolution, one must recognize
and understand the many genres that compose it. To do this, however, it is
helpful to come up with a modern art definition.
Works produced during this time showcase artists’ interest in re-imagining,
reinterpreting, and even rejecting traditional aesthetic values of precedingstyles.
Modern artists and their works
• Claude Monet is French painter who was a popular caricaturist. By the age
of 15, Monet had made something of a name for himself with his charcoalcaricatures.
• Paul Cézanne, in his paintings, often rejected realistic portrayals of space in
favor of more creative compositions. This is particularly evident in his still-life
depictions, which frequently feature fruit, bottles, and other everyday objectsbalanced on tilted, topsy-turvy tabletops
ii) Abstract Art
Abstract art uses a visual language of shape, form, color and line to create
a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual
references in the world. Abstract art does not depict a person, place or thing
in the natural world.
The term ‘abstract art’ also called “non-objective art”, “non-figurative”,
“non-representational”, “geometric abstraction”, or “concrete art. The
Abstract Art movement is called Abstract Expressionism because, although
the art has no subject, it is still trying to convey some kind of emotion. The
Abstract Expressionism movement began in the 1940s in New York City
after World War II. However, the first real Abstract Art was painted earlier by
some Expressionists, especially Kandinsky in the early 1900s.
The main characteristic of abstract art is that it has no recognizable subject.
Some Abstract Artists had theories on the emotions that were caused bycertain colors and shapes.
Famous Abstract Artists
• Willem de Kooning was a Dutch artist who became a part of the New York
City Abstract Expressionist movement. His most famous painting is WomanIII which sold for over $137 million
• Joan Mitchell is an American who was born (February 12, 1925 and died
October 30, 1992) Mitchell is one of artists of “second generation” abstract
expressionist painters and printmakers. She was a member of the American
abstract expressionist movement, even though much of her career took place
in France. Her paintings and edition prints can be seen in major museums andcollections across the United States and Europe.
• Piet Mondrian is one of 20 century Dutch painters and was the one who
developed an Abstract painting style that involved straight lines and colored
rectangles. He called this type of painting “The Style”. Some of his artwork isComposition, 1916.
• Georgia O’Keeffe is American who was born November 15, 1887 and
died March 6, 1986. Georgia O’Keeffe is artist of Modernism which is artistic
and cultural movement which peaked between the two World Wars. It was
marked by a deliberate departure from tradition and use of innovative formsof expression. Her abstract Masterpiece: Forgotten sister (1926)
• Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957)
Romanian abstract sculptor, active in Paris. One of the great early exponents
of non-objective art. Pioneer of direct carving; emphasized ‘shape’
1.2. World-renowned Artists
Long time ego, artists have been innovating and improving their art day to day
and some of their works have influence in the history of art as new general try
to imitate techniques used these artists we include: Michelangelo, Leonardo Da
Vinci, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Raphael, Picasso and O’Keeffe
i) Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, (6 March 1475 – 18
February 1564)
Known best as simply Michelangelo, he was an Italian sculptor, painter,
architect and poet of the High Renaissance born in the Republic of Florence,who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.
He sculpted two of his best-known works, “the Pietà” and “David”, before
the age of thirty. Despite holding a low opinion of painting, he also created
two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes
from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and “The LastJudgment” on its altar wall
Michelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published
while he was alive.
ii) Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 May 1519),
More commonly known as Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the
Renaissance whose areas of interest included invention, drawing, painting,
sculpture, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature,
anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, paleontology, and cartography. He is
widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time; despite perhapsonly 15 of his paintings have survived.
He was a Dutch post-impressionist painter who is among the most famous
and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade
he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most
of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes,
still lives, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterized by bold colors
and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the
foundations of modern art. He was not commercially successful, and his
suicide at 37 came after years of mental illness and poverty.
He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the public imagination as
the quintessential misunderstood genius, the artist “where discourses on
madness and creativity converge “Sunflowers, 1889” and “Wheatfieldwith crows, 1890” are some of his artworks
Known for his self-portraits and biblical scenes, Dutch artist Rembrandt is
considered to be one of the greatest painters in European history.
v) Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso was born in Spain in 1881, and was raised there before
going on to spend most of his adult life working as an artist in France.
Throughout the long course of his career, he created more than 20,000paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics and other items such as costumes
and theater sets. He is universally renowned as one of the most influential
and celebrated artists of the twentieth century.
Guernica is a large 1937 oil painting on canvas by Spanish artist Pablo
Picasso. One of Picasso’s best known works, Guernica is regarded by many
art critics as one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings inhistory. It is exhibited in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.
1.3. Great artworks in the world
The frescoes on the side walls of the chapel were painted from 1481 to 1483.
On the north wall are six frescoes depicting events from the life of Christ as
painted by Perugino, Pinturicchio, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio,and Cosimo Rosselli.
The most important artworks in the chapel are the frescoes by Michelangeloon
the ceiling and on the west wall behind the altar. The frescoes on the ceiling,
collectively known as the Sistine Ceiling, were commissioned by Pope Julius
II in 1508 and were painted by Michelangelo in the years from 1508 to
1512. They depict incidents and personages from the Old Testament. The
Last Judgment fresco on the west wall was painted by Michelangelo forPope Paul III in the period from 1534 to 1541.
• The Rape of Proserpina (Italian: Ratto di Proserpina) is a large Baroque
marble sculptural group by Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, executed
between 1621 and 1622. Bernini was only 23 years old at its completion. It
depicts theAbduction of Proserpina, who is seized and taken to the underworldby the god Pluto.
Figure 1.3.4: The rape of Proserpina (1621-1622) by Gian Lorenzo Berinini
• FERTILITY GODDESS
This is representation of a fertility Goddes. It is inspired by the idealization
of female fertility, drawn from the Venus of Wilendorf, believed to have beencarved 24,000-22,000B.C. today is in Vienna, Austria
AFRICAN ART
• Ancient Egyptian art refers to paintings, sculptures, architecture, and
other arts produced in ancient Egypt between the 31st century BC and the
4th century AD. It is very conservative; Egyptian styles changed remarkably
little over time. Much of the surviving art comes from tombs and monuments,
which have given more insight on the Egyptians’ belief of the afterlife. This
has caused a greater focus on preserving the knowledge of the past. Wall art
was not produced for people to look at but it had a purpose in the afterlife andin rituals. Egyptian art considered as a mother of art in whole world civilization
Nok art is art made by people from Nok empire in our days this region is made
by West Africa countries. Art of this society referred to making the sculpture
of huge human, animal and other figures made out of terracotta pottery, made
by the Nok culture and found throughout Nigeria. The terracotta’s representthe earliest sculptural art in West Africa and were made between 900 BCE
and 0 CE, co-occurring with the earliest evidence of iron smelting in Africa
south of the Sahara desert.
• Nok Terracottas
The famous terracotta figurines are made of local clays with coarse tempers.
Although very few of the sculptures have been found intact, it is clear that they
were nearly life-sized. Most are known from broken fragments, representing
human heads and other body parts wearing a profusion of beads, anklets,
and bracelets. Artistic conventions recognized as Nok art by scholars include
geometric indications of eyes and eyebrows with perforations for pupils, anddetailed treatment of heads, noses, nostrils, and mouths.
A possible precursor to the art are figurines depicting cattle found throughout
the Sahara-Sahel region of North Africa beginning in the 2nd millenniumBCE; later connections include the Benin brasses and other Yoruba art.
It is renowned for prehistoric parietal cave art featuring charcoal drawings
and polychrome paintings of contemporary local fauna and human hands. The
earliest paintings were applied during the Upper Paleolithic, around 36,000
years ago. The site was only discovered in 1868 by Modesto Cubillas.
Altamira is located in the Franco-Cantabrian region and declared a World
Heritage Site by UNESCO as a key location of the Cave of Altamira andPaleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain.
• Lascaux Cave is a Paleolithic cave situated in southwestern France, near
the village of Montana in the Dordogne region, which houses some of the
most famous examples of prehistoric cave paintings.
Close to 600 paintings mostly of animals - dot the interior walls of the
cave in impressive compositions. Horses are the most numerous, but deer,
aurochs, ibex, bison, and even some felines can also be found. Besides these
paintings, which represent most of the major images, there are also around
1400 engravings of a similar order
The museum was founded by Mary Leakey and is now under the jurisdiction
of the Tanzanian Government’s Department of Cultural Antiquities. It is a
museum dedicated to the appreciation and understanding of the OlduvaiGorge and Laetoli fossil sites
