Western Art

Western art is characterized by an extraordinary richness that reflects the great diversity of European and American civilization throughout often turbulent history. Like Western philosophy, it remained based for the most part on the classicism of Greece and Rome, as well as the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, until the 20th century, when the complexity of modern society ushered in sweeping changes.

Prehistoric Times

Although people must have been making art almost since the rise of our species, Homo sapiens, the earliest art to come down to us is the recently discovered (late 1994) paintings in the Chauvet cave in southeastern France, which owe their survival to their secluded location. Dating from more than 30,000 years ago, they are surprisingly sophisticated, and they show that Stone Age culture must have already been well established. Ferocious lions, rhinoceroses, and mammoths are depicted with extraordinary vividness, along with occasional renderings of humans. By contrast, the cave paintings at Lascaux, France, and Altamira, Spain, date from about 15,000-10,000 b.c, when the Ice Age was drawing to a close. Focusing on horses, bulls, and bison, they represent a late stage in prehistoric culture. Cave paintings are traditionally thought to have been related to hunting magic. However, it is likely that they held a larger religious significance, and they may well be the ancestors of the half-human, half-animal deities familiar to us from the earliest civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Prehistoric art also includes small carvings in bone and stone of animals, as well as fetishis-tic nude female figures, such as the famous Venus of Willendorf (Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna) from Austria. The New Stone Age brought a decisive change, as people began to settle into villages, leaving us with the first significant architectural remains. Architecture in Neolithic Europe, however, was confined to dolmens (tombs constructed of megalithic slabs of stone) and cromlechs, notably Stonenenge in Wiltshire, England, a huge outdoor altar for sun worship.

Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia

The rise of the first great civilizations almost simultaneously in Egypt and Mesopotamia marks the beginning of art history proper, which is linked to the concentration of people, resources, and power into highly organized urban societies. Yet a greater contrast could hardly be found. Egyptian art was codified about 3000 b.c. and hardly varied in character until its demise, despite occasional attempts to loosen the canon, especially during periods of political upheaval. It was closely related to hieroglyphic ("sacred") writing ana remained highly conceptual, for its purpose was ultimately to glorify the pharaoh, who was himself a god carrying out his divine mission on earth. Thus human figures are shown in a standard combination of frontal and profile views that defies nature but remains aesthetically satisfying. Landscapes, though they provided a welcome opportunity for experimentation, often have the same ideographic quality. Much of the Egyptian art we have comes from tombs, where it served as a kind of pictorial calendar to ensure the cosmic order and to provide for the afterlife of the deceased's soul (ka) Such tombs originally took the form of mastabas, but the finest were the three great pyramids built near Giza around the middle of the third millennium b.c. The famous Sphinx nearby was probably a portrait of the first of the kings Mycerinus. There were also vast temple complexes at Luxor and elsewhere that reflected the rising power of the priests. Only under Akhneton around 1360 b.c. was there a serious effort to after Egyptian art as part of a larger process of political and religious reform, but this brief episode ended with his son, Tutankhamen, after which it reverted to a conservative style once again.

In contrast, the art of Mesopotamia reflects the dramatic changes that frequently overtook the area. Architecture centered on huge temples, or ziggurats, built on the flat plains, ofwhich the most famous was the legendary Tower of Babel, Whereas Egyptian art was based on the cube, early Sumerian art was cylindrical and retained its roundness to the end. It typically shows worshipers in prayerful poses and with expectant expressions awaiting the arrival of one of the awesome deities from the pantheon of gods and goddesses. Assyrian art is both angular and more skillful. It consists mainly of decorative reliefs for huge palace complexes that were both administrative and religious centers. They record in considerable detail the great military campaigns that made the Assyrians the leading power in the region. But the finest scenes were reserved for the ritual lion hunts, which often show a remarkable sympathy for these animals in their death throes, unlike the treatment of the Assyrians' vanquished enemies. Finally, Persian art adds to this amalgam the animal style characteristic of nomadic peoples, which typically took the form of small bronzes and weavings, usually of a fanciful sort.

Ancient Crete and Mycenae

The complex history of Crete and Mycenae was determined by the interaction of local events and natural disasters, though the role of the volcanic eruption that destroyed Thera (Santorini) has been overstated. Architecture was modest in scale and open to the elements and invaders; palaces functioned primarily as administrative and storage centers. A considerable number of decorated vases, as well as a few small statues, are known, but the most important art form was mural painting, which the Minoans must have adopted from Egypt. Delightfully realistic, these paintings focus on scenes of animal life and nature, including the first pure landscapes in the history of art The deservedly most famous is the ritual bull-jumping scene known as the Tbredor Fresco. The Myceneans took over the Minoan palaces soon after the cataclysmic eruption of 1500 b.c. There is still considerable debate as to how much Mycenaean art was actually produced by Minoans, but the sculpture and architecture, such as the Lion Gate at Mycenae, show the strong influence of the Near East.

Classical Greece and Rome

After an inauspicious start, consisting mostly of small bronze or clay figurines, in the early 8th century b.c. Creek art grew substantially in size and variety. The early history is traced mainly through large vases, which begin with the tightly controlled decorations of the Geometric style but soon give way to a profusion of narrative scenes devoted to myths and legends during the "orientalizing" period (725— 650 b.c), when Near Eastern influences flooded Greece. Vase painting reached its height during the Archaic period, first in the black-figure style practiced by Exekias and Psiax, and then in the red-figure style of Euphronious and Douris. Thereafter, vase painting became subordinate to wall painting, which it sought to imitate; unfortunately, none has survived, though echoes of it no doubt appear in Etruscan murals.

It is sculpture that epitomizes the Greek achievement in art Although female idols of the familiar flat wedge shape were made in the Cyc-lades as early as 2500 b.c, Archaic Greek sculpture is largely an adaptation of Egyptian prototypes but with an essential difference; it was meant to show the living human figure, so that from the start it is filled with inner life, achieved through swelling proportions, large eyes, and the famous "Archaic smile. Moreover, the male figure (called kouros, which means "youth") is always nude. The female figure (kore), on the other hand, remained draped until the classical period, but consequently shows the greatest variety of type and dress.

By the early 6th century b.c. the Greeks had also begun to adorn their temples with sculptural cycles devoted, like vases, to the main myths and legends, through which the Greeks grasped history and human nature. In a sense, sculpture of the classical period represents a fusion of these two strands. The key development was the discovery of contrapposto, or counterpoise, which permitted the figure to stand "at ease" in a comfortably natural way, instead of at rigid attention. Once freed to act, the figure was now also free to reflect, and Greek sculpture came to acquire a philosophical cast even in the midst of the most violent action, as on the pediments from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia of c. 460 b.c. This new naturalism was allied to an intensive study of proportions in search of ideal types. Unfortunately, most freestanding statues are known only through later copies ana imitations, but the so-called Elgin Marbles from the Temple of Athena in Athens (now in the British Museum, London) reflect the highest accomplishments in Greek sculpture. Hellenistic sculpture, in contrast, is full of the violent action and expression seen in the famous Laocoon and the frieze from the Altar of Zeus at Pergamum (now in Berlin).

The Greek contribution to architecture is hardly less important than in sculpture, to which it is related. Moreover, its origins in domestic architecture were equally humble, its attainment unthinkable without the Egyptians. The Archaic temple is lower and more muscular than later classical examples, reflecting the same difference in character found in the sculpture of the two periods. The so-called optical refinements of the Temple of Athena on the Parthenon are less a matter of visual compensation than an expression of the same aesthetic ideal seen in its pedimental sculpture. Hellenistic architecture is likewise as inventive in departing from the norm as sculpture.

The Greeks established colonies in Italy, so that Etruscan art reflects obvious Greek influences. Yet it is utterly different in character. Most of it is found in tombs that reflect changing attitudes toward death. Wall paintings are at first gay but then become filled with terrifying demons of death. The Etruscans were skilled at bronze casting, which they learned from the Greeks, as well as working in terra-cotta. Their sculpture has an impressive monumentality, albeit with somewhat crude proportions. Above all, however, they were superb city planners and builders. The Romans inherited this ability, and it was consequently in architecture that they asserted their genius most emphatically. Although they adopted the formal vocabulary of the Greeks, whom they admired, they imposed it on novel structures, such as the Colosseum in Rome, that have no counterpart in Greece and reflect the fundamentally different needs of Roman civilization with its diverse, far-flung empire. The Romans relied heavily on concrete, which allowed them to experiment with arches and vaulting while building cheaply on an unprecedented scale.

The Roman contribution to painting and sculpture is harder to define, because the boundless admiration for Greece makes it appear derivative. Much of it, in fact, may have been made by Greeks, but if so they are thoroughly romanized. Hence what Roman painting has survived at Pompeii and Herculaneum snows architectural and landscape scenes that have no known counterpart in Greek art; like the narrative scenes, they give the appearance of compilations from disparate sources. Perhaps the most characteristically Roman form of sculpture is reliefs commemorating military campaigns, which present extremely detailed records that are nonetheless carefully selected for their symbolic importance. No less compelling are the highly naturalistic yet subtly idealized portrait heads, the realism of which is pyschological even more than visual.

The Middle Ages

Early Christian art was a response to the sudden need to give public expression to a faith that had existed largely underground as one of many competing sects in the late Roman Empire before becoming the official state religion in the late 4th century. The problem was made especially difficult by the biblical ban on images as idolatrous. Like Rome itself, Christianity snowed a genius for adapting old forms for new ends, such as the good shepherd, which now became a symbol of Christ, and architecture, notably the public basilica and communal bath, which were transformed into churches and baptisteries. The most distinctive form of early Christian art was the mosaics that transformed the new churches, such as San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy, into walls of shimmering light.

Byzantine art managed to survive the iconoclastic controversy (726—843) and remained essentially classical in character. That heritage was all but lost to the western empire during the early Middle Ages, when Germany became the leading political power and cultural center of Europe, despite attempts by Charlemagne and his Otton-ian successors to revive it The commercial and cultural revival throughout Europe during the Romanesque period found its consummate expression in the great pilgrimage churches that lined the route to Santiago da Compostela in Spain, such as St-Sernin in Toulouse, France, of about 1080—1120, the first truly large-scale architecture in more than five centuries. Whereas the Romanesque was marked by wide regional variations, Gothic art originated in the Ile-de-France under Abbot Suger around 1140 but was so persuasive that it soon spread to the rest of the medieval world. The Gothic era is rightly known as the "Age of Cathedrals," such as the cathedral at Chartres, France, which miraculously preserves the stained-glass windows so essential to the spiritual experience of the Gothic. Gothic churches also demanded a far greater amount of sculpture than ever before, which was executed by crews, drawn from throughout Europe, who helped to carry the new style back to their native lands. Italy, in the meantime, renewed its commercial and cultural contacts with the Byzantine world. The "Greek" style, as Byzantine art was called, fused with classical elements left over from Roman times to produce an explosion of monumental painting, epitomized by Giotto's frescoes in the Arena Chapel, in Assisi, Italy, which treat traditional biblical subjects with unprecedented realism and intensity. By 1400 the artistic exchange across the Alps resulted in a homogeneous international Gothic style (sometimes referred to as, simply, International style).

The Renaissance

Italian Renaissance art was born in Florence around 1425. At its core lay humanism, the revival of antique learning and art that was united with Christian faith. The difference between it and earlier classical revivals was more one of spirit, however. We sense it immediately in Donatello's St George, which has a classical harmony of both pose and expression, athough he personifies the Christian soldier. The same admixture can be seen in the churches of Filippo Brunelleschi, who is also credited with the discovery of geometric (or "scientific") perspective as part of his rationalization of space. The same principles, applied to painting, allowed artists such as Masaccio to gain total control over the picture surface, which they treated with systematic illusionism. Toward the middle of the century Venice emerged as an important artistic center under the leadership of Andrea Mantegna and his brother-in-law, Giovanni Bellini, whose paint-ings show an important influence from the North. It is customary to label the art that arose simultaneously in the Netherlands Late Gothic, partly because the difference from the Gothic is less pronounced, partly because humanism (and with it, Italian influences) did not appear until about 1500. It is marked by a conquest of the visible world no less intense, albeit less coherent, than in Italy. It begins with the Merode Altar-piece (c. 1425-1428; Cloisters, New York City) by the Master of Flemalle, who can be identified with Robert Campin, and quickly reaches its height in the work of Jan and Hubert van Eyck. These painters treated every detail with reverence as God's handiwork, and invested it with learned Christian symbolism. The most influential artist, however, was Rogier van der Weyden, whose Descent from the Cross (c. 1435; Prado, Madrid) has a sweeping grandeur and pathos more accessible to the Late Gothic mind. The late 15th century in the North saw the rise of printmaking, a development no less revolutionary than the almost simultaneous invention of the printing press.

The High Renaissance was the result of a handful of artists whose work was instantly recognized as classic in its own right: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, all of whom spent their early careers in Florence, and Giorgione and Titian, who passed their lives in Venice. Whereas the Italian Renaissance sought the authority of the past, these masters created their own norms. Because it was so closely identified with them, the High Renaissance did not outlive these men, most of whom died before 1520, although Michelangelo and Titian were to have long, productive careers. If Leonardo was the great pioneer, Michelangelo was the universal genius and Raphael the masterful synthesizer. The greatest single achievement of the period remains the frescoes Michelangelo painted in the Vatican's Sis-tine Chapel (which were cleaned in 1989—1994 to reveal their full glory); they present an overwhelming vision of humanity s history from the Creation through the Last Judgment. Although he was influenced by Michelangelo, Titian initiated a coloristic tradition that emphasized a spontaneous approach over drawing and design, sparking a debate that continued into modern times.

The Renaissance proper arrived in the North after 1500, brought home by Albrecht Durer and other artists who were decisively influenced by visits to Italy. Equally important was the rise of centers of humanistic learning in Germany and elsewhere. The Renaissance in the North nevertheless had a very different character than in the South. There is nothing Italianate about the Isenheim Altar (c. 1515; Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar, France) by Mathias Griinewald, who never ventured south of the Alps, but it is no less sweeping than Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel decorations, while possessing an expressive intensity that is peculiarly Northern. Even the prints of Durer, a learned humanist who successfully adapted Italian principles to the Northern taste, often share this darkly imaginative quality. The other great artist of the period was Pieter Brueghel the Elder, who was likewise steeped in humanism. His work parodies the foibles of humanity, particularly peasants, but he is remembered today especially for his landscapes, which he was instrumental in launching as an independent genre.

Mannerism and the Baroque

Italian art after 1520 presents a confusing welter of tendencies. The younger generation in Florence and Rome, led by Rosso Fiorentino and Parmigianino, initiated a wildly imaginative tendency called Mannerism that took Michelangelo and Raphael as its point of departure but subverted their ideals, though it was deliberately anticlassical only during its Drief initial phase. Mannerism soon became international as it was dispersed to Fontainebleau and other major centers. It appeared as well in Venice and other north Italian cities, where it was counterbalanced, however, by several varieties of realism, represented by the sensuous scenes of Correggio, the theatrical displays of Veronese, and the direct naturalism of Savoldo.

The baroque in Italy has been closely identified with the Counter-Reformation, which, in fact, had already completed its work. Baroque painting was inaugurated by two artists from northern Italy, Caravaggio and Amábale Carracci, who synthesized "protobaroque" realism with classicism upon their arrival in Rome, albeit with very different results. In contrast to Counter-Reformation painting, which was entirely doctrinal in content, or the mystical scenes of the late Mannerists Tintoretto and El Greco, Caravaggio presented religious visions as completely formed and taking place in the same realm as the viewers. Intended to appeal to a lay audience, who largely rejected it, Caravaggism was absorbed by other tendencies after 1630. Carracci managed to combine Correggio, Michelangelo, and Raphael into an exuberant style that, despite its apparent conservatism, is full of typically baroque theatricality and illusionism, These characteristics literally reached their height in the ceiling decorations of Pietro da Cortona and Bacciccia, which present grandiose visions of miraculous events taking place overhead in the heavens filled with multitudes of figures. The leader of the classical reaction to the apparent excesses presented by these stupen- dous scenes was the Frenchman Nicolas Poussin, Iwho spent almost his entire career in Rome. After passing through a youthful Titianesque phase, he sought his inspiration in Raphael, whose style he endowed with an insistent rationalism. His late maniera magnifica happily unites the best aspects of both into a highly poetic, personal style.

It is typical of the contradictory baroque style that Gianlorenzo Bernini, its greatest sculptor, sided with the classicists against da Cortona, whose closest friend in turn was Alessandro Algardi, the leading classical sculptor. Bernini's Ecstasy of St Teresa (1644—1647; Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome) epitomizes baroque iltusionism. It takes in a stagelike setting complete with observers in loge-type boxes to the side. Algardi s masterpiece, Leo I Defeating Attila the Hun (1643— 1653; St Peter's, Rome), differs from Bernini's work only in its relative degree of restraint Bernini also railed against the liberties taken by his rival in architecture, Francesco Borromini, whose style was more elastic in degree only. The baroque in Flanders was shaped by Peter Paul Rubens, whose commanding presence influenced nearly every artist around him. He returned from a ten-year stav in Italy with a thorough mastery of all the latest tendencies, which he used to update traditional Flemish subjects. Thus his Raising of the Cross (1609-1611; Antwerp Cathedral) is a baroque version of van der Wey-den's Descent His most important assistant became a leading artist in his own right Anthony Van Dyck, who defined aristocratic portraiture. Jacob Jordaens, who succeeded them as Flanders s leading painter, found inspiration in Rubens throughout his career. Rubens s impact extended to landscape and still life, whose course he decisively affected through his collaborations with Frans Snyders and Jan Brueghel the Elder.

Dutch baroque art is marked by a much greater variety precisely because no artist enjoyed such dominance, not even Rembrandt, Holland's greatest painter. The Dutch were unique in that art was purchased almost exclusively by the large class of wealthy burghers rather than the small aristocracy or Protestant church, which prohibited images, though few painters managed to subsist on art alone. Genres that were considered minor elsewhere, such as landscape, still life, portraiture, and everyday scenes, flourished in profusion. Despite their charm, only a relative handful of artists stand out among these "little masters." The most important were the portraitist Frans Hals, the genre painter Jan Vermeer, the land-scapist Jacob van Ruisdael, and the still-life painter Jan de Heem, who also worked in Flanders. Rembrandt towers above them, not only because of his extraordinary abilities as both painter and print-maker but also because of his depth, which reaches a timeless universality shared by few artists.

The baroque was also the "Golden Age" in Spain, despite a slow start. El Greco presence in Toledo had little impact, and the main school was centered in Seville, which absorbed Caravaggism from afar probably by way of Naples, then a Spanish outpost, where Jusepe Ribera had succeeded Caravaggio as the leading painter. Among the first converts was Diego Velazquez, but his work underwent a transformation in style after he was named court painter in Madrid, where his eyes were opened to Titian by Rubens. His later works, notably Las Meninas or The Maids of Honor (1656; Prado), perform miracles in capturing the play of light Because of its sometimes harsh realism, Caravaggism appealed to the ascetic piety of the Spanish, as seen in the paintings of Francisco de Zurbaran. Esteban Murillo updated traditional Spanish religious painting by combining aspects of these two artists with features derived from Van Dyck and other North-era artists. His readily accessible style was imitated by a legion of minor followers who obscured his real achievement.

Rococo, Classicism, and Romanticism

During the reign of Louis XIV, French art pursued a conservative classicism dictated by the French Academy until the turn of the century, when the influence of Rubens gave rise to the rococo. The greatest representative of the new style was Antoine Watteau, whose fetes galantes treat romantic love in the idiom of the Italian commedia delfarte. Francois Boucher, the favorite artist of Madame de Pompadour, and his pupil Jean-Honore Fragonard painted delightfully playful scenes of human and divine love. Fragonard had also studied with Tean-Baptiste Chardin, a painter of humble still lifes and genre scenes that validated bourgeois virtues by discovering a hidden poetry in the commonplace. The rococo in Italy was largely the creation of Venetian artists, such as Sebastiano Ricci and Giambattista Tiepolo, who revived the coloristic tradition of Titian and Veronese, Their skills as decorative painters made them in great demand throughout Europe, including Germany and Austria, which developed a highly ornate form of rococo. In England, William Hogarth created a new form of moralizing pictures. He and Thomas Gainsborough felt rococo influences from abroad, but the latter's main contribution was the rediscovery of Anthony Van Dyck's portraiture, whose example was equally critical to the classically minded Joshua Reynolds.

The lively fantasies of the rococo were swept away by the insistent rationalism of the Enlightenment, which cultivated the sober neoclassicism epitomized by Jacques-Louis David. The reign of Napoleon later helped to give birth to Romanticism, which replaced the emphasis on truth and virtue with the cult of sentiment and the individual. In France the great tradition was upheld by two rivals who represented the twin poles of classicism and Rubenism, Jean-Auguste Ingres and Eugene Delacroix. They nevertheless shared the same subject matter, which emphasized history. Pantheism elevated nature to the most characteristic theme of the Romantics everywhere. Here, too, opposing traditions can be found in the work of Camille Corot, who drew on Claude and Poussin, and Theodore Rousseau, the Barbizon school leader who was influenced early on by Corot but drew his inspiration chiefly from the Dutch. Landscape permitted English artists an unparalleled range of expression, from the intimate scenes of John Constable to the sublime visions of J. M W. Turner. In Cermany and the United States, landscape was closely identified with nationalism, as seen in paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, with their Gothic reminiscences, and Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School.

Realism and Early Modernism

Whereas the Romantics manipulated nature freely for artistic purposes, Gustave Courbet, leader of the "realists," faithfully captured rural life and scenery in massive canvases that are socialist statements in disguise. Edouard Manet chose instead to portray what critic Charles Baudelaire called the "heroism of modern life": the urban existence of the bourgeoisie. Like Edgar Degas, who also disdained the label, Manet was allied with impressionism. Its leaders, Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir, recorded the play of sunlight in scenes of Paris and its environs using a spontaneous approach ideally suited to capturing the passing moment.

By 1884 the impressionist movement had disintegrated and was replaced by an array of tendencies known collectively as postimpressionism, which extended its achievement in new directions. Paul Cezanne wanted "to make something solid of impressionism" by investigating the fundamental geometry of form and its structure across the pictorial surface. Georges Seurat pursued the same end even more systematically by subjecting the visual elements to aesthetic "laws" that he formulated as part of a comprehensive theoretical approach. Paul Gauguin, an early disciple of Cezanne, reacted against the spiritual bankruptcy of industrial society by seeking out the provinces and colonial outposts. He was closely allied to the symbolist painters, among them Odilon Redon, Fernand Khnopff, and Jan Toorop, who rejected the authority of nature in favor of inner vision. His theories influenced Vincent van Gogh, who used color to express his intensely personal vision of a world pulsating with vibrant energy, Nineteenth-century sculpture pursued a largely conventional path because of the long shadow cast by antiquity and the desire to create modera classics, as well as the conservative politics of the state, the most important source of commissions. Its content nevertheless reflects the full range of Romantic subject matter. Auguste Rodin, the one certifiable genius, revolutionized sculpture toward the end of the century by turning his back on the classical tradition in favor of Michel- angelo and by elevating the fragment to the status of a finished work. Architecture and the decorative arts were gripped by a succession of revival styles, often combined in eclectic fashion, which reflected the changing tastes and views of the period. This cycle was decisively broken only in the 1890s by art nouveau, which constituted a wholly original style. Equally important was the advance made by Louis Sullivan, who defined the principle of the skyscraper by using the latest advances in engineering Perhaps the most distinctive contribution of the century to the arts was photography, which reflected both the technological basis of the Industrial Revolution and the essentially democratic character of Western society. However, its status as an art form was resolved only after 1900.

The Early 20th Century

Early-20th-century painting was stylistically a direct outgrowth of post-impressionism, but its content was new. The cubism of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, inspired by Cezanne, provided an abstract vocabulary and syntax that expressed the new time-space relationships defined by the machine age and modern physics. Expressionists, such as Henri Matisse and Ludwig Kirchner, used van Gogh and Gauguin as their point of departure to convey both the beauty and the existential tensions created by this brave new world. And fantasy, as seen in the work of Giorgio de Chirico, explored the inner realm of dreams and the psyche analyzed by Freud and his followers. This heroic phase was shattered by World War I, which left artists in a state of despair about the state of modern civilization that found its outlet in the irrational absurdities of Dada and surrealism on the one hand and the bleak anxiety of Max Beckmann on the other. The idealism associated with abstraction was left to Piet Mondrian and a handful of others, as the founders of modern painting, including Picasso and Matisse, increasingly sought refuge in the classical past The Great Depression and the rise of fascism helped lead to the retrenchment of modernism during the 1990s in favor of realism, especially in the United States, which had experimented only briefly with abstraction, despite the success of the Armory Show in 1913.

Although the cubists incorporated fragments of real objects in their collages, they maintained an allegiance to bronze, so that cubism, much like Fauvism, had little impact on the development of sculpture, despite the important experiments conducted by Picasso and Matisse, instead, it was Constantin Brancusi who gave modern sculpture its independence by using a rigorous form of abstraction to reduce things to their absolute essence. Dada and surrealism contributed novel sculptural forms, most notably the readymades of Marcel Duchamp and Hans Arp's "human concretions." In the 1930s, England, having resisted modernism, became home to emigres from the Continent who helped create the artistic climate for Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. These artists, influencing one another, incorporated nearly the full range of early modern sculpture into styles that represented its culmination.

Twentieth-century architecture begins with Sullivan's protege Frank Lloyd Wright, who was the first to use a spare abstract geometry to define and integrate space. His influence proved greatest in Europe, which adopted the functionalism inherent in his approach. Walter Gropius took the crucial step toward modernism by creating walls of glass shortly before World War I. After the war, Dutch architects under the influence of Mondrian defined the formal vocabulary of what was to become the International style of the 1920s and 1930s under the leadership of Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Baunaus and Le Corbusier, who became its chief spokesperson. There was also a visionary "expressionist' strain exemplified by Max Berg. The "holy grail" of early modem architecture was the skyscraper, but most were in the United States, which preferred art deco and the Gothic Revival as veneers. By 1920 photography had become an art form by gaining its independence from painting. On the one hand it sought a heightened realism akin to surrealism and on the other it espoused a straightforward documentary approach. The essential step was Alfred Stieglitz's concept of the equivalent, in which the image comes to embody a poetic idea.

Postwar to Postmodern

Art since World War II has been dominated by the United States. The war had the effect of displacing the development of Western culture across the Atlantic, where many of the leading European artists and architects sought refuge, some temporarily, others permanently. It also reflects the rise of the United States as the most powerful and culturally vital nation in the world. The abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, which marked the coming of age of American painting, reflected the anxiety brought on by the Cold War and the nuclear age in the years around 1950. It was succeeded a decade later by pop art, which celebrated mass culture, and photo-realism, which dispassionately investigated the world around it. Equally important were minimalism, which reduced art to its aesthetic essence while eliminating all subject matter as distracting and conceptualism, which focused on content but had little interest in aesthetic issues. Both were allied to sculpture, whose heroic scale has given it nearly the status of architecture, with which it is often associated as well. The 1950s through the 1970s marked the heyday of "high modernism," as architects were at last able to translate their dreams of skyscrapers from the drawing board into literally concrete reality. They also had unprecedented freedom to shape the urban environment, sometimes even to create entire cities, reflecting the ideals that characterized modernism throughout the century. This cultural consensus, never uniform in the first place, began to break down altogether in the 1980s with the first "neo" movements in painting. Of these, the most significant was neoexpressionism, which had important representatives in Germany (Anselm Kiefer), Italy (Francesco Clémente), and America (Elizabeth Murray). In retrospect this presented a transition to postmodernism, which was dominated by semiotics and deconstruction. By the 1990s painting was issue-oriented as never before, so that matters of content and meaning relegated the aesthetic object to a minor place. Instead, text was often married to imagery—often derived from photography—in order to address the social, and at times political, problems bedeviling contemporary society. In the process sculpture became nearly vestigial, whereas architecture played perhaps, the most vital role of all indefining the postmodern agenda.

See also:

- Asian Art
- African Art
- Oceanic Art
- Native American Art
- ArtWorks as an Investments