Learning Art History with Fiona

After studying Art History systematically for two years at l’Ecole du Louvre, I find out that it’s really helpful for my creation. As an illustrator, it’s important to know how art has evolved and how to borrow the ideas from the masters. On this page, I would like to summarize the evolution of art history from 1600 to our days in a very short and delightful way, which will help you get to know the most important figures and art movements chronologically. Hope you could enjoy it!

Baroque 1600 – 1725

巴洛克 17世纪

The principal European style in the visual arts in the 17th century and the first half of the 18th; generally considered to be characteristic of the period of Caravaggio, Rubens, Rembrandt, Giordano and Tiepolo in painting, Bernini in sculpture, and Borromini, Fischer von Erlach and Wren in architecture. The Baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant detail, deep colour, grandeur, and surprise to achieve a sense of awe. The style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome, then spread rapidly to France, northern Italy, Spain, and Portugal, then to Austria, southern Germany, and Russia.

Rococo  1730-1780

​洛可可 18世纪早期

Rococo is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, and trompe-l'œil frescoes to create surprise and the illusion of motion and drama. It is often described as the final expression of the Baroque movement.

Néo-classicisme 1750-1860

​新古典主义 18世纪中后期

Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity.  Neo-classicism was the successor to Rococo in the second half of the 18th century and was itself superseded by various historicist styles in the first half of the 19th century. The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, laterally competing with Romanticism. 

Romantisme 1770-1850

浪漫主义 19世纪早期

Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism, idealization of nature, suspicion of science and industrialization, and glorification of the past with a strong preference for the medieval rather than the classical.

Romantisme Noir 1840-1870

黑暗浪漫主义 19世纪中期

Dark Romanticism is a literary sub-genre of Romanticism, reflecting popular fascination with the irrational, the demonic and the grotesque. Often conflated with Gothic fiction, it has shadowed the euphoric Romantic movement ever since its 18th-century beginnings. 

Loneliness and sadness, desire and death, the obsession with horror, and the absurdity of dreams are all themes explored in the artwork. 

Académisme Late 19th Century

​学院派 19世纪后期

Academic art, or academicism or academism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, which was practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and the art that followed these two movements in the attempt to synthesize both of their styles, and which is best reflected by the paintings of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Thomas Couture, and Hans Makart.

Éclectisme 19th-20th Century

折衷主义 19世纪-20世纪

Eclecticism is a 19th and 20th century architectural style in which a single piece of work incorporates a mixture of elements from previous historical styles to create something that is new and original. In architecture and interior design, these elements may include structural features, furniture, decorative motives, distinct historical ornament, traditional cultural motifs or styles from other countries, with the mixture usually chosen based on its suitability to the project and overall aesthetic value.

Réalisme 1848-1900

现实主义 19世纪中后期

Movement in mid- to late 19th-century art, in which an attempt was made to create objective representations of the external world based on the impartial observation of contemporary life. Realism was consciously democratic, including in its subject-matter and audience activities and social classes previously considered unworthy of representation in high art. The most coherent development of Realism was in French painting, where it centred on the work of Gustave Courbet, who used the word réalisme as the title for a manifesto that accompanied an exhibition of his works in 1855. Though its influence extended into the 20th century its later manifestations are usually labelled as Social Realism.

Impressionnisme 1860-1890

印象派 19世纪晚期

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles, and inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.

Avant-Garde 1860-1920

先锋派 19世纪末20世纪初

Avant-garde art can be said to begin in the 1850s with the realism of Gustave Courbet, who was strongly influenced by early socialist ideas. This was followed by the successive movements of modern art, and the term avant-garde is more or less synonymous with modern.Some avant-garde movements such as cubism for example have focused mainly on innovations of form, others such as futurism, De Stijl or surrealism have had strong social programmes.

Fauvisme 1905-1908

野兽派 20世纪初

Movement in French painting from c. 1898 to 1906 characterized by a violence of colours, often applied unmixed from commercially produced tubes of paint in broad flat areas, by a spontaneity and even roughness of execution and by a bold sense of surface design. It was the first of a succession of avant-garde movements in 20th-century art and was influential on near-contemporary and later trends such as Expressionism, Orphism and the development of abstract art.

Cubisme  1907-1921 

立体主义 20世纪初

Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from a single viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context.[1] Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century.[2][3] The term is broadly used in association with a wide variety of art produced in Paris (Montmartre and Montparnasse) or near Paris (Puteaux) during the 1910s and throughout the 1920s.

L’Abstraction 1930s

抽象艺术 20世纪初

Term applied in its strictest sense to forms of 20th-century Western art that reject representation and have no starting- or finishing-point in nature. As distinct from processes of abstraction from nature or from objects (a recurring tendency across many cultures and periods that can be traced as far back as Palaeolithic cave painting), abstract art as a conscious aesthetic based on assumptions of self-sufficiency is a wholly modern phenomenon.

Art Nouveau 1890-1914

新艺术运动 19世纪末至一战前