The history of arts. Brief overview

In the visual arts the European movement called "neoclassicism" began after 1765, as a reaction against both the surviving Baroque and Rococo styles.

Contrasting with the Baroque and the Rococo, Neoclassical paintings are devoid of pastel colours and haziness; instead, they have sharp colours.

Romanticism as an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement originated in 18th century Western Europe, around 1790, during the Industrial Revolution. It was partly a revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms of this period and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature in art and literature. It stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror.

As the Romantic movement waned, the focus shifted away from idealism to a more realistic rendering of nature, social relationships, and the characteristics of the individual, society, and the nation at large. This new realism assumed various forms in the different countries where it took root.

Realism had a profound influence on the literature and figurative arts of Europe. The most systematic and coherent form evolved in France during the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. It reached its peak during the Second Empire (1852-70) and began to wane in the 1870s.

The beginnings of modern painting started in 19th-century France. The paintings of Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, and the Impressionists represent a deepening rejection of the prevailing academic tradition and a quest for a more naturalistic representation of the visual world. From about the 1890s on, different movements and styles arose, such as Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Constructivism, Surrealism, Social Realism, Pop art, Minimal art, and Neo-Expressionism, etc. Despite the enormous variety seen in these movements, most of them are characteristically modern in expressing a spiritual response to the changed conditions of life in the 20th century.

An important trend throughout the 20th century has been the abstract art – i.e., art in which little or no attempt is made to reproduce the appearances or forms of objects. The development of photography and of allied photomechanical techniques of reproduction has had an important influence on the development of modern art, because these mechanical techniques freed manually executed drawing and painting of their crucial role as the only means of accurately depicting the visible world.

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