Different Art Movements are explained

2. Classical Art: Classical Art adheres to artistic principles and rules laid down by centuries of
Master Artist Painters and Sculptors all with artistic lineage leading all the way back to the
noble Greeks and Romans (time of Aristotle, Plato, Alexander the Great) and their
interpretation and formal representation of the human form and the environment in which it
exists. From our country’s perspective we can say any art form that is based on ancient
traditional rules/values is classical art.
Followings are some characteristics of classical art:
1. Usually based on religious or mythical figure/story.
2. Idealism (heroic figures, figures look perfect)
3. Bodies are active.
4. Nude.
5. Often emotionless.
6. Little or no perspective. (ancient people have no idea of how to create perspective;
the idea of creating perspective/depth comes around 1300AD)
7. Harmony is an important concept.
8. Order is more emphasized than beauty.
9. The purpose of art is showing the importance of God/Goddess/king.
Classical art: Read
the above characteristics of classical art and compare.
Neoclassical art:
Neoclassical art refers to the art that is produced later but inspired by antiquity. The
words Classical and neoclassical are often used interchangeably. Art work of Leonardo

3. Da Vinci, Michael Angelo (time of Italian renaissance) is considered neo-classical since
they drew inspiration from classical works.
For example Aristotle laid down the three act structure of drama. If someone writes a
piece of literature/drama/script/or anything based on this formula it will be regarded as
classical/neoclassical art. (Remember it is a tricky example, I will clarify later)
Rules like rule of third; golden ratio; three act structures for drama; unity of space, time
and place for theater are some classic example of classical art rules.
Neoclassical art piece
Romanticism:
A movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that marked the reaction in
literature, philosophy, art, religion, and politics from the neoclassicism and formal
orthodoxy of the preceding period. Romanticism tends to see the individual at the center of
all life, and it places the individual, therefore, at the center of art.
Characteristics:
1. Liberalism and individualism.
2. Predominance of imagination over reason and formal rules (classicism) and over
the sense of fact or the actual (realism).

4. 3. Emphasis on beauty over order (neoclassicism)
4. Sensibility; love of nature; sympathetic interest in the past; mysticism;
individualism; unrestrained imagination; enthusiasm for the uncivilized or
"natural"; interest in human rights; sympathy with animal life; sentimental
melancholy; emotional psychology in fiction.
Ophelia by John Evrett Milais (romanticism)

5. Jacques Luis Davis (romanticism)
Difference between neoclassical and romantic art is that one prefers rule, logic and order
(neoclassical) and other one prefers beauty and imagination (romanticism).
Modernism:
Modernism is marked by experimentation, particularly manipulation of form, and by the
realization that knowledge is not absolute. This movement starts around first decade of
20th century. Writings of Darwin (evolution/creation), Marx (communism/capitalism),
Einstein (relativity), Planck (quantum theory), Nietzsche (will of power), and Freud
(Dream interpretation) created identity and ideological crisis; modernism grows as a
response to lack of absolute knowledge about ourselves. Modernism's stress on freedom
of expression, experimentation, radicalism, and Primitivism disregards conventional
expectations.
Few characteristics of modernism:
1. Intentional distortion of shapes
2. Focus on form rather than meaning
3. Breaking down of limitation of space and time
4. Breakdown of social norms and cultural values
5. Dislocation of meaning and sense from its normal context
6. Valorization of the despairing individual in the face of an unmanageable future
7. Disillusionment

6. 8. Rejection of history and the substitution of a mythical past
9. Need to reflect the complexity of modern urban life
10. Importance of the unconscious mind
11. Interest in the primitive and non-western cultures
12. Impossibility of an absolute interpretation of reality
13. Overwhelming technological changes
14. No use of traditional meter, no regular rhyme scheme in poetry.
15. Rejection of rules of harmony and composition in music.
Modernist Painting Sub-branches:
A. Fauvism
Supremacy of color over form
Interest in the primitive and the magical
(Matisse) Fauvism
B. Cubism
Objects are analyzed, broken up and reassembled in an
abstracted/geometric/cube form.
Instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject
from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context.
Pablo Picasso was a cubist.

7. Cubism (Pablo Picasso)
Cubism (Pablo Picasso) Three musicians

8. Cubism (Braque)
C. Abstract painting
Representational art use shape, form, color and line to create a composition that
resemble real world. 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. This departure from accurate representation can be slight, partial,
or complete. Total abstraction bears no trace of any reference to anything recognizable.
Abstract art (Kandinsky)
D. Vorticism

9. Experimental art using angular simplification and abstraction.
Incorporating the idea of motion and change.
Vorticism
Vorticism (Wyndham Lewis)
Modernist literature:
1. Lack of traditional chronological narrative (discontinuous narrative)
2. Break of narrative frames (fragmentation)
3. Moving from one level of narrative to another
4. A number of different narrators (multiple narrative points of view)
5. Self-reflexive about the act of writing and the nature of literature (meta-
narrative)
6. Use of interior monologue technique

10. 7. Use of the stream of consciousness technique
8. Focus on a character's consciousness and subconscious
Realism:
Realism sought to convey a truthful and objective vision of life. This is part of the
reason for making the painting real to the point that they look like photographs. The artist
doesn’t want to make anything more than what it really is. The goal of realism is
depicting things as it is. Realism (or naturalism) in the arts is the attempt to represent
subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible,
exotic and supernatural elements.
Characteristics:
1. Avoidance of stylization
2. The accurate depiction of life forms, perspective, and the details of light and
color.
Realism (Francois Millet)

11. Realism
Comparison between modernism and romanticism:
Modernism Romanticism
Genre of art that makes a self-
conscious break with previous
genres.
A movement in art during the late
18th and early 19th centuries that
celebrated nature rather than
civilization.

12. Change in attitude brought about
by the conflict of WWI.
Belief in the awe and beauty of
nature.
Strong reaction against political,
religious and social views.
Common man and
childhood.
No such thing as absolute
truth.
Imagination
Life is un-ordered. Strong senses, emotion and
feelings.
Impressionism:
Impressionism started way back in the 19th century (most prominent during 1870s and
1880s) in Paris, France. The name of this movement comes from the title of Claude
Monet’s work “Impression, Sunrise”.
Impressionism tries to capture the impression of a fleeting moment (look at a landscape
and paint the impression that it creates at the particular moment of seeing). It is
objective rather than subjective form of art. Impressionists use light and its changing
qualities, vibrant color and lack of detail as their tools.
From ancient time people have tried to imitate reality. When in mid nineteenth century
photography came and captured reality intact artists began to ask what would be the
purpose of painting now. So impressionism outgrew as a sub-branch of realism.
Realism and impressionism both are objective (not subjective). Realism captures reality
and impressionism captures impression of that reality.
Impressionism is mainly a painting movement/also bit literary. Impressionistic literature
characteristically detailed the author's impression (idea, opinion, or feeling about
something) regarding a scene.
Characteristics:
1. Short, thick strokes of paint are used to quickly capture the essence of the
subject, rather than its details.
2. Colours are most vibrant; applied side-by-side with as little mixing as possible.
Synthetic colors are used widely for the very first time.
3. Grays and dark tones are produced by mixing complementary colours. In pure
Impressionism the use of black paint is avoided.
4. Wet paint is placed into wet paint without waiting for successive applications to
dry, producing softer edges and an intermingling of color.

13. 5. The play of natural light is emphasized. Close attention is paid to the reflection
of colors from object to object.
6. Landscape painting is the most common art form.(not studio painting)
Impression, Sunrise (Claudio Monet)
Impressionism

14. Impressionism
Expressionism:
Expressionism is a movement in the arts in which the artist did not depict objective
reality, but rather a subjective expression of their inner experiences. Expressionism
emerged during the late Nineteenth century and moved into the early Twentieth. This
movement was most prominent from 1910 to 1925. Expressionism often uses dream,
symbolism and violent distortion of reality to depict the emotion. It is mainly a poetry
movement, later engulfs painting and other arts.
Difference between impressionism and expressionism is that impressionism depicts what
they saw without involving their own moods and feelings. Expressionism presents the
world from the viewpoint of the artist (subjective), violently distorting it to obtain an
emotional effect and to transmit personal moods and ideas.

15. Expressionism, Scream (Edvard Munch)
Expressionism (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner)

16. Expressionism, Starry night (Van Gogh)
Surrealism:
Started around 1920
Reaction to chaos of WWI (logic, technology, science bring destruction instead
of advancement)
Influence of Freud: Dreams and subconscious (based on the belief in the
superior reality of the dream)
Impossible scale
Reversal of natural laws
Double images
Juxtaposition
Odd, Illogical, Irrational, Exciting, Disturbing
Techniques:
1. Change the normal scale of objects
(Ex: a car the size of a living room or bugs the size of people)
2. Turn the accepted order of things upside down
(Ex: dogs walking people instead of people walking dogs)
3. Mix internal and external space
(Ex: trees growing in a kitchen, seeing the inside and outside of an object
at the same time)
4. Transform one object into another

17. (Ex: a car turning into a fish, an animal turning into a person)
Surrealism, Persistence of Memory (Salvador Dali)
Surrealism, The listening room (Rene Magritte) Impossible scale

18. Surrealism (Rene Magritte) reversal of natural law
Surrealism

19. Surrealism
Dadaism:
1. Started during 1st world war
2. Dada means ‘yes, yes’ in Russian and ‘there, there’ in German and ‘Hobby
Horse’ in French(meaninglessness)
3. Dadaists believed that the 'reason' and 'logic' of bourgeoisie capitalist society had
led people into war.
4. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that
appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos and irrationality.
5. The idea is more important than the work itself.
6. Art can be made of anything (readymade object).
7. Shock, irony, readymade object, nihilism, absurdity are important concept.

20. Dadaism, LHOOQ stands for French she is hot in the ass (Marcel Duchamp)
Dadaism, The fountain (Marcel Duchamp)
Surrealism starts from Dadaism. Both are irrational but Dadaism has special feature of
giving shock to audience challenging common cultural belief/tradition.

21. Post modernism:
1. Post-modernists believes that the majority of the world basis its views on what
is presented to them through the media (Modernists believe that people were
capable of original thought).
2. Post=modernists believe that works of art are open to many different
interpretations (Modernists believed that a work of art bears a universal truth
or meaning).
3. Postmodern culture, is self-referentiality, irony, pastiche, and parody.
4. Hyper reality (there is only surface meaning; there is no longer any original
thing for the sign to represent; the sign is the meaning)
5. Rejection of ‘grand or meta-narratives (like progress of history, economy,
evolution). The truth therefore needs to be ‘deconstructed’ so that we can
challenge dominant ideas that people claim as truth.
Modernism

22. Post-modernism
Futurism:
Futurism (Italian: Futurismo) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy
in the early 20th century. It emphasized speed, technology, youth and violence and objects
such as the car, the aero plane and the industrial city.
For example ‘the man with a movie camera’ and ‘2001: A space odyssey’ are futuristic
art.
Conclusion:
One thing we need to keep in mind that although I have described art movements from
the point of view of painting none of this art movement is truly genre specific. Every
movement has philosophical, political, social, literary and other art genre aspects and
many movements are not necessarily from painting; their origin may be in some other
art form or philosophy/politics; but the basic idea that underlies the original concept is
same for all art form (romanticism in painting, literature, film all carry basic
characteristics of individualism, liberalism, imagination and aestheticism). Another thing is
that every movement has developed in reaction to existing movement trying to create a
new form of art.
So what is the current art movement that we live in? The answer is a difficult one; but

23. experts say we live in ‘Pluralism’ where we blend two or more movements into a single
one. Even ‘selfy’ is regarded as a contemporary art movement. Let me give you an
example to clarify it. We heard about abstract art and impressionism. If we blend these
two we will get abstract impressionism. Below are some examples of contemporary art:
Abstract impressionism
This picture is partially abstract because it represents our real world partially. Like
impressionism there is use of light, reflection, vibrant color etc. Notice there is use of
black which isn’t pure impressionism.
Abstract expressionism

24. Abstract romanticism
Abstract realism

25. Abstract cubism
Abstract surrealism

26. Abstract Dadaism
Abstract surreal or surreal abstract?
This document is prepared for students of one year film direction and screenwriting course of
PATHSHALA (South Asian Media Institute). There can be wrong information; so check your
information from authentic sources if you intend to use it for academic purpose.
Thank you

27. Prepared by Ahsan Aziz
mycobacterium46@yahoo.com