Encyclopedia
Painting taken literally is the practice of applying
pigment suspended in a liquid vehicle to a
surface such as
paper, canvas,
wood or a wall. However, when used in an artistic sense it means the use of this activity in combination with
drawing, composition and other aesthetic considerations in order to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner.
Painting is used as a mode of representing, documenting and expressing all the varied intents and subjects that are as numerous as there are practitioners of the craft. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational ,
photographic,
abstract, be loaded with narrative content, symbolism, emotion or be political in nature. A large portion of the history of painting is dominated by spiritual motifs and ideas; sites of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery to
biblical scenes rendered on the interior walls and ceiling of
The Sistine Chapel to depictions of the human body itself as a spiritual subject.
Colour and tone are the essence of painting as
sound and pitch are of
music. Colour is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but elsewhere white may be. Some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including
Goethe,
Kandinsky,
Newton, have written their own
colour theory. Moreover the use of language is only a generalisation for a colour equivalent. The word "
red", for example, can cover a wide range of variations on the pure red of the
visible spectrum of light. There is not a formalised register of different colours in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music, such as C or C# in music, although the
Pantone system is widely used in the commercial
printing and
graphic design industry for this purpose.
Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, for example, collage which began with
Cubism and is not painting in the strict sense. Some modern painters incorporate different materials such as
sand,
cement,
straw or
wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of
Jean Dubuffet or
Anselm Kiefer.
In 1829, the first photograph was produced. From the mid to late 19th century,
photographic processes improved and, as it became more widespread, painting lost much of its historic purpose to provide an accurate record of the observable world. There began a series of art movements into the 20th century where the
Renaissance view of the world was steadily eroded, through
Impressionism,
Post-Impressionism,
Fauvism,
Expressionism,
Cubism and
Dadaism. Eastern and African painting, however, continued a long history of stylization and did not undergo an equivalent transformation at the same time.
Modern and Contemporary Art has moved away from the historic value of craft and documentation in favour of concept; this has led some to say that painting, as a serious art form, is dead, although this has not deterred the majority of artists from continuing to practise it either as whole or part of their work.
History of painting
Pre-history
Also see pre-historic art.
The oldest known
paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet in
France, claimed by some historians to be about 32,000 years old. They are engraved and painted using
red ochre and black pigment and show horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, mammoth or humans often hunting. There are examples of
cave paintings all over the world—in
France,
Spain,
Portugal,
China,
Australia etc. Many theories have been written about these paintings with no objective conclusion. Some sustain that prehistoric men painted animals to "catch" their soul or spirit in order to hunt them more easily, others refer an
animistic vision and homage to surrounding
nature and others the basic need of expression that is innate to human being.
Egypt, Greece and Rome
Ancient Egypt, a civilization that is strongly connected to
architecture and artistic forms, had many mural paintings in his temple and buildings. Often graphical, more symbolic than realistic in bold outline and flat, in which symmetry is a constant characteristic. Egyptian painting has close connection with its written language and painting had an essential role in their manuscripts . In fact painted symbols are amongst the first forms of written language.
To the north of Egypt was the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete. The wall paintings found in palaces such as of the Knosos are similar to that of the Egyptians. Around 1100 B.C., tribes from the north of Greece conquered Greece and the people there passed their artistic knowledge to the Greeks.
Ancient Greece had its great painters like it had great sculptors and architects, unfortunately no example of their work lasted to our days. What remains are written descriptions of their contemporaries or Roman copies. However vase painting can be as a surviving example of what Greek painting was. Some famous Greek painters who are referred in texts are
Apelles, Zeuxis and Parrhasius.
Zeuxis lived in 5-6 BC and was said to be the first to use
sfumato. His paintings are described to be highly realistic so much that
Pliny the Elder wrote that birds tried to eat the grapes of his works.
Apelles is described to be the greatest painter of
Antiquity for its perfect technique in drawing, brilliant colour and modeling.
Roman painting has no special character and has a resemblance of Greek painting and can be taken as a surviving example of what ancient Greece's painting was.
Middle Ages
The rise of Christianity imparted a different spirit and aim to painting styles. Byzantium, or Byzantine art flourished after the fall the of Constantinople in East Roman Empire in 5th century. The main form of painting in Byzantine art is the icon, usually static religious figures in golden backgrounds. Byzantic painting has a particularly hieratic feeling and icons were and still are seen as a reflection of the divine.
Cimabue and Giotto are considered to be the two great medieval masters in painting in western culture. Cimabue, within the byzantine tradition, gave a more realistic and dramatic approach to his art. He was also the master of Giotto that lead this innovations to a higher level and made the foundations to western painting tradition.
An important form of painting in Middle Ages are
illuminated manuscripts. This art was widely used until the invention of
printing press and is now what is called
illustration.
Romanesque and Gothic Styles were done mainly in monasteries in Italy and Northern Europe. There, monks made copies of Bibles and other books and made hand-made decorations with miniature paintings and other designs called illuminations. Walls of Romanesque churches were decorated with mosaics and frescoes and the few remainig murals today show these painters had a simple style of their religious art. The adoption of the Gothic styles and architecture in the north of Europe led the end to frescoes. Churches had more windows and stained glass with many colors become a staple in decoration. One of the most famous of these examples in the Notre Dame. By the 14th century the authority of the Church ended and painters found new patrons in the rich nobility. Illuminated manuscripts took on a new character and slim, fashionably dressed court women were shown in their landscapes. This style soon became known as International style and tempera panel paintings and altarpieces gained importance. The Gothic style never reached Italy.
Renaissance and Mannerism
The
Renaissance is said to be by many the golden age of painting. In Italy artists like
Paolo Uccello,
Piero della Francesca,
Sandro Botticelli,
Leonardo Da Vinci,
Michelangelo Buonarroti,
Raphael and
Titian took painting to a higher level through the use of perspective, the study of
human anatomy and proportion, and through their development of an unprecedented refinement in drawing and painting techniques.
Flemish and German painters of the Renaissance such as
Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach,
Matthias Grünewald,
Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Brueghel represent a different approach from their Italian colleagues, one that is more realistic and less idealized. The adoption of oil painting , made possible a new verisimilitude in depicting reality. Unlike the Italians whose work drew heavily fron the art of ancient Greece and Rome, the northerners retained a stylistic residue of the sculpture and
illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages.
Renaissance painting reflects the revolution of ideas and science that occur in this period, the
Reformation, and the invention of the
printing press. Dürer, considered one of the greatest of printmakers, states that painters are not mere
artisans but
thinkers as well. With the development of
easel painting in the Renaissance, painting gained independence from architecture. Following centuries dominated by religious imagery, secular subject matter returned to Western painting as artists painted the world around them, or the products of their own imaginations. Those who could afford the expense could commission portraits of themselves or their family.
In the sixteenth century, movable pictures came into popular demand, which could be hung easily on walls and moved around at will, rather than paintings being made on permanent structures, such as altars and other solid structures.
The late Renaissance gave rise to a stylized art known as
Mannerism. In place of the balanced compositions and rational approach to perspective that characterized art at the dawn of the sixteenth century, the Mannerists sought instability, artifice, and doubt. The unperturbed faces and gestures of Piero della Francesca and the calm Virgins of Raphael are replaced by the troubled expressions of
Pontormo and the emotional intensity of
El Greco.
Baroque and Rococo
Among the greatest painters of the
Baroque are
Caravaggio,
Rembrandt, Rubens,
Velazquez and
Vermeer. Caravaggio is an heir of the
humanist painting of the Renaissance. His realistic approach to the human figure, painted directly from life and dramatically spotlit against a dark background, shocked his contemporaries and opened a new chapter in the history of painting.
Baroque painting often dramatizes scenes using light effects; this can be seen in works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Le Nain and
La Tour.
Rococo followed as a decadent sub-genre of Baroque, lighter, often frivolous and erotic. The French masters
Watteau,
Boucher and
Fragonard represent the style, as do
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and
Thomas Gainsborough.
19th century: neo-classicism, romanticism, Impressionism
After the decadence of
Rococo there arose in the late 18th century an ascetic neo-classicism, best represented by such artists as
David and his heir Ingres. Ingres' work already contains much of the sensuality, but none of the spontaneity, that was to characterize
Romanticism.
This movement turned its attention toward landscape and nature as well as the human figure and the supremacy of natural order above mankind's will. There is a pantheist philosophy within this conception that opposes
Enlightenment ideals by seeing mankind's destiny in a more tragic or pessimistic light. The idea that human beings are not above the forces of
Nature is in contradiction to Ancient Greek and Renaissance ideals where mankind was above all things and owned his fate. This thinking led romantic artists to depict ruined churches, shipwrecks, massacres and madness.
Romantic painters turned landscape painting into a major genre, considered until then as a minor genre or as a decorative background for figure compositions.
Some of the major painters of this period are
Eugene Delacroix,
J. M. W. Turner,
Caspar David Friedrich and
John Constable.
Francisco de Goya's late work demonstrates the Romantic interest in the irrational, while the work of
Arnold Böcklin evokes mystery.
Camille Corot painted sometimes as a romantic, sometimes as a realist who looks ahead to
Impressionism. A major force in the turn towards realism at mid-century was
Courbet. In the latter third of the century Impressionists like
Monet and
Degas and the slightly younger post-Impressionists like
Vincent Van Gogh,
Paul Gauguin and
Paul Cezanne lead art up to the edge of
modernism.
Modern and Contemporary
The heritage of painters like Van Gogh, Cezanne and Gauguin was essential for the development of modern art.
Picasso made his first cubist paintings based in the idea, created by Cezanne, that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids:
cube,
sphere and
cone. After cubism several movements emerged; Futurism ,
Abstract ,
Suprematism , Constructivism ,
Dadaism and
Surrealism . Modern painting influenced all visual arts, from architecture to design and became an experimental laboratory in which artists stretched the limits of this medium to his extreme.
Van Gogh's painting had great influence in
Expressionism which can be seen in Die Brücke, a group lead by German painter Ernst Kirchner and in
Edvard Munch or
Egon Schiele's work.
Post-second world war painting renewed Abstract art with artists like
Jackson Pollock and Vieira da Silva and as a response to this tendence Pop-Art emerged with names like
Andy Warhol and
Roy Lichtenstein, trying to take popular and mass culture into fine art. Modern art tends to undermine or oppose the traditional painting techniques and subjects, however, in the 20th century important painters continued to practice a
figurative, solid technique painting with contemporary subjects like
Edward Hopper, Balthus,
Francis Bacon or
Lucian Freud. These painters cannot be attached to the movements described above and can be seen as outsiders.
Islamic Countries
The depticion of humans, animals or any another figurative subjects is forbidden within Islam to prevent believers from
idolatry so there is no religiously motivated painting tradition within Muslim culture. Pictorial activity was reduced to
Arabesque, mainly
abstract, with
geometrical configuration or floral and plant-like patterns. Strongly connected to
architecture and
calligraphy, it can be widely seen as used for the painting of
tiles in
mosques or in illuminations around the text of the holy Koran and other books. In fact abstract art is not an invention of modern art but it is present in pre-classical, barbarian and non-western cultures many centuries before it and is essentially a decorative or
applied art. Notable
illustrator M.C. Escher was influenced by this geometrical and pattern based art.
Art Nouveau re-introduced abstract floral patterns into western art.
Note that despite the taboo of figurative visualization, some muslim countries did cultivate a rich tradition in painting, though not in its own right, but as a companion to the written word. Iranian or Persian art, widely known as Persian miniature, concentrates on the illustration of epic or romantic works of literature. Persian illustrators deliberately avoided the use of shading and perspective, though familiar with it in their pre-islamic history, in order to abide by the rule of not creating any life-like illusion of the real world. Their aim was not to depict the world as it is, but to create images of an of an ideal world of timeless beauty and perfect order.
In present days, painting by art students or professional artists in arab and non-arab muslim countries follow the same tendencies of Western culture art.
See also Islamic art.See also Persian miniature.See also Arabesque.Far east
China, Japan and Korea have a strong tradition in painting which is also highly attached to the art of
calligraphy and
printmaking . Far east traditional painting is characterized by water based techniques, less realism, "elegant" and stylized subjects, graphical approach to depiction, the importance of white space and a preference for
landscape as a subject.
Late 19th century artists like the
Impressionists,
Van Gogh,
James Ensor or Whistler admired traditional painters like
Hokusai and
Hiroshige and their work was influenced by it.
See also Chinese painting, Japanese painting, Korean painting.India
History
The earliest Indian paintings were the rock paintings of
prehistoric times, the
petroglyphs as found in places like
Bhimbetka, and some of them are older than 5500 BC. Such works continued and after several millennia, in the
7th century, carved pillars of
Ellora,
Maharashtra state present a fine example of Indian paintings, and the colours, mostly various shades of red and orange, were derived from minerals. Thereafter, frescoes of
Ajanta and Ellora caves appeared. India’s
Buddhist literature is replete with examples of texts which describe that palaces of kings and aristocratic class were embellished with paintings, but they have not survived. But, it is believed that some form of art painting was practiced in that time.
;Madhubani painting
Madhubani painting is a style of Indian painting, practiced in the Mithila region of Bihar state, India. The origins of Madhubani painting are shrouded in antiquity, and a tradition states that this style of painting originated at the time of the Ramayana, when King Janak commissioned artists to do paintings at the time of marriage of his daughter,
Sita, with Sri Rama who is considered to be an incarnation of the
Hindu god lord
Vishnu.
;Rajput painting
Rajput painting, a style of
Indian painting, evolved and flourished, during the
18th century, in the royal courts of Rajputana,
India. Each Rajput kingdom evolved a distinct style, but with certain common features. Rajput paintings depict a number of themes, events of epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, Krishna’s life, beautiful landscapes, and humans. Miniatures were the preferred medium of Rajput painting, but several manuscripts also contain Rajput paintings, and paintings were even done on the walls of palaces, inner chambers of the forts, havelies, particularly, the havelis of Shekhawait.
The colours extracted from certain minerals, plant sources, conch shells, and were even derived by processing precious stones, gold and silver were used. The preparation of desired colours was a lengthy process, sometimes taking weeks. Brushes used were very fine.
;Mughal painting
Mughal painting is a particular style of
Indian painting, generally confined to illustrations on the book and done in miniatures, and which emerged, developed and took shape during the period of the
Mughal Empire 16th -
19th centuries).
;Tanjore painting
Tanjore painting is an important form of classical
South Indian painting native to the town of
Tanjore in
Tamil Nadu. The art form dates back to the early
9th Century, a period dominated by the
Chola rulers, who encouraged
art and
literature. These paintings are known for their elegance, rich colours, and attention to detail. The themes for most of these paintings are
Hindu Gods and Goddesses and scenes from
Hindu mythology. In modern times, these paintings have become a much sought after souvenir during festive occasions in South India.
The process of making a Tanjore painting involves many stages. The first stage involves the making of the preliminary sketch of the image on the base. The base consists of a cloth pasted over a wooden base. Then chalk powder or
zinc oxide is mixed with water-soluble
adhesive and applied on the base. To make the base smoother, a mild abrasive is sometimes used. After the drawing is made, decoration of the jewellery and the apparels in the image is done with semi-precious stones. Laces or threads are also used to decorate the jewellery. On top of this, the gold foils are pasted. Finally,
dyes are used to add colours to the figures in the paintings.
The Madras SchoolDuring British rule in India, the crown found that Madras had some of the most talented and intelectual artistic minds in the world! As the Britishers had also established a huge settlement in and around Madras, Georgetown was chosen to establish an institute that would cater to the artistic expectations of the royals in London. At first tradional artists were employed to produce exquisite varities of furniture, metal work, curios etc. and the masterpieces were sent to the royal palaces of the queen. In a very short period this institute established itself as the first school of art in India! It predates even the famous Madras University. Today this institute can be found in Periamet, Chennai. Now it is named as The Govt; College of Finearts.
Most of the famous Painters, Sculptors and Craftsmen of India either are products of this college or are influenced by this college. The stamp of this college can be found in each and every painting or sculpture that is being produced in India. Indian art history will not be complete without the prominent mention of the Govt; College of Finearts-no matter whoever denies it.
The most prominent artists to come from this school lately are Santhanaraj,Munusamy,Adimoolam,Chandrasekar,Roy choudry,KCS Paniker,Kanniappan,Palaniappan,Adhiveerapandian,Michaelirudayarajand numerous other personalities who are spread all over the world.
Unlike the Bengal School where 'copying' is the norm of teaching, the Madras school flourishes on 'creating' new styles, arguments and trends!
;Bengal school
The
Bengal School of Art was an influential style of art that flourished in India during the
British Raj in the early
20th century. It was associated with Indian
nationalism, but was also promoted and supported by many British arts administrators.
The Bengal school arose as an
avant garde and nationalist movement reacting against the
academic art styles previously promoted in India, both by Indian artists such as
Ravi Varma and in British art schools. Following the widespread influence of Indian spiritual ideas in the
