List of art movements
Encyclopedia
This is a list of art movements in alphabetical order. These terms, helpful for curricula
or anthologies
, evolved over time to group artists who are often loosely related. Some of these movements were defined by the members themselves, while other terms emerged decades or centuries after the periods in question. Ordering is approximate, as there is considerable overlap.
Curriculum
See also Syllabus.In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults...
or anthologies
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
, evolved over time to group artists who are often loosely related. Some of these movements were defined by the members themselves, while other terms emerged decades or centuries after the periods in question. Ordering is approximate, as there is considerable overlap.
A
C
- Classical RealismClassical RealismFor Classical Realism in International Relations, see Realism Classical Realism refers to an artistic movement in late 20th century painting that places a high value upon skill and beauty, combining elements of 19th century neoclassicism and realism.-Origins:The term "Classical Realism" first...
- Color FieldColor FieldColor Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering Abstract Expressionists...
- Computer ArtComputer artComputer art is any art in which computers play a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, videogame, web site, algorithm, performance or gallery installation...
- Conceptual artConceptual artConceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
- ConstructivismConstructivism (art)Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...
- CubismCubismCubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
D
- DadaDadaDada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
- Danube schoolDanube schoolThe Danube School or Donau School is the name of a circle of painters of the first third of the 16th century in Bavaria and Austria . Many also were innovative printmakers, usually in etching...
- Dau-al-Set
- De StijlDe StijlDe Stijl , propagating the group's theories. Next to van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian , Vilmos Huszár , and Bart van der Leck , and the architects Gerrit Rietveld , Robert van 't Hoff , and J.J.P. Oud...
(also known as Neoplasticism) - DeconstructivismDeconstructivismDeconstructivism is a development of postmodern architecture that began in the late 1980s. It is characterized by ideas of fragmentation, an interest in manipulating ideas of a structure's surface or skin, non-rectilinear shapes which serve to distort and dislocate some of the elements of...
- Digital ArtDigital artDigital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process...
F
- Fantastic realismVienna School of Fantastic RealismThe Vienna School of Fantastic Realism is a group of artists founded in Vienna in 1946. It includes Ernst Fuchs, Arik Brauer, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter, Anton Lehmden and Fritz Janschka, all students of Professor Albert Paris Gütersloh at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts...
- FauvismFauvismFauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...
- Figurative artFigurative artFigurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork—particularly paintings and sculptures—which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational.-Definition:...
- Figuration LibreFiguration LibreFiguration Libre is a French art movement of the 1980s. It is the French equivalent of Bad Painting and Neo-expressionism in America and Europe, Junge Wilde in Germany and Transvanguardia in Italy. The term was coined by Fluxus artist Ben Vautier.The group was formed in 1981 by Robert Combas, Remi...
- Folk artFolk artFolk art encompasses art produced from an indigenous culture or by peasants or other laboring tradespeople. In contrast to fine art, folk art is primarily utilitarian and decorative rather than purely aesthetic....
- FluxusFluxusFluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
- FuturismFuturism (art)Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...
H
- Harlem RenaissanceHarlem RenaissanceThe Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke...
- Hudson River SchoolHudson River schoolThe Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism...
- Humanistic Aestheticism
- HypermodernismHypermodernism (art)Hypermodernism refers to a cultural, artistic, literary and architectural movement distinguished from Modernism and Postmodernism chiefly by its extreme and antithetical approach...
- HyperrealismHyperrealism (painting)Hyperrealism is a genre of painting and sculpture resembling a high-resolution photograph. Hyperrealism is considered an advancement of Photorealism by the methods used to create the resulting paintings or sculptures...
I
- ImpressionismImpressionismImpressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
- Institutional CritiqueInstitutional CritiqueInstitutional Critique is an art term that describes the systematic inquiry into the workings of art institutions, for instance galleries and museums, and is most associated with the work of artists such as Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser, Fred Wilson and Hans...
- International GothicInternational GothicInternational Gothic is a phase of Gothic art which developed in Burgundy, Bohemia, France and northern Italy in the late 14th century and early 15th century...
- International Typographic StyleInternational Typographic StyleThe International Typographic Style, also known as the Swiss Style, is a graphic design style developed in Switzerland in the 1950s that emphasizes cleanliness, readability and objectivity. Hallmarks of the style are asymmetric layouts, use of a grid, sans-serif typefaces like Akzidenz Grotesk, and...
L
- Les NabisLes NabisLes Nabis were a group of Post-Impressionist avant-garde artists who set the pace for fine arts and graphic arts in France in the 1890s. Initially a group of friends interested in contemporary art and literature, most of them studied at the private art school of Rodolphe Julian in Paris in the...
- Letterism
- Lowbrow (art movement)Lowbrow (art movement)Lowbrow, or lowbrow art, describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s. Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other subcultures. It is also...
- Lyco artPaul HartalPaul Hartal is a Canadian painter and poet, born in Szeged, Hungary. He has created the term "Lyrical Conceptualism" to characterize his style in both painting and poetry, and has created a manifesto to describe his thesis....
- Lyrical AbstractionLyrical AbstractionLyrical Abstraction is either of two related but distinctly separate trends in Post-war Modernist painting, and a third definition is the usage as a descriptive term. It is a descriptive term characterizing a type of abstract painting related to Abstract Expressionism; in use since the 1940s...
M
- Magic RealismMagic realismMagic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...
- MannerismMannerismMannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...
- MassurrealismMassurrealismMassurrealism is a portmanteau word coined in 1992 by American artist James Seehafer, who described a trend among some postmodern artists that mix the aesthetic styles and themes of surrealism and mass media—including pop art.-History:...
- MaximalismMaximalismThe term maximalism is sometimes associated with post-modern novels, such as by David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon, where digression, reference, and elaboration of detail occupy a great fraction of the text....
- Metaphysical painting
- MingeiMingei', the Japanese folk art movement, was developed in the late 1920s and 1930s in Japan. Its founding father was Yanagi Sōetsu .-Origins:In 1916, Yanagi made his first trip to Korea out of a curiosity for Korean crafts...
- MinimalismMinimalismMinimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
- ModernismModernismModernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
- Modular constructivismModular constructivismModular constructivism is a style of sculpture that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s and was associated especially with Erwin Hauer and Norman Carlberg...
N
- Naive artNaïve artNaïve art is a classification of art that is often characterized by a childlike simplicity in its subject matter and technique. While many naïve artists appear, from their works, to have little or no formal art training, this is often not true...
- NeoclassicismNeoclassicismNeoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
- Neo-DadaNeo-DadaNeo-Dada is a label applied primarily to audio and visual art that has similarities in method or intent to earlier Dada artwork. It is the foundation of Fluxus, Pop Art and Nouveau réalisme. Neo-Dada is exemplified by its use of modern materials, popular imagery, and absurdist contrast...
- Neo-expressionismNeo-expressionismNeo-expressionism is a style of modern painting and sculpture that emerged in the late 1970s and dominated the art market until the mid-1980s...
- Neo-figurativeNeo-figurativeNeo-figurative art describes an expressionist revival in modern form of figurative art. The term neo and figurative emerged in the 1960s in Mexico and Spain to represent a new form of figurative art.-Neo-figurative artists:...
- NeoismNeoismNeoism is a parodistic -ism. It refers both to a specific subcultural network of artistic performance and media experimentalists, and more generally to a practical underground philosophy...
- Neo-primitivismNeo-primitivismNeo-primitivism was a Russian art movement which took its name from the book Neo-primitivizm , by Aleksandr Shevchenko. In the book Shevchenko proposes a new style of modern painting which fuses elements of Cézanne, Cubism and Futurism with traditional Russian 'folk art' conventions and motifs,...
- Net art
- New ObjectivityNew ObjectivityThe New Objectivity is a term used to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art, literature, music, and architecture created to adapt to it...
- Northwest School (art)Northwest School (art)The Northwest School was an art movement based in small-town Skagit County, Washington, and was at its peak in the 1930s and 1940s.-The big four:...
P
- PhotorealismPhotorealismPhotorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...
- Pixel ArtPixel artPixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art.- History :The term pixel art was first...
- Plein Air
- PointillismPointillismPointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works...
- Pop artPop artPop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
- Post-impressionismPost-ImpressionismPost-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
- PostmodernismPostmodernismPostmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
- PrecisionismPrecisionismPrecisionism, also known as Cubist Realism, was an artistic movement that emerged in the United States after World War I and was at its height during the inter-War period...
- Pre-Raphaelitism
- PrimitivismPrimitivismPrimitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics...
- PurismPurismPurism was a form of Cubism advocated by the French painter Amédée Ozenfant and the architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret . Purism rejected the decorative trend of cubism and advocated a return to clear, ordered forms that were expressive of the modern machine age as documented in their 1918 book...
R
- RasquacheRasquacheRasquache is a Spanish term, of Nahuatl origin, used by Chicanos, which originally had a negative connotation in Mexico as being an attitude that was lower class or impoverished...
- RealismRealism (arts)Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
- RemodernismRemodernismRemodernism revives aspects of modernism, particularly in its early form, and follows postmodernism, to which it contrasts. Adherents of remodernism advocate it as a forward and radical, not reactionary, impetus....
- RenaissanceRenaissanceThe Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
- RococoRococoRococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...
- RomanesqueRomanesque artRomanesque art refers to the art of Western Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 13th century, or later, depending on region. The preceding period is increasingly known as the Pre-Romanesque...
- RomanticismRomanticismRomanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
S
- SamikshavadSamikshavadSamikshavad is the first indigenous Art movement in modern India, which started in North India in 1974. It has a different identity from the western movements of art. It is neither affected or inspired by the western art....
- Shin hangaShin hangawas an art movement in early 20th-century Japan, during the Taishō and Shōwa periods, that revitalized traditional ukiyo-e art rooted in the Edo and Meiji periods...
- Shock artShock artShock art is contemporary art that incorporates disturbing imagery, sound or scents to create a shocking experience. While the art form's proponents argue that it is "embedded with social commentary" and most critics dismiss it as "cultural pollution", it is an increasingly marketable art,...
- Sōsaku hangaSosaku hangawas an art movement in early 20th-century Japan, during the Taishō and Shōwa periods. It advocated the principles of "self-drawn" , "self-carved" and "self-printed" art, stressing the artist, motivated by a desire for self-expression, as the sole creator...
- Socialist RealismSocialist realismSocialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
- Space ArtSpace artSpace art is a general term for art emerging from knowledge and ideas associated with outer space, both as a source of inspiration and as a means for visualizing and promoting space travel. Whatever the stylistic path, the artist is generally attempting to communicate ideas somehow related to...
- Street ArtStreet artStreet art is any art developed in public spaces — that is, "in the streets" — though the term usually refers to unsanctioned art, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives...
- StuckismStuckismStuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...
- SuprematismSuprematismSuprematism was an art movement focused on fundamental geometric forms which formed in Russia in 1915-1916. It was not until later that suprematism received conventional museum preparations...
- SurrealismSurrealismSurrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
- Symbolism (arts)Symbolism (arts)Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
- SynchromismSynchromismSynchromism was an art movement founded in 1912 by American artists Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell. Their abstract "synchromies", based on a theory of color that analogized it to music, were among the first abstract paintings in American art...
See also
- Art periodsArt periodsArt period n. A phase in the development of the work of an artist, groups of artists or art movement.-Renaissance:Renaissance c. 1300 - c. 1602...
- List of musical movements