World Art Appreciation: Selected Movements and Artists
Why movements matter
Examiners test whether you can link a work to its movement by describing evidence: handling of space, brushwork, colour and subject.
Core sequence
- Renaissance (15th–16th c.): linear perspective, anatomy, sfumato and chiaroscuro - Masaccio, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael.
- Baroque (17th c.): drama, diagonal composition, tenebrism - Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Rubens, Velázquez.
- Neoclassicism / Romanticism / Realism (18th–19th c.): reason and outline versus emotion and sublime versus ordinary labour (Courbet, Millet).
- Impressionism (from 1874): broken colour, plein-air light, optical mixture - Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Morisot. The name came from Monet's Impression, Sunrise.
- Post-Impressionism: structure or expression beyond observed light - Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat (pointillism).
- Fauvism (1905): arbitrary, unmixed colour - Matisse, Derain.
- Cubism (1907 on): multiple viewpoints, faceted planes, collage - Picasso, Braque.
- Futurism: motion and modern machinery - Boccioni. Expressionism: distortion for feeling - Munch, Kirchner.
- Dada: anti-art, readymades - Duchamp. Surrealism (1924): dream imagery and automatism - Dalí, Magritte, Miró.
- Abstract Expressionism: Pollock, Rothko. Pop Art: Warhol, Lichtenstein, Hamilton.
Worked example
A canvas shows separate dabs of complementary colour, no drawn outline, and a shifting light on water. Reasoning: broken colour plus optical mixture plus outdoor subject = Impressionism. If the same scene were built from faceted planes seen from two angles, it would be Cubism.
Traps
Calling Van Gogh an Impressionist (he is Post-Impressionist); assuming Cubism is non-representational; placing Duchamp's readymades under Surrealism; treating Fauvism as a colour-scheme exercise rather than an expressive revolt.