From Then to Now in Ten Easy Steps Quiz

Answer: Prehistoric

Like artists today, prehistoric man used art for a variety of reasons. He basically made two types of art - portable art and stationary art. Portable art can be picked up and moved, such as Venuses that were small, crude statues of women, presumably connected to the concept of fertility.

The "Venus of Berekhret Ram", believed to be one of the oldest known examples, dates to sometime between 800,000-200,000 years ago. The second type of prehistoric art created was stationary art; it was art that was meant to stay put. Cave paintings, like those done at Chauvet Cave in France, are the best known examples of stationary art and date to approximately 30,000 years ago.

Answer: Renaissance

Renaissance painting and sculpture were characterized by a strife for realistic depictions, particularly with regard to perspective, a technique mostly ignored by medieval art. Subjects included humans in many different poses as well as buildings and landscapes. The movement was mostly driven by Italian artists, of which Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were probably the best known.

Answer: Mannerism

Mannerism was an art style that emerged when artists felt that the main challenges of painting had been solved in Renaissance. It distanced itself from the naturalistic depictions, particularly of people. It employed unnatural (but theoretically possible) poses for human and animal subjects in usually equally artificial surroundings. Tintoretto, El Greco and Rosso Fiorentino were some major artists of this period.

Answer: Baroque

The baroque style is mostly known for its lavish and overly ornate forms and decorations and idealized depictions. It evolved first in religious spaces, particularly churches, but also saw widespread adoption at the noble and royal courts of the time. Baroque scenes tend to emphasize emotions and dramatic moments, as opposed to the more tranquil and balanced settings of earlier periods. Peter Paul Rubens, who introduced Flemish baroque, Caravaggio in Italy and Nicolas Poussin in France were major baroque artists.

Answer: Neoclassicism

In opposition the lavish style of the baroque period, younger artists of the mid-18th century were drawn in by the simplicity of the classical Greek and Roman statues and architecture. While some artists, such as John Flaxman, went all the way back to the line art style found on Greek and Roman pottery, others kept using the techniques discovered in the previous centuries, but applying them to scenes from classical mythology such as seen in Jacques-Louis David's "Oath of the Horatii" (1784) or Angelica Kauffmann's "Venus Induces Helen to Fall in Love with Paris" (1790).

Answer: Realism

Realism artists attempted to depict their subjects "as is", without any embellishment or use of imagination; some used their work as a social commentary, showing the harsh living conditions for some people. Typical works included scenes of ordinary common people going about their everyday lives. Notable paintings from the era include "The Stone Breakers" (1849) by Gustave Courbet, which shows two men braking rocks, and "The Gleaners" (1857) by Jean-François Millet, which shows peasant women gleaning fields for wheat.

Answer: Impressionism

Unlike many of the previous styles, which resemble photographic works in their details, impressionist painting attempts to capture the mood of a scene without going into detail. Claude Monet's landscape paintings in particular evoke a blurred, almost kaleidoscopic, view of their scenes done in broad brush strokes and bright colors, which however still remain easily recognized. Social situations, depicted in vivid, emotional scenes, are also a frequent impressionist subject, such as seen in Pierre-Auguste Renoir's work, for example his 1876 painting "Bal du moulin de la Galette".

Answer: Art Nouveau

The French name for this school means New Art. It was a response to the academic art of the 19th century, which emphasised symbolism and allegory in formal structures. Art Nouveau turned to natural shapes, especially curves seen in plants and flowers.

The movement was seen in many art forms , not just painting. A number of these were brought together in the 1900 Exposition universelle, held in paris. The architecture of the buildings was not completely Art Nouveau, there were also Beaux-Arts elements, but many of the displays were definitely Art Nouveau.

These included jewelry and crystal by Lalique, Tiffany glass lamps and vases, Sèvres porcelain, and a pavilion in which Siegfried Bing displayed six different rooms all featuring variations of the Art Nouveau style of interior decoration. Most European countries had their own name for the movement, and there were regional variations.

In Vienna, a distinct form of Art Nouveau developed, headed by Gustav Klimt, which became known as the Vienna Secession.

Answer: Surrealism

Surrealism was a prominent movement in the 1920s, which tried to produce direct connections to the unconscious mind by using intentionally distorted and illogical images. They were strongly influenced by the work of Freud, and dream analysis. It was not just an art movement, but included literature and music as well.

In fact, art was a latecomer to the movement. The first Surrealist exhibition was held at the Parisian Galerie Pierre in 1925, and included work from such exponents of the form as Paul Klee, Man Ray, André Masson and Joan Miró.

Other exponents included René Magritte, known for "This is not a pipe" - a painting of a pipe with those words (in French) written underneath.

Answer: Minimalism

Minimalism developed in Western art following World War II, and flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in the United States. They did not aim for self-expression or realistic imitation of the world, but instead used geometric figures, and focus on the picture itself as the object of the process. One of the first painters associated with this movement was Frank Stella.

His Black Paintings were compositions of black paint separated by very thin strips of unpainted canvas. He then proceeded to a series of paintings using metallic paint, using a similar technique, but with a range of colours, and non-rectangular canvases.