Chronologizing Modern Art
The below timeline summarizes the major movements, sometimes referred to as "schools" of art, along with key artists over the past century and a half. The more general term "Fine Arts" refers to painting and sculpture. However, in somewhat of a return to eightieth-century practice, many modern movements include additional disciplines like architecture, industrial design, and performing arts.
This chronology is deliberately intended to be less than all-inclusive. Since Proto-Impressionism, there have been more than 150 art movements. Some were brief and evolved to become new schools. Others were mere trends, which either fell by the wayside or diminished to become style descriptions. Nevertheless, every attempt has been made here to include key movements that continue to have a lasting impact and lesser ones too compelling to ignore.
The artists themselves would oftentimes drop association and create or migrate to new schools with philosophies more closely aligned to their own. You will therefore notice many artists repeated within multiple movements.
Finally, for clarification, the term "Modern Art" indicates all art movements since the Industrial Revolution and Impressionism. A few movements have been open-dated as "ongoing." However, this is not an attempt to chronologize contemporary artwork or all schools since the turn of the twenty-first century. That would be subject to a future effort.
Modern Art Timeline
The evolution of Fine Art...
What's this thing called "Fine Art"? The portable camera and the Industrial Revolution changed the art world forever. Today similar seeds are being sewn for yet another departure.
Visit this later update by CLICKING HERE
Continuing the figurative tradition?
Action Heroes as Fine Art Instead of gods and angels, we have caped crusaders. Instead of demons and devils, brutes and antiheroes. Superheroes instead of Olympian gods!
Visit this later update by CLICKING HERE
Digital reproduction and Fine Art!
Art Transfigured: Art has seen many transitions since the invention of the camera. What if the future of art was computerized, high-definition reproductions of museum artwork?
Visit this later update by CLICKING HERE
The below timeline summarizes the major movements, sometimes referred to as "schools" of art, along with key artists over the past century and a half. The more general term "Fine Arts" refers to painting and sculpture. However, in somewhat of a return to eightieth-century practice, many modern movements include additional disciplines like architecture, industrial design, and performing arts.
This chronology is deliberately intended to be less than all-inclusive. Since Proto-Impressionism, there have been more than 150 art movements. Some were brief and evolved to become new schools. Others were mere trends, which either fell by the wayside or diminished to become style descriptions. Nevertheless, every attempt has been made here to include key movements that continue to have a lasting impact and lesser ones too compelling to ignore.
The artists themselves would oftentimes drop association and create or migrate to new schools with philosophies more closely aligned to their own. You will therefore notice many artists repeated within multiple movements.
Finally, for clarification, the term "Modern Art" indicates all art movements since the Industrial Revolution and Impressionism. A few movements have been open-dated as "ongoing." However, this is not an attempt to chronologize contemporary artwork or all schools since the turn of the twenty-first century. That would be subject to a future effort.
Modern Art Timeline
Instructions
Art movements and artist names are hyperlinked for additional click-through information. Mousing over a select item of interest will produce a hyperlink. Upon clicking, a new browser instance will open. It does this so you may return to the main page without losing the item(s) you have selected for review or further study.
Note: Artist links appear in non-partial, alphabetical order. To save space, only last names are visible. Subsequently, a few of the artists listed have repeating surnames. Confirm full names by clicking on artist links to view detailed biographies.
- 1848—1863, Proto-Impressionism (Late Romanticism, French Realism, Rebel Academicians, Barbizon School)
- 1863—1893, Impressionism (First Modern School of Painting)
- 1878—1910, Skagen Painters (Skagensmalerne, Danish Impressionists)
- 1880—1910, Symbolism (Gothic Romanticism, Post Romanticism)
- Painting, Literature, Theatre
- Bakst, Baudelaire, Benois, Bernard, Bussière, Čiurlionis, Fantin-Latour, Gauguin, Kandinsky, Klimt, Nesterov, Redon, Rops, Vasnetsov, Waterhouse, Wilde, Yeats
- 1883—1895, Neo-Impressionism (Pointillism, Divisionism)
- 1884—1915, Newlyn School (Post-Barbizon, En Plein Air)
- 1887—1910, Post-Impressionism (Symbolism, Cloisonnism, Pont-Aven)
- 1890—1897, Les Nabis (Prophets, Symbolists)
- 1890—1920, Art Nouveau (Jugendstil, Glasgow Style)
- Painting, Architecture, Sculpture, Objet d'art (glass, ceramics, jewelry)
- 1896—1918, Ashcan (American Impressionism, The Eight, Armory Movement)
- 1900—1908, Fauvism (Wild Beasts)
- 1905—1925, Expressionism (German, French)
- 1907—1925, Cubism (Orphism, Analytic Cubism, Synthetic Cubism)
- 1909—1914, Futurism (Urban Modernity)
- 1911—1914, Der Blaue Reiter (Blue-Expressionism, Russian/German-Expressionism)
- 1912—1915, Vorticism (British Modernism)
- 1912—1920, Synchromism (Harmonized Color, "With Color")
- 1915—1925, Suprematism (Irrational Spatiality [Russian])
- 1915—1933, Precisionism (Post-Cubist Realism)
- 1917—1937, Constructivism (Productivism [Russian-Romanian])
- 1916—1922, Dada (Dada Anti-Dada, Pre-Surrealism)
- 1917—1931, De Stijl (Neoplastic, Ultimate Style, Geometrics)
- 1918—1922, Return to Order (Neoclassicism, Classical Revivalism)
- 1919—1933, Bauhaus (Staatliches Bauhaus, Vkhutemas)
- 1923—1967, Surrealism (Psychic Automatism, Freudian Realism, Paranoiac-Critical Realism),
- 1942—1966, Abstract Expressionism (Action Art, Post-Surrealism)
- 1948—1964, Color Field (Post-Modernism, Stain Art)
- 1953—1969, Neo-Dada (Pre-Pop)
- 1953—1976, Post-Painterly Abstraction (Painterly Abstractionism)
- 1955—1972, Pop Art
- Painting, Sculpture
- Dowd, Johns, Gill, Hamilton, Hockey, Indiana, Katz, Kogelnik, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Polke, Paolozzi, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, Thiebaud, Warhol, Wesselmann
- 1955—Ongoing, Conceptual Art (Conceptualism)
- 1955—1990, Kinetic Art (Op Art, Kineticism)
- 1957—Ongoing, Performance Art (Body Art)
- 1959—1971, Hard-edge Painting (Abstract Classicism, Post-Precisionism)
- 1961—Ongoing, Photorealism (Hyperrealism, Super realism)
- 1962—1968, Minimalism (Neo-Suprematism)
- 1962—1972, Arte Povera (Poor Art, Impoverished Art)
- 1966—Ongoing, Post-Minimalism (Process Art)
- 1977—1993, Neo-Expressionism (Transavanguardia)
- 1999—Ongoing, Stuckism (Remondernism, Anti-Postmodernism)
Recommended Reading
- Proto-Impressionism: The Seeds of Modern Art
- French Romanticism and the Advance of Avant-garde
- The Rise, Capitulation and Subsequent Malaise of Contemporary Art
- What's this thing called "Fine Art"?
What's this thing called "Fine Art"? The portable camera and the Industrial Revolution changed the art world forever. Today similar seeds are being sewn for yet another departure.
Visit this later update by CLICKING HERE
Action Heroes as Fine Art Instead of gods and angels, we have caped crusaders. Instead of demons and devils, brutes and antiheroes. Superheroes instead of Olympian gods!
Visit this later update by CLICKING HERE
Art Transfigured: Art has seen many transitions since the invention of the camera. What if the future of art was computerized, high-definition reproductions of museum artwork?
Visit this later update by CLICKING HERE
