The Early History of Art | What Defines An Artist's Painting?
Who first started art?
The first known works of art never cease to amaze. Ancestors began to mix different colored clays and powders with water and other compounds and used their hands to create primitive designs to adorn the walls of the caves in which they slept.
The first known works of art never cease to amaze. Ancestors began to mix different colored clays and powders with water and other compounds and used their hands to create primitive designs to adorn the caves' walls in which they slept.
When the first humans began to express themselves through art, a precise time has never really agreed on. Some state that the beginning of pre-historic art – as it is known today – began 40-50,000 years ago. Others, though, believe that the expression of art began as long as 500,000 years ago.
It started with simple graffiti or markings carved into rock structures, but art evolved, and eventually, humans began to paint great scenes such as memorable hunts and even camp gatherings.
Malta's Neolithic temples dated back to 2,600BC and adorned with ornate carvings of patterns into the very rock which makes up the structure. Ancient Egypt was also another place where early art flourished with rock carvings being embellished with paint or dye to create the incredible hieroglyphics – the legacy they left behind, which is still a source of fascination today.
Art also began to take shape through small carvings, which eventually evolved into statuettes and stone charms, bracelets, or pendants. In time, men began decorating earthenware pots, which were used for cooking and storage. Evidence also shows that this developed into its art form of ceramic pottery, which made for no other reason than decoration. China and its dynasties were instrumental in developing pottery art as finely represented by Ming vases and similar items.
There have been drastic shifts in artistic styles over the millennia, but the one thing that has remained constant is humankind's need to create something new, break the mold, and keep a visual record of its progression through history. Art can even be described as one of the many things that make humans what they are.
What Defines An Artist's Painting?
What defines an artist?
We hear so much about painting, but what defines an artist painting as such? Painting is best described as an object that is an aesthetic work created to evoke emotion by applying paint to a two dimensional surface such as canvas.
Back in ancient times, painting existed as an artistic tradition. Artistic impressions have been discovered in caves all over the world. Some of these impressions included primitive languages made up of painted figures; others are simply paintings by the artists of that era.
Over the years, schools that taught only artistic painting developed. These schools not only taught the skill of painting but the history of painting. Today these same Art schools still exist, teaching new students the techniques and history of the masters such as Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh, and Dali, to name just a few. This type of painting brought the artist's work into classical societies. Many different painting styles were developed from the ancient mural painting, including religious, portraiture, landscape, symbolic, and historical, to name just a few.
Art has basic themes and components considered to have aesthetic value and thus classify them as an artistic painting. However, these themes tend to vary greatly depending on the cultural movement at the time. In general, the basic guidelines are still intact. Still, the artistic community feels no one distinction determines a successful painting, but unity plays an essential role in producing an appealing painting to the general public. Without an agreement, repulsion can occur.
If we look at the Renaissance period, art depicted nature and its surrounding beauty. This idea of painting was first established in the writings from the Renaissance period. Even today, as far as painting styles have evolved, some of the Renaissance period theories are still widely used.
In modern times we see more abstract painting than in any other era. Many believe this abstract work is a result of an artist's unhealthy mental state. These chaotic paintings indicate the work of an artist that is emotionally stunted or in turmoil.
Modern art schools teach the artist not to combine all the traditional elements into one painting in the hope of creating a great painting. Rather they teach that the work should be unified in its mood and style and other values incorporated into the artwork. Only then will they be able to evoke an emotional response from the viewer.
The art of the past has become the building block for the art of the future. As theories are learned and rebuilt to meet modern-day thinking, new artistic styles and forms develop. Each artist separates the theories of the past into a useable block to apply to their work. After all, if the artist was to apply all these theories to their painting, it would turn into one big contradiction. So rather, they pull from theories that meet their personality and their personal philosophies about art and incorporate these theories into their modern-day art.
Painting has changed dramatically over the centuries, with the only real similarity remaining being the paint and the surface. Even our belief in what constitutes a good painting has changed over time. Every work of art that combines paint and canvas is technically a painting, but society looks much deeper to find the artist's vision and the emotional response the painting evokes. Only then do we consider such a work as indeed a painting.
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