AP Art History Review Notes

Global Prehistory (30,000-500 BCE)

  • Ritual and symbolic works related to food sources.
  • Manipulation of available materials.
  • Monumental structures aligned with astrological events.
  • Animal images and female figurines associated with shamanism and animism.

Ancient Near East (3500-600 BCE)

  • Civilizations displaying power and authority through art.
  • Religious and political art.
  • Frontal, stiff sculptures; animal + human hybrids.

Egyptian (3500-40 BCE)

  • Focus on the afterlife; Pharaohs considered gods.
  • Consistent style, except during the Amarna Period (slender figures).
  • Sacred temples with ashlar masonry.

Ancient Greece (1000-30 BCE)

  • Emphasis on human form, proportions, and geometry.
  • Idealization of human form and perfection of temples.
  • Contrapposto stance, marble sculptures, folds of drapery, emotion.

Etruscan (1000-27 BCE)

  • Necropolis with tombs and frescoes.
  • Buildings of wood and mud brick, terra cotta sculptures on roofs.

Ancient Rome (30 BCE-400 CE)

  • Showed Prestige, power, and expansion of the EMPIRE through emperors.
  • Political propaganda; appropriation of Greek culture.
  • Engineering advancements: aqueducts, dome, arch, concrete.

Early Christian (100-500 CE)

  • Secret Christian art with hidden symbols to avoid persecution.
  • Jesus depicted as a shepherd.

Byzantine (500-1300 CE)

  • Rome of the East.
  • Emphasis on mosaics.
  • Flat, frontal, floating, and golden figures; dome on pendentives.

Medieval (500-1300)

  • Everything revolved around God/The Church
  • Manuscript illumination
  • Large, heavy churches (Romanesque)
  • High, light, stained-glass window cathedrals (Gothic).

Islamic (1630-1700)

  • Textiles, metalwork, Persian manuscripts, Qur’an folios.
  • Mosque architecture with calligraphy, arabesques, and tesselations; no figural art.

Renaissance (1400-1600)

  • Rebirth of Greek and Roman Classical styles; Humanism.
  • Idealized human form, Classical repose and proportions.
  • Altarpieces, oil paintings, woodcuts.

Baroque (1600-1750)

  • Catholics: awe-inspiring, dramatic religious images.
  • Protestants: Genre scenes, landscapes, still lifes, portraits.
  • Spanish Colonial: Combined European Baroque with Native American and Asian elements.

Rococo (1700-1750)

  • Frivolous, aristocratic art with pastel colors, seashells, foliage.
  • Feminine and decadent themes.

Neoclassical (1750-1800)

  • Inspired by Ancient Rome to promote civic virtue.
  • Era of revolutionary thought.

Romanticism (1800-1850)

  • Poetic, emotional, and fantastical; reaction to Neoclassical constraints.

Realism (1830-1860)

  • Paint only what they see!
  • Lower class people, sex workers, gleaners represented in earth tones.
  • Art with social consciousness; reaction to Romanticism.

Impressionism (1870-1880s)

  • Captured moments in time and effects of light on color in plein air.
  • Modernized, urban Parisian life.

Symbolism (1890-1910)

  • Inner experience of the artist’s life is inspiration
  • Reaction to literal world of Realism

Post-Impressionism (1880-1900)

  • Reaction to the trivial nature of Impressionism.
  • Bold colors, thick brushstrokes, structured forms, emotion, and symbolism.

Modern Art (1900-1960)

  • Questions reality, focuses on process, experiments with materials.
  • Manipulates images and shocks with new things.

--------> Be sure to review the individual artistic styles for the 20th century!

FAUVISM

  • Broad, flat areas of violently contrasting color
  • Appeared to be created by les fauves (wild beasts)

DADA

  • Mocked the capitalist and nationalistic cultural climate of WWI, focusing instead on the irrational, nonsensical, and absurd
  • Dada= “hobby horse” (nonsense word)

DE STIJL

  • De Stijl = Dutch for “the style”
  • White background with black lines to create rectangular spaces
  • Only primary colors and perpendicular lines
  • Completely abstract

EXPRESSIONISM

  • Traditional representation discarded in favor of communicating the emotion or meaning behind the work

SURREALISM

  • Expression through the exploration of the unconscious mind
  • Unsettling, dreamlike settings with juxtaposing and deformed subject matter

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

  • Brash, chaotic brushstrokes and bold pops of color
  • Abstraction of subject matter

CUBISM

  • Reduction of subjects into geometric or ‘cube-like’ shapes to produce a more three-dimensional perspective

CONSTRUCTIVISM

  • Dramatic use of materials
  • Influenced by modern industrial complex that dominated employment in 20th century

HARLEM RENAISSANCE

  • Art produced in Harlem in the 1920s- 1930s by African-Americans
  • Themes of racial pride, civil rights, and the influence of slavery on modern culture

MEXICAN MURALISM

  • Revival of fresco painting with political or social message, often labor and struggle of working class

POP ART

  • Juxtaposed or inconsistent elements from comic books, magazines, and advertisements, placed together to emohasize the banality of popular culture

COLOR FIELD PAINTING

  • Subtle tonal values that are often variations of a monochromatic hue

HAPPENINGS

  • The word “happening” was coined in the 1950s to describe an act of performance art that is initially planned, but involves spontaneity, improvisation, and often audience participation

SITE ART

  • Sometimes called Earth Art, Site Art began in the 1970s and is dependent on its location to render full meaning

Indigenous Americas (1000-1900)

  • MESOAMERICA (Aztec, Maya): pyramidal structures, jadeite, astronomy, calendars
  • NORTH AMERICA (Puebloans, Mississipian, various tribes): earthworks, pottery, oneness with animals
  • ANDES (Chavin, Inka): mountain veneration, burial, human-environment interaction.

Africa (1100-1900)

  • Carving of wood and metal masks used in ceremonies.
  • Statues and performers wearing masks are imbued with spiritual powers greater than the visual representation.

Pacific (700-1980 CE)

  • Themes of the sea, shipbuilding, and navigation.
  • Power and authority; rituals and ceremonies.
  • Art influenced by ecology and social structure of an island + commerce, colonialism, missionary activity.

South and Southeast Asia (500 BCE-1980 CE)

  • Temple architecture devoted to specific gods.
  • Horror vacui in relief carvings.
  • Buddhist: Mound-shaped with large, solid hemisphere.
  • Hindu: Sculpted mountain with a small interior.
  • Sculptures of the Buddha and of Hindu gods like Shiva, Vishnu.

East Asia (500 BCE-1980 CE)

  • Chinese philosophies of Daoism and Confucianism reflected in the arts.
  • Architecture of a grand scale (palaces, temples, tombs, rock-cut caves).
  • Ink painting, scrolls, silk, porcelains, cut jade, lacquered wooden objects.

Global Contemporary (1980-Present)

  • Use of plastics, computer graphics, video projections, sound installations, fiberglass, acrylic, lasers.
  • Public spaces for large installations.
  • Artworks emulate or appropriate elements of the past.