The 10 Main Artistic Currents: What Are They And What Characteristics Do They Have?
Gombrich said in his great History of Art that there is no such thing as art, but rather artists To a certain extent, this is entirely true, since each creator expresses from their own, unique and non-transferable world. However, it is no less true that artists cannot escape their time. Each artistic expression, therefore, is subject to a specific context and, no matter how much the artist tries to disassociate himself, he remains to a greater or lesser degree subject to it.
Next, we are going to make a practical summary of what are the main artistic currents in the history of art. This article is just a basic outline; Let’s remember that nothing is black or white and that there are an enormous number of nuances. All cultures and all times have expressed art in some way.
It is difficult to summarize the essential characteristics of all of them in such a short article, but we will try to give a general overview that can be practical when it comes to understanding the evolution of art throughout history. As a point, say that We have focused the article on Western art, since it is completely impossible to summarize universal artistic expression in such a small space We hope you find it useful.
Artistic currents (also known as artistic movements) are the set of creations that share a context and a series of aesthetic characteristics, as well as certain ideological objectives. Following this definition, we could also call the art created by the great ancient cultures, such as Egypt, Greece or Mesopotamia, an artistic movement.
However, this is not entirely correct. In the civilizations mentioned above there was no other possibility of creation; It was the genuine expression of culture as a whole, so it is somewhat risky to call it an artistic movement Therefore, we are going to begin our journey from the last centuries of the Middle Ages, when the different cultural movements began to quickly follow each other to culminate in the mosaic of styles that occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries.
1. The Romanesque
Romanesque is perhaps the first fully European style, with very specific global characteristics And, although it is true that it was not a style as homogeneous as other later currents, such as Baroque or Romanticism, it is true that in all latitudes of Europe it shares a series of elements that make it a more or less style. less compact.
The Romanesque appeared around the 11th and 12th centuries in Burgundy; specifically, in the Cluny Abbey. From there it radiated to the rest of Europe, where each territory bathed it with its own characteristics. We cannot make a complete analysis of what the Romanesque is, but we can summarize that, architecturally, it includes Roman construction elements (hence the name given to it in the 19th century) and that its base is the semicircular arch, the barrel vault and the groin vault, among many other construction elements.
The architectural Romanesque is due to the need for unification of the liturgy in Europe and the appearance of the so-called pilgrimage churches, with a very specific structure. In the Romanesque buildings, Sculpture is usually subordinated to architecture, and we find a greater profusion of sculptural decoration in the tympanum and in the archivolts of the doors
On the other hand, Romanesque painting draws on Byzantine icons that came from the East with the Crusades, as well as Mozarabic miniatures. They are hieratic paintings, very unrealistic, whose main objective was to transmit a message, not copy reality. For this reason, in Romanesque pictorial spaces there is no perspective or volume, and earthly elements are mixed with heaven and hell, duly separated by stripes of bright colors.
2. The Gothic
The next fully European style was Gothic. Especially uniform was the so-called International Gothic, which developed in the 14th century and recovered the Byzantine golden backgrounds with ideally stylized figures. In Gothic, the representations begin to become imbued with reality, and the figures tend to become humanized. It is the time of cities, of the bustle of commerce, of great cathedrals. The Gothic Virgins begin to be real mothers, very far from the Theotokos Virgins or Virgins of the throne, hieratic, who did not interact with the Child. On the other hand, the Crucified, both pictorial and sculptural, become naturalized and begin to show pain.
The most characteristic element of the Gothic are, of course, the cathedrals The architectural language of these buildings is very innovative; Despite this, Giorgio Vasari, in the 16th century, described these constructions as “barbaric” (Gothic). Flying buttresses and buttresses proliferate, designed to give stability to an increasingly taller building with more openings (the wonderful Gothic stained glass windows). It is important to remember that, just like the Romanesque, Gothic buildings were completely polychrome, a fact that materializes the great love that the Middle Ages felt for bright chromatic tones.
3. The Renaissance
Although classical culture was not forgotten in the Middle Ages, it is during the Renaissance era when classical precepts are consciously recovered, such as the architectural treatises of the Roman Vitruvius (1st century BC). It is also at this time when the artist is intellectualized, who begins to see himself as something more than a mere craftsman.
The Renaissance begins in Florence at the beginning of the 15th century, with works such as the doors of the Baptistery or the magnificent dome that Brunelleschi designed for the cathedral whose diameter had not been achieved since the construction of the Pantheon in the 1st century AD. Architects seek inspiration in the constructions of antiquity, while painters, lacking models (Pompeii and Herculaneum had not yet been discovered) are inspired by the frescoes that decorate Nero’s Domus Aurea.
However, the most important innovation of the Renaissance was the mathematical perspective, codified by Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) in his treatise De pictura, for which he based himself on the ideas of Brunelleschi. From then on, painting will seek to be an open window to the world, where perspective is achieved through a single vanishing point where all the lines converge.
4. The Baroque
In the last years of the 16th century, the Renaissance was completely exhausted and, in its place, Mannerism appeared, which in painting is characterized by an elongation and stylization of figures. But at the beginning of the following century a new aesthetic trend began to take over counter-reformation Europe: the Baroque.
It can be said that the Baroque is the child of the Counter-Reformation of the Catholic Church, which needed a vehicle of expression for its faith The objective was to preserve the faithful in the Roman Church and prevent them from emigrating to Lutheranism. The baroque language is, therefore, a reflection of this will; In painting, emotion is promoted through the expression of suffering. The bizarre legends of the saints, against which the Protestants preached, are eliminated and the sacred figures are represented with their attributes. Religion is brought down to the people, and biblical characters appear in everyday scenes, whose models are taken directly from reality.
In architecture, it can be said that the Baroque is still very classicist, especially in France. The Palace of Versailles is a great example of this elegant French classicism. On the other hand, and as usually happens in all styles, each territory gives birth to a different Baroque: in the United Provinces, for example, where the Catholic Church no longer exists and where the patrons are the bourgeoisie of the cities, He develops intimate painting, whose main representative is Johannes Vermeer.
5. Rococo
Erroneously treated as an extension of the Baroque, Rococo is a genuine expression of the first half of the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment. From the hand of enlightened philosophers, this style celebrates the sweetness of life, intimacy, home comfort and everything beautiful in everyday life.
This is why Rococo motifs are happy, festive motifs, not at all dramatic: pastoral scenes, bucolic scenes, masquerades, gallant scenes, flirting scenes, etc. In one word: Rococo is the joie de vivre, the joy of living, of the wealthy classes of the Old Regime
6. Neoclassicism
In many ways, Neoclassicism represents a break with Rococo. Also emerging in France, like its predecessor, this aesthetic trend is the perfect expression for the new French Republic: a sober, austere, harmonious and republican style. Neoclassicism is inspired, of course, by classical art. In painting, he has a preference for grandiose and solemn themes, which serve as a model of virtue to the people; A great example of this are the canvases of Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), the great neoclassical painter. On the other hand, neoclassical architecture is practically an imitation of ancient Greek and Roman temples; You only have to look at the Madeleine Church in Paris to realize this.
The Neoclassical style experienced its zenith during the Napoleonic era, since its Roman and martial aesthetics suited the empire that the Great Corsican had created very well After the fall of Napoleon, neoclassical forms became obsolete and, although their aesthetics remained very alive (especially in architecture) throughout the 19th century, in the first decades of the century the first signs of expressions of Romanticism.
7. Romanticism
In the history of art it is common for a style to be born in part as a response to the previous style. And, although nothing is black or white and there are many nuances to this statement, we do find evidence of it in cases such as the birth of Romanticism. While Neoclassicism was an apotheosis of the republican, first, and the Roman empire, later, with all the discipline that this implies, Romanticism was born as a vindication of human subjectivity and, therefore, of the individual. Art will never again be seen, at least exclusively, as something subordinate to power; It is the artist who creates, it is his self that gives birth to artistic expression. The authentic creator is against the Academy and all the narrow rules that strangle art.
All subsequent currents that exalt creative individualism draw on Romanticism: the Pre-Raphaelites, the Symbolists, the Expressionists and, of course, the Surrealists In the case of the latter, they explore to the limit the depths of the human psyche, something that the Romantics already did a hundred years before when they represented terrible, dreamlike worlds, full of ghosts, tombs and images resulting from delirium. On the other hand, the romantic current gives a lot of importance to the homeland and the nation, since it is made up of individuals who decide, and tends to idealize the past of nations and turn it into legend.
Around 1850, Romanticism began to expire. It is the time of positivism, of technological advances, of the Second Industrial Revolution. In the cities, factories grow and the miserable people who live in subhuman conditions multiply. It is then that art begins to forget the ideal worlds preached by the Romantics and becomes interested in social problems and conflicts.
In both the plastic arts and literature, the recurring theme is social denunciation. Starving workers leaving the factories like ghosts; children ragged and dirty; prostitutes, beggars, washerwomen, young people with no future. Realism is committed, then, to social reality
Later, the growing interest in psychology evolved the realist movement towards naturalism, which took objectivity and observation to the limit. The naturalist artist, who in literature is magnificently represented by Émile Zola (1840-1902), sees reality as a research laboratory, where creatures act based on the stimuli of the environment. In this very scientific art there is, therefore, no place for subjectivity, much less for beauty for its own sake.
9. The currents of aestheticism
In response to this art that has become science and that ignores the beauty of the world, a series of currents appear at the end of the 19th century that proclaim art for art’s sake. This is the case of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, decadentism, Parnassianism, symbolism and Art Noveau, better known in Hispanic countries as Modernism.
We cannot talk about all these currents here, but we can point out what they have in common: a forceful aversion to positivism, to technological advance, to factories, to scientific progress as a castrator of beauty Therefore, all these aesthetic trends will want to return to art as the exclusive creator of beauty.
10. The avant-garde
Again, we cannot talk about all the avant-garde movements that proliferated during the last years of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, but we will try, at least, to name them. The official avant-garde appears at the beginning of the 20th century. It is considered that the first of these was Fauvism, a movement that valued color as a means of subjective expression, not as an imitator of reality. After the Fauves, who held their first exhibition in 1905, The avant-garde movements followed one another so quickly that some of them overlapped: expressionism, futurism, cubism, dadaism, surrealism.
The avant-garde is the main characteristic of 20th century art. They are a series of movements that go against established norms, groups of artists with common characteristics that come together to form a kind of pictorial school, usually with a basic ideological manifesto. Currently, we live in a new era of individuality that causes artistic currents to blur and fragment into a thousand pieces, so we can hardly talk about currents, but rather about artists. But perhaps, deep down (and as Gombrich said) it has not always been this way?
