Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of

Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence in the

1870s and 1880s. The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet
work, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which provoked the critic Louis
Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.

Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush
strokes, open composition, emphasis on the accurate depiction of light in its changing
qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter,
the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and
unusual visual angles. The emergence of Impressionism in the visual arts was soon
followed by analogous movements in other media which became known as Impressionist
music and Impressionist literature.

Impressionism also describes art created in this style, but outside of the late 19th century
time period.

Impressionist techniques
• Short, thick strokes of paint are used to quickly capture the essence of the subject,
rather than its details. The paint is often applied impasto.
• Colours are applied side-by-side with as little mixing as possible, creating a
vibrant surface. The optical mixing of colours occurs in the eye of the viewer.
• Grays and dark tones are produced by mixing complementary colours. In pure
Impressionism the use of black paint is avoided.
• Wet paint is placed into wet paint without waiting for successive applications to
dry, producing softer edges and an intermingling of colour.
• Painting in the evening to get effets de soir - the shadowy effects of the light in
the evening or twilight.
• Impressionist paintings do not exploit the transparency of thin paint films (glazes)
which earlier artists built up carefully to produce effects. The surface of an
Impressionist painting is typically opaque.
• The play of natural light is emphasized. Close attention is paid to the reflection of
colours from object to object.
• In paintings made en plein air (outdoors), shadows are boldly painted with the
blue of the sky as it is reflected onto surfaces, giving a sense of freshness and
openness that was not captured in painting previously. (Blue shadows on snow
inspired the technique.)

Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are
applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886,
branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the
late 1880s to ridicule the works of these artists, and is now used without its earlier
mocking connotation.[1]
If red, blue, and green light (the additive primaries) are mixed, the result is something
close to white light (see Prism (optics)). Painting is inherently subtractive, but pointillist
colours often seem brighter than typical mixed subtractive colors. This may be partly
because subtractive mixing of the pigments is avoided, and partly because some of the
white canvas may be showing between the applied dots.

The painting technique used for pointillist color mixing is at the expense of the traditional
brushwork used to delineate texture.

The majority of pointillism is done in oil paints. Anything may be used in its place, but
oils are preferred for their thickness and tendency not to run or bleed.[3]

Expressionism was a cultural movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in

Germany at the start of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world in an
utterly subjective perspective, radically distorting it for emotional effect, to evoke moods
or ideas.[1][2] Expressionist artists sought to express the meaning of "being alive"[3] and
emotional experience rather than physical reality.[3][4]

Expressionism emerged as an 'avant-garde movement' in poetry and painting before the

First World War. It remained popular during the Weimar years,[1] particularly in Berlin.
The movement was embodied in various art forms, including painting, literature, theatre,
dance, film, architecture and music.

The term is sometimes suggestive of emotional angst. In a general sense, painters such as
Matthias Grünewald and El Greco can be called expressionist, though in practice, the
term is applied mainly to 20th century works. The Expressionist stress on the individual
perspective has been characterized as a reaction to positivism and other artistic
movements such as naturalism and impressionism.[5]

Cloisonnism is a style of post-Impressionist painting with bold and flat forms separated
by dark contours. The term was coined by critic Edouard Dujardin on occasion of the
Salon des Indépendants, in March 1888.[1] Artists Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin, Paul
Gauguin, Paul Sérusier, and others started painting in this style in the late 19th century.
The name evokes the technique of cloisonné, where wires (cloisons or "compartments")
are soldered to the body of the piece, filled with powdered glass, and then fired. Many of
the same painters also described their works as Synthetism a closely related movement.

In The Yellow Christ (1889), often cited as a quintessential cloisonnist work, Gauguin
reduced the image to areas of single colors separated by heavy black outlines. In such
works he paid little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle
gradations of color — two of the most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance
painting.

The cloisonnist separation of colors reflects an appreciation for discontinuity that is

characteristic of Modernism.[2]
Naïve art is a classification of art that is often characterized by a childlike simplicity in
its subject matter and technique. While many naïve artists appear, from their works, to
have little or no formal art training, this is often not true. The words "naïve" and
"primitive" are regarded as politically incorrect and are therefore avoided by many.

The term naïve art[2] is often seen as outsider art which is without a formal (or little)
training or degree. While this was true before the twentieth century, there are now
academies for naïve art. Naïve art is now a fully recognized art genre, represented in art
galleries worldwide.

The characteristics of naïve art are an awkward relationship to the formal qualities of
painting. Especially non-respect of the 3 rules of the perspective (such as defined by the
Progressive Painters of the Renaissance) :

1° decrease of the size of objects proportionally at the distance,

2° enfeeblement of colors with the distance,
3° decrease of the precision of details with the distance,

The results are :

1° effects of perspective geometrically erroneous (awkward aspect of the works,

children's drawings look, or Middle Ages' painting look, but the comparison stops
there)
2° strong use of pattern, unrefined color on all the plans of the composition,
without enfeeblement in the background,
3° an equal accuracy brought to details, including those of the background who
should be shaded off.

Simplicity rather than subtlety are all supposed markers of naïve art. It has, however,
become such a popular and recognizable style that many examples could be called
pseudo-naïve.

Whereas naïve art ideally describes the work of an artist who did not receive formal
education in an art school or academy, for example Henri Rousseau or Alfred Wallis,
'pseudo naïve' or 'faux naïve' art describes the work of an artist working in a more
imitative or self-conscious mode and whose work can be seen as more imitative than
original.

"Primitive art" is another term often applied to art by those without formal training, but is
historically more often applied to work from certain cultures that have been judged
socially or technologically "primitive" by Western academia, such as Native American,
subsaharan African or Pacific Island art (see Tribal art). This is distinguished from the
self-conscious, "primitive" inspired movement primitivism. Another term related to (but
not completely synonymous with) naïve art is folk art.
There also exist the terms "naïvism" and "primitivism" which are usually applied to
professional painters working in the style of naïve art (like Paul Gaugin, Mikhail
Larionov, Paul Klee, Sergey Zagraevsky etc.)

Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a short-lived and loose
group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly
qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by
Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910,
the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1904–1908, and had three exhibitions.[1][2]
The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain.

The paintings of the Fauves were characterised by seemingly wild brush work and
strident colours, while their subject matter had a high degree of simplification and
abstraction.[3] Fauvism can be classified as an extreme development of Van Gogh's Post-
Impressionism fused with the pointillism of Seurat[3] and other Neo-Impressionist
painters, in particular Paul Signac.

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and
Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired
related movements in music, literature and architecture. The first branch of cubism,
known as Analytic Cubism, was both radical and influential as a short but highly
significant art movement between 1907 and 1911 in France. In its second phase,
Synthetic Cubism, the movement spread and remained vital until around 1919, when the
Surrealist movement gained popularity.

English art historian Douglas Cooper describes three phases of Cubism in his seminal
book, The Cubist Epoch. According to Cooper there was "Early Cubism", (from 1906 to
1908) when the movement was initially developed in the studios of Picasso and Braque;
the second phase being called "High Cubism", (from 1909 to 1914) during which time
Juan Gris emerged as an important exponent; and finally Cooper referred to "Late
Cubism" (from 1914 to 1921) as the last phase of Cubism as a radical avant-garde
movement.[1]

In cubist artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted
form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from
a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces
intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The
background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow ambiguous
space, one of cubism's distinct characteristics.

Synthetic Cubism was the second main movement within Cubism that was developed by
Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris and others between 1912 and 1919. Synthetic cubism is
characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces, collage elements, papier
collé and a large variety of merged subject matter. It was the beginning of collage
materials being introduced as an important ingredient of fine art work.

Considered the first work of this new style was Pablo Picasso's "Still Life with Chair-
caning" (1911–1912),[8] which includes oil cloth that was printed to look like chair-
caning pasted onto an oval canvas, with text; and rope framing the whole picture. At the
upper left are the letters "JOU", which appear in many cubist paintings and refer to the
newspaper titled Le Journal.[9] Newspaper clippings were a common inclusion, physical
pieces of newspaper, sheet music, and like items were also included in the collages. JOU
may also at the same time be a pun on the French words jeu (game) or jouer (to play).
Picasso and Braque had a friendly competition with each other and including the letters in
their works may have been an extension of their game.

Whereas Analytic Cubism was an analysis of the subjects (pulling them apart into
planes), Synthetic Cubism is more of a pushing of several objects together. Less pure
than Analytic Cubism, Synthetic Cubism has fewer planar shifts (or schematism), and
less shading, creating flatter space.

De Stijl (Dutch pronunciation: [də ˈstɛɪl], English: /də ˈstaɪl/), Dutch for "The Style", also
known as neoplasticism, was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917. In a narrower
sense, the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931 founded in
the Netherlands.

The name De Stijl is supposedly derived from Gottfried Semper's Der Stil in den
technischen und tektonischen Künsten oder Praktische Ästhetik (1861–3), which Curl[2]
suggests was mistakenly believed to advocate materialism and functionalism. In general,
De Stijl proposed ultimate simplicity and abstraction, both in architecture and painting,
by using only straight horizontal and vertical lines and rectangular forms. Furthermore,
their formal vocabulary was limited to the primary colours, red, yellow, and blue, and the
three primary values, black, white, and grey. The works avoided symmetry and attained
aesthetic balance by the use of opposition. This element of the movement embodies the
second meaning of stijl: “a post, jamb or support”; this is best exemplified by the
construction of crossing joints, most commonly seen in carpentry.

Action painting sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in

which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than
being carefully applied.[1] The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of
painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist.

It is essential for the understanding of Action painting to place it in historical context. A

product of the post-World War II artistic resurgence of expressionism in America and
more specifically New York City. Action painting developed in an era where quantum
mechanics and psychoanalysis were beginning to flourish and were changing peoples
perception of the physical and psychological world; and civilization’s understanding of
the world through heightened self-consciousness and awareness.
Action painting took this a step further, using both Jung and Freud’s ideas of the
subconscious as its underlying foundations. The paintings of the Action painters were not
meant to portray objects per se or even specific emotions. Instead they were meant to
touch the observer deep in the subconscious mind, evoking a sense of the primeval and
tapping the collective sense of an archetypal visual language. This was done by the artist
painting "unconsciously," and spontaneously, creating a powerful arena of raw emotion
and action, in the moment. Action painting was clearly influenced by the surrealist
emphasis on automatism which (also) influenced by psychoanalysis claimed a more
direct access to the subconscious mind.