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Painting

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Art

   The Mona Lisa is one of the most recognizable artistic paintings in the
   Western world.
   Enlarge
   The Mona Lisa is one of the most recognizable artistic paintings in the
   Western world.

   Painting taken literally is the practice of applying colour to a
   surface (support) such as paper, canvas, wood, glass, or other.
   However, when used in an artistic sense, the term "painting" means the
   use of this activity in combination with drawing, composition and other
   aesthetic considerations in order to manifest the expressive and
   conceptual intention of the practitioner.

   Painting is used as a mode of representing, documenting and expressing
   all the varied intents and subjects that are as numerous as there are
   practitioners of the craft. Paintings can be naturalistic and
   representational (as in a still life or landscape painting),
   photographic, abstract, be loaded with narrative content, symbolism,
   emotion or be political in nature. A large portion of the history of
   painting is dominated by spiritual motifs and ideas; sites of this kind
   of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on
   pottery to biblical scenes rendered on the interior walls and ceiling
   of The Sistine Chapel to depictions of the human body itself as a
   spiritual subject.

   Colour and tone are the essence of painting as sound and pitch are of
   music. Colour is highly subjective, but has observable psychological
   effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black
   is associated with mourning in the West, but elsewhere white may be.
   Some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe,
   Kandinsky, Newton, have written their own colour theory. Moreover the
   use of language is only a generalisation for a colour equivalent. The
   word " red", for example, can cover a wide range of variations on the
   pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a formalised
   register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on
   different notes in music, such as C or C# in music, although the
   Pantone system is widely used in the commercial printing and graphic
   design industry for this purpose.

   Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to
   include, for example, collage which began with Cubism and is not
   painting in the strict sense. Some modern painters incorporate
   different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their
   texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet or Anselm
   Kiefer. (There is a growing comunity of artists who use computers to
   literally paint colour onto a digital canvas using such programs as
   Photoshop, Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto
   traditional canvas if required.)

   In 1829, the first photograph was produced. From the mid to late 19th
   century, photographic processes improved and, as it became more
   widespread, painting lost much of its historic purpose to provide an
   accurate record of the observable world. There began a series of art
   movements into the 20th century where the Renaissance view of the world
   was steadily eroded, through Impressionism, Post-Impressionism,
   Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism and Dadaism. Eastern and African
   painting, however, continued a long history of stylization and did not
   undergo an equivalent transformation at the same time.

   Modern and Contemporary Art has moved away from the historic value of
   craft and documentation in favour of concept; this has led some to say
   that painting, as a serious art form, is dead, although this has not
   deterred the majority of artists from continuing to practise it either
   as whole or part of their work.
   Creation of The Birds by Remedios Varo
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   Creation of The Birds by Remedios Varo

History of painting

Pre-history

   Cave Painting

                Lascaux

   The oldest known paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet in France, claimed
   by some historians to be about 32,000 years old. They are engraved and
   painted using red ochre and black pigment and show horses, rhinoceros,
   lions, buffalo, mammoth or humans often hunting. There are examples of
   cave paintings all over the world—in France, Spain, Portugal, China,
   Australia etc. Many theories have been written about these paintings
   with no objective conclusion. Some sustain that prehistoric men painted
   animals to "catch" their soul or spirit in order to hunt them more
   easily, others refer an animistic vision and homage to surrounding
   nature and others the basic need of expression that is innate to human
   being.

Egypt, Greece and Rome

   Ancient Egypt, a civilization that is strongly connected to
   architecture and artistic forms, had many mural paintings in his temple
   and buildings. Often graphical, more symbolic than realistic in bold
   outline and flat, in which symmetry is a constant characteristic.
   Egyptian painting has close connection with its written language (see
   pictography) and painting had an essential role in their manuscripts (
   papyrus). In fact painted symbols are amongst the first forms of
   written language.

   To the north of Egypt was the Minoan civilization on the island of
   Crete. The wall paintings found in palaces such as of the Knosos are
   similar to that of the Egyptians. Around 1100 B.C., tribes from the
   north of Greece conquered Greece and the people there passed their
   artistic knowledge to the Greeks.

   Ancient Greece had its great painters like it had great sculptors and
   architects, unfortunately no example of their work lasted to our days.
   What remains are written descriptions of their contemporaries or Roman
   copies. However vase painting can be as a surviving example of what
   Greek painting was. Some famous Greek painters who are referred in
   texts are Apelles, Zeuxis and Parrhasius. Zeuxis lived in 5-6 BC and
   was said to be the first to use sfumato. His paintings are described to
   be highly realistic so much that Pliny the Elder wrote that birds tried
   to eat the grapes of his works. Apelles is described to be the greatest
   painter of Antiquity for its perfect technique in drawing, brilliant
   colour and modeling.

   Roman painting was influenced by Greek painting and can in part be
   taken as a descendant of ancient Greek painting. However, Roman
   painting does have important unique characteristics. Much of the
   surviving Roman painting comes down as wall paintings from the area
   known as Campania, in the Naples area. Such painting can be grouped
   into 4 main "styles" or periods and may contain the first examples of
   trompe-l'oeil, psuedo-perspective, and pure landscape.

Middle Ages

   The rise of Christianity imparted a different spirit and aim to
   painting styles. Byzantium, or Byzantine art flourished after the fall
   of Constantinople in the Eastern Roman Empire in the 5th century AD.
   The main form of painting in Byzantine art is centered around the icon,
   usually of religious significance, depicted as a static figure on a
   golden background. Byzantic painting has a particularly hieratic
   feeling and icons were and still are seen as a reflection of the
   divine. Cimabue and Giotto are considered to be the two great medieval
   masters of painting in western culture. Cimabue, within the byzantine
   tradition, used a more realistic and dramatic approach to his art. His
   pupil, Giotto, took these innovations to a higher level which in turn
   set the foundations for the western painting tradition. An important
   form of painting in the Middle Ages is the illuminated manuscript. This
   type of art, now known as illustration, was widely used until the
   invention of the printing press. Romanesque and Gothic Styles were
   largely confined to monasteries in Italy and Northern Europe. There,
   monks made copies of Bibles and other books as well as hand-made
   decorations with miniature paintings and other designs called
   illuminations. Walls of Romanesque churches were decorated with mosaics
   and frescoes and the few remainig murals today show that these painters
   had a simple style to their religious art. The adoption of Gothic style
   painting and architecture in Northern Europe led to the end of the
   fresco. Churches were built with more and more windows and the use of
   colorful stained glass become a staple in decoration. One of the most
   famous examples of this is found in the church of Notre Dame. By the
   14th century the authority of the Church had lessened significantly and
   painters found new patrons in the rich nobility. Illuminated
   manuscripts took on a new character and slim, fashionably dressed court
   women were shown in their landscapes. This style soon became known as
   International style and tempera panel paintings and altarpieces gained
   importance. The Gothic style never reached Italy.

Renaissance and Mannerism

   The Renaissance is said to be by many the golden age of painting. In
   Italy artists like Paolo Uccello, Piero della Francesca, Sandro
   Botticelli, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raphael and
   Titian took painting to a higher level through the use of perspective,
   the study of human anatomy and proportion, and through their
   development of an unprecedented refinement in drawing and painting
   techniques.

   Flemish, Dutch and German painters of the Renaissance such as Albrecht
   Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Matthias Grünewald, Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter
   Brueghel represent a different approach from their Italian colleagues,
   one that is more realistic and less idealized. The adoption of oil
   painting (whose invention was traditionally, but erroneously, credited
   to Jan Van Eyck), made possible a new verisimilitude in depicting
   reality. Unlike the Italians whose work drew heavily from the art of
   ancient Greece and Rome, the northerners retained a stylistic residue
   of the sculpture and illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages.

   Renaissance painting reflects the revolution of ideas and science
   (astronomy, geography) that occur in this period, the Reformation, and
   the invention of the printing press. Dürer, considered one of the
   greatest of printmakers, states that painters are not mere artisans but
   thinkers as well. With the development of easel painting in the
   Renaissance, painting gained independence from architecture. Following
   centuries dominated by religious imagery, secular subject matter
   returned to Western painting as artists painted the world around them,
   or the products of their own imaginations. Those who could afford the
   expense could commission portraits of themselves or their family.

   In the sixteenth century, movable pictures came into popular demand,
   which could be hung easily on walls and moved around at will, rather
   than paintings being made on permanent structures, such as altars and
   other solid structures.

   The late Renaissance gave rise to a stylized art known as Mannerism. In
   place of the balanced compositions and rational approach to perspective
   that characterized art at the dawn of the sixteenth century, the
   Mannerists sought instability, artifice, and doubt. The unperturbed
   faces and gestures of Piero della Francesca and the calm Virgins of
   Raphael are replaced by the troubled expressions of Pontormo and the
   emotional intensity of El Greco.

Baroque and Rococo

   Among the greatest painters of the Baroque are Caravaggio, Rembrandt,
   Rubens, Velazquez and Vermeer. Caravaggio is an heir of the humanist
   painting of the Renaissance. His realistic approach to the human
   figure, painted directly from life and dramatically spotlit against a
   dark background, shocked his contemporaries and opened a new chapter in
   the history of painting. Baroque painting often dramatizes scenes using
   light effects; this can be seen in works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Le Nain
   and La Tour.

   Rococo followed as a decadent sub-genre of Baroque, lighter, often
   frivolous and erotic. The French masters Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard
   represent the style, as do Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Thomas
   Gainsborough.

19th century: neo-classicism, romanticism, Impressionism

   After the decadence of Rococo there arose in the late 18th century an
   ascetic neo-classicism, best represented by such artists as David and
   his heir Ingres. Ingres' work already contains much of the sensuality,
   but none of the spontaneity, that was to characterize Romanticism. This
   movement turned its attention toward landscape and nature as well as
   the human figure and the supremacy of natural order above mankind's
   will. There is a pantheist philosophy (see Spinoza and Hegel) within
   this conception that opposes Enlightenment ideals by seeing mankind's
   destiny in a more tragic or pessimistic light. The idea that human
   beings are not above the forces of Nature is in contradiction to
   Ancient Greek and Renaissance ideals where mankind was above all things
   and owned his fate. This thinking led romantic artists to depict ruined
   churches, shipwrecks, massacres and madness.

   Romantic painters turned landscape painting into a major genre,
   considered until then as a minor genre or as a decorative background
   for figure compositions. Some of the major painters of this period are
   Eugene Delacroix, J. M. W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich and John
   Constable. Francisco de Goya's late work demonstrates the Romantic
   interest in the irrational, while the work of Arnold Böcklin evokes
   mystery.

   Camille Corot painted sometimes as a romantic, sometimes as a realist
   who looks ahead to Impressionism. A major force in the turn towards
   realism at mid-century was Courbet. In the latter third of the century
   Impressionists like Monet and Degas and the slightly younger
   post-Impressionists like Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Paul
   Cezanne lead art up to the edge of modernism.

Modern and Contemporary

   The heritage of painters like Van Gogh, Cezanne and Gauguin was
   essential for the development of modern art. Picasso made his first
   cubist paintings based in the idea, created by Cezanne, that all
   depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cube, sphere and
   cone. After cubism several movements emerged; Futurism ( Balla),
   Abstract ( Kandinsky, Der Blaue Reiter, Mondrian), Suprematism (
   Malevich), Constructivism ( Tatlin), Dadaism ( Duchamp, Arp) and
   Surrealism (Dali, Ernst). Modern painting influenced all visual arts,
   from architecture to design and became an experimental laboratory in
   which artists stretched the limits of this medium to his extreme. Van
   Gogh's painting had great influence in Expressionism which can be seen
   in Die Brücke, a group lead by German painter Ernst Kirchner and in
   Edvard Munch or Egon Schiele's work.

   Post-second world war painting renewed Abstract art with artists like
   Jackson Pollock and Vieira da Silva and as a response to this tendence
   Pop-Art emerged with names like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein,
   trying to take popular and mass culture into fine art.

   During the 1960's and 1970's, there was a reaction against painting.
   Critics began to veiw it as infected by consumerism and
   commodification, and as an artistic hegemony. Artists like Ad Reinhardt
   declared the 'death of painting'. New movements gained prominence; arte
   povera, performance art, body art, fluxus, the situationists and most
   importantly, conceptual art. This trend to distance art from painting
   occurred throughout the 1970's. In the late 1970's and early 1980's,
   there was a return to painting that occurred almost simultaneously in
   Canada,Italy, Germany, United States and Britain. These movements were
   called Transpressionism, Transavantguardia, Neue Wilde,
   Neo-expressionism, and the School of London respectively. These
   painting were characterized by large formats, free expressive mark
   making, figuration, myth and imagination. They were a reaction against
   not only conceptual art, but what was veiwed as the sterile abstraction
   of high modernism before it. Perhaps this new wave of paintings could
   be encapsulated by Guity Novin's statement that 'Artificiality is a
   deathtrap. Art is birth.' All work in this genre (with the exception of
   Transpressionism) came to be labeled neo-expressionism. Critical
   reaction was divided. Some critics regarded it as driven by profit
   motivations by large commercial galleries. Today this genre holds a
   respected position alongside installation art, the major vehicle for
   academics and the artistic vanguard.

   Contemporary, or post-modern painting is an open field no longer
   divided by the objective vs non-objective dichotomy. Artists can
   achieve critical success whether their images are representational or
   abstract. What has currency is content, exploring the boundaries of the
   medium, and a refusal to recapitulate the works of the past as an end
   goal.

Islam

   The depiction of humans, animals or any another figurative subjects is
   forbidden within Islam to prevent believers from idolatry so there is
   no religiously motivated painting (or sculpture) tradition within
   Muslim culture. Pictorial activity was reduced to Arabesque, mainly
   abstract, with geometrical configuration or floral and plant-like
   patterns. Strongly connected to architecture and calligraphy, it can be
   widely seen as used for the painting of tiles in mosques or in
   illuminations around the text of the holy Koran and other books. In
   fact abstract art is not an invention of modern art but it is present
   in pre-classical, barbarian and non-western cultures many centuries
   before it and is essentially a decorative or applied art. Notable
   illustrator M.C. Escher was influenced by this geometrical and pattern
   based art. Art Nouveau ( Aubrey Beardsley and the architect Antonio
   Gaudi) re-introduced abstract floral patterns into western art.

   Note that despite the taboo of figurative visualization, some muslim
   countries did cultivate a rich tradition in painting, though not in its
   own right, but as a companion to the written word. Iranian or Persian
   art, widely known as Persian miniature, concentrates on the
   illustration of epic or romantic works of literature. Persian
   illustrators deliberately avoided the use of shading and perspective,
   though familiar with it in their pre-islamic history, in order to abide
   by the rule of not creating any life-like illusion of the real world.
   Their aim was not to depict the world as it is, but to create images of
   an ideal world of timeless beauty and perfect order.

   In present days, painting by art students or professional artists in
   arab and non-arab muslim countries follow the same tendencies of
   Western culture art.

Iran

   Oriental historian Basil Gray believes "Iran has offered a particularly
   unique [sic] art to the world which is excellent in its kind".

   Caves in Iran's Lorestan province exhibit painted imagery of animals
   and hunting scenes. Some such as those in Fars Province and Sialk are
   at least 5,000 years old.

   Painting in Iran is thought to have reached a climax during the
   Tamerlane era when outstanding masters such as Kamaleddin Behzad gave
   birth to a new style of painting.

   Paintings of the Qajar period, are a combination of European influences
   and Safavid miniature schools of painting such as those introduced by
   Reza Abbasi. Masters such as Kamal-ol-molk, further pushed forward the
   European influence in Iran. It was during the Qajar era when "Coffee
   House painting" emerged. Subjects of this style were often religious in
   nature depicting scenes from Shia epics and the like.

Far east

   China, Japan and Korea have a strong tradition in painting which is
   also highly attached to the art of calligraphy and printmaking (so much
   that it is commonly seen as painting). Far east traditional painting is
   characterized by water based techniques, less realism, "elegant" and
   stylized subjects, graphical approach to depiction, the importance of
   white space (or negative space) and a preference for landscape (instead
   of human figure) as a subject.

   Late 19th century artists like the Impressionists, Van Gogh, James
   Ensor or Whistler admired traditional painters like Hokusai and
   Hiroshige and their work was influenced by it.
   Fresco from Ajanta, c 200 BCE - 600 CE
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   Fresco from Ajanta, c 200 BCE - 600 CE

India

   Indian paintings historically revolved around the religious deities and
   kings. Indian art is a collective term for several different schools of
   art which existed the Indian sub-continent. The paintings varied from
   large frescoes of Ellora to the intricate Mughal miniature paintings to
   the metal embellished works from the Tanjore school. The paintings from
   the Gandhahar-Taxila are influenced by the Persian (Iran) works in the
   west. The eastern style of painting was mostly developed around the
   Nalanda school of art. The works are mostly inspired by various scenes
   from Indian mythology.

History

   The earliest Indian paintings were the rock paintings of prehistoric
   times, the petroglyphs as found in places like Bhimbetka, and some of
   them are older than 5500 BC. Such works continued and after several
   millennia, in the 7th century, carved pillars of Ellora, Maharashtra
   state present a fine example of Indian paintings, and the colors,
   mostly various shades of red and orange, were derived from minerals.
   Thereafter, frescoes of Ajanta and Ellora caves appeared. India’s
   Buddhist literature is replete with examples of texts which describe
   that palaces of kings and aristocratic class were embellished with
   paintings, but they have not survived. But, it is believed that some
   form of art painting was practiced in that time.

   Madhubani painting

   Madhubani painting is a style of Indian painting, practiced in the
   Mithila region of Bihar state, India. The origins of Madhubani painting
   are shrouded in antiquity, and a tradition states that this style of
   painting originated at the time of the Ramayana, when King Janak
   commissioned artists to do paintings at the time of marriage of his
   daughter, Sita, with Sri Rama who is considered to be an incarnation of
   the Hindu god lord Vishnu.
   an 18th century Rajput painting.
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   an 18th century Rajput painting.

   Rajput painting

   Rajput painting, a style of Indian painting, evolved and flourished,
   during the 18th century, in the royal courts of Rajputana, India. Each
   Rajput kingdom evolved a distinct style, but with certain common
   features. Rajput paintings depict a number of themes, events of epics
   like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, Krishna’s life, beautiful
   landscapes, and humans. Miniatures were the preferred medium of Rajput
   painting, but several manuscripts also contain Rajput paintings, and
   paintings were even done on the walls of palaces, inner chambers of the
   forts, havelies, particularly, the havelis of Shekhawait.

   The colors extracted from certain minerals, plant sources, conch
   shells, and were even derived by processing precious stones, gold and
   silver were used. The preparation of desired colors was a lengthy
   process, sometimes taking weeks. Brushes used were very fine.
   a 17th century Mughal painting.
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   a 17th century Mughal painting.

   Mughal painting

   Mughal painting is a particular style of Indian painting, generally
   confined to illustrations on the book and done in miniatures, and which
   emerged, developed and took shape during the period of the Mughal
   Empire 16th -19th centuries).

   Tanjore painting

   Tanjore painting is an important form of classical South Indian
   painting native to the town of Tanjore in Tamil Nadu. The art form
   dates back to the early 9th Century, a period dominated by the Chola
   rulers, who encouraged art and literature. These paintings are known
   for their elegance, rich colors, and attention to detail. The themes
   for most of these paintings are Hindu Gods and Goddesses and scenes
   from Hindu mythology. In modern times, these paintings have become a
   much sought after souvenir during festive occasions in South India.

   The process of making a Tanjore painting involves many stages. The
   first stage involves the making of the preliminary sketch of the image
   on the base. The base consists of a cloth pasted over a wooden base.
   Then chalk powder or zinc oxide is mixed with water-soluble adhesive
   and applied on the base. To make the base smoother, a mild abrasive is
   sometimes used. After the drawing is made, decoration of the jewellery
   and the apparels in the image is done with semi-precious stones. Laces
   or threads are also used to decorate the jewellery. On top of this, the
   gold foils are pasted. Finally, dyes are used to add colors to the
   figures in the paintings.

   The Madras School

   During British rule in India, the crown found that Madras had some of
   the most talented and intelectual artistic minds in the world! As the
   Britishers had also established a huge settlement in and around Madras,
   Georgetown was chosen to establish an institute that would cater to the
   artistic expectations of the royals in London. At first tradional
   artists were employed to produce exquisite varieties of furniture,
   metal work, curios etc. and the masterpieces were sent to the royal
   palaces of the queen. In a very short period this institute established
   itself as the first school of art in India! It predates even the famous
   Madras University. Today this institute can be found in Periamet,
   Chennai. Now it is named as The Govt; College of Finearts.

   Most of the famous Painters, Sculptors and Craftsmen of India either
   are products of this college or are influenced by this college. The
   stamp of this college can be found in each and every painting or
   sculpture that is being produced in India. Indian art history will not
   be complete without the prominent mention of the Govt; College of
   Finearts-no matter whoever denies it.

   The most prominent artists to come from this school lately (apart from
   numerous other fields that this college has influenced) are
   Santhanaraj(painting and
   sculpture),Munusamy(painting),Adimoolam(drawing and
   painting),Chandrasekar(painting and sculpture),Roy
   choudry(sculpture),KCS
   Paniker,Kanniappan(sculpture),Palaniappan(printing),Adhiveerapandian(pa
   inting),Michaelirudayaraj(painting)and numerous other personalities who
   are spread all over the world.

   Unlike the Bengal School where 'copying' is the norm of teaching, the
   Madras school flourishes on 'creating' new styles, arguments and
   trends!

   Bengal school

   The Bengal School of Art was an influential style of art that
   flourished in India during the British Raj in the early 20th century.
   It was associated with Indian nationalism, but was also promoted and
   supported by many British arts administrators.

   The Bengal school arose as an avant garde and nationalist movement
   reacting against the academic art styles previously promoted in India,
   both by Indian artists such as Ravi Varma and in British art schools.
   Following the widespread influence of Indian spiritual ideas in the
   West, the British art teacher Ernest Binfield Havel attempted to reform
   the teaching methods at the Calcutta School of Art by encouraging
   students to imitate Mughal miniatures. This caused immense controversy,
   leading to a strike by students and complaints from the local press,
   including from nationalists who considered it to be a retrogressive
   move. Havel was supported by the artist Abanindranath Tagore, a nephew
   of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore painted a number of works
   influenced by Mughal art, a style that he and Havel believed to be
   expressive of India's distinct spiritual qualities, as opposed to the
   "materialism" of the West. Tagore's best-known painting, Bharat Mata
   (Mother India), depicted a young woman, portrayed with four arms in the
   manner of Hindu deities, holding objects symbolic of India's national
   aspirations. Tagore later attempted to develop links with Japanese
   artists as part of an aspiration to construct a pan-Asianist model of
   art.

   The Bengal school's influence in India declined with the spread of
   modernist ideas in the 1920s.

Modern Indian painting

   Modern Indian painting is trying to break free from the shackles
   imposed by a post-colonial Modernistic imperative to depict art solely
   from an Indian point of view. You had to paint the same village scenes,
   urban squalor, folk themes traditionally linked with what was supposed
   to be truly Indian - the entire snake charmer, bullock cart bias. There
   was also this strange need to depict abstract imagery, and talented
   painters with skill, sensitivity and deep artistic perception were
   considered 'western' or 'illustrative' if they pursued their heart's
   calling and painted in a visually realistic manner. If the "form wasn't
   broken" enough, it wasn't considered Indian Modern Art.

   But painters such as Hemen Majumder, Atul Bose, and later Bikash
   Bhattacharjee and Ganesh Pyne defied such puedo-Modernistic compulsions
   and continued to paint their hearts out. The breathtaking array of
   their work, the rich visual splendour and the self-evident talent
   instills awe in the eyes of the beholder and these painings continue to
   grow in the mind long after they were seen for the first time. Ganesh
   Pyne is a bit different in the sense that he was created a style where
   images traverse a peculiar bridge between the flat surface of canvas
   and 3D illusion.

   More recently a new generation of painters have come up who are secure
   in their Indian-ness, open to the world and its artistic trends and
   traditions, especially in this age of the internet and wikipedia, have
   a vision that looks far beyond parochial and critque driven limits and
   explores art to the best of their skill and imagination. These are the
   Meta-realists who are gifted enough to depict their vision of reality
   on canvas, and liberated enough to not get stuck by their Indian roots.
   Prosenjit Roy's meta-realistic paintings straddle the fine gap between
   an imaginative recreation of the visible world and a hallucinatory
   vision of the inner self. According to some, there is another group -
   the Pseudo-realists. Devajyoti Ray is one such painter. his style
   beyond the confines of Art-school grammar explores colors in a
   pseudo-realist perpective.

   These new artists are neither dogged by nationalistic insecurities,
   secure as they are in their Indian-ness, nor by the age old debate of
   Modernism. They have created their own niche in a post modern,
   culturally interlinked but wonderully heterogeneous world.

   Sanjay Bhattacharya, a more senior painter and from a classical
   academically trained background who paints with a brooding sense of
   devotion is also a very successful artist in this genre of Modern
   Indian painting.

Africa

   African traditional culture and tribes do not seem to had great
   interest in two-dimensional representations in favour of Sculpture.
   However, decorative painting in African culture is often abstract and
   geometrical. Another pictorial manifestation is body painting, present
   for example in Maasai culture in their ceremony rituals. Note that
   Pablo Picasso and other modern artists were influenced by African
   sculpture in their styles. Contemporary African artists follow western
   art movements and their paintings have little difference from
   occidental art works.

Aesthetics and theory of painting

   Aesthetics tries to be the "science of beauty" and it was an important
   issue for 18th and 19th century philoshopers like Kant or Hegel.
   Classical philosophers like Plato and Aristotle also theorized about
   art and painting in particular; Plato disregarded painters (as well as
   sculptors) in his philosophical system, sustaining that a painting is a
   copy of reality (a shadow of the world of ideas so it cannot depict the
   truth) and is nothing but a craft, similar to shoemaking or iron
   casting. Leonardo Da Vinci, on the contrary, said that "Pittura est
   cousa mentale" (painting is an intellectual thing). Kant identified
   Beauty with the Sublime, not referring particularly to painting, but
   this concept was taken by painters like Turner or Caspar David
   Friedrich. Hegel recognized the failure of attaining a universal
   concept of beauty and in his aesthetic essay wrote that Painting is one
   of the three "romantic" arts, along with Poetry and Music for its
   symbolic, highly intellectual purpose. Painters like Kandinsky or Paul
   Klee also wrote theory of painting. Kandinsky in its essay sustains
   that painting has a spiritual value also he attaches primary colors to
   essential feelings or concepts, something that writers like Goethe had
   already tried to do.

   Iconography has also something to say about painting. The creator of
   this discipline, Erwin Panofsky, tries to analyse visual symbols in
   their cultural, religious, social and philosophical depth to attain a
   better comprehension of mankind's symbolic activity.

   Beauty, however, a concept of which Painting is essentially linked,
   cannot be defined as an objective matter, purpose or idea. Much
   aesthetics and theory of art is connected with painting. In 1890, the
   Parisian painter Maurice Denis famously asserted: "Remember that a
   painting – before being a warhorse, a naked woman or some story or
   other – is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in
   a certain order." Thus, many twentieth century developments in
   painting, such as Cubism, were reflections on the business of painting
   rather than on the external world, nature, which had previously been
   its core subject.

   Julian Bell (1908-37), a painter himself, examines in his book What is
   Painting? the historical development of the notion that paintings can
   express feelings and ideas:

          Let us be brutal: expression is a joke. Your painting expresses
          – for you; but it does not communicate to me. You had something
          in mind, something you wanted to ‘bring out’; but looking at
          what you have done, I have no certainty that I know what it
          was....

Popular painting styles

   'Style' is used in two senses: It can refer to the distinctive visual
   elements, techniques and methods that typify an individual artist's
   work. It can also refer to the movement or school that an artist is
   associated with. This can stem from an actual group that the artist was
   consciously involved with or it can be a category in which art
   historians have placed the painter. The word 'style' in the latter
   sense has fallen out of favour in academic discussions about
   contemporary painting, though it continues to be used in popular
   contexts.

   Painting styles
     * Abstract
     * Abstract expressionism
     * Post-Abstract Expressionism
     * Art Brut
     * Baroque
     * Colour Field
     * Constructivism
     * Contemporary Art
     * Cubism
     * Expressionism
     * Fauvism
     * Folk
     * Graffiti
     * Hard-edge
     * Impressionism
     * Lyrical Abstraction
     * Mannerism
     * Minimalism
     * Modernism
     * Naïve art
     * Neo-classicism
     * Op art
     * Orientalism
     * Orphism
     * Outsider
     * Painterly
     * Photorealism
     * Pointillism
     * Pop art
     * Postmodernism
     * Post-painterly Abstraction
     * Primitive
     * Pseudorealism
     * Realism
     * Rectoversion
     * Romanticism
     * Romantic realism
     * Socialist realism
     * Stuckism
     * Surrealism
     * Tachism
     * Transpressionism

Common painting idioms

   Painting idioms include:
     * Allegory
     * Bodegon
     * Body painting
     * Botanical
     * Figure painting
     * Illustration
     * Industrial
     * Landscape
     * Portrait
     * Still life
     * War

   Some other painting terms are:

   Altarpiece, Broken Colour, Cartoon, Composition, Drybrush, Easel
   Picture, Foreshortening, Genre, Halo, Highlights, History painting,
   Imprimatura, Landscape, Madonna, Maulstick, Miniature, Mural Painting,
   Palette, Panel Painting, Perspective, Pietá, Plein Air, Portrait,
   Stippling, Technique, Trompe l'oeil, Underpainting, Varnish, Wet-on-wet
   and Four-dimensional painting.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painting"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
