The traditions and pathos of a particular period in painting has usually been reflected in many of its other visual arts. The ideals and aspirations of the ancient cultures, of the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, and Neoclassical periods of Western art and, more recently, of the 19th-century Art Nouveau and Secessionist movements were displayed in much of the architecture, interior design, furniture, textiles, ceramics, costume, and handicrafts, as well as in the fine arts, of their times. After the Industrial Revolution, with the reduced requirement of hand-craftmanship and the absence of direct expression between the fine artist and larger society, general society, idealistic efforts to unite the arts and crafts in service to the community were made by William Morris in Victorian England and by the Bauhaus in 20th-century Germany. Although their aims were not fully successful, their successors, like those of the short-lived de Stijl and Constructivist movements, have been immeasurable, particularly in architectural, furniture, and typographic design.

Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were inventive painters, sculptors, and architects. Although no artists have since excelled in such a wide range of creative forms, leading 20th-century painters expressed their thoughts in many other mediums. In graphic design, for example, Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and Raoul Dufy produced posters and illustrated books; André Derain, Fernand Léger, Marc Chagall, Mikhail Larionov, Robert Rauschenberg, and David Hockney designed for the stage; Joan Miró, Georges Braque, and Chagall worked in ceramics; Braque and Salvador Dalí designed jewelry; and Dalí, Hans Richter, and Andy Warhol made movies. Many of these, with other modern painters, have also been sculptors and printmakers and have designed for fabrics, tapestries, mosaics, and stained glass, while there are few mediums of the visual arts that Pablo Picasso did not at some point work in and revitalize.

In turn, painters have been taught by the imagery, techniques, and design of other visual arts. One of the earliest of these influences was quite possibly from the theatre, where ancient Greeks are thought to have been the first to use the illusions of optical perspective. The discovery or reappraisal of design techniques and imagery in the art-forms and processes of other cultures has been a wonderful stimulus to the development of more recent forms of Western painting, whether or not their traditional significance have been fully understood. The influence of Japanese woodcut prints on Synthetism and the Nabis, for example, and of African sculpture on Cubism, and the German Expressionists helping to create visual vocabularies and syntax with which to express new visions and ideas. The invention of photography and film exposed painters to new aspects of nature, while eventually prompting others to abandon representational painting altogether. Painters of everyday life, such as Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Vuillard, and Bonnard, exploited the design tricks of camera cutoffs, close-ups, and unconventional viewpoints to provide the feeling of sharing an intimate picture space with the figures and objects in the painting.

Looking for watercolour paint or watercolour brushes? The watercolour paints at Discount Art are top quality and are available online. Visit today.

Sphere: Related Content