Posts Tagged ‘stone age landscape paintings’
Abstract art in America
The Nazi rise to power in the 1930s was a boon to the abstract art movement in the United States. Artists fleeing Nazi suppression, made New York their home. All the major modern art forms from expressionism to cubism to dada to abstraction found a spotlight in New York. Artists Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Leger, Piet Mondrian, and Andre Breton were among the great 20th century artists who found refuge in New York.
The cultural influences of the Europeans were melded with the aspirations of eager, young American artists. Galleries which had previously only showed abstract art from Europe began to take note of the American artists as they matured. Eventually, two well known groups formed. They were known as the Abstract expressionists and the New York School. From this explosion on the New York art scene the world gained such artists as Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, and Franz Kline.
Stone Age Landscape Paintings
This is the first in a small series of studies about art history. Why? Whereas history is the story of wars and conquests and power, art history is the story of the every day lives of people, their hopes, inspirations, and beliefs.
Man first began making art in the Old Stone Age, 25,000 years ago. Landscape paintings consisted of pictures on cave walls of bison, deer, horses, mammoths and boars, probably in the hopes of having a successful hunting expedition. Sculptures were made from bone, ivory, antlers or stone and are believed to be an attempt to appease the forces of nature.
It was during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age period that humans became herdsmen and farmers. Architecture, in the form of massive stones, first appeared about 5000BC. The most famous of these, Stonehenge, is believed to have been created about 2000BC. It is amazing to us to think that these ancient people could manipulate stones that large without the help of the equipment we use today.