Spain 2º Bachillerato Foundations of Art
Chapters: 6
1. Foundations of art
Art technology, materials and techniques · Art and architecture terminology · Historical, geographical and social aspects of art · Theories and definitions of art · Gender perspective in art · Conceptual art and object art
- Art Materials and Techniques: Choosing the Right Media – Artists choose materials (media) for the look they want. Every paint is pigment (coloured powder) mixed with a binder that sticks it to the surface: oil for oil paint, gum arabic for watercolour, acrylic resin for acrylic, egg for tempera. Dry media include graphite pencils (H = hard and light, B = soft and dark), charcoal, pastels and coloured pencils. Wet media include ink, watercolour, gouache, acrylic and oil. Transparent media let light and lower layers show through; opaque media cover them. The support is the surface: paper (with different weights and textures), canvas, wood panel, walls. 3D processes include modelling clay, carving, construction and casting; printmaking makes many copies from one block, plate or screen. Digital media add tablets, photo and video. Good artists test materials, refine work by experimenting, and use them safely and sustainably.
- Art History: From Cave Walls to Today – People have made art for at least 40,000 years. Prehistoric art shows animals and hands on cave walls. Ancient civilisations made art for rulers, gods and the afterlife. Classical traditions arose in Greece and Rome, India, China, Africa and the Americas. The Renaissance brought perspective and realism; modern art (from about 1860) broke those rules; contemporary art uses any material. To appreciate any artwork, describe it, analyse its elements, interpret its meaning in its context, and judge why it works.
- Philosophy of Art: What Is Art, and Why Does It Matter? – The philosophy of art (part of aesthetics) asks: what is art, what is beauty, is taste only personal, what makes a creator, and can art show truth? Answers have changed from "art copies nature" to "art expresses feeling" to "the idea is the art".
- Women in Art: Who Is Shown, and Who Made It? – Two different questions: how are women shown in pictures, and how many pictures were made by women? For centuries women were often the subject but seldom the maker, because schools, life classes and selling were closed to them. Women artists and groups changed this, and today we look at art with both questions.
2. Vision, reality and representation
Pre-Columbian and pre-colonial African art · Spatial representation in painting · Impressionism and Post-Impressionism · Realism and Hyperrealism · Surrealism and its influence · Abstraction: origins and evolution
- World Art: How Different Cultures Make Art – Every cultural region has its own art language, shaped by its beliefs, materials and way of life. African art uses bold, simplified forms in masks, wood figures, bronze and textiles, often for ritual and community events, and it inspired modern European art such as Cubism. Indian art is rich in detail and symmetry: temple towers, stupas, sculpture, miniature and folk painting. Far Eastern art values brush-and-ink, calligraphy and empty space. Arab-Muslim art builds geometric stars, arabesques and calligraphy by repeating a rule. Pre-Columbian America made stepped pyramids, textiles and gold work; later came totems and Mexican murals. European art moves from Greek columns to Gothic, Renaissance perspective and modern styles. To interpret any work, describe it, link it to its culture, notice how it makes you feel, then try making your own work in that style.
- Perspective Drawing: Horizon, Vanishing Points and Shadows – Perspective drawing makes a flat page look deep. You draw a horizon line at eye level, then lines going away from you meet at vanishing points. Far objects are drawn smaller (size ∝ 1 ÷ distance). One-point perspective uses one vanishing point, two-point uses two. Shadows are found with two crossing lines.
- Impressionism – Impressionism was an art movement that began in France in the 1860s–1870s. Painters such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt painted outdoors, quickly, to catch the changing effects of light and the atmosphere of one moment. They used bright, pure colours placed side by side in visible brushstrokes, coloured shadows and scenes of modern everyday life. Their first group show in Paris in 1874 was mocked by critics, who took the name from Monet's painting 'Impression, Sunrise'. Impressionism opened the way to Post-Impressionism (Seurat, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin) and modern art, and the word was also used for music (Debussy) and literature.
3. Classical art and its legacy
Greek architecture and sculpture · Portrait sculpture in Ancient Rome · Architecture from Romanisation to late Middle Ages · Rebirth of classical art: Renaissance · Classical legacy in modern times
- Ancient Greek Art – Ancient Greek art grew over about 900 years in four periods: Geometric, Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic. Painted pottery moved from black-figure to red-figure. Sculpture moved from stiff kouros statues to the relaxed contrapposto of the Classical age and the drama of the Hellenistic age. Temples used three column orders (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian) and careful proportion. These ideals of balance and beauty shaped Roman, Renaissance and even Gandhara art.
- Medieval Art: From Mosaics to Gothic Cathedrals – Medieval art in Europe and the Mediterranean covers about 300 to 1400 CE. Early Christian art took over the Roman basilica and catacomb paintings. Byzantine art added domes, gold mosaics and icons. Romanesque churches (c. 1000–1150) have round arches, thick walls and small windows, with teaching sculpture over doors. Gothic cathedrals (from c. 1140) use pointed arches, ribbed vaults and flying buttresses to build tall, thin walls filled with stained glass. Monks made illuminated manuscripts. Late Gothic painters like Giotto made art more lifelike, opening the way to the Renaissance. Art in this age mainly served faith and taught stories to people who could not read.
- Changing Cultural Traditions: Renaissance, Reformation and Science – From the 14th to the 17th century, rich Italian trading cities led a new interest in Greek and Roman learning called humanism. Artists aimed for realism, using perspective and the study of the body; architects built great domes. Printing spread ideas. Some educated women wrote and ruled. Luther's challenge in 1517 split the Western Church into Catholic and Protestant groups, and the Catholic Church reformed itself. Copernicus, Galileo and Newton changed how people saw the universe, and sailors found sea routes to the Americas and India.
- Neoclassicism: Art That Went Back to Greece and Rome – Neoclassicism (about 1750–1830) was a style in art, buildings and writing that copied the calm order of ancient Greece and Rome. It began after Pompeii was dug up and grew with the Enlightenment's love of reason. It used straight lines, balance, sharp outlines, white marble and serious stories of duty, as a reaction against the playful Rococo. Key names: Jacques-Louis David, Ingres, Angelica Kauffman, Canova. Its ideas came back in the 1920s 'return to order' and metaphysical painting.
4. Art and expression
Baroque painting and sculpture · Romanticism and the birth of modernity · Fauvism and Expressionism · From Dada to Fluxus
- The Baroque: Art in Motion (c. 1600–1750) – Baroque is the European style of about 1600 to 1750 in painting, sculpture, architecture, music and literature. It grew in Rome after the Reformation, when the Catholic Church and kings used art to move and impress people. Its marks are motion, contrast and emotion: diagonals, dramatic light (chiaroscuro and tenebrism), curving walls and domes, gold and illusion ceilings, music with a basso continuo and many weaving voices, and writing full of contrasts, surprising metaphors and the theme of passing time. Key names: Caravaggio, Bernini, Rubens, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Borromini, Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Góngora, Donne. Classicism answered it with order, reason and calm.
- Romanticism – Romanticism was a movement in literature, art and music from about 1780 to 1850. It reacted against the Age of Reason's strict rules and against ugly, crowded factory towns. Romantics valued nature, especially wild and 'sublime' nature, strong personal feeling, the free individual, imagination and dreams, the past and folk culture. Key figures include Wordsworth, Keats, Goethe, Pushkin, Mary Shelley, Victor Hugo, the painters Turner and Friedrich, and composers such as Chopin and Schubert.
- Expressionism: Painting What You Feel, Not What You See – Expressionism (about 1905–1925) was a modern art movement that showed inner feelings rather than the outside world. Artists bent shapes, used strong unreal colours and rough brushwork to show fear, anger, joy or loneliness. Its forerunners were Van Gogh and Munch. Fauvism in Paris (Matisse) freed colour; in Germany, Die Brücke (Kirchner) used jagged woodcut shapes and Der Blaue Reiter (Kandinsky, Marc) treated colour as spiritual feeling. Expressionism also shaped film, theatre, poetry and prose.
- Avant-Garde Movements in Art and Literature – Avant-garde (French for "front guard") names the artists and writers who, from about 1905 to 1970, broke the old rules of art on purpose. Futurism praised speed and machines; Expressionism showed inner feeling; Dada used nonsense, chance and protest after the shock of the First World War; Surrealism explored dreams and the unconscious with automatic writing; Constructivism built clean, useful forms for a new society. Between the wars, avant-garde poets dropped rhyme and fixed metre, played with the shape of words on the page and wrote about cities and machines. After 1945, neo-avant-garde groups such as Fluxus turned art into events and everyday actions.
5. Nature, society and communication in art
Art Nouveau and organic architecture · Bauhaus and Art Deco · Iron and glass architecture and the Modern Movement · Art and mass media: poster to Pop Art · Screen art and digital art · Art and ecology · Art for social change and urban art
- Art Nouveau and Art Around 1900 – Art Nouveau (French for "new art") was a style that spread across Europe and beyond from about 1890 to 1914. Instead of copying old Greek, Roman or Gothic styles, artists took long flowing "whiplash" lines from plants, flowers, insects and water. They used new materials like curved iron and coloured glass, and gave the same style to buildings, furniture, posters and jewellery. At the same time Symbolist painters showed dreams and feelings, and early Expressionists used strong colour to show inner emotion. Organic architecture took the idea further: buildings that grow out of and fit with nature.
- Digital Art and Media Art – Analogue art uses physical materials; digital art is made and stored as numbers. A raster image is a grid of pixels (resolution = number of pixels); a vector image stores points and curves and stays sharp at any size. Digital tools add layers, undo, special brushes and pen tablets. Artists often combine analogue and digital: draw, scan, edit, print, then paint again. Media art uses screens, light, sound, code and interaction as materials: video art, projection mapping, interactive installations, generative art, web and game art. Each medium has features that change how a work is made, shown and experienced.
- Art and Nature: Plein Air, Land Art and Eco Art – Artists use nature in four ways: they paint it outdoors in changing light (plein air), frame it with a camera, build artworks in the landscape itself (Land Art), and make art that warns us about harm to nature or uses waste and natural materials in a sustainable way.
- Public Art: Art in the Spaces We All Share – Public art is art placed in shared spaces – squares, parks, streets, stations and walls – where anyone can see it without a ticket. It includes monuments and statues, murals, trompe-l'oeil (paintings that fool the eye with fake depth), street art and graffiti, site-specific works made for one exact place, temporary installations and urban interventions, and community or collaborative art made with local people. Public art can remember history, make a place beautiful, tell a neighbourhood's story, start a debate or push for social change. Because it is in everyone's space, it raises questions: who decides, who pays, is it legal, and does the community feel it belongs to them? Art also needs spaces: museums, galleries and new buildings designed for art, as well as streets and the internet.
6. Methods and strategies
Methods for studying artworks · Sharing tasks in group art projects · Project methodology in art · Choosing styles, techniques and languages
- Art Criticism: How to Look at and Judge Artworks – Art criticism is careful talk about art. A common method has four steps: describe what you see, analyse how the parts are arranged, interpret what it means or makes you feel, and judge its worth with reasons. Critics also look from different viewpoints (form, feeling, context) and use proper art words. The same method works for paintings, sculpture, buildings, dance, drama and film.
- Collaboration and Teamwork – Collaboration means people working together towards one shared goal, sharing ideas, work and credit. Good teams agree a clear goal, split work into roles that fit people's strengths, and communicate through shared channels. The number of communication links grows fast (n(n−1)/2), so teams of about 4–7 often work best. Teams pass through stages: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. Disagreement is normal and is solved by listening, ground rules and focusing on the problem. Collaborative critique (praise, question, suggest) improves work, and the same skills apply in design projects, art, writing and online work.
- The Design Process: From Problem to Product – The design process is a loop of steps designers use to solve a real problem for real people: investigate the need, define it in a brief and a measurable specification, generate many ideas, build a prototype, then test and evaluate it against the specification. Whatever fails sends you back round the loop. This repeating is called iteration, and it is how almost every product, app, building and artwork is improved.
- Art Materials and Techniques: Choosing the Right Media – Artists choose materials (media) for the look they want. Every paint is pigment (coloured powder) mixed with a binder that sticks it to the surface: oil for oil paint, gum arabic for watercolour, acrylic resin for acrylic, egg for tempera. Dry media include graphite pencils (H = hard and light, B = soft and dark), charcoal, pastels and coloured pencils. Wet media include ink, watercolour, gouache, acrylic and oil. Transparent media let light and lower layers show through; opaque media cover them. The support is the surface: paper (with different weights and textures), canvas, wood panel, walls. 3D processes include modelling clay, carving, construction and casting; printmaking makes many copies from one block, plate or screen. Digital media add tablets, photo and video. Good artists test materials, refine work by experimenting, and use them safely and sustainably.