Art History isn't about memorizing dates of dead people in berets. It is the story of Humanity's Greatest Argument. For thousands of years, artists have been responding to one another (usually with a revolution)
Nobody ever changed the course of art by following the rules perfectly; they changed it by deciding the old way of working was no longer enough.
Every movement represents a different way to solve a visual problem. By studying these shifts, you’re basically building a toolkit for your own projects. Whether you want your work to feel structured and "correct" or raw and chaotic, someone has already figured out how to do it.