The Beginning of Art

There are many ways to study the history of art. We are going to look closely at the duality of opposites which play out in every major art period and movement in human history.

Those opposites are represented as:

# 1. The artist's encounter with the world and his or her desire to visually reproduce it which is conveyed through aspects of realism.

# 2. The artist’s imagination which is conveyed through their selections, transformation of reality, symbols and individual choices

We are going to learn about the history of art by looking closely at these opposites in an effort to better understand the motivation and style of the major periods of art history. Let’s start!