A Beginner’s Guide to Art History

Christopher P Jones is the author of <a href="https://www.chrisjoneswrites.co.uk/how-to-read-paintings/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">How to Read Paintings,</a> an examination of art’s most enthralling images and their meanings. When I first began learning about the history of art, I remember I wanted to understand one thing above all. I wanted to know the timeline. In other words, the grand story of one-style-followed-by-the next: Romanticism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, and so on. I had the sense that art history was like a relay-race of artists, each passing the baton on from one to another, building up a cause-and-effect chain of history and development. I had other questions too: What was ‘Baroque’ and did it come before or after the Renaissance? Actually, come to think of it, what was the Renaissance? Did ‘Classical’ refer to classical music or something else altogether? What’s the difference between ‘modern art’ and ‘contemporary art’? It took me a little while to understand that there are both simple and complex answers to these questions. I’ve explained this in more detail in my book, <a href="https://www.chrisjoneswrites.co.uk/exploring-art-history/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Exploring Art History</a>. But the first thing I did, to satisfy my curiosity, was to find a list of art movements and write it out so as to fix it in my memory. It went something like this: <a href="https://christopherpjones.medium.com/a-beginners-guide-to-art-history-5c2b5da1c581">Click Here</a>