History of Art.

Where does it starts? The first traces of art come back in time to the Stone Age, where to cave man was painting inside the caves. The oldest paintings were found in France (Lascaux) and Spain (Altamira). They’re dated for 17,000 and 15,000 BCE.

That would mean that art was accompanying humans from the very beginning and it stayed with us till nowadays.

 

That is something that all of us would agree on. However how universal is the history of art that we tell?

 

On our CTS lessons we were asked to rank 10 the most important artists of all the time. Of course, names like Picasso, Turner, Michael Angelo appeared on the list. After summarising our results, we concluded that most of them are man, they’re white race and sadly all dead.

 

Why is that a picture of an art history? Is this because in schools we all were taught mostly only about these artists. Obviously, I am not trying to minimize their importance, but that does make us wonder where are others? Why all of them are only white man? What about coloured artists? Were women allowed to be artists back in time? Who decides what is a better art?

 

/  see interesting article about coloured artists here: https://design.tutsplus.com/articles/10-influential-people-of-color-throughout-art-history–cms-26390

And female artists here:

https://design.tutsplus.com/articles/10-influential-women-of-art-throughout-history–cms-25924  /

 

Bit of light in that matter will show a historical background. The context in which art was produced. From beginning of the 15^th century until end of the 18^th century European Expansion was taking place.  That’s when the world has been sliced between the colonising countries. The matter was shown by many artists.

 

Ironically the attackers were murdering and in slavering under cover of bringing the civilisation to barbarian. One of interesting fact about the Tate museums, today’s legacy cultivated and treated as a national or even international good has really dark history.

The museums were built by Tate & Lyle sugar company. The white gold was produced in colonised British islands by coloured slaves.

 

Europeans were thinking of themselves as a centre of the modernity, that path has changed only recently. Such a ignorant point of view covered up many influences from different cultures including African and Asian. Cultural crossovers are easy to notice, although hardly ever spoken about. Claude Monet was obsessed with Japan and its heritage. His garden was built in a traditional asian style, even if he never has been there. He has also painted his wife dressed in kimono.