Painting

Painting is a visual art where paint, pigment, color, or another material is put onto a flat surface. The paint is usually spread with a brush. Other tools can be used too, such as palette knives, sponges, airbrushes, the artist's fingers, or even paint that drips down because of gravity. A person who makes paintings is called a painter.

In art, the word "painting" can mean the act of painting or the finished work, which is also called "a painting." Paintings can be made on many surfaces, including walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, pottery, leaves, banners, copper, and concrete. Artists may also add other materials, such as sand, clay, paper, cardboard, newspaper, plaster, gold leaf, and even whole objects.

Painting is an important form of visual art. It brings together parts such as drawing, composition, gesture, narration, and abstraction. Some paintings are realistic and show real things, such as portraits, still life, and landscape painting, although these styles can also be abstract. Other paintings are photographic, abstract, or tell a story. Some are symbolist (as in Symbolist art), some show strong feelings (as in Expressionism), and some are political (as in Artivism).

Much of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is shaped by religious art. These paintings include artwork showing mythological figures on pottery, Biblical scenes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and scenes from the life of Buddha. They also include other images with Eastern religious origin.

History

Main article: History of painting

Cave paintings of a wild boar hunt in the Maros-Pangkep karst of Sulawesi are estimated to be at least 43,900 years old. Scientists called this "the oldest known depiction of storytelling and the earliest instance of figurative art in human history." The oldest known paintings are more than 40,000 to 60,000 years old (art of the Upper Paleolithic). They are found in the caves in the district of Maros in Sulawesi, Indonesia. They often use hand stencils and simple shapes.

In November 2018, scientists reported a painting of an unknown animal in the cave of Lubang Jeriji Saléh on the Indonesian island of Borneo. At that time, it was the oldest known painting of a figure. In December 2019, paintings of pig hunting in the Maros-Pangkep karst region were found to be even older. In 2024, the journal Nature reported that paintings of anthropomorphic figures with a pig, in Leang Karampuang, are about 51,200 years old. This makes them the oldest known paintings in the world. There are cave paintings all over the world, in places such as France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, China, India, Australia, and Mexico. In Western cultures, oil painting and watercolor have long traditions. In the East, ink has traditionally been the main material. The invention of photography, with the first photograph made in 1829, changed painting a great deal. Photographic methods became more common, and painting became less important for accurately recording the world. Art movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Dadaism, challenged the Renaissance view of the world. Eastern and African painting, however, continued a long history of stylization. Modern and Contemporary art moved away from craft and documentation, and focused more on concept. Still, most painters today still paint. In an age of pluralism, no single style represents the time. Artists make works in many styles and temperaments. The Feminist art movement began in the 1960s during the second wave of feminism. It worked to win equal rights and opportunities for female artists around the world.

Elements of painting

Painting is about spreading color across a surface. Color is made of hue, saturation, and value. It is as central to painting as pitch and rhythm are to music. People can feel different things about color, and these feelings can change from one culture to the next. For example, black is linked with mourning in the West, but white is in the East. Some thinkers, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. The word "red" can cover many shades that differ from the pure red of the visible spectrum. Unlike musical notes such as F or C♯, colors have no fixed list. Painters work with pigments, so "blue" can mean phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, Cobalt blue, ultramarine, and more. Colors add meaning to a painting, but each person sees that meaning in their own way. Sound in music is like light in painting, dynamics are like shades, and coloring is like the timbre of musical instruments.

Modern artists have stretched painting in many ways. Collage, which began with Cubism, is not painting in the strict sense. Some artists add sand, cement, straw, leaves, or wood for texture, as Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer did. Many artists now paint on computers using programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter, and these images can be printed onto canvas. Jean Metzinger used a mosaic-like Divisionist technique that matched the work of Symbolist writers. For Piet Mondrian, rhythm matters in painting just as it does in music, since a pause in a sequence can create rhythm and leave room for new creations. Music also helped give birth to abstract art, because it expresses inner feelings rather than the outside world. Wassily Kandinsky used musical terms for his works, calling spontaneous paintings "improvisations" and more planned ones "compositions." He believed that "music is the ultimate teacher" and even linked colors to sounds. His stage design for Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition shows this idea. Jackson Pollock showed the same interest in music with his 1950 painting Autumn Rhythm (Number 30). Freedom of movement in how we see a work is felt as beauty, and this free flow of energy adds to its value in art and other forms of techne.

Aesthetics and theory

Main article: Theory of painting

Aesthetics is the study of art and beauty. It was an important topic for philosophers of the 1700s and 1800s, such as Kant and Hegel. Earlier thinkers like Plato and Aristotle also wrote about painting. Plato saw painting as a copy of reality and a craft, like shoemaking. Later, in the time of Leonardo da Vinci, painting was seen as a closer picture of the truth than it had been in Ancient Greece. Leonardo said that painting is a thing of the mind. Kant separated beauty from the sublime and gave beauty more importance. Painters such as J.M.W. Turner and Caspar David Friedrich later took up this idea.

Hegel said painting is one of three "romantic" arts, along with Poetry and Music. He said this was because of its symbolic and thoughtful purpose. Painters Kandinsky and Paul Klee also wrote about painting. Kandinsky believed painting has a spiritual value. He linked primary colors to feelings, something Goethe had also tried to do. Iconography studies what paintings show. Erwin Panofsky and other art historians look at what the things shown mean to viewers and to wider culture, religion, and society. In 1890, the Parisian painter Maurice Denis said that a painting is first of all a flat surface covered with colors. Because of this view, many 20th-century works, such as Cubism, explored the methods of painting. They did not focus as much on the outside world of nature, which had once been its main subject.

Painting media

Paints are often named for the material that holds the color, called the medium. The medium changes how the paint behaves, including how thick it is, how it mixes with other paints, how it dissolves, and how long it takes to dry. Encaustic painting uses heated beeswax mixed with colored pigments. Watercolor uses pigments mixed into a material that dissolves in water. Gouache is a thick, water-based paint that does not let light through. Enamels are made by melting powdered glass onto metal when it is heated. Tempera dries quickly and lasts a long time. Fresco is a painting done on a wall or ceiling, on wet plaster. Artists also use ink, glaze, and other materials.

Oil painting mixes pigments with drying oil. It became the main painting style in much of Europe. Pastel is made into sticks from powdered color and a binder. Acrylic paint dries quickly and does not wash off with water once dry. Aerosol paint comes in spray cans, which is why it is a common graffiti material. Water miscible oil paints can be cleaned with water instead of harsh chemicals. Some artists make sand paintings by pouring colored sand. Digital painting creates art on a computer.

Main article: Sandpainting

Main article: Digital painting

Painting styles

Main article: Style (visual arts)

A "style" can mean the special looks, tools, and methods that make one artist's work unique. It can also mean the group or school of painting that an artist belongs to. Sometimes an artist was part of a group, and sometimes art historians have put a painter into a category. Writers who study art use the word "style" less for modern painting, but people still use it in everyday talk. Painters have worked in many movements and schools, including those below.

Modernism began in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It was a break from older ideas about realism. Impressionism was the first modern school of painting, and its artists often painted outdoors. Abstract painting uses shapes, colours, and lines that do not have to match things in the real world. Surrealism grew out of Dada activity during World War I. Photorealism and Hyperrealism paint scenes so they look very much like photographs. Painting traditions in Asia, Africa, and the Islamic world also have their own styles. These include Chinese and Japanese painting and Mughal miniature painting. Indian styles include Madhubani Art, Pattachitra, and Mysore painting.

Other painting styles are listed below.

• Modernist: Color Field, Lyrical Abstraction, Hard-edge painting, Pop art, Action painting, Abstract expressionism, Outsider art
• East Asian: Tang Dynasty, Ming Dynasty, Shan shui, Ink and wash painting, Yamato-e, Rimpa school, Superflat
• Islamic: Arabic miniature, Ottoman miniature, Persian miniature, Calligraphy
• Indian: Rajasthani painting, Pahari painting, Company style, Bengal School, Kerala mural painting
• African: Egyptian painting, Ethiopian painting, Tingatinga

See also: Outline of painting § Styles of painting

Types of painting

Painters make many kinds of paintings. An allegory is a figurative mode that shows a meaning beyond what you see. It uses symbolic figures or actions. It is often treated as a figure of rhetoric, but it does not have to use language. Allegory is also common in realistic painting. A simple example is the grim reaper, which viewers understand as a symbol of death. In Spanish art, a bodegón is a still life of pantry items, such as food, game, and drink. Some bodegones show people too, often in a kitchen or tavern. These paintings became popular in Spain in the 1620s and 1630s, during the Baroque period. Still life painting began in the Low Countries, which today are Belgium and the Netherlands. It was far more popular there than in southern Europe. Northern still lifes included the trompe-l'œil, flower bouquets, and the vanitas. A figure painting is a work of art that mainly shows the human figure, either clothed or nude. Some artists known for figure painting are Peter Paul Rubens, Edgar Degas, and Édouard Manet. Illustration paintings appear in books, magazines, theater or movie posters, and comic books. Illustrators were once seen as less important than fine artists and graphic designers. Today, the computer game and comic industries have grown, and illustrations are valued more, especially in South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and the United States. Medieval codices had hand-painted pictures called illuminations. After the printing press was invented in the 15th century, books were often illustrated with woodcuts. In America, this led to a "golden age of illustration." Successful illustrators from this time include N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle of the Brandywine School, James Montgomery Flagg, Elizabeth Shippen Green, J. C. Leyendecker, Violet Oakley, Maxfield Parrish, Jessie Willcox Smith, and John Rea Neill. In France, in 1905, the Contemporary Book Society asked Paul Jouve to illustrate Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book. He spent ten years on its 130 illustrations, which are still admired as some of the finest book art.

Main article: Landscape art

Landscape painting shows natural scenery, such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, lakes, and forests. It often shows a wide view arranged into a balanced picture. The sky is almost always included, and weather is often part of the picture. The two main traditions come from Western painting and Chinese art. Both have been around for well over a thousand years. Portrait paintings show a person, with the face and expression as the main focus. They show a person's likeness, personality, and mood. Portraits were popular in Ancient Greece and especially in Roman sculpture, where people wanted realistic portraits, even if they were not flattering. One of the best-known portraits in the Western world is Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. It is thought to show Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Warhol was one of the most prolific portrait painters of the 20th century. His works include Orange Shot Marilyn of Marilyn Monroe and Orange Prince (1984) of the pop singer Prince. A still life shows mostly objects. These may be natural, such as food, flowers, or shells, or human-made, such as glasses, books, or vases. Still life gives artists more freedom in arranging their designs than landscape or portraiture does. A veduta is a very detailed, usually large painting of a cityscape or other view. This genre of landscape began in Flanders, where Paul Bril painted them as early as the 16th century. Later, views of familiar scenes from the Grand Tour became common. Panoramas were also painted to show wide views.