Painting

Painting is a visual art that involves applying paint, pigment, color, or another medium to a solid surface. The paint is usually spread on the surface with a brush, but other tools can be used too, such as palette knives, sponges, airbrushes, the artist's fingers, or even a dripping method that uses gravity. A person who makes paintings is called a painter.

In art, the word "painting" can mean both the act of painting and the finished work, which is also called "a painting." Paintings can be made on many surfaces, including walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, pottery, leaf, 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 that brings together elements such as drawing, composition, gesture, narration, and abstraction. Some paintings are realistic and show real things, as in 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 range from artwork showing mythological figures on pottery, to Biblical scenes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, to scenes from the life of Buddha, as well as other images of Eastern religious origin.

History

Main article: History of painting

Cave paintings showing a wild boar hunt in the Maros-Pangkep karst of Sulawesi are estimated to be at least 43,900 years old. This finding was recognized as "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, and are often made from hand stencils and simple geometric 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. It was then the oldest known figurative art painting. 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, making 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 rich traditions, while in the East, ink has historically been the main material. The invention of photography, with the first photograph made in 1829, had a major impact on painting, since photographic processes became more common and painting lost much of its role in 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 in favour of concept, but most living painters still paint. In an age of pluralism, there is no single style that represents the time, and artists make works in many styles and temperaments. The Feminist art movement began in the 1960s during the second wave of feminism, seeking equal rights and opportunities for female artists around the world.

Elements of painting

Painting is about spreading color across a surface. Color is made up of hue, saturation, and value, and 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 how people see that meaning is very personal. 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 is important in painting as it is 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, and it was an important topic for 18th- and 19th-century philosophers 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. By the time of Leonardo da Vinci, painting was seen as a closer picture of the truth than it had been in Ancient Greece, and 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, because of its symbolic and intellectual purpose. Painters Kandinsky and Paul Klee also wrote about painting. Kandinsky believed painting has a spiritual value and linked primary colors to feelings, something Goethe had also tried to do. Iconography studies what paintings show, and 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 rather than the outside world of nature, which had once been its main subject.

Painting media

Different paints are named for the material that holds the pigment, called the medium. The medium affects how the paint behaves, including its viscosity, miscibility, solubility, and drying time. Encaustic painting uses heated beeswax mixed with colored pigments, and watercolor uses pigments suspended in a water-soluble material. Gouache is an opaque, water-based paint, and enamels fuse powdered glass onto metal when fired. Tempera is a fast-drying paint with long-lasting results, and fresco is a wall or ceiling painting done on plaster. Ink, glaze, and other media are also used by artists.

Oil painting uses pigments mixed with drying oil and became the main medium in much of Europe. Pastel is made in stick form from powdered pigment and a binder. Acrylic paint dries quickly and becomes water-resistant, and aerosol paint comes in pressurized cans, making it a common graffiti medium. Water miscible oil paints can be cleaned with water instead of chemicals. Artists also make sand paintings by pouring colored sand, and 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 visual features, techniques, and methods that mark one artist's work. It can also mean the movement or school of painting that an artist belongs to. Sometimes the artist was really part of a group, and sometimes art historians have grouped the painter into a category. Academic writers now 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 and was a rebellion against the older ideas of realism. Impressionism was the first modern school of painting, and its artists often worked outdoors. Abstract painting uses shapes, colours, and lines that do not have to match things in the real world. Surrealism developed 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, such as 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. Allegory is a figurative mode that shows a meaning other than the literal one, using symbolic figures or actions. It is usually treated as a figure of rhetoric, but it does not have to use language and is often found 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, or a painting with figures and still life elements, often set in a kitchen or tavern. These paintings became popular in Spain in the second quarter of the 17th century, starting in the Baroque period. Still life painting began and was far more popular in the Low Countries, today Belgium and Netherlands, than in southern Europe. Northern still lifes included the trompe-l'œil, the flower bouquet, and the vanitas. A figure painting is a work of art whose main subject is the human figure, 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, but growth in the computer game and comic industries has made illustrations valued, especially in 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," and illustrators such as 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 became highly successful. 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 remain among the masterpieces of bibliophilia.

Main article: Landscape art

Landscape painting shows natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, lakes, and forests, often as a wide view arranged into a coherent composition. 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, and both go back well over a thousand years. Portrait paintings show a person, with the face and expression as the main focus, to display their likeness, personality, and mood. The portrait flourished in Ancient Greek and especially Roman sculpture, where people wanted realistic portraits, even unflattering ones. One of the best-known portraits in the Western world is Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, thought to show Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Warhol was one of the most prolific portrait painters of the 20th century, and his works include Orange Shot Marilyn of Marilyn Monroe and Orange Prince (1984) of the pop singer Prince. A still life shows mostly objects, either 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 highly 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, and panoramas were painted to show wide views.