If you follow the question of why, you will naturally understand the history of Western art.
Studying art history has also made me knowledgeable about Western history!

If you look at ancient Egyptian murals, you will find something strange.
Because the body is frontal, but the face is sideways.
Why did Egyptians paint like this? These days, landscapes are the most common type of painting.
However, landscape painting was neglected for a very long time in Western art history.
Why was that? "A History of Western Art: A Guide to the Past" is an introductory and educational book on art, offering a comprehensive overview of everything from prehistoric cave paintings to modern graffiti, based on crucial questions that profoundly changed the course of art.

There are many 'handprints' left behind by people from that era in cave paintings from the Paleolithic Age.
But this handprint is also an interesting mystery.
The ancients would spread out their hands, place them against the cave wall, and spray paint around their hands and between their fingers.
It appears that the paint was blown into something like a pipe or sprayed directly into the mouth.
These handprints are the signatures of the artists who painted the caves.
--- p.22

The Egyptians were concerned that if they depicted the dead incompletely, the dead would live on in that state.
The figures in the tomb murals are all young.
I thought that youth was the most perfect time in life.
When Egyptian artists drew people, they always drew the head in profile, the shoulders and torso in front, and the area below the waist in profile again. This was because they wanted to portray the deceased as 'complete' as possible.
--- p.29

This is because, unlike the Egyptians who adhered to rules, the Greeks put effort into depicting the human form more vividly.
In other words, in Greece, the idea of ​​humans being the center of the world and the measure of all things developed, and that idea was also reflected in works of art.
--- p.42

Medieval European art doesn't look very realistic.
In ancient Greece and Rome, techniques for depicting people and objects continued to evolve. Why did a group of artists suddenly abandon these techniques and adopt seemingly simple and childish techniques? Some explain it as Christianity's emphasis on spiritual values, which discouraged realistic depictions.
However, this can be seen as a result of the disappearance of Rome as a cultural center with the beginning of the Middle Ages.
There was no basis for a group of artists to systematically learn and pass down techniques.
As the empire fell, Christianity took its place.
--- p.65

The idea of ​​painting the faces of individuals without religious affiliation only arose in the late Middle Ages.
Even at first, he had to show his face next to Jesus or the Virgin Mary.
[The Madonna and Child with the Prime Minister Rolin] satisfies the desire of the person who commissioned the painting to have his or her likeness preserved while demonstrating his or her religious beliefs.
--- p.83, 84

There is no hierarchy in Bruegel's paintings.
You can't tell which of the people and objects on the screen are more or less important.
In this respect, Bruegel's paintings contain a completely new attitude.
The world originally unfolded like this without any hierarchy or order.
--- p.113

Later, researchers who organized art history with the Renaissance masters at the top dismissed Mannerism as a transitional movement between the Renaissance and the Baroque.
The flow of art history that had been going well stagnated and retreated with the arrival of Mannerism.
However, since the 20th century, as the perspective on art has changed and the new and eccentric have been valued, Mannerism has been re-evaluated.
--- p.126

Why does such extravagant art emerge after balanced art? This question arises when we look at Mannerism and Baroque art, which emerged following the Renaissance.
A similar pattern could be seen before.
After the balanced art of the so-called 'classical' period of ancient Greece, the colorful and passionate Hellenistic art emerged.
We must see that the seeds of disorder, proliferation, and explosion are contained within balanced art.
Even in the Renaissance masters da Vinci and Michelangelo, we can find a mysterious passion and a confusing emotion that is never balanced.
--- p.130

The Netherlands was a Protestant country, and since Protestantism prohibited the creation of religious images, Dutch artists could not receive commissions from churches like their Italian or French counterparts.
So I drew a simple everyday life that pious citizens would like.
Art genres such as portraits, still lifes, and landscapes developed.
--- p.140

As commerce developed and material conditions improved, Europeans opened their eyes to sensual pleasures.
I hung paintings filled with luxurious items in my home, vicariously satisfying myself, and made that kind of wealthy life my life's goal.
But even so, I couldn't abandon ethics and justification.
So, the painting was a space where material desires and religious values ​​clashed.
--- p.142

Although both Neoclassicism and Romanticism emerged amidst industrial development and political upheaval, their artistic responses were diametrically opposed.
While Neoclassicism pursued strict and concise rules, taking past cultures and heritage as examples, Romanticism argued that art should transcend rules and institutions and reveal the inner self of humans and their free emotions.
--- p.170

Landscape painting has not been well-received in the history of Western art.
Compared to portraits, they were considered inferior and were treated as paintings for entertainment at best.
However, as human attitudes toward nature changed, the status of landscape painting gradually rose.
For example, in the Netherlands, which focused on maritime trade, many marine landscape paintings depicting the sea and ships were produced in the 17th century.
--- p.181, 183

Since the Renaissance, it had been customary to include nude figures in paintings depicting myths and history, so the nude figure itself was not unfamiliar.
The overly realistic and cheeky atmosphere of Manet's paintings puzzled people, and that surprise led to anger.
--- p.211

In the 1840s, oil paints could finally be contained in metal tubes.
We made a lid that seals simply by turning it.
Now all you have to do is open the tube cap and squeeze the paint onto your palette.
Painters were able to take their easels and tubes of paint with them and paint outdoors, directly observing the landscape.
The image that we often think of when we think of a painter today, that is, a painter putting a canvas on an easel outdoors and playing with a brush, originated from this period.
--- p.217

Is it art to only draw the ever-changing appearance, or shouldn't we draw the fundamental things that don't change?
Now artists are asking themselves this question:
As a reaction to Impressionism, which doggedly pursued the moment, art emerged that pursued the eternal rather than the moment, the universal rather than the individual.
--- p.228

At the time, the idea that a woman could have a career as an artist was considered implausible.
It was a time when it was taken for granted that a woman's path was to draw pictures only as a hobby and then marry into a good family.
Women who have walked the path of an artist have had to endure all kinds of pressure.
Another huge limitation that male artists didn't have to worry about was that they couldn't draw from human models.
--- p.230

Meanwhile, some artists who surrounded Impressionism argued that art should move away from everyday subjects and address spiritual and fundamental issues.
The grammar of art changed significantly between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Some emerging artists have come up with radical alternatives.
The world's reaction was not good.
Matisse and his colleagues were given the name 'Fauvisme'.
It means that the colors and brushstrokes run wild like a 'beast'.
--- p.257, 258

Who is the true surrealist artist? What are his works? The space where the answer should be is empty.
This often happens when talking about trends.
Artists' activities are all different, but a trend is something that conveniently groups those activities together.
Surrealism had a profound influence on artists outside Europe, particularly in the United States.
--- p.299

Pop art is said to be art that responded to the public's demands in the era of popular culture.
First of all, it is a friendly art form that is easy to understand and can be understood even by viewers with little knowledge.
However, if you bring popular culture into art, art may end up being absorbed into popular culture.
--- p.321

Duchamp said that art should always give people a chance to think about something, and that an artist is not someone who 'makes' works, but someone who 'selects' ready-made ones.
In other words, instead of creating something with one's own hands, an artist should become a director who comes up with ideas and creates situations.
--- p.326

Conceptual artists have tried to deny that there is such a thing as art.
It has been said that art is not a material object, but a concept of the artist who created the object.
The artist said that he didn't have to create anything.
Even the world of art, such as galleries, art museums, art criticism, and art markets,
He said that I didn't need that either.
But if those things hadn't supported it, conceptual art wouldn't have existed.
--- p.326, 328

Performance is a work that uses the body, and media art utilizes various mechanical devices, so at first glance, they seem to have different directions.
However, both are similar in that they reaffirm the role of the artist as a mediator between humans and the world.
--- p.336

The role of the collector is crucial in contemporary art.
yBa also gained fame by buying luxury works.
In fact, art has long been driven by patrons.
If Pope Julius II had not commissioned Michelangelo and Raphael to paint, we would not be able to see the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the frescoes in the Vatican today.
--- p.340

Since Romanticism, art has perplexed the world by shaking the sensibilities of mainstream society. However, today's art is caught up in the language and conventions of the art world, remaining difficult to understand and unable to shake the world or convey a clear message.
In this reality, graffiti artists, including Banksy, demonstrate that graffiti has a more distinct aesthetic significance and can exert critical power than so-called institutional art.
Graffiti has become a street scene in cities around the world.

--- p.356, 357