Painting: A Progression

One reason out of many as to how we differentiate humans from other animals is the fact that we create art. What's strange is that we, as homo sapiens sapiens, have been around for around 100,000 years yet we only started creating 2-dimensional images around 32,000 years ago.

There's also been that story about a man who has grown up without ever seeing a painting or a drawing and was one day confronted with an image of a horse. Yet, though he has seen a horse before, he could not identify the image on the paper as being a horse simply because he could not walk around it and touch it.

So our relationship, especially how and why it began, with 2-dimensional art is a mystery. Still, ever since that time when we first decided to stencil our hand on the ceiling of a cave, we have continued to nurture our newly found ability and found a suitable media for it: painting.

Now, cave paintings, as said before, started around 32,000 years ago, meaning ~30,000 B.C.E. The materials used were usually charcoal or red ochre combined with some sort of binding. It would then be applied with some sort of brush or the paint was put inside a persons mouth and spat out at the surface of the rock.

The images that were typically made were of animals (bison, deer, etc), stencils of human hands, odd patterns of dots, and even images of humans, sometimes with body parts of other animals.

People have been trying for a long time to figure out why these images were made. These drawings were generally found in caves and would also often be found in difficult to get to, claustrophobic areas of said caves. That means that while the images were out in public, they were not necessarily made as decoration of a living area or for display.

With the reason more associated with modern art ruled out, some have theorized that the drawings served as something of a prayer. The idea is that the people would draw images of animals in hopes that the images would bring good luck when they went hunting the animals depicted. Yet what goes unexplained by this theory are the odd patterns of dots and the images of the half human half animals.

The other theory is that these paintings were part of a ritual in which a person, a shaman per se, would enter a trance in order to heal another member of the tribe. What was often seen in these trances would be those odd patterns and, what they likely saw, were the animals as the animals were culturally a significant part of the tribal life. So the images would then be depictions of what the person saw when in a trance.


The next big thing in painting after cave paintings was fresco. Fresco painting has a long tradition that dates back into the Greco-Roman era (as pictured above) and has continued to be popular during the Byzantine empire, the Renaissance, and Baroque art. Fresco is even still used today, though not quite as prolifically.

Fresco is the practice of painting on plaster. There are actually several ways you can fresco paint. True fresco, more commonly known as buon fresco, or dry fresco. Buon fresco is the technique of painting on wet plaster. This means you have to work very quickly and does not allow much margin for error. However, the finished piece lasts far longer than dry fresco. Dry fresco is the technique of painting on dry plaster. It allows for a longer working time frame, but the finished piece is less likely to last.

Oil painting arose during the Renaissance and has been the most popular painting media since then. Oil painting consists of pigment and oil and is very slow drying. What this means is that you could work for long periods of time on each painting and create realistic textures and add more depth to a painting. This was very unlike its predecessor, tempera painting (pigment mixed with egg yolk), which was fast drying allowing for less time and, thus, less texture.

What this also means is that a person needed a higher amount of skill in drawing realistically. So ateliers were created in which there was a master painter who received commissions from his patrons and then there were apprentices which would help out with the painting of said commissions. Back in the 1500's, apprentices generally had to live with the master painter which meant that women were unable to become artists unless their father was one and was willing to teach them. On that note, there have been a few woman painters in the past, most notably Artemisia Gentileschi and Angelica Kaufmann.

Finally, there's digital painting. Digital painting requires a computer and software such as Corel Painter or Photoshop. With the brush tools available, you can then mimic the effects of oil paints on the program and create an image. At the moment, there are not many "high art" digital artists. Digital paintings are usually created for deviantart.com, perhaps comics, but they are rarely ever put in a gallery and sold. The reason for that is because art galleries prefer to sell items of a higher value and the fact that digital paintings can and are usually printed out many times causes them to be lower in value. What that means if that while digital painting may rise in popularity over next years, oil paintings will still continue to be popular as well.

Mapping Out Art Today

Above is a video of high school students from Hong Kong International School talking about what they think of contemporary art. Each of these students, though giving varied answers, seem to mutually agree on the fact that art today is incredibly diverse. Some even go so far as to say that art can be anything. A dramatic statement and, considering the post modern mindset of the art world, not so far from the truth.

Postmodernist art, that being the current era of art, is characterized by a lack of an organized structure, ambiguity and diversity. It has a very laissez-faire attitude that culminates in the art of today being described as "can be anything."

Part of the reason why art has become like this is because postmodernism was originally a reaction against modernism, which was a reaction against the academic art of the 19th century. Academic art was clearly structured and with each coming reaction, the structure fell apart more and more.

The second reason why art can now be anything is because the art world turned its attention away from the art and has focused on the artist. This is due to the fact that the art created is generally difficult to understand or decipher unless the artist him/herself explains.


This attitude can be represented by one artist - Andy Warhol. People know him because of his pieces like the Marilyn Monroe Triptych or the Campbell's Soup can prints. The main reason why we have all heard of him, however, is because Andy Warhol knew how to market himself. There was always interest around his studio, nicknamed the Factory, and there was often scandals revolving around him such as an attempted assassination of him. Warhol exploited these controversies as well as worked on his own image until he has become an icon in not just the art world, but also America.

It's interesting to note, however, that the king of pop art himself believed that "the course of art history would be changed if one thousand students could be taught Old Master drawing and painting techniques."