200 Views of Western Art

My Personal Tour of Western Art in 200 Talks

Thank you for joining me on my personal tour of Western Art. Below are all my current and planned talks organised chronologically into chapters. Each chapter is numbered, for example, “02” is Egyptian art. 

The links take you to my notes and references in PDF format and each link is followed by the talk from my YouTube channel for Laurence Shafe.

I started the project in 2014 giving private talks to a class in London and I switched to YouTube in 2020 driven partly by lockdown. Please feel free to use the talks and the notes but don’t blame me for any mistakes and please double check everything yourself. Humans can make mistakes as well as AI systems.

In 2023 I started to use ChatGPT as an assistant to help me research the talks and my goal now is to completely replace myself by the end of 2026. To achieve this I will fully automate the research, production and even giving the talks using AI. This ties together my academic background which was initially in AI in the 1970s and more recently in art history in the 2000s. 

This is my biography and the best way to contact me is to comment on my YouTube channel.

00 Introduction

00-01 200 Views of Western Art

This is an entertaining podcast produced by Google NotebookLM of 200 Views of Western Art:

01 The Earliest Art

01-01 The Earliest Art (notes)

02 Egyptian Art 3,000-300 BC

02-01 Egyptian Art Old & Middle Kingdoms (notes) 

02-02 Egyptian Art New Kingdom (notes)

03 Greek Art 2,000-450AD

03-01 The Invention of Antiquity (notes)

03-02 Greek Art (notes)

04 Roman Art 27BC – 450AD

04-01 Roman Art (notes)

05 Byzantine Art 500-1200

05-01 Byzantine Art (notes)

06 Celtic, Saxon and Viking Art 550-900

06-01 Celtic, Saxon and Viking Art (notes)

07 Medieval Art 800-1000

07-01 Medieval Art 800-1000 (notes)

08 Romanesque Art 1000-1300

08-01 Romanesque Art 900-1200 (notes)

09 Gothic and Netherlandish Art 1100-1500

09-01 Gothic Cathedrals (notes)

09-02 Gothic Art – Giotto (to be recorded)

09-03 Hieronymus Bosch (notes)

10 Renaissance Art 1400-1600

10-01 An Introduction to Renaissance Art (to be recorded)

10-02 The Renaissance Nude (notes)

10-03 Piero della Francesca (to be recorded)

10-04 Mantegna and Bellini (notes)

10-05 Lorenzo Lotto (notes)

10-06 Botticelli (notes)

10-06 Botticelli Podcast (produced by Google NotebookLM) 

Youtube video scheduled

10-07 Renaissance – Leonardo da Vinci (notes)

10-08 Raphael (notes)

10-08 Raphael Podcast (produced by Google NotebookLM)

Youtube video scheduled

10-09 Michelangelo (notes)

10-10 Titian 

10-10 Titian Podcast (produced by Google NotebookLM)

10-11 Tintoretto

10-11 Tintoretto Podcast (produced by Google NotebookLM)

10-12 Veronese

10-12 Veronese Podcast (produced by Google NotebookLM)

https://youtu.be/2uhv7wYjtVw

11 Mannerism 1520-1600

11-01 The Extremes of Mannerism (notes)

12 Tudor and Stuart Art

12-01 Three Hundred Years of British Art (notes)

12-02 British Art 1500-1800

12-03 British Art 1545-2000

12-04a Tudor & Stuart Art – From Absolute Monarch to Civil War, 1540-1650

12-05 Tudor Art – Images of Elizabeth I: Fashion or Propaganda?

12-06 Tudor Art – Elizabethan Miniatures

12-07 Tudor Art – Secret and Puzzling Tudor Art

12-08 Tudor Art – How Art Helped Establish the Tudor Dynasty

12-09 Tudor Art – The Hidden History of Hampton Court

12-10 Tudor Art – Hans Holbein at the Court of Henry VIII

12-11 Tudor Art – The Wholesale Destruction of English Art

12-12 Stuart Art – Charles I: King and Collector

12-13 Stuart Art – How the Royal Collection was Mis-sold

12-14 Stuart Art – Inigo Jones: Man, Masques and Mansions

12-15 Stuart Art – Van Dyck and the Early Stuart Painters

13 Baroque Art 1600-1700

13-01 Carravaggio

13-02 Baroque Art – Velasquez (to be recorded)

13-03 Baroque Art – Rubens (to be recorded)

13-04 Baroque Art – Rembrandt (to be recorded)

13-05 Baroque Art – Britain’s Love of Rembrandt

13-06 Baroque Art – Van Dyck (to be recorded)

14 Dutch Golden Age 1600-1700

14-01 The Dutch Golden Age (notes)

14-02 Vermeer’s Complete Works (Part 1) (notes)

14-03 Vermeer’s Complete Works (Part 2) (notes)

15 Academic Art 1600-1900

15-01 Academic Painting

15-02 Academic Art – Nicolas Poussin (to be recorded)

15-03 Academic Art – William-Adolphe Bouguereau (to be recorded)

16 Restoration England 1660-1700

16-01 Restoration England – Introduction 1660-1800

16-02 Restoration England – The Power of Beauty in Restoration England

16-03 Restoration England – The Commonwealth to the Georgian Period

16-04 Restoration England – Charles II: Art and Power (to be recorded)

16-05 Restoration England – The Windsor and Hampton Court Beauties

16-06 Restoration England – Wren and the English Baroque

17 Eighteenth Century British Art

17-01 18thC British Art – The Georgian Period, 1730-1780

17-02a 18thC British Art – Hogarth His Life and Society

17-02b 18thC British Art – Hogarth’s World

17-02c 18thC British Art – Hogarth’s World (for Save the Children)

17-03 18thC British Art – Thomas Gainsborough

17-04 18thC British Art – Joshua Reynolds (to be recorded)

17-05 18thC British Art – George IV Art & Spectacle

17-06 18thC British Art – Revolutionary Times, 1780-1810

17-07 18thC British Art – The Royal Academy

17-08 18thC British Art – Zoffany and the Conversation Piece

17-09 18thC British Art – Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797)

18 Rococo Art 1700-1770

18-01 Canaletto (to be recorded)

18-02 François Boucher (to be recorded)

18-03 Jean-Honoré Fragonard (to be recorded)

19 Spanish Art

19-01 Spanish Art – Velázquez & the Spanish Golden Age 

19-02 Spanish Art – A 10-Minute Guide to Velazquez (to be recorded)

19-03 Spanish Art – Goya 1746-1828 (to be recorded)

20 Neo-Classicism 1770-1830

20-01 Neo-Classical Art – Mary Moser

20-02 Neo-Classical Art – Angelica Kaufmann

20-03 Neo-Classical Art – Angelica Kauffman Version 2

20-04 Neo-Classical Art – Jacques-Louis David (to be recorded)

20-05 Neo-Classical Art – Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (to be recorded)

21 Romanticism 1790-1850

21-01 Romanticism – Parisian Life During the Revolution

21-02 Romanticism – Théodore Géricault (to be recorded)

21-03 Romanticism – Eugène Delacroix (to be recorded)

21-04 Romanticism – The Romantic Age of English Painting

21-05 Romanticism – William Blake

21-06 Romanticism – JMW Turner

21-07 Romanticism – Turner’s Modern World

21-08 Romanticism – John Constable

21-09 The Gothic and its Revival

21-10 Romanticism – Regency to Victorian, 1810-1840

22 Nineteenth-Century American Art

22-01 19thC American Art

22-02 19thC American Art – Thomas Cole (to be recorded)

22-03 19thC American Art – Frederic Edwin Church (to be recorded)

23 Victorian Art

23-01 Victorian Art (Part 1)

23-02 Victorian Art (Part 2)

23-03 Victorian Art Summary

23-04 Victorian Art – The Art of the Industrial Revolution

23-05 Victorian Art – Children in Victorian Art

23-06 Victorian Art – The Politics of Early 19th Century Landscape

23-07 Victorian Art – Turner and Turnips

23-08 Victorian Art – Social Realism in Victorian Painting

23-09 Victorian Art – Social Realism and Victorian Morality

23-10 Victorian Art – The Deserving Poor

23-11 Victorian Art and Darwinian Beauty

23-12 Victorian Portrait Painting

23-13 Victorian Landscape Painting Part 1

23-14 Victorian Landscape Painting Part 2

23-15 Women in Victorian Art

23-16 Victorian Women Artists

23-17 Late Victorians,1890-1900

23-18 The Edwardians,1900-1910

23-19 Newlyn, Glasgow, Camden Town

23-20 Victorian Art – Fairy Painting

23-21 Victorian Orientalism

24 Photography

24-01 Photography – The Art of Victorian Photography

24-02 Pictorialism and Late Victorian Photography

24-03 Moving Images

24-04 Straight Photography 1907-1940 (to be recorded)

25 Pre-Raphaelites 1848-1880

25-01 Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – Early Days

25-02 Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – Later

25-03 The PreRaphaelites, 1840-1860

25-04 The Pre-Raphaelite Sisters

25-05 Burne-Jones

26 Nineteenth-Century French Art

26-01 Barbizon School (to be recorded)

26-02 French Realism & Gustav Courbet (to be recorded)

26-03 French Orientalism (to be recorded)

27 Impressionism 1860-1880

27-01 Edouard Manet

27-01 Édouard Manet (Podcast produced by Google NotebookLM)  

27-02 Claude Monet

27-02 Claude Monet (Podcast produced by Google NotebookLM)

27-03 Monet and Architecture

27-04 Edgar Degas (to be recorded)

27-05 Camille Pissarro (to be recorded)

27-06 Auguste Renoir (to be recorded)

27-07 American Impressionism (to be recorded)

27-08 Impressionism in London

27-09 English Impressionism

27-10 Impressionism Post-Impressionism and Fauvism

27-11 Sorolla – Spanish Master of Light

28 Aestheticism 1870-1890

28-01 Aesthetic Movement to Degeneration Part 1

28-02 Aesthetic Movement to Degeneration Part 2

28-03 The Aesthetic Movement,1860-1890

James McNeill Whistler (to be recorded)

29 Degenerate Art

29-01 Beardsley Decadence & Death

30 Post Impressionism 1880-1905

30-01 Paul Cézanne

30-02 Van Gogh and Britain

30-03 Paul Gauguin: His Life and Work

30-04 Pierre Bonnard

30-05 The Short Life of Amedeo Modigliani

31 Symbolism 1890-1920

31-01 Symbolism 1890-1920 (to be recorded)

32 Russian Art 1890-1930

32-01 Russian Art 1890-1930

33 Pointillism & Divisionism

33-01 Georges Seurat and Paul Signac (to be recorded)

34 Arts & Crafts

34-01 The Design Reform Movement

34-02 William Morris & The Arts & Crafts Movement

35 Art Nouveau 1890-1914

35-01 Art Nouveau – Gustav Klimt

35-02 Egon Schiele

35-03 Art Nouveau Charles Rennie Mackintosh

36 South American Art 1900-present

36-01 Frida Kahlo (Mexico, 1907-1954) (to be recorded)

36-02 Diego Rivera (Mexico, 1886-1957) (to be recorded)

36-03 Lygia Clark (Brazil, 1920-1988) (to be recorded)

36-04 Hélio Oiticica (Brazil, 1937-1980) (to be recorded)

37 Edvard Munch (1863-1944)

37-01 Edvard Munch

38 Modernism 1900-present

38-01 The 20th Century British Nude

38-02 Modernism – Picasso 1932

38-03 Auguste Rodin

38-04 Modernism – 20th Century British Life Painting

38-05 Modernism – New Ways of Seeing

39 Ashcan School 1890-1920

39-01 George Bellows (to be recorded)

40 Les Fauves 1900-1907

40-01 André Derain (to be recorded)

40-02 Henri Matisse (to be recorded)

41 Cubism 1907-1918

41-01 Cubism Abstraction and the British Avant Garde

41-02 Pablo Picasso (to be recorded)

41-03 Georges Braque (to be recorded)

42 Expressionism 1900s-1930

42-01 What is Expressionism? (to be recorded)

43 Futurism 1909-1915

43-01 Futurism (to be recorded)

44 Vorticism 1913-1915

44-01 Vorticism and World War I Art

45 Abstract Art 1915-1940

45-01 Abstract Art in Britain

46 Dada 1915-1922

46-01 Dada Surrealism and Expressionism

46-02 Marcel Duchamp (to be recorded)

47 Constructivism and Suprematism 1917-1921

47-01 Constructivism and Suprematism (to be recorded)

48 De Stijl 1917-1931

48-01 Piet Mondrian and De Stijl (to be recorded)

49 Bauhaus 1919-1933

49-01 Bauhaus (to be recorded)

50 Harlem Renaissance

50-01 The Harlem Renaissance

51 American Realists & Modernism

51-01 American Realists – Edward Hopper

51-02 American Realists – Georgia O’Keeffe

52 British Art 1900-1950

52-01 British Art 1900-50 British Art 1900-1950

52-02 British Art 1900-50 – British Sculpture

52-03 British Art 1900-50 – The Great War and After,1910-1930

52-04 British Art 1900-50 – British Realists in the 1920s and 30s

52-05 British Art 1900-50 – Aftermath WWI Art

52-06 British Art 1900-50 – Return to Order Stanley Spencer

52-07 British Art 1900-50 – The Interwar Years,1930s

52-08 British Art 1900-50 – British Figurative Art

52-09 British Art 1900-50 – Gwen John

52-10 British Art 1900-50 – Augustus John

52-11 British Art 1900-50 – Laura Knight

52-12 British Art 1900-50 – World War 2 Art

53 Surrealism 1920-1930

53-01 Women Surrealists

53-02 René Magritte

53-03 Salvador Dalí

The following is a conversation about Salvador Dalí was generated by Google’s NotebookLM. The voices and the conversation are completely AI generated.

54 Escher 1898-1972

54-01 Maurits Escher (to be recorded)

55 Art Deco 1920-1930

55-01 Tamara de Lempicka

The following is a conversation about Tamara de Lempicka was generated by Google’s NotebookLM. The voices and the conversation are completely AI generated.

56 Magical Realism and New Objectivity 1925-1950

56-01 Magic Realism (to be recorded)

57 Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field Painting

57-01 Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field Painting (to be recorded)

57-02 Jackson Pollock (to be recorded)

57-03 Mark Rothko (to be recorded)

57-04 Willem De Kooning (to be recorded)

57-05 Kenneth Noland (to be recorded)

58 Pop Art 1950-1960

58-01 World War II and After

58-02 Pop Art Warhol and Hockney

59 Neo-Dada 1952-1960

59-01 Jasper Johns (to be recorded)

59-02 Robert Rauschenberg (to be recorded)

60 Recent Art

60-01 New Ways of Seeing

60-02 Pop Art and Beyond 

60-03 Postmodern Art, 1980-2000

60-04 British Art since 1950 Introduction

60-05 Young British Artists

60-06 British Figurative Art since 1950

60-07 Feminist Art

60-08 Conceptual Art & Minimalism

60-09 Video and Performance Art

60-10 Op Art & Bridget Riley (to be recorded)

60-11 Kinetic Art (to be recorded)

60-12 Land Art and Earth Art (to be recorded)

60-03 Neo-expressionism (to be recorded)

60-04 Installation Art (to be recorded)

60-05 Photorealism & Hyperrealism (to be recorded)

60-06 Arte Povera (to be recorded

61 Recent Artists

61-01 David Hockney

61-01 David Hockney (Podcast produced by Google NotebookLM)

61-02 Grayson Perry and Outsider Arty

61-03 Francis Bacon (to be recorded)

61-04 Lucian Freud (Podcast produced by Google NotebookLM)

61-05 Ai Weiwei (to be recorded)

61-06 Damien Hirst (to be recorded)

61-07 Tracey Emin (to be recorded)

61-08 Joseph Beuys (to be recorded)

61-09 Louise Bourgeois (to be recorded)

61-10 Antony Gormley (to be recorded)

61-11 Anish Kapoor (to be recorded)

61-12 Chris Ofili (to be recorded)

61-13 Bruce Nauman (to be recorded)

61-14 Paulo Rego (to be recorded)

61-15 Sarah Lucas (to be recorded)

61-16 Rachel Whiteread (to be recorded)

61-17 Banksy (to be recorded)

62 AI and Art

62-01 What is AI?

62-02 Can AI be Creative?

62-03 AI-Generated Art

62-04 Collaborative Art

62-05 Interactive Art and AI

62-06 Music Composition and AI

62-07 AI in Film and Animation

62-08 AI-Enhanced Photography and Image Editing

62-09 AI in Architecture and Design

62-10 AI in Literary Arts

62-11 AI and Art Criticism

62-12 Art Restoration and Preservation

62-13 AI in Digital and Video Games

62-14 NFTs and AI

62-15 AI in Art History

62-16 Ethical and Philosophical Questions

62-17 The Limits of AI

97 Forgery

97-01 Forgery – The Genius of Art Forgery

97-02 Forgery – The 12 Greatest Art Forgers (Part 1)

97-03 Forgery – The 12 Greatest Art Forgers (Part 2)

97-04 Forgery – Can You Spot a Fake (Parts 1 & 2)

98 Tate

98-01 A History of the Tate

98-02 Tate & The Turner Prize

98-03 Tate Britain in 60 Minutes

98-04 Tate Modern: Artist and Society

98-05 Tate Modern: In the Studio

98-06 Tate Modern: Materials and Objects

98-07 Tate Modern: Media Networks

99 General Topics

99-01 General – How to Read Paintings

99-02 General – Looking at Art

99-03 General – Too Good to Eat

99-04 General – Art at the Seaside

99-05 General – Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art

99-06 General – The Thames in Art

99-07 General – Venice – City of Water

99-08 General – Art Meets Science

99-09 The RA Summer Exhibition (Part 1)

99-09 The RA Summer Exhibition (Part 2)

99-10 General – The World’s Most Expensive Paintings

99-11 General – Children in Art SCF

99-12 My Top Ten Strangest Paintings

99-12 My Top Ten Strangest Painting (Podcast generated by Goggle’s NotebookLM)