A Guide to Western Art

Free Lecture Notes in PDF Format

These are all my current and planned talks.The numbers represent chapters and sections within the chapter and the titles correspond to those on YouTube. A letter after the number indicates different versions of the same talk. 

The links load PDF files that contain all the slides with their associated lecture notes and references. The PDF notes sometimes contain slides that are omitted from the talk. When there is no link I have not yet written the talk. Some of the talks are videos on my YouTube channel for Laurence Shafe.

Please feel free to use the talks and the notes but don’t blame me for any mistakes, please double check everything yourself.

00 Introduction

  • 00-01 A History of Western Art

01 The Earliest Art

02 Egyptian Art 3,000-300 BC

03 Greek Art 2,000-450AD

04 Roman Art 27BC – 450AD

05 Byzantine Art 500-1200

06 Celtic, Saxon and Viking Art 550-900

07 Medieval Art 800-1000

08 Romanesque Art 1000-1300

09 Gothic and Netherlandish Art 1100-1500

10 Renaissance Art 1400-1600

11 Mannerism 1520-1600

12 Tudor and Stuart Art

13 Baroque Art 1600-1700

14 Dutch Golden Age 1600-1700

15 Academic Art 1600-1900

16 Restoration England 1660-1700

17 Eighteenth Century British Art

18 Rococo Art 1700-1770

  • 18-01 Canaletto
  • 18-02 François Boucher
  • 18-03 Jean-Honoré Fragonard

19 Spanish Art

20 Neo-Classicism 1770-1830

21 Romanticism 1790-1850

22 Nineteenth-Century American Art

23 Victorian Art

24 Photography

25 Pre-Raphaelites 1848-1880

26 Nineteenth-Century French Art

  • 26-01 Barbizon School
  • 26-02 French Realism & Gustav Courbet
  • 26-03 French Orientalism

27 Impressionism 1860-1880

28 Aestheticism 1870-1890

29 Degenerate Art

30 Post Impressionism 1880-1905

31 Symbolism 1890-1920

  • 31-01 Symbolism 1890-1920

32 Russian Art 1890-1930

33 Pointillism & Divisionism

  • 33-01 Georges Seurat and Paul Signac

34 Arts & Crafts

35 Art Nouveau 1890-1914

36 South American Art 1900-present

  • 36-01 Frida Kahlo (Mexico, 1907-1954)
  • 36-02 Diego Rivera (Mexico, 1886-1957)
  • 36-03 Lygia Clark (Brazil, 1920-1988)
  • 36-04 Hélio Oiticica (Brazil, 1937-1980)

37 Edvard Munch (1863-1944)

38 Modernism 1900-present

39 Ashcan School 1890-1920

  • 39-01 George Bellows

40 Les Fauves 1900-1907

  • 40-01 André Derain
  • 40-02 Henri Matisse

41 Cubism 1907-1918

42 Expressionism 1900s-1930

  • 42-01 What is Expressionism?

43 Futurism 1909-1915

  • 43-01 Futurism

44 Vorticism 1913-1915

45 Abstract Art 1915-1940

46 Dada 1915-1922

47 Constructivism and Suprematism 1917-1921

  • 47-01 Constructivism and Suprematism

48 De Stijl 1917-1931

  • 48-01 Piet Mondrian and De Stijl

49 Bauhaus 1919-1933

  • 49-01 Bauhaus

50 Harlem Renaissance

51 American Realists & Modernism

52 British Art 1900-1950

53 Surrealism 1920-1930

54 Escher 1898-1972

  • 54-01 Maurits Escher

55 Art Deco 1920-1930

56 Magical Realism and New Objectivity 1925-1950

  • 56-01 Magic Realism

57 Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field Painting

  • 57-01 Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field Painting
  • 57-02 Jackson Pollock
  • 57-03 Mark Rothko
  • 57-04 Willem De Kooning
  • 57-05 Kenneth Noland

58 Pop Art 1950-1960

59 Neo-Dada 1952-1960

  • 59-01 Jasper Johns
  • 59-02 Robert Rauschenberg

60 Recent Art

61 Recent Artists

  • 61-01 David Hockney
  • 61-02 Grayson Perry & Outsider Art
  • 61-03 Francis Bacon
  • 61-04 Lucien Freud
  • 61-05 Ai Weiwei
  • 61-06 Damien Hirst
  • 61-07 Tracey Emin
  • 61-08 Joseph Beuys
  • 61-09 Louise Bourgeois
  • 61-10 Antony Gormley
  • 61-11 Anish Kapoor
  • 61-12 Chris Ofili
  • 61-13 Bruce Nauman
  • 61-14 Paulo Rego
  • 61-15 Sarah Lucas
  • 61-16 Rachel Whiteread
  • 61-17 Banksy

97 Forgery

98 Tate

99 General Topics