Your question is too general. There are many schools and styles of Western painting, each with different characteristics. This is enough to write a paper.
Let’s start with the Renaissance. European Renaissance art from the 14th to 16th centuries aimed to adhere to realist methods and embody humanistic ideas, which was expressed as a firm realism in early Renaissance paintings. ism. With the help of linear perspective discovered by Brunelleschi, pictures acquired a true sense of three-dimensionality; with the help of the precise study of the human figure, the human figure now acquired volume; careful observation of nature gave rise to various earthly phenomena. Faithful reproduction. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael in Italy are the three representatives of Renaissance art.
Baroque art appeared in Europe in the 17th century. It originated in Italy and later became popular throughout Europe. It is characterized by the pursuit of passion and sporty performance, emphasizing gorgeous and gorgeous decoration. It is different from the solemn and elegant Renaissance art in the 16th century. It is a passionate art that breaks the tranquility and harmony of reason, has a strong romantic color, and places great emphasis on the rich imagination of the artist; it strongly emphasizes movement, movement, and change can be said to be the soul of Baroque art; it pays great attention to The work has a sense of space and three-dimensionality; it has a strong religious color, and religious themes occupy a dominant position in Baroque art. Rubens is a representative figure of Baroque painting. His passionate and colorful paintings have a lasting influence on Western painting. Realist masters of the same era, such as Rembrandt of the Netherlands and Velázquez of Spain, also have Baroque characteristics to a certain extent.
The Rococo style emerged in France in the 18th century and subsequently spread to other European countries. Rococo art is characterized by its pursuit of gorgeousness, delicacy and refinement. This art form is characterized by lightness, refinement, delicacy, and complexity. Table painters include French Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard.
With the advent of the French Bourgeois Revolution in 1789, progressive artists once again revived the heroic spirit of ancient Greece and Rome and launched a neoclassical art movement. Classical art, under the banner of reviving ancient Greek and Roman art, appeared in France as early as the 17th century. It lasted until the early 19th century and became the main trend of thought in European literature and art. The so-called classicism is named after the literature and art of ancient Greece and Rome. In the mid-18th century, the excavation of Pompeii and the spread of the aesthetic ideas of German scholar Winckelmann aroused people's interest in classicism. Classicism was revived again, so it was called neoclassicism. The so-called "neoclassicism" first follows the rationalist point of view, believing that art must proceed from reason and exclude the artist's subjective thoughts and feelings. Especially in the face of conflicts of social and personal interests, individuals must restrain their emotions, obey reason and law, and advocate The perfect morality of a citizen is to sacrifice oneself and fulfill one's duty for the motherland. The creation of artistic images advocates the ideal beauty of ancient Greece; it focuses on the integrity of classical art forms, sculpture-like shapes, and pursues elegance, solemnity, and harmony. At the same time, it adheres to strict sketches and clear outlines, and tries its best to weaken the color elements of paintings. The "newness" of "neoclassicism" lies in the fact that it borrows themes and expressions of ancient heroism to directly depict major events and heroic figures in real struggles, closely cooperates with real struggles, and directly serves the bourgeoisie to seize and consolidate power. It has a distinctive Realistic tendency. Therefore, neoclassicism, also known as revolutionary classicism, has dignified, elegant and obvious characteristics of the times. The neoclassical style, a perfect combination of classical and modern, originated from the classical era, but it is not an antique or retro style, but a resemblance to the gods. Its main characteristics are: choosing serious and major themes (major events in ancient history and reality), emphasizing rational rather than emotional expression in artistic form; emphasizing integrity in composition; emphasizing sketches and outlines in modeling, focusing on Sculpture-like figures, but not enough attention to color. Its representative painters are David and Ingres of France.
Romanticism arose with the decline of Neoclassicism. "The Raft of the Medusa" by Géricault of France is regarded as the pioneering work of romantic painting, but the leader of this movement was Delacroix, whose paintings have strong colors, unrestrained brushwork, and are full of strong passion. His representative works include "The Massacre of Chia" and "Liberty Leads the People".
The mid-19th century was a period when realist art flourished.
Realism as an art movement emerged at the same time as the French Revolution of 1848. Realistic art advocates objective observation of real life, truly expressing typical images in typical environments and reproducing life according to the original appearance of real life. The most famous realist painter is Courbet. He has a famous saying: "I can't draw an angel because I have never seen him." This sentence embodies the spirit of realist art. Representative painters include Millet, Corot, Rousseau, etc.
Impressionism emerged in France in the late 19th century. This school of painting appeared with an innovative attitude. It opposed the outdated artistic concepts and rules of the classical academic school at that time. Inspired by modern optics and color science, it focused on expressing the effect of light in paintings. Impressionist painting, also called Impressionism, is an epoch-making art school in the history of Western painting. Many people have different views on academic teaching methods and painting styles. They believe that classicism is uniform and lacks personal style. They prefer realism and advocate outdoor sketching. Impressionism adopts the method of directly depicting scenes under outdoor sunlight, pursuing the use of thinking to figure out the changes of light and color, and attaching the instantaneous light feeling to the canvas based on the processing in one's mind. This kind of speculation on light and color is also Reaching the ultimate beauty of color and light. Impressionist painting uses points to replace the simple lines and surfaces of traditional painting, thereby achieving a depiction of light that traditional painting cannot achieve. Due to different personal interests, Impressionist painters are divided into two types: those that emphasize light and color and those that emphasize modeling and sketching. The former is represented by Monet and Renoir, the latter is represented by Degas, and Camille Pissarro. Somewhere in between.
After Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism (represented by Seurat and Signac) and Post-Impressionism (represented by Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin) appeared. In fact, Post-Impressionism and Impressionism have different artistic ideas and are even completely opposite. Among them, Van Gogh's paintings focus on expressing his strong emotions, with bright colors and unrestrained lines. Gauguin's paintings mostly contain symbolic meanings and decorative lines and colors. Cézanne's paintings pursued geometric structure, and he was therefore revered as the "Father of Modern Art".
Since the 20th century, modern art has shown a variety of schools and styles. The Fauvist painting represented by Matisse, born in 1905, emphasized the simplification and flatness of shapes and pursued the decorative nature of the picture. Cubist painting, represented by Braque and Picasso, which emerged in 1908, inherited Cezanne's modeling rules and decomposed natural objects into geometric blocks, thereby fundamentally breaking away from the visual rules and spatial concepts of traditional painting.
With the establishment of the Bridge Society in Germany in 1905 and the Blue Rider Society in 1909, expressionism entered the painting world as an important genre. This school of painting focused on expressing the painter's subjective spirit and inner emotions.
1 The Futurist art movement appeared in Italy in 1909. Painters of this school were keen to use Cubism to decompose objects to express the feeling of moving objects and movement. Abstract art works were produced around 1910. Its representative painters include the Russian painter Kandinsky and the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, and both of them represent the two directions of lyrical abstraction and geometric abstraction respectively.
Dadaism emerged during the First World War. Artists of this school not only opposed war, authority, and tradition, but also denied art itself and everything else. Duchamp painted Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" with a beard and used the urinal as a work of art, which is the embodiment of Dadaism.
As the Dada movement faded, the Surrealist artistic trend emerged on this basis. This school of painters is based on Bergson's intuitionism, Freud's psychoanalysis and dream psychology, and strives to show the unconscious and subconscious world. His paintings often combine detailed descriptions with fictional artistic conceptions to express dreams and hallucinations. Representative painters include Ernst, René Magritte, Chagall, Dali, Joan Miró, etc.
The abstract expressionist paintings produced in the United States after World War II, represented by Pollock and de Kooning, combine the characteristics of abstraction and expressionism, emphasizing the freedom of movement and freedom of the painter. automaticity.
Pop Art, which originated in the United Kingdom in the early 1950s and flourished in the United States in the mid-1950s, inherited the spirit of Dadaism and made extensive use of waste, product posters, movie advertisements, and various newspapers and periodicals in its works. The pictures are collaged together, so it is also called Neo-Dadaism. Representative figures include American painters Johns, Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, etc.
The main feature of the hyper-realism (or photorealism) movement that emerged in the 1970s is the use of photographic results for objective reproduction and realistic depiction. Representative painters include Close and Perlstein. Among the sculptors, Andre and Hansen are the most famous.
This is just a summary for reference.