The art history hands down from generation to generation. The spirit of civilization was also passed to us. In fact the oil paintings that we can see today are the artist’s fruits of wisdom based on their historical environment and their life experiences. Appreciating an oil painting, particularly an ancient oil painting art, we normally need to reference the artists’ times and compare the precious art style, even the following art development that we could find the exact position of the oil painting in art history, and understanding the true meaning of the artists beauty.
Oil painting world is a three-dimensional phenomenon that carried the oil painting’s changes and development. The art ideals and styles are very different in different historical periods. The emerging of the post-impressionism painting separated the whole western painting development into two stages. That’s why the western art from Renaissance to 80s of the 19th century was named as classical paintings.
The features of classical paintings: The shapes were normally realistic and the painting compositions were complete. The art aesthetics inclination was harmonious and elegant. Western paintings from post-impressionism to contemporary were named as modern paintings.
The feature is that the artists don’t follow the truth of classical art principles, and they didn’t paint for only depicting the objective world but in a large extent influenced by the modern aesthetics, psychology and the oriental art. They lay importance to the subjective feeling elements, even developed into extreme.
We need to consider about different appreciating principles and method for understanding the distinguished method. Never the less, when you face an outstanding modern art and judge it by the traditional art standard, that would be jokes.
The western art purpose and artistic style are different in different background. The more we know about the times in history and the social conditions the more we are close to the art spirit and soul. Hence, the art appreciators need to study the culture history and the art developing history for understanding the oil painting art better.