Painting, Sketching & Enjoying Arts

Because I don’t have an art background, I decided to read “The Story of Art” by Gombrich from cover to cover. To help me remember what I read, I summarized each chapter in a small notebook. I also thought it would be fun to sketch what I considered the most iconic artwork from each chapter. This resulted in a series of sketches using different media on almost translucent paper, so you might see some notes showing through. The series begins with a cave painting and ends with a painting by Morandi with a touch of Duchamp. I admit that I sometimes adapted the sketches to suit my taste. After all, the site is called “Arts Fun” for a reason.

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Preface
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Strange beginnings
Prehistoric and primitive peoples; Ancient America
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Art for eternity
Egypt, Mesopotamia, Crete
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The great awakening
Greece, seventh to fifth century BC
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The realm of beauty
Greece and the Greek world, fourth century BC to first century AD
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World conquerors
Romans, Buddhists, Jews and Christians , first to fourth century AD
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A parting of ways
Rome and Byzantium, fifth to thirteenth century
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Looking eastwards
Islam, China, second to thirteenth century
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Western art in the melting pot
Europe, sixth to eleventh century
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The church militant
The twelfth century
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The church triumphant
The thirteenth century
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Courtiers and burghers
The fourteenth century
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The conquest of reality
The early fifteenth century
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Tradition and innovation I
The later fifteenth century in Italy
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Tradition and innovation II
The fifteenth century in the North
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Harmony attained
Tuscany and Rome, early sixteenth century
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Light and colour
Venice and northern Italy, early sixteenth century
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The new learning spreads
Germany and the Netherlands, early sixteenth century
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A crisis of art
Europe, later sixteenth century
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Vision and visions
Catholic Europe, first half of the seventeenth century
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The mirror of nature
Holland, seventeenth century
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Power and glory I
Italy, later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
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Power and glory II
France, Germany and Austria, late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
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The age of reason
England and France, eighteenth century
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The break in tradition
England, America and France, late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
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Permanent revolution
The nineteenth century
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In search of new standards
The late nineteenth century
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Experimental art
The first half of the twentieth century
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A story without end
The triumph of Modernism , Another turning of the tide, The changing past
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