Culture of Europe - Art

Art

• Painting

The oldest known cave paintings are at the El Castillo cave (Spain), older than 40,800 years. The history of Western painting represents a continuous, though disrupted, tradition from antiquity. Until the mid 19th century it was primarily concerned with representational and Classical modes of production, after which time more modern, abstract and conceptual forms gained favor. Developments in Western painting historically parallel those in Eastern painting, in general a few centuries later.

• Sculpture

The earliest European sculpture to date portrays a female form, and has been estimated at dating from 35,000 years ago. See Classical sculpture, Ancient Greek sculpture, Gothic art, Renaissance, Mannerist, Baroque, Neoclassicism, Modernism, Postminimalism, found art, Postmodern art, Conceptual art.

• Music
  • Classical Music : Important classical composers from Europe include Hildegard von Bingen, Guillaume de Machaut, Pérotin, Guillaume Dufay, Orlande de Lassus, Jean-Baptiste Lully, J.S. Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, Schumann, Liszt, Chopin, Wagner, Rimsky-Korsakov, Bruckner, Camille Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Falla, Granados, Albéniz, Rodrigo, Schoenberg, Bartok, Nielsen, Sibelius, Prokofiev, Puccini, Debussy, Rossini, Ravel, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Penderecki. Luciano Pavarotti was a contemporary popular opera singer. Orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra are considered to be amongst the finest ensembles in the world. The Salzburg Festival, the Bayreuth Festival, the Edinburgh International Festival and the BBC Proms are major European classical music festivals, and International Chopin Piano Competition is the world's oldest monographic music competition.
  • Folk Music : Europe has a wide and diverse range of indigenous music, sharing common features in rural, travelling or maritime communities. Folk music is embedded in an unwritten, aural tradition, but was increasingly transcribed from the nineteenth century onwards. Many classical composers used folk melodies, and folk has influenced some popular music in Europe.
  • Popular Music : Europe has also imported many different genres of music, mainly from America, ranging from Blues, Jazz, Soul, Pop, Rap, Hip-Hop, R'n'B and Dance. The UK has been most successful in re-exporting this type of music and also creating many of its own genres via notable movements including the British Invasion, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (that has been compared to Beatlemania.) and Britpop. Some major UK acts include The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Elton John, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Deep Purple, Sex Pistols, Eric Clapton, The Clash, Van Morrison, Dire Straits, The Police, Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, George Michael, Pet Shop Boys, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, The Who, Eurythmics, Dusty Springfield, The Cure, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Duran Duran, Oasis, Radiohead, Coldplay, One Direction, Muse, Gorillaz, Robbie Williams, Seal, Bee Gees, Spice Girls, UB40, Adele, Jessie J, Amy Winehouse... Other popular European musicians are U2 (Ireland), Björk (Iceland), ABBA (Sweden), a-ha (Norway), Alizée (France), Andrea Bocelli (Italy), Julio Iglesias (Spain), Nana Mouskouri (Greece/France), Kati Wolf (Hungary), Boney M. (Germany), Daft Punk (France), Charles Aznavour (France), Johnny Hallyday (France), Modern Talking (Germany), Scorpions (Germany), Rammstein (Germany), Ace of Base (Sweden), t.A.T.u. (Russia), Enya (Ireland), James Last (Germany), Doda (Poland), Jean Michel Jarre (France), Aqua (Denmark/Norway), Rasmus Seebach (Denmark), Roxette (Sweden). Main festivals: Glastonbury (UK), Wacken (Germany), Benicassim (Spain), Roskilde (Denmark). EMI is the largest European music company.

• Architecture

Neolithic architecture : Born in the Levant, Neolithic architecture spread to Europe. The Mediterranean neolithic cultures of Malta worshiped in megalithic temples. In Europe, long houses built from wattle and daub were constructed. Elaborate tombs for the dead were also built. These tombs are particularly numerous in Ireland, where there are many thousand still in existence. Neolithic people built long barrows and chamber tombs for their dead and causewayed camps, henges flint mines and cursus monuments., Architecture of ancient Greece, Roman architecture, Medieval architecture, Renaissance architecture, Baroque architecture, Beaux-Arts architecture, Expressionist architecture, Stalinist architecture, Deconstructivism.

• Literature

Europe has produced some of the most prominent or popular fiction and nonfiction writers of all time : Homer, Sappho (Greece) Virgil, Francesco Petrarca, Dante Alighieri, Salvatore Quasimodo, Umberto Eco (Italy) François Rabelais, Alexandre Dumas, Racine, Molière, Voltaire, Jules Verne, Marcel Proust, Daniel Pennac, Albert Camus, Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (France) Garcilaso de la Vega, Miguel de Cervantes, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Francisco de Quevedo, Luis de Góngora, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Benito Pérez Galdós, Pío Baroja, Federico García Lorca (Spain) Luís de Camões, José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, Fernando Pessoa, José Saramago (Portugal) William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jane Austen, H. G. Wells, J. R. R. Tolkien, J. K. Rowling, Beatrix Potter, D. H. Lawrence, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, John Milton, Terry Pratchett, Mary Shelley, Roald Dahl, Lewis Carroll, Agatha Christie, Daniel Defoe, Alan Moore, Rudyard Kipling (U.K) Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, J. M. Barrie, Walter Scott (Scotland) Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Mikhail Sholokhov, Anton Chekhov, Alexander Pushkin (Russia) C. S. Lewis, Bram Stoker, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett William Butler Yeats (Ireland) Brothers Grimm, Anne Frank, Patrick Süskind (Germany) Joseph Conrad, Czesław Miłosz, Zbigniew Herbert, Witold Gombrowicz, Henryk Sienkiewicz, (Poland) Franz Kafka (Czech Republic) Hans Christian Andersen (Denmark) Sigrid Undset, Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun (Norway) Nikolai Gogol, Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko (Ukraine) Stieg Larsson (Sweden)

• Performing arts

See Western art history, dance, drama, and circus arts.

• Film

In 1897, Georges Méliès established the first cinema studio on a rooftop property in Montreuil, near Paris. Some notable European film movements include German Expressionism, Italian neorealism, French New Wave, Polish Film School, New German Cinema, Portuguese Cinema Novo, Czechoslovak New Wave, Dogme 95, New French Extremity, and Romanian New Wave. The cinema of Europe has its own awards, the European Film Awards. Main festivals : Cannes Film Festival (France), Berlin International Film Festival (Germany). The Venice Film Festival (Italy) or Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica di Venezia, is the oldest film festival in the world.

• Video Game

Some of the most popular games of all time come from Europe: the Grand Theft Auto (series), Tomb Raider, Cossacks: European Wars, The Settlers, The Patrician, Brain Challenge, Block Breaker Deluxe, Europa Universalis.