The history of art can be traced back to cave paintings of about 15000 BC. The nature of paintings changed little until around 1450 AD, when the Renaissance brought-about naturalistic styles and formal rules of composition, such as perspective (Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc). Following the Renaissance, new styles emerged every 50 to 100 years, but nothing significantly changed (e.g. the rules of perspective were still applied).

In 1874, Impressionism was born (Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, etc). The term was originally used to make fun of Claude Monet's painting "Impression: Sunrise", but was adopted by artists to describe their style of work. Most people are familiar with Impressionism, so I will not waste words describing the style, and move on. At the end of the 1800s, Impressionism spawned Post Impressionism (Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, etc). While Impressionism had remained faithful to nature, Post Impressionism favoured brighter and more unnatural colors.

Next we had Abstraction, where artists (Modigliani, Picasso, etc) changed the appearance of their subject so it no longer looked realistic, by shifting the point of view, exaggeration, simplification, etc. At the risk of over simplifying things myself - Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, and Dada all quickly followed, and were variations on Abstraction. As the 21th century begins, Realism is set to move to the forefront once again. It is representational art that brings the world around us onto the canvas; it is a language that even those who are ignorant of art can appreciate.