One Minute Art History: Centuries of Artistic Styles Get Packed Into a Short Experimental Animation

From Cao Shu, a new media artist at the Chi­na Acad­e­my of Art, comes an exper­i­men­tal ani­ma­tion called “One Minute Art His­to­ry.” This work has been described as “a fas­ci­nat­ing mon­tage in which cen­turies of artis­tic trends are packed into a sin­gle minute of film. Start­ing in ancient Egypt and con­tin­u­ing into present day, each image in this imag­i­na­tive ani­ma­tion is a fleet­ing visu­al of the past.”

Else­where, the film has been described a bit more con­cep­tu­al­ly:

Art his­to­ry is a long tale which tells us what hap­pened in the past, but can­not tell us where new oppor­tu­ni­ties lie. Wait­ing, like art itself, is an absur­di­ty, some kind of eter­nal behav­iour with no pur­pose and no end­ing.

The run time of “One Minute Art His­to­ry” is, yes, one minute.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

An Online Guide to 350 Inter­na­tion­al Art Styles & Move­ments: An Invalu­able Resource for Stu­dents & Enthu­si­asts of Art His­to­ry

100,000 Free Art His­to­ry Texts Now Avail­able Online Thanks to the Get­ty Research Por­tal