“History of Art” is an application created by a group of art-lovers who have been finding and struggling with some deficiencies while researching and analyzing art from online and printed sources, such as:

• The limited scope:
  • Most sources include only post 14th century-western art, which excludes an extremely rich and interesting world of arts in other cultures, religions, regions, and times that should never be missed out on.
  • Most sources focus on paintings and sculptures; but there are also decorative arts, miniatures, manuscripts, metalworks, reliefs, mosaics, cave paintings, jewelry, architectural works, photographs, and so on.
  • There are very limited sources printed and online about architecture, and these sources are positioned apart from art history. But we think architecture is an indispensable subject of any art/art history source.
  • Generally, the main movements are included in art sources. But groups, schools, and styles, as well as movements are also extremely important to be able to follow the progress of art and art history through.
  • The limited amount of samples per topic, which limits the understandability of the subject.
• The lack of integrity of content data. All content and the relations between movements, artists, artworks, types, places, styles, etc. are impossible to include in printed sources because of dimensional and extent limits, which leaves the content incomplete, yet there are not enough online sources including this holistic data.
• The size and the weight of the printed sources already :)

We think that the journey of art through the ages is the best source of mankind's history. So, a large scoped, user-friendly, and verified art source is not essential only for understanding art, but also for figuring us out as humans and where humanity is heading to.

With this perspective, we started to think about a solution to all these issues. The thought turned into a dream and then “The History of Art” application was born as this dream coming true.

After two years of hard work, we scanned all public and online sources (over 100.000 Wikipedia articles, Wikimedia images, museum web sites, search engines, and so on) available. We checked, analyzed, verified, organized, classified, prioritized, and grouped over 100.000 artists, artworks, movements, cultures, styles, architectural works, relations, and so on, all on an individual basis with our editorial team.

This work resulted in content including;

• 200+ art movements and styles,
• 300+ cultures and periods,
• 350+ architectural styles and regions,
• 180+ art schools and groups,
• 40.000+ artists and architects,
• 120.000+ artworks,
• 50.000+ architectural works,
• 200.000+ Wikipedia articles
and so much more.

All through this creation process, we;

• Analyzed the art content in the largest scope possible.
• Grouped this content by ages, regions, movements, styles, types, cultures, religions, and so on.
• Designed a user-friendly application for this content.

FEATURES

Art Through the Ages: We thought that grouping the art content into ages would be a good approach for you to get to know art history in advance. You can see all movements, styles, groups, schools, cultures, etc. of that age. You can compare the evolution of art in different parts of the world within that age.

We paid special attention to the Prehistoric Art and Ancient Art because they have special importance as the inheritance of our oldest ancestors. We created a rich content from cave paintings to venus figurines, from potteries to megaliths, from Ancient Greece to Ancient Egypt, from Huns to Hittites, from Lapitas to Mathura, and so on...

The only age that we are not satisfied with is post-1945 art. There are very limited sources that are copyright-free. But we continue to work on it.

Movements and Styles: To follow through the art, you should examine the movements from Visigothic to Renaissance; Romanesque to Realism; Gothic to Dada; and styles of art from Black-figure Pottery to Orientalism; Coptic Art to Pointillism; Japonism to Feminist art.

Cultures: While western art is grouped into movements, non-western art is divided into cultures. Cultures vary from Japanese to Islamic, Oceanian to African, Native American to Chinese all further divided into periods.

Schools and Groups: Another important classification of art is the schools and groups throughout history.

Fundamentals of Art: We created a dictionary including fundamental terms of art (forms, techniques, types, etc.) to help you understand the concept better.

Architecture: We are also proud of our architecture content, which we put a special effort into. We collected and classified over tens of thousands of architectural structures into ages from Neolithic to Contemporary; regions from Africa to Oceania; and countries from Sri Lanka to Finland. We collected the most important architectural structures from hundreds of regions and cities.

Galleries: Galleries, which are groups of artworks based on their concept (birds, portraits, Paris, sleeping, rain, e.t.c.) are one of our most important facilities. Via galleries:

• You can discover new artists, artworks, movements, and cultures
• You can see the progress and diversity of art through ages, cultures, and regions.

Most Popular Items: We prepared lists of the most popular artworks, artists, architects, architectural works, and museums for you to be able to explore and discover them.

New Discoveries Every Day: “History of Art” application is not created as an art history ebook. We want it to be a dynamic, living application. For this purpose, we set an artwork, architectural work, artist/architect every single day to make you discover a new world of art.

Facilities: We assisted our application with many facilities such as:

• Timelines,
• Maps,
• In-app search,
• Share,
• Search external links,
• Favorite management,
• Multilingual interface (over 20 languages and counting)

We have huge respect for the property rights of others. We have been using only public and copyright-free content in the application. We gave the credit of every single item as described. In case you think that we have skipped a credit, please do not hesitate to use the “Report” facility of our application or email us.

In this context; we would like to thank the museums and foundations for opening their artworks to public use, authors for sharing their free photos on Wikimedia Commons, and Wikipedia community members participating in the articles. This application could never come to life without them.

As time goes by, art history content will continue to be expanded, we will continue to discover new artists, artworks, museums, art terms, architectural works, and so on. Maturing the context is an endless process and we have to keep working on it. We always feel ready to begin the process of creating new content, new facilities, maybe even new history applications.

To be able to continue working on the content and keeping our application alive, we had to make some part of the application paid. We set the price as low as we could, aiming to offer new content every day for free use.

As the immortal painter Edgar Degas said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” We are more than eager to hear what you see in our application. Please do not hesitate to share your comments and suggestions.