Your Cart is Empty
Proudly Made In Massachusetts! 
Skip to Content 
Back in March, we created a sort of Art History 101 crash course to help you be a little more knowledgeable when selecting a piece of art for your Samsung Frame TV. We shared samples and styles like the world-famous Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck and Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.
We wanted to get a little more advanced and get into a 201-level course to find some lesser-known — but no less beautiful — portraits to include in your Samsung Frame TV. These are high-resolution images that, when combined with one of our beautiful Deco Frames, can create a museum in your own living room or family room.
Here are sevenmore important periods of art for you to consider for your Samsung Frame TV.
Byzantine art is a product of the Eastern Roman Empire and includes the 5th through the 15th centuries. A lot of religious iconography was produced during this time, so it's known for its rich use of gold and intricate mosaics.
A lot of holy and divine people were depicted with gold halos surrounding their heads, so you've probably seen examples of this without even realizing it. The Byzantine period influenced a lot of European and Middle Eastern artists.
A great example of Byzantine art is the "The Good Shepherd" mosaic in theMausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, Italy. Ravenna is home to many amazing examples of Byzantine mosaic art and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. (Interesting note: The Mausoleum is said to have inspired Cole Porter to compose his song, "Night and Day.")
This mosaic showcases some of the masterful and intricate mosaic techniques, using tinytesserae — small blocks of stone, tile, or glass; also a restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia — to create this dazzling image.
The golden haloes create a sense of otherworldliness and spiritual significance. In Byzantine art, people are rendered with precise lines and vivid colors, which gives them a sense of divine authority. More important people are also shown to be larger than others, which denotes their significance. Meanwhile, lesser-significant people have plain, non-gold haloes or no haloes at all.
Byzantine artists would create their work using a technique known as "reverse mosaic." That's where the tesserae were placed on a smaller surface and then transferred to the wall. This method allowed for greater precision and detail in the finished work. The golden haloes are made with gold leaf, which is a hallmark of Byzantine art.
Aboriginal art, which is created by Indigenous Australians, is an ancient tradition with its roots in spirituality and land. It often symbolizes land, culture, and spirituality and is often made using intricate dot paintings.
A perfect example is "Tjukurrpa Tjukurrpa" by Emily Kame Kngwarreye. This painting explores her connection to her ancestral homeland. The colors and patterns create a sense of the Australian landscape, denoting its spiritual significance to the people who lived in Australia thousands of years before the first White settlers appeared.
The dots represent the Dreaming stories, and each one carries a specific meaning, often representing a particular site or event in the Dreaming.
Indigenous artists often used natural pigments like ochre and charcoal to create their works, rather than what we think of as "traditional" paints and colors. Many Indigenous artists still create contemporary works that use their traditional techniques and styles.
Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910 – 1996) was a highly influential Aboriginal artist who helped to revitalize traditional Aboriginal art forms. She used to paint for ceremonial purposes, usingbatik, a dyeing technique that draws or stamps wax on a cloth to prevent color absorption during the dyeing process.
She didn't start working as an artist until 1988, when she was introduced to acrylic paints. She produced3,000 — that's three thousand — paintings over the next eight years.
Ming Dynasty painting represented a period of great artistic growth in China. It's characterized by its refined brushwork, delicate colors, and poetic themes.
You've no doubt heard of Ming vases, made between the late 1300s through mid-1600s, and how they're considered to be some of the finest pottery work in the world. This is because they were made with a high level of technical mastery and aesthetic innovation.
Well, Ming Dynasty paintings are also highly prized by collectors and connoisseurs. While Ming Dynasty porcelain is admired for its technical perfection and beauty, Ming paintings are valued for their artistic expression, cultural significance, and historical importance. Both mediums represent the height of Chinese artistic achievement during the 14th through 17th centuries.
Some of the most revered artists during this time were the literati painters. They came from the scholar-official class — individuals who passed the civil service exams to pursue government careers. Some of the literati chose to focus their lives on painting, not a government career. Literati painters were well-educated in calligraphy, poetry, and music.
"A Branch of Bamboo" by Ni Zan is a perfect example of literati painting. It's a minimalist composition with muted colors that create a peaceful and meditative environment. The artist's precise brushwork shows his understanding of nature and sense of aesthetic appreciation. While the empty spaces — also known as"negative spaces" — are just as important as the painted areas.
They force us to only consider the branch of bamboo. There's nothing in the background, nothing to distract us from the diagonal stalk of bamboo growing from below the start of the canvas.
Ni Zan was one of the leading literati painters and is considered one of the ten best artists in Chinese history. He is known for his minimalist style and the ability to convey a sense of peace and solitude in his paintings. His work was an influence on other Chinese artists for centuries to come.
Art Nouveau was a reaction against the industrialization of the 19th century, and it was characterized by flowing lines, organic forms, and decorative motifs. It wasn't just felt in the fine arts; it also influenced architecture and design.
The goal was to bring a sense of beauty and elegance to everyday objects. The artists drew their inspiration from organic life and forms, like plants, flowers, and insects, and they preferred asymmetrical compositions and decorative motifs.
A famous Art Nouveau painting is The Kiss by Gustav Klimt, which he completed in 1908 and exhibited under the nameLiebespaar (The Lovers). The style is sensual and uses vibrant colors to show a man and woman in an embrace. They're kneeling on a flowery meadow, and she has her face upturned as he bends over to kiss her right cheek — symbolizing love and desire. His robe is golden with various geometric shapes, and he wears a crown of vines while she wears a crown of flowers.
The painting's composition and ornamentation create a sense of luxury and sensuality, and the use of gold leaf adds to the painting's dreamlike quality.
Klimt's use of gold leaf in his paintings was inspired by a trip he made to Italy in 1903, where he visited Ravenna (see our entry above on Byzantine art) and saw the Byzantine mosaics in theBasilica of San Vitale. He was so inspired by their lack of perspective and depth, and the way that enhanced the use of gold leaf, that he began to use gold and silver leaf in earnest.
Klimt's style is known for its bold colors, decorative patterns, and symbolic imagery; The Kiss is one of his most famous works, and is considered "the face" of the Art Nouveau movement.
Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi who designed some of the most iconic Art Nouveau buildings in the work, like the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. There is a myth that we get the word "gaudy" from Antoni Gaudi's style, but the word existed in the 16th century, and he lived between 1852 and 1926.
Another artistic movement that affected art, design, and architecture was the Art Deco movement. It's a style characterized by bold colors, geometric patterns, and a sense of luxury. It was very popular in the 1920s and 1930s and reflected the optimism and energy of the period.
Art Deco, a style characterized by geometric patterns, bold colors, and a sense of luxury, was popular in the 1920s and 1930s. It influenced architecture, design, and the fine arts, reflecting the optimism and energy of the era.
A well-known example of Art Deco painting is Tamara de Lempicka's "The Dream," which captures the spirit of the Jazz Age with its sleek lines, opulent details, and air of sophistication. de Lempicka was a Polish-born artist who became a leading figure of the Art Deco movement, often painting portraits of glamorous women to capture the spirit of the Jazz Age.
The Dream's stylized form creates a sense of energy and excitement. The image is of a nude woman reclining in an alluring pose, covering herself with her folded arms. She's a modern woman who fixes the viewer with a sense of sad boredom and smudged mascara to make you think she's tired after a long night of dancing and drinking.
Art Deco celebrated modernity, technology, and progress and was influenced by ancient Egyptian art, Cubism, and Futurism. The Art Deco artists often used new materials like chrome and Bakelite to create their sleek designs.
Surrealism, like Abstract Expressionism below, sought to explore the unconscious mind. But unlike Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism is characterized by dreamlike imagery, unexpected incongruities, and a sense of the irrational. Surrealist artists wanted to challenge the conventional ideas of reality and tap into the power of the subconscious.
The most famous of these paintings is Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory" (also known as "Melting Clocks"), but we write about that one a lot. So, instead, we're going to talk aboutRené Magritte's "The Treachery of Images."
This is a simple work: It's a painting of a pipe on a tan background, and the caption, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" or "This is not a pipe." By juxtaposing the image with the statement, Magritte sought to challenge our perception of reality and language.
In Harry Torczyner's 1977 book, Magritte: Ideas and Images, Magritte said, "The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture, 'This is a pipe,' I'd have been lying!"
The painting is sometimes used as an example of a meta message like Alfred Korzybski's statement, "The word is not the thing."
Surrealism was influenced by Freud's theories of the unconscious mind, and the artists often used techniques like automatic drawing and dream analysis to access the subconscious. In addition to Dali and Magritte, other notable Surrealist artists include Joan Miró, Leonora Carrington, Man Ray,and Yves Tanguy.
Magritte, who comes from Belgium, is also responsible for self-portrait, The Son Of Man — the painting of a man in an overcoat and bowler hat with a green apple obscuring his face.
Abstract Expressionism is an American art movement that emerged in the mid-20th century. It's marked by large-scale canvasses and expressive brushwork. The goal of Abstract Expressionism was to express the artist's emotions and unconscious mind.
One of the most famous examples of unconscious mind-expressing is"No. 5, 1948" by Jackson Pollock, painted in, well, 1948. It's a prime example of Pollock's "drip painting" technique, and it reflects Pollock's emotional intensity. It's the absence of recognizable forms that encourage us to look at the painting on an emotional level.
The form was a reaction against the rigid formalism of previous art movements and was heavily influenced by Surrealism (#6 above) and European Modernism (e.g., Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky). It celebrated spontaneity and emotion, and the artists used unconventional techniques like dripping, pouring, and splattering paint. And Jackson Pollock's technique had a major influence on the development of modern art.
If you would like to learn more about different artists and their works you can display in your living room, visit theSamsung Art Store on your Samsung Frame TV. It has more than 2,000 different paintings from all around the world. If they don't have something you like, you can install a painting of your own choosing. Check out our blog article aboutHow to Add Your Own Art or Photos to the Samsung Frame TV.
