Henry M. Sayre, in the book entitled “ A World of Art ” identified seven major themes in art. These include the spiritual Belief, the Cycle of Life, Love and Sex, The Body, Gender, and Identity, The Individual and Cultural Identity, Power, Science, Technology and the Environment (Sayre, 2016). These themes, according to Sayre, transcended different historical eras, which were associated with social, economic, and technological changes. Artist had to capture such changes in their artwork and hence it is possible to classify artwork based on these themes ( D'Alleva 2006) .
Chapter 22 of the book covered the theme of The Cycle of Life. In this chapter, it is revealed that art captured and presented different aspects related to the life of a person right from the time a person is born to the time he or she dies. These kinds of arts were common during classical time when people were still trying to find out the origin of life ( Preziosi, 2009) .
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Chapter 23, on the other hand, explored how art present love and sex. The art form representing love are designed to attract erotic and sensual feeling. These were common during romanticism. Francoise Boucher, for example, created an art form called Pan and Syrinx, which is very erotic and sensual. The art form is depicted in the figure below.
The people were obsessed with pleasure during this era ( Nelson & Shiff, 2012) . The artist could make the painting more sensual by including darker background. An artist called Metisse created a similar art form ( Halsall & Zijlmans 2008) . It’s called Blue nude. It is presented below.
Lastly, chapter 24 covered the body, gender and identity. A closer look at the art forms designed to depict the gender and identity shows that they are very different from the love and sex art forms. Similarly, the art forms designed to reflect on technological advancement are very distinct from the classical and romanticism art forms. Each era has unique visual features used.
References
D'Alleva, A. (2006). How to write art history . London: Laurence King Publishing.
Halsall, F., & Zijlmans, K. (2008). Systems of art: Art, history and systems theory . Oxford ; Bern : Peter Lang
Nelson, R. S., & Shiff, R. (2012). Critical terms for art history . Chicago [Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
Preziosi, D. (2009). The art of art history: A critical anthology . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sayre, H. M. (2016). A World of Art, 8 th . Pearson
