Autumn re-runs: A history of western art in under three minutes

This post ran originally on 13 June 2009. Oh me oh my do I love art history and I'd forgotten all about this fantastic video. The point of my weekend re-runs is to give a second chance to some of my old material and bo-baby does this video need to be seen again.

Check this out. Someone posted this on Twitter this week and I've been watching it ever since. For the life of me I'm not exactly sure who posted it though. I think it was @leonagaita or @verdigrisvie though. If it were someone else I apologize and ladies, if either of you were the original poster, thank you.

I haven't gone off on an Art History tear in a couple of weeks and this video will do it for me. This thing's a brilliant, animated survey of the last 500 years of western portraiture. I love, love, love how this video's producer got to the 19th century and kept going up to the present. Far too often, people gloss over the last 100 years because they don't quite know what to do with it. That's unfortunate because even though it may not be immediately obvious, all art rests on the shoulders of the art that came before. This video drives home that point brilliantly and it does it in less than three minutes. Bravo!

If you're having trouble with this, follow this link. This video came from the great website GUBA, and it was posted by someone who goes by the name jun129. Thank you jun129.