What previous movements influenced the art of the Renaissance, and how?

Why do you think that the modern movements in art, "the isms" like Impressionism, Cubism etc are so much shorter in length of time than the earlier periods in art like the Renaissance or the Baroque periods?

• Answer:

  Because human society has been on the fast track and going faster in the past 100 years than in centuries prior. The Renaissance (as example) started around the end of the 1300's and lasted until the early 1600's a nearly 200 year period. It was a slow one to start, starting in Italy and slowly spreading through the Western World. Its slowness was due to how news traveled - mostly by cart and by foot. Since the late 19th century (1800's) we have had telegraph then telephone - that has greatly reduce the amount of time that news travels, thus greatly reducing the amount of time it takes for a new period to take over. The advent of Radio and then TV has reduced the time even more - now with the internet news, fads, etc travel so fast that we could technically go from one period to the next in a month. The world is spinning faster - in as much as we humans are gaining knowledge and dispensing that knowledge in ever increasing amounts in shorter periods of time. The end result will be social and artistic movements within society moving passing in and out of style faster than in previous centuries.