What are the three main movements in contemporary art?

Art movements particular to water?

• Have there been any art movements which largely incorporated the painting/drawing/photographing/sculpting etc of water? This is for my art GCSE. Thanks in advance for any answers. Also ideas on how to how to show the study of artists and art movements in my sketchbook would be greatly appreciated.

• Answer:

  Paintings of seascapes were popular from the 17th into the 20th centuries. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_painter In the 17th century, as part of the general Dutch interest in landscape, Dutch painters of ships at sea seem to have found a good market for their work, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_van_de_Velde,_the_elder J M W Turner was practically an art movement by himself (look for 'Turner sea' in Google image search), though to make a proper movement you could add in Caspar David Friedrich ('Friedrich sea'). Both part of the wider Romantic movement. Water is often an important element in Impressionist painting ('Monet water lilies'). Coming into the 20th century, late in his career Emil Nolde focused on seascapes a good deal ('Emil Nolde sea'). But that was his speciality; other Expressionists weren't that interested. As you've probably realised by now, unfortunately I can't think of any entire movements which focused mainly on water. In your sketchbook, to show the study of artists, the first thing is probably to go to exhibitions (or just look at pictures in books) and do simplified drawings of work that interests you. Try to analyse the work: e.g you might have a sketch where you try to simplify a picture into blocks of light or dark. Another sketch, perhaps of the same painting, could focus on warm and cold colours, or on the way the eye is led around the artwork. When you've done a bit of this you can start doing sketches to show similarities and differences between different members of the same movement. The more advanced stage would be to try to apply things you've found in other artists' work to your own original sketches. Eg. Nolde often has a violent clash of warm and cold in his seascapes.