1430-1516
Italian
Painter

Best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. He revolutionized Venetian paintings moving to a more sensuous, colouristic style with more depth, and detailed shadings.

Giovanni
Bellini

Tiziano
Vecellio

1488-1490
Italian
Painter

Most important member of the 16th century in Venetian school. His painting methods and use of colours, unfluenced future generations of the Western art. Vecelli was truly inspired by Bellini.

Gerard
Mercator

1512-1594
Spanish/ Dutch
Cartographer/Mathematician

Famous for his world maps in 1569 based on new projection showing sailing courses. He was the first to use the term Atlas for a collection of maps. Mercator learnt globe making from Gemma Frisius and went on to become the leading European globe maker of the age.

Gemma
Frisius

1508-1555
Dutch
Physician/Cartographer/Mathematician

Frisius created important globes, improved the mathematical instruments of his day and applied mathematics in new ways to surveying and navigation. In 1533, he described for the first time the method of triangulation still used nowdays. Twenty years later, he was the first to describe how an accurate clock could be used to determine longitude.

Stéphane
Mallarmé

1842-1898
French
Poet/Critic

He was a major French symbolist poet. He was the initiator of the typographical poetry.
His work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Cubism, Dadaism, etc. His most famous publication was, Un Coup de Dés Jamais N'Abolira Le Hasard, published in Cosmopolis Mag. in 1897.

Guillaume
Appolinaire

1880-1918
Italian/ French
Poet/ Writer/ Art Critic

He was one of the most important poet in the XXth century.he is credited with coining the word Surrealism and writing one of the earliest works described as surrealist, the play The Breasts of Tiresias (1917, used as the basis for a 1947 opera).
He was foremost known for his Calligrammes Poems on peace and war in 1913-1916.

René
Margritte

1898-1967
Belge
Surrealist Artist

Surrealist painter, he was influenced by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
His became famous for his thought-provoking images with his most well-known artwork is Ceci n'est pas une pipe from La Trahison des images, presented in 1928-1929. His work challenges observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality.

Ludwig
Wittgenstein

1889-1951
Austrian/ British
Philosopher

Wittgenstein's influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are widely diverging interpretations of his thought. He developped with Friedrich Waismann, the language-game: referring to simple examples of language use and the actions into which the language is woven.

Guy
Debord

1931-1994
French
Filmmaker/ Letterist/ Marixst Theorist

Debord created the Derivé and the Situationist mouvement. He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie. He wrote La Société du Spectacle in 1967.
Having established the situationist critique of art as a social and political critique, one not to be carried out in traditional artistic activities, the SI began, due in part to Debord’s contributions, to pursue a more concise theoretical critique of capitalist society.

David
Hockney

1937-????
British
Photographer/ Painter

Important figures of the Pop Art mouvement in 1980s. Hockney is considered as the most influential British artists of the 20th century. He produced photo collages, photomontages. He was the major contributor to the technique called "joiners" or panography.

Jeff
Wall

1946-????
Canadian
Photographer

Wall has been a key figure in Vancouver's art scene since the early-1970s. He reinterpreted classical paintings by contemporary daily life photos. He also uses multiple photo shoots and reconstructs them into one scene, such as A Sudden gust of Wind in 1993.

Christoph
Fink

1963-????
Belge
Designer/Artist

Fink works on mapping based on visited cities. He published the Atlas der Bewegingen. He is truly inspired by the work of Gerard Mercator.
Fink brings as an alternative worldview in which the coherence of the various elements that surround us is questioned .

Jan
Rothuizen

1968-????
Dutch
Visual Artist

Rothuizen works mainly on maps re-visited with a personal touch. His work is descriptive but more often documentary. His drawings are both an image and a story; the viewer is free to interpret them in their own way.
His most well-known for his work is De Zachte Atlas van Nederland in 2011.

Word & Image: Timeline

David
Carson

1954-????
American
Graphic Designer

He is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun, in which he employed much of the typographic and layout style for which he is known. In particular, his widely imitated aesthetic defined the so-called "grunge typography" era.

Barbara
Kruger

Jenny
Holzer

Guerrilla
Girls

1945-????
American
Visual Artist

Kruger is a conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of black-and-white photographs overlaid with declarative captions—in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they" that points the public.

1950-????
American
Visual Artist

Holzer belongs to the feminist branch of a generation of artists that emerged around 1980, looking for new ways to make narrative or commentary an implicit part of visual objects. Holzer is mostly known for her large-scale public displays that include billboard advertisements, projections on buildings and other architectural structures, as well as illuminated electronic displays.

1985-????
American
Visual Artist

Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous group of feminist, female artists who claim to be devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. Guerrilla Girls were formed by 7 women artists in the spring of 1985 in response to the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition "An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture", which opened in 1984.
Throughout their existence the Guerrilla Girls have gained the most attention for their bold protest art.

1400

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VENETIAN RENAISSANCE

EARLY NETHERLANDISH ART

ROMANTISM

SYMBOLISM & SYNTHETISM

CONCEPTUAL ART

ROMANTISM

PHOTOGRAPHY COMES TO AGE

DADA

PERFORMANCE ART

INSTALLATION ART

DIGITAL ART

Sample of Mallarmé's poetry:

Interview: René Magritte 'Le surréalisme et les questions'

Interview: Christoph Fink

Virtual maps of Mercator:

Virtual pages of Rothuizen's book:

Talk of Jeff Wall:

Sample of his calligrammes:

From notebook to hyperbook by Yvonne Schwemer-Scheddin in 1999

The Limits of Language:

TED talk by Carson

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