Bill Mitchell told the story of art up to the invention of photography. The story continues. Here is a reproduction of the jacket cover to the exhibition guide to a major art show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1936. It shows the curator Alfred Barr?s view of the development of abstract art and cubism, and the various influences that different styles had on each other. The internal influences of one art style on another are shown in black, external influences are shown in red.
Unlike na?ve realism which is a relatively linear progression of better technique, abstract art is a bushy tree of creative experiments: the cubists, the constructivists, the surrealists, the futurists, the fauvists, etc. The opportunities of new forms of expression are what excites artists.
In computer graphics, we use the term non-photorealistic rendering to indicate all these different styles. I am not that fond of that term; it is always better to define what you are rather than what you aren?t. But a lot of what I have to say revolves around non-photorealism.