AP Art History Unit 4 Cheat Sheet: Later Europe & Americas

Movement Timeline (1750–1980)

Scroll right on mobile · Dates are approximate and overlapping — movements influence one another

Required Works at a Glance

#	Work	Artist	Date	Medium	Movement
1	Marie Antoinette and Her Children	Vigée Le Brun	1787	Oil on canvas	Neoclassicism
2	The Death of Marat	David	1793	Oil on canvas	Neoclassicism
3	Paolina Borghese as Venus Victrix	Canova	1808	Marble	Neoclassicism
4	La Grande Odalisque	Ingres	1814	Oil on canvas	Neoclassicism
5	Third of May, 1808	Goya	1814	Oil on canvas	Romanticism
6	Raft of the Medusa	Géricault	1818–19	Oil on canvas	Romanticism
7	Liberty Leading the People	Delacroix	1830	Oil on canvas	Romanticism
8	The Slave Ship	Turner	1840	Oil on canvas	Romanticism
9	The Stone Breakers	Courbet	1849–50	Oil on canvas	Realism
10	Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe	Manet	1863	Oil on canvas	Realism
11	Impression, Sunrise	Monet	1872	Oil on canvas	Impressionism
12	The Boating Party	Cassatt	1893–94	Oil on canvas	Impressionism
13	The Starry Night	Van Gogh	1889	Oil on canvas	Post-Impressionism
14	Mont Sainte-Victoire	Cézanne	1902–06	Oil on canvas	Post-Impressionism
15	Where Do We Come From?	Gauguin	1897–98	Oil on canvas	Post-Impressionism
16	The Joy of Life	Matisse	1905–06	Oil on canvas	Fauvism
17	Les Demoiselles d'Avignon	Picasso	1907	Oil on canvas	Cubism
18	Unique Forms of Continuity in Space	Boccioni	1913	Bronze	Futurism
19	Self-Portrait as a Soldier	Kirchner	1915	Oil on canvas	Expressionism
20	Fountain	Duchamp	1917/1964	Glazed china	Dada
21	Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada…	Höch	1919–20	Photomontage	Dada
22	Villa Savoye	Le Corbusier	1929–31	Reinforced concrete	International Style
23	The Persistence of Memory	Dalí	1931	Oil on canvas	Surrealism
24	The Two Fridas	Kahlo	1939	Oil on canvas	Surrealism
25	The Migration Series	Lawrence	1940–41	Tempera on board	Modernism
26	Convergence	Pollock	1952	Oil on canvas	Abstract Expressionism

9 Key Concepts

Concept 1

Neoclassicism vs. Romanticism

Neoclassicism prizes rational order, classical line, moral virtue, and historical/mythological subject (David). Romanticism values emotion, color, sublime nature, political struggle, and the irrational (Delacroix, Géricault). The two movements directly competed in the French Academy.

Concept 2

The Salon and Academic Painting

The Paris Salon was the official exhibition of the French Academy — the gateway to artistic success. Works rejected as too crude, political, or sexual were shown at the Salon des Refusés (1863). This institutional gatekeeping drove artists to create independent exhibitions (Impressionists, 1874).

Concept 3

Impressionism's Innovations

Painting outdoors (en plein air); capturing transient light effects; loose, visible brushwork; everyday modern-life subjects; rejection of Classical idealism. The name came from Monet's Impression, Sunrise, mockingly coined by critic Louis Leroy in 1874.

Concept 4

Cézanne's Legacy: Bridge to Cubism

"Treat nature by the cylinder, sphere, and cone." Cézanne reduced landscape to geometric planes, flattened pictorial space, and integrated multiple viewpoints — directly inspiring Picasso and Braque's Cubism. He is called the "father of modern art."

Concept 5

Primitivism and African Influence

Early 20th-century European artists (Picasso, Matisse) drew on African and Oceanic art as sources of formal radicalism — flattened planes, geometric abstraction, emotional directness. This appropriation is now critiqued for reducing complex cultures to formal resources.

Concept 6

Readymades and Institutional Critique

Duchamp's Fountain asks: does selection constitute artistic authorship? The readymade removes craft from the definition of art. It establishes Conceptual Art's premise: the idea is the art. Every subsequent debate about "what counts as art" traces to this 1917 urinal.

Concept 7

Surrealism and the Unconscious

Freud's theories of the unconscious and dream work inspired Surrealism (Breton's 1924 Manifesto). Methods: automatic writing, dream imagery, juxtaposition of incongruous elements. Dalí's hyperrealist technique renders the irrational convincingly real; Kahlo's personal mythology transforms biography into symbol.

Concept 8

Abstract Expressionism and the Cold War

American Abstract Expressionism (Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning) emerged post-WWII. The CIA covertly promoted it abroad as evidence of American freedom vs. Soviet Socialist Realism. "Gesture" vs. "color field" are the two main strains — both reject representation entirely.

Concept 9

Identity, Gender, and Race in Modern Art

Vigée Le Brun as rare female academician; Cassatt's Impressionist sphere as domestic/feminine; Kahlo's body as site of cultural conflict; Lawrence's Great Migration as civil rights visual history. The exam frequently asks how identity shapes artistic production and reception.

7 Exam Traps

Manet ≠ Impressionist. Manet is Realist — he showed at the Salon des Refusés, influenced the Impressionists but never exhibited with them and rejected the label.
Goya spans Romanticism AND something darker. His Black Paintings and Saturn Devouring His Son anticipate Expressionism and go beyond Romantic categories. Don't force him into a single box.
Duchamp's Fountain original is lost. All extant versions are authorized 1964 replicas. The "work" may be the concept, not the object — key to Dada and Conceptualism.
Kahlo rejected the Surrealist label. Breton called her Surrealist; she insisted she painted her own reality, not dreams. The distinction matters for FRQ contextual analysis.
Pollock's drip paintings are not accidental. He controlled the flow carefully. "Action Painting" means the gesture is the subject, not that the result is random.
Ingres is Neoclassical despite anatomical distortion. La Grande Odalisque's elongated spine is deliberate idealization, not error — Ingres prioritized elegant line over anatomical accuracy.
The Migration Series alternates between two museums. Even-numbered panels at MoMA, odd-numbered at the Phillips Collection — a design decision by Lawrence, not an accident of sale.