Watch: This animated film teaches you the evolution of art in one minute flat
The filmmaker painstakingly made hundreds of paintings, one for each frame of the video.
Normally, it might take years to even take a look all the different styles of art that have ever existed in the world. Unless animator and filmmaker Cao Shu is around to help. Then, it only takes a minute.
Shu’s video One Minute Art History (above) is exactly what the title says – it’s a one-minute video that shows the evolution of art and artistic styles over the years. Remarkably, the video is made of hundreds of hand-painted paintings, each in a different style, but essentially depicting the same subject, in a way that the animated sequence adds up to a little story of its own.
According to Shu, “Art history is a long tale which tells us what happened in the past, but cannot tell us where new opportunities lie. The specific image of each genius exhausted with their life, is just a fleeting image in the film. The entire film is about waiting. Waiting is absurd, like art, a kind of eternal behaviour with no purpose, no ending.”
Sure, but this video is also a way to marvel at the multiplicity of art styles, and at Shu’s determination to bring it all together.
