Marc Chagall, a Russian-born French artist of the 20th century, won fame for his paintings of Russian and Jewish villagers. At once Surrealist, Expressionist, and Symbolist, Chagall's colorful and imaginative painting I and the Village (1911) is an incredible exploration of the creative mind.

Prehistoric cave paintings in France, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Jackson ("Jack the Dripper") Pollock's paint-splattered canvases, and a three-year-old's crayon scribbles, all reflect one simple, but incredible impulse: the desire to paint and to create.

But are random paint splatters or a tot's wall drawings "art?" For that matter, what is art? Are works of art the outpouring of inspired individuals working alone in studios? What makes someone an artist? Is artwork inextricably bound to historic events and times? Furthermore, who has the final say on what is or isn't "art"?

Beyond Books, History of Painting ponders the tough questions on the value and the power of art. As a survey program, Beyond Books' sprint through 20,000 years of painting covers the famous masters, the less well-known masters, and the unappreciated-in-their-own-time masters.

This program starts by exploring painting principles and techniques, thus providing a framework for talking about paintings. It ends with an examination of the business of art.

Along the way, the program uncovers the earliest known art — images of animals in caves — then examines Egyptian tomb painting and the dancing monkeys of the Minoans. From ancient times it's on to the medieval world, when Christianity dominated art and the heavenly world was a primary focus for painters. But whereas artists of the first millennium C.E. were content to depict their religious views in a flat, reverent, proscribed manner, the painters of the later Middle Ages became more interested in life on Earth. They painted how people felt emotionally and started to realistically depict how their subjects actually moved in three-dimensional space.

The Sistine Chapel in Rome stands as a monument to the great painters of the Renaissance who learned to paint anatomically correct bodies and the deep space of linear perspective. Michelangelo's horrifying The Last Judgment is an extraordinary piece of work that shows the chaos of this moment with his skill at portraying the human body in a multitude of poses.

Then the Renaissance dawned, and humans became the measure of all things. Not content to know what something looked liked from the outside, artists ripped bodies open to examine musculature in order to depict their subjects more realistically. Step by step, the artists of the Renaissance built on what they learned from the artists who preceded them. Without Giotto, no Masaccio. Without Masaccio, no Leonardo.

The Renaissance was a time of huge leaps in painting techniques. The introduction of linear perspective and the invention of oil paints helped artists faithfully depict the world around them.

As Western art progressed into the modern era, painters skilled in all these artistic techniques found new challenges as voices of the political, social, or religious climate of their times. From the highly symbolic artwork of the Northern Renaissance to the modern art "isms" — Neoclassicism, Impressionism, Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and Minimalism — painting has been in part a response to and reflection of world events.

Incredible artistic practises exist beyond boundaries of the West, though. Beyond Books travels around the world to examine some of the most fascinating and intriguing paintings of Tibet, Japan, and the Muslim world, among others.

The journey will include close examinations of many artists and artworks. Other notable artists will hardly be mentioned. Where's Titian? Where's Norman Rockwell? Where's Andy Warhol? If every great artist were included, there would be no time left in the day to study geometry, geography, or much else …

Giant brightly painted banners are the hallmarks of Tibetan painting. Called thangkas, these enormous paintings, such as Je Tsongkhapa, depict the great deities, spiritual leaders, and philosophers of Tibetan Buddhism.

Remember, this is a survey — an introduction to major movements and major figures. But if an artist or movement does incite interest, there are over 1500 links to other websites for further exploration. Take a trip to the Louvre in Paris, the Prado in Spain, the Uffizi in Florence, or the Met in New York.

Better yet, visit a local museum or gallery.

Do take a breather from the sprint to play some artistically inspired games, such as "Match the Madonnas" in Focus 4e: "Raphael" and "Whack-a-Letter" in Focus 9a: "Abstraction."

For all those hard-to-say names and terms, this program features a talking dictionary. Clicking on a word highlighted in yellow opens a new window containing the word's definition and pronunciation. For instance, just click on Benozzo Gozzoli to learn how to say his name.

Art is not just an extracurricular activity. Art is mind-blowing. It is about the human need to create images, shapes, movement, and feeling out of paint and brushes. Artists speak through their images. So take a stroll (or sprint) through and think about why these artists painted what they did.

1. Painting Principles and Techniques
   1. Painting and the Popular Mind
   2. Realism in Painting
   3. Aerial and Linear Perspective
   4. Depth Perception
   5. Nonrepresentational Painting
2. Painting before 1300
   1. Prehistoric Painting
   2. Egyptian Painting
   3. Aegean Frescoes
   4. Greek and Roman Painting
   5. Early Medieval Painting
3. Painting of the Late Middle Ages
   1. Late Medieval Painting in Italy
   2. Giotto's Directness of Vision
   3. The International Gothic Style
   4. The Van Eycks
   5. Rogier van der Weyden
4. Renaissance Painting in Italy
   1. Masaccio: The Birth of Perspective
   2. The Early Renaissance in Florence
   3. Leonardo da Vinci
   4. Michelangelo
   5. Raphael
   6. The High Renaissance in Venice
5. The Northern Renaissance
   1. Albrecht Dürer and the Graphic Process
   2. Pain, Pleasure, Heaven & Hell: Grünewald & Bosch
   3. Northern Renaissance Symbolism
   4. Northern Portraits and Landscapes
   5. Vanity and the Evolution of the Still Life
6. Two Hundred Years of the Baroque
   1. Mannerism and Eclecticism in Italian Art
   2. The Early Baroque in Italy and Spain
   3. Rubens and His Debt to Italy
   4. Rembrandt van Rijn
   5. The Classical Point of View
   6. Heroic Landscapes
   7. The Popularity of Genre Art
7. The Age of Rococo: Art in 18th-Century Europe
   1. The Academic Point of View
   2. The Birth of Rococo
   3. Chardin: Painter of the Bourgeoisie
   4. Reynolds and Gainsborough: English Decorative Portraiture
   5. Morality in the Age of Reason
8. The Seeds of Modernity: 19th-Century Europe
   1. Neoclassicism
   2. Romanticism
   3. Realism
   4. Impressionism
   5. Post-Impressionism
9. A New Way of Seeing -- 20th-Century Painting
   1. Abstraction
   2. Expressionism
   3. The Armory Show of 1913
   4. Dada and Surrealism
   5. "Los Tres Grandes" -- The Great Mexican Muralists
10. Beyond the West
    1. Islamic Art
    2. The Art of India
    3. The Art of Tibet
    4. The Art of China
    5. The Art of Japan
11. The Business of Art
    1. Buying and Selling Art
    2. Art Critics
    3. Museums and Collecting
    4. Conservation
    5. Faking It