Painting Supports: History

Video Transcript

"Now historically, of course, the earliest paintings were on cave walls and then ancient ruins show painting architecturally, like the ruins of Pampas for example; ruins of Egypt. So painting was an architecturally element. Gradually painting became more portable. People would work on wooden panels. A tempera really needs to be on a wooden panel because the slightest flexing will cause it to crack. But one advantage when artists discovered painting in oils was they also discovered you could stretch a canvas. And that makes a big painting a lot lighter and a lot more portable. So perhaps the first time in history, the idea of large, important works of art being portable came to being. And it has been that way ever since. Canvas is still the primary mode of painting today. Primary support for painting. Of all sizes, they can be rectangular as they most frequently are, they could be rounded or they could be shaped in any number of ways as so many modern artistes have shaped them. The basic structure of the canvas is fundamentally the same."