Art is a subjective thing. Some people look at modern art and see a pile of junk while others stare at a pile of junk and see profundity. One of the biggest misunderstandings about art history is that there has been a steady progression from primitive art to some level of perfection it reached recently. In fact it is not that people in the past couldn’t make art in the same way we do it’s that they chose to follow styles that they found most beautiful and moving.

Here are ten of the ancient world’s most amazing styles.

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10 Cycladic Figures

Cycladic figurines are instantly recognisable. Carved from white marble they tend to show people with elongated heads, pointed noses, and smooth lines. There is some evidence that the blank heads may once have been painted but today they stare out from museum cases with completely expressionless faces.

Despite being made over at least a millennium (3300-2300 BC) the figurines show a remarkably consistent style. The standing figurines are often female and are shown with arms folded across their belly. Sometimes the pubic hair of the figurines is scratched and drilled into the marble.

Another type of Cycladic figure represents musicians. Some of them play a large harp that rests on their knee while another blows a double pipe. The curving shapes of the figurines would not look out of place in a modern art institute and they have been found across the Cycladic islands suggesting they were just a popular in their own day as they are prized today.^[1]

9 Voluptuous Venus

The ancient Roman goddess Venus was the embodiment of love and sexuality. Her statues from the Classical Age are therefore representative of what sculptors of the time found most attractive. If the group of sculptures known as Venus figurines also show idealised womanhood then stereotyped ideas of beauty have changed over the millennia.

The Venus figurines tend to show rotund women with oversized breasts, ample hips, and large buttocks. Sometimes their private parts are similarly emphasised. The earliest of these figurines, the Venus of Hohle Fels, was carved from a mammoth tusk and dates from around 35,000 years ago. Other figurines are made of stone or ceramic and most are relatively small in size. This suggests that the Venus figures were meant to be carried around with the people who owned them.

No one can say exactly what the around 200 Venus figurines represent. Were they a mother goddess? Were they fertility idols? Were they simply figures of beauty and security? It is unlikely that we will ever know for sure.^[2]

8 Roman Frescos

Romans surrounded themselves with art. From small statues of their gods, to monumental sculptures, to graffiti scratched into their walls there was no part of life that could not be decorated. This included the interior walls of their homes. Unsatisfied with just painting their walls they sometimes created false views to create the illusion that they were dining outside. These false views are known as trompe l’oeil.

At first the frescos, paintings done directly onto fresh plaster, were large blocks and represented architectural features like pillars and doorways. Soon the paintings evolved into more complex scenes. Perhaps a door would open and a person would peep out from behind it. Sometimes a false window would open out onto a vista showing fields or beaches.

Perhaps the highest achievement of Roman fresco painting can be found in a villa belonging to the Roman Empress Livia. The walls of the dining room of the villa are not covered in fake walls and windows. Instead the walls are painted as if they are not there at all. The frescos show a garden scene containing trees, fruit, birds, and flowers.^[3]

7 Moche Pottery

The Moche people lived on the coast of Peru from around 100-700 AD. While their culture is little known today they left large amounts of pottery that can be found in museums around the world. Though sometimes the pottery is hidden away because of the sensitive nature of the scenes the pottery depicts.

Sometimes Moche pottery is relatively simple in form and shape, but with complex images painted on it. Other times the pottery is sculpted into complex configurations. These can show everything from animals, to gods, to portraits of individual humans. Sometimes what the humans are doing is revealing in many ways.

Over 500 pots have been found that show humans engaging in sexual activities. Some of the pots show men with large penises, which are fairly common in art from the ancient world, but there are also representations of women with gaping vaginas. Intriguingly vaginal sex is never shown between individuals in the pottery – anal sex was apparently more to the taste of the Moche potters.^[4]

6 Engraved Gems

People have always loved pretty stones. As soon as gems were discovered humans were using them to decorate their bodies. The pretty stones were not beautiful enough on their own however. From at least 5000 years ago people were cutting into gems to create images. And these were not simple geometric shapes – some of them are as life-like as anything created in stone can be.

These images could show everything from mythological beings to individual people. Roman Emperors were fond of having their faces cut into gems. But these were not large objects. Most of the engraved gems from antiquity are small enough to be worn in rings and would have functioned as seals.

The stones were engraved using tiny drills and abrasive dust. The engravers must have had amazing eyesight because the detail in their work can be as small as half a millimetre. One gem known as the Pylos Combat Agate manages to show two men fighting in anatomically accurate detail on a surface just 3cm across. A fallen soldier also on the gem is sculpted so skilfully that individual muscles can be seen.^[5]

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5 Roman Glass Portraits

Before photography there was no easy way to capture a person’s likeness. The best most people could hope for was a description – and one that picked out mostly unflattering parts of their image. Legal texts from ancient Egypt will often name a person and then describe them as “with a scar on their forehead” or “long-faced” or “bald in front.” For some lucky Romans however their faces have been hauntingly preserved.

In Roman gold glass portraits the faces of certain Romans have survived. These portraits were made by placing a thin layer of gold onto glass and then pinpricking it and scratching to create a delicate image. The portraits can capture the shade created by the shape of a face and often include the imperfections that make our faces unique.

Most of the portraits were made on the bases of bowls and cups to celebrate a special occasion. When the person in the portrait died however they were often broken out of the glass vessel and used to mark their grave.^[6]

4 Fayum Mummy Portraits

Ancient Egyptian art is not generally known for its realism. People were often shown in profile and in strange contortions. But Egyptian art did not remain static over the thousands of years that it was produced. Once Egypt was incorporated into the Roman Empire there was a synthesis of their different styles.

Egyptian culture placed a great emphasis on the afterlife and the commemoration of the dead. While pharaohs were given gold and gem encrusted sarcophagi more humble people had to make do with wooden face-masks. These are known as Fayum Mummy Portraits and were created on wood or directly on the wrappings of the mummy.

Unlike the stylised images found elsewhere in Egyptian art these portraits are very personal. The shadows that play across the faces make them feel three dimensional and alive. The portraits are also revealing about how people in the ancient world really looked. Normally hairstyles and make-up die with the person but by looking at these portraits reveals how fashions in Egypt changed over the centuries.^[7]

3 Etruscan Sarcophagi

Placing a painting or image in a grave is one way of making sure that the appearance of a person is not forgotten but if you want to really capture how a person looks then Etruscan sarcophagi are probably the way to go. Etruscan tombs often took the form of a terracotta statue of the deceased. They are almost always shown as if they were reclining on a banqueting couch and enjoying an eternal feast.

The tombs did not contain a body because the Etruscans cremated their dead. Perhaps that is why creating a lasting monument of the dead was so important to them. The terracotta of the tomb was painted in brilliant colours. Unlike in some ancient societies it seems that women were as important as men. Married couples often shared a tomb and were shown side by side in death.

One sarcophagus belonging to a woman called Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa was found to contain the woman’s complete skull. Using this skull researchers were able to reconstruct her appearance in life and showed that the woman depicted on top of the tomb really was the woman buried in it.^[8]

2 Hand Stencils

Hands are among the most common finds in stone age art. Rock faces from South America, to Europe, to Asia, to Australia are all covered in the hands of our ancestors. These images of hands stretch back as far as 39,000 years.

Sometimes the artist would use powdered pigments and place their hand directly in them before leaving a hand print on the rock face. More commonly though they would use a tube to blow watered-down pigment over the hand to leave a negative image on the wall. From studying the hands we know that this type of art was made by men, women, and children. We can even tell that people in the stone age were mostly right-handed because most of the hands depicted were left hands. The artists would have held the tube used spray the pigment in their dominant hand.

What the purpose of this art was remains debated. The hand prints are often found in the most hard to reach places in a cave system while flat sections of wall were left unmarked.^[9]

1 Dogu

Some of the strangest pottery ever made must have belonged to the Jomon period of Japan that lasted from 14,000 to 300 BC. Because Japan was so abundant with food supplies at the time the population was able to form stable, sedentary communities that produced large amounts of pottery. Jomon pottery was marked by cords of string being pressed into the clay.

As well as decorated pots they also made figurines called Dogu. These human figures can be separated into several types. Some of them look like Horned Owls, others have heart-shaped heads, and others are Goggle-Eyed. It is these google-eyed figurines that have attracted the most attention.

The figurines in some cases look as if they are wearing ornate space suits and their goggle-eyes resemble helmets. They have been taken by some fringe theorists to be evidence of ancient alien visitors. The truth is that no one can say for sure what these figurines were used for – but they were the product of amazing ancient artists and not aliens.^[10]

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“This film is so…” Fill in the blank with directors whose signature techniques have not only encaptivated moviegoers but also left an indelible mark on the art of filmmaking itself.

It’s one thing to make a great movie. It’s quite another to make one in a way instantly identifiable for its directorial calling cards. Here are ten directors whose distinctive styles helped make them legends.

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10 Wes Anderson

The director of such classics as The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is modern filmmaking’s most effectively weird filmmaker. With few exceptions, Wes Anderson movies are more live-action storybooks than conventional films, with relatively simple plots serving as vehicles for ornate typography, elaborately embellished set designs, and quirky characters toggling between outcasts, antiheroes, and flat-out oddballs.

One telltale sign of an Anderson film is that flourish is at the forefront. Characters like Royal Tenenbaum, Steve Zissou, and Rushmore’s Max Fischer are exaggerated caricatures of themselves, faux elitist Anglo-Saxons in exclusive settings. Artistic angles, stop-motion techniques, and color schemes varyingly muted or extreme help add to the eccentricity.

Throughout most of Anderson’s films, one common thread is symmetry, which he tends to incorporate in angles ranging from bird-eye panoramas to single-character closeups. The device serves to make shots simultaneously aesthetically pleasing and somewhat disorienting, as many scenes often seem too picture-perfect to be realistic. Again, with Anderson, it’s typically art first, storytelling second.

Through the years, Anderson’s success has snowballed upon itself in one important way: terrific actors eager to work with him again and again. Bill Murray, Anjelica Huston, Adrian Brody, and Jason Schwartzman have all graced multiple Anderson films, with B-level actors like Owen Wilson made more effective by the star-studded cast around them.^[1]

9 Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone is an incredible filmmaker who may also be incredibly insane. But nuts or not, his strategic sensationalism has yielded some exceptionally memorable movies.

Stone’s at his best when using innuendo to leave audiences suspicious of conventional wisdom or convinced of official malfeasance. Any Given Sunday is a strong example. At its surface, the film follows the successes and setbacks of a pro (American) football team. But bubbling barely underneath is the grotesque gladiatorialism that, in an inherently violent society, passes for family-oriented entertainment.

Stone’s bomb-throwing doesn’t always land. Alexander, which chronicled the exploits of Alexander the Great, was a 3-hour, 27-minute snooze, and 2006’s World Trade Center somehow managed to make 9/11 tedious. Likewise, seemingly compelling flicks like 1995’s Nixon and 2008’s W.—released while its subject, George W. Bush, was still the sitting president—simply weren’t very good.

But two films cement Stone’s legacy. The first is 1991’s JFK, which employed Stone’s fanaticism by lending credibility to eccentric New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison and, in doing so, helped birth a new generation of assassination conspiracy theorists.

The other is his masterpiece, 1994’s Natural Born Killers, which dramatically showcases the glorification of violence in the then-blooming age of sensationalist magazine TV “journalism.” Here, Stone shifts between gory murder, trippy illustration, and mockumentary to shine a mirror back on the audience. In the end, Mickey and Mallory are as American as apple pie, making us responsible for their Bonnie and Clyde-esque killing spree.^[2]

8 Spike Lee

The industry’s most famous African-American director has lent more than social justice and Black cultural celebration to filmmaking. Spike Lee is also the inventor of a particular type of scene called the double dolly shot.

A dolly is a camera mounted on a cart that travels along tracks, which allows a scene to move without unsteadying the camera. In use since 1907, dolly shots are nearly as old as moviemaking itself.

It was Lee, however, who introduced the double dolly, in which not only the camera but also the actor is dollied. The result is a motionless central character seeming to float as the background glides past.

Lee employs the double dolly quite frequently and for various reasons. Often, the shot is used to take a narrative timeout that allows a character to provide added commentary. At other times, the effect provides a trippy disorientation, signifying that the character doesn’t quite have a grasp on the situation. Invariably, the double dolly disrupts the audience’s conventional viewing rhythm, lending the shots extra emphasis.

Another Lee trait is leaning into controversy. With 1992’s Malcolm X, Lee came under fire for pinning the civil rights leader’s assassination on the Nation of Islam (though this was likely accurate). Most recently, he filmed and ultimately cut scenes showcasing 9/11 “Truthers”—conspiracy theorists who falsely believe the World Trade Center attacks were perpetrated by the U.S. government—from an HBO documentary chronicling NYC from 2001 through COVID-19.^[3]

7 Ken Burns

While other documentarians explore singular events or themes—9/11, the 2008 fiscal crisis, the opioid epidemic—Burns wrangles the Civil War, American westward expansion (The West), World War II, and jazz. These feats, often at least nine multi-hour episodes apiece, are akin to teaching a college course on the subjects.

Period music, grainy black and white photos, war plan maps, mini-personal histories. Add in a narrator and intersperse with subject matter experts, and Burns manages to condense something as complex as the Civil War into 11 hours and 30 minutes of brilliance.

But even Burns has his limits—and his talents extend to recognizing this. For his WWII doc The War, Burns circumvents the impossibility of comprehensively tackling humankind’s broadest, deadliest armed conflict by instead following the true stories of four Americans who, between them, seemed to pop up in nearly every major American battle.

Burns is also cognizant that, sometimes, a topic is not only exceptionally broad but living and breathing. For example, his comprehensive history of baseball, laid out in nine multi-hour “innings,” was released in 1994. Shortly thereafter, the game saw several landmark events, including a World Series-cancelling strike, the introduction of Wild Card playoff spots, and a sweeping steroids scandal that Burns knew required revisiting. So in 2010, his “10th Inning” covered all that plus the late-1990s Yankees dynasty, the introduction of advanced analytics into decision-making, and the end of Boston’s 86-year championship drought.^[4]

6 David Zucker

While David Zucker hasn’t elicited so much as a chuckle in over a quarter-century, he makes this list for two reasons. First, the comedy director has a decidedly distinctive style. Second, he has written and directed two of the 10 funniest films ever made. We’re talking, of course, about 1980’s Airplane! and 1988’s Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!

The style is, simply, rapid-fire jokes that hardly let audiences catch their breath between laughs. Zucker is the master of throwing random, spaghetti-at-the-wall one-liners and slapstick and having an outsized portion of them stick. He throws jokes like a flyweight throws boxes—lots of quick jabs, followed up with the occasional haymaker that leaves audiences floored with laughter.

The highlights from his dueling masterpieces alone are Hall of Fame-worthy. An old white woman who speaks jive. An undercover cop posing as an umpire breakdances after a called third strike. An air traffic controller who, as the movie progresses, picked a bad week to quit smoking, drinking, and sniffing glue, respectively.

Zucker is also almost single-handedly responsible for transitioning Leslie Nielsen from an accomplished “serious movie” actor into one of the funniest film comedians of all time, despite often sharing the screen with terrible actor and double-murder enthusiast O.J. Simpson. Here’s O.J. nearly dying.^[5]

5 Quentin Tarantino

Casual, superfluous violence, anyone?

It’s tempting to see blood-spatter aficionado Quentin Tarantino as a one-trick pony—a director whose signature ultra-violent scenes are an attempt to distract from shortcomings elsewhere. But what’s exceptional about Tarantino is that, despite being most associated with bloodbaths, his filmography would be stellar even without them.

This was true right from his directorial debut, 1992’s Reservoir Dogs. Easily overlooked among the bank robbery-turned-mass murder, hostage torture, and undercover cop slowly bleeding to death is a true act of filmmaking mastery: Tarantino manages to develop a cast of anonymous criminals so guarded they eschew names for colors (Steve Buscemi: “Why do I have to be Mr. Pink?”). While Michael Madsen chopping off a cop’s ear to the upbeat rhythm of “Stuck in the Middle with You” may be the film’s marquee moment, the movie’s genius is borne of dialogue, pacing, and suspense.

Tarantino is at his best when protagonists have a clear, evil foil and a mission to accomplish, as such plotlines allow the audience to enjoy extreme violence guiltlessly. In 2009’s Inglorious Bastards, we revel in the scalping of Nazis during France’s occupation as we follow a team led by Brad Pitt at his smug, cocksure best. Three years later, Django Unchained flipped the script on the casual violence exacted against slaves as Jamie Foxx shoots his way through a notorious plantation to rescue his long-lost wife. ^[6]

4 Akira Kurosawa

Over a nearly 60-year career, Akira Kurosawa earned a reputation for being Japan’s greatest filmmaker—and one of the top few directors, period.

Kurosawa left an indelible mark on filmmaking at large, but his working methods were perhaps his most noteworthy legacy. Simply put, he was difficult to work with, from a film’s inception to its finished, theater-ready product. A true moving-picture perfectionist, Kurosawa took command of scripts and lorded over writers and, once in production, had a vision that often took both actors and cameramen dozens of takes to meet. In post-production, he was his own meanest editor, chopping and rearranging until his own lofty expectations were met.

Over time, Kurosawa’s perfectionism became Darwinian: as his fame and reputation grew, his filmmaking teams were drawn from an ever-winnowing pool loosely called “Kurosawa-gumi,” or “Kurosawa group.” It was an A-list director demanding an A-list moviemaking unit.

As a dictatorial director, Kurosawa had carte blanche to create and innovate as he saw fit. In the 1940s and 50s, his groundbreaking uses of axial cuts—a type of jump cut where the camera suddenly moves closer or further away—and screen wipes became part of filmmaking’s device repertoire in subsequent years.

Among Kurosawa’s finest and most influential works is 1954’s Seven Samurai, whose montage-esque build-up, ambitious action scenes, riveting underdog story, and seemingly inescapable situations have inspired (largely inferior) action films for nearly seven decades.^[7]

3 Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese thrives on violent subcultures. He’s a master at deep dives into seedy underworlds that protagonists and antiheroes must deftly navigate to thrive or survive.

The mafia (Goodfellas). Porn and prostitution (Taxi Driver). The mafia again (Casino). Boxing (Raging Bull). The mafia again (The Departed). Mid-19th Century slum gangs (Gangs of New York). The mafia yet again (The Irishman). Scorsese’s stories immerse audiences in an underbelly society—narrowing their focus before expanding upon it extensively.

Extensively, indeed. Scorsese makes some of the longest feature films in show business. Most eclipse two hours, and many approach three. Notably, his frequent use of protagonist voiceovers for context—typically at the beginning of a new scene—is a device to speed things up; without them, communicating that information visually may have made some Scorsese films too long for movie theaters, which have a monetary interest in maximizing showtimes.

In 2019, Scorsese was freed from the bondage of brevity with The Irishman, which was exclusively distributed by Netflix. The result was a three-and-a-half-hour gem chronicling the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.

Finally, like many filmmakers, Scorsese has certain actors he favors. One is Robert De Niro, the other Leonardo DiCaprio, who has starred in five Scorsese films, including The Departed, which brought Scorsese a long-deserved Oscar for Best Director.^[8]

2 Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock is the only director on this list who stands as the undisputed greatest in his genre. Buttressed by Hitchcock’s five Academy Award nominations for Best Director, every other horror filmmaker is competing for the silver.

Hitchcock’s most notable moniker, “Master of Suspense,” is as well-deserved as a superlative can be. His innovative pacing brought unprecedented levels of build-up not only into horror films but other genres. Moreover, Hitchcock inherently understood that fright was more psychological than physical—that the anticipation of something terrible was more terrifying than the terrible thing itself.

Ironically, it’s what Hitchcock didn’t have at his disposal during his filmmaking career—elaborate special effects—that helped cement his legacy. Necessity is often the mother of invention, and Hitchcock—already an exceptionally inventive director—had to find ways to enthrall and frighten moviegoers without repulsive monsters killing in superhuman ways. It’s also worth noting that Hitchcock managed to mortify at a time when abundant goriness simply wouldn’t fly and, even if it did, blood isn’t as scary in black-and-white.

A sterling example of Hitchcock’s ahead-of-its-time brilliance is Miriam’s death scene from 1951’s Strangers on a Train. Her demise has several eminently recognizable signs of modern horror-movie deaths: the “audience fake-out” as she screams in the Tunnel of Love, yet emerges unharmed; the stalker waiting for her to momentarily straggle away from her friends; the hushed deathblow seen through a warped lens—in this case, Miriam’s glasses, which fall to the ground as her killer strangles her.^[9]

1 Stanley Kubrick

Many (including me) consider Stanley Kubrick the greatest filmmaker of all time. Pigeon-holing Kubrick into a distinctive style would be unworthy of his genius, so instead, let’s focus on a common theme. Here, among Kubrick’s most effective directorial devices is his lack of faith in humanity. Many of his films serve as a blunt yet artistic warning that mankind is its own hubris-driven worst enemy.

Take, for example, arguably his masterpiece (“arguably” only because he has several masterpieces), 2001: A Space Odyssey. Released in 1968 at the height of the U.S.-Soviet space race, the film showcases the downsides of technological competition: a lack of checks and balances fueled by one-upmanship resulting in AI too smart for mankind to control.

Not surprisingly, Kubrick doesn’t trust humanity with nukes, either, as seen in 1964’s Dr. Strangleove. All it takes, he surmises, is one paranoid rogue general—mockingly named Jack D. Ripper—to usher in a snowball effect that leads to the obliteration of civilization as we know it. Patterned after a protégé of insanely hawkish general Curtis LeMay—who nearly led the U.S. to nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis—Ripper is Exhibit A that many not only don’t fear nuclear war but, per Slim Pickens’s epic bomb-bucking descent into doom, would openly embrace it.

A Clockwork Orange. Full Metal Jacket. The Shining. A strong argument can be made that Kubrick claims five or more of the best 20 or 25 films ever.^[10]