While cave paintings that are more than 17,000 years old have been found, aesthetics as it relates to ancient art is based on the eight ancient civilizations of the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Chinese, Persians, Mayans and Asian Indians. The Greeks who venerated the physical form were of most influence on aesthetics in the West. They developed artistic skills to portray beauty, grace, anatomically correct proportions and musculature. This complemented the thoughts of philosophers at the time, such as Plato, who philosophized that objects of beauty incorporated harmony, proportion and unity.
Modernism is the name given to the period of art from the late 19th to early 20th century. It was a movement to escape the objective reality of earlier artwork, which, proponents of modernism, also known as avant-garde, believed lacked any artistic expression or creative interpretation. The Industrial Revolution and the theory of relativity in physics lead progressive artists such as Toulouse Lautrec, Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso to question the interpretation of reality. They strived to redefine existing notions of beauty in art in very radical ways, pushing the expression of form and use of color to new heights. This was met with great criticism from conservative realists, who considered the art as ugly as the landscape at the time, which, they believed, had been blighted by industrial capitalism.
The postmodernist aesthetic is said to be found in the impact and sensation of art, as opposed to its meaning and interpretation. It began as an architectural movement which attempted to define perfection as a minimalist harmony of form and function, but evolved as artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko further expanded abstract expressionism.
When related to the performing arts, the definition of aesthetics is rooted in viewer and audience perception. As a modern definition, the need to present performances in cross-cultural and multilingual formats that address globalism and the broadest possible audience is at the heart of the aesthetic debate. In dance, aesthetics relate to the expression and communication of emotions.