Regionalism was an art movement that sprung up after World War I in America that sought to paint naturalistic scenes of regional America. Foremost among the Regionalists was Thomas Hart Benton, who was inspired by politically conscious muralists like Diego Rivera to make large-scale works about his native Midwest. Benton's work often had political overtones that supported left-wing positions, and he was influential as an art teacher.

Picasso's 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is largely considered one of the first cubist paintings. As such, Picasso broke with traditional forms of representation, but did so by including many different influences, particularly impressionists like Paul Cézanne and trends toward a primitivism in art. Picasso also began creating the piece after seeing an exhibition on tribal art that included African masks like those portrayed in the painting.

Utilizing large canvases featuring only one or two bold colors in large blocks, Mark Rothko deconstructed the principles of Abstract Expressionism to their simplest form. Beginning in 1949, Rothko's "multiforms" became his chief artistic format, and made him a world-famous artist.

Diego Rivera began his artistic career in Paris during the first decade of the twentieth century as a cubist influenced by Picasso. On moving back to his native Mexico in the 1910s, Rivera began embracing revolutionary politics, more direct figures, and native Mexican culture, as well as painting massive murals on the sides of buildings. These murals made Rivera much more successful, and produced many different commissions around the world.

A collage is constructed not as one image, but by compiling a variety of images into one larger piece. This can be done for a variety of reasons, including ironic juxtaposition, social commentary, or refreshing traditional imagery. Collages became more widely used in the twentieth century as various forms of media were brought into widespread use.

Jackson Pollack began his career as an expressionist painter, using representative shapes and traditional methods. Beginning in the late 40s, however, Pollack began using the technique of "drip painting," which involved laying the canvas on the floor and splattering liquid paint on it from above. This produced paintings that were extremely abstract, but vivid and emotional, which garnered Pollack worldwide acclaim.

Andy Warhol sought to make art that directly engaged and confronted popular culture in unique and surprising ways. Warhol also liked to experiment with methods that had a sense of automation, such as screenprinting. Both of these aspects of Warhol's work were shown in a series of paintings he did in the 1960s, which had images of celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean reprinted in bright pinks, blues, and greens.

While "mosaic" is a very broad term, it refers to any artwork made by assembling together small pieces of glass and tile. Roman artists and architects frequently used mosaics to create artwork in homes and buildings, and these were frequently realistic depictions of people or landscapes. Mosaics are still used by artists today, but can often take on abstract forms.

The eclectic, improvisational nature of jazz had a wide influence in other artistic forms. In particular, visual artists sought to take some of jazz's extemporaneous elements and apply them to painting and sculpture. This idea greatly influence Jackson Pollock's "drip method" and other aspects of Abstract Expressionist art from the 1940s and 1950s.

Rembrandt van Rijn was one of the great masters of the Dutch Golden Age of painting during the seventeenth century. His style was notable for featuring bold colors and dramatic lighting in "everyday scenes" of commonfolk, as well as portraits and scenes out of the Bible. Almost all of Rembrandt's paintings featured people, and he almost never drew landscapes.