Short answers, pulled from the story.
Painting is a visual art defined by applying paint, pigment, color, or other medium to a solid surface, most commonly with a brush. The person who produces paintings is called a painter, and the term describes both the act and the finished work.
The oldest known painting is a scene in Leang Karampuang cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, depicting human-like figures interacting with a pig and measuring 36 by 15 inches. In July 2024 the journal Nature reported it to be approximately 51,200 years old.
After the first photograph was produced in 1829, improving photographic processes deprived painting of much of its historic purpose to record the observable world. This loss helped drive movements such as Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Dadaism.
Kandinsky held that music is the ultimate teacher and used musical terms for his work, calling spontaneous paintings improvisations and elaborate ones compositions. He theorized that yellow is the color of middle C on a brassy trumpet and that black is the color of closure and the end of things.
Painting media include encaustic or hot wax painting, watercolor, gouache, ceramic glaze, ink, enamel, tempera, fresco, oil, pastel, acrylic, spray paint, water miscible oil paint, sand, and digital painting. Each is identified by the medium in which the pigment is suspended.
Between 1946 and 1949, Leonard Bocour and Sam Golden invented a solution acrylic paint under the brand Magna paint. In 1963, George Rowney became the first manufacturer to introduce artists' acrylic paints in Europe, under the brand name Cryla.
Outsider art is a term coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut, the raw art label created by Jean Dubuffet for art made outside official culture. It has become a successful marketing category, with an annual Outsider Art Fair held in New York since 1992.