Throughout history, forms of art have gone through periodic abrupt changes called artistic revolutions. Movements have come to an end to be replaced by a new movement markedly different in striking ways. See also cultural movements. 

The role of fine art has been to simultaneously express values of the current culture while also offering criticism, balance, or alternatives to any such values that are proving no longer useful. So as times change, art changes. If changes were abrupt they were deemed revolutions. The best artists have predated society's changes due not to any prescience, but because sensitive perceptivity is part of their talent of seeing. 

Artists who succeeded enough to portray visions that future generations could live to see, often had to navigate an often treacherous path between their own capacity to see and execute what lesser artists could not, while still appealing to powerful patrons who could finance their visions. For example, paintings glorified aristocracy in the early 17th century when leadership was needed to nationalize small political groupings, but later as leadership became oppressive, satirization increased and subjects were less concerned with leaders and more with more common plights of mankind. 

No art owes quite as much to state power as French painting does. It was in the age of absolute monarchy launched by Louix XIV in the 17th century that the likes of Poussin and Le Brun put France in the forefront of European art. Versailles found its stately mirror in the powerful idea of classicism – a painting style, enduring in later artists like Ingres, whose austerity and grandeur express the authority of a world where Jove is very much in his throne. QUESTIONS:

Q1:
1. Who made France a leader of European art?
2. Thanks to whom did France become a dynamic player on the European art scene?
3. 
Q2:
1. Who besides Le Brun made France a leader of European art?
2. Thanks to whom, other than Le Brun, did France become a dynamic player on the European art scene?
3. 
Q3:
1. What does the term artistic revolution refer to?
2. What happens during an artistic revolution?
3. 
Q4:
1. What was championed in paintings from the 17th century?
2. What did 17th century art praise?
3. 
Q5:
1. What did classicism refer to?
2. What was the meaning of classicism?
3. 
Q6:
1. What happened when art was swiftly changed?
2. How were sudden shifts in artistic movements referred to?
3. 
Q7:
1. Why are the greatest artists ahead of the times regarding societal changes?
2. Why do the most talented artists predict societal changes with their work?
3. 
Q8:
1. Which sort of art is the most indebted to state power?
2. What artistic form is the most enmeshed with government power?
3. 
Q9:
1. Who ushered in the era of absolute monarchy?
2. Who made it so that absolute monarchy was thes system of government?
3. 
Q10:
1. What changes with the times?
2. What shifts at the same moment as the times?
3. 
Q11:
1. What was mirrored by the notion of classicism?
2. What was perfectly represented by classicism?
3. 
Q12:
1. What must successful artists often do?
2. What is a common obligation of artists who have done well?
3. 
