Stairway to Art is a card game about recognising the great European art styles from the image of the work and nothing else. No artist, no date, no label.
The idea is that the eye learns by looking. After a few games, players start telling a Romanesque round arch from a Gothic pointed one, a Baroque solomonic column from a Classical Ionic one, an Impressionist brushstroke from an Art Nouveau pattern.
This is a deliberate simplification. Real art history is far messier, full of transitions, regional schools, artists who break their own classification and arguments that are still going on.
To make it playable, we have:
- Cut it down to the 10 styles that are easiest to recognise in European art.
- Grouped prehistoric, Egyptian and Mesopotamian work under "Ancient".
- Folded the Rococo into the late Baroque.
- Given every work a single style, even though plenty of them sit between two.
The bridge ↔ cards are where we admit as much: three works that recognise a style does not end on a given afternoon.