Narrative Art: T elling Tales About Art Practice; part 1 Narrative Art; Pre- Modern A narrative is simply a story (Tate, 2018a) and narrative art practice produces art and design work that tells a story. Much of Western art until the twentieth century has been narrative, depicting stories from religion, myth and legend, history and literature. Audiences were assumed to be familiar with the stories in question. A good example of this is the life of St Francis depicted in the Basilica San Francisco, Assisi by Giotto 1300. Prior to the advent of literacy most narrative art was done in a simultaneous narrative style with very little overarching organisation. Once literacy developed in different parts of the world pictures began to be organised along register lines, like lines on a page that helped define the direction of the narrative. Modern Narrative art The Modern era in art is generally taken to begin around 1860 to 1960. Beginning with Manet’s Ol...