This article is about the academic discipline of art history. For an overview of the history of art worldwide, see History of art. For other uses, see Art history (disambiguation).
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Cup with a frieze of gazelles, ca. early 1st millennium B.C.
Art history is the study of artistic works made throughout human history and its impact on societies and cultures, along with how the arts can change throughout the course of history.
Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today, art history examines broader aspects of visual culture, including the various visual and conceptual outcomes related to art.[1][2] Art history is a broad discipline encompassing many branches. Some focus on specific time periods, while others concentrate on particular geographic regions, such as the art ofEurope. Thematic categorizations include feminist art history, iconography, the analysis of symbols, and design history.[3]
Studying the history of art emerged as a means of documenting and critiquing artistic works, with influential historians and methods originating in Ancient Greece, Italy and China.[4][5]
As a discipline, art history is distinguished from art criticism, which is concerned with establishing a relative artistic value for critiquing individual works. Within the discipline the art historian uses a historical method or a philosophy, such as historical materialism or critical theory, to analyze artworks.[3]
Methodologies
An conservation technician working on a painting. c.2010
Art historians employ a number of methods in their research so they can examine work in the context of its time. This is professionally done in a manner which respects its creator's motivations and imperatives; with consideration of the desires and prejudices of its patrons and sponsors. A comparative analysis of themes and approaches of the creator's colleagues and teachers along with consideration of iconography and symbolism is part of the examination. In short, this approach examines the work of art in the context of the world within which it was created.
An analysis of iconography is a large branch of art history which focuses on particular design elements of an object. Through a close reading of such elements, it is possible to trace their lineage, and with it draw conclusions regarding the origins and trajectory of these motifs. In turn, it is possible to make any number of observations regarding the social, cultural, economic and aesthetic values of those responsible for producing the object.[6]
Art historians may also work alongside or as art conservationists, helping restore and conserve artworks. Conservation is a scientific field that is crucial to historians work, due to them needing to observe a work that is a condition good enough to be examined. Training in art conservation typically involves coursework in chemistry as well as the practice and history of art.[7]
The earliest surviving writing on art that can be classified as art history are the passages in Pliny the Elder's Natural History (c.AD 77–79), concerning the development of Greek sculpture and painting.[5] From them it is possible to trace the ideas of Xenokrates of Sicyon (c.280 BC), a Greek sculptor who was perhaps the first art historian.[9] Pliny's work, while mainly an encyclopaedia of the sciences, has thus been influential from the Renaissance onwards. (Passages about techniques used by the painter Apelles c. (332–329 BC), have been especially well-known.) Similar, though independent, developments occurred in the 6th century China, where a canon of worthy artists was established by writers in the scholar-official class. These writers, being necessarily proficient in calligraphy, were artists themselves. The artists are described in the Six Principles of Painting formulated by Xie He.[4]
Giorgio Vasari, a Tuscan painter, sculptor and author of the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, has been credited with writing the first true history of art.[10] He emphasized art's progression and development, which was a milestone in this field. His work was a personal and a historical account, featuring biographies of individual Italian artists, many of whom were his contemporaries and personal acquaintances. The most renowned of these was Michelangelo.
Vasari's writings about art were enormously influential, and served as a model for many.
Winckelmann and art criticism
Scholars such as Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) criticized Vasari's "cult" of artistic personality, and argued that the real emphasis in the study of art should be the views of the learned beholder and not the viewpoint of the artist.[citation needed] Winckelmann's writings thus were the beginnings of art criticism. His two most notable works that introduced the concept of art criticism were Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst(Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks), published in 1755, and Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (History of Art in Antiquity), published in 1764 (this is the first occurrence of the phrase 'history of art' in the title of a book).[11] Winckelmann critiqued the artistic excesses of Baroque and Rococo forms, and was instrumental in reforming taste in favor of Neoclassicism. Winckelmann's work marked the entry of art history into the high-philosophical discourse of German culture.[12]
Winckelmann was read avidly by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, both of whom began to write on the history of art, and his account of the Laocoön group occasioned a response by Lessing. The emergence of art as a major subject of philosophical speculation was solidified by the appearance of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment in 1790, and was furthered by Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics. Hegel's philosophy served as the direct inspiration for Karl Schnaase's work. Schnaase's Niederländische Briefe established the theoretical foundations for art history as an autonomous discipline, and his Geschichte der bildenden Künste, one of the first historical surveys of the history of art from antiquity to the Renaissance, facilitated the teaching of art history in German-speaking universities. Schnaase's survey was published contemporaneously with a similar work by Franz Theodor Kugler.[citation needed]
Wölfflin and stylistic analysis
Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945), who studied under Burckhardt in Basel, is considered to be one of the most influential scholars of modern art history.[13] He introduced a scientific approach to the history of art, focusing on three concepts.[14] Firstly, he attempted to study art using psychology, particularly by applying the work of Wilhelm Wundt. He argued, among other things, that art and architecture are good if they resemble the human body. For example, houses were good if their façades looked like faces. Secondly, he introduced the idea of studying art through comparison. By comparing individual paintings to each other, he was able to make distinctions of style. His book Renaissance and Baroque developed this idea, and was the first to show how these stylistic periods differed from one another. In contrast to Giorgio Vasari, Wölfflin was uninterested in the biographies of artists. He proposed the creation of an "art history without names."[15] He also studied art based on ideas of nationhood. He was particularly interested in whether there was an inherently "Italian" and an inherently "German" style. This last interest was most fully articulated in his monograph on the German artist Albrecht Dürer.[16]
In the late 19th century a major school of art-historical thought developed at the University of Vienna. The first generation of the Vienna School was dominated by Alois Riegl and Franz Wickhoff, both students of Moritz Thausing, and was characterized by a tendency to reassess neglected or disparaged periods in the history of art. Riegl and Wickhoff both wrote extensively on the art of late antiquity, which before them had been considered as a period of decline from the classical ideal. Riegl also contributed to the revaluation of the Baroque.[citation needed]
The next generation of professors at Vienna included Max Dvořák, Julius von Schlosser, Hans Tietze, Karl Maria Swoboda, and Josef Strzygowski. A number of the most important twentieth-century art historians, including Ernst Gombrich, received their degrees at Vienna at this time. The term "Second Vienna School" (or "New Vienna School") usually refers to the following generation of Viennese scholars, including Hans Sedlmayr, Otto Pächt, and Guido Kaschnitz von Weinberg. These scholars began in the 1930s to return to the work of the first generation, particularly to Riegl and his concept of Kunstwollen, and attempted to develop it into a full-blown art-historical methodology. Sedlmayr, in particular, rejected the minute study of iconography, patronage, and other approaches grounded in historical context, preferring instead to concentrate on the aesthetic qualities of a work of art. As a result, the Second Vienna School gained a reputation for unrestrained and irresponsible formalism, and was furthermore colored by Sedlmayr's overt racism and membership in the Nazi party. This latter tendency was, however, by no means shared by all members of the school; Pächt, for example, was himself Jewish, and was forced to leave Vienna in the 1930s.[citation needed]
Our 21st-century understanding of the symbolic content of art comes from a group of scholars who gathered in Hamburg in the 1920s. The most prominent among them were Erwin Panofsky, Aby Warburg, Fritz Saxl and Gertrud Bing. Together they developed much of the vocabulary that continues to be used in the 21st century by art historians. "Iconography"—with roots meaning "symbols from writing" refers to subject matter of art derived from written sources—especially scripture and mythology. "Iconology" is a broader term that referred to all symbolism, whether derived from a specific text or not. Today art historians sometimes use these terms interchangeably.
Panofsky, in his early work, also developed the theories of Riegl, but became eventually more preoccupied with iconography, and in particular with the transmission of themes related to classical antiquity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In this respect his interests coincided with those of Warburg, the son of a wealthy family who had assembled a library in Hamburg, devoted to the study of the classical tradition in later art and culture. Under Saxl's auspices, this library was developed into a research institute, affiliated with the University of Hamburg, where Panofsky taught.
Warburg died in 1929, and in the 1930s Saxl and Panofsky, both Jewish, were forced to leave Hamburg. Saxl settled in London, bringing Warburg's library with him and establishing the Warburg Institute. Panofsky settled in Princeton at the Institute for Advanced Study. In this respect they were part of an extraordinary influx of German art historians into the English-speaking academy in the 1930s. These scholars were largely responsible for establishing art history as a legitimate field of study in the English-speaking world, and the influence of Panofsky's methodology, in particular, determined the course of American art history for a generation.
Jung and archetypes
Carl Jung in 1935
Carl Jung also applied psychoanalytic theory to art. Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker, and founder of analytical psychology. Jung's approach to psychology emphasized understanding the psyche through exploring the worlds of dreams, art, mythology, world religion and philosophy. Much of his life's work was spent exploring Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, sociology, as well as literature and the arts. His most notable contributions include his concept of the psychological archetype, the collective unconscious, and his theory of synchronicity. Jung believed that many experiences perceived as coincidence were not merely due to chance but, instead, suggested the manifestation of parallel events or circumstances reflecting this governing dynamic.[17] He argued that a collective unconscious and archetypal imagery were detectable in art. His ideas were particularly popular among American Abstract expressionists in the 1940s and 1950s.[18] His work inspired the surrealist concept of drawing imagery from dreams and the unconscious.
Jung emphasized the importance of balance and harmony. He cautioned that modern humans rely too heavily on science and logic and would benefit from integrating spirituality and appreciation of the unconscious realm. His work not only triggered analytical work by art historians but became an integral part of art-making. Jackson Pollock, for example, famously created a series of drawings to accompany his sessions with his Jungian analyst, Joseph Henderson. Henderson, who later published the drawings in a text devoted to Pollock's sessions, realized how powerful the drawings were as a therapeutic tool.[19]
The legacy of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology in art history has been profound, and extends beyond Freud and Jung. The prominent feminist art historian Griselda Pollock, for example, draws upon psychoanalysis both in her reading into contemporary art and in her rereading of modernist art. With Griselda Pollock's reading of French feminist psychoanalysis and in particular the writings of Julia Kristeva and Bracha L. Ettinger, as with Rosalind Krauss's readings of Jacques Lacan and Jean-François Lyotard and Catherine de Zegher's curatorial rereading of art, Feminist theory written in the fields of French feminism and Psychoanalysis has strongly informed the reframing of both men and women artists in art history.
Linda Nochlin's essay "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" helped to ignite feminist art history during the 1970s and remains one of the most widely read essays about female artists. This was then followed by a 1972 College Art Association Panel, chaired by Nochlin, entitled "Eroticism and the Image of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Art". Within a decade, scores of papers, articles, and essays sustained a growing momentum, fueled by the Second-wave feminist movement, of critical discourse surrounding women's interactions with the arts as both artists and subjects. In her pioneering essay, Nochlin applies a feminist critical framework to show systematic exclusion of women from art training, arguing that exclusion from practicing art as well as the canonical history of art was the consequence of cultural conditions which curtailed and restricted women from art producing fields.[20] The few who did succeed were treated as anomalies and did not provide a model for subsequent success. Griselda Pollock is another prominent feminist art historian, whose use of psychoanalytic theory is described above.
While feminist art history can focus on any time period and location, much attention has been given to the Modern era. Some of this scholarship centers on the feminist art movement, which referred specifically to the experience of women. Often, feminist art history offers a critical "re-reading" of the Western art canon, such as Carol Duncan's re-interpretation of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Two pioneers of the field are Mary Garrard and Norma Broude. Their anthologies Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany, The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, and Reclaiming Feminist Agency: Feminist Art History After Postmodernism are substantial efforts to bring feminist perspectives into the discourse of art history. The pair also co-founded the Feminist Art History Conference.[21]
Art historians are often employed by museums due to their expertise in the field. Galleries, and archives are places where art historians may be in charge of exhibits, research or collections, depending on specialization factors.[22]Museum studies, including the history of museum collecting and display, is now a specialized field of study, as is the history of collecting.
Professional organizations
In the United States, the most important art history organization is the College Art Association.[23] It organizes an annual conference and publishes the Art Bulletin and Art Journal. Similar organizations exist in other parts of the world, as well as for specializations, such as architectural history and Renaissance art history. In the UK, for example, the Association of Art Historians is the premiere organization, and it publishes a journal titled Art History.
↑ In Synchronicity in the final two pages of the Conclusion, Jung stated that not all coincidences are meaningful and further explained the creative causes of this phenomenon.
↑ Jung defined the collective unconscious as akin to instincts in Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.
Nelson, Robert S.; Shiff, Richard, eds. (2003). Critical Terms for Art History (2nded.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN978-0226571683.
Further reading
Listed by date
Wölfflin, H. (1915, trans. 1932). Principles of Art History; the problem of the development of style in later art. [New York]: Dover Publications.
Hauser, A. (1959). The philosophy of art history. New York: Knopf.
Arntzen, E., & Rainwater, R. (1980). Guide to the literature of art history. Chicago: American Library Association.
Holly, M. A. (1984). Panofsky and the foundations of art history. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
Johnson, W. M. (1988). Art history: its use and abuse. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Carrier, D. (1991). Principles of art history writing. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Kemal, Salim, and Ivan Gaskell (1991). The Language of Art History. Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-44598-1
Fitzpatrick, Virginia L. N. V. D. (1992). Art History: A Contextual Inquiry Course. Point of view series. Reston, Virginia: National Art Education Association. ISBN978-0937652596
Minor, Vernon Hyde. (1994). Critical Theory of Art History. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Adams, L. (1996). The methodologies of art: an introduction. New York: IconEditions.
Frazier, N. (1999). The Penguin concise dictionary of art history. New York: Penguin Reference.
Pollock, G., (1999). Differencing the Canon. Routledge. ISBN0-415-06700-6
Harrison, Charles, Paul Wood, and Jason Gaiger. (2000). Art in Theory 1648–1815: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Minor, Vernon Hyde. (2001). Art history's history. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Robinson, Hilary. (2001). Feminism – Art – Theory: An Anthology, 1968–2000. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell.
Clark, T. J. (2001). Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Buchloh, Benjamin. (2001). Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Mansfield, Elizabeth (2002). Art History and Its Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline. Routledge. ISBN0-415-22868-9
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