Art History

Art history is a humanistic discipline that studies cultural modes of expression throughout history. It focuses on a key event, such as creation of a seminal work or publication of an important text, to tell a story of art and explore the context of its creation. In some cultures, art is woven into other practices, such as historical documentation, magic, or folklore. Art history therefore observes a wide range of human skills and talents—visual, spatial, tactile, or aural—that illuminate human experience and consciousness through use of material, expression, and form. The first art historian is considered to be Giorgio Vasari, who wrote The Lives of Artists, published in 1550, which provided a basis for understanding and interpreting works of art. The purpose of art history is to recognize the ways in which historic and contemporary artistic expression influence construction of meaning, thus contributing to a society’s social, political, and spiritual life.

Brief History

Art history in its present form originated in Germany in the nineteenth century, following developments of art theory of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The Lives of Artists by Italian artist Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) provided a basis for Western understanding and interpreting works of art. In Vasari's view, art developed in periodic cycles, achieving its highest point in ancient Greece, declining in the Middle Ages, and was revived in the early Renaissance by artists such as Giotto di Bondone (known as Giotto; ca. 1267–1337), Tommaso Cassai Masaccio (known as Masaccio; ca.1401–1427), Piero della Francesca (ca.1416–1492), and Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506). Vasari explained that art continued to develop, reaching its height in the late Renaissance with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Raphael Sanzio (known as Raphael; 1483–1520), and Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (known as Michelangelo; 1475–1564). Following Vasari’s discourse, art history, with a focus on individual artists and schools, was taught in various European art academies, taking into account aesthetic criteria of the times. Art and beauty were thought to be extrinsic (outside of) history, thus striving to achieve timeless aesthetic norms, regardless of the changing foil of history.

This view was partly corrected by the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768), in his History of the Art of the Antiquity (1764). Winckelmann considered art to be simultaneously the result of its times, but also an embodiment of a universal moral idea applicable to all cultures. Finally, German philosopher Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), in his Lectures on Aesthetics (published 1835–1838) reached an understanding of the hermenautic problem of art. Hermenautics looked into methods of fully understanding something if one does not share the conditions that gave meaning to its creation. Hegel solved this problem by introducing the philosophical concept of Universal Spirit (Geist), or Absolute Idea. For Hegel, art is a portrait of the human mind: it expresses human beliefs and ideas in a sensory form, thus articulating and reflecting the Absolute Idea. Absolute Idea is an ultimate blueprint that is revealed differently during different times, from ancient Egypt to the present. According to Hegel, human expression is consciousness that takes material form in the creation of artworks. Art is thus both evidence and progress of history.

Traditionally, art history concerns itself with a chronological description of art objects, their classifications, genre, design, format, and style. Like art, art history is concerned with subject and object, expression and form; both the material from which the object is created and the individuals, groups, and societies that created them. During the twentieth century, art history largely abandoned the Absolute Idea and splintered into branches that follow different methodologies, emphasizing different points of interest.

Art History Today

Contemporary art history largely abandons simple explanations, embracing a hybrid of theoretical approaches and methodologies to analyze and interpret artistic practices. Art history narratives can be constructed along national or transnational lines, or with a specific thematic or methodological focus. Art history methodologies organize background information on key events, places, and people that contributed to creation of art; theoretical approaches and discussions as they changed through time; and intersections between art history and other sciences, such as anthropology, history, philosophy, politics, sociology, economy, science, and others.

National art history narratives are typically traced through predominant schools and movements. For example, French twentieth-century art can be observed through the development of figurative art, Fauvism, Cubism, and Surrealism; the same period in Germany can be studied through Expressionism, Dada, Bauhaus and Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), and in Russia it would concern itself with the history of the avant-garde. In comparison, transnational developments would focus on overarching global interests in art of the times, such as renewed interest in tribal or naive art, or the emergence of abstraction. Thematic narratives follow the development of recurring themes and genres, such as landscape art or portraiture. One example of this kind of narrative would involve mapping the development of landscape art to land art and eco- or bio-art.

Methodological art history narrative focuses on a formalist, contextual, structuralist, or poststructuralist approach, or a combination of several of these methods, explained as follows:

• The formalist approach focuses on evaluation of artwork by analyzing its form and style. Pure formalism maintains that everything that is necessary for understanding a work of art is contained within its form. Typical questions that a formalist art historian would ask may be: What does this artwork look like? How can its color, space, line, volume, mass, and composition be best described? Prominent formalist art historians were Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945) and Alois Riegl (1858–1905).
• Contextual analysis is a method of studying the work of art in its cultural, social, or political context. Contextual analysis would ask questions such as: When and where was this work made? Who made it? What kind of view did the artist have? What are the factors that could have affected the artist? Who was it meant for? What is its deeper or symbolic meaning? In his book Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955), Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968) pursues the study of iconography and meaning in Renaissance art.
• Structuralism maintains that the work of art must be understood in terms of its relationship to a larger system or structure, such as language. It has developed from the early 1900s from the linguistic studies of Ferdinand de Sassure and Claude Lévi-Strauss.
• Poststructuralism is a method formulated to mediate the heterogeneous works of mid-twentieth century European philosophers and critical theorists, such as Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Giles Deleuze, Judith Butler, and Julia Kristeva. They all present different critiques on structuralism, but common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency and the binary opposition of the structures. In this sense, art since the beginning of the twentieth century is largely formulated as a response to other strands of thought.

Bibliography

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Hatt, Michael and Charlotte Klonk. Art History: A Critical Introduction to its Methods. Manchester UP, 2006.

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