Encyclopedia
- This article is an overview of the history of art worldwide. For the academic discipline of art history, see Art history.
The
history of art usually refers to the history of the
visual arts, such as
painting,
sculpture and
architecture. The term also encompasses theory of the visual arts. It is not usually taken or intended to refer to the
performing arts or literary arts. The history of art attempts an objective survey of art throughout human history, classifying cultures and periods and noting their distinguishing features and influences.
The field of "art history" was developed in the
West, and originally dealt exclusively with
Western art history, with the
High Renaissance as the defining standard. Gradually, with the onset of
Modernism, a wider vision of history has developed, seeking to place other societies in a global overview by analyzing their artifacts in terms of their own cultural values. Thus, the subject is now seen to encompass all visual art, from the
megaliths of
Western Europe to the paintings of the
Tang Dynasty in
China.
Study of art history
Study of the history of art is a relatively recent phenomenon; prior to the
Renaissance, the modern concept of "
art" did not exist, and
art was used to refer to workmanship by generally anonymous tradespeople.
The viewpoint of the art historian is a significant input into the defining parameters which are employed. For example, during the early
Victorian era, the
quattrocento artists were considered inferior to those of the
High Renaissance—a notion subsequently challenged by the
Pre-Raphaelite movement. There has since been a trend, dominant in most modern art history, to see all cultures and periods from a neutral point of view, with a tendency to shy away from value judgements. Thus, for example,
Australian Aboriginal art would not be deemed better or worse than
Michelangelo by typical Modernist art historians—just different.
Analysis has also evolved into studying the "political" use of art, rather than reserving analysis to the
aesthetic appreciation of its craftsmanship or
beauty. It is believed there is always an intent and a philosophy behind art, and an effect achieved by it. Thus, for example, the considerable employment by the
Eastern Orthodox Church in the
Middle Ages can be contrasted or compared with "
Soviet propaganda", the manifestation of social structure through 19th-century portraiture, an anarcho-religious vision exemplified by Van Gogh, etc. What may once have been viewed simply as a masterpiece is now deconstructed into an economic, social, philosophical, and cultural manifestation of the artist's world-view, philosophy, intentions and background.
There are different ways of structuring a history of art. The following is one which is commonly used, based primarily on time, but within that creating subdivisions based on place and culture.
Earliest known art
The oldest surviving art forms include small
sculptures and
paintings on rocks and in
caves. There are very few known examples of art that date earlier than 40,000 years ago, the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic period. People often rubbed smaller rocks against larger rocks and boulders to paint pictures of their everyday life, such as
hunting wild
game.
The so-called
Venus of Willendorf is a sculpture from the paleolithic era, which depicts an obviously pregnant woman. This sculpture, carved from stone, is remarkable in its roundness instead of a flat or low-relief depiction. Early
Aegean art, although it dates from a much later period, shares some of the same abstract figurative elements.
Prehistoric art objects are rare, and the context of such early art is difficult to determine.
Prehistoric, by definition, refers to those cultures which have left no written records of their society. The art historian judges early pieces of art as objects in their own right, with few opportunities for comparison between contemporaneous pieces. Interpretation of such early art must be done primarily in the context of
aesthetics tempered by what is known of various tribal societies still in existence.
Ancient art
The period of ancient art began when ancient civilizations developed a form of written language. The earliest examples of ancient art originated from
Mesopotamia and
Egypt.
The great traditions in art have a foundation in the art of one of the six great ancient civilizations: Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia,
Greece,
Rome,
India, or
China. Each of these centers of early civilization developed a unique and characteristic style in their art. Because of their size and duration these civilizations, more of their art works have survived and more of their influence has been transmitted to other cultures and later times. They have also provided us with the first records of how artists worked.
The period of Greek art saw a veneration of the human physical form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty and anatomically correct proportions.
Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic distinguishing features .
Post-ancient Western art
In
Byzantine and
Gothic art of the
Middle Ages, the dominance of the church insisted on the expression of biblical and not material truths. There was no need to depict the reality of the material world, in which man was born in a "state of sin", so the skill of doing so was marginalised in favour of methods which would show the higher unseen glory of a heavenly world, especially through the extensive use of gold in paintings, which also presented figures in idealised, patterned .
The
Renaissance is the return yet again to valuation of the material world, and this paradigm shift is reflected in art forms, which show the corporeality of the human body, and the three dimensional reality of landscape.
Post-ancient Eastern art
Eastern art has generally worked in a style akin to Western medieval art, namely a concentration on surface patterning and local colour . A characteristic of this style is that the local colour is often defined by an outline . This is evident in, for example, the art of India, Tibet and Japan.
Religious
Islamic art forbids iconography, and expresses religious ideas through geometry instead.
Contemporary art
The physical and rational certainties of the clockwork universe depicted by the 19th-century
Enlightenment were shattered not only by new discoveries of relativity by
Einstein and of unseen psychology by
Freud, but also by unprecedented technological development accelerated by the implosion of civilisation in two world wars. The history of twentieth century art is a narrative of endless possibilities and the search for new standards, each being torn down in succession by the next. Thus the parameters of
Impressionism,
Expressionism,
Fauvism,
Cubism,
Dadaism,
Surrealism, etc cannot be maintained very much beyond the time of their invention. Increasing
global interaction during this time saw an equivalent influence of other cultures into Western art, such as
Pablo Picasso being influenced by
African sculpture. Japanese woodblock prints had an immense influence on Impressionism and subsequent development. Then African fetish sculptures were taken up by Picasso and to some extent by
Matisse.
Modernism, the idealistic search for truth, gave way in the latter half of the 20th century to a realisation of its unattainability. Relativity was accepted as an unavoidable truth, which led to the Postmodern period, where cultures of the world and of history are seen as changing forms, which can be appreciated and drawn from only with irony. Furthermore the separation of cultures is increasingly blurred and it is now more appropriate to think in terms of a global culture, rather than regional cultures.
See also
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Architectural history studies the evolution [i] and history [i] of architecture [i] ac ...
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- Visual culture
- African American art
Bibliography
- Ed. Frank Milner , "The Stuckists Punk Victorian" National Museums Liverpool, ISBN 1-902700-27-9.
Further reading
- Vernon Hyde Minor, Art History's History. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 2001, 1994.
- Donald Preziosi, Seeing through Art History in: Ellen Messer-Davidow,David R. Shumway, David J. Sylvan, eds., Knowledges. Historical and Critical Studies in Disciplinarity, Charlotteville, University Press of Virginia 1993, pp. 215-231
- H.W. Janson & Anthony Janson, History of Art, Revised Sixth Edition
- Marilyn Stokstad, Art History Revised, Second Edition
External links
