Teens/adults - Lesson 2: Stepping into (art) history

To look at an art work or object and discuss its history is an exciting challenge. There are so many questions to answer: Who made it and when, where did it come from, why was it made, how did it work, what is it made out of, how did people respond to it when it was made, what forces in society influenced it? Also, how it influenced society, how it connects to other works, and more. Those are the basic questions of the study we know as Art History. Most of us didn’t learn this is school, and it’s something new to us. But it is a rich and fascinating thing to be able to see something and encounter a lot of information about it.

This unit of Art at Home goes into Art History to provide you with the tools you can use to look at any art work or object and begin to discuss answers to the above questions. First, it’s important to know what’s at stake. History is complex, and so is Art History. In order to see some of the challenges an art historian faces when talking about an art work or object, familiarize yourself with a brief overview.

Art History’s History

Art History, as a discipline of study, got a late start in the classical world. Visual arts were not included in the seven liberal arts of Ancient Greece (Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy or Cosmology.) There was no Greek muse for pictorial arts. In the western world, the study of art started slowly. Art History dates to Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79), who wrote Naturalis Historia (Natural History), an encyclopedic examination of things in the Roman empire. One of the largest single books to have survived from antiquity, Natural History is nearly the only book to discuss art and artists of its time. Pliny’s ideas on art can be traced further back to the Romans’ most familiar art critic, the Greek sculptor and critic named Xenocrates of Athens (c. 280 B.C.), whose writings did not survive but are quoted by Pliny.

Xenocrates of Athens wrote about the categories and development of art. Why does that matter? Pliny’s areas of focus set the template for the goals of Art History that largely remain, even today. In Book XXXIV, Pliny’s discusses the notable coins, statues, chariots, objects, and monuments constructed from copper, copper alloys, bronze, iron, lead, silver, and gold. Pliny writes in this chapter on metal, “…Of the bronze which was renowned in early days, the Corinthian is the most highly praised. This is a compound that was produced by accident, when Corinth was burned at the time of its capture; and there has been a wonderful mania among many people for possessing this metal—in fact it is recorded that Verres, whose conviction Marcus Cicero had procured, was, together with Cicero, proscribed by Antony for no other reason than because he had refused to give up to Antony some pieces of Corinthian ware; and to me the majority of these collectors seem only to make a pretence of being connoisseurs, so as to separate themselves from the multitude, rather than to have any exceptionally refined insight in this matter; and this I will briefly show…” Book XXXIV, iii. [1]

He continues with numerous and colorful accounts of the great statues of history, along with the stories that merited their memorialization, the artists involved, examples of the fees they received, and the reception of those works by the public—elements we still use to discuss art’s history.

The Connection of Biography and History

In Western art, throughout the Renaissance, Art History was closely related to biography. The most notable and influential example is Le vite de piú eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori (Lives of the Artists), by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), considered the father of Art History. An artist himself in the age of Michelangelo, Vasari’s Lives (1550, 1568) tells the stories of famous artists—many of whom the author knew personally—and it led future art historians toward two notable conclusions: Art can be understood by learning about the artist who made it; and contemporary art is influenced by the art of the past.

From Vasari’s chapter, “Lionardo da Vinci,” here is an excerpt: “Lionardo undertook to paint for Francesco del Giocondo a portrait of Mona Lisa his wife, but having spent four years upon it, left it unfinished. The work now belongs to King Francis of France, and whoever wishes to see how art can imitate nature may learn from this head. Mona Lisa being most beautiful, he used, while he was painting her, to have men to sing and play to her and buffoons to amuse her, to take away that look of melancholy which is so often seen in portraits; and in this of Lionardo’s there is a peaceful smile more divine than human. By the excellence of the works of this most divine of artists his fame was grown so great that all who delighted in art, and in fact the whole city, desired to have some memorial of it.” Stories of the Italian Artists from Vasari. [2]

By the 18th century, antiquarians turned their sights to documenting the art in medieval archives, churches, and monuments. Throughout the century, survey monographs in several European countries appeared such as Browne Willis’ Survey of the Cathedral-church of Landaff (1719). At the same time, Art History took a turn when the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) began to weigh in on art during the Age of Enlightenment, and this, in turn, led to numerous philosophers, scientists, and others to look at art and write about it in detail, not as a study of art and its history, but as evidence to buttress their own scientific theories.

Rewriting History

As the field of science became more rigorous, art historians began to rewrite histories to challenge earlier scholarship with recent discoveries. Nineteenth-century controversies sprang up on any number of issues from past art historians; meanwhile, the first university Art History course was established by Gustav Waagen at the University of Berlin. Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) rejected Vasari and urged Art History away from a “cult” of personality and toward the appraisal of experts in his masterwork, Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (The History of Ancient Art), published in 1764. A boom in archaeology uncovered a multitude of “new” ancient works and caused further rethinking of art’s past as well as a reevaluation of the ways art is documented.

Two avenues of thought led Art History of the 19th century. One was the empirical method, which guided art historians to study individual works of art. Another was a theoretical approach, which looked at the broader development of art divided into periods. The later influenced Art History as a way to understand cultures themselves. By this point, several European cities became centers of Art History research, including: London, Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, and in the early 20th century, Boston and New York. Harvard University granted the first American fine arts Ph.D in 1913.

The number of art historians grew, and so did their methods of looking at art. They enlarged the definition of art itself (the Museum für Kunst und Industrie and the Victoria and Albert Museum were the first decorative arts museums in Europe). At the influential University of Vienna, methodology split into three areas: a history-based approach; a stylistic approach; and a linguistic-historical approach to the history of art. Closer to our day, “New Art History” was the name coined by Norman Bryson, Yves Bonefoy, and Anita Brookner to refer to a post-war reordering of history after mid-century. It rejected Renaissance-based scholarship in favor of new approaches including Marxism, semiotics, and deconstruction.

Closer to our own day, art historians have engaged in many social issues that include post-colonialism, race, gender, and identity, to name only a few. [3] Each of these presents tools that are useful when looking at art and objects.

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[1] Pliny, Natural History with an English Translation in Ten Volumes, by H. Rackham, edited by T. E. Page, E. Capps, W. H. D. Rouse, L. A. Post, E. H. Warmington (Harvard University Press), 1952, reprinted 1961, p. 131

[2] Giorgio Vasari, Stories of the Italian Artists from Vasari, arranged and translated by E. L. Seeley (Chatto & Windus & Duffield & Co.), 1908, p. 154

[3] See “An Outline of the History of Art History,” Dictionary of Art Historians, arthistorians.info, accessed September 19, 2019