academic of art history

ART HISTORIES – THE ACADEMIC STUDY OF ART
The academic subject of art history, with its origins in the eighteenth century, was no less embedded within the ideas, assumptions and institutions of its time. The aesthetic theories outlined here have been variously used or privileged by particular methodological approaches which in turn have underpinned the ideas of art historians,
critics and other cultural commentators. The chapters in this primer have been organised to reflect some of these interconnections and inter-dependencies.

For example, Greenberg’s Modernist theory, explored in Chapter 2, can be seen as a belief which privileges the best art on the basis of judgements about form. The interpretative framework offered by more orthodox and pragmatic forms of Marxism (Chapter 3) has typically, although not exclusively, endorsed art in terms of resemblance and imitation. The institutional reading of art is evident within formulations of the postmodern (Chapter 7). More recent critiques offered by semiotics (Chapter 4), psychoanalysis (Chapter 5), feminism (Chapter 6) and postcolonialism (Chapter 8) have explored issues, themes and exclusions arising from
past and present methodological traditions which have their origins both within and beyond the academic study of art history. The collective impact of these critiques, appreciable from the late 1960s onwards,
resulted in claims of a ‘New Art History’. However, as several commentators noted at the time, it was by no means clear if there had been agreement on what the old art history had been (Bann 1986: 19–31).
In this chapter’s second section, we will explore aspects of the development of art history. Understood in its very broadest sense, art history is the academic study concerned with exploring the making and meaning of those objects and practices judged to have aesthetic value. As you read the brief survey of the development of art history, keep in mind the ideas about what art was generally assumed to be through these successive historical periods. Whilst art is not a static category, similarly, the assumptions and practices of art historians have also changed through time. In this sense, the actual production of art and its academic study are symbiotic.