INTRODUCTION
WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?
Art History: The Basics has been written as an undergraduate primer and for the general reader with an interest in art history and the visual arts. As a university or college student, you may be exploring art history or the contextual studies component of a practice- based fine art or art and design programme for the first time. If you are a regular or even casual visitor to galleries and exhibitions, or peruse art critics’ newspaper columns and reviews, Art History: The Basics offers an introduction to the subject and to broader debates about the interpretation and meaning of art.
WHAT DOES THIS BOOK OFFER?
In the last few decades art history has developed significantly beyond the stylistic analysis and classification of art works. A number of introductory books or anthologies have been written which open up the subject to the student or general reader. For example, John Berger’s collaborative series of essays, Ways of Seeing (1972),
offered a critical Marxist approach to a canonical art history. Marcia Pointon’s Art History: A Students’ Handbook (since 1980) is a highly successful and popular guide largely aimed at a pre-college student readership. Books containing selected texts on key art historical
issues provide material for more in-depth research, for example
Eric Fernie‘s Art History and Its Methods: A Critical Anthology
(1995). Michael Hatt and Charlotte Klonk’s Art History: A Critical
Introduction to Its Methods (2006) offers accessible discussions and
explanations of methodological debates in art history. The Methodologies
of Art, by Laurie Schneider Adams (1996), surveys differing
approaches to art and some of the assumptions of their use.
Art History: The Basics provides a toolkit of concepts, ideas and
methods relevant to understanding art and art history. It will develop
reader knowledge and subject-specific skills, enabling the exploration
of issues and debates within art histories.
CONTEMPORARY ART HISTORIES
Contemporary approaches to art history recognise its plurality –
‘art histories’ – rather than a singular and central art historical
tradition. For example, as its title suggests, Ernst Gombrich’s The
Story of Art, first published in 1950, asserted particular assumptions
and exclusions about the meaning of art and the role of art
history, many of which are no longer tenable. Jonathan Harris has
described Gombrich’s concern with ‘The canon of great art, and its
confirmation in, and by, art history’ as integral to broader humanist
values and liberal ideals (2001: 37). Gombrich perceived these
connections to be self-evident and unproblematic.
Fast-forward over half a century and the ‘picture’, so to speak,
looks very different although not unrecognisable. The subject
boundaries, which broadly characterised the discipline of art history
in the 1950s, have been profoundly transformed by the concerns of
critical theory – initially from the continent, and increasingly taken
up across the world. Today we are faced with a range of art histories
rather than a single methodological approach or explanatory model.
What one commentator has recently described as an interdisciplinary
‘menu’ of options concedes the partiality of interpretation,
whilst inviting a healthy and timely self-suspicion about the basis
on which claims to artistic value and meaning might be sustained.
This is not to suggest, however, that older and more conservative
‘Gombrichian’ approaches to art history do not continue among
survey courses or some A-level syllabi – they do. Parallel to these new perspectives is an increasingly globalised cultural economy of new proximities and perspectives. The
contemporary world is one in which past and present asymmetries
of power and postcolonial histories are mediated through contemporary
art and art history, as they are by other interests and
discourses.
WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?
Art History: The Basics has been written as an undergraduate primer and for the general reader with an interest in art history and the visual arts. As a university or college student, you may be exploring art history or the contextual studies component of a practice- based fine art or art and design programme for the first time. If you are a regular or even casual visitor to galleries and exhibitions, or peruse art critics’ newspaper columns and reviews, Art History: The Basics offers an introduction to the subject and to broader debates about the interpretation and meaning of art.
WHAT DOES THIS BOOK OFFER?
In the last few decades art history has developed significantly beyond the stylistic analysis and classification of art works. A number of introductory books or anthologies have been written which open up the subject to the student or general reader. For example, John Berger’s collaborative series of essays, Ways of Seeing (1972),
offered a critical Marxist approach to a canonical art history. Marcia Pointon’s Art History: A Students’ Handbook (since 1980) is a highly successful and popular guide largely aimed at a pre-college student readership. Books containing selected texts on key art historical
issues provide material for more in-depth research, for example
Eric Fernie‘s Art History and Its Methods: A Critical Anthology
(1995). Michael Hatt and Charlotte Klonk’s Art History: A Critical
Introduction to Its Methods (2006) offers accessible discussions and
explanations of methodological debates in art history. The Methodologies
of Art, by Laurie Schneider Adams (1996), surveys differing
approaches to art and some of the assumptions of their use.
Art History: The Basics provides a toolkit of concepts, ideas and
methods relevant to understanding art and art history. It will develop
reader knowledge and subject-specific skills, enabling the exploration
of issues and debates within art histories.
CONTEMPORARY ART HISTORIES
Contemporary approaches to art history recognise its plurality –
‘art histories’ – rather than a singular and central art historical
tradition. For example, as its title suggests, Ernst Gombrich’s The
Story of Art, first published in 1950, asserted particular assumptions
and exclusions about the meaning of art and the role of art
history, many of which are no longer tenable. Jonathan Harris has
described Gombrich’s concern with ‘The canon of great art, and its
confirmation in, and by, art history’ as integral to broader humanist
values and liberal ideals (2001: 37). Gombrich perceived these
connections to be self-evident and unproblematic.
Fast-forward over half a century and the ‘picture’, so to speak,
looks very different although not unrecognisable. The subject
boundaries, which broadly characterised the discipline of art history
in the 1950s, have been profoundly transformed by the concerns of
critical theory – initially from the continent, and increasingly taken
up across the world. Today we are faced with a range of art histories
rather than a single methodological approach or explanatory model.
What one commentator has recently described as an interdisciplinary
‘menu’ of options concedes the partiality of interpretation,
whilst inviting a healthy and timely self-suspicion about the basis
on which claims to artistic value and meaning might be sustained.
This is not to suggest, however, that older and more conservative
‘Gombrichian’ approaches to art history do not continue among
survey courses or some A-level syllabi – they do. Parallel to these new perspectives is an increasingly globalised cultural economy of new proximities and perspectives. The
contemporary world is one in which past and present asymmetries
of power and postcolonial histories are mediated through contemporary
art and art history, as they are by other interests and
discourses.
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