basic history of art

Figure 2 Another Day Closer to Paradise, David Hensel, 2006, slate and boxwood, 44 × 33 ×
22cm, Ó the artist.
Presenting this work in public and watching the reactions has produced many fascinating insights into how the arts work, about the need for understanding the broader picture of the dynamics of culture, and particularly
the need to study the history of propaganda and patronage, the pursuit of invisible influence, in parallel to the study of a history of art.
(Letter from David Hensel, 1 December 2006) Unsympathetic critics and commentators claimed that the treatment of Hensel’s RA submission demonstrated the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ syndrome, although the jury’s selection seemed to suggest just how arbitrary contemporary ideas about art and aesthetics seem to be.
Taking Hensel’s thoughts on his RA submission and its aftermath as a point of departure, we might reasonably ask what we actually mean by art and art history. These are the two central questions around which this primer has been written. This chapter will consider some of the changing ideas about art and its interpretation.
What are the origins of art history as an academic discipline and how has it evolved? What is the purpose of art? And how might we characterise some of the developments of recent decades within the academic discipline of art history?