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welcome to art history now you might be
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taking a class
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in ancient medieval you might be looking
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at
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western art from the renaissance to the
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modern maybe world of the arts
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or any number of other possible art
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history courses
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the purpose of this video is to explain
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what art history is
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what we're attempting to do and the
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questions we attempt to answer
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in doing so i hope to introduce you to
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the field of art history and give you
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some of the
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ideas concepts and terminology that you
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will hear
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throughout the course if you're not
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taking a course and you're just here on
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youtube well
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welcome to art history and this will
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help you understand
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some of the material that you're going
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to see on this channel
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so let's start at the beginning what is
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art history well let's break down the
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term
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history is the recording and
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interpretation
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of past events often coming with a tweed
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coat with patches on the elbows
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art on the other hand is something we
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can see
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and touch art provides tangible evidence
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of societies cultures views and
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histories
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art history is therefore the academic
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study
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of the history and development of
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painting sculpture
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and other visual arts what art history
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is trying to do is
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take a piece of art and truly understand
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it
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one of the best ways to do that is to
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place it within
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some form of context now context
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as i'll define in a minute is going to
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allow us
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a better more rounded view of a piece of
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art
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today many of us will experience art be
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it ancient or modern
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in a museum this is probably not the
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setting it was meant to be viewed in
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there was a specific culture or society
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that created it
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a specific time period a specific
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geography
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the closer we can get to understanding
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that material
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the better we can understand the art now
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yes we can individually interpret the
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work judge its merits
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or determine its success or failure
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these are all valid
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aesthetic responses but our history is
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more than aesthetics it's more than
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saying that something is beautiful
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or determining what is or isn't art
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in fact today it's something very
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different
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aesthetics is a completely separate
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field
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today the museum is equally distant from
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picasso's studio or van gaal's fields
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as it is from the ancient world
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without understanding the circumstances
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of a works creation
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we have only a part of the story take
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money's olympia as we see here without
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understanding the history the society
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the artists and other elements behind it
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we see
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a reclining nude but yet this was
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perhaps the first piece of modern art
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in the history of art history it's
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incredibly important piece
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and yet you wouldn't know that
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necessarily by simply looking at it
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art appreciation and aesthetic judgment
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do not require an understanding of
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historical context
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art history thus provides a more rounded
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understanding of a work than
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pure appreciation or aesthetic study a
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central aim of art history is to
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determine
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the original context so
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what we're looking at is where it may
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have been made
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the culture geography why it was made
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other details and information art
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reflects society so
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to understand the art we need to
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understand the society
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thus the aim of art history and we
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look not only at history as a context
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but we look at social and cultural
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elements we look at economics
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politics gender biographical information
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race group identity and many many more
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to really begin to understand a work
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such as this piece by john sloan an
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ashcan school painter
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who's looking at issues of class and
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issues that are going to be particularly
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important to turn of the century new
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york
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art is also indispensable when
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understanding
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history art in some ways
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illuminates or illustrates history for
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us
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it gives us a better understanding of
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what we're looking at
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and we're going to get into that a
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little bit more
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later because when you look at the art
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the art is always a reflection of the
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society and therefore
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is just as informative as an ancient
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document or any other ancient artifact
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art objects shed light on the artist as
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well as the time
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in which they lived the opposite is also
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true
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artists can change the society by
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reinforcing your challenging cultural
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values and practices
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very very common when we get into modern
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contemporary
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art in the 21st century
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is a little different it gets hazy it
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gets difficult to deal with
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in art history well things get more
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complicated
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art historians typically study the
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material culture
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that humans create we study your stuff
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but it's not just your stuff we look at
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both
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high art in other words art that is
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meant as a prestige item
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these would be painting sculptures
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prints or
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photography but we also look at
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crafts or commercial art or commercial
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design utilitarian items
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anything from ceramics and textiles to
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your latest
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mac or iphone or whatever else
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these boundaries are blurry and can
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change between societies or even within
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the same society over time
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so an object that may have been in
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ancient greece nothing more than
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utilitarian a pot suddenly becomes high
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art
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possibly because of its age and so we've
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got this difference between high art
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and low art high art is all about
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aesthetics
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what is art it's higher value whereas
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low art tends to be functional or
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utilitarian the chair you're sitting on
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the desk you're sitting at
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tends to be of lower value and it tends
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to be considered craft we have this
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weird line in art history between fine
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art and craft and what
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should and shouldn't be studied but
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today we even look
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at things like wrappers and graphic
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design
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to really understand
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the artistic ideas of a certain period
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now beginning with the greeks and the
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romans scholars have studied
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objects consciously manufactured as art
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generally to which some title has been
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applied
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oftentimes one of the definitions of art
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can be whether or not was
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meant as high art and also whether or
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not
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it's been given a title a name
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in this case the discobolos or the
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discus thrower
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today art historians take a broader
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approach
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often looking at artifacts that were at
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one time utilitarian like our greek pot
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or in this case a roman coin
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now of course this has become a work of
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art through time and scholarly interest
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but
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had you been alive at the time
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of in this case julius caesar
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you would have looked at this as just
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another coin
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it had very little value to you so
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things can move
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from low art to high art given time
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interest or any number of other factors
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as arts definition and possibilities
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expand so
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too does the field of art history for
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example
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digital computer generated work is now
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considered art
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whereas the involvement of machine in
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the past would have disqualified a piece
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as art
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since it lacked the human hand and smelt
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of manufacturing or
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teen spirit maybe not the last one
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and in this case what you're seeing is
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on the left a computer-generated
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image an image that was painted on a
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computer on the right
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you see a beautiful tapestry well that
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beautiful tapestry
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is actually one of the first versions of
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computerized manufacturing it comes out
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of the 18th century and
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these french tapestries were basically
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programmed in and created by machine
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they're
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rarely even seen as art by many people
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so in the past decades even the lines
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between theater and art have been
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blurred
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where we've seen the rise of performance
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art all this blurring makes our history
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that much more interesting
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now let's look at the questions that art
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historians
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tend to ask do blazers go with genes
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sorry the sort of questions that they
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tend to ask such as
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how old is a peace who created the peace
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who paid for the peace what does it mean
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in the overall history of civilization
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society
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the artist etc and we start with
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how old is a piece of art
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age is of course incredibly important
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when trying to determine
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historical context art historians use a
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number of ways to determine
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an object's age for example
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physical evidence including the
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materials used
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and manufacturing techniques this is
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where we look
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at how they created the piece of art
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we look at all of the evidence so it
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could come down to
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literally screws giving us a sense of
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age
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why is it important that we know the age
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of a piece
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because it gives us the context it gives
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us the society
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which created it then we have
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documentary evidence
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these could be official records such as
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appraisals upon someone's death
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commissions or payments
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we also see the use of internal evidence
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in other words when we look at a
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painting or a sculpture
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it could be that there's an identifiable
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person a
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fashion or even a hair style that tells
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us
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approximately when the piece was created
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because these things change over
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time styles change every few years and
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so it
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works really well to fit a painting into
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a specific time period
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we also have stylistic evidence this is
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what people typically think of when they
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think of art history
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this is the analysis of style or
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distinctive manner of producing an
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object
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it is however very very
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subjective and therefore on its own
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quite unreliable but
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what is style i mean after all style can
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be
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so many things well defining artistic
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style is key to art history although
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it's not as dominant as it once was
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as our understanding of material culture
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increases
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so there used to be a time where art
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history was entirely about style where
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people
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with pipes and turtlenecks and black
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berets stood around
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and looked at works and said
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i think this is impressionism because of
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this
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now we tend to date things we use a lot
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of scientific analysis
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etc but it's still a key element
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of art history so how do we develop
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these ideas of style well
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we can talk about period style
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so characteristic artistic manners of a
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specific era or
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span of years for example you could be
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talking about
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the different periods of ancient greece
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or the high italian renaissance
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any of these will be considered solid
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periods the problem
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is history tends to blend history is a
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spectrum
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not a bunch of really nice boxes so if
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you think back to high school
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and you learned about the mayans and the
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aztec then mexico under spanish rule
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it seemed very linear it seemed to make
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a lot of sense but the reality is
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things blend you don't have a solid
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deadline where we move
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from the romanesque to the gothic we
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don't have a
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solid period in time where we move
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from the high renaissance to mannerism
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all of it blends together just like
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anything else i want you to keep that in
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mind because even though in an art
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history class we frequently talk about
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these periods
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it should be understood that if you go
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further into art history you will
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discover
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how muddy all of that territory really
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is
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and of course when we get to the 21st
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century it gets to be
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a right mess we also see regional styles
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now
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these are variations tied to geography
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so you'll see the same style despite age
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from the same place for example here
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old kingdom egypt to new kingdom egypt a
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span of
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thousands of years and we have a style
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that you can look at and immediately
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read
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as egyptian now this can of course
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break down so there can be major
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cultural or historical shifts
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such as the rise of the italian
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renaissance or in the case that you're
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looking at
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the rise of coptic christianity in egypt
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which completely changes the art style
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then we have personal style this is the
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distinctive manner of an artist
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or architect something like van gaal
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where you can look at a painting by the
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artist and you know immediately
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who it is art historians
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will frequently look at many more pieces
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and know who they are
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right off the top i'm using van gaal
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here because he is
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one of the ones that most people are
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going to be familiar with
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this often explains variations or
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outliers
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for example vincent van gaal doesn't
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entirely fit
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really snugly into the
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post-impressionist period where we put
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him
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so we tend to look at him through a
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biographical
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context or personal style
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art historians must also frequently
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distinguish amongst different period
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styles
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within a single artist's career for
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example here we have picasso moving from
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his
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very early realist period through his
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blue period into cubism into some of his
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later work
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and so we need to not only break down
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large
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periods or large geographies but
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sometimes we're breaking down
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individual artists trying to put their
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work in order and
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develop a sense of categories why
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category is because it makes it easier
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to
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study a specific period of time
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and get some generalizations
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so what is another question that art
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historians tend to ask
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well we tend to want to know what is the
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subject
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this is why in art history we frequently
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talk about whatever the story is
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especially in religious or
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biblical accounts biblical paintings
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now this encompasses the story or
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narrative
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the scene the scene's time or place the
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people involved in the environment in
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which it all takes place
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yes even with hieronymus bosch here
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and it helps us understand what the
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artist is trying to get across there may
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be
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clues there that help us understand
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incredibly enigmatic works
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in the case of abstract paintings or
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sculptures
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the work itself can be the subject
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in and of itself so the work becomes the
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subject such as we see with rothko
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there is no context he's giving us
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through the painting
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the painting becomes the concrete image
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now traditionally subjects are split
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into
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several categories and it creates this
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hierarchy of art that has been with
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us for a very long time moving from
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history and religious paintings this was
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always seen as the highest
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form of art really all the way up to the
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20th century
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you're looking at any kind of history
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and religious paintings this could
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be mythology it could be a lot of things
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then the next step down is going to be
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genre scenes
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paintings of real life then we have
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portraits paintings of
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people followed by landscape which is
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paintings of places and still life
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paintings of your stuff
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why do we have this hierarchy of art
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because traditionally
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artists tried to work at the highest
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possible level
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and they felt often times that history
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and religious paintings
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were sort of the high-end paintings they
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were the ones that were going to get you
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paid the most
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they're the ones the commissions that
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were most sought after
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and then portraits and genre scenes can
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actually flip on occasion so it depends
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who you're talking to so we have
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these categories of art that you will
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hear on a regular basis
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we also talk about iconography
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now this is the writing of images and
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refers to the study of the visual
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content
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and symbols within a piece of art such
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as we see
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here with this breakdown of a depiction
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of the buddha
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iconography is all about what a piece
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looks like and the symbols used within
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it
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symbols are images that stand for
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other images or encapsulate larger ideas
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often times they will be used
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especially when we get into christianity
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for example to represent specific people
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for example if you see a depiction of a
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saint with a broken wheel
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and she's female you're probably going
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to assume it's saint catherine because
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she was
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martyred on the wheel if you see a woman
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with a baby and a lily flower
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that's probably going to be the virgin
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mary if you see a man with a key it's
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almost certainly
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saint peter st lucy has her eyes plucked
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out saint francis assisi
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is going to have the stigmata in his
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hands
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and feet those wounds from the
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crucifixion
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may also be surrounded by animals saint
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jerome is depicted with the bible
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so they use symbols as identification
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but again it can stand for something
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else it can be
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allegorical now artists
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may also use attributes or symbols to
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identify figures or
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ideas within a work if you go one step
00:19:15
beyond iconography and
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beyond symbols in iconography you get
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into personification
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where we see the use of personifications
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to capture
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abstract ideas usually codified into
00:19:27
human forms here
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we see dawn and dusk as represented by
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michelangelo
00:19:33
at one of the medici tombs
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now one of the other questions we tend
00:19:38
to ask is who made it
00:19:41
this is known as attribution
00:19:44
so when we talk about who is the
00:19:46
painting attributed to it basically
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means
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who created it now this can be done a
00:19:52
couple of different ways
00:19:54
the easiest is when you have a signature
00:19:56
such as this where it says
00:19:57
michelangelo bonarte of florence it
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makes it
00:20:01
really really easy but
00:20:04
we also do so through style
00:20:07
and so this is connoisseurship this is
00:20:10
looking at
00:20:10
a piece and assigning it to the hand of
00:20:14
an artist
00:20:15
of one artist over another determining
00:20:19
whether or not this is caravaggio
00:20:21
or gentileschi or maybe a third
00:20:24
artist sometimes we're actually looking
00:20:27
at pieces
00:20:28
that are done by an artist who worked in
00:20:29
the workshop of
00:20:31
a master painter and therefore paints in
00:20:34
a very
00:20:34
very similar style
00:20:38
now obviously attribution by style is
00:20:40
really a touchy
00:20:41
area there have to be a lot of things
00:20:43
that come together it has to date
00:20:45
properly
00:20:46
it has to have the right materials which
00:20:49
brings in chemistry
00:20:50
you have to have the right style and
00:20:52
composition
00:20:53
so there's a lot that goes into it but
00:20:55
it does happen it is however
00:20:58
exceedingly difficult in many cases
00:21:02
now sometimes we see artists that work
00:21:06
in
00:21:06
similar styles at the same time and the
00:21:09
same place such as the 17th century
00:21:12
school of amsterdam these groups are
00:21:15
called schools and these refer to a
00:21:17
group of artists
00:21:18
that are all working in more or less the
00:21:20
same style in the same area in this case
00:21:23
17th century amsterdam
00:21:26
another question that we ask is who paid
00:21:29
for it
00:21:30
now you might be saying there's thinking
00:21:32
artists are very independent people
00:21:34
creating amazing pieces
00:21:36
with very little oversight but in fact
00:21:37
you couldn't be farther from the truth
00:21:39
until we get
00:21:40
to very recent times maybe the late
00:21:44
19th century and after
00:21:47
so despite a great deal of interest in
00:21:49
time being devoted to the maker
00:21:52
often the artist in fact had very little
00:21:54
to no
00:21:55
say in the final form of an object what
00:21:58
we tend to see
00:21:59
is artists who are given these very
00:22:01
specific contracts
00:22:03
even back to the renaissance that will
00:22:06
say
00:22:06
i want a painting depicting these saints
00:22:09
they have to look like this the
00:22:10
background should be this
00:22:12
they're going to lay out everything and
00:22:14
so the artist is going to have
00:22:15
very little creative leeway in those
00:22:18
situations
00:22:20
consequently often artists will toil in
00:22:23
obscurity doing their patrons bidding in
00:22:26
fact this is the situation all the way
00:22:27
up to the renaissance where artists
00:22:29
start to become
00:22:30
sort of celebrities patrons
00:22:34
are those who pay artists for their work
00:22:38
now the patron often plays a dominant
00:22:40
role in deciding how an artist will
00:22:42
represent
00:22:43
a subject the patrons may appear
00:22:46
in the painting the
00:22:50
patrons may have oversight they may be
00:22:53
visiting the artist on a weekly or
00:22:55
monthly basis
00:22:56
there are many occasions where we see
00:22:58
contracts being revised by the patron
00:23:01
because they don't like the direction
00:23:02
that the artist is going
00:23:04
now of course this does change over time
00:23:07
but through most of art history
00:23:08
this is the case the patron has far more
00:23:11
control
00:23:11
than the artist this is especially true
00:23:14
when we get to portraits of kings
00:23:16
emperors pharaohs or people in power
00:23:19
for example our friend augustus
00:23:22
the first true emperor of rome
00:23:26
is always going to be depicted in his
00:23:28
20s even when he's been ruling for 40
00:23:30
years and obviously isn't going to be in
00:23:32
his 20s
00:23:33
he's doing this as a show of power and
00:23:35
youth and vigor
00:23:38
but it doesn't tell us a great deal
00:23:40
about the artist
00:23:42
the artist would be very limited they
00:23:43
would be told depict me
00:23:45
in this form and so they have to do so
00:23:49
again their hands are often tied
00:23:52
now whenever a patron contracts with an
00:23:55
artist to create an object and
00:23:56
prescribed manner
00:23:58
personal style often takes on some kind
00:24:01
of secondary importance
00:24:03
oftentimes artists throughout much of
00:24:05
history are seen more as artisans
00:24:08
more as plumbers or electricians someone
00:24:11
you go to to create an image for you
00:24:14
rather than someone who is brilliant in
00:24:16
their own right
00:24:18
often artists have far less creative
00:24:21
license
00:24:22
than we give them credit for at least
00:24:24
until the late 19th century
00:24:27
and again it often comes down to
00:24:30
depictions to give you another example
00:24:32
here we see a forensic recreation
00:24:34
of george washington on the left not
00:24:37
that
00:24:38
unique looking of a man kind of looks
00:24:40
like christopher watkins
00:24:41
when you look at his traditional
00:24:43
portrait on the right though
00:24:45
it's very different and if you were to
00:24:47
create a depiction of george washington
00:24:49
today
00:24:50
you would have to use the image on the
00:24:53
right
00:24:54
even today arguably artists hands are
00:24:56
tied unless you're really in the
00:24:58
avant-garde
00:25:00
so let's look at art history as it
00:25:02
relates to other disciplines because it
00:25:04
is incredibly interdisciplinary
00:25:06
study art history has always been
00:25:10
interdisciplinary but is increasingly so
00:25:12
in the 20th century we have
00:25:14
chemists who will help date a piece
00:25:18
geologists who might identify where a
00:25:20
statue was quarried
00:25:22
radiologists who may x-ray a painting to
00:25:24
determine
00:25:25
whether it's a forgery or changes that
00:25:28
took place
00:25:29
during the painting process art
00:25:31
historians
00:25:32
also contribute to other fields an art
00:25:35
historian might date a painting for a
00:25:37
historian to determine
00:25:39
if it is from life or whether it's an
00:25:42
idealization done after someone's death
00:25:44
this could be really important to
00:25:46
understanding the history of the time
00:25:50
we also inform anthropologists work with
00:25:53
archaeologists assist journalists while
00:25:56
using
00:25:57
philosophy sociology and gender studies
00:26:00
in our own work
00:26:03
art history also has different ways of
00:26:06
seeing things because it is so
00:26:09
subjective
00:26:11
the history of art can be a history of
00:26:13
artists and their work of styles
00:26:15
and stylistic change of materials and
00:26:17
techniques of
00:26:18
images and themes and their meanings and
00:26:21
context culture and patrons
00:26:26
the best art historians use multiple
00:26:28
approaches
00:26:29
to any work but no art historian can be
00:26:32
truly objective
00:26:33
in such a subjective field the problem
00:26:36
is with many of these works
00:26:38
all we know for sure the only objective
00:26:40
fact we might have
00:26:41
could be how it was created it might
00:26:45
just be how it looks
00:26:46
if we're lucky we have an artist and a
00:26:48
date associated with it
00:26:50
but most of what we're doing is pure
00:26:52
interpretation
00:26:54
how should we understand it how should
00:26:56
we look at it
00:26:58
so this becomes a bit of an issue
00:27:01
because we're limited in our
00:27:03
understanding of any time or culture
00:27:05
which
00:27:06
is not our own we tend to fill in the
00:27:09
blanks with what we know
00:27:11
looking back at ancient greece we have
00:27:13
certain ideas of ancient greece maybe
00:27:15
that we picked up
00:27:16
from high school or grade school or
00:27:18
college
00:27:19
from history courses or civics courses
00:27:24
and the problem is when we start
00:27:25
applying those to the past
00:27:27
they aren't necessarily accurate and so
00:27:30
it creates
00:27:30
a bias and that is a problem in
00:27:34
any field any of the humanities but
00:27:37
we also see it of course in our history
00:27:40
for example you look at this depiction
00:27:42
and this could be the world's ugliest
00:27:46
baby or it could be a religious item
00:27:51
it becomes a matter of understanding the
00:27:53
context
00:27:54
properly and not filling in the gaps as
00:27:58
we see
00:27:58
fit but of course any scholar will fill
00:28:01
gaps with assumptions and presumptions
00:28:04
of their own culture
00:28:06
this is a bias which we all bring to our
00:28:09
research
00:28:10
everyone has bias there's no such thing
00:28:13
as an
00:28:14
unbiased person much less an unbiased
00:28:17
academic
00:28:19
here's an example we see the same thing
00:28:22
a portrait
00:28:24
of te pehi kupe
00:28:28
and in this case both of them are
00:28:30
focused on the tattoo
00:28:33
one is created by a european artist
00:28:36
and that's the one we see on the left
00:28:38
giving us this very classic european
00:28:40
view
00:28:41
of how a portrait should be done
00:28:44
but the chief himself focuses on the
00:28:47
tattoo in his drawing on the right
00:28:49
an image that he draws completely from
00:28:52
memory
00:28:54
and so we see two images focusing on a
00:28:56
tattoo going at
00:28:58
from two very different perspectives the
00:29:00
same thing happens in art history
00:29:02
where we might be looking at exactly the
00:29:04
same work but i'm coming at from a
00:29:07
completely different direction
00:29:08
than you will or another scholar
00:29:12
thus we have a lot of the debate and
00:29:15
ideas
00:29:15
that develop within art history
00:29:18
so what is it good for
00:29:22
contextual study is the central concern
00:29:25
for all art historians
00:29:27
we cannot simply look at an object we
00:29:29
have to understand who created it
00:29:32
when it was created how did it react
00:29:35
and how does it blend in
00:29:38
with the culture and society that
00:29:41
creates it
00:29:42
is there something else to it is there a
00:29:44
gender element a race element etc
00:29:48
so the study of context when looking at
00:29:51
a piece of art gives us this
00:29:53
much more rounded viewpoint of what
00:29:55
we're looking at
00:29:57
every piece we examine must be placed
00:29:59
within a cultural
00:30:01
historical or other context to better
00:30:04
understand the work encore watt did not
00:30:07
simply rise from the jungle
00:30:09
organically it was built by someone they
00:30:11
had ideas behind it there's
00:30:13
reason why we see those towers
00:30:16
why they're depicted in that way why
00:30:19
there's a big
00:30:20
square moat around it everything about
00:30:23
it
00:30:23
had to be chosen or decided at some
00:30:27
level
00:30:28
and don't we get a better understanding
00:30:30
of it if we know why those decisions
00:30:32
took place in the first place
00:30:36
but we also have to understand that art
00:30:37
is a language
00:30:39
is a matter of using classes like this
00:30:42
to learn that language and begin to read
00:30:44
the visual culture around you
00:30:47
this piece is very recent this was done
00:30:48
by banksy in 2015 and
00:30:51
here he's actually directly referring to
00:30:53
art depicting the raft of the medusa
00:30:55
which is
00:30:56
a painting done by an artist in the 19th
00:31:00
century
00:31:02
by understanding visual culture and art
00:31:05
history we can take this
00:31:06
and better understand what the artist is
00:31:09
getting at
00:31:12
and a better understanding of the world
00:31:14
around us is always going to be
00:31:16
a positive ultimately art history
00:31:20
will help you understand the visual
00:31:22
artifacts left behind by previous
00:31:24
generations
00:31:25
so you can better understand them and
00:31:27
their world
00:31:29
as well as your own because the same
00:31:31
ideas that came up in the past will come
00:31:33
up again history doesn't repeat but it
00:31:35
rhymes
00:31:37
and art can change the world especially
00:31:41
today in the 21st century look at this
00:31:43
this is
00:31:43
less than a year ago less than a year
00:31:46
before i recorded this we saw the statue
00:31:48
of
00:31:49
j.e.b stuart removed in richmond
00:31:54
all in reaction to the black lives
00:31:56
matter movement
00:31:58
at the same time we had an artist who
00:32:01
was reacting directly to the original
00:32:04
civil war statue
00:32:05
create rumor of war and depict it
00:32:09
in richmond a block or two from the
00:32:12
original statue
00:32:15
thus creating this incredible
00:32:17
juxtaposition and understanding the
00:32:19
history of one
00:32:20
helps us understand the history of the
00:32:22
other
00:32:23
you cannot separate these things this is
00:32:26
the importance of art history
00:32:28
it helps you understand the visual
00:32:32
as well as the cultural world around you
00:32:35
so that you can better be in touch with
00:32:38
the society
00:32:39
that you are part of
