Art History
 Art history (also sometimes called history of art, particularly when a university subject) is a term which encompasses several different methods of studying the visual arts; in its most common usage it refers to the academic study of works of art and architecture. The definition is, however, wide-ranging, and some aspects of the discipline overlap with art criticism and art theory, as is demonstrated by Ernst Gombrich's observation that "the field of art history [is] much like Caesar's Gaul, divided into three parts inhabited by three different, though not necessarily hostile tribes: the connoisseurs, the critics and the academic art historians". Works of criticism or of theory have frequently been the pivots around which the understanding of art history has turned.
Historical development
The ancient world
The earliest surviving writing on art that can be classified as art history is the passages in Pliny the Elder's Natural History concerning the development of Greek sculpture and painting. From it it is possible to trace the ideas of Xenokrates of Sicyon, a Greek sculptor who was possibly the first art historian. As a result, although Pliny's work was mainly an encyclopaedia of the sciences, his writings on art were disproportionately influential from the Renaissance onwards, particularly the passages about the techniques used by the painter Apelles. Similar, though independent developments occurred in 6th century China, where a canon of worthy artists was established by writers in the scholar-official class (who, being necessarily proficient in calligraphy, were artists themselves), and the Six Principles of Painting were formulated by Xie He.
The beginnings of modern art history
While personal reminiscences of art and artists have long been written and read, it was Giorgio Vasari, the Tuscan painter, sculptor and author of "Lives of the Painters," who ushered in the era of the story of art as history, with emphasis on art's progression and development, a milestone in this field. His was a personal and an historical account, featuring biographies of individual Italian artists, many of whom were his contemporaries and personal acquaintances. The most renowned of these was Michelangelo, and Vasari's account is enlightening. Vasari's ideas about art held sway until the 18th century, when criticism was leveled at his peculiar style of history as the personal. Scholars such as Johann Joachim Winckelmann criticised Vasari's "cult" of artistic personality, and argued that the real emphasis in the study of art belonged on the views of the learned beholder and not the unique viewpoint of the charismatic artist. Winckelmann's writings thus were the beginnings of art criticism. Winckelmann was famous for his critique of the artistic excesses of the Baroque and Rococo forms, and subsequently instrumental in reforming taste in favor of the more sober Neoclassicism, in a return to elemental Renaissance thinking. Incidentally, from Winckelmann until the early 20th century, the field of art history was dominated by German-speaking academics.
Modern Art History
Most acknowledge Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945) as the father of modern art history. Wölfflin certainly made the first formal analysis of the field. He introduced a scientific approach to the history of art, turning on three concepts. Firstly, he attempted to study art using psychology, particularly the work of Willhelm Wundt, an early behaviorist. A principal, if strained, scientific conception was that of the artistic ideal of corporeal correspondence; i.e. that art and architecture are good if they resemble the human body. For example, houses were good if their façades looked like faces. Secondly, he introduced the idea of studying art through comparison. Hence by comparing individual paintings to each other, one were able to make distinctions of style. His book Renaissance and Baroque developed this idea, and was the first to show how these stylistic periods differed from one another. In contrast to Giorgio Vasari, Wölfflin was uninterested in the biographies of artists. In fact he proposed the creation of an "art history without names." Finally, he studied art based on ideas of nationhood. He was particularly interested in whether there was an inherently "Italian" and an inherently "German" style. This last interest was most fully articulated in his monograph on the German artist Albrecht Durer.
Psychoanalytic Art History
 Heinrich Wölfflin was not the only scholar to invoke psychological theories in the study of art. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud wrote a book on the artist Leonardo Da Vinci, in which Freud used Da Vinci's paintings to interrogate the artist's psyche and sexual orientation. Freud inferred from his analysis that Leonardo was likely a homosexual. The use of posthumous material to perform psychoanalysis is controversial; furthermore, the sexual mores of Da Vinci's time and Freud's are different.
After Freud, several other scholars have applied psychoanalytic theory to art. One of the most well know of which is Laurie Schnieder Adams, who wrote a popular textbook Art Across Time.
Prominent Critical Art Historians
Since Heinrich Wolfflin's time, art history has embraced social history by using critical approaches. The goal of these approaches is to show how art interacts with power structures in society. The first critical approach that art historians used was Marxism. Marxist art history attempted to show how art was tied to specific classes, how images contain information about the economy, and how images can make the status quo seem natural (ideology).
Marxist Art Historians
Even Marxism has figured in the interpretation of art. Meyer Schapiro was the first art historian to take Marxism seriously. While he wrote about numerous time periods and themes in art, he is best remembered for his commentary on sculpture from the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, at which time he saw evidence of capitalism emerging and feudalism declining.
Arnold Hauser wrote the first marxist survey of Western Art, titled "The Social History of Art." In this book he attempted to show how class consciousness was reflected in major art periods. His book was very controversial when it was published during the 1950s because it makes gross generalizations about entire eras. However, it remains in print as a classic art historical text.
T.J. Clark was the first art historian writing from a Marxist perspective to abandon vulgar Marxism per se. He wrote Marxist art histories of several impressionist and realist artists, including Gustav Courbet and Eduard Manet. These books focused closely on the political and economic climates in which the art was created. |
