(Re)defining Art History
Many people have a vague idea about what Art History is. Even if you don't the name "Art History" gives away some clues - that it may have something to do with the history of art. The field of Art History is extremely broad, Art Historians study all kinds of things both directly and distantly related to art. An Art Historian may study portraiture, or they may study the ways that different furniture arrangements affect the environment of a room. The field is so broad because art is a broad subject. Art History has a reputation of being elitist and even snobby, which makes it relatively uninteresting or intimidating to non-Art Historians. This reputation is not entirely true though. While there are some long-standing practices in the field that make it true, the Art History world is rapidly changing at this very moment. Curators are teaming up with Native American tribes to create museum exhibitions that center Indigenous voices instead of white ones, Art Historians are uncovering narratives of history as told by artists with marginalized identities, museums are returning sacred artworks to their place of origin from which they were stollen hundreds of years ago. The field of Art History is evolving to be more inclusive and less centered on the European perspective.
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Because we all play a part in the unfolding of history, Art History is something that should be accessible to everyone. To move forward, you must first understand where you started. Understanding the history of Art History, how it is studied, and the state of the discipline today can help us to find new ways to better the field.
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Below are some topics in Art History that can help us begin to have a better understanding of what it really is. These sections are by no means all-encompassing, they only barely scratch the surface of the issues they cover. They are here as a starting point for you to begin rethinking the way you see Art History and your role in it.
Who invented Art History?
This is a trick question because there was no one person that “invented” Art History. Art History developed from art critics and theorists in Europe who were reflecting on the art of their time and the art that came before them, tracing the changes in art over time and trying to “decode” visuals within artworks.
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The practice of teaching people Art History only began in the 1840s, first in universities in Germany and then quickly spreading throughout the rest of Europe and the United States.
In its earliest years, the field of Art History approached artworks in a very scientific way. Art Historians saw artworks as pieces of evidence, and thought that their characteristics could be dissected and studied. They wanted to take a piece of artwork and fully decode all of its elements to assign a clear meaning to each. This method led to the development of iconography, which was a way that people study artwork by reading its visual pieces and seeing each as a metaphor – a rose means love, a ray of sunshine alludes to religion, and so on. This way of studying art does not take into account other important aspects of an artwork, such as what it is made of, the social conditions during its creation, things like that. Cultures also understand different symbols as having different meanings, so iconographic readings can often miss culture-specific messages depending on the Art Historian’s point of view.
There are two key people that Art Historians see as instrumental in the foundation of Art History: Giorgio Vasari and Johann Joachim Winckelmann.
Giorgio Vasari (1511-74)
Vasari was born in Arezzo, a city in Tuscany, but moved to Florence in adulthood. He was a scholar that wrote about Florentine art, art from Florence Italy, during the height of the Renaissance period. He believed that Renaissance artists in Florence were creating artworks around the same topics and issues that ancient and medieval European artists were dealing with – the struggle of artistic representation in the context of nature, especially growth occurring over time. His scholarship about artwork, such as The Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors from Cimabue to Our Times published in 1550, played a big role in how many people see Renaissance art as the peak of artistic creation, especially Italian Renaissance art made in Florence. Vasari saw the artwork of Michelangelo as the high point of artmaking, and the baroque period that followed the Renaissance as inferior and overly excessive.
Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-68)
Winckelmann studied art hundreds of years after Vasari, long after the Renaissance was over. As many Europeans’ world view became more globalized, or more aware of other peoples and cultures outside of Europe, Winckelmann and his associates centered the principles and values of art on “antiquity” – or the art of Ancient Greece. The goal was to take the classical characteristics of Ancient Greek art –graceful poses, white marble, philosophical principles – and create a new art style that would be relevant to the modern era and guide society through its contemporary periods of unrest. Neoclassicism was created on these principles and quickly rose to popularity.
Both scholars had influential ideas about art. They were interested in creating a lineage of artwork created in the world, tracing stylistic changes from one era to the next. However, they both failed to acknowledge artwork from outside of Western Europe, focusing mainly on Italy and Greece. Both Vasari and Winckelmann wanted to pinpoint one style of art as “the best art ever made”, which is also problematic because there is no objective measure whether one kid of art is better than another. By viewing a style of art as superior without even considering non-Western art, they immediately put everyone else on the outskirts of “good art”.
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Vasari and Winckelmann were not “Art Historians” in the way we think about Art Historians today, they were historians that wanted to study visual arts and art theory, providing a foundation for the discipline of Art History to evolve from. While the field has grown exponentially since then, its roots began in a place of Eurocentrism (seeing Europe and its culture as superior to all others), whiteness, and privilege.
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Information from “Introduction” and “Chapter 1: Art as History” in The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology (2009), edited by Donald Preziosi.
"The Canon"
Throughout Art History, the canon is what you call a group of artworks that are seen as the gold standard of that kind of art and used as a reference point against which other artworks are measured. Canonical works, ones considered part of a canon, are often heavily studied and have been deemed some of the finest examples of artwork, and other artworks that come later were thought to be imitations of them.
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However, the idea of a “canon of art” is problematic for many reasons. While there can be several different canons, ones for different mediums, regions, movements, etc., the establishment of a canon suggests perfection within it and imperfection outside of it. To say that an artwork is “canonical” is to say that it is the standard that other artworks in that area should be trying to achieve, although probably unsuccessfully. Seeing these artworks as “perfect” causes problems because, although they should be celebrated, this creates an environment where art that does not follow the same guidelines is excluded or seen as inferior.
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To add to the issue of the canon, the “Art History Canon” that most (non-Art-Historian) people are familiar with today is more or less homogenous, meaning that it is full of a bunch of the same kinds of art. The art that is featured in history textbooks, museum exhibitions, and art classes has historically been made in Europe and America due to a variety of reasons: the origins of Art History, the privilege ingrained into most education systems, the colonial mindset of these regions of the world, and so on.
The non-European works considered part of the canon in public knowledge are framed by Eurocentric perspectives, and therefore their meaning and significance have been skewed.
Today, the “Art History Canon,” as many people understand it, means the work of the “Old Masters,” or the most well-known artists (mostly painters) that worked during the 16th through 19th centuries in Europe. These names are familiar to many of us, painters like Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Raphael, Vincent Van Gogh, and so on. While the artwork by these artists is extremely impressive and deservedly influential, should it be seen as the gold standard for all art ever made?
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No, it should not. And that is at the core of the problems with having a canon that have arose in the last century and a half. However, canonical works have staying power. Once they are seen as “the best”, it’s difficult to take away that title. For example, Giorgio Vasari, who was mentioned in the previous section, established a list of the very best Italian Renaissance artists according to his thoughts, and that list is still thought of Italian Renaissance canon today.
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The homogenous make-up of today’s canon is dangerous to a more inclusive Art Historical study because canons have a lot of staying power and as mentioned in the beginning, can easily divide the art world into an “us versus them” situation. For those that subscribe to the standards of the canon, people that deviate from it are lesser than themselves. When the canon mostly includes old white men from a 300-year period in European history, people from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and even Pre-Columbian America do not fit the bill.
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Art Historians are working to reframe the public understanding of “the canon”, as well as the academic idea of it. Discussions around the existence of a canon are complex and seemingly never-ending in the Art History world, and I have not even begun to scratch the surface of it.
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Information from “The Canon in Art History: Concepts and Approaches” by Gregor Langfeld, published in Journal of Art Historiography (December 2018).
Art History today
In the last fifty years or so, there have been many shifts taking place in the field of Art History. In the ‘70s, a wave of feminism washed over the Art History world, during which scholars began to ask questions about women artists throughout history. Why were we studying mostly male artists and their work? As time progresses, so does the critical perspective of Art Historians as they work to uncover the other artists that have often been ignored.
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The past decade has possessed a major shift in the field of Art History. There has been a recent push to expand the global idea of Art History, to deconstruct the Eurocentric frameworks that have been in place for so long. As Art History began in Europe and European studies have placed themselves at the top of the historical hierarchy, a lot of the Art Historical theories and approaches that have been developed are ones based on European values and practices. This means that a lot of the work in Art History has excluded art from other regions or cannot be applied to other cultures because it never took them into account.
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So, Art Historians have taken on the task of bringing marginalized stories to the forefront of the field, placing them alongside the European ones. This push is known as the globalization of Art History, as the field works to incorporate more parts of the world into the frameworks and theories that are in place.
However, this leads to even more complications. Because Art Historical study has neglected much of the world’s art, the framework that we look at art through do not consider many of the cultural differences that occur between societies. Can Art Historians globalize the field by pulling non-European art into their existing frameworks? Even if those frameworks weren’t built for others? This is a question even the brightest of today’s Art Historians are struggling with. If the answer is no like many people think it is, that means that our entire concept of art must be disassembled and reconstructed from the ground up. Is that even possible?
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There are new approaches to Art History that attempt to deal with this issue. Many scholars are working to center the narratives of various marginalized groups and societies heavily impacted by European and American colonization. Art Historians are calling attention to voices of queer artists, artists of color, disabled artists, folk artists, and so many other groups that have been previously neglected by the field.
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Evidently, there is much work to be done in the field of Art History. The efforts of modern-day Art Historians are not going wholly unnoticed though, as we see large institutions refocus their exhibits and repatriate stollen art, or return artwork to their place of origin after it was removed non-consensually through colonial activities or pillaging. Curators in museums hold a lot of power over how objects they put on display are understood by the general public. As Art History as a discipline works to give more space for people to tell their story, instead of have a version of it told for them, the content of museum exhibitions will hopefully continue to evolve in efforts to do the same.
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Art Historians, museum curators, arts critics, and everyone else in the art world today are not the ones that created the exclusive, elitist frameworks we often see in Art History, those began forming centuries ago. However, it is their job – our job – to critique the way things are and push for change in a direction that reflects a more inclusive discipline. There is the potential to do better in Art History, and many Art Historians are working to make that happen.
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Information from:
Kobena Mercer’s “Chapter 13: Art History after Globalization: Formations of the Colonial Modern” in Travel & See: Black Diaspora Art Practices since the 1980’s (2016)
And
Art History in the Wake of the Global Turn, edited by Jill H. Casid and Aruna D'Souza (2014)
Why should I care about Art History?
Art History is an expansive field, it includes ancient temples and modern NFTs, the Hagia Sofia and Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup Cans, and everything in between. Learning about different works of art in dialogue with one another helps us to learn about the ways we are all connected through space and time. Learning about gothic churches in Germany may be interesting, but when you look at their structural elements in comparison to those of Islamic mosques built by the Ottoman Empire, you can see similarities in the values of both religions. The fancy tea sets of 18th century France are beautiful to look at, but comparing them to Chinese porcelain tea sets and studying the ways the two are connected can help us understand the way that our modern world has been formed by the cultural exchanges that have taken place throughout history. There are endless examples of how one kind of art can influence our understanding and perspective on another, and our concept of the world we live in broadens when we learn about each one.
Of course, there is no way for one person to learn about every type of art or art movement around the world, but asking questions and looking beyond the surface of artworks is a good place to start. At the end of the day, you should take from art what interests you and leave the rest, but staying curious about the art around you may lead to something unexpected.
What do Art Historians do?
There is no one way to “do” Art History. But because Art Historians do not use beakers and chemicals or conduct experiments in labs, there is often confusion about what Art Historians actually do.
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As we’ve covered, Art Historians study artworks made by people in the past to learn about the culture and society that the artwork was created in. They ask questions like, “Who made this piece?” and “Did somebody pay them to make it?” The identity of an artist and their reasons for making a piece of art can often influence the artistic choices they make within the piece. Art Historians will also look at the societal problems and conditions at the time and place where the artwork was made. Was there political unrest? Were religious conflicts taking place? Was the economy unstable? These conditions can inform Art Historians about the context of the artwork to better understand its potential meaning.
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Art Historians work with a lot of kinds of information besides actual art. Depending on their area of study, they may look into archives of personal or legal documents to track down information, or studies published in other fields like psychology, sociology, anthropology, and even biology or archaeology. Most publications about Art History today also use other Art Historians’ work to support their argument. When someone’s essay has an argument that supports your own, you can use their claims as evidence that yours is valid.
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Basically, Art Historians are like puzzle masters. They see a work of art or a body of work and pick apart its composition, or the way the artwork is arranged, and ask questions about its parts. Then, they comb through primary and secondary sources alike, compiling research about the topic to then build an argument about the artwork they are working with. Art Historians take all of the information they’ve collected to support the idea that the art they are talking about is “saying” something to us even today.
Because Art History reaches into so many adjacent fields, it is difficult to define the bounds of the discipline. But that is the beauty of it. Because Art History is so interdisciplinary, it can uncover all sorts of information about almost anything. Starting from an artwork and chasing its roots through space and time, Art Historians have the ability to teach us both about ourselves and others.
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We don’t all have to dig through hand-written documents in the basements of libraries and museums to study Art History, though. Learning about art from more than one place in more than one time period can help us spot similarities and think of questions to ask. Modern art is informed by artwork made in the past, so learning about past art and the societies it was created in can give us a better understanding of our world and the art we make today.
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Information from the Introduction of The Subjects of Art History: Historical Objects in Contemporary Perspective, edited by Mark A. Cheetham, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey (1998).