Art history

Nature & Assumption

 ART HISTORY

• Discipline focuses on the development and uses of

art throughout human history. The central aim of art
history is to determine the original context of an
artwork (Helen Gardner).
• The word art is rooted 13th century, French
word art which means skill as a result of
learning or practice, and in latin word ‘ars’
meaning ability or practical skills.
– Many known personalities defined art in various
ways. According to Plato, art is that which brings life
in harmony with the beauty of the world. For John
Dewey, Art is an attitude of spirit, a state of mind-
one which demands for its own satisfaction and
fulfilling, a shaping of matter to new and more
significant form. To Oscar Wilde, the most intense
mode of individualism that the world has known
and for Elbert Hubbard, Art is not a thing-it is a
way.
 Ways to Establish the Date
of an Artwork
 Physical Evidence- often reliably indicates an object age. .
 Documentary evidence- can help pinpoint the date of an object or
building when dated written document mentions the work.
 Internal evidence- can play a significant role in dating an artwork.
Hence, a painter might have depicted an identifiable person or a
kind of hairstyle or clothing.
 Stylistic evidence- The analysis of style-an artist’s distinctive
manner or producing an object, the way a work looks-is the art
historian’s special sphere.
 KINDS OF ARTISTIC STYLE

• Period style- refers to the characteristic artistic manner of a specific time,

usually within a distinct culture, such as “Archaic Greek.”
• Regional style-is the term art historians use to describe variations in
style tied to geography. Like an object’s date, its provenance, or place
of origin.
• Personal style- the distinctive manner of individual artist, architects,
often decisively explains stylistic discrepancy among monuments of
the same place.
 Archaic Greek Egyptian Statue 500 BCE

An example of Period Style An example of Regional Style

Ancient World
 Prehistoric Art
Period Major Works/Chief Characteristics
Artist

A. Prehistoric Art It predates

1. The Old Stone Age - Venus of writing,
Willendurf, Hall of printmaking and
the Bulls basically
2. The New Stone Age - Thinker of encompasses the
Cernavoda, genesis of both
Terracotta early sculpture
sculpture and painting.

Venus of Willendurf
 Egyptian Art
Period Major Works/Chief Characteristics
Artist

B. Egyptian Art Art with an afterlife

(3500 BCE – 30 - Great Pyramids of Giza focus: pyramids and
- Tombs carved into tomb painting.
BCE)
mountains Somewhat static,
1. The Old Kingdom
- Mortuary Temple of usually formal,
2. The Middle Queen Hatshepsut, Bust strangely abstract, and
Kingdom of Nefertiti often blocky nature
3. The New Kingdom
 Ancient Near Eastern
Period Major Works/Chief Characteristics
Artist

C. Ancient Near Eastern Warrior art and

(3500 BCE – 636 BCE) -Ziggurat of Ur, Steel narration in stone
1. Sumerian Art of Hammurabi relief. Human first
2. Assyrian Art -Head of Akkadian used the wheel and
Rule, Stele of the plow, learned
NaramSin how to control
floods and construct
irrigation canals.
 Greek Art
Period Major Works/Chief Characteristics
Artist

D. Greece \-Palace of Knossos, Greek idealism:

(900 BCE – 30 BCE) Treasury of Atreus balance, perfect
1. Ancient Greek - Geometric Krater proportions;
2. Hellenistic Athena Partheonos idealized forms
(Phidias), Parthenon (both in sculpture
– Iktinos and and architecture).
Kallikrates
 Roman Art
Period Major Works/Chief Characteristics
Artist

E. Roman Verism:
(735 BCE - 337 CE) - Portrait of Augustus psychological
1. Early Empire - Arch of Constantine penetration in
2. Late Empire the great, Colosseum, sculpture; interior
The Four Tetrach decoration and
encaustic portraits.
The Middle Ages
 Early Christian &
Byzantine
Period Major Works/Chief Characteristics
Artist

A. Early Christian and -Old St. Peter’s, Christian images-

Byzantine Mausoleum of Galla Mosaics (tesserae);
(400 CE – 600 CE) Placidia, Good icons, panel
Shepherd, Santa painting,
architectural
terminology specific
to Byzantine
structures.
 Early Medieval Art
Period Major Works/Chief Characteristics
Artist

B. Early Medieval Art -Gero Crucifix, Bronze Portable works,

(410 -1024) door of Bishop interlacing patterns,
Bernward, Durham Illuminated
Cathedral manuscript, Burial
relics, Animal style
jewelry.
 Romanesque Art
Period Major Works/Chief Characteristics
Artist

C. Romanesque Art -Reliquary of Sainte- Romanesque:

(950 -1100) Foy, Pisa Cathedral muscular
architectural style,
rounded headed
arches, linear
sculpture, distorted
to convey religious
emotion
 Gothic Art
Period Major Works/Chief Characteristics
Artist

D. Gothic Art -Notre Dame, Gothic structures:

(1140 1300) Chartres (jamb flying buttresses,
statues), Sainte- pointed arches,
Chapelle,Rottgen stained glass.
Pieta Stained Sculptural ‘S’ curves,
and Books of Hours.

Sainte-Chapelle
The Modern World
 Neoclassicism
& Romanticism
Period Major Works/Chief Characteristics
Artist

A. Neoclassicism and - Artist: David, Ingres, Art that recaptures

Romanticism Kauffmann, West, Greco-Roman grace
(1780–1850) Vigee-Lebrun and grandeur. The
triumph of
imagination and
individuality
 Realism
& Expressionism
Period Major Works/Chief Characteristics
Artist

B. Realism and -Artist: Courbet, Celebrating

Expressionism Daumier, Millet working class and
(1848– 1900) peasants; en plein
air rustic painting
 20th Century
Period Major Works/Chief Characteristics
Artist

C. 20th Century -Picasso, Eiffel Embracing mostly

Tower everything from
pure abstraction
to hyperrealism;
 Post Modernism
Period Major Works/Chief Characteristics
Artist

- Artist: Cindy Art that

D. Post Modernism Sherman, Christo challenges
(1970–present ) and Jeanne Claude conventional
categories
reworking and
mixing past styles
 Nature & Assumption
1. Art is subjective and art is more subjective than
objective. (Art for art itself)
2. Art is form and content. (there is always a concept).
3. There is a connection between beauty and art and
beauty is the measure of quality of art.
 Living with Art

• The role of art in human life is to

transform man's widest metaphysical
ideas, by selective reproduction of
reality, into a physical form—a work of
art—that he can comprehend and to
which he can respond emotionally.
Prepared by
Group 1
Alipis, Rey Jr
Dosono, Rynalexzel
Torente, Jezel Mae
Maciling, Lovely
Limen, Jana Marie
Ibañez, Ruther Jason
 Sources

• Kleiner, Fred S. Gardner. Art through the ages. A

concise History of Western Art 3rd ed, 2016 pp. 1-5
• Ariola Mariano: Introduction to art pdf.
• Johnson Art History book.