Art History Quick Map:

This quick guide to Art History is intended to be brief and concise but should also prod you into

further exploration of some art periods.

Prehistoric:

- Cave paintings, Venus figurines which are considered portable sculptures

- Greek standard of beauty: the birth of the "Classical" Age

- Romans: the competitor of Greece; created realistic sculptures of human figure

Middle Ages

- The "death" of artistic freedom due to canonical standards of visual interpretation

- The rise of Gothic art especially in Gothic Churches

- Popular art: Stained glass windows and illuminated manuscripts

Renaissance

- Revival of artistic genius

- Where the term "Renaissance Man" was derived because of man's intellectual achievements

in the arts and science

- The time of "Masters" e.g., Donatello, Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Raphael, and Van Eyck

Baroque

- Grandiose and ornate art

- Artistic innovation: "spotlight effect" called chiaroscuro or in extreme usage, it is called

tenebrism

- Artists to note: Caravaggio (Italy), Velazquez (Spain), Poussin (France), and Antonio Gaud

(designer of "Sagrada Familia" chapel in Barcelona)

19th Century

- Emergence or "isms"
- Neoclassicism: Greek and Roman Classics revived

- Romanticism, Realism, Art Nouveau, Impressionism

- Photography comes into the scene

- Post-impressionism, early expressionism, and symbolism

20th Century Modern Art

- Art became more non-representational

- Garish colors explored in Fauvism

- Abstracted sculptures emerged

- Simplified forms in paintings by Picasso and Matisse

- Art movements: Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, Expressionism

- Mondrian's purely geometric art

Art During the Wars

- Dadaism: the art movement that defies logic

- Surrealism. stepping into the dreamworld

- American art blossoms: Jackson Polock became famous as "Jack the Dripper" and paved the way for
American Abstract Expressionism

- Mobile Sculptures (Alexander Calder) and Color Field (Rothko) paintings also became prominent

20th Century to Contemporary

- Highly experimental and radical

- Pop art defines consumer culture, dominated mostly by works of Andy Warhol

- Minimalism: glorifying the simplest art elements

- Birth of conceptual art

- Photography is further developed which paved the way to the art movement, Photorealism

- Neo-expressionism or new expressionism is characterized by strong subject matters

- Contemporary Art: a very diverse art scene; the rise of appropriation, photography-derived works,
graphic style of art, experimental works, multimedia, and multi-modal art
Now, critique the work based on the following. Write your answers on the spaces provided.

1. Formal qualities: simply enumerate the elements that you see: the quality of lines, shapes, colors, etc.

2. Subject matter: What is the artist tackling about? Can you see any representational forms? If none,
what do you think is the main subject matter?

3. Composition: Consider the arrangement if objects, people, or elements. What is most prominent?
Who or what is on the foreground, middle ground, and background?

4. Technique: Looking at the technique and manner of painting and composition, how is it related to the
artist's objective?

5. Content: What do you think the artwork is all about after carefully examining its parts? What story?
What message, and what argument is the artist trying to tell?

6. Analysis: Further dig into the artist’s intention in terms of the relationship of each part to the whole.
Keep asking why, and try to answer them based on visual clues. Research further if needed, especially if
there is a historical connection.

7. Your own criticism about the work: provide a coherent and convincing judgment about the work.

What you have just done here is an exercise in art criticism. As you can see, it takes some careful

observation before one can deduce the meaning and interpretation of an artwork. This is just a
suggestion on how you can critique better and apply it to almost any work of art.
Methods in Reading Art:

What is a method?

Think of methods as filters that help you appreciate aspects of art in diferent lenses. There are some
"filters that are more effective than others, especially when we talk about context and content.

Have you encountered philosophy as a required subject to study? Philosophy has been man's

attempt to make sense of why we do what we do. If we want to become more diverse in our approach
to learning, art methodologies is one of the means and these are mainly hinged on long-held
philosophies. Depending on what the art is talking about and where it is from, we can read it in a non-
biased way through these approaches:

1. Formalism and Style - basically gives importance to the formal qualities (art elements, materials, and
design principles) as a basis for the meaning of art. Roger Fry is a major purveyor of this thinking. The
form is the content per se and does not take history and context into account.

2. Iconography- Focuses on the subject matter primarily over form. When using this method, you will
answer questions like. who is this person the artist painted and what does it represent? Why did the
artist choose this image and what for?

3. Contextual Approaches- From the term itself, context becomes an important factor in criticizing
artworks here. We can take many approaches to contexts like Marxism, Orientalism, Colonialism, Racial
Iconography, Feminism, and Gender. As you can observe, these are mainly schools of thought and
philosophical movements that place artwork within a certain parameter. For example, Marxism is about
art in relation to economics. On the other hand, Feminism is bent toward the societal context of art
wherein gender becomes a strong factor in the forces behind an artistic creation.

4. Biography and Autobiography - Considers the life and context of the artist. This approach is based on
the assumption that the artist's life, beliefs, choices, and personality are directly connected to the works
that he or she creates.

5. Semiotics- From the Greek word "sema", which means sign. Hence, an artwork or art form is assumed
to be composed of a set of signs that may have significant cultural and contextual meanings beyond
itself.

6. Psychoanalysis- Freud is probably a familiar name in the field of psychology and he is one of the basis
of this theory. In psychoanalysis, one is concerned about the unconscious mind in relation to the artist,
the viewer, and the cultural context it is involved in.

7. Aesthetics and Psychoanalysis- Individual notion of what is considered acceptable beautiful, or

attractive in works of art are in part influenced by psychological factors. This approach then connects
psychology to one's constructed philosophy of art
Reinforcement Activity

As Filipinos, we like entertainment and social media. It is flamboyant, noisy, and easy to catch
our attention. We often just take in the information and news from them without sifting
through it and realigning what we have heard or seen, with our values as a person. In the
discipline of art criticism, what did it teach you about the act of looking? Should you just accept
what is placed before you? Why do you think it is better to counter-check every judgment or
thought that comes into our heads, not just in art, but also in everyday life?  Write your
thoughts in the space provided