Art history is, briefly, the history of art—or the study of a specific type of objects created in the past.
171-512: Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today, art history examines broader aspects of visual culture , including the various visual and conceptual outcomes related to an ever-evolving definition of art. Art history encompasses the study of objects created by different cultures around the world and throughout history that convey meaning, importance or serve usefulness primarily through visual representations. As
342-412: A collective consciousness . Art historians do not commonly commit to any one particular brand of semiotics but rather construct an amalgamated version which they incorporate into their collection of analytical tools. For example, Meyer Schapiro borrowed Saussure 's differential meaning in effort to read signs as they exist within a system. According to Schapiro, to understand the meaning of frontality in
513-462: A low culture , popular culture , or folk culture of the lower classes, distinguished by the stratified access to cultural capital . In common parlance, culture is often used to refer specifically to the symbolic markers used by ethnic groups to distinguish themselves visibly from each other such as body modification , clothing or jewelry . Mass culture refers to the mass-produced and mass mediated forms of consumer culture that emerged in
684-494: A German artistic movement initially and most predominant in painting, poetry and the theatre between 1910 and 1930, most precursors of the movement were not German. Furthermore, there have been expressionist writers of prose fiction, as well as non-German-speaking expressionist writers, and, while the movement declined in Germany with the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, there were subsequent expressionist works. Expressionism
855-484: A Greek sculptor who was perhaps the first art historian. Pliny's work, while mainly an encyclopaedia of the sciences, has thus been influential from the Renaissance onwards. (Passages about techniques used by the painter Apelles c. (332–329 BC), have been especially well-known.) Similar, though independent, developments occurred in the 6th century China, where a canon of worthy artists was established by writers in
1026-519: A brief period of influence in American theatre, including the early modernist plays by Eugene O'Neill ( The Hairy Ape , The Emperor Jones and The Great God Brown ), Sophie Treadwell ( Machinal ) and Elmer Rice ( The Adding Machine ). Expressionist plays often dramatise the spiritual awakening and sufferings of their protagonists. Some utilise an episodic dramatic structure and are known as Stationendramen (station plays), modeled on
1197-406: A culture with an abacus are trained with distinctive reasoning style. Cultural lenses may also make people view the same outcome of events differently. Westerners are more motivated by their successes than their failures, while East Asians are better motivated by the avoidance of failure. Culture is important for psychologists to consider when understanding the human mental operation. The notion of
1368-465: A decade, scores of papers, articles, and essays sustained a growing momentum, fueled by the Second-wave feminist movement , of critical discourse surrounding women's interactions with the arts as both artists and subjects. In her pioneering essay, Nochlin applies a feminist critical framework to show systematic exclusion of women from art training, arguing that exclusion from practicing art as well as
1539-410: A discipline, art history is distinguished from art criticism , which is concerned with establishing a relative artistic value for individual works with respect to others of comparable style or sanctioning an entire style or movement; and art theory or " philosophy of art ", which is concerned with the fundamental nature of art. One branch of this area of study is aesthetics , which includes investigating
1710-437: A distinct worldview that is incommensurable with the worldviews of other groups. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or "tribal" cultures. In 1860, Adolf Bastian (1826–1905) argued for "the psychic unity of mankind." He proposed that a scientific comparison of all human societies would reveal that distinct worldviews consisted of
1881-465: A filter which rids them of all substantial accretions to produce their clear essence [...and] are assimilated and condensed into more general forms, into types, which he transcribes through simple short-hand formulae and symbols." Important precursors of Expressionism were the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), especially his philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1892);
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#17327656078562052-474: A full picture, but it does not provide an ultimate explanation ." There are a number of international agreements and national laws relating to the protection of cultural heritage and cultural diversity . UNESCO and its partner organizations such as Blue Shield International coordinate international protection and local implementation. The Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in
2223-501: A full-blown art-historical methodology. Sedlmayr, in particular, rejected the minute study of iconography, patronage, and other approaches grounded in historical context, preferring instead to concentrate on the aesthetic qualities of a work of art. As a result, the Second Vienna School gained a reputation for unrestrained and irresponsible formalism , and was furthermore colored by Sedlmayr's overt racism and membership in
2394-574: A group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a global "accelerating culture change period," driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human population explosion, among other factors. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. These forces are related to both social structures and natural events, and are involved in
2565-476: A historical event should not be thought of as culture unless referring to the medium of television itself, which may have been selected culturally; however, schoolchildren watching television after school with their friends to "fit in" certainly qualifies since there is no grounded reason for one's participation in this practice. In the context of cultural studies, a text includes not only written language , but also films , photographs , fashion , or hairstyles :
2736-438: A larger brain. The word is used in a general sense as the evolved ability to categorize and represent experiences with symbols and to act imaginatively and creatively. This ability arose with the evolution of behavioral modernity in humans around 50,000 years ago and is often thought to be unique to humans . However, some other species have demonstrated similar, though much less complicated, abilities for social learning. It
2907-847: A limited concentration scoped on the intricacies of consumerism, which belongs to a wider culture sometimes referred to as Western civilization or globalism . From the 1970s onward, Stuart Hall's pioneering work, along with that of his colleagues Paul Willis , Dick Hebdige , Tony Jefferson, and Angela McRobbie , created an international intellectual movement. As the field developed, it began to combine political economy , communication , sociology , social theory , literary theory , media theory , film/video studies , cultural anthropology , philosophy , museum studies , and art history to study cultural phenomena or cultural texts. In this field researchers often concentrate on how particular phenomena relate to matters of ideology , nationality , ethnicity , social class , and/or gender . Cultural studies
3078-406: A member of society." Alternatively, in a contemporary variant, "Culture is defined as a social domain that emphasizes the practices, discourses and material expressions, which, over time, express the continuities and discontinuities of social meaning of a life held in common. The Cambridge English Dictionary states that culture is "the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of
3249-413: A model for many, including in the north of Europe Karel van Mander 's Schilder-boeck and Joachim von Sandrart 's Teutsche Akademie . Vasari's approach held sway until the 18th century, when criticism was leveled at his biographical account of history. Scholars such as Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) criticized Vasari's "cult" of artistic personality, and they argued that the real emphasis in
3420-468: A modern context, meaning something similar, but no longer assuming that philosophy was man's natural perfection. His use, and that of many writers after him, " refers to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism , and through artifice, become fully human." In 1986, philosopher Edward S. Casey wrote, "The very word culture meant 'place tilled' in Middle English, and
3591-514: A more affirmative notion of leftover materials of capitalist culture. Greenberg now is well known for examining and criticizing the formal properties of modern art. [3] Meyer Schapiro is one of the best-remembered Marxist art historians of the mid-20th century. After his graduation from Columbia University in 1924, he returned to his alma mater to teach Byzantine, Early Christian, and medieval art along with art-historical theory. [4] Although he wrote about numerous time periods and themes in art, he
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#17327656078563762-522: A new approach to culture was suggested by Rein Raud , who defines culture as the sum of resources available to human beings for making sense of their world and proposes a two-tiered approach, combining the study of texts (all reified meanings in circulation) and cultural practices (all repeatable actions that involve the production, dissemination or transmission of purposes), thus making it possible to re-link anthropological and sociological study of culture with
3933-547: A part of the development of functionalism . In Mexico, in 1953, German émigré Mathias Goeritz published the Arquitectura Emocional ("Emotional Architecture") manifesto with which he declared that "architecture's principal function is emotion". Modern Mexican architect Luis Barragán adopted the term that influenced his work. The two of them collaborated in the project Torres de Satélite (1957–58) guided by Goeritz's principles of Arquitectura Emocional . It
4104-428: A particular group of people at a particular time." Terror management theory posits that culture is a series of activities and worldviews that provide humans with the basis for perceiving themselves as "person[s] of worth within the world of meaning"—raising themselves above the merely physical aspects of existence, in order to deny the animal insignificance and death that Homo sapiens became aware of when they acquired
4275-432: A person to make sense of the culture they inhabit, "can blind us to things outsiders pick up immediately." The sociology of culture concerns culture as manifested in society . For sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918), culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history." As such, culture in the sociological field can be defined as
4446-588: A reaction against Abstract Expressionism was implicit in it at the start, and is one of its most lineal continuities." The Expressionist movement included other types of culture, including dance, sculpture, cinema and theatre. Exponents of expressionist dance included Mary Wigman , Rudolf von Laban , and Pina Bausch . Some sculptors used the Expressionist style, as for example Ernst Barlach . Other expressionist artists known mainly as painters, such as Erich Heckel , also worked with sculpture. There
4617-431: A result, there has been a recent influx of quantitative sociologists to the field. Thus, there is now a growing group of sociologists of culture who are, confusingly, not cultural sociologists. These scholars reject the abstracted postmodern aspects of cultural sociology, and instead, look for a theoretical backing in the more scientific vein of social psychology and cognitive science . The sociology of culture grew from
4788-465: A similar work by Franz Theodor Kugler . Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945), who studied under Burckhardt in Basel, is the "father" of modern art history. Wölfflin taught at the universities of Berlin, Basel, Munich, and Zurich. A number of students went on to distinguished careers in art history, including Jakob Rosenberg and Frida Schottmüller [ de ] . He introduced a scientific approach to
4959-426: A specific pictorial context, it must be differentiated from, or viewed in relation to, alternate possibilities such as a profile , or a three-quarter view . Schapiro combined this method with the work of Charles Sanders Peirce whose object, sign, and interpretant provided a structure for his approach. Alex Potts demonstrates the application of Peirce's concepts to visual representation by examining them in relation to
5130-583: Is comparative cultural studies , based on the disciplines of comparative literature and cultural studies. Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies had originated in the 1950s and 1960s, mainly under the influence of Richard Hoggart, E.P. Thompson , and Raymond Williams , and later that of Stuart Hall and others at
5301-437: Is a concept that encompasses the social behavior , institutions , and norms found in human societies , as well as the knowledge , beliefs , arts , laws , customs , capabilities, attitude , and habits of the individuals in these groups. Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location. Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization , which
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5472-413: Is absent in more than 100 cultures around the world, suggesting that such mayhem is not biologically inevitable. Second, the brain itself changes in response to experiences, raising the question of whether adolescent brain characteristics are the cause of teen tumult or rather the result of lifestyle and experiences." David Moshman has also stated in regards to adolescence that brain research "is crucial for
5643-745: Is also used to denote the complex networks of practices and accumulated knowledge and ideas that are transmitted through social interaction and exist in specific human groups, or cultures, using the plural form. Raimon Panikkar identified 29 ways in which cultural change can be brought about, including growth, development, evolution, involution , renovation, reconception , reform, innovation , revivalism, revolution , mutation , progress , diffusion , osmosis , borrowing, eclecticism , syncretism , modernization, indigenization , and transformation. In this context, modernization could be viewed as adoption of Enlightenment era beliefs and practices, such as science, rationalism, industry, commerce, democracy, and
5814-454: Is an especially good example of this, as the Russian avant-garde and later Soviet art were attempts to define that country's identity. Napoleon Bonaparte was also well known for commissioning works that emphasized the strength of France with him as ruler. Western Romanticism provided a new appreciation for one's home country, or new home country. Caspar David Friedrich 's, Monk by
5985-400: Is an icon for all of womankind. This chain of interpretation, or "unlimited semiosis" is endless; the art historian's job is to place boundaries on possible interpretations as much as it is to reveal new possibilities. Semiotics operates under the theory that an image can only be understood from the viewer's perspective. The artist is supplanted by the viewer as the purveyor of meaning, even to
6156-459: Is as important as human rationality. Moreover, Herder proposed a collective form of Bildung : "For Herder, Bildung was the totality of experiences that provide a coherent identity, and sense of common destiny, to a people." In 1795, the Prussian linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) called for an anthropology that would synthesize Kant's and Herder's interests. During
6327-455: Is best remembered for his commentary on sculpture from the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Arnold Hauser wrote the first Marxist survey of Western Art, entitled The Social History of Art . He attempted to show how class consciousness was reflected in major art periods. The book was controversial when published in 1951 because of its generalizations about entire eras, a strategy now called " vulgar Marxism ". [5] Marxist art history
6498-422: Is concerned with the meaning and practices of everyday life. These practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television or eating out) in a given culture. It also studies the meanings and uses people attribute to various objects and practices. Specifically, culture involves those meanings and practices held independently of reason. Watching television to view a public perspective on
6669-411: Is considered a central concept in anthropology , encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies . Cultural universals are found in all human societies. These include expressive forms like art , music , dance , ritual , religion , and technologies like tool usage , cooking , shelter , and clothing . The concept of material culture covers
6840-490: Is done in a manner which respects its creator's motivations and imperatives; with consideration of the desires and prejudices of its patrons and sponsors; with a comparative analysis of themes and approaches of the creator's colleagues and teachers; and with consideration of iconography and symbolism . In short, this approach examines the work of art in the context of the world within which it was created. Art historians also often examine work through an analysis of form; that is,
7011-469: Is necessarily situated within the value system of a given culture. The modern term "culture" is based on a term used by the ancient Roman orator Cicero in his Tusculanae Disputationes , where he wrote of a cultivation of the soul or "cultura animi", using an agricultural metaphor for the development of a philosophical soul, understood teleologically as the highest possible ideal for human development. Samuel Pufendorf took over this metaphor in
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7182-470: Is notoriously difficult to define, in part because it "overlapped with other major 'isms' of the modernist period: with Futurism , Vorticism , Cubism , Surrealism and Dadaism ." Richard Murphy also comments, “the search for an all-inclusive definition is problematic to the extent that the most challenging expressionists such as Kafka , Gottfried Benn and Döblin were simultaneously the most vociferous 'anti-expressionists.'" What can be said, however,
7353-606: Is often termed the first expressionist drama. In it, an unnamed man and woman struggle for dominance. The man brands the woman; she stabs and imprisons him. He frees himself and she falls dead at his touch. As the play ends, he slaughters all around him (in the words of the text) "like mosquitoes." The extreme simplification of characters to mythic types, choral effects, declamatory dialogue and heightened intensity all would become characteristic of later expressionist plays. The German composer Paul Hindemith created an operatic version of this play, which premiered in 1921. Expressionism
7524-520: Is organized into four fields, each of which plays an important role in research on culture: biological anthropology , linguistic anthropology , cultural anthropology , and in the United States and Canada, archaeology . The term Kulturbrille , or "culture glasses," coined by German American anthropologist Franz Boas , refers to the "lenses" through which a person sees their own culture. Martin Lindstrom asserts that Kulturbrille , which allow
7695-447: Is possible to trace their lineage, and with it draw conclusions regarding the origins and trajectory of these motifs . In turn, it is possible to make any number of observations regarding the social, cultural, economic and aesthetic values of those responsible for producing the object. Many art historians use critical theory to frame their inquiries into objects. Theory is most often used when dealing with more recent objects, those from
7866-423: Is representational. The closer the art hews to perfect imitation, the more the art is realistic . Is the artist not imitating, but instead relying on symbolism or in an important way striving to capture nature's essence, rather than copy it directly? If so the art is non-representational—also called abstract . Realism and abstraction exist on a continuum. Impressionism is an example of a representational style that
8037-437: Is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies. A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group. Accepting only a monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to
8208-417: Is that it was a movement that developed in the early twentieth century, mainly in Germany, in reaction to the dehumanizing effect of industrialization and the growth of cities, and that "one of the central means by which expressionism identifies itself as an avant-garde movement, and by which it marks its distance to traditions and the cultural institution as a whole is through its relationship to realism and
8379-527: Is the physical evidence of a culture in the objects and architecture they make or have made. The term tends to be relevant only in archeological and anthropological studies, but it specifically means all material evidence which can be attributed to culture, past or present. Cultural sociology first emerged in Weimar Germany (1918–1933), where sociologists such as Alfred Weber used the term Kultursoziologie ('cultural sociology'). Cultural sociology
8550-536: Is well-mannered." Some of the style's main visual artists of the early 20th century were: The style originated principally in Germany and Austria. There were groups of expressionist painters, including Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke . Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider, named after a painting) was based in Munich and Die Brücke (The Bridge) was originally based in Dresden (some members moved to Berlin ). Die Brücke
8721-607: The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects , who wrote the first true history of art. He emphasized art's progression and development, which was a milestone in this field. His was a personal and a historical account, featuring biographies of individual Italian artists, many of whom were his contemporaries and personal acquaintances. The most renowned of these was Michelangelo . Vasari's ideas about art were enormously influential, and served as
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#17327656078568892-599: The Mona Lisa . By seeing the Mona Lisa , for example, as something beyond its materiality is to identify it as a sign. It is then recognized as referring to an object outside of itself, a woman, or Mona Lisa . The image does not seem to denote religious meaning and can therefore be assumed to be a portrait. This interpretation leads to a chain of possible interpretations: who was the sitter in relation to Leonardo da Vinci ? What significance did she have to him? Or, maybe she
9063-693: The Cologne Werkbund Exhibition (1914) , and Erich Mendelsohn 's Einstein Tower in Potsdam , Germany completed in 1921. The interior of Hans Poelzig 's Berlin theatre (the Grosse Schauspielhaus ), designed for the director Max Reinhardt , is also cited sometimes. The influential architectural critic and historian Sigfried Giedion , in his book Space, Time and Architecture (1941), dismissed Expressionist architecture as
9234-602: The Native Americans who were being conquered by Europeans from the 16th centuries on were living in a state of nature; this opposition was expressed through the contrast between "civilized" and "uncivilized." According to this way of thinking, one could classify some countries and nations as more civilized than others and some people as more cultured than others. This contrast led to Herbert Spencer 's theory of Social Darwinism and Lewis Henry Morgan 's theory of cultural evolution . Just as some critics have argued that
9405-787: The Romantic movement was an interest in folklore , which led to identifying a "culture" among non-elites. This distinction is often characterized as that between high culture , namely that of the ruling social group , and low culture . In other words, the idea of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries reflected inequalities within European societies. Matthew Arnold contrasted "culture" with anarchy ; other Europeans, following philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau , contrasted "culture" with "the state of nature." According to Hobbes and Rousseau,
9576-547: The Romantic era , scholars in Germany , especially those concerned with nationalist movements—such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire —developed a more inclusive notion of culture as " worldview " ( Weltanschauung ). According to this school of thought, each ethnic group has
9747-569: The Weimar Republic , particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a wide range of the arts, including expressionist architecture , painting, literature, theatre , dance, film and music . Paris became a gathering place for a group of Expressionist artists, many of Jewish origin, dubbed the School of Paris . After World War II, figurative expressionism influenced artists and styles around
9918-525: The psyche through exploring the worlds of dreams , art, mythology , world religion and philosophy . Much of his life's work was spent exploring Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy , astrology , sociology , as well as literature and the arts. His most notable contributions include his concept of the psychological archetype , the collective unconscious , and his theory of synchronicity . Jung believed that many experiences perceived as coincidence were not merely due to chance but, instead, suggested
10089-588: The 15th century onward which emphasize extreme emotion. Such art often occurs during times of social upheaval and war, such as the Protestant Reformation , German Peasants' War , and Eighty Years' War between the Spanish and the Netherlands, when extreme violence, much directed at civilians, was represented in propagandist popular prints . These were often unimpressive aesthetically but had
10260-431: The 20th century. Some schools of philosophy, such as Marxism and critical theory , have argued that culture is often used politically as a tool of the elites to manipulate the proletariat and create a false consciousness . Such perspectives are common in the discipline of cultural studies . In the wider social sciences , the theoretical perspective of cultural materialism holds that human symbolic culture arises from
10431-472: The Americas Art of Oceania Art history is an interdisciplinary practice that analyzes the various factors—cultural, political, religious, economic or artistic—which contribute to visual appearance of a work of art. Art historians employ a number of methods in their research into the ontology and history of objects. Art historians often examine work in the context of its time. At best, this
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#173276560785610602-588: The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham . This included overtly political, left-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture as "capitalist" mass culture ; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the " culture industry " (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see
10773-485: The English-speaking academy in the 1930s. These scholars were largely responsible for establishing art history as a legitimate field of study in the English-speaking world, and the influence of Panofsky's methodology, in particular, determined the course of American art history for a generation. Heinrich Wölfflin was not the only scholar to invoke psychological theories in the study of art. An unexpected turn in
10944-664: The Event of Armed Conflict and the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions deal with the protection of culture. Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights deals with cultural heritage in two ways: it gives people the right to participate in cultural life on the one hand and the right to the protection of their contributions to cultural life on
11115-691: The Litany , The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History , and Reclaiming Feminist Agency: Feminist Art History After Postmodernism are substantial efforts to bring feminist perspectives into the discourse of art history. The pair also co-founded the Feminist Art History Conference. As opposed to iconography which seeks to identify meaning, semiotics is concerned with how meaning is created. Roland Barthes 's connoted and denoted meanings are paramount to this examination. In any particular work of art, an interpretation depends on
11286-528: The Modern era. Some of this scholarship centers on the feminist art movement , which referred specifically to the experience of women. Often, feminist art history offers a critical "re-reading" of the Western art canon, such as Carol Duncan 's re-interpretation of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon . Two pioneers of the field are Mary Garrard and Norma Broude . Their anthologies Feminism and Art History: Questioning
11457-613: The Nazi party. This latter tendency was, however, by no means shared by all members of the school; Pächt, for example, was himself Jewish, and was forced to leave Vienna in the 1930s. Our 21st-century understanding of the symbolic content of art comes from a group of scholars who gathered in Hamburg in the 1920s. The most prominent among them were Erwin Panofsky , Aby Warburg , Fritz Saxl and Gertrud Bing . Together they developed much of
11628-497: The Russian Revolution and the communist ideals. Artist Isaak Brodsky 's work of art Shock Workers from Dnieprostroi in 1932 shows his political involvement within art. This piece of art can be analysed to show the internal troubles Soviet Russia was experiencing at the time. Perhaps the best-known Marxist was Clement Greenberg , who came to prominence during the late 1930s with his essay " Avant-Garde and Kitsch ". In
11799-516: The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881); Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944); Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890); Belgian painter James Ensor (1860–1949); and pioneering Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). In 1905, a group of four German artists, led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , formed Die Brücke (the Bridge) in the city of Dresden. This was arguably
11970-735: The Sea (1808 or 1810) sets a sublime scene representing the overwhelming beauty and strength of the German shoreline at the Baltic Sea. In the infancy of the American colonies, the people believed it was their destiny to explore the Western, "untamed", wilderness. Artists who had been training at the Hudson River School in New York, took on the task of presenting the unknown land as both picturesque and sublime. Culture Culture ( / ˈ k ʌ l tʃ ər / KUL -chər )
12141-813: The U.S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors. For example, after tropical forests returned at the end of the last ice age , plants suitable for domestication were available, leading to the invention of agriculture , which in turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics. Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural practices. War or competition over resources may impact technological development or social dynamics. Additionally, cultural ideas may transfer from one society to another, through diffusion or acculturation. In diffusion ,
12312-482: The United States. In the 19th century, humanists such as English poet and essayist Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) used the word "culture" to refer to an ideal of individual human refinement, of "the best that has been thought and said in the world." This concept of culture is also comparable to the German concept of bildung : "...culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all
12483-534: The World War in 1914, wanted to create artworks which were nonconforming and aimed to destroy traditional art styles. [2] These two movements helped other artists to create pieces that were not viewed as traditional art. Some examples of styles that branched off the anti-art movement would be Neo-Dadaism, Surrealism, and Constructivism. These styles and artists did not want to surrender to traditional ways of art. This way of thinking provoked political movements such as
12654-525: The anxious, unstable, and rebellious adolescent has been criticized by experts, such as Robert Epstein , who state that an undeveloped brain is not the main cause of teenagers' turmoils. Some have criticized this understanding of adolescence, classifying it as a relatively recent phenomenon in human history created by modern society, and have been highly critical of what they view as the infantilization of young adults in American society. According to Robert Epstein and Jennifer, "American-style teen turmoil
12825-457: The article anonymously. Though the use of posthumous material to perform psychoanalysis is controversial among art historians, especially as the sexual mores of Michelangelo's and Leonardo's time and Freud's are different, it is often attempted. Carl Jung also applied psychoanalytic theory to art. Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist , an influential thinker, and founder of analytical psychology . Jung's approach to psychology emphasized understanding
12996-482: The beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists have sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality. Expressionism developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War . It remained popular during
13167-461: The canonical history of art was the consequence of cultural conditions which curtailed and restricted women from art producing fields. The few who did succeed were treated as anomalies and did not provide a model for subsequent success. Griselda Pollock is another prominent feminist art historian, whose use of psychoanalytic theory is described above. While feminist art history can focus on any time period and location, much attention has been given to
13338-416: The capacity to arouse extreme emotions in the viewer. Expressionism has been likened to Baroque by critics such as art historian Michel Ragon and German philosopher Walter Benjamin . According to Alberto Arbasino , a difference between the two is that "Expressionism doesn't shun the violently unpleasant effect, while Baroque does. Expressionism throws some terrific 'fuck yous', Baroque doesn't. Baroque
13509-404: The centre" of expressionist music, with dissonance predominating, so that the "harmonious, affirmative element of art is banished" (Adorno 2009, 275–76). Erwartung and Die Glückliche Hand , by Schoenberg, and Wozzeck , an opera by Alban Berg (based on the play Woyzeck by Georg Büchner ), are examples of Expressionist works. If one were to draw an analogy from paintings, one may describe
13680-658: The change. Thus in military culture, valor is counted a typical behavior for an individual and duty, honor, and loyalty to the social group are counted as virtues or functional responses in the continuum of conflict . In the practice of religion, analogous attributes can be identified in a social group. Cultural change , or repositioning, is the reconstruction of a cultural concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies. Organizations like UNESCO attempt to preserve culture and cultural heritage. Culture
13851-490: The concept of bildung : "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity." He argued that this immaturity comes not from a lack of understanding, but from a lack of courage to think independently. Against this intellectual cowardice, Kant urged: " Sapere Aude " ("Dare to be wise!"). In reaction to Kant, German scholars such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) argued that human creativity, which necessarily takes unpredictable and highly diverse forms,
14022-522: The creation, in turn, affect the course of artistic, political and social events? It is, however, questionable whether many questions of this kind can be answered satisfactorily without also considering basic questions about the nature of art. The current disciplinary gap between art history and the philosophy of art (aesthetics) often hinders this inquiry. Art of Central Asia Art of East Asia Art of South Asia Art of Southeast Asia Art of Europe Art of Africa Art of
14193-427: The creator's use of line , shape , color , texture and composition. This approach examines how the artist uses a two-dimensional picture plane or the three dimensions of sculptural or architectural space to create their art. The way these individual elements are employed results in representational or non-representational art. Is the artist imitating an object or can the image be found in nature? If so, it
14364-560: The direct inspiration for Karl Schnaase 's work. Schnaase's Niederländische Briefe established the theoretical foundations for art history as an autonomous discipline, and his Geschichte der bildenden Künste , one of the first historical surveys of the history of art from antiquity to the Renaissance, facilitated the teaching of art history in German-speaking universities. Schnaase's survey was published contemporaneously with
14535-502: The direction that this will take in the discipline has yet to be determined. The earliest surviving writing on art that can be classified as art history are the passages in Pliny the Elder 's Natural History ( c. AD 77 –79), concerning the development of Greek sculpture and painting . From them it is possible to trace the ideas of Xenokrates of Sicyon ( c. 280 BC ),
14706-434: The distinction between high and low cultures is an expression of the conflict between European elites and non-elites, other critics have argued that the distinction between civilized and uncivilized people is an expression of the conflict between European colonial powers and their colonial subjects. Other 19th-century critics, following Rousseau, have accepted this differentiation between higher and lower culture, but have seen
14877-426: The dominant conventions of representation." More explicitly, that the expressionists rejected the ideology of realism. The term refers to an "artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person". It is arguable that all artists are expressive but there are many examples of art production in Europe from
15048-554: The economic basis (such as tourism) of a state, region or municipality. Tourism is having an increasing impact on the various forms of culture. On the one hand, this can be physical impact on individual objects or the destruction caused by increasing environmental pollution and, on the other hand, socio-cultural effects on society. Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement , initially in poetry and painting , originating in Northern Europe around
15219-408: The enigma of the sublime and determining the essence of beauty. Technically, art history is not these things, because the art historian uses historical method to answer the questions: How did the artist come to create the work?, Who were the patrons?, Who were their teachers?, Who was the audience?, Who were their disciples?, What historical forces shaped the artist's oeuvre and how did he or she and
15390-471: The essay Greenberg claimed that the avant-garde arose in order to defend aesthetic standards from the decline of taste involved in consumer society , and seeing kitsch and art as opposites. Greenberg further claimed that avant-garde and Modernist art was a means to resist the leveling of culture produced by capitalist propaganda . Greenberg appropriated the German word ' kitsch ' to describe this consumerism, although its connotations have since changed to
15561-411: The event of war and armed conflict. According to Karl von Habsburg , President of Blue Shield International, the destruction of cultural assets is also part of psychological warfare. The target of the attack is the identity of the opponent, which is why symbolic cultural assets become a main target. It is also intended to affect the particularly sensitive cultural memory, the growing cultural diversity and
15732-412: The expressionist painting technique as the distortion of reality (mostly colors and shapes) to create a nightmarish effect for the particular painting as a whole. Expressionist music roughly does the same thing, where the dramatically increased dissonance creates, aurally, a nightmarish atmosphere. In architecture, two specific buildings are identified as Expressionist: Bruno Taut 's Glass Pavilion of
15903-462: The extent that an interpretation is still valid regardless of whether the creator had intended it. Rosalind Krauss espoused this concept in her essay "In the Name of Picasso." She denounced the artist's monopoly on meaning and insisted that meaning can only be derived after the work has been removed from its historical and social context. Mieke Bal argued similarly that meaning does not even exist until
16074-541: The field, distance themselves from this view. They criticize the Marxist assumption of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non-Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product. This view comes through in the book Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman (by Paul du Gay et al. ), which seeks to challenge
16245-488: The form of something (though not necessarily its meaning) moves from one culture to another. For example, Western restaurant chains and culinary brands sparked curiosity and fascination to the Chinese as China opened its economy to international trade in the late 20th-century. "Stimulus diffusion" (the sharing of ideas) refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention or propagation in another. "Direct borrowing", on
16416-411: The founders of art history, noted that Winckelmann was 'the first to distinguish between the periods of ancient art and to link the history of style with world history'. From Winckelmann until the mid-20th century, the field of art history was dominated by German-speaking academics. Winckelmann's work thus marked the entry of art history into the high-philosophical discourse of German culture. Winckelmann
16587-548: The founding organization for the German Expressionist movement, though they did not use the word itself. A few years later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in Munich. The name came from Wassily Kandinsky 's Der Blaue Reiter painting of 1903. Among their members were Kandinsky, Franz Marc , Paul Klee , and August Macke . However, the term Expressionism did not firmly establish itself until 1913. Though mainly
16758-415: The globe during the process of colonization . Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation . The transnational flow of culture has played a major role in merging different cultures and sharing thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) formulated an individualist definition of "enlightenment" similar to
16929-487: The highly stratified capitalist systems of the West . In 1870 the anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832–1917) applied these ideas of higher versus lower culture to propose a theory of the evolution of religion . According to this theory, religion evolves from more polytheistic to more monotheistic forms. In the process, he redefined culture as a diverse set of activities characteristic of all human societies. This view paved
17100-528: The history of art criticism came in 1910 when psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud published a book on the artist Leonardo da Vinci , in which he used Leonardo's paintings to interrogate the artist's psyche and sexual orientation. Freud inferred from his analysis that Leonardo was probably homosexual . In 1914 Freud published a psychoanalytical interpretation of Michelangelo's Moses ( Der Moses des Michelangelo ). He published this work shortly after reading Vasari's Lives . For unknown reasons, he originally published
17271-442: The history of art, focusing on three concepts. Firstly, he attempted to study art using psychology, particularly by applying the work of Wilhelm Wundt . He argued, among other things, 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. By comparing individual paintings to each other, he
17442-550: The idea from the Symbolist director and designer, Edward Gordon Craig ). Staging was especially important in Expressionist drama, with directors forgoing the illusion of reality to block actors in as close to two-dimensional movement. Directors also made heavy use of lighting effects to create stark contrast and as another method to heavily emphasize emotion and convey the play or a scene's message. German expressionist playwrights: Playwrights influenced by Expressionism: Among
17613-403: The identification of denoted meaning—the recognition of a visual sign, and the connoted meaning—the instant cultural associations that come with recognition. The main concern of the semiotic art historian is to come up with ways to navigate and interpret connoted meaning. Semiotic art history seeks to uncover the codified meaning or meanings in an aesthetic object by examining its connectedness to
17784-426: The image is observed by the viewer. It is only after acknowledging this that meaning can become opened up to other possibilities such as feminism or psychoanalysis. Aspects of the subject which have come to the fore in recent decades include interest in the patronage and consumption of art, including the economics of the art market, the role of collectors, the intentions and aspirations of those commissioning works, and
17955-415: The individual has been the degree to which they have cultivated a particular level of sophistication in the arts , sciences, education , or manners. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes been used to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. Such hierarchical perspectives on culture are also found in class-based distinctions between a high culture of the social elite and
18126-413: The internet or by other means, has transformed the study of many types of art, especially those covering objects existing in large numbers which are widely dispersed among collections, such as illuminated manuscripts and Persian miniatures , and many types of archaeological artworks. Concurrent to those technological advances, art historians have shown increasing interest in new theoretical approaches to
18297-414: The intersection between sociology (as shaped by early theorists like Marx , Durkheim , and Weber ) with the growing discipline of anthropology , wherein researchers pioneered ethnographic strategies for describing and analyzing a variety of cultures around the world. Part of the legacy of the early development of the field lingers in the methods (much of cultural, sociological research is qualitative), in
18468-418: The late 19th century onward. Critical theory in art history is often borrowed from literary scholars and it involves the application of a non-artistic analytical framework to the study of art objects. Feminist , Marxist , critical race , queer and postcolonial theories are all well established in the discipline. As in literary studies, there is an interest among scholars in nature and the environment, but
18639-561: The late 20th and early 21st century have developed distinct styles that may be considered part of Expressionism. After World War II, figurative expressionism influenced artists and styles around the world. In the U.S., American Expressionism and American Figurative Expressionism , particularly Boston Expressionism , were an integral part of American modernism around the Second World War. Thomas B. Hess wrote that "the ‘New figurative painting’ which some have been expecting as
18810-459: The later plays of the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg (1849–1912), including the trilogy To Damascus (1898–1901), A Dream Play (1902), The Ghost Sonata (1907); Frank Wedekind (1864–1918), especially the "Lulu" plays Erdgeist ( Earth Spirit ) (1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora ( Pandora's Box ) (1904); the American poet Walt Whitman 's (1819–1892) Leaves of Grass (1855–1891);
18981-431: The liberatory aspects of fandom . The distinction between American and British strands, however, has faded. Some researchers, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a Marxist model to the field. This strain of thinking has some influence from the Frankfurt School , but especially from the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser and others. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on
19152-568: The manifestation of parallel events or circumstances reflecting this governing dynamic. He argued that a collective unconscious and archetypal imagery were detectable in art. His ideas were particularly popular among American Abstract expressionists in the 1940s and 1950s. His work inspired the surrealist concept of drawing imagery from dreams and the unconscious. Jung emphasized the importance of balance and harmony. He cautioned that modern humans rely too heavily on science and logic and would benefit from integrating spirituality and appreciation of
19323-416: The material conditions of human life, as humans create the conditions for physical survival, and that the basis of culture is found in evolved biological dispositions. When used as a count noun , a "culture" is the set of customs, traditions , and values of a society or community, such as an ethnic group or nation. Culture is the set of knowledge acquired over time. In this sense, multiculturalism values
19494-407: The matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world." In practice, culture referred to an elite ideal and was associated with such activities as art , classical music , and haute cuisine . As these forms were associated with urban life, "culture" was identified with "civilization" (from Latin: civitas , lit. 'city'). Another facet of
19665-492: The most important twentieth-century art historians, including Ernst Gombrich , received their degrees at Vienna at this time. The term "Second Vienna School" (or "New Vienna School") usually refers to the following generation of Viennese scholars, including Hans Sedlmayr , Otto Pächt, and Guido Kaschnitz von Weinberg. These scholars began in the 1930s to return to the work of the first generation, particularly to Riegl and his concept of Kunstwollen , and attempted to develop it into
19836-455: The nature of artworks as objects. Thing theory , actor–network theory , and object-oriented ontology have played an increasing role in art historical literature. The making of art, the academic history of art, and the history of art museums are closely intertwined with the rise of nationalism. Art created in the modern era, in fact, has often been an attempt to generate feelings of national superiority or love of one's country . Russian art
20007-422: The notion of progress. Rein Raud , building on the work of Umberto Eco , Pierre Bourdieu and Jeffrey C. Alexander , has proposed a model of cultural change based on claims and bids, which are judged by their cognitive adequacy and endorsed or not endorsed by the symbolic authority of the cultural community in question. Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to
20178-538: The notion that those who produce commodities control the meanings that people attribute to them. Feminist cultural analyst, theorist, and art historian Griselda Pollock contributed to cultural studies from viewpoints of art history and psychoanalysis . The writer Julia Kristeva is among influential voices at the turn of the century, contributing to cultural studies from the field of art and psychoanalytical French feminism . Petrakis and Kostis (2013) divide cultural background variables into two main groups: In 2016,
20349-549: The organization of production. In the United Kingdom, cultural studies focuses largely on the study of popular culture ; that is, on the social meanings of mass-produced consumer and leisure goods. Richard Hoggart coined the term in 1964 when he founded the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies or CCCS. It has since become strongly associated with Stuart Hall , who succeeded Hoggart as Director. Cultural studies in this sense, then, can be viewed as
20520-539: The other hand, tends to refer to technological or tangible diffusion from one culture to another. Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model of why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products. Acculturation has different meanings. Still, in this context, it refers to the replacement of traits of one culture with another, such as what happened to certain Native American tribes and many indigenous peoples across
20691-405: The other. In the 21st century, the protection of culture has been the focus of increasing activity by national and international organizations. The UN and UNESCO promote cultural preservation and cultural diversity through declarations and legally-binding conventions or treaties. The aim is not to protect a person's property, but rather to preserve the cultural heritage of humanity, especially in
20862-694: The painter Kandinsky he avoided "traditional forms of beauty" to convey powerful feelings in his music. Arnold Schoenberg , Anton Webern and Alban Berg , the members of the Second Viennese School , are important Expressionists (Schoenberg was also an expressionist painter). Other composers that have been associated with expressionism are Krenek (the Second Symphony), Paul Hindemith ( The Young Maiden ), Igor Stravinsky ( Japanese Songs ), Alexander Scriabin (late piano sonatas) (Adorno 2009, 275). Another significant expressionist
21033-439: The peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same planet. Sometimes "culture" is also used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society, a subculture (e.g. " bro culture "), or a counterculture . Within cultural anthropology , the ideology and analytical stance of cultural relativism hold that cultures cannot easily be objectively ranked or evaluated because any evaluation
21204-422: The perpetuation of cultural ideas and practices within current structures , which themselves are subject to change. Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models , and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. For example,
21375-446: The physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization (including practices of political organization and social institutions ), mythology , philosophy , literature (both written and oral ), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society. In the humanities , one sense of culture as an attribute of
21546-422: The piece. Proper analysis of pigments used in paint is now possible, which has upset many attributions. Dendrochronology for panel paintings and radio-carbon dating for old objects in organic materials have allowed scientific methods of dating objects to confirm or upset dates derived from stylistic analysis or documentary evidence. The development of good color photography, now held digitally and available on
21717-434: The poets associated with German Expressionism were: Other poets influenced by expressionism: In prose, the early stories and novels of Alfred Döblin were influenced by Expressionism, and Franz Kafka is sometimes labelled an Expressionist. Some further writers and works that have been called Expressionist include: The term expressionism "was probably first applied to music in 1918, especially to Schoenberg", because like
21888-554: The political and economic climates in which the art was created. Linda Nochlin 's essay " Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? " helped to ignite feminist art history during the 1970s and remains one of the most widely read essays about female artists. This was then followed by a 1972 College Art Association Panel, chaired by Nochlin, entitled "Eroticism and the Image of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Art". Within
22059-572: The presentation of the suffering and death of Jesus in the Stations of the Cross . Strindberg had pioneered this form with his autobiographical trilogy To Damascus . These plays also often dramatise the struggle against bourgeois values and established authority, frequently personified by the Father. In Sorge's The Beggar , ( Der Bettler ), for example, the young hero's mentally ill father raves about
22230-439: The production of meaning . This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts . In a Marxist view, the mode and relations of production form the economic base of society, which constantly interacts and influences superstructures , such as culture. Other approaches to cultural studies, such as feminist cultural studies and later American developments of
22401-487: The prospect of mining the riches of Mars and is finally poisoned by his son. In Bronnen's Parricide ( Vatermord ), the son stabs his tyrannical father to death, only to have to fend off the frenzied sexual overtures of his mother. In Expressionist drama, the speech may be either expansive and rhapsodic, or clipped and telegraphic. Director Leopold Jessner became famous for his expressionistic productions, often set on stark, steeply raked flights of stairs (having borrowed
22572-504: The reactions of contemporary and later viewers and owners. Museum studies , including the history of museum collecting and display, is now a specialized field of study, as is the history of collecting. Scientific advances have made possible much more accurate investigation of the materials and techniques used to create works, especially infra-red and x-ray photographic techniques which have allowed many underdrawings of paintings to be seen again, including figures that had been removed from
22743-495: The refinement and sophistication of high culture as corrupting and unnatural developments that obscure and distort people's essential nature. These critics considered folk music (as produced by "the folk," i.e., rural, illiterate, peasants) to honestly express a natural way of life, while classical music seemed superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrayed indigenous peoples as " noble savages " living authentic and unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by
22914-436: The rendering of the visual appearance of objects, Expressionist artists sought to portray emotions and subjective interpretations. It was not important to reproduce an aesthetically pleasing impression of the artistic subject matter, they felt, but rather to represent vivid emotional reactions by powerful colours and dynamic compositions. Kandinsky, the main artist of Der Blaue Reiter , believed that with simple colours and shapes
23085-418: The same basic elements. According to Bastian, all human societies share a set of "elementary ideas" ( Elementargedanken ); different cultures, or different "folk ideas" ( Völkergedanken ), are local modifications of the elementary ideas. This view paved the way for the modern understanding of culture. Franz Boas (1858–1942) was trained in this tradition, and he brought it with him when he left Germany for
23256-449: The same word goes back to Latin colere , 'to inhabit, care for, till, worship' and cultus , 'A cult, especially a religious one.' To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensely to cultivate it—to be responsible for it, to respond to it, to attend to it caringly." Culture described by Richard Velkley : ... originally meant the cultivation of the soul or mind, acquires most of its later modern meaning in
23427-531: The scholar-official class. These writers, being necessarily proficient in calligraphy, were artists themselves. The artists are described in the Six Principles of Painting formulated by Xie He . While personal reminiscences of art and artists have long been written and read (see Lorenzo Ghiberti Commentarii , for the best early example), it was Giorgio Vasari, the Tuscan painter, sculptor and author of
23598-497: The spectator could perceive the moods and feelings in the paintings, a theory that encouraged him towards increased abstraction. In Paris a group of artists dubbed the École de Paris ( School of Paris ) by André Warnod were also known for their expressionist art. This was especially prevalent amongst the foreign born Jewish painters of the School of Paris such as Chaim Soutine , Marc Chagall , Yitzhak Frenkel , Abraham Mintchine and others. These artists' expressionism
23769-440: The study of art should be the views of the learned beholder and not the viewpoint of the artist. Winckelmann's writings thus were the beginnings of art criticism. His two most notable works that introduced the concept of art criticism were Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst , published in 1755, shortly before he left for Rome ( Fuseli published an English translation in 1765 under
23940-444: The style of several of the films of Ingmar Bergman . More generally, the term expressionism can be used to describe cinematic styles of great artifice, such as the technicolor melodramas of Douglas Sirk or the sound and visual design of David Lynch 's films. Two leading Expressionist journals published in Berlin were Der Sturm , published by Herwarth Walden starting in 1910, and Die Aktion , which first appeared in 1911 and
24111-435: The texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of culture. Culture, for a cultural-studies researcher, not only includes traditional high culture (the culture of ruling social groups ) and popular culture , but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies. A further and recent approach
24282-771: The theories (a variety of critical approaches to sociology are central to current research communities), and in the substantive focus of the field. For instance, relationships between popular culture , political control, and social class were early and lasting concerns in the field. In the United Kingdom, sociologists and other scholars influenced by Marxism such as Stuart Hall (1932–2014) and Raymond Williams (1921–1988) developed cultural studies . Following nineteenth-century Romantics, they identified culture with consumption goods and leisure activities (such as art, music, film, food , sports, and clothing). They saw patterns of consumption and leisure as determined by relations of production , which led them to focus on class relations and
24453-552: The theories of Riegl, but became eventually more preoccupied with iconography, and in particular with the transmission of themes related to classical antiquity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In this respect his interests coincided with those of Warburg, the son of a wealthy family who had assembled a library in Hamburg, devoted to the study of the classical tradition in later art and culture. Under Saxl's auspices, this library
24624-616: The title Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks ), and Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums ( History of Art in Antiquity ), published in 1764 (this is the first occurrence of the phrase 'history of art' in the title of a book). Winckelmann critiqued the artistic excesses of Baroque and Rococo forms, and was instrumental in reforming taste in favor of the more sober Neoclassicism . Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897), one of
24795-560: The tradition of textual theory. Starting in the 1990s, psychological research on culture influence began to grow and challenge the universality assumed in general psychology. Culture psychologists began to try to explore the relationship between emotions and culture , and answer whether the human mind is independent from culture. For example, people from collectivistic cultures, such as the Japanese, suppress their positive emotions more than their American counterparts. Culture may affect
24966-802: The unconscious realm. His work not only triggered analytical work by art historians but became an integral part of art-making. Jackson Pollock , for example, famously created a series of drawings to accompany his sessions with his Jungian analyst, Joseph Henderson. Henderson, who later published the drawings in a text devoted to Pollock's sessions, realized how powerful the drawings were as a therapeutic tool. The legacy of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology in art history has been profound, and extends beyond Freud and Jung. The prominent feminist art historian Griselda Pollock, for example, draws upon psychoanalysis both in her reading into contemporary art and in her rereading of modernist art. With Griselda Pollock 's reading of French feminist psychoanalysis and in particular
25137-449: The vocabulary that continues to be used in the 21st century by art historians. "Iconography"—with roots meaning "symbols from writing" refers to subject matter of art derived from written sources—especially scripture and mythology. "Iconology" is a broader term that referred to all symbolism, whether derived from a specific text or not. Today art historians sometimes use these terms interchangeably. Panofsky, in his early work, also developed
25308-435: The way for the modern understanding of religion. Although anthropologists worldwide refer to Tylor's definition of culture, in the 20th century "culture" emerged as the central and unifying concept of American anthropology , where it most commonly refers to the universal human capacity to classify and encode human experiences symbolically , and to communicate symbolically encoded experiences socially. American anthropology
25479-572: The way that people experience and express emotions. On the other hand, some researchers try to look for differences between people's personalities across cultures . As different cultures dictate distinctive norms , culture shock is also studied to understand how people react when they are confronted with other cultures. LGBT culture is displayed with significantly different levels of tolerance within different cultures and nations. Cognitive tools may not be accessible or they may function differently cross culture. For example, people who are raised in
25650-412: The ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together shape a people's way of life. Culture can be either of two types, non-material culture or material culture . Non-material culture refers to the non-physical ideas that individuals have about their culture, including values, belief systems, rules, norms, morals, language, organizations, and institutions, while material culture
25821-742: The word expressionist was used in the modern sense as early as 1850, its origin is sometimes traced to paintings exhibited in 1901 in Paris by obscure artist Julien-Auguste Hervé, which he called Expressionismes . An alternative view is that the term was coined by the Czech art historian Antonin Matějček in 1910 as the opposite of Impressionism : "An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself... (an Expressionist rejects) immediate perception and builds on more complex psychic structures... Impressions and mental images that pass through ... people's soul as through
25992-465: The work of (for example) Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, and Paul Gilroy . In the United States, Lindlof and Taylor write, "cultural studies [were] grounded in a pragmatic, liberal-pluralist tradition." The American version of cultural studies initially concerned itself more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to, and uses of, mass culture ; for example, American cultural-studies advocates wrote about
26163-501: The work of American artist Marsden Hartley , who met Kandinsky in Germany in 1913. In late 1939, at the beginning of World War II , New York City received many European artists. After the war, Expressionism influenced many young American artists. Norris Embry (1921–1981) studied with Oskar Kokoschka in 1947 and during the next 43 years produced a large body of work in the Expressionist tradition. Embry has been termed "the first American German Expressionist". Other American artists of
26334-435: The world. The term is sometimes suggestive of angst . In a historical sense, much older painters such as Matthias Grünewald and El Greco are sometimes termed expressionist, though the term is applied mainly to 20th-century works. The Expressionist emphasis on individual and subjective perspective has been characterized as a reaction to positivism and other artistic styles such as Naturalism and Impressionism . While
26505-468: The writings of Julia Kristeva and Bracha L. Ettinger , as with Rosalind Krauss's readings of Jacques Lacan and Jean-François Lyotard and Catherine de Zegher's curatorial rereading of art, Feminist theory written in the fields of French feminism and Psychoanalysis has strongly informed the reframing of both men and women artists in art history. During the mid-20th century, art historians embraced social history by using critical approaches. The goal
26676-471: The writings of the 18th-century German thinkers, who were on various levels developing Rousseau 's criticism of " modern liberalism and Enlightenment ." Thus a contrast between "culture" and " civilization " is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such. In the words of anthropologist E.B. Tylor , it is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as
26847-457: Was Béla Bartók in early works, written in the second decade of the 20th century, such as Bluebeard's Castle (1911), The Wooden Prince (1917), and The Miraculous Mandarin (1919). Important precursors of expressionism are Richard Wagner (1813–1883), Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), and Richard Strauss (1864–1949). Theodor Adorno describes expressionism as concerned with the unconscious, and states that "the depiction of fear lies at
27018-423: Was a dominant influence on early 20th-century German theatre, of which Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller were the most famous playwrights. Other notable Expressionist dramatists included Reinhard Sorge , Walter Hasenclever , Hans Henny Jahnn , and Arnolt Bronnen . Important precursors were the Swedish playwright August Strindberg and German actor and dramatist Frank Wedekind. During the 1920s, Expressionism enjoyed
27189-442: Was 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
27360-497: Was active for a longer period than Der Blaue Reiter, which was only together for a year (1912). The Expressionists were influenced by artists and sources including Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh and African art . They were also aware of the work being done by the Fauves in Paris, who influenced Expressionism's tendency toward arbitrary colours and jarring compositions. In reaction and opposition to French Impressionism, which emphasized
27531-551: Was an Expressionist style in German cinema, important examples of which are Robert Wiene 's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Paul Wegener 's The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920), Fritz Lang 's Metropolis (1927) and F. W. Murnau 's Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922) and The Last Laugh (1924). The term "expressionist" is also sometimes used to refer to stylistic devices thought to resemble those of German Expressionism, such as film noir cinematography or
27702-487: Was an inherently "Italian" and an inherently " German " style. This last interest was most fully articulated in his monograph on the German artist Albrecht Dürer . Contemporaneous with Wölfflin's career, a major school of art-historical thought developed at the University of Vienna . The first generation of the Vienna School was dominated by Alois Riegl and Franz Wickhoff , both students of Moritz Thausing , and
27873-535: Was characterized by a tendency to reassess neglected or disparaged periods in the history of art. Riegl and Wickhoff both wrote extensively on the art of late antiquity , which before them had been considered as a period of decline from the classical ideal. Riegl also contributed to the revaluation of the Baroque. The next generation of professors at Vienna included Max Dvořák , Julius von Schlosser , Hans Tietze, Karl Maria Swoboda, and Josef Strzygowski . A number of
28044-540: Was described as restless and emotional by Frenkel. These artists, centered in the Montparnasse district of Paris tended to portray human subjects and humanity, evoking emotion through facial expression. Others focused on the expression of mood rather than a formal structure. The art of Jewish expressionists was characterized as dramatic and tragic, perhaps in connection to Jewish suffering following persecution and pogroms. The ideas of German expressionism influenced
28215-703: Was developed into a research institute, affiliated with the University of Hamburg , where Panofsky taught. Warburg died in 1929, and in the 1930s Saxl and Panofsky, both Jewish, were forced to leave Hamburg. Saxl settled in London, bringing Warburg's library with him and establishing the Warburg Institute . Panofsky settled in Princeton at the Institute for Advanced Study . In this respect they were part of an extraordinary influx of German art historians into
28386-489: Was edited by Franz Pfemfert . Der Sturm published poetry and prose from contributors such as Peter Altenberg , Max Brod , Richard Dehmel , Alfred Döblin , Anatole France , Knut Hamsun , Arno Holz, Karl Kraus , Selma Lagerlöf , Adolf Loos , Heinrich Mann , Paul Scheerbart , and René Schickele , and writings, drawings, and prints by such artists as Kokoschka , Kandinsky, and members of Der blaue Reiter . Oskar Kokoschka 's 1909 playlet, Murderer, The Hope of Women
28557-433: Was not directly imitative, but strove to create an "impression" of nature. If the work is not representational and is an expression of the artist's feelings, longings and aspirations or is a search for ideals of beauty and form, the work is non-representational or a work of expressionism . An iconographical analysis is one which focuses on particular design elements of an object. Through a close reading of such elements, it
28728-496: Was read avidly by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller , both of whom began to write on the history of art, and his account of the Laocoön group occasioned a response by Lessing . The emergence of art as a major subject of philosophical speculation was solidified by the appearance of Immanuel Kant 's Critique of Judgment in 1790, and was furthered by Hegel 's Lectures on Aesthetics . Hegel's philosophy served as
28899-416: Was refined by scholars such as T. J. Clark , Otto Karl Werckmeister [ de ] , David Kunzle, Theodor W. Adorno , and Max Horkheimer . T. J. Clark was the first art historian writing from a Marxist perspective to abandon vulgar Marxism . He wrote Marxist art histories of several impressionist and realist artists, including Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet . These books focused closely on
29070-616: Was then reinvented in the English-speaking world as a product of the cultural turn of the 1960s, which ushered in structuralist and postmodern approaches to social science. This type of cultural sociology may be loosely regarded as an approach incorporating cultural analysis and critical theory . Cultural sociologists tend to reject scientific methods, instead hermeneutically focusing on words, artifacts and symbols. Culture has since become an important concept across many branches of sociology, including resolutely scientific fields like social stratification and social network analysis . As
29241-462: Was to show how art interacts with power structures in society. One such critical approach 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 ). [1] Marcel Duchamp and the Dada Movement jump-started the anti-art style. German artists, upset by
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