Misplaced Pages

#667332

108-406: Easel painting is a term in art history for the type of midsize painting that would have been painted on an easel, as opposed to a fresco wall painting , a large altarpiece or other piece that would have been painted resting on a floor, a small cabinet painting , or a miniature created while sitting at a desk, though perhaps also on an angled support. It does not refer to the way the painting

216-414: 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

324-485: 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

432-465: 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

540-410: 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

648-501: 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

756-687: A long tradition of carving masks for use in shamanic rituals. Indigenous peoples of the Canadian arctic have produced objects that could be classified as art since the time of the Dorset culture . While the walrus ivory carvings of the Dorset were primarily shamanic, the art of the Thule people who replaced them circa 1000 CE was more decorative in character. With European contact the historic period of Inuit art began. In this period, which reached its height in

864-415: 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

972-514: 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

1080-516: A mortuary pond at Fort Center , on the west side of Lake Okeechobee . Particularly impressive is a 66 cm tall carving of an eagle. More than 1,000 carved and painted wooden objects, including masks, tablets, plaques and effigies, were excavated in 1896 at Key Marco , in southwestern Florida . They have been described as some of the finest prehistoric Native American art in North America. The objects are not well dated, but may belong to

1188-512: A network of roads. Construction for the largest of these settlements, Pueblo Bonito , began 1080 years before present . Pueblo Bonito contains over 800 rooms. Turquoise , jet, and spiny oyster shell have been traditionally used by Ancestral Pueblo for jewelry, and they developed sophisticated inlay techniques centuries ago. Around 200 CE the Hohokam culture developed in Arizona. They are

SECTION 10

#1732772688668

1296-547: A red zig-zag. In the Plains Village period, the cultures of the area settled in enclosed clusters of rectangular houses and cultivated maize. Various regional differences emerged, including Southern Plains, Central Plains, Oneota , and Middle Missouri. Tribes were both nomadic hunters and semi-nomadic farmers. During the Plains Coalescent period (1400-European contact) some change, possibly drought, caused

1404-465: 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

1512-426: 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

1620-454: 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

1728-401: 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

1836-725: Is another notable craft. Tribes have lived on the Great Plains for thousands of years. Early Plains cultures are commonly divided into four periods: Paleoindian (at least c. 10,000–4000 BCE), Plains Archaic (c. 4000–250 BCE), Plains Woodland (c. 250 BCE–950 CE), Plains Village (c. 950–1850 CE). The oldest known painted object in North American was found in the southern plains, the Cooper Bison Skull , found in Oklahoma and dated 10,900–10,200 BCE. It's painted with

1944-455: 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

2052-517: Is defined as approximately 18,000 to 8,000 BCE. The period from around 8000 to 800 BCE is generally referred to as the Archaic period . While people of this time period worked in a wide range of materials, perishable materials, such as plant fibers or hides, had seldom been preserved through the millennia. Indigenous peoples created bannerstones , Projectile point , Lithic reduction styles, and pictographic cave paintings, some of which have survived in

2160-561: Is divided into early, middle, and late periods, and consisted of cultures that relied mostly on hunting and gathering for their subsistence. Ceramics made by the Deptford culture (2500 BCE–100 CE) are the earliest evidence of an artistic tradition in this region. The Adena culture are another well-known example of an early Woodland culture. They carved stone tablets with zoomorphic designs, created pottery , and fashioned costumes from animal hides and antlers for ceremonial rituals. Shellfish

2268-490: 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,

SECTION 20

#1732772688668

2376-400: Is meant to be displayed; most easel paintings are intended for display framed and hanging on a wall. In a photographic darkroom , an easel is used to keep the photographic paper in a flat or upright (horizontal, big-size enlarging) position to the enlarger . The word easel is an old Germanic synonym for donkey (compare similar semantics). In various other languages, its equivalent

2484-447: 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

2592-423: 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

2700-743: Is the Cooper Bison Skull from approximately 8,050 BCE. Lithic age art in South America includes Monte Alegre culture rock paintings created at Caverna da Pedra Pintada dating back to 9250 to 8550 BCE. Guitarrero Cave in Peru has the earliest known textiles in South America, dating to 8000 BCE. The southwestern United States and certain regions of the Andes have the highest concentration of pictographs (painted images) and Petroglyphs (carved images) from this period. Both pictographs and petroglyphs are known as rock art . The Yup'ik of Alaska have

2808-622: Is the only word for both the animal and the apparatus, such as Afrikaans : esel and earlier Dutch : ezel (the easel generally in full Dutch : schildersezel , "painter's donkey"), themselves cognates of the Latin : asinus (ass). Easels have been in use since the time of the ancient Egyptians. In the 1st century, Pliny the Elder made reference to a "large panel" placed upon an easel. There are three common designs for easels: An easel can be full height, designed for standing by itself on

2916-608: 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

3024-599: 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

3132-663: The Ammassalik . Sperm whale ivory remains a valued medium for carving. Cultures of interior Alaska and Canada living south of the Arctic Circle are Subarctic peoples . While humans have lived in the region far longer, the oldest known surviving Subarctic art is a petroglyph site in northwest Ontario , dated to 5000 BCE. Caribou , and to a lesser extent moose , are major resources, providing hides, antlers, sinew, and other artistic materials. Porcupine quillwork embellishes hides and birchbark. After European contact with

3240-689: The Barrier Canyon Style and others, are seen at present day Buckhorn Draw Pictograph Panel and Horseshoe Canyon , among other sites. Petroglyphs by these and the Mogollon culture 's artists are represented in Dinosaur National Monument and at Newspaper Rock . The Ancestral Puebloans , or Anasazi, (1000 BCE–700 CE) are the ancestors of today's Pueblo tribes . Their culture formed in the American southwest, after

3348-557: The Caddo , Choctaw , Muscogee Creek , Wichita , and many other southeastern peoples. A large number of pre-Columbian wooden artifacts have been found in Florida. While the oldest wooden artifacts are as much as 10,000 years old, carved and painted wooden objects are known only from the past 2,000 years. Animal effigies and face masks have been found at a number of sites in Florida. Animal effigies dating to between 200 and 600 were found in

Easel - Misplaced Pages Continue

3456-878: The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University , the Southwest Museum , and the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of the American Indian . California has a large number of pictographs and petroglyphs rock art . One of the largest densities of petroglyphs in North America, by the Coso people , is in Big and Little Petroglyph Canyons in the Coso Rock Art District of

3564-555: The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex , a pan-regional and pan-linguistic religious and trade network. The majority of the information known about the S.E.C.C. is derived from examination of the elaborate artworks left behind by its participants, including pottery , shell gorgets and cups, stone statuary , repoussé copper plates such as the Wulfing cache , Rogan plates , and Long-nosed god maskettes . By

3672-525: 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

3780-612: The 12th century onward, the Haudenosaunee and nearby coastal tribes fashioned wampum from shells and string; these were mnemonic devices, currency, and records of treaties. Iroquois people carve False Face masks for healing rituals, but the traditional representatives of the tribes, the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee , are clear that these masks are not for sale or public display. The same can be said for Iroquois Corn Husk Society masks. One fine art sculptor of

3888-413: The 20th century. The bone is too mineralized to be dated, but the carving has been authenticated as having been made before the bone became mineralized. The anatomical correctness of the carving and the heavy mineralization of the bone indicate that the carving was made while mammoths and/or mastodons still lived in the area, more than 10,000 years ago. The oldest known painted object in North America

3996-472: 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

4104-743: The Americas. Indigenous art of the Americas has been collected by Europeans since sustained contact in 1492 and joined collections in cabinets of curiosities and early museums. More conservative Western art museums have classified Indigenous art of the Americas within arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, with precontact artwork classified as pre-Columbian art , a term that sometimes refers to only precontact art by Indigenous peoples of Latin America. Native scholars and allies are striving to have Indigenous art understood and interpreted from Indigenous perspectives. The Lithic stage or Paleo-Indian period

4212-485: 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

4320-589: The Indigenous peoples of the Americas Art of Central Asia Art of East Asia Art of South Asia Art of Southeast Asia Art of Europe Art of Africa Art of the Americas Art of Oceania The visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic practices of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to

4428-692: 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

Easel - Misplaced Pages Continue

4536-464: The Mississippian culture became fully agrarian, as opposed to the hunting and gathering supplemented by part-time agriculture practiced by preceding woodland cultures. They built platform mounds larger and more complex than those of their predecessors, and finished and developed more advanced ceramic techniques, commonly using ground mussel shell as a tempering agent . Many were involved with

4644-528: 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

4752-677: The Native American tribes of California, such as the Chumash, are carving and shaping effigy figurines. From multiple archaeological studies that occurred in various historical sites (the Channel Islands , Malibu , Santa Barbara , and more) many effigy figures were discovered and portrayed several zoomorphic forms, such as fish, whales, frogs, and birds. As a result from analyzing these effigy figurines in these studies, several strong conclusions were drawn that provided context to

4860-744: The Native Americans of California, such as social attributes between the Chumash and other tribes, economical significance, and possibly used in rituals. Some effigy figurines were found in burials, and others were found in relation to having similar stylistic features with dates that suggest social interactional spheres in the MIddle and Late Holocene between tribes. In the Southwestern United States numerous pictographs and petroglyphs were created. The Fremont culture and Ancestral Puebloans and later tribes' creations, in

4968-613: 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

5076-666: The Pacific Northwest coasts and Great Plains. Nez Perce , Yakama , Umatilla , and Cayuse women weave flat, rectangular corn husks or hemp dogbane bags, which are decorated with "bold, geometric designs" in false embroidery. Plateau beadworkers are known for their contour-style beading and their elaborate horse regalia. Great Basin tribes have a sophisticated basket making tradition, as exemplified by Dat So La Lee /Louisa Keyser ( Washoe ), Lucy Telles , Carrie Bethel and Nellie Charlie . After being displaced from their lands by non-Native settlers, Washoe wove baskets for

5184-499: 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

5292-732: 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. Visual arts of

5400-534: 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

5508-457: 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

SECTION 50

#1732772688668

5616-462: 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

5724-474: The commodity market, especially 1895 to 1935. Paiute , Shoshone and Washoe basketmakers are known for their baskets that incorporate seed beads on the surface and for waterproof baskets. The Native Americans of California have used different mediums and forms for their traditional designs found in artifacts that express their history and culture. Some traditional art forms and archaeological evidence include basketry, painted pictographs and petroglyphs found on

5832-523: 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

5940-427: 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

6048-758: The cultivation of corn was introduced from Mexico around 1200 BCE. People of this region developed an agrarian lifestyle, cultivating food, storage gourds, and cotton with irrigation or xeriscaping techniques. They lived in sedentary towns, so pottery, used to store water and grain, was ubiquitous. For hundreds of years, Ancestral Pueblo created utilitarian grayware and black-on-white pottery and occasionally orange or red ceramics. In historical times, Hopi created ollas , dough bowls, and food bowls of different sizes for daily use, but they also made more elaborate ceremonial mugs, jugs, ladles, seed jars and those vessels for ritual use, and these were usually finished with polished surfaces and decorated with black painted designs. At

6156-560: 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

6264-451: 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 ),

6372-499: 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

6480-408: 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

6588-471: 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

SECTION 60

#1732772688668

6696-463: 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

6804-779: The first millienium of the current era. Spanish missionaries described similar masks and effigies in use by the Calusa late in the 17th century, and at the former Tequesta site on the Miami River in 1743, although no examples of the Calusa objects from the historic period have survived. A south Florida effigy style is known from wooden and bone carvings from various sites in the Belle Glade , Caloosahatchee , and Glades culture areas. The Seminoles are best known for their textile creations, especially patchwork clothing. Doll-making

6912-413: The floor. Shorter easels can be designed for use on a table. It is most often used to hold up a painter's canvas or large sketchbook while the artist is working, or to hold a completed painting for exhibition . Here are some common uses for easels: Art history Art history is, briefly, the history of art—or the study of a specific type of objects created in the past. Traditionally,

7020-411: 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

7128-529: 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

7236-442: 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

7344-406: 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

7452-427: 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

7560-846: The influence of the Grey Nuns , moosehair tufting and floral glass beadwork became popular through the Subarctic. The art of the Haida , Tlingit , Heiltsuk , Tsimshian and other smaller tribes living in the coastal areas of Washington state , Oregon , and British Columbia , is characterized by an extremely complex stylistic vocabulary expressed mainly in the medium of woodcarving. Famous examples include totem poles , transformation masks , and canoes. In addition to woodwork, two dimensional painting and silver, gold and copper engraved jewelry became important after contact with Europeans. The Eastern Woodlands , or simply woodlands, cultures inhabited

7668-413: 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

7776-418: 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

7884-721: The late 19th century, Inuit artisans created souvenirs for the crews of whaling ships and explorers. Common examples include cribbage boards. Modern Inuit art began in the late 1940s, when with the encouragement of the Canadian government they began to produce prints and serpentine sculptures for sale in the south. Greenlandic Inuit have a unique textile tradition intregrating skin-sewing, furs, and appliqué of small pieces of brightly dyed marine mammal organs in mosaic designs, called avittat . Women create elaborate netted beadwork collars. They have strong mask-making tradition and also are known for an art form called tupilaq or an "evil spirit object." Traditional art making practices thrive in

7992-570: 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

8100-780: The mass migration of the population to the Eastern Woodlands region, and the Great Plains were sparsely populated until pressure from American settlers drove tribes into the area again. The advent of the horse revolutionized the cultures of many historical Plains tribes. Horse culture enabled tribes to live a completely nomadic existence, hunting buffalo. Buffalo hide clothing was decorated with porcupine quill embroidery and beads – dentalium shells and elk teeth were prized materials. Later coins and glass beads acquired from trading were incorporated into Plains art. Plains beadwork has flourished into contemporary times. Buffalo

8208-703: The mid-nineteenth century was Edmonia Lewis (African American / Ojibwe). Two of her works are held by the Newark Museum . Native peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands continued to make visual art through the 20th and 21st centuries. One such artist is Sharol Graves, whose serigraphs have been exhibited in the National Museum of the American Indian . Graves is also the illustrator of The People Shall Continue from Lee & Low Books . The Poverty Point culture inhabited portions of

8316-492: 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

8424-615: The much further away Ohio and Tennessee River valleys. Vessels were made from soapstone which came from the Appalachian foothills of Alabama and Georgia . Hand-modeled lowly fired clay objects occur in a variety of shapes including anthropomorphic figurines and cooking balls. The Mississippian culture flourished in what is now the Midwestern , Eastern , and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally. After adopting maize agriculture

8532-455: 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

8640-458: The northern Mojave Desert in California. The most elaborate pictographs in the U.S are considered to be the rock art of the Chumash people , found in cave paintings in present-day Santa Barbara , Ventura , and San Luis Obispo Counties . The Chumash cave painting includes examples at Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park and Burro Flats Painted Cave . An art practice used by

8748-422: 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

8856-555: 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

8964-419: The present. Belonging in the lithic stage, the oldest known art in the Americas is a fossilized megafauna bone, possibly from a mammoth, carved with a profile of walking mammoth or mastodon that dates back to 11,000 BCE. The bone was found early in the 21st century near Vero Beach, Florida , in an area where human bones ( Vero man ) had been found in association with extinct pleistocene animals early in

9072-567: The present. These include works from South America and North America, which includes Central America and Greenland . The Siberian Yupiit , who have great cultural overlap with Native Alaskan Yupiit , are also included. Indigenous American visual arts include portable arts, such as painting, basketry, textiles, or photography, as well as monumental works, such as architecture, land art , public sculpture, or murals. Some Indigenous art forms coincide with Western art forms; however, some, such as porcupine quillwork or birchbark biting are unique to

9180-504: 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

9288-530: The regions of North America east of the Mississippi River at least since 2500 BCE. While there were many regionally distinct cultures, trade between them was common and they shared the practice of burying their dead in earthen mounds, which has preserved a large amount of their art. Because of this trait the cultures are collectively known as the Mound builders . The Woodland period (1000 BCE–1000 CE)

9396-575: The scarcity of hides, Plains artists adopted new painting surfaces, such as muslin or paper, giving birth to Ledger art , so named for the ubiquitous ledger books used by Plains artists. Since the archaic period the Plateau region, also known as the Intermontaine and upper Great Basin , had been a center of trade. Plateau people traditionally settled near major river systems. Because of this, their art carries influences from other regions – from

9504-533: 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

9612-448: The state of Louisiana from 2000 to 1000 BCE during the Archaic period . Many objects excavated at Poverty Point sites were made of materials that originated in distant places, including chipped stone projectile points and tools, ground stone plummets, gorgets and vessels, and shell and stone beads. Stone tools found at Poverty Point were made from raw materials which originated in the relatively nearby Ouachita and Ozark Mountains and from

9720-440: 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

9828-552: 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

9936-468: The time of European contact the Mississippian societies were already experiencing severe social stress, and with the political upheavals and diseases introduced by Europeans many of the societies collapsed and ceased to practice a Mississippian lifestyle, with notable exceptions being the Plaquemine culture Natchez and related Taensa peoples. Other tribes descended from Mississippian cultures include

10044-617: 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

10152-539: The turn of the 20th century, Hopi potter Nampeyo famous revived Sikyátki -style pottery, originated on First Mesa in the 14th to 17th centuries. Southwest architecture includes Cliff dwellings , multi-story settlements carved from living rock ; pit houses ; and adobe and sandstone pueblos . One of the most elaborate and largest ancient settlements is Chaco Canyon in New Mexico , which includes 15 major complexes of sandstone and timber. These are connected by

10260-803: 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

10368-449: 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

10476-572: The walls in the caves, and effigy figurines.  The Native Americans in California have a tradition of exquisitely detailed basket weaving arts. In the late 19th-century Californian baskets by artists in the Cahuilla , Chumash , Pomo , Miwok , Hupa and many other tribes became popular with collectors, museums, and tourists. This resulted in great innovation in the form of the baskets. Many pieces by Native American basket weavers from all parts of California are in museum collections, such as

10584-468: 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

10692-493: Was a mainstay of their diet, and engraved shells have been found in their burial mounds. The Middle Woodland period was dominated by cultures of the Hopewell tradition (200–500). Their artwork encompassed a wide variety of jewelry and sculpture in stone, wood, and even human bone. The Late Woodland period (500–1000 CE) saw a decline in trade and in the size of settlements, and the creation of art likewise declined. From

10800-442: 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

10908-545: 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

11016-535: 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

11124-703: 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

11232-433: 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

11340-496: 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

11448-416: 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

11556-514: Was the preferred material for Plains hide painting . Men painted narrative, pictorial designs recording personal exploits or visions. They also painted pictographic historical calendars known as Winter counts . Women painted geometric designs on tanned robes and rawhide parfleches , which sometimes served as maps. During the Reservation Era of the late 19th century, buffalo herds were systematically destroyed by non-native hunters. Due to

11664-462: 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

#667332