Art History

The history of art is the discipline that aims to study the works in the history and meaning they can take. It also examines the conditions created by the artists, the recognition by arts audiences, and the spiritual context, cultural, anthropological, economic and social development of the art.


A discipline and study subjects

This discipline is based on academic research, updating and implementation issues of historical, scientific, around artistic and cultural phenomena. Thus, the history of art is specialized in artistic creation and its various dimensions and concepts (sometimes understood as fiction) idea (l 'art, the culture), object (the work, the technique, the material ), individual (the artist, the viewer), language (the speech carried in and around the art object, the medium, the perception), experience poetic (what to work?) or imaginary (the representation of the figure).


On the origin of art history

We find these questions deal with collections of objects and practices from the ancient Mediterranean (Pliny the Elder Pausanias Periegetes), Classical India (Bharata Muni Abhinavagupta), ancient China (Xie He medieval Islam (Abu Nasr al-Farabi until the Renaissance (Dante Alighieri, Cennini, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Leone Battista Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, Giorgio Vasari) and that since, in the various traditions and writings about the art as the art critic, treaties artists of antiquity, of passengers, etc.. In the context of renewed scientific questions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (especially with Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Karl Friedrich von Rumohr and Jacob Burckhardt), the history of art takes shape in parallel development of the archeology, the libraries and museums in the Western public (in each national context emerging as a specialty of philosophy and the history complements the study of texts from the literature.


Conditions of the current education

Apart from Germany and Italy where for historical reasons it is a matter well integrated into the university curriculum, or school, we see that art history continues to be regarded as an area marginal or minor in spite of its relatively good public image. From his side the discipline is particularly divided into sub-specialties very heterogeneous (historical periods, cultural areas, methodological traditions, institutional affinities etc..), Between which relations are sometimes tense and fragile unity (cf. H . Belting, D. Riout, USA. Chassey of).

For example, in France, as the President of the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne (France Culture, March 23, 2007), the failure rate in examinations of first year students of art history and archeology of 70 % (but 45% at the site of Paris I). The curriculum is regularly taken as examples of failures of the university (mismatch between the goals of students during their initial registration and actual lessons, career opportunities and ongoing training, coaching and facilities departments consistency of content and refusal of the interdisciplinary, teacher recruitment, evaporation of docs, etc..).


The question of methodologies

It differs very briefly two approaches in art history according to their objectives (see also structural and individualistic theories and the opposition forms / contexts especially in the world Anglo - Saxon
The most common end as having the updated body of works and artists, the uniqueness of their discourse, based on concepts such as masterpiece, style, manner, schools, movements, trends and joints, their interactions with history, political and social events. Identify, classify, prioritize and then sometimes regarded as a methodological basis (see A. Chastel). But in some cases this approach is called (ironically) of attributionniste for his taste for biographies and narrative catalogs or monographs of artists.
The other approach is also concerned about his own discourse on art, on the theory of art or on the boundaries of art - closer to the science of art is also initiated around (de) Berlin and Vienna in the nineteenth century So, beyond how this story is written (historiography), it is to compare the work and challenges of the artist (see the "irreducible referents" by J. Lichtenstein with that their eyes are worn. Today, some speak of the history of art criticism (cf. Fr Bardon, M. Podro and new art history (cf. A. Wessely history art compared (cf. Chr. Michel or even art history philosophy (R. Pouivet


More broadly

We can present its scope as everything is the work of poetry (in the broadest sense, which causes a gap aesthetic) context and cultural and spiritual, since the conditions of production by its author, presentation and broadcast to its perception varies with time by a public recognition - or not - an artistic nature to the subject or the act of the artist, and its representation.

The implementation of an art history is therefore appealing simultaneously to different knowledge and experiences, and it is simpler to note that it is not supposed to be (a decision on the art, a catalog collection, a complete reading of the work a bias idealist etc..) that define what it is sometimes (a critical work, an interpretation, an epistemology - a discourse on knowledge ), but always with some scholarship (a "thorough knowledge" is an ambition for documentation and interpretation of works


Summary table summary

Four stages of the work of art historian against an object can quickly be developed:
the description, formal analysis, structural iconographic, iconological of the work and its contexts
his analysis material, technological or physical (laboratory for dating, etc.).
the study of historical sources around the production of the work (contract, project, etc.).
and about his perception (reviews, critiques, interviews, etc..) or knowledge of documentary sources side.


The history of art considered as a science?

Because many contributors to the history of art were not qualified or situated as art historians (even outside the field of science), it is sometimes presented as a science transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary But it also discusses many of his place in the humanities (see D. Arasse) and social (it is an applied science museums? What is self discipline? Example).

So we see that the history of art appropriates many methodologies and scientific perspectives such as phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, etc..), Psychological (Rene Huyghe, etc..) And psychotherapy (Meyer Schapiro, etc..) , sociological (Arnold Hauser, Francastel, Howard Becker), structuralist (Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky, Hubert Damisch Pierre Daix) Marxist (Michael Baxandall, Francoise Bardon, etc..), formalistic and semiotic (Wölffin Heinrich, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco), postmodernist (-Achille Bonito Oliva, Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida).

Moreover, it would be tedious to list all the disciplines which involve the art historians of the cultural history, social, to the anthropology of art and culture through the aesthetic, the language, the 'cultural economy, the theory of literature, the communication or mediology, the Visual, Gender, Cultural and Queer Studies, and various comparative studies, impact of new issues epistemological contemporary.

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