What is Art History? - Franklin High School

What is Art History?
Central Aim: Determine the original
context of a work of art.
How old is it?
•Physical evidence (CSI)
•Documentary Evidence
•Internal Evidence (hairstyle, clothes, portrait, etc.)
•Stylistic Evidence: artist’s distinctive style, not so
reliable.
What is Style?
•Period Style: specific time, culture
•Regional Style: of a particular place in a
period. Provenance = place of origin
•Personal Style: distinctive manner of an
individual artist
Portraits in Different Styles
What is the subject?
Sometimes there is no subject
Kandinsky: Transverse Lines
Religious
Seated Boddhisatva: 16th C. Bhutan
Historical
Victory Stele of Naram-Sin
Mythological
Bernini: Apollo and Daphne
Genre
Velazquez: The Waterseller of Seville
Portraiture
Velazquez: Queen Isabel
Landscape
Pieter Bruegel: Hunters in the Snow
Still Life
Harmen Steenwyck: The Vanities of human Life
Other
Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights (detail)
Iconography (writing of images)
•Content and study of content in a work of art
•Study of symbols, images that stand for other images or ideas
•Attributes: something that identifies a figure.
•Personification: Abstract ideas embodied in human form
Symbol
Personification
Delecroix: Liberty Leading the People
Attribute
El Greco: St. Peter: St. Peter
has keys (to heaven)
Who made it?
• Attribution = determination of who made it
• If not clear, use style, etc., CSI
• Connoisseur: expert with trained eye,
experience, knowledge to attribute an artwork
to “the hand” of a particular artist.
• Artists working in the same style: School
Who paid for it and Why?
•
•
•
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Patron influences (dictates) subject, style, etc.
Portraiture
Propaganda
Other
Art History Terms:
• Form: object’s shape or structure
• Composition: How forms are arranged in flat
(2D) or 3D (volume) space
Material and Technique: What is the object
made of and how it was made?
Oil Paint
vanEyck: Arnolfini Wedding Portrait
Fresco
Michelangelo: Sistine Chapel, detail
Line: Path of a point moving through
space
Calder: Acrobats
Picasso: Stravinsky
Color: Property of light. Sunlight contains all
colors
• Hue: Particular wavelength of light – red, blue, etc.
• Value: How light or dark a color is
• Intensity or Saturation: How pure the color is
• Primary Colors: Red, Yellow, Blue. All other colors (in
painting) can be made by mixing them.
• Secondary Colors: Orange, Green, Violet (purple): Made
by mixing 2 primary colors
•All 8 boxes have the same value
•Saturation (intensity) decreases from top to bottom
Texture: Quality of the surface, either
represented or actual
Isamu Noguchi: Detail
Leonardo da Vinci: Grotesque
Portrait
Space: The boundary of an object: 2D or 3D.
Can be illusionistic space (when an image
depicts 3 dimensions in 2 dimensions)
Mass and Volume: Describe 3D objects
(sculpture and architecture)
•Mass = bulk, weight, density (not scientific
definitions). Can be shell (like building), or
solid (like a stone sculpture)
•Volume is space that mass organizes,
divides, encloses
.
Perspective: Ways 3D illusion is
created in2D
• Size: Objects farther away are smaller
• Overlap (occlusion): Objects closer to viewer
block out objects farther from viewer
• Linear Perspective: The way objects get
smaller and converge
• Atmospheric Perspective: Objects farther
away are not as distinct or bright as closer
objects.
Size
Breugel: Dance
Overlap
Giotto: Madonna in Glory
Linear and Atmospheric Perspective:
Claude Lorrain: Seaport at Sunset
Foreshortening:
Special type of Perspective: The way an object
contracts when at an angle to the picture plane.
Carravagio: Supper at Emmaus
Proportion: Size Relationship of parts in
a work of art.
Galia Slayen made a Barbie doll that stands about 6 feet
tall with a 39" bust, 18" waist, and 33" hips.
Hierarchy of Scale:
In some works more important things are bigger than less
important or powerful things. Not naturalistic- symbolic
Akhenaten Offering to Aten the Solar Disc Egyptian Relief
Relief Sculpture: Subjects project from background
(flat plane of material) or are carved (incised) into
background. Only viewed from the front like a
painting.
High Relief: Project out a lot
Low (Bas) Relief: Project out a little
Incised Relief
High Relief
Benin relief plaque from the 17th century
Bas Relief
Ghiberti: Creation
Carving: A work of art (usually sculpture or relief) created by
removing material such as wood or stone. Subtractive method.
Michelangelo: Slave (unfinished)
Additive Method: Adding material on until final volume is reached.
Casting: Creating a copy of a sculpture or relief in a different material
using molds.
Rodin: Walking Man
Architectural Drawings:
Plan: Like a floor map
Chartres Cathedral: Floor Plan
Architectural Drawings:
Section: View of a vertical “slice”
Architectural Drawings:
Elevation: Head-on view of an interior or exterior wall