Art Historical Approaches: Theories and Methodologies for Understanding Images

Readings: Theory Text Ch. 4, 13:2

Emperor Qinshihuang's Tomb (r. 221-207 BC), rediscovered c. 1974

Xian another view

Pompei & Herculaneum-rediscovery c. 1748

Art & Images as a way to understand or know history, life & the world

Portrait of literate woman from Herculaneum c. 50 AD

Pompei--Vesuvius Erupts 79 AD

Foundations of Art History as a Discipline (Western Traditions) & It’s Influence on Ways of Thinking about

(and analyzing) Visual Images• Discussion of Art History as a Discipline (take notes as this part is not

included in detail in this outline)

• Changing notions & debates : what visual is representation doing?– Mimesis

• Art as imitation of absolute ideas (world of forms--Plato)

• Art does not reproduce visual appearance but essential idea (not just what exists but what could or should exist--Artistotle)

– Imitatio (art as representation of nature, reality, the world)• Imitation of what (ancients? natural world? Universal truths? Artist’s vision? Reflection

of context? Anticipation of viewer?)

• Questions of formalism, iconography, iconology, stylistic movement, etc…

Core early foundations inspired by humanists from the Italian Renaissance:

– Leon Battista Alberti (1404• Philosopher: rationalism,

moderation, following nature, public good, ancient philosophers

• Admiration for ancient styles: Major work analyzing architectural styles & role of architecture in civic life, notions of beauty : De Re Aedificatoria, c. 1450-72

– Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Architects, Painters and Sculptors (Lives of Artists in your readings) 1550

– Notion of connecting art to world views, socio-economic & cultural contexts emerges

Maison Carré, Nimes, c. 19 AD

Greco-Roman Architecture

• Large built public spaces

• Visual display of power

• Lost engineering skills

• Insights into culture

• Framing spectacles

Classification & Analysis of

Architectural Styles--Relation to General

Theories of Life-Nature

• Illustration from Diderot’s Encyclopedie

Transition from Byzantine to Early Renaissance

Cimabue Madonna Enthroned 13th c. Gentile da Fabriano early 14th c.

Notion of New Techniques for Depicting ‘Reality’/Nature as “we” see it or “as it really is” (??)

• Renaissance rediscovery of linear perspective (Edgerton)

• Depicting 3 dimensions (3D) on picture plane (2D)

• Not just about art & science--“art in the service of God” (Edgerton)

Rediscovery of Linear Perspective

Art & Science “in the service of God”

• D. Veneziano, Madonna & Child 1445

Edgerton’s analysis of

use of symbolic use

of perspective

• Form & composition as key to meaning or content

Content/Meaning, Norm & Form

• Formalism• Example: theories of Heinrich

Wöfflin Principles of Art History…

1-Linear vs. painterly2-Plane vs. recession3-Closed form to open form4-Multiplicity to unity5-Absolute clarity to relative clarity

– For 16th-17th art but applicable to later art

– Examples: Ingres vs. Delacroix in 19th c. French painting

Ingres Valpincon Bather

Delacroix--Liberty Leading the People

Panofsky’s ideas about meaning & iconology (Theory Text Ch. 4:1)

Iconology & Search for Methodologies Beyond Formalism

• Panofsky is critical of Wolfflin’s Formalist analysis (ex. triangle between legs of Michelangelos’s David)--Analysis of motifs & compositions

• Seeks ‘intrinsic’ meaning or content

“Intrinsic Meaning”=Underlying principles that reveal attitudes (Panofsky)

• Examples of change in conventions about depictions of “The Adoration of Christ)

Madonna Kneeling

Abstract Art as a Challenge to

“the canon”• Picasso Les

Demoiselles d’Avignon

• Continues 19thc tradition of new art challenging the ‘establishment’

MANET Dejeuner sur l<herbe

Impressionism (1870s)

Neo-Impressionism

Proliferation of stylistic movements

• Cloisonism --Pont Aven School

Re-evaluation of artists & art in terms

of subsequent developments

• Van Gogh self-portrait

Relationships between artistic

movements• Alfred Barr--

Museum of Modern Art exhibition catalogue

Gombrich on art & invention or discovery

• Example: Constable

Constable

JM Turner: Steam & Fog (before 1844)

Svetlana Alpers

• Meanings & the position of the viewer--when the artist becomes the observer & the gaze is turned on the spectator

• Analysis of Velazquez’ Las Meninas

• who is the viewer-subject?

• What is the painting about?

• Idea of multiple meanings• Modes of picturing

relationships between the “viewer-subject”

Detail of Velazquez’ Las Meminas

• Detail

Manet’s Olympia

Buck-Morris on critical analysis of contemporary images & image-making

• Aesthetic Experience & the “virtual”

• Example of Surrealsm--S. Dali The Persistence of Memory

The “New Art History”

• c.1980s• Context

– “art for art’s sake”

– Political and economic contexts

– Anti-racist, feminist & post-colonialist influences

• Not just “great works” (canons) or “great men” (questioning bias in art historical methods)

• Re-thinking older classifications of art and non-art

– Non-representational art

– Popular culture

Pop Art (Roy Lichtenstein Nude with Beach Ball)

Artists had long been challenging definitions of what is art, art history and

who can define it

Marcel Duchamp. Fountain, original (left) and recreations of lost 1917 “Original”