scholarly journals The Growing Pains of Digital Art History: Issues for the Study of Art Using Computational Methods

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-151
Author(s):  
Amanda Wasielewski
Keyword(s):  
Text Mining ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
Digital Art ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Computational Techniques ◽  
Distant Reading ◽  
Growing Pains ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Large Groups

Digital methodologies that revolve around the study of text have become popular in humanities disciplines such as literature and history. The potential for studying large groups of text automatically through techniques like text mining has meant that Franco Moretti’s “distant reading” has found more and more proponents. Art history, however, presents some unique barriers to uptake in computational techniques, not least the resistance of art historians, who have raised legitimate concerns about the relevance of such techniques. Many so-called “digital art history” projects focus only on formal characteristics while ignoring context, which does not reflect the nature of art historical study in the last 60 years. The technical challenges of using digital methodologies in the study of art and visual culture have limited the potential benefits of such techniques as well: the methodologies used for images are more complex than text recognition and there is simply not enough preexisting data that needs to be sorted in this way.

scholarly journals Digital Art History for the Masses? The Role of the Public Digital Art History Lab

2019 ◽  
pp. 196-213
Author(s):  
Ellen Prokop
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Digital Art ◽  
Computational Techniques ◽  
Massive Datasets ◽  
The Public ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Masses

Digital Art History (DAH), which embraces massive datasets, innovative methodologies based on computational techniques, and collaborative paradigms, promises to offer new perspectives on the history of art. For example, DAH has the potential to shift the discipline’s focus from the traditional topics of inquiry to less explored aspects of the field—in short, to reposition the discipline’s central preoccupations with the issues of patronage, which are the concerns of the elite, to broader structures at work in a society, including the experiences of the marginalized. This displacement from center to periphery is not restricted to DAH research questions, but often applies to other aspects of DAH as well: to its status within the Digital Humanities (DH); to the demographic it frequently attracts; and to the infrastructure(s) developed to support it. Yet despite this potential, in many respects DAH occupies the periphery. This essay problematizes these issues as crystallized by the establishment of a digital art history lab at a privately funded library that serves the public, and explores one instance of how DAH has forced the North American academy to reflect further on the issues of privilege, access, and the future of art history.

Shadows, Highlights and Faces: the Contribution of a ‘Human in the Loop’ to Digital Art History

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
M.W.A. Wijntjes
Keyword(s):  
Gender Bias ◽  
Art History ◽  
Digital Art ◽  
Gaze Direction ◽  
Computational Techniques ◽  
Human In The Loop ◽  
Projection Plane ◽  
Complementary Approach

Abstract While automatic computational techniques appear to reveal novel insights in digital art history, a complementary approach seems to get less attention: that of human annotation. We argue and exemplify that a ‘human in the loop’ can reveal insights that may be difficult to detect automatically. Specifically, we focused on perceptual aspects within pictorial art. Using rather simple annotation tasks (e.g. delineate human heights, indicate highlights and classify gaze direction) we could both replicate earlier findings and reveal novel insights into pictorial conventions. We found that Canaletto depicted human figures in rather accurate perspective, varied viewpoint elevation between approximately 3 and 9 m and highly preferred light directions parallel to the projection plane. Furthermore, we found that taking the averaged images of leftward-looking faces reveals a woman, and for rightward-looking faces showed a male, confirming earlier accounts on lateral gender bias in pictorial art. Lastly, we confirmed and refined the well-known light-from-the-top-left bias. Together, the annotations, analyses and results exemplify how manual annotations can contribute and complement to digital art history.

Recording Epigraphic Sources as Part of Artworks

2020 ◽  
pp. 128-144
Author(s):  
Gabriele Pieke
Keyword(s):  
Original Artwork ◽  
Art History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Line Drawings ◽  
Color Data ◽  
Written Word

Art history has its own demands for recording visual representations. Objectivity and authenticity are the twin pillars of recording artistic data. As such, techniques relevant to epigraphic study, such as making line drawings, may not always be the best approach to an art historical study, which addresses, for example, questions about natural context and materiality of the artwork, the semantic, syntactic, and chronological relation between image and text, work procedures, work zones, and workshop traditions, and interactions with formal structures and beholders. Issues critical to collecting data for an art historical analysis include recording all relevant information without overcrowding the data set, creating neutral (i.e., not subjective) photographic images, collecting accurate color data, and, most critically, firsthand empirical study of the original artwork. A call for greater communication in Egyptology between epigraphy/palaeography and art history is reinforced by drawing attention to images as tools of communication and the close connection between the written word and figural art in ancient Egypt.

MapTap and Cornelia Slow Digital Art History and Formal Art Historical Social Network Research

2016 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koenraad Brosens ◽  
Klara Alen ◽  
Astrid Slegten ◽  
Fred Truyen
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Data Model ◽  
Art History ◽  
Digital Art ◽  
Unique Data ◽  
Network Research ◽  
Custom Made

Abstract The essay introduces MapTap, a research project that zooms in on the ever-changing social networks underpinning Flemish tapestry (1620 – 1720). MapTap develops the young and still slightly amorphous field of Formal Art Historical Social Network Research (FAHSNR) and is fueled by Cornelia, a custom-made database. Cornelia’s unique data model allows researchers to organize attribution and relational data from a wide array of sources in such a way that the complex multiplex and multimode networks emerging from the data can be transformed into partial unimode networks that enable proper FAHSNR. A case study revealing the key roles played by women in the tapestry landscape shows how this kind of slow digital art history can further our understanding of early modern creative communities and industries.

scholarly journals A descriptive mode in art and the issue of a representation

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-17
Author(s):  
O. V. Bezzubova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
American Art ◽  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Research

The predominant for XX century art studies tradition was seriously reconsidered during the 1970– 1980s during the so called «new art history» development, when many received concepts were called into question. A notion of descriptiv e mode of painting proposed by an American art historian S. Alpers is of great interest in this context because it allows us to revise the homogeneous development of European art. While elaborating the concept of descriptive mode of painting, Alpers took under consideration a wide range of historical and cultural sources thus contributed to the new research approach nowadays known under the title of visual culture studies. It is not less important that she also focused on the issue of pictorial representation, which inquires the essence of the work of art.

scholarly journals Temptation, Resistance, and Art Objects: On the Lack of Material Theory within Art History before the Material Turn

2019 ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Charolotta Krispinsson
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Visual Culture Studies ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material Turn

Niccolò di Pietro Gerini's painting “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” (1390-1400) serves as a point of departure for this essay. It depicts Saint Anthony during a lapse of self-control as he attempts to resist an alluring mound of gold. Since the mound is in fact made of genuine gold leaves applied to the painting's surface, it works both as a representation of temptation as well as an object of desire affecting the beholder. The aim of this essay is to explore different approaches to materiality before the material turn within the art history discipline by examining two opposing directions within the writing and practice of art history:  the tradition of connoisseurship; and the critique of the fetish within the theoretical apparatus of new art history and visual culture studies of the 1980s and 90s. As an expression of positivism within art history, it is argued that connoisseurship be considered within the context of its empirical practices dealing with objects. What is commonly described as the connoisseur's “taste” or “love for art” would then be just another way to describe the intimate relationship formed between art historians and the very objects under their scrutiny. More than other humanist disciplines, art history is, with the possible exception of archaeology, an object-based discipline. It is empirically anchored in the unruly, deep sea of objects commonly known as the history of art. Still, there has been a lack of in-depth theoretical reflection on the materiality of artworks in the writings of art historians before the material turn. The question however, is not ifthis is so, but rather, why?In this essay, it is suggested that the art history discipline has been marked by a complicated love-hate relationship with the materiality of which the very objects of study, more often than not, are made of; like Saint Anthony who is both attracted to and repelled by the shapeless mass of gold that Lucifer tempts him with. While connoisseurship represents attraction, resistance to the allure of objects can be traced to the habitual critique of fetishism of the first generations of visual culture studies and new art history. It reflects a negative stance towards objects and the material aspect of artworks, which enhanced a conceived dichotomy between thinking critically and analytically in contrast to managing documents and objects in archives and museum depositories. However, juxtaposing the act of thinking with the practice of manual labour has a long tradition in Western intellectual history. Furthermore, it is argued that art history cannot easily be compared to the history of other disciplines because of the simple fact that artworks are typically quite expensive and unique commodities, and as such, they provoke not just aesthetic but also fetishist responses. Thus, this desire to separate art history as a scientific discipline from the fetishism of the art market has had the paradoxical effect of causing art historians to shy away from developing methodologies and theory about materiality as an act of resistance. 

Questioning Representation: When Art History Becomes Visual Culture

1993 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-71
Author(s):  
Christine Bunting
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Art History
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