1. What is art history?

‘What is art history?’ discusses the term art history and draws distinctions between it and art appreciation and art criticism. It also considers the range of artefacts included in the discipline and how these have changed over time. The work of art is our primary evidence, and it is our interaction between this evidence and methods of enquiry that forms art history. Art appreciation and criticism are also linked to connoisseurship. Although art is a visual subject, we learn about it through reading and we convey our ideas about it mostly in writing. The social and cultural issues articulated by art history are examined through an analysis of four very different works of art.

4. Presenting art history

‘Presenting art history’ considers the different ways of presenting art history, and especially the importance of the gallery or museum. It maps out the development of collections from the cabinet of curiosities to the private and corporate sponsor and collector of today and discusses the impact the amassing of objects has had on their perceived value and on the histories of art, and how writing about objects can affect their ‘value’. The emergence of the prestige building by a star architect to house art collections has become an increasingly global phenomenon, which along with ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions has had a significant impact on the presentation and understanding of art history.

3. A global art history?

Are the practices of Western art history appropriate for the study of art from cultures outside its geographical boundaries and conventional timeframe? The bias in this interpretation of the subject opens up the questions of the importance of the canon in art history and how we view non-figurative, primitive, and naive art. ‘A global art history?’ considers a range of different examples of artistic practice from around the world, including the sculpture of the Dogon people of Mali and the calligraphy of Wu Zhen, who was active during the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368). It also discusses what is meant by the ‘primitive’ arts of Oceania, Africa, and North and South America.

7. Looking at art

The physical properties of artworks have an important influence on how we understand them as objects. ‘Looking at art’ outlines some examples of the different mediums and techniques of producing art, to show how an awareness of these factors can help our understanding of art history. It considers sketches and drawing; tempera painting; oil painting; and the modelling, carving, and casting of sculpture. Each example acts as a kind of vignette to show how the physical properties of an artwork can add another layer of meaning to its history. This very brief survey shows that artists are not always confined by the medium in which they work.

5. Thinking about art history

The relationship between art and thought can be a complex one. ‘Thinking about art history’ discusses the impact various philosophical schools and psychoanalytic theory have had on the way in which we think about art history and the role, meaning, and interpretation of art. It introduces the ideas of such key thinkers as G. W. F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida in order to show how they have interacted with art history, not least in regard to the emergence of social histories of art and feminist art history.

6. Reading art

‘Reading art’ discusses the idea of meaning in art, in particular of the quality and kinds of representation, and the use of iconography, or symbolism, in artworks throughout history. Focusing on figurative representation of the human form, it introduces some ways in which artworks themselves can be the starting point for how we read art history. Subject matter, materials, and methods combine in the process of reading art. A combination of different ways of writing, presenting, and thinking about art history converges on the works themselves to show how important it is to not lose sight of these objects and how art can indeed have a history.

2. Writing art history

‘Writing art history’ looks at how histories of art have been written in Europe and North America and the effect that this has had on the object itself and on the subjects of art history. Discussing the work of influential art historians Pliny the Elder, Giorgio Vasari, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Jacob Burckhardt, Ernst Gombrich, and Clement Greenberg, it introduces the expectations we have of art history as a chronological story about great Western male artists. Complementary to this gender bias is the impact of the writing of women art historians such as Griselda Pollock and Linda Nochlin. They have mapped out a different way of seeing and understanding cultural production and the social relationships expressed therein.