Anne D’Alleva

The Fundamentals of Art History

Third Edition

Prentice Hall
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chapter 1
introducing art history

Art is long, life is short.

Prouerb attributed to Hippocrates (c. 4 6 0 -3 5 7 bce)

This chapter will introduce you to art history as an

academic discipline. It distinguishes the aims and
methods o f art history from related disciplines like
anthropology and aesthetics. It also attempts to answer
two questions that are more complicated than they
appear at first glance: What is art? and What is history?

what do art historians do? The object of art history

Art historians do art. But we don’t make it, we study it. We try
to understand what artists are expressing in their work, and
what viewers perceive in it. We try to understand why some­
thing was made at the time it was made, how it reflected the
world it was made in, and how it affected that world. We talk
about individual artists and their goals and intentions, but
also about patrons (the people who commission artworks),
viewers, and the kinds o f institutions, places, and social
groups in which art is made and circulates—whether that’s
an art school, temple, or government agency.

What is “art”?
“Art” is one o f those words that people use all the time but
that is hard to define. All sorts o f cultural and political val­
ues determine what gets included or not included under this
term, which makes it difficult for people to agree on precisely
what art is. However, it’s important to make the attempt as a
first step in discussing what art history, as a discipline, actu­
ally does.
This process o f definition is complicated for two reasons:
first, the term “art” has not been around very long in Western
culture; and second, there is rarely an exactly corresponding
term in other cultures. In Europe, the term “ art” as we com­
monly understand it today emerged in the Renaissance—
earlier periods had no direct equivalent for it. The Greek phi­
losopher Plato (c. 428-c. 348 bce ), for example, used the term
mimesis, which means imitation, to talk about painting and
sculpture. In ancient Greek, demiourgos, “ one who works for the
people, ” can refer to a cookas well as a sculptor or painter. Simi­
larly, more than a thousand languages are spoken in Africa, and
more than six hundred in Papua New Guinea, but none o f them
includes a precise translation for the term “art.”
In defining this term, many people today would start from
an essentially post-Renaissance definition o f art as a painting,
sculpture, drawing, print, or building made with unusual skill
and inspiration by a person with specialized training to pro­
duce such works. Most people would agree, according to this
definition, that the decoration o f the Sistine Chapel ceiling by
Michelangelo (1475-1564) is art (even if they don’t particu­
larly like it themselves). What belongs in this category o f “art”
does shift over time. It often happens that objects excluded
from this category at one time now easily qualify as art. In the
nineteenth century, for example, people commonly exclud­
ed the sculpture, paintings, and architecture o f Africa, the
Pacific, and other regions o f the world because they (wrongly)
regarded these arts as “ primitive” or inferior to Western art,
not simply different from them.
One problem with this definition o f “ art” is that itconsist-
endy leaves out a lot o f other things that people make and do.
For example, it excludes useful objects like baskets or ceramic
pots made by people with craft skills but with no professional
training as artists. This kind o f work is sometimes called “ folk
art” or “ low art,” to distinguish it from “ high art” such as
the Sistine Chapel. From this perspective, the category “art”
doesn’t include many things historically made by women in
Europe and North America, including embroidery, quilts, and
hand-woven textiles. At the same time, people sometimes use
this definition o f “art” to exclude a lot o f modem art, which
they don’t think is characterized by sufficient skill, serious­
ness, or conceptual complexity. (Maybe you’ve had the experi­
ence o f being in a modem art gallery and hearing someone
say—or even saying yourself—“A child could make that!
That’s not art.” )
Although some people are perfecdy happy to exclude any­
thing from the category “art” that doesn’t fit a fairly narrow
definition, that’s not a productive attitude for a scholar to
take. Excluding things from a category is often a way to de­
value them and to justify not engaging with them in a serious
way. As I see it, “art” should be a flexible, inclusive catego­
ry—a term and idea that get us looking at and thinking criti­
cally about all the different kinds o f things people make and
do creatively.

A working definition of art

For the purposes o f this book, I’ll define art as potentially any
material or visual thing that is made by a person or persons
and that is invested with social, political, spiritual, and/or
aesthetic value by the creator, user, viewer, and/or patron. My
definition o f art includes the Sistine Chapel ceiling, but it also
includes such things as a wood figure from Papua New Guin­
ea, a quilt, an Ottoman ceramic pitcher, and an advertising
poster. It includes ephemeral (non-permanent) things such as
a masquerade costume made from leaves by the Bwa people
o f Burkina Faso in west Africa. Using the word “ thing” here
doesn’t mean that a work o f art has to be a concrete object
like a marble sculpture— a film or a performance can also be
art in this sense. All these things are made with special skills
and with great attention to their appearance, although most
would be excluded from the traditional category o f “ high
art.” In my definition, art may have economic value but not
economic value alone. A pile o f pine logs on a flatbed truck
has economic value but isn’t in the category o f art—unless, o f
course, the loggers deliberately arranged the logs in a certain
way that carries social/political/spiritual/aesthetic meaning.
Remember that I’m not using the term “art” because it’s
universal or inherent to the objects o f our study, or because I
want to create hierarchies or make value judgements. Many
artists and art historians today reject the idea that a work o f art
is, by definition, an inherently “ higher" or privileged type o f
object. This is the idea that Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) critiques
when she tells her viewers “ You invest in the divinity o f the
masterpiece" (Figure 1.1). Rather, I use a broad definition o f
art because regarding things as “art"— putting them in that
category— helps me ask better questions and opens up cer­
tain ways o f thinking about them.
Though you may find the concept o f art that I've outlined
here challenging, you probably won’t find it particularly hard
to categorize the images included in this book as art. Most o f
the illustrations come from the major art-history textbooks,
which focus primarily on well-known artworks that have been
studied and considered important for some time.

What is “history”?
Our word “ history" comes direcdy from the Latin historia,
which means “ inquiry" as well as “ history.” The Webster’s Dic­
tionary definition goes like this:

1. TALE, STORY
2. a: a chronological record of significant events (as affecting a na­
tion or institution) often including an explanation of their causes
b: a treatise presenting systematically related natural phenomena
c: an account of a patient's medical background d: an established
record [a prisoner with a history of violence]
3. a branch of knowledge that records and explains past events
[medieval history]

So how do we put these bits and pieces together into the

practice that we call history? History is telling tales about
the past— it is making stories. These stories are not fictions
(although sometimes fiction can tell history). But histories
are grounded in the events that happened— they have to be
“ true" in the sense that they are based on verifiable historical
evidence. And yet all historians must confront the challenge
o f the gaps, omissions, misrepresentations, and inconsist­
encies in the various documents, objects, texts, and memo­
ries comprising the historical record. This is why writing or
You invest in the
• wry v .

i Barbara Kruger, Untitled (You Inuest in the Diuimty of the Masterpiece), 1982.
Photostat, 71 ’/ , x 45 / in (182 x 116 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Kruger's u/ords frame a detail of the Sistine Chapel ceiling (the ultimate masterpiece)
that represents God reaching out to endow Adam with life (the ultimate act of creation).
Her work critiques the ways that masterpieces are "made.'’ we as a culture decide to inuest
aesthetic and other kinds of ualue in certain works even as we devalue others.
telling history is an act o f interpretation, creative as well as
scholarly. Sometimes I think that being a historian is like be­
ing a weaver— history isn’t a blanket already woven for us, but
instead starts from the scraps o f yam that are the remains o f
a tattered old blanket. We take those bits and pieces o f yam
and weave them again into a blanket. It’s a new blanket, but if
we’re skilled weavers, it will tell us something o f what the old
blanket was like.
On top o f all this, the chronological range o f art history
sometimes confuses students. How far in the past does art
have to be for it to be history? Why is it that some art histo­
rians write about contemporary art? As I see it, art historians
write about the art o f the past, which both is history and tells
history. They also write about art o f the present that will be
the history o f this time: it is art that will tell people in the
future about this present moment. O f course, contemporary
art often has something to tell us, too, about the moment
we live in. It can be a risky business, because the winnowing
process o f history hasn’t taken place— artworks o f enduring
significance have yet to emerge as such. What i f the art histo­
rian makes a mistake? What if her subject doesn’t turn out to
be as significant as she thought? There’s no easy answer, ex­
cept to say that, along with this risk, there’s excitement, too,
in telling the history o f contemporary art, precisely because
that winnowing process hasn’t yet taken place.

why is art history important?

Jt is the glory and good of Art

That Art remains the one u>ay possible
Of speaking truth— to mouths like mine, at least.
Robert Browning (1812-89),
The Ring and the Book, lines 8 4 2-4

Why is art history important? This is one o f those questions

that you tend to ask yourself as you’re working late into the
night to prepare for an exam or write a paper. Why, you may
ask, am I torturing myself with this course ...
Considered in the cold light o f day, there are several
possible answers to that question. Lots o f undergraduates
take art history simply to fulfill a general education require­
ment for their degrees. For them it’s a completely utilitarian
undertaking. Other people study art history to become more
cultivated, to possess some o f the knowledge— and polish—
that they feel an educated person ought to have. These are both
legitimate reasons, as far as they go, but I think there are other
answers to the question that are much more interesting.
The first is that art history teaches you to think differently.
It teaches you to ask interesting questions, to reject standard
answers and conventional wisdom, to look beyond surfaces
and obvious appearances, to see the nuances in things. Art
history will help you develop skills in visual analysis and criti­
cal reading; you will learn to build solid arguments and to ex­
press your ideas effectively, both verbally and in writing. This
training will not only help you if you want to become an art
historian; it will also enhance your ability to practice a lot o f
different professions.
The second answer is that art history gives us unique ac­
cess to the past, because history cannot be told only through
documents, texts, and words. Human lives are short, but the
things people make are enduring, and they give us a sense o f
what those past lives were like. As the poet Robert Browning
said, art is a way o f “ speaking truth”— o f expressing ideas,
emotions, viewpoints that sometimes can’t be expressed in
any other way. If you want to know a culture’s “ truths,” then
look at its art
I think there’s another good reason to study art history,
although people don’t talk about it much. And that is pleas­
ure. The joy o f it. Taking a course is hard work, and there’s
always the grind o f exams and paper deadlines. But I hope
that at some point in your study o f art history you’ll experi­
ence the sheer joy o f being totally absorbed in a work o f art,
o f feeling that you “get” what Michelangelo or Kathe Kollwitz
(1867-1945) or a Native American beadworker was trying to
do. That you’ll experience the excitement o f art-history “de­
tective work” as you piece together an interpretation, creat­
ing a narrative about a work or an artist or culture. That you’ll
feel awed by a great example o f human creativity—and that
you’ll be stirred to happiness or anger or sorrow by it. Or that
you’ll be touched by the sense o f humanity conveyed in the
trace o f an artist’s hand in a chisel mark on a stone surface or
the stitches on a quilt (Figure 1.2).
Now maybe I’ m a hopeless romantic, but I believe in the
value o f such experiences both intellectually and emotionally.
As a teacher, I want my courses to change the way students
see themselves and see the world— w hat’ s the point o f study­
ing art together i f you leave my course with the same ideas,
knowledge, and skills going out that you brought into it? I
hope you will be open to the possibility o f all that your en­
gagement with art history can offer.

a=-MftgT

i.2 Harriet Powers, Bible quilt, c. i 886. 75 x 89 in (191 x 2 2 7 cm). National M useum of
American History, Smithsonian Institution, W ashington, D .C.

Harriet Powers ( 1 8 3 7 -1 9 1 0 ) was an ex-slaue from Athens, Georgia, whose two suruiuincj
a/orks are masterpieces of the quilting art and the best suruiuincj early examples of this rich
artistic tradition in the southern United States.
evaluate their quality. Modern techniques o f connoisseurship
were developed in the nineteenth century, as practitioners
such as Giovanni Morelli (1816-91) tried to systematize the
process o f attributing anonymous works o f historical art to
particular artists. Techniques o f connoisseurship are rarely
taught on undergraduate courses today, but they can be part
o f the training o f museum curators, who often need to work
with artworks that are not well documented.

Art history’s toolbox: formal and contextual analysis

When starting out in art history, you may find it helpful to

group the different approaches to interpreting works o f art
under two broad categories: “ formal analysis” and “ contextu­
al analysis.” These approaches are dependent on each other.
Often, art-historical interpretation requires us to do both at
the same time.
Formal analysis includes those methods and questions
that mostly concern the visual and physical aspects o f a work
o f art. In formal analysis, you seek the answers to your ques­
tions in the work o f art itself, usually without referring exten­
sively to outside sources. You’re exploring the visual effect o f
the work o f art, looking at what the artist is trying to accom­
plish through visual means.
In contrast, contextual analysis often requires you to go
outside the work o f art for your answers. What you’re trying
to do in contextual analysis is understand how a work o f art
expresses or shapes the experiences, ideas, and values o f the
individuals and groups that make, use, view, or own it. To de­
velop a contextual analysis, you might look at such evidence
as documents, other images, books from the period, the art­
ist’s writings, and histories.
Although these terms may be unfamiliar, you already
practice the basics o f formal and contextual analysis— for ex­
ample, when you take the time to look closely at an advertise­
ment. Responding to an advertisement engages many o f the
same processes as art-history analysis. You interpret a visual
image (and often an accompanying text) to decipher its mes­
sage and evaluate this message in context. The context is usu­
ally a targeted consumer group, people who exhibit certain
Reading captions for information
Artist's name scholars. In this case, a range may be given
A caption usually gives you the artist’s name (for example, “460-450 bc” or “gth-ioth cen­
first. If the artist’s (or architect’s) name isn’t tury ad ”) or the Latin word circa (“around”)
known, then it may say something like “artist may be used (circa is often abbreviated as “c ”).
unknown” or list nothing at all. An expression bc means “before Christ” and is equivalent
like “After Polykleitos” means that the work is to bce , “before the common era.” ad means
a copy by an unknown artist of an original by anno domini (“in the year of our Lord,” or after
a known artist, in this case the ancient Greek the birth of Christ). It is equivalent to ci, or
sculptor Polykleitos. An expression like “Cir­ “common era.”
cle of Rembrandt" or “School of Rembrandt”
Medium
indicates an unknown artist who is thought to
A caption will usually also list the materials
have worked closely with, or been a student
used in the work because photographs often
of, a known artist.
cannot give a truly accurate impression of
Title what materials make up a work.
The title ofthe work usually follows the artist’s
Size
name. Sometimes a work is titled by the artist,
The measurements are important because
as in sculptor Audrey Flack’s (b. 1931) Marilyn
they give you a sense of the work’s scale. Size
(Vanitas) (see Figure 2.3). Sometimes the title
and scale are often hard to judge from pho­
is a descriptive one that the artist didn’t give
tographs, especially in a textbook, which can
to the work but that is used as a convenient
picture a miniature portrait and a palace on
way to refer to it, for example the Arnolfini
the same page.
Portrait (see Figure 3.6). The practice of giv­
ing titles to artworks hasn’t been used in all Period or culture
time periods and cultures, so many are named This tells you the work’s original time period
in this way. Sometimes a title refers to a pa- or culture (as in Edo Period, Japan, or a partic­
| tron or collector— for example, Velasquez’s ular dynasty for Egyptian art). In art-history
painting Venus and Cupid is also known as the textbooks where the chapters are organized by
Rokeby Venus after a famous collector who period or culture, this reference may be omit­
once owned it. In English-language titles, ted from the caption.
[ the first word and other main words (nouns,
Collection and location
■ verbs, adjectives, adverbs) usually start with
This tells you where the work is now. It is often
I a capital letter, while conjunctions (such as
the name and location of a museum or gal­
and) and prepositions (such as by, from) are
I
lery, or the name of the collection that owns
lower-case. In other languages there are
the work but that may not necessarily display
different conventions.
t it in public (such as the Government Art Col­
z! Date lection in Britain). Where the work belongs to
[ The date for a work may be precise, as when a private collector, the location may simply be
it’s signed and dated by the artist, or it given as “Private Collection,” abbreviated to
I may be an approximate date determined by “Priv. Coll.”
desirable characteristics. The ad is trying to persuade these
consumers to purchase a product or, in the case o f public
service announcements, to inform them o f something or per­
suade them to act in a particular way.
Let’s take an example from a US National Institute on
Drug Abuse (NIDA) magazine ad campaign, which combines
text and images to counter steroid use among high school
athletes (Figure 1.3). Looking at the ad’s formal qualities you
note that the word “ steroids” appears in large, bold type in
the upper left corner o f the ad; it attracts attention, yet is im­
mediately undermined by the question mark that follows it.
The message would shift dramatically if, say, the word “ ster­
oids” were followed by an exclamation mark. The message is
underscored by the image o f the athlete, whose appearance is
clearly calculated to appeal to teenage readers. Note that he
is very good-looking, with strong features and sexy, tousled
hair, and is the same age as the target audience. He is pictured
twice: in a close-up that lets the viewer see how good-looking
he is, and also in action, lifting a large dumbbell, which sug­
gests that he is a strong, successful athlete, even though he
doesn’t have the oversized muscles o f someone on steroids.
The ad’s visual message is enhanced by knowledge o f its
context. It targets high school athletes, and the text lists as
the negative side effects o f steroids: acne, baldness, stunted
growth, and the risk o f HIV. Three o f these focus on physical
appearance, about which high school students typically have a
lot o f anxiety. The list does not include some o f the more seri­
ous long-term effects o f steroid use, including liver tumors,
heart attacks, strokes, and kidney failure, perhaps because
these might seem too abstract or remote to young people,
who often see themselves as invincible or immune to death.
The brief, punchy text is written as if spoken by the teenage
athlete depicted and not the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
In other words, this isn’t the preachy argument o f some gov­
ernment bureaucrat, but the direct statement o f an equal.
In the first paragraph, I analyzed the formal elements,
focusing on design and the interaction o f image and text to
decipher the ad’s message. In the second paragraph, I pur­
sued a contextual analysis, relying on outside knowledge to
try to understand the ad. You can take any advertisement and
NIDA

m* A.steroidabuse org

1.3 Poster from a public information campaign by NIDA against steroid use,
2005

interpret its formal and contextual elements in a similar way.

When you’re browsing through a magazine, although you
may not stop to work systematically through the process o f
formal and contextual analysis, your process o f interpretation
is related in many ways to art-historical methods.
Museum accession numbers
Captions in museums and galleries and in scholarly books
often include a number or code. This is the unique accession
number assigned to each object when it enters a collection.
The number usually includes the date the object was “acces­
sioned” (for example, the year 1977 may be cited in full or
abbreviated to “ 7 7 ” ), followed by other data separated by full
stops. These numbers or letters give museum curators and
scholars further information, such as which part o f the col­
lection the object belongs to (for example, African Art or Eu­
ropean Ceramics).

Conclusion
I hope this chapter has provided you with a better understand­
ing o f what art history is and how it differs from other aca­
demic disciplines. As you advance in the study o f art history,
in addition to formal and contextual analysis, you’ll learn to
use theoretical models, such as psychoanalysis, feminism, and
semiotics, that approach interpretation in specialized ways.
But for now, thinking in terms o f formal and contextual anal­
ysis may help you ask a full range o f questions when you’re
interpreting works o f art. The next two chapters will examine
these fundamental methods o f art history in more depth.