Art History: The Basics

Now in its second edition, this volume is an accessible introduction to the historyof art. Using an international range of examples, it provides the reader with atoolkit of concepts, ideas and methods relevant to understanding art history.This new edition is fully updated with colour illustrations, increased coverage of non-western art and extended discussions of contemporary art theory. It introduces key ideas, issues and debates, exploring questions such as:. What is art and what is meant by art history?. What approaches and methodologies are used to interpret and evaluate art?. How have ideas regarding medium, gender, identity and difference informedrepresentation?. What perspectives can psychoanalysis, semiotics and social art histories bringto the study of the discipline?. How are the processes of postcolonialism, decolonisation and globalisation changing approaches to art history?Complete with helpful subject summaries, a glossary, suggestions for future reading and guidance on relevant image archives, this book is an ideal starting point for anyone studying art history as well as general readers with an interest in the subject.Cover 1Endorsements 2Half Title 4Series Page 5Title Page 6Copyright Page 7Dedication 8Table of Contents 10List of figures 17Acknowledgements 21Introduction to the second edition 231. Art histories and art theories 28Introduction 28What is art? 31What is art history? 32The classical concept of ‘art’ 33Plato’s idea of mimesis�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 34Issues arising from art as imitation 36Medieval art and its interpretation 37Art as imitation in the Renaissance 37Giorgio Vasari and the origins of western art history 38Early writing on art 39Academies and the ‘Hierarchy of Genres’ 40Winckelmann, art history and the western Enlightenment 41Art as an expression of the ‘will to create’ 42Aesthetic comparison and contrast 42Connoisseurship and art history 43The limits of connoisseurship 45Bell’s theory of ‘significant form’ 18 45The theory of art as expression 47Objections to Collingwood’s theory 48Art as abstraction or idea 49Art understood as ‘family resemblance’ 49The Institutional Theory of Art 50Art history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries 50Art history and the 1930s diaspora 52British art history, the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes 53The ‘New Art History’ 53Beyond the ‘New Art History’ 54Summary 55Further reading 562. Formalism, modernism and modernity 58Introduction 58Formalist art theories and the avant-garde 58The formal components of painting and design 59Abstraction as process 62Formal language, abstraction and sculpture 67Observations on formal analysis 70Formalism as art practice and art theory 70Roger Fry and a British formalist tradition 71Avant-garde art and ‘the crisis of taste’ 73Greenberg and the dominance of modernist theory 75Modernism and the White Cube hang 77Objections to Greenberg’s modernism 78Art after Greenberg 79Summary 80Further reading 813. Marxist and social art histories 82Introduction 82Who was Karl Marx? 82Art as ideology 83Contextual analyses 84David and the Paris Salon 85Reactions and responses to the Horatii 86The Horatii as political metaphor 87Iconography and iconology 89Iconology and ‘intrinsic meaning’ 90Art, alienation and ‘species being’ 91Art as commodity and a ‘deposit of a social relationship’ 93Superstructure and infrastructure 94Art and agency – ‘life creates consciousness, not consciousness life’ 96David’s Horatii as a revolutionary manifesto 96The Horatii as a canonical painting of the French Revolution 97Tendency and social commitment – what should art and artists do? 98Malevich’s Black Square and the ‘zero of forms’ 99Social interpretation and meaning 99Art and the ‘social command’: Soviet Socialist Realism and its legacies 101Social realism in Europe 104Critical theory, the ‘Frankfurt School’ and Gerhard Richter 106T. J. Clark and a British Marxist tradition 109New social and political constellations 110Summary 112Further reading 1134. Semiotics and poststructuralism 114Introduction 114Introducing language and linguistics 114Ferdinand de Saussure 116Charles Sanders Peirce 117Developments of semiosis 118Art and semiotics 119Signs and representations of reality 120Modalities of the sign 120Challenging ‘reality’ 122Whose ‘reality’? 123Structural analysis 125Syntagmatic analysis of images 126Discourse and power 126Discourse and ‘metanarratives’ 127Paradigmatic oppositions 128Binary oppositions and art 131Markedness 131Figurative language 132Social semiotics 135Poststructuralism and its critics 135Summary 136Further reading 1375. Psychoanalysis, art and the fractured self 139Introduction 139Freud, psychoanalysis and psycho-sexual development 140The Oedipus complex 141The psyche’s tripartite structure�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 143Instinctual energies, creativity and sublimation 143Surrealism and psychoanalysis 144Gombrich and psychoanalysis 146Klein, Stokes, Fuller and the ‘infant–mother’ paradigm 146Lacan: the mirror stage; the symbolic, the imaginary and the real 148Feminist challenges to the Freudian and Lacanian psyche 149Creativity, sadism and perversion 151A Freudian postscript: from symptoms to symbols 153Art and abjection 155Abjection, ambivalence and contemporary art 156Summary 160Further reading 1616. Representations of gender, sex and sexualities 162Introduction 162Defining sex, gender and sexuality 163Classical representation of the human form 164Visualising gender difference 166Gender, status and power 168Challenges to gender boundaries 169Viewing the nude 170The gaze: the pleasure of looking 172Mary Cassatt’s challenge to the male gaze 173Caught in the act: subverting the pleasure of the gaze 175Feminism and art history 176Feminist interventions in art 177Expanding feminism 178Contemporary art history and feminism 180Gender perspectives on contemporary art 180Developments in gender studies 182New paradigms of gender, sex and sexuality 182Queer theory and LGBTQIA+ 185Beyond gender: the body as sensorium and spectacle 187Summary 188Further reading 1897. Art and art histories since the 1960s 191Introduction 191Art and ‘paradigm shifts’ 192Duchamp’s readymades�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 193American hegemony and a new order 194Death of the author 195Art, objecthood and theatricality 196Art as commodity and concept 197The Institutional Theory of Art 200Limitations of the Institutional Theory 200Lyotard and the death of the ‘metanarratives’ 201New countercultures for the 1960s and 1970s 202Photography, cultural reproduction and oppositional postmodern cultures 204Approaching the postmodern and late modern: how soon is now? 207The contemporary as ‘critical pluralism’ 209Visual cultures and ‘double-coding’ 212Baudrillard and the four orders of the simulacra 214‘The End of History’? 215Relational Aesthetics 216Summary 219Further reading 2208. Postcolonialism, globalisation and art histories 222Introduction 222Western-centrism within art history 223Global cultural and artistic interactions 224Western artistic appropriations and ‘Primitivism’ 228The struggle for independence and decolonisation 230Edward Said and Orientalism 230Postcolonialism and postcolonial studies 233Globalisation 235Legacies and continuities: empire, coloniality and the subaltern 238Interpreting cultural interaction and exchange 240Identity, agency and place 242Globalising art history and global contemporary art 246Afterword from Oceania 252Summary 254Further reading 255Resources 257Galleries and museums: collections online 257Galleries, museums, virtual tours and videos 258Digital archives, essays and glossaries 258Other resources, magazines, journals, dictionaries and encyclopaedias 259Sources of images 260Glossary of terms 261Bibliography 275Index 3101 Art histories and art theories; 2 Formalism,modernism and modernity; 3 Marxist and social art histories; 4 Semiotics and poststructuralism; 5 Psychoanalysis,art and the fractured self; 6 Representations of gender,sex and sexualities; 7 Art and art histories since the 1960s; 8 Postcolonialism,globalisation and art histories1 Art histories and art theories,2 Formalism,modernism and modernity,3 Marxist and social art histories,4 Semiotics and poststructuralism,5 Psychoanalysis,art and the fractured self,6 Representations of gender,sex and sexualities,7 Art and art histories since the 1960s,8 Postcolonialism,globalisation and art histories