Art appreciation

1. {
Art Appreciation
What is Art History?
Gardner’s “Art Through the Ages”
Introduction

2.  Architecture
 Sculpture
 Pictorial Arts (painting, drawing, print
making, photography)
 Craft Arts (objects of utility; ex. Ceramics,
jewelry, textiles)
 Machine and machine produced objects
belong to the history of technology
What we consider art:

3.  Chronology (date/how old is it?)
 Provenance (place of origin/region)
 Style (period or culture/”ism”
 Iconography and subject matter (portrait,
landscape, historical, genre, still life etc)
 Attribution (who made it)
 Who paid for it? (patrons)
 Meaning, cause, context
Historical categories historians use
to arrange objects in time:

4.  Measuring scale of historical time
 Art looks different from one period
to the next.
Chronology

5.  Classification of place by origin
 Style can have regional variations
 Can allow us to see the spread of certain
styles to various regions
Provenance

6.  Time period when a work of art was made
has everything to do with its style (look)
 Style of a work of art is a function of its
historical period
Style and Stylistic Change

7.  Iconography literally means “writing of
images”
 Symbols can be derived from images, and
an image may have symbolic significance
 What the work of art is about, the story or
narrative, scene presented, person
involved, environment and its details
Iconography and Subject
Matter

8.  Pictorial subject matter can be broadly
separated into
 Religious
 Historical
 Mythological
 Genre (scenes from everyday life)
 Portrait
 Landscape
 Still Life

9. Documentary evidence: signatures, dates
on work and artists own writings.
Who made it?/Attribution

10.  School: often, not always, artists are
influenced by their masters, and then
influence or are influenced by fellow
artists working in similar styles at the
same time or place (this is a
chronological and stylistic classification
with regards to place/origin)

11.  Did someone commission the artist to create
the work? (patron)
Who paid for it?

12.  Involves both the sensibilities of a sculptor
and painter and must be able to use the tools
and instruments of a mathematician.
Architecture:

13.  Relief: figures projecting from a background
from which they are a part of
 High-Relief vs. Low (bas) relief
 In the round
Categories and terms in
Sculpture

14.  Subtractive: carving, reduction of original
mass
 Additive: built up (usually clay), make a
shape, create a mold
More on sculpture….

15.  Form & Composition
 Material & Technique
 Line
 Color
 Texture
 Space, Mass, Volume
 Perspective & Foreshortening
 Proportion & Scale
 Carving & Casting
 Relief Sculpture (high, low)
Words art Historians use:

16. Rubens, Lion Hunt, 1617
(example of foreshortening)

17. Lorrain, Embarkation of the Queen,
1648 (example of perspective)

18. Color Chart

19. David, Michelangelo

20. Andy Warhol

21. Jackson Pollock