The document discusses the main categories and considerations of art history, including the different mediums of architecture, sculpture, painting, and craft arts. It outlines aspects historians examine for each work such as chronology, provenance, style, subject matter, attribution, and patronage. The document also provides examples to illustrate important artistic techniques and terminology used in analyzing works of art.

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