Art History Read online

  In contradiction to this, what is known as the ‘canon’ of art regiments our understanding and interpretation of the evidence. In this instance, the canon is artwork regarded by influential individuals – not least connoisseurs – as being of the highest quality. In art history the canon has usually, but not exclusively, been associated with the ‘traditional’ values of art. In this way the canon plays an important role in the institutionalization of art, as new works can be judged against it. As such it is a means of imposing hierarchical relationships on groups of objects. This hierarchy usually favours the individual genius and the idea of the ‘masterpiece’. Moreover, the canon promotes the idea that certain cultural objects or styles of art have more value (both historical and monetary) than others. One of my principal interests in this book is the impact of canonical works that are considered defining examples of taste and of historical significance on art history.

  I have been using the words ‘art’ and ‘visual’ almost interchangeably. This raises another important question – what are the subjects of art history? Traditionally, the history of art has been concerned with ‘high art’. But a range of artefacts has been included in the discipline, and these have changed over time. When talking about the Renaissance, for instance, it is quite easy to confine discussion to known artists such as Michelangelo or Raphael and to works of painting or sculpture, or their preparatory processes such as drawings. But the remains of the visual outputs of different cultures and epochs are quite varied and invite a range of interpretations. We are all familiar with the rock art of prehistoric times, but the reasons behind its production and who produced it remain enigmatic. We look at the cave paintings at Lascaux in the Dordogne, France, and see in them hunting scenes – depictions of everyday life. But rock art also includes abstract designs and shapes. So could this kind of art have had a more mystical function? Some argue that these images are the work of shamans – members of a religious cult who used hallucinogenic drugs as part of their practice of worship – and these images come from the unconscious as a result.

  A different question arises if we look at ancient Greece. The world inhabited by this civilization is seen as a high point in the history of art. But most ancient Greek sculpture is known only through Roman copies, a problem discussed in more detail later on in this volume. And we have very little knowledge of ancient Greek paintings. Partly in response to these gaps in our knowledge, attention has focused on Greek vases, which even from as early as 800 BCE were decorated. The plentiful remains of Greek vases demonstrate a range of painting styles from the geometric designs of the Archaic period through to the silhouette-like bodies on Black Figure vases and the more painterly, fluid representations of the human form on Red Figure vases. These relics from the past are everyday objects, yet, perhaps due to the paucity of specimens of high art, they are venerated examples of ancient Greek art. Perhaps unsurprisingly, their history is mapped against that of Greek sculpture and is the story of ongoing development in the pursuit of the representation of human physical perfection.

  In the case of non-Western art, everyday objects, sometimes referred to as material culture, are the best evidence we have for the artistic output of a given society. A Mayan vase (Fig. 2) may well tell us something about the religious or social rituals, as well as indicate the way in which artists chose to represent their world. However, in later periods in Western art, vases – and other everyday objects – have not always enjoyed such attention. Even the exquisite designs on the soft paste porcelain of the Sèvres factory or the classical scenes on Wedgwood vases take second place to the high art of the same period – at least as far as art historians are concerned. It is important to remember, however, that ceramics and furniture were often considered more valuable and prestigious possessions at the time of their production than were painting or sculpture. So the emphasis and value we place on high art may in fact misrepresent its significance in the eyes of contemporaries. And the way in which art history can distort objects in terms of their contemporary and present-day meaning and significance is something I return to at various points in this book.

  2. Mayan cylindrical vessel decorated with the image of a dignitary wearing a blossom headdress.

  In recent years the term art history has itself come under question. The so-called New Art History, now a generation old, sought to reassess the way in which we think and write about histories of visual objects. New Art History was particularly influenced by theoretical ways of thinking about art to bring out its social, cultural, and historical meaning. I discuss the various ways of writing and thinking about art history in subsequent chapters; it is enough to say here that the notion of works of art having historical meaning beyond their role in the narrative of the work of great artists or of styles of art was revolutionary. So much so that the subject is still divided between ‘new’ and ‘old’ even 20 years later.

  This book does not advocate either way of thinking about art history. I see the merit of both approaches, and I very much want to question the object, confront it, in order to explore its broadest possible meaning and significance. But at the same time I do not want to lose sight of the object itself – its physical properties, and in many cases its sheer aesthetic appeal. After all, I am arguing that art history is a separate discipline from history – the visual is then its primary material, the starting point for any kind of historical enquiry. Although it is important to be able to articulate the appearance of a work of art, to describe and analyse the visual using words is not an end in itself. And making this kind of visual analysis is not always as easy as it sounds. Art history has its own vocabulary, or taxonomic system, that enables us to speak precisely about the objects we see in front of us, as can be appreciated from the glossary at the end of this book. But the ability to discuss or analyse a work of art, even using a sophisticated taxonomic system, is not art history. Certainly, it is the act of accurately describing a work, and this process may be intertwined with the practice of connoisseurship, but this satisfaction with articulating what is in front of us remains largely the preserve of art appreciation. If we compare this practice to the study of English literature, for instance, the point becomes clearer. We would neither consider reading out the text of King Lear, nor a synopsis of the plot of the play, the definitive analysis of this work by Shakespeare. It may be that these processes are a necessary part of the analysis, but they are not an end in themselves. Similarly, we should not accept the description of an artwork as the end of the process of study.

  It is true that there is a difficulty in this relationship between the verbal and the visual; they are both discrete methods of description. This tension is further explored in the next chapter. We are perhaps more familiar with the use of words to describe art, where one system of articulation is brought to bear on the other. But we must remember that this also works the other way around – the visual can describe and represent the verbal, phenomena usually expressed in words.

  Art history and ‘visual culture’

  More recently, the terms ‘visual culture’ or ‘visual studies’ have been used in the place of ‘art history’. On the one hand this broader title acknowledges the wide range of material that can be used in historical analysis and encourages the inclusion of media like film, photography, video, and digital recording. Perhaps more importantly in this context, the field of intellectual enquiry known as visual culture takes as its subject vision and its representations. As such, visual observation and articulation is privileged over the verbal. Visual culture is partly about the physiological processes of seeing and also the nature of perception, which is to some extent culturally determined. In recent years some of these ideas have been absorbed into the discipline of art history, and I discuss these in Chapter 4.

  Many of the subjects of visual culture are the same as those of art history; for instance issues of gender and a consideration of art as a system of viewing the world. The essential difference between the two disciplines arises from the fact that v
isual culture is concerned with the operations of the eye, and as such its archive is everything we see – the world we perceive around us; visual culture has moved beyond the scope of ‘art’ as traditionally conceived to incorporate the idea of movement, light, and speed in every kind of visual phenomenon from advertising to virtual reality, with an emphasis on the everyday. I am not denying the importance of these images, nor their widespread appeal. I would even venture to suggest that Mario of The Super Mario Brothers (Fig. 3) is as familiar as The Mona Lisa – if not more so to certain generations. It is also important here to distinguish between visual culture and popular culture. Art can become popular culture – not just in the way I have already discussed, but also through its adoption into other formats. Take John Constable’s The Cornfield (1826; Fig. 4). A recent exhibition of this work held at the National Gallery in London showed how this revered image of the English countryside has been used on a range of items such as biscuit tins and calendars, as well as for posters and prints. In this way, visual culture can be said to encompass a broad range of subject matter that stands outside the definition of high art. Indeed, although visual culture and its methods are principally associated with more recent artistic production – in the broadest sense – its approach is an equally effective way of interrogating the artefacts from earlier periods. For instance, the distinctive category of fine art cannot necessarily be used to describe many objects that were produced in the Middle Ages. So there is a resonance between those who look at visual culture in the periods that stand on either side of the dominance of fine, or high, art in Western culture.

  3. Mario of The Super Mario Brothers, one of the characters in a video game produced by Nintendo.

  There is also a political dimension to visual culture as a method of critical activity, as it is seen by many of its apologists as a way in which the forces of global capitalism can be challenged. Through the emphasis on the everyday, mass consumption, and experience visual culture does concentrate mainly on the study of modernity – in this case the world in the post-World War II era. As such, its purview is based partly on the material available. We know much less about popular culture and ways in which visual objects were perceived in earlier historical periods, so a political reading of them is more difficult to achieve. That said, many art historians do bring a political agenda to their writing, and this is discussed later in this volume.

  4. John Constable’s painting of The Cornfield (1826) has adorned a range of products from calendars to biscuit tins.

  Not all the concerns of visual culture are rooted in the later 20th century and thereafter. For instance, the concern with the way we see relates to theories of optics, which were certainly popular in the 16th and 17th centuries and were elucidated by such prominent figures as Sir Isaac Newton and René Descartes. Optical theory found its way into artistic practice through the use of the camera obscura. Also, we must not forget the discovery of perspective in the Renaissance period in northern Europe as well as in Italy (I discuss this in Chapter 5). This shows that artists had an interest in the perception of space created by the illusory properties of linear perspective and aerial perspective. As discussed in Chapter 4, the status of visual experience was a major preoccupation of 18th-century thinkers – not least Immanuel Kant. So it is partly the political agenda of visual culture, and partly the way in which it puts the aesthetic in second place to this, as well as the broad range of artistic outputs covered, that separates this discipline from art history. Visual culture is perhaps most at home in an analysis of global capitalism as expressed in a multi-media world, and this is really the subject of a separate Very Short Introduction.

  Practising art history

  I want now to present some examples of the ways in which art history articulates and investigates a whole range of social and cultural issues and of the various functions art history has. In order to do this I have chosen four quite different images in terms of their subject matter and date. The first is Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi (Fig. 5), also known as the Strozzi Altarpiece. The painting is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, but originally it was an altarpiece in the Strozzi family chapel in Santa Trinità, Florence. This relocation of the picture raises an important issue when looking at works of art – quite often they are no longer in their original location, and we see them as part of a historical sequence presented by a gallery. Usually the different rooms of a gallery follow a chronological sequence, perhaps subdivided into categories, styles, or subject matter. So our primary evidence for art history – the work itself – is presented out of its original context. Looking at a work of art in a gallery can place emphasis on the physical characteristics of the work itself, which harks back to the principles behind art connoisseurship I discussed earlier in this chapter.

  5. The Adoration of the Magi by Gentile da Fabriano (1423) is also known as the Strozzi Altarpiece. It was originally located in the Strozzi family chapel in Santa Trinità, Florence.

  The second issue this picture raises is the idea of the patron – the painting has two titles: one describes the subject matter, the other refers to the family who commissioned it. Interestingly, in this case the artist comes a distinct third, showing how less famous artists can be sidelined as other preoccupations in the writing of art history come to the fore. The close relationship between the patron and the painting might lead us to question what this image was for. The subject matter – the adoration of the Magi, where three kings come to pay tribute to the infant Jesus – is based on the New Testament of the Bible and is an important moment in the Christian faith. Gentile’s image captures this moment, as the kings kneel to show their respect to the Christ child, which is meant to underscore their recognition of Jesus as the presence of God on earth. Indeed, most of the art produced in the West in the Middle Ages was religious – comprising altarpieces and fresco decorations in chapels, as well as intricate manuscript illustrations. Although the work dates from the Early Renaissance, Gentile shows an affinity with these older traditions in his style and materials, which implies there are not such clear breaks between one artistic period and the next.

  An abundance of gold leaf and rich colours enhance the jewel-like appearance of the altarpiece. It is easy to imagine how in its ornate gilded frame it presented a magical image, lit by candlelight in the family chapel. The use of such splendid material – real gold leaf to add highlights in the picture and to cover the frame, and semi-precious stones like lapis lazuli, which were ground up to make the rich blue that is so dominant in the picture – tells us a great deal.

  Firstly, the patron must have been wealthy enough to afford these expensive materials – we know that paintings such as these were seen as symbols of wealth since in the contracts between artists and patrons there were often clauses stating how much gold and semi-precious pigments were to be used. In the case of the Strozzi family, who were wealthy Florentine merchants, we know they were keen patrons across several generations. (There is another Strozzi Altarpiece showing Christ enthroned with the Virgin and saints by Orcagna [Andrea di Cione] dated 1357, which remains in its original setting in Santa Maria Novella in Florence.)

  Secondly, the decorative effect of Gentile’s painting as a whole adds much to the luxurious feel of the picture. If you look at it quickly, the background, foreground, and all the figures seem to form a rich pattern across the picture rather like a woven fabric. The pattern-like quality of the picture surface, together with the opulent materials and the flatness of the image (there are no illusions of space or depth in this painting), are all characteristics of a mode of painting known as International Gothic. Here, as in most of art history, ‘International’ refers only to the West, and in this particular case to Europe since America was not really known about when this work was made. This view of the world begins to tell us something about how histories of art have been written, very much from a Western perspective, based on Western ideas and placing emphasis on the kinds of values that a male-dominated society a
nd culture wants to read about and wants to see in the works themselves. One of the aims of this book is to show that we can think about the same objects in different ways to show their richness and value as historical documents or evidence.

  My second painting is known as Las Meninas (Fig. 6), by Diego Velázquez (c.1658–60). Once again, we find a work of art with more than one name. It is really a portrait of the family of King Philip IV of Spain, and it was only in a catalogue of the royal collection of pictures written in 1843 by Pedro de Madrazo that the title Las Meninas (which means ‘The Ladies in Waiting’) was given to the work.

  In this painting the artist has become more dominant than his subjects, as not only do we know this work to have been one of his masterpieces, but he has actually included himself in the picture. We see him standing behind the canvas to the left of the picture, looking out at us. We can only assume that his royal patrons were happy for Velázquez to include himself in this family portrait – he is certainly one of the dominant figures, the King and Queen being seen only as reflections in the mirrors at the centre of the back wall.