art history essay

art history essay

Revisiting Art History: Exploring Key Movements, Artists, and Themes

1. Introduction to Art History

The first of this two-part course focuses on mimetic expression and aesthetic endeavors observed in the prehistoric and ancient world. These classes are designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to the history of art and the development of art mimetic expression in cultures. This class uses diverse approaches to explore different methods of producing art, the characteristics of such art along with the artists who create it, the movements and periods that distinguish art produced in terms of style, the specific relationships between different artworks, and the social and political impact of the artwork and artist in question. Students will be asked to not only attend to content, visual imagery, and ideas presented in these readings, but also question the impact, if any, of each reading and the reading’s relevancy to our personal, academic, and social values. The second seminar is designed to coincide and interact with the examination of archaeological evidence for both prehistoric and ancient human culture, and to investigate more specific issues of ritual and technological expression through art. These classes examine the production of supernatural, symbolic, or gang art, symbols and symbolic associations of such objects, modes of manufacture and technologies associated with art, aesthetic judgments associated with art, and the social, gender, age, and special dimensions of art. Their impact upon and meaning within archaic and ancient societies are also examined.

Artistic expression has been a basic component of most human cultures throughout history. Art both became a leading edge for human development and served as an important record of social and political achievement. Art also reflects the aesthetic and moral judgment of the society that created it. Although our job here is to explore the visual arts through art historical eyes, it’s important to remember that art is also artifactual and symbolic, providing us not only with evidence of past lives, values, and artistic achievements, but with the potential to appreciate these objects as beautiful, expressive, and sometimes provocative works. Just as examples of literature, music, and theater continue to entertain and inspire us, the visual arts allow us to look through a virtual window into the past and connect with our ancestors in a very unique and powerful way.

2. Major Art Movements and Their Impact

Starting from established art history surveys and to some extent from textbooks, we identified nineteen art movements from 1860 to the 1950s. Some of these movements were highly influenced by international historical events, such as the Treaty of Kanagawa (which can be considered as the birth of international trade influence between the US and Japan), the hegemonic economic power of industrial European countries and financing of external conflicts, the invention of Kodak photographic silver-halide film, and with them the fact that anyone could become a photographer or that photography would deform art. We decided to link these art movements with the unique regional characteristics of artworks to help address the problem of restricted Western dominance within art history textbooks.

Here we introduce twelve major art movements and groups of the 19th and 20th centuries that range from discussing their origins, approaches, and major artists to their distinct regional variations and impact. These movements, which are by far the most widely studied in classrooms across the globe, are: Realism, Romanticism, Impressionism, Symbolism, American Regionalism, Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism & Surrealism, Futurism, and some movements which are rooted in fascination of Eastern cultures, namely Art Nouveau and Japonism. While traditionally Art History focuses on Western history as the only universal definition of what Art is, in this project we argue that art should be approached universally, and that cultural differences in their own right should be the subject of exploration and appreciation.

3. Prominent Artists and Their Contributions

However, even discussing global influences will only cover a general understanding of art movements, so this chapter will also discuss prominent artists from a more localized set of movements. Consequently, we might consider influences in propagating art to have resulted as a consequence of the status of the world at the time. Beginning during the Hellenistic period and propagating intermittently through various moments of the development of art, artists have continually reflected the world in which they live and the philosophies that underpin their worldview. Collectively, these voices broaden art, consequently influencing existing and subsequent actions and developments through their understanding of the value of the experiences that we go through. With that perspective, the current milieu for most of us has its roots founded on the precepts of what came before. Therefore, assimilating the noted variety of styles can help us make sense of the showcases that draw our attention today.

In many ways, we have come to know art through its celebrated creators: the likes of Picasso, Matisse, and so many others who have set in motion an evolving understanding that we have of the world and the human experience. Iconic works of art build on prevailing technologies, political situations, and individual subjectivity, assembling storied histories through which we can chart their influences and meanings. When we seek to better understand the scope and the connections that art has forged across centuries, we should look to the figures who created its most pivotal moments of development. In doing so, we can glean a more developed understanding of the art that we absorb. The breadth of creativity found in art is indicative of not only the strength of individual artists but of the broader periods and movements during which they sought expression. This section will offer insight into key artists who have shaped art history and culture.

4. Themes and Symbolism in Art

We have two types of symbolism in art: allegorical and natural. The allegory is a symbol that is specifically included for literary or visual significance. An example of this would be a frowning cupid, created by Caravaggio in Eros Victory. Caravaggio’s work creates a macabre and tragic image, quite different from the traditionally light-hearted depiction of a cherub. In more modern terms, the image is much less accessible than a traditional cupid, with the sadness and despair of mortality highlighted rather than love. Another famous theme in art history is the vanitas, a reminder of the mortality of life usually containing reminders of the shortness of life and futility of wealth, particularly popular in still-life painting in the 17th and 18th centuries and always with a message heavily laced within its image. On the other hand, a natural symbol in art is one that is represented within a piece with the intention of making it as lifelike as possible, with particular focus on the rendition of an everyday object. Whichever way that a symbol is intended, the most satisfying artistic presentations give the viewer a deeper understanding of the piece.

Themes in art leave a vast world of opportunities available to an artist. Encompassing everything from war to religion to issues of identity, the incorporation of metaphor into the artistic language may tell a much more complex story than it would with only a straightforward representation. The inclusion of metaphor in an artwork acts as a double exhibition that allows both the artist to demonstrate the extent of their creativity and intelligence and the viewer to appreciate the narrative at a much deeper level. It is pertinent that when interpreting a symbol in art, we view it through both the intended as well as cultural lenses. What does the message mean on its own terms, and what would the viewer of the time have thought or understood about it in context?

5. Conclusion and Future Directions

We find that research can be broken down into several ongoing tasks. First, image processing and data cleaning must be refined. For visual analysis, we need to categorize artists and build a list of known visual artists for those categorizations taken from Wikimedia categories, and we need a list of movements or schools based on academic sources. For comparing artist vs. movement contributions, the number of works per movement needs to be normalized to the number of artists.

This paper introduces a dataset covering a broad sweep of visual arts from 35,000 BCE to the present day. The dataset is clustered using unsupervised methods and brings together three different dimensions of cultural production: art historical period, artist, and art historical movement. We reviewed each of these clusters to facilitate comparisons, update and revise the literature, and provide access to students and researchers, though we do not present a full discussion in this paper. In our future work using this data, we plan to make comparisons within and across these clusters and use supervised methods to study how dimensions of these works relate to their art historical period, artist, and movement.