Lesson 2: History of Art

History of Art

This can be considered as the history of mankind in spectacle. It is the reflection of cultural breakthroughs of civilizations and expression of historical narratives.

Pluralistic Communal Understanding

Each community has its own background that affects the artwork that they created.

Art History

A discipline (historiography), explores objects from diverse cultures and time periods that communicate meaning, significance, or utility primarily through visual representations.

Attribution

Who made the art?

Authentication

Authenticating the legitimacy of the artwork and its artist.

Categorization

Discerning which era in time and the artist’s life is the artwork made.

Evaluation

To gauge the influence or impact of the artwork in the development of art.

Documentation

Records keeping, specifically on the later whereabouts or buyer of the artwork.

Form

This refers to an object’s shape and structure, either in two dimensions or in three dimensions.

Composition

This refers to how an artist organizes forms in an artwork, either by placing shapes on a flat surface or by arranging forms in space.

Line

Among the most important elements defining an artwork’s shape or form is line. This can be understood as the path of a point moving in space, an invisible line of sight.

Colors

Light is needed to reveal its identity. Light in the world of the painter and other artists differs from natural light.

Texture

It refers to the quality of a surface.

Space

This is the bounded or boundless “container” of objects.

Perspective

This is one of the most important pictorial devices for organizing forms in space.

Proportion and Scale

This concerns the relationships (in terms of size) of the parts of persons, buildings, or objects.

Material

Artists shape and uses this i order to create artworks that they desire. 

Technique

The processes that artists employ, such as applying paint to canvas with a brush, and their distinctive, personal ways they handle materials.

Carving and Casting

Sculptural technique falls into two basic categories, subtractive and additive. Carving is a subtractive technique. The final form is a reduction of the original mass of a block of stone, a piece of wood, or another material. In additive sculpture, the artist builds up the forms, usually in clay around a framework, or armature.

Art Criticism

This plays a crucial part in the history of art as it focuses on determination of the relative artistic value of individual works of art in comparison to others of similar style or movement, or on endorsing an entire style or movement.

The primary objective is to establish a logical foundation for appreciating art through aesthetic theories.

Art Period

Refers to a broad span of time in art history characterized by the overarching cultural, philosophical, and stylistic tendencies. It encompasses multiple artistic developments and reflects the general climate of thought, politics, and aesthetics across religions and disciplines.

Art Movement

It is a more specific and intentional collective of artists who share a common philosophy, technique, or goal. Movements typically arise within a larger period and are marked by a unified style or creative identity.

Prehistoric Period

Also known as Dawn of Art which began around 40,000 BCE during the Paleolithic period (from the Greek paleo, “old,” and lithos “stone”), was arguably the most important era in the entire history of art. It was then that humans first recorded the world around in pictures, often painted on or carved into the walls of caves. 

This is speculated to have mainly focused on mysticism and utility particularly as a communicative medium as writing is yet to be invented.

Paleolithic

(40,000 - 9000 BCE) humans create the first sculptures and paintings. The works range in scale from tiny figurines to life-size paintings on cave walls.

Neolithic

(8000 - 3500 BCE) age, the first settled communities appear in Anatolia and Mesopotamia. Artists produce the first large-scale sculptures in earliest paintings with coherent narratives.

Sumerian cuneiform

The earliest known form of writing which comes from the Latin word cuneus, meaning wedge.

Ancient Mesopotamia

This is where the fundamental change in human society first occurred where the land mass that forms a huge “fertile crescent” and the world’s first great civilization—Summer—arose.

Sumerians

Who founded the world’s first city-states and invented writing in the fourth millennium BCE?

Standard of Ur

This is a 4,500-year-old Sumerian artifact from ancient Mesopotamia that depicts scenes of both war and peace. Discovered in the royal cemetery at Ur, this rectangular mosaic-inlaid wooden box is thought to have been a decorative or ceremonial object, though its exact function remains a mystery.