AcDec Art Resource Guide Section 1 2025

What is the primary goal of art history as a discipline?

To understand art and its meaning in its historical context, including its formal qualities, function, artistic intent, patronage, and audience.

What academic fields are closely related to art history?

Anthropology, history, sociology, aesthetics, and art criticism.

What is aesthetics?

The philosophical inquiry into the nature and expression of beauty.

What is art criticism?

The explanation and interpretation of current art events to the general public, often through the press.

What is the difference between art history and art criticism?

Art history studies artworks in historical context; art criticism focuses on evaluating contemporary art.

What kind of questions do art historians ask?

Formal qualities, cultural function, artist/patron intentions, audience interpretation, and more.

What does the discipline of art history aim to reconstruct?

The social, cultural, and economic contexts in which an artwork was created.

How do modern art historians define "art"?

As any visual material created by people and invested with meaning and/or valued for its aesthetic appeal.

What did “fine art” traditionally include?

Paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture, and architecture.

What objects were previously considered “craft”?

Textiles, pottery, and body art like tattoos.

What everyday objects can now be studied as art?

Posters, advertisements, telephones, forks, sofas, etc.

Why is art’s meaning not fixed?

Because viewers interpret artworks based on context, background, access, religion, gender, and more.

How might the Pope and a 16th-century worker view the Sistine Chapel differently?

The Pope had theological insight and private access; a worker had limited literacy and a different social perspective.

What changes meaning over time in art?

Viewers’ cultural context, religion, literacy, and historical distance.

How would a 21st-century atheist or Muslim view the Sistine Chapel?

Differently than a 16th-century Catholic, though all might admire its aesthetic value.

What are the two main modes of art historical analysis?

Formal analysis and contextual analysis.

What does formal analysis focus on?

Visual qualities intrinsic to the artwork.

What are "elements of art"?

Terms used to describe formal qualities like line, shape, color, texture, and composition.

What does contextual analysis examine?

Cultural, religious, social, and economic context—how the artwork was used, viewed, funded, and placed.

What does formal analysis require?

Strong observational and descriptive skills.

What does contextual analysis reveal?

How patronage, location, cost, access, and similar factors shaped an artwork’s meaning.

Why is starting with formal analysis beneficial?

It centers the object itself before expanding outward into context.

What role does comparative study play in art history?

It helps distinguish styles and trace chronological artistic development.

How can comparing Gothic and Renaissance art help?

It reveals stylistic changes and how those relate to historical context.