The history of art has as an aim the study of works in the history, and the direction which they can take. She also studies the creative processes of the artists, the recognition of the artistic phenomenon by a public, as well as the spiritual context, cultural and social of the Art.

Like university discipline, the history of art is specialized in the '' artistic '' creation and its various aspects: idea (the Art, the Culture), object (the work, the technical ), individual (the Artist, the Spectator), language (the speeches carried in and around of the objet d'art), Poetic experiment (what to make work?) or Imaginary.

One finds these questions vis-a-vis the Collections of objects since Antiquity (at Pline Old the) until the Rebirth (with Giorgio Vasari) like in the various traditions of writings about art, like the Critic art , the treaties of artists, etc But it is with the history of art takes form, simultaneously with the development of the Archéologie and the Musée S in Occident, like a speciality of the Philosophie and history complementary to the study of texts, literature.

Object and methodologies

One very summarily distinguishes two approaches in history from art (see also the structural and individualistic theories), according to their objectives:

• most current having like end the update of Corpus of works and artists, founded on concepts such as '' masterpiece '', styles , schools , movements , tendencies and their articulations, their interactions with the history, events political and social. To identify, classify and treat on a hierarchical basis are then sometimes regarded as a methodological base (cf A. Chastel). But in certain cases this approach is qualified (ironically) attributionnist for his taste of the Biographie S and the Monographie S of artist.
• the other approach also wonders about its clean speech on art , the theory of art or on the borders of art - nearer to the sciences of art, is it also initiated around at the 19th century. Today, some even speak about history of critical art (cf france Bardon, Mr. Podro) or about history of art compared (cf Mr. Bayard) of philosophizing history of art (R. Pouivet).

One can to present his scope of application as all that raises of poetic work '' '' (with the broad direction, which causes a esthetic variation) and of its context Culture L and spiritual, from its conditions of production by its Auteur, of presentation and diffusion, to its variable Perception in time by a public grateful - or not - an artistic character with the object, or the act of the artist, and with his Représentation. The implementation of a history of art thus makes call simultaneously to various knowledge and experiments, and it is simpler to underline than it is not supposed being (a judgment on art, a catalog of collection, an exhaustive reading of work, a party taken idealistic, etc), than to define what it is sometimes (a work criticizes, a interpretation, a epistemology - a speech on knowledge), but that always with some scholarship (a “thorough knowledge”).

Four stages of the work of the historian of art vis-a-vis an object can quickly be development:

• description, iconographic, material and technological formal analysis and of work;
• its physical analysis in laboratory (dating, etc);
• the study of the documentary sources around the production of work (contract, project, etc);
• and around its perception (comments, criticisms, interviews, etc) and of sound (its) context (S).

to Voir the philosophy of art in the wikilivre, Anthropology of art, History and evolution of art and the only article on wikipédia on this subject.

History of art regarded as a science?

Owing to the fact that many contributors with the history of art qualified themselves nor not located as historians of art (even out of the field of science), one can present it like a science transdisciplinaire or multidisciplinary. But one discusses also much his place in the Social sciences (cf D. Arasse) and social (is this a science applied to the museums? which is the autonomy of the discipline? for example).

One notes thus that the history of art adapts many scientific methodologies like those phenomenologic (Merleau-Ponty, etc), psychological (Rene Huyghe, etc) and psychoanalytical (Meyer Schapiro, etc), sociological (Arnold Hauser, Pierre Francastel, Howard Becker), structuralist (Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky, Hubert Damisch, Pierre Daix), Marxist (Michael Baxandall, Francoise Bardon, etc), formal and semiological (Heinrich Wölffin, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco), postmodernist (Achilles Bonito-Oliva, Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida).

Moreover, it would be tiresome to quote all the disciplines to which call the historians of art make, of the cultural Histoire with the cultural Anthropologie of art or while passing by the Esthétique, the Linguistique, the economy of the culture, the Théorie of the literature or the Médiologie, and of the various comparative studies, consequences of the new epistemological questions contemporary.

to also Voir, in complement of historiography and, debates on the linguistic Turning, the gender & them and on in the world anglo-saxon.

Conditions of its teaching

In France, according to the president of the University Paris Iv-Sorbonne (France culture, March 23rd, 2007), the rate of failure to the examinations of the first-year students of history of art and archeology are of 70% (but 45% on the site of Paris I). The course is regularly taken in example of the dysfunctions of the university (shift between the objectives of the students at the time of their first inscription and the reality of the lesson, outlets professional and continuing education, framing and means of the departments, coherence of the contents and refusal of Interdisciplinarité, recruitment of the teachers, etc).

History of the history of art

Schematically, history of art such as it was conceived Renaissance - since Giorgio Vasari and its Vie of the famous Artists ( Quickly the ), while passing by the 18th century of Johann Joachim Winckelmann until the 19th century hégelien - is the history of a progress of Article.

Art is supposed to pass from an antiquated stage to a traditional stage then to fall in decline.

Greek and Roman art are presented in example of this curve of development.

For Greek art, the concept of art was different from that which is present in the Western civilization. Indeed, in Greek, the word “art” said tekhné , the Technique. The Greeks thus did not make any difference between the Artisan and the Artiste; “to only do it” seemed to have its importance.
The antiquated period corresponds to the Minoan art, mycénien and cycladic; the traditional period with the apogee of creation attic (contemporary Parthenon with Athens of the sculptures of Phidias of the theater of Aristophane and the philosophers Plato, Socrate…) ; follows the decline of the Athenian republic and that concomitant of art hellenistic until the Roman invasion.

For Roman art, the antiquated period is that of the rough and austere art of the Republic; the classic art corresponds to the apogee of the Empire; the art of the Lower Empire (in particular paléo-Christian) to the simplified forms will be perceived like a decline under the attacks of the cruel invasions.

The turning of this perception takes place with the publication, in 1901, with Vienna, of the work of Aloïs Riegl, the art of the Roman Lower Empire which shows that the artistic creation which accompanies the fall of the Roman Empire, does not have to be interpreted like decline but like change of standard and birth of a new paradigm. One will note the agreement between the publication of this theoretical work and the artistic practice of the Sécession Viennese which is freed then from the guns of the Art schools, a few years later Kandinsky and Kupka create the first abstract works and Picasso and Braque cubism; like giving reason to Riegl…

From there, history of art (until there captive of the paradigm of the Rebirth: to make “revive” the apogee of the Antique arts and explain which are the conditions esthetic - but so political, economic - creation of a “traditional” art) admits the plurality of the standards simultaneous stylistics (from where also, being given the collapse of a dogmatic and normative effort, the multiplication of the artistic currents) and attempts to note, rather indexing, comparing, explaining arts than Article.

to voir rather (these paragraphs are to be rewritten):
J. von Schlosser, artistic literature: handbook of the sources of the history of the modern art , Paris, 1984 (transl. according to the 1st ED. allemande, 1924, and the ED. Italian of O. Kurz, 1956-1964).
A. Hauser {{in}}, Philosophy der Kunstgeschichte , Munich, 1958; Engl. transl. The philosophy off art history , Evanston, 1985.
G. Bazin {{in}}, History of the history of art: of Vasari at our days, Paris, 1986.
History of the history of art , under dir it. of ED. Apple tree, Paris, Museum of Louvre, Klincksieck, 1995-1997 ( Conferences and conferences of Louvre ), T.I and T. II.

See also: History of the history

See also: List of historians and theorists of art

History of art and classification of arts

to Voir the categories Art and Artist, the article Art and the gate of the arts.

Consequently divergences on the definition of art and with the difficulties of approaching it in its globality, the quarrels on the Classification of arts (or in) and the categories artistic are a " appear imposée" history of art and esthetic (the such quarrel of the Old and Modern in literature).

Against what

Do the terms then selected inform us at least as much about those which state them (when? where? from which point of view? context?) that on works which they are supposed to gather or describe. In addition to proposing a new genealogical grid of art, they are usually defined “against” (another movement, a school, etc) or by exclusion (out of the field of art, of a practice). It is remarkable that their significances are extremely variable in time, and passed from negative to positive from many times (baroque, impressionism, etc).

Visual arts

These last years certain reduce the history of art to the history of the visual Art especially to distinguish it from the Musicologie, of the study of the Live performance (theater, dance, circus, etc) or of the Littérature (even of the Architecture), although in parallel of others with the very broad field cultural inheritance associates it. Indeed, in certain scientific contexts (in history and linguistics particularly), it is usual to isolate the visual culture from the culture oral or written to study specificities of them (the not written sources and the nonverbal language ). Thus one little to prefer the image term (in the direction of any source to the Imaginary ) to avoid the ambiguity of the art terms or work, considered as qualitative. But one should not confuse the image perceived by the eye with the Représentation which one is made of a work, underlined by subtle the E cosa will pittura It mental (painting is “mental thing”, a sign?) of Leonardo da Vinci. Finally the esthetic experiment calls upon several directions simultaneously and rare are the artistic practices which develop without interactions with others.

Visual arts

In the French-speaking world, it is the same of the concepts of fine art and decorative arts (since the end of the 19th century), of Visual arts and Applied arts (since the years 1960), which corresponds especially to institutional realities, commercial or industrial rather than a border (with the function of work) between an artistic production has and Artisan Al (see for example the movement Arts & British Crafts, the Art nouveau French or the German Bauhaus).

Historically, with the Italian Rebirth, the arte LED designo gathered arts of volume (sculpture, architecture) and those of surface (drawing, painting, engraving), opposition which one would étymologiquement find étymologiquement in the expressions “visual arts” and “graphic arts” (J. - R. Gaborit). The common point of these manual practices would be then the action on the matter.

DEBATEs in France

Let us announce in addition that the current debate, in France, on visual arts (like that on the history of the arts) succeeding that older on the visual arts, is also related to the reforms of artistic education, object of many corporatisms on both sides, and amplified by the opposition enter the two ministries (culture and education).

Conclusion

Although vague or criticizable, it should be noted however that these terminologies are significant development of places and new means of creations and artistic reflections, beyond the parcelling out or appropriation of the approaches (and teaching) of Article.

to also Voir the articles, and lastly Classification of arts.

Géo-cultural and chronological classification

Chronological cutting (in relation to the geographical and cultural surfaces) poses the same problems of relevance as to the historians (see the remarks at the beginning of the following articles): Prehistory and Protohistoire, Antiquity and late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, modern Time, contemporary Time. And it is significant that the great nonWestern units remain relatively under represented in the general stories of art , in particular arts known as first (the art of Africa, of Oceania, the Arctique, the America S), the art of the Asia (of Central Asia, of the India, the Southeast Asia, China, and the Japan) and of Moslem civilization .

Let us notice that inter alia inaccuracies, it is necessary for the modern art to distinguish the time which corresponds to the modern time of the historians (between the Middle Ages and the 19th century) and works who took part in the ideas of '' modernity '' and of '' avant-garde '' in art (since the middle of the 19th century, or the beginning of XXe) rather associated with the contemporary period in history. Indeed it is usually considered that the Contemporary art recovers all the current art for a group of individual (obviously with restrictions very variable on what is recognized like current, alive, new or with the mode) but also the art which has direct consequences on current art (in the case of works of Marcel Duchamp, for example).

Do these various difficulties pose in more the question of the universality of art (how of comparing what is comparable? Can one apprehend it in only one “history”?). In this direction the approach synchronic and diachronic of works (“at one exact moment” and “in its evolutions”) also makes it possible to approach the languages of art out of the chronological and geographical limits strict.

to initially Voir the gate of the History of art.

Subdivision set of themes

to especially Voir the category on the artistic topics.

• the naked
• the Still life
• the Landscape
• the allegory
• the Self-portrait
• the Portrait
• the Pietà

The historian and the worlds of art

• Traditionnellement one opposes the history of art to the Critic art , in the direction where this one is a '' judgment '' (an appreciation of the Beau, Goût) founded on the intuition and the sensitivity, and not on a scientific argumentation. Moreover the critical also tightens him to make work, sometimes with the artist even or his environment, even in interaction with a gallery and the gone of art.

• Within the actors of the world of art, another current distinction is that between the term of Amateur of art (but has a double direction: who can appreciate, who does not know or little), like a collector, and of professional of art like a commercial of art, or any person remunerated for his report/ratio by art (thus the specialized historian? a Police chief of exposure?).

Some of these two characters (of critic and art lover) are found at the Anglo-Saxon .

One distinguishes also the historian from art (teacher and researcher) with:

• a curator of a museum which has like mission of inventorying, to preserve, enrich and make available a collection, a inheritance, in many physical constraints and of management (institutional, local, commercial, etc). But this profession, with that of archeologist, is also at the origin of the history of Article
• a restorer of art or museum, historically related to the preceding one.
• an Expert in art, working for gallery, insurance companies, museum or private individual.
• a cultural mediator, a lecturer, a guide, working in a preoccupation of promotion and a popularization (with the good sense of the term).
• a Artist, a Craftsman, a “expert of artistic behaviors”, or a teacher of these “artistic practices of production”, the direction of an opposition enters the glance and the practical .

These postures vis-a-vis (and in) art combines more than they are not excluded and it is usual to alternate more or less fortunately, two, three, or more, of these attitude to the 21e century (and not only with that of historian of art).

to Voir the category personality of the artistic world and H. Becker, worlds of art (Art worlds) , 1982.

Criticisms of the history of art

Sometimes among criticisms, one reproaches the history art:

• its Ethnocentrisme Occident Al (G. Bazin), is to be founded on the study of the Christian arts and its gréco-Roman sources;
• to be satisfied to take note, has posteriori , of this fuzzy idea of Art, in demonstrations anachronistic where the concept is non-existent, different, at the time and with the place concerned;
• to associate rational methods with a “forgery Concept” (Francoise Bardon);
• to perpetuate a typology of “noble arts”, a Vulgate of art, within a élitiste framework or fetishist;
• to reintroduce a report/ratio divinisant, inaccessible, with art, associating artist, genius, god;
• a qualitative approach of the sources of the history (Nadeije Laneyrie Dagen): to speak about work is already a judgment of the document, a selection, contrary to the category image , more neutral (in the direction of any source to imagination).
• studied the conditions of artistic creation and to leave side the material and technical aspect of work;
• of gloser on the Glose, in a certain indifference with the realities of the artists in the company of, and also to today be unaware of the simplicity (its '' banality '', “with the provision of everyone”) of the daily poetic experiment.

to Voir Social condition of the artist, Popular culture, Mass culture, Art of mass.

Quotations

• the history of art is a “discipline which takes in load, the identifier, the classifying and the treating on a hierarchical basis, the products of the human activity in the fields of " creation; visuelle" , different from the music and the literature” (Andre Chastel)

• “history of art being reduced essentially to a history forms - or Idées” “it is a question of outlining a history of works through one their elements founders, the Matière the immaterial one” (Florence de Mèredieu).
• “Even if she wants to often give herself the aspect of a scientific discipline by taking again the protocols of statement of the Science S known as exact, the history of art is not the “science of art” (imperfect translation of German ) and, if one must to count it with number of “social sciences” (what does not make Lévi-Strauss the class significantly in “arts and letters”), she is the “human artistic behavioral science”, a science of the “artistic practices” whose criteria of scientificity are far from being established” (Daniel Arasse, to see the conference in external bond).
• “I speak neither about the art nor of the history of art but of the current problems from these two” (Hans Belting, to see the conference in external bond).
• “Like Herve Fischer, Hans Belting estimates that the modern art contributed to break the history of the art whose standards and concepts are not applicable for him. It is not the only defect of our history of Article This one was done within a European framework and does not relate to non-European civilizations, even less the anhistoric ages of Africa and Oceania. And even with these concepts, all the art of the Occident cannot be connected, because they were elaborate according to the esthetic alternatives which followed one another during one short period between the Rebirth and the baroque. Aren't esthetics suitable for the Middle Ages also foreign with this system? ” (Germain Bazin, Histoire of the history of art , 1986, p. 570)
• the historian of art “seeks before very with interpreting works of art”, “it is always starting from these genealogies speech on the work of art, of these interpretations, that are made new interpretations” (Roland Recht), cannot be satisfied any more to study singular works as expressions of normative esthetics but it must study the history of the change of the esthetic standards themselves. One could widen this prospect: it should not more treat each work as an absolute data which would hold its own truth, but seek to include/understand to become to it historical of each work through the glances which one scanned. Such an investigation should necessarily lead the historian of art to recognize the relativity of its own historical position. ” (Roland Recht, '' Revue art '', 124 1999, p. 9).
• “The connoissor might Be defined ace has laconic art historian, and the art historian ace has loquacious connoissor” '' connoissor '' can be defines as a historian of laconic art and the historian of art like a '' loquacious connoissor '' (Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts , 1955).
• “a reflection on the legitimacy and the vitality of a métahistoire of art would undoubtedly show that there is no discrepancy between the history and the standard, but that any historical reflection starts by taking support on a theory of arts; she would recall that the conscience of the historical dimension of art is also interdependent of a certain collective conscience, which can be formed around a broader history, that of a city, of a state, of a dynasty; she would help to relativize tired prophecies on death of the history of art, by showing that the times, the mediums, the cultures, the institutions invent, progressively, thousand and one modulations inside the historical speech on Article” (Edouard Pommier, 1997, p. 9-10)
• “As historians we are “theorists” and “skeptics”, and that especially in the beautiful etymological direction of these two terms, which want to say to look at . Let us look at the historical phenomena not “to judge them”, not “to defend them”, but to include/understand them in their development. This seems the single objective of the history of art as a historical discipline. ” (Julius von Schlosser, quoted by Otto Kurz in 1955

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