Art

• Art history is an academic discipline that seeks to reconstruct the social, cultural, and economic contexts in which an artwork was created.
• The basic goal of art history is to arrive at an understanding of art and its meaning in its original historical context.
• Art historians rely on a variety of documents and sources in order to conduct formal and contextual analyses.
• The history of Western art is often studied chronologically, beginning with early cave paintings in southeastern France and taking us to contemporary art all over the world.
• Early civilizations arose in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Nubia, and the civilizations of the Aegean Islands, Greece, and Rome.
• The artworks that have survived from ancient civilizations are those made of durable materials, often preserved in places that were relatively inaccessible.
• Tremendous shifts occurred in the art of the medieval period with the emergence of Christianity as a major religion and the Church as a powerful patron of the arts.
• The Church remained an important patron of art during the Renaissance and Baroque periods; at the same time, there was also a rise in secular artworks during these periods, in light of the Protestant Reformation and general societal and economic shifts throughout Europe.
• Major innovations of the Renaissance include the use of linear perspective and a move toward greater naturalism.
• Baroque art is generally distinct from Renaissance art because of its greater sense of movement and drama.
• The Rococo style of art was closely tied to the power of the French aristocracy prior to the Revolution of 1789.
• The Neoclassical movement may in part be seen as a reaction to the Rococo and a response to the political and social revolution.
• Romanticism, in turn, was a reaction to the classicizing tendencies of Neoclassical art, seeking to appeal to the emotions and the senses.
• Realism and Impressionism both emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, focused on everyday life as a subject matter, although Impressionism became increasingly concerned with ideas of visual perception.
• Other late nineteenth-century developments included Post-Impressionism and the Pre-Raphaelites.
• Modernism emerged in the early twentieth century, with important movements including Cubism, Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism.
• The Armory Show in New York (1913) marked a shift in the art world, as the United States became a new center of progressive artistic activity.
• Pop Art, Minimalism, and Photorealism responded to a post-WWII industrial culture.
• Art historians are challenging the traditional chronological study of Western art, recognizing that art throughout the world is interconnected, especially in terms of contemporary art.
• Art historians sometimes rely on different methods to understand nonwestern art, including China, India, and Japan, which have ancient traditions and have produced art that relates to political power and religious practice.
• Ancient traditions can also be found in Africa, often created for very different functions from art in the Western traditions, resulting in tremendous formal differences.
• Islam is a major world religion that has produced much art, most of which is non-figurative.
• Ancient civilizations existed in the Americas as well, often using archaeology to learn about their art.
• Art historians seek to describe the formal qualities of artworks, including line, shape and form, perspective, color, texture, and composition.
• Artists throughout time have worked in a variety of media, including drawing, printmaking, painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media, performance, craft and folk art, and architecture.
• Roman concrete, or opus caementicium, was made from the same basic elements it is still made from today: broken stone, sand, lime mortar, and water.
• Concrete was a key reason for the growth and dominance of the Roman Empire, which ruled nearly all of Europe, North Africa, and West Asia by 117 ce.
• Roads, bridges, and aqueducts made with concrete facilitated travel, trade, and communication between the far-flung regions of the Roman Empire and enabled its political control.
• British-made bone china replaced the Chinese-made bone china.
• Roman architects discovered that adding pozzolana sand to mortar produced concrete that was so durable it could cure under water, revolutionizing building projects across the empire.
• Concrete offered many advantages: it was strong, durable, inexpensive, convenient, adaptable to atypical shapes, and easily worked by unskilled laborers.
• The use of concrete allowed Roman builders to develop architectural forms like the arch, vault, and dome.
• The use of concrete gave vaulted buildings more stability and sunlight and allowed them to be relatively fireproof.
• The Pantheon, constructed for religious worship and intended to function as a temple to all the gods, is one of the most technically advanced concrete structures built by Roman architects.
• The Pantheon’s dome was an engineering marvel and is still today the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome.
• The dome and oculus, with their perfect spherical shapes, symbolized eternity and perfection, a reflection of the heavens the space was made to honor.
• The absence of vertical sight lines connecting the Pantheon’s floor to the upper recesses of its dome creates a visual and physical experience of hovering and perpetual motion.
• Upon its completion, the Pantheon became Emperor Hadrian’s favorite place to hold court.
• Much of the art and architecture that survives from ancient Egypt is funerary in nature, highlighting the Egyptian preoccupation with continued material existence in the afterlife.
• The seventy-two-day process of embalming corpses began with the removal of internal organs that might rapidly decay, except for the heart, which was believed to be the seat of understanding and was therefore left intact.