Introduction to Art History

Basic Terms and Concepts

AP Art History

What is “art history”?

The study of art in its cultural environment, including its:

– economic realities– historical events– social dynamics– religious and spiritual organizations– technological advancements

By its nature, art history is interdisciplinary.

Three Primary Types of Art

Painting

Sculpture

Architecture

Art = Form + Content

In the most basic way art can be thought of as having two parts:– its form and– its content.

Form relates to the “formal” aspects of art or how the art is made.

Content relates to the subject, message, or meaning of the art.

Style

Style of the art is a by-product of both its formal elements and content.

Styles usually emerge during, and are associated with, periods of time in a culture.

– Impressionism– Realism– Romanticism

The artist’s or era’s own unique character must also be considered in style

Context

Partner activityBrief class discussion

Contextual Considerations

HistoricalGeographicalSocialPoliticalGenderPatronageFunction Setting

Formal Elements of Painting

Formal Elements of Sculpture

compositionmaterialtechnique massvolume Texturespace

Formal Elements of Architecture

materialmassplansection Cutawayelevation

Q1: Define composition. Can you see ways that Raphael composes his painting?

Composition

relationship of the parts of a painting, sculpture, or work of architecture.

Artists consider composition when they structure the relationships of colors, lines, shapes, and masses in their art.

Artists usually balance compositions-symmetrical, asymmetrical, radial

Material

Material is the substance from which a work of art is made.

Material can be the pigment of a fresco, the bronze of a statue, or the sandstone of a pyramid.

Other examples of materials are: paper, clay, metal, plastic, glass.

Conceptual Art and Performance Art sometimes have no materials

Q2: Is Marina Ambrovic’s following conceptual art piece, The Artist is Present, a valid form of art in your opinion? Why or why not?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS0Tg0IjCp4#t=169

Marina Abramovic and Ulay

Technique

From the Greek word techne meaning “skill.” Technique is any method of working with material to create an

art object.

Often implied is the sense that techniques are carefully studied, exacting, or traditional, but this is not necessarily the case.

Examples of technique are hatching, engraving, repousse, encaustic, additive, subtractive, etc

Line

An element of art which refers to the continuous mark made on some surface by a moving point.

Lines define space and may create an outline or contour, a style called “linear.”

It may be two-dimensional, three-dimensional (as with a wire), or suggested or implied.

“Art, like morality, consists in drawing a line somewhere.”

- G.K. Chesterton, 19th c. author, English

Color

wavelengths of light hitting an object and and those wavelengths reflecting back into your eyes.

Color is also an element of art with three properties: hue, intensity, and value– Hue is the name of the color, like red or blue– Intensity is the purity and strength of the color,

also sometimes called “saturation.”– Value is the degree of lightness or darkness of a

color.

PrimarySecondaryIntermediateAnalogousComplementaryWarm/Cool

Texture

Texture is an element of art pertaining to the surface quality or “feel” of the work of art.

Texture can be described as smooth, rough, soft, etc. Some textures are real and others are simulated.

Space

Negative space-empty spacePositive space-occupiedCreate depth or feeling of space through

perspective

Depth & PerspectivePerspective is the technique that artists use

to project the illusion of three-dimensional space onto a two-dimensional surface.

Perspective helps to create a sense of depth–a sense of receding space.

Piero della Francesca, Ideal City, Urbino, 1470 CE

Artists achieve visual depth in several different ways:

– (1) by making objects in the foreground larger than those in the background

– (2) by making objects at the bottom of the composition larger than those at the top

– (3) by using lighter colors and fuzzier edges to suggest the distant objects and space (atmospheric perspective)

– (4) by using mathematical or linear perspective, where the recession is directed towards a vanishing point.

Proportion

Proportion is a principle of design referring to the relationship of one part to another or to the whole with respect to size, quantity, or degree.

If one figure appears larger than another in a composition, it is thought of to be out of proportion and, thereby, given emphasis.

Consider Leonardo da Vinci’s Study of Proportions (right).

Scale

As an art history term, scale refers to the size of the art object at hand or the size of the objects represented in a particular art object.

Artists often use scale to suggest relationships between figures and landscape, figures and other figures, and/or sometimes a figure’s importance.

Q4: What is noteworthy about the size of the figure in this stele? Why is his scale so large as compared with the other smaller ones?

Stele of Naramsin, King of Akkad, c. 2250 BCE

Volume

A shape in three dimensions

Mass

Mass= volume + density (actual or perceived weight)

Henri Moore, Reclining Nude,20th c. sculptor, English

Plan

A plan is section view from exactly overhead at 90 degrees.

This is the plan of the Villa Capra, better known as the “Villa Rotunda”, by Adnrea Palladio, a 16th c. Venetian architect.

Section

A section shows you a slice of building. Imagine taking a cake, cutting it, and seeing its layers of cake and frosting inside, when you do so, you are seeing a “section.”

Here you see two sections of the Roman Pantheon, built in 125 CE by the Emperor Hadrian.

longitudinal section lateral section

Cutaway

This is a cutaway view of the White House, Washington, D.C. In a cutaway you can see both exterior and interior details of a

building, thereby better understanding their relationship.

Elevation

An elevation is, literally, the elevated view of the building from the exterior.

Notice that nothing is “sectioned” or “cutaway”; the building is intact as viewed from its ground level to its uppermost point, in this case, a lantern with finial.

This is an elevation of the façade of St. Paul’s cathedral (built in the late 17th c. CE) in London.