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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

What's the point of art history?

Goodness Gracious Meme

14:44 / 01.04.04

Is writing about art like dancing about architecture?

From the paintings discussion thread, thought I'd pick out an issue that's in the background, and stepinrazor's comments explictly point up. This is something I have a very personal relationship to, and would love to hear other people's opinions on...

Is it neccesary to know the history of a piece/of visual art in general to encounter pieces?

How has having this knowledge enhanced yr understanding? Are there types of work that seem to 'require' a/historical knowledge? Have you ever found stuff that made you wish/go off and investigate it's history.

How does art history add to accessiblility? How does it detract from it? Does this matter, is it part of the art historian's remit?

And finally, how do art practice/history/theory connect?

Phew. I'll be back with some thoughts later...

20:28 / 01.04.04

A short and horribly over-simplified answer is how imoprtant would Roy Lichtenstein be without comics? Art existsts within the context of the society that creates it.

Another over-simplification: How many of us have heared someone say "My kid can draw better'n that," when observing a Picasso? Are they dead from the neck up? No, they have never been taught the context out of which Picasso painted.

Beyond that, art history is a huge font of inspiration for the artists themselves. Frank Lloyd Wright (and I believe a large number of other artists from the early 1900's) was heavily influenced but Japanese art and culture of the 1800's.

No, I don't think a knowledge of art history is required, as there is plenty of art that requires no context, but it sure enriches the whole experience.

03:31 / 02.04.04

I'm a bachelor of music history student, and I believe the field to be sort of along the same lines of what you are talking about with art history. Both areas of study are important parts of culture and art. For example, without music historians (I really don't think I'm hijacking this thread, just work with me here) we wouldn't have the huge amount of ancient music which we have today and enjoy listening to and I'm not just talking ancient. This could include composers like Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner. Music historians contribute to the world by finding new pieces of music, finding out when they were made, who wrote them and much more; which to a musician is very important. The same would go for visual artist as well. If you know when and how something was composed or otherwise created, you can have a better understanding of how the piece should be looked at. For example, music from certain time periods have certain unwritten rules. I am not a [visual] artist, but I could tell you that the same probably goes for visual arts as well.

I'm registered for a course in art history for the upcoming Fall 2004 semester. Why? Because I find it interesting to know and understand the artists of our past and where they got their ideas from. Why? Because I believe that all artists; musicians, sculpters, painters, writers, filmakers; all have a certain common inspiration between their fields of work. In other words, all art influences other art in some way. (The impressionist painters certainly influenced the composer Debussy). If I can understand what Debussy was thinking, I could understand his music, therefore in the end I could further enjoy listening to composers like Debussy. Having a better understanding of all this gives me a better idea of what art is, why we have it, why we do it and why we enjoy it.

--First serious post

09:57 / 02.04.04

I got really interested in art history after reading about Situationists in Vague magazine (years ago) and then finding Greil Marcus's "Lipstick Traces." I'm a fan of history in general because I'm a sucker (sometimes literally) for a good story, so I found it easy to apply it to studying art. (Now I have a girlfriend who runs a small gallery, so I don't seem like a total idiot--only an Epsilon semi-moron)

Modern visual art, meaning anything done after photography and especially cinema, doesn't always give obvious clues. It helps to see Impressionism and Pointillism as ways to play with light after photography made straight representation redundant, or that Cubism is an attempt to convey motion on a canvas.

Getting closer to the present, art seems to rely more heavily on theory, and you have to find out what the artist is trying to say and how well they are saying it. Or are they just having a laugh at your expense? Or are the Saatchi brothers, by speculating in such art, having a laugh at your expense?

(digression)
There's a debate going on in the Dutch art establishment over the value of different types of arts funding, especially in light of last year's (and this year's) budget cuts. As elsewhere, the public reacts badly to art they're told is art; they want art that "looks like" art. The usual boorish "populist" politicians are using this to attack public arts funding in general, in the way that Reagan's and Thatcher's people did before them.
(/digression)

Er, yeah, some backstory is necessary, but too much and an artwork collapses under the weight of its theory.

10:48 / 02.04.04

But thanks to postmodern "death of the author"-esque analysis, a work can take on interpretations the artist didn't intend, consciously or otherwise. Time and nature can also play a role in presenting the work in a new light.

Which reminds me of a funny story (read to the bottom). Piero Manzoni, an Italian conceptual artist, sealed his shit in 90 small cans, 30 grams to a can, in 1961 and sold each for the going price of gold, about US$35. There was the obvious point, echoed by many of other conceptual artists, but Manzoni had another point and got the last laugh (or would have had he not drunk himself to death in 1963). First of all, the work "Can of Artist's Shit" has appreciated. The Tate Gallery bought one 2 years ago for about $40,000, about 100 times equivalent amount of gold is only about $400.

But.

Half of the 90 cans have leaked or exploded. So is this still a sculpture? Is it slow-moving kinetic art? Performance art? Did Manzoni beat Damien Hirst to the punch by 30 years?

For dealers:

Are the remaining intact cans worth double what they otherwise would have been? Are the exploded cans worthless? Has trading in the artwork become an expensive game of Hot Potato?

Please show your work.

I live for stories like this.

21:05 / 02.04.04

Thank you, bjacques, that's the funniest... er, shit... I've heared all day! I usually seethe when people talk about the monetary worth of art, but in this case it's obviously the point.
You also bring up an interesting point, Post-Modernism, which by definition makes no sense without Modernism. This can be expande to just about any school of art: Abstract Expressionism without Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism without without the perceived stagnation of the art world in the early 1900's...

21:17 / 02.04.04

But thanks to postmodern "death of the author"-esque analysis, a work can take on interpretations the artist didn't intend, consciously or otherwise.

yes, but the "death of the author" means specifically that meaning is fluid and contextual, not willed into the work somehow by the author's intent.

which means that while meaning is open-ended and protean, to "get it" in the same way that the audience who is understood to "get it" "gets it," you need to share context with them, which generally means having similar understandings of art history and theory.

or, to put it another way, contemporary art functions within a realm of language, and you are a part of the audience to the degree that you share the same language of art. art history, theory, and criticism then are where that language and all its references come from, and to be able to take part in the conversation, you have to become fluent in them.

18:08 / 05.04.04

I think one of the answers to this question is another question? How can you know where you're going if you don't know where you've been? I feel I should add a "young grasshopper" or a tasty little cookie...

19:15 / 05.04.04

Is writing about art like dancing about architecture?

Yes, but what's wrong with that?

00:07 / 17.04.04

art history is a discipline without any connection to art practice. its archaelogoy daddio. oil is for fossils, right. sharks have to keep moving!

All Acting Regiment

23:47 / 30.10.04

Is writing about art like dancing about architecture?

In real life there is no-one I can talk to about paintings. Basically. But read a book and go on a forum, and there you are. In this case, writing about art, thinking about it and talking about all attain the same level of importance.

14:28 / 05.11.04

I'd like to point out that in some cases knowing history and context can actually detract from your enjoyment of art. I used to enjoy Degas, until reading that he was misogynistic and had said that he basically viewed women as animals. I know there's some contention about that aspect of his personality, but the fact remains that now I can't look at those beautiful ballet dancers and nudes without thinking about the artist considering them to be cattle. It's one of those things I would have preferred never to know.

22:14 / 05.11.04

Art history is about the history of art, not artists' biographies.

Nevertheless, did women have the vote in Degas' day? Was he unusual at the time in thinking women inferior to men? Are criticisms of his attitude therefore an historical anachronism?

12:38 / 08.11.04

Per the thread summary: "Is it neccessary/useful to know about work/artist's history when encountering it?"

Surely one of the most salient points of the "history" of any art piece would be the artist? Why should the period, style, movement, school, influences, and social milieu from which an art work emerges be regarded as more relevant than the actual artist's individual personality? If one is going to study the history of art at all, ignoring the people who created that art seems rather senseless.

As for the other point - Degas was indeed regarded as misogynistic during his lifetime, in turn-of-the-century France. He himself said he was a misogynist, and once remarked that all women were basically ugly. As far as anyone knows, he was celibate his entire life.

None of this means he wasn't a brilliant artist, of course. And it rather begs the question - should an encounter with a work of art necessarily include knowledge of its history? My point is that in some cases it can actually detract from one's enjoyment of the piece rather than enhancing it. On the other hand, for some this sort of knowledge may prove fascinating, and add to their depth of understanding of the piece in question.

Tryphena Absent

23:32 / 12.11.04

Why should the period, style, movement, school, influences, and social milieu from which an art work emerges be regarded as more relevant than the actual artist's individual personality?

Because the artist only painted a picture of society and may have inadvertently given us a historical impression that they didn't intend. The only question that can absolutely arise from yours is intention of the author vs. intention of the reader and it's a boring question, particularly when you're talking years since the picture was produced.

I have always been of the opinion that art is very much like literature- there are hundreds of ways to read it and some of them are important not because you're reading art but because you're examining a time period. If I want to read about Victorian fashion than Dickens is as helpful as any factual account. Bruegel, Van Eyck, Giotto: these artists give us a social impression, even if it's not of the time, it's a visual fantasy of the time. These paintings always bring across some social aspiration and they can't be pulled apart visually, it has to be done in words.

In my 'A' level art history classes I learned about the history of perspective for the first time and it's probably the most interesting thing that I've ever encountered in an ongoing course. I felt totally incapable when I began and as it went on I knew I was really learning something. The very evolution of techniques, their development is fascinating, art history might not seem to be anything but I felt like I learnt to actually look at things and that's why it's useful. It certainly helped me look at paintings I'd previously dismissed in a new way, I always thought Constable's work was boring until I started to talk about it.