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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Art history, What is useful?

01:09 / 10.10.02

Ok, it's like this: I am a teacher in a highschool, and one of the courses I teach is art history, it's only studied by those students in the design/architecture area, in the last year. So I put the focus mostly on the visual arts area (painting, sculpture, architecture). Since the students do not have any previous experience in visual arts, I have to start from the basics (from art apreciation to basic theories like prespective or chiaroscuro use). Even if there is some emphasis on philosophical and historical basis for art, the main attention is on art apreciation and basic identification.

So, the intention of this thread is to find out what can be more useful for those that work in visual arts/design/architecture? What would you recommend me? What contents? Which teaching techniques? What kind of learning experiences?
What do you remember fondly of when you studied art history? What are the bad memories?
Which knowledge of art history has been useful to you in your art activities?

Any idea will be taken in account. Thank you

Matthew Fluxington

15:21 / 10.10.02

In all my experience with art school, the best advice I'd give you is to try your best to include more 20th century art in your lectures, and try to bridge the gap between the past and the present as much as possible. Try to show how artists, styles, movements, and innovations were important by showing the actual effect those things had on people over the course of history. I've found that too many art history courses don't really do this, that they just want you to take for a given that something is important or great, but never quite tell you why.

Matthew Fluxington

15:24 / 10.10.02

I contradicted myself in that last line - don't TELL, so much as SHOW.

21:50 / 10.10.02

I've just started studying art history, and my mom loaned me a book called The Story of Art by E.F. Gombrich. It seems to be a textbook. I really liked it because I liked his philosophy of art, and also because he doesn't talk about a single building or sculpture or painting that he doesn't show a picture for (sometimes he mentions a painting and says, this painting cannot be displayed in a book). He talks about architecture and art together, by the way. I would guess that the weaknesses might be that he overperiodizes the art, but that was good for me as a beginner.

23:00 / 10.10.02

Connecting the flow of art through style, period, and technique (as Flux mentioned earlier) is a very important aspect of art history that is generally overlooked. Focusing on the why is a great way to get people interested in the material and making it more personal. A bit of social context is also a good thing to have so your students can see what the issues were at the time and what influences found their way into pieces.

A field trip is also a good thing to do. I found that it was nice to wander a museum for an afternoon and see what is really going on with my own eyes.

The best art history prof I had was a pretty loose guy as far as the general mold is concerned. He taught about modern art which seemed to have a bit more impact on me than the works of people far long gone. His best asset was that he knew some of the major surrealists out of New York on a first name basis.

He gave the class insight because he knew the artists personally. So to tie in...keep in mind that a great deal of art history is subjective in nature and that it might be good to make the students aware that what most art historians say is an educated guess. Making one's own connections is important.

18:23 / 22.11.02

Wow, I'm impressed that someone read through Gombrich as an introduction to art history. I've got an MA in the field, and found Gombrich incredibly dated and difficult. Certainly not for high schoolers!

Gombrich, like others of his generation, tends to see art history as largely a chronological progression of formal styles. That attitude is probably deadly boring to most people, and makes art history seem (at first) like a field for interior decorators with some sense of history.

What's a lot more interesting, and relevant, is to look at visual images as historical documents, and to use them to understand the past.

A wonderful way to do this in the classroom, and preseve the Visual Primer stuff that's important to your students, is to do case studies that leap around in history. Lessons cover topics like "role of the artist", "buildings", "objects", "materials." In each, choose several time periods (or styles) and show how each topic is different in each era. The role of the artist in 1850 is quite different than in 1913, for example. "Art materials" were quite varied for long periods of human history, but for a few hundred years, art = easel painting. That changed dramatically around 1910, and since 1960 or so anything goes. (Obviously this is an oversimplification, but you get the idea).

22:45 / 22.11.02

That attitude is probably deadly boring to most people, and makes art history seem (at first) like a field for interior decorators with some sense of history.

*good-naturedly*

Welcome to my mind, I guess. "Think inside the box," that's my motto. And actually I work for a decorative painting studio, so maybe that primed me for the Gombrich. It really was the nicest read for me, and that's saying something given that I can't seem to read at all this year...

Tryphena Absent

13:01 / 25.11.02

I always found it interesting to hear how the artists died. The death of an artist is usually quite dramatic. Also the creation of a period from another was fascinating and generally being able to identify where a piece of work falls in a timeline.

14:57 / 25.11.02

Gombrich said some interesting things about realism though. You could tie this in to present-day video game graphics, maybe?

14:08 / 13.01.03

imho - context, context, context.

to me, as a practicing art person (art/creative director/vp), art history is most useful in that it can contextualize arts realities.

knowing what made picasso, picasso, is one thing - but understanding the context of his contributions in relation to art's ideals of the time, matisse, and everything else - is the real story that has value for the future artist, for in these realisations we see the role of the artist at that level (that they can indeed make their own, not just their own version of someone else's ideals, as well as the underlying message of intitiative, which is critical to successful creative activity).

i think art society has a tendency to liionize things to the point of stifling creativity, and i fear that starts in art appreciation and history classes where folks are teaching dates and art concepts, instead of contextualizaing those historical realities which often span hundreds of years and cultures, and thus require that kind of depth of insight to take any real value from, in terms of both inspiring the artist to take control of themselves, as well as let them see the potential that surrounds us all.

hope something there made sense =P

17:48 / 13.01.03

I think what others have said about overall stuff is paramount, so I'm going to try to list the most interesting things I can remember about my art history education.

Marinelli's Futurism: Pro-War and anti-tradition. They were highly influential and I could relate to them because I tend to retaliate preliminarily against what "people call art". It's an intriguing story from a wild time in history.

Swiss Modern Design: A lot of Art history glosses over the role of Graphic Design in the 20th century. Yes, all things repeat historically, but in the mid 20th, we were waking up to a new feeling of globalism. The international sentiments and cleanness of Modern design was psychologically and sociallogically necessary to convey multicultural thinking.

Roman Catholic iconoclastic imagery... and the muslim response at Hagia Sophia. It's important to note HOW much religion controlled thought and therefore art in the ancient world. the result of two huge religions in Constantinople and the imapct of belief on architecture and religious imagery.

It wouldn't be a bad thing to discuss other forms of art that ocurred and flourished in the speed-based 20th century. Two that come to mind are film and comics, shot glasses of literature/philosophy/artistic freedom.

21:32 / 14.01.03

it drives me mad, coz they spend ages talking about how u hav 2 develop ur very own style, then they say "do an essay on Matisse" and then say it should influence ur practical work severely! I mean, make up ur mind.

01:57 / 21.02.03

Thank you all, I've been aplying some of your ideas and sugestions (though sometimes limited by the reality of the school and the pupils). I find very interesting the ideas sugested by schmee and gingerbop (particularly g's confusion by the contradictory intentions in art history teaching), I'll reflect on all this and apply what I can

19:14 / 04.03.03

The only thing that written art (well, art appreciation) is useful for is a pish-easy way to up my whole art grade. Yeah, it sux but if it gives me better marks, bring it on.

22:03 / 12.03.03

Been giving some thought to the point you raise.
First thing is, I am talking about visual arts (the class is centered on Painting, architecture and sculpture).
Second, this class is given to young people who will work on (directly or indirectly) artistic areas
Since art is more a matter of feeling/appreciating, than of intellectual understanding, and that they are going to live from art, (visual) art appreciation will be very useful for them.

Let me tell you that as a teacher for ten years, I’ve had very few moments of existential satisfaction. One of those was a few weeks ago, when in an e-mail a pupil mentioned that he had put Klee’s Goldfish as wallpaper in his PC, because he had liked the image a lot.

22:17 / 12.03.03

Perhaps composition, if they don't have much of a background in painting/sculpture? It might be an easier way in, and from that point you could go over how painters have used light, chiaroscuro, perspective, colour, etc. as key components of composition, as well as drawing? Also it does highlight how paintings work - dunno about sculpture though, maybe looking at masses and balance and stuff...

The Jungle Keeper's Old Smoky Pipe, Haunted by The Black Dog Spirit

22:44 / 03.04.03

I study architecture and had a very good art history course (in fact, one of the best in Latin America), and there was a precise differenciation between studying art history and practicising art history. I don't think a art history class should teach all the artistic technics, from brunelleschi to Constable, even more the early 20th century modern stiles.

It's much more usefull to the student to have a wide vision on all stiles and then try to develop skills on those he liked, than making him to draw all those chiaroscuro studies, or applying Klee's color theory to his works... THATS boring!

Instead, you could give him the ways to get to his favorite stile spirit, to know the ideas and the essence of the work of those he admires, then creating hes own personal stile.