Conditions of Visibility

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
Shared Objects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Prejudice ◽  
Historical Past

We often assume that works of visual art are meant to be seen. Yet that assumption may be a modern prejudice. The ancient world - from China to Greece, Rome to Mexico - provides many examples of statues, paintings, and other images that were not intended to be visible. Instead of being displayed, they were hidden, buried, or otherwise obscured. In this third volume in the Visual Conversations in Art & Archaeology series, leading scholars working at the intersection of archaeology and the history of art address the fundamental question of art's visibility. What conditions must be met, what has to be in place, for a work of art to be seen at all? The answer is both historical and methodological; it concerns ancient societies and modern disciplines, and encompasses material circumstances, perceptual capacities, technologies of visualization, protocols of classification, and a great deal more. The emerging field of archaeological art history is uniquely suited to address such questions. Intrinsically comparative, this approach cuts across traditional ethnic, religious, and chronological categories to confront the academic present with the historical past. The goal is to produce a new art history that is at once cosmopolitan in method and global in scope, and in doing so establish new ways of seeing - new conditions of visibility - for shared objects of study.

Aby Warburg

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adi Efal-Lautenschläger
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Visual Studies ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Visual Phenomena ◽  
History Of ◽  
Aby Warburg

One preliminary point which must be stated regarding Agamben’s relation to the art historian Abraham (‘Aby’) Moritz Warburg (1866–1929) is that this line of questioning is not reducible to problems regarding imagery or ‘visual’ art. Agamben says explicitly that ‘only the myopia of a psychologizing history of Art could have defined [Warburg’s art history] as a “science of the image”’ (ME 53). Although most scholarship on Warburg has indeed viewed the latter’s work as laying the foundations for image and visual studies, in Agamben’s account Warburg ushers the humanities towards another kind of inquiry, one having more to do with the concept of time than with any sort of imagery or visual phenomena. In this, Agamben’s reading of Warburg differs substantially from those of major art historians influenced by Warburg, such as Horst Bredekamp (Bildakt)1 or Georges Didi-Huberman (images malgré tout).2 In fact, Agamben’s reading of Warburg’s art historical inquiries can be elaborated as a fruitful critique of the recent ‘imagist’ turn in the history of art, viewing visual artworks as being primary and essentially ‘images’.

scholarly journals Motivstudier. Kontinuitet og fornyelse i ornamentale hybridformer fra antikken til ca. 1600

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (123) ◽  
pp. 109-134
Author(s):  
Maria Fabricius Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Art History ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Italian Art ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Over Time

Representations of hybrids of human figures, plants, and animals were prolific in all media in sixteenth-century Italian art. The motif is known back from Greek and Roman antiquity, both in poetry and visual art, which the artists of the sixteenth century – or the renaissance – claimed to revive. Yet the representations of hybrids from these two periods within the history of art differ remarkably. And at the same time they belong to an iconographic tradition that did not disappear in the medieval period, an observation which blurs the picture of these ornaments as rediscovered and revived in the renaissance. How then do motifs such as foliate heads or other phyto- or zoomorph creatures develop in visual art from antiquity to ca. 1600? The topological method can be applied to a tracking of these motifs over time in order to stress continuity and analyze the transformations which took place through the centuries. This article reflects on some methodological and historiographical aspects of studies of motifs in art history. In a double-sided strategy it both aims at challenging the persistent notion of the renaissance as a period rejecting the middle ages and reviving antiquity (i.e. it stresses the continuity of the sixteenth century with the preceding centuries); and it suggest some characteristics of the visual paradigm of sixteenth-century Italian art (i.e. it describes some of the innovations of the period).

Art History vs. the History of Art

Art Journal ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 313
Author(s):  
Jules David Prown
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of

Cheshire Cat and Mickey Mouse: analysis, interpretation and the art of the La Tène Iron Age

1970 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 261-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. V. S. Megaw
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Art History ◽  
Mickey Mouse ◽  
Classical Archaeology ◽  
Italian Physician ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
Prehistoric Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Wilhelm Worringer

Nearly seventy years ago Wilhelm Worringer first wrote that ‘ultimately all our definitions of art are definitions of classical art’ (Worringer, 1953, 132). Today, the study of Western European art history, old or modern, the products of peasant craft-centres or urban ‘schools’, has in the course of time developed its own methodology and, almost, mystique. In contrast, the study of many branches of prehistoric art in Europe and elsewhere is all too often seen as a mere extension of the skilled but subjective approaches of classical archaeology without considering the suitability of the latter's application. The use of the classical art-historian's intuitive methods built up not just from visual exprience but a detailed background of literary, historical and philosophical studies must in fact be almost entirely denied the student of prehistoric or primitive art. It is perhaps only natural that principles of classical art history should be applied to later European prehistory, though it is often difficult to arrive at a precise definition of these principles. It was Johann Joachim Winckelmann who made the first systematic application of categories of style to the history of art (Gombrich, 1968, 319). Sir John Beazley, the greatest of all modern classical art historians followed in this tradition basing attributions ‘on the grounds of tell-tale traits of individual mannerisms’ (Carpenter, 1963, 115 ff.) a scheme first applied to painting less than a century ago by the Italian physician Giovanni Morelli (Gombrich, 1968, 309 ff.) and followed at the turn of the nineteenth century in the study of Italian painting (Lermolieff, 1892–3). With Beazley it is, however, difficult to follow step by step his methods of work.

scholarly journals The grotesque as it appears in Western art history and in Ian Marley’s creative creatures

Literator ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-54
Author(s):  
R. Swanepoel
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Western History ◽  
Western Art ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Grotesque

This article presents a theoretical exploration and reading of the notion of the grotesque in Western history of art to serve as background to the reading of the original creatures in the “Tracking creative creatures” project.1 These creatures were drawn by Marley, based on imaginary creatures narrated by his five year-old son, Joshua. The focus in this article is on the occurrence of the grotesque in paintings and drawings. Three techniques associated with the grotesque are identified: the presence of imagined fusion figures or composite creatures, the violation and exaggeration of standing categories or concepts, and the juxtaposition of the ridiculous and the horrible. The use of these techniques is illustrated in selected artworks and Marley’s creatures are then read from the angle of these strategies.

Rewriting or Reaffirming the Canon? Critical Readings of Exhibition History – Editorial

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Boersma ◽  
Patrick van Rossem
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
The Public ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Exhibition History ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of

In 2010, Afterall Publishers launched a series of exhibition histories wholly devoted to the study of landmark exhibitions.[1] The aim was to examine art in the context of its presentation in the public realm. In this way, research into art history shifted from the artistic production of one individual artist to the context of the presentation, and to the position, views, and convictions of the curator. In the introduction to the book, published in 2007 with its contextually pertinent title, Harald Szeemann: Individual Methodology, Florence Derieux stated: “It is now widely accepted that the art history of the second half of the twentieth century is no longer a history of artworks, but a history of exhibitions.”[2] Not everyone agrees with this, however. For example, art historian Julian Myers justifiably criticized this statement when he wrote that the history of art and exhibitions are inextricably linked.

Epilogue

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Emison
Keyword(s):  
Sound Recording ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Changing Role

The span of this book is roughly that of directors who had started out in silent pictures reaching the end of their careers, including their transitions to color. The introduction of sound recording and color both transformed filmmaking, not least its cost. Misgivings were voiced early on about the moral effect of the new art, even as censorship was deplored. Mannerism as an art-historical concept was being developed to supplement that of Renaissance naturalism even as filmmakers were trying to reconcile the realism to which photography might seem suited with the artificiality it also enabled. Although studying the history of film inevitably dredges up evidence of racism, sexism, and other prejudices, the history of film, like the history of art, is too complex and has long been too deeply engrained in our cultural lives for historians to choose to be ignorant of once admired works we may now in part or thoroughly deplore, as well as minor yet elucidating works that may likewise be problematic, at least in part. The supposition that respect is the default response to any work of art underestimates the changing role of laughter and other forms of active disregard, particularly during the last century.

Considering the future of art bibliography: the FAB initiative

2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 10-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Salomon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Art History ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
The Future ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
History Of ◽  
Review Current ◽  
Research Institute ◽  
Current Practices

The Future of Art Bibliography (FAB) initiative developed out of various conversations among colleagues in the United States and Europe. Events in the art historical community, including limited funding resources for art libraries and projects internationally, and the cessation of the Getty’s support for the production of the Bibliography of the history of art (BHA) provided the catalyst for the Kress Foundation grant to the Getty Research Institute. A series of international meetings of art librarians, art historians, publishers and information specialists ensued. The goal was to review current practices, take stock of changes, and seriously consider developing more sustainable and collaborative ways of supporting the bibliography of art history in the future.

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