Rank geo-cultural and chronological

The chronological breakdown poses the same problems of relevance only to historians: Prehistory and early history, Antiquity and Late Antiquity, Middle Ages, Modern Era, Epoch contemporary. And it is significant that the major non-Western remains relatively under-represented or treated separately in the general histories of art, particularly art called premiers51 (the art of Africa, Oceania, the Arctic, of the Americas), the art of Asia (in Central Asia, India, Asia, South-East Asia, China, and Japan) and the Islamic civilization or the Middle East.

Note that, among other inaccuracies, it is necessary to distinguish modern art time that corresponds to modern historians (from the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century) and the works that have contributed to ideas and avant edge in the art (since the mid-nineteenth century or early twentieth) rather related to the period in contemporary history. Indeed it is usually considered that contemporary art encompasses all art today for a group of individuals (of course with restrictions vary widely on what is known as actuel53 living, new or fashionable) but also the art has a direct impact on contemporary art (in the case of works of Marcel Duchamp, for example).

These various difficulties arise over the question of the universality of art (how to compare what is comparable? Can we grasp in a single "history"?). In this sense, the synchronic and diachronic approach works (at a particular time "and" in its evolution ") can also address the languages of art out of chronological and geographical boundaries perceived as arbitrary.


Subdivision theme

The historian and art worlds
Traditionally one contrasts the history of art and art criticism in the sense that it is a trial (an appreciation of beauty, taste) based on intuition and sensitivity, not an argument Science. Moreover critic also tends to work, literary, sometimes with the artist or his environment, or interacting with a gallery and art market.
Among the players in the world of art, another common distinction is that between the term of art lover (but has a double meaning: who can appreciate who has no or little) as a collector, and of professional art54 as an art dealer, or any person paid for his relationship with art (ie specialist historian? A curator?).

Some of these characters (criticism and art lover) are found in the (in) connoisseur Anglo-Saxon.


A Conservative which has a mission to identify, preserve, develop and make available a collection, a heritage, in many physical constraints and management (institutional, local, commercial, etc..). However this profession, like an archaeologist, because of the close historical and scientific nature of these practices is often confused with the history of art.
An art restorer, museum or architect of historic monuments, occupations linked to.
An art expert working for insurance companies, galleries, museums and individuals, and a mediator Heritage specializes in legal aspects ...
A mediator , a speaker, a guide working in the interests of promotion and extension (in a good way).
An artist, an artisan, a "practitioner of artistic behavior, or teacher of these" artistic production practices "in the sense of opposition between regard7 and practice (which nevertheless recalls the opposition between teachers and researchers in same discipline).

These postures face (and) art combine rather than mutually exclusive and it is usual to alternate more or less happily, two, three or more of these attitudes in the twenty-first century (and not only with that of art historian).

Reviews of Art History

Among critiques59, sometimes criticized in the history of art:
its western ethnocentrism (G. Bazin), is to be based on the study of Christian art and its Greco-Roman sources;
traditions still strongly élitiste60 and hierarchical (or corporatiste9) and his difficulties over the instruments of general culture.
merely to note in retrospect, this vague idea of art in demonstrations where the anachronistic concept is absent, different, at the time and place concerned;
involve rational methods with a "false idea" (Françoise Bardon27), potentially ahistorical (private history), an area "irreducible to approach the mind" (Claire Barbillon7);
perpetuate a typology of the "noble art" 61, a partial (and biased) culture, a vulgate of art, in a fetish or sexist;
reintroduce a report deifying inaccessible, art, arts, engineering, god;
a qualitative sources of history (noted by Nadeije Laneyrie Dagen): speaking of work is already a trial of material, selection, unlike the class picture, more neutral (in the sense of any source to the imaginary).
to study the conditions of artistic creation and leave aside the technical and material aspects of the work;
of gloss on the gloss, to appropriate the word about art in a certain indifference to the realities of artists in society today, and also to ignore the simplicity (its banality, "available to Everyone ") to the poetic experience daily.

Quotes
The history of art is "a discipline that supports, by identifying, ranking and prioritizing the products of human activity in the areas of Creation" visual ", different music and literature "(Andre Chastel62)

"The history of art is essentially reduced to a history of forms - and ideas" [...] "This is a story outline works through one of their founding elements , material [and intangible]

"Although she often wants to give the appearance of a scientific discipline by taking the set of protocols called exact sciences, history of art is not the" science of art "(translation imperfect German (de) Kunstwissenschaft) and, if we must count it among the "human sciences" (which is not Levi-Strauss [that class significantly in the "arts and letters"]), it is "science of human behavior artistic," a science of "practical arts" which of scientific criteria are far from being established "

"[...] If we try to know the art, we definitely need a tool for precise analysis, because the knowledge that we will be even closer to the truth that is the wider range science available to us. For the contemporary aesthetic awareness, the issue of the science of art (Kunstwissenschaft [which includes the philosophy of art, sociology and art history, aesthetics, and finally the theory of genres individuals]), as part of exact knowledge, no longer arises. "

"I speak neither art nor history of art, but the current problems of these two" (Hans Belting65, see the conference external link).
The art historian "seeks above all to interpret [the artwork]," [...] "It's always from these pedigrees [speech on the work of art], to those interpretations that are new interpretations "(Roland Recht7) in the context of learning in the critical, historical, therefore, informed by history" of the work as rigorously considered a "world image" (to understand the speech carried by and with the work).

"To go further on my position on this question of pedagogy is that long, for my part being formed by the history of art, I wanted there to be a distinction between transmission of knowledge practices (drawing lessons ...) and what was the education of the eye. Today I think it's a workhorse that is absolutely abandoned. One might ask the question (because we fold many ears on the need for a kind of civic education in school) of perception as an element of civic education. One wonders whether education should not aim to train viewers and therefore perceivers rather than placing them in a relationship simply historicized in relation to heritage. ".

"The history of art, noted in his introduction Heinrich Dilly67 can no longer be content to study the individual works as expressions of aesthetic standards, but it must study the history of changing aesthetic standards themselves. One could broaden this perspective: it must no longer treat each work as an absolute given that would hold its own truth, but seek to understand the historical development of each work through the eyes which are scrutinized. Such an inquiry would necessarily lead to art historian to recognize the relativity of his own historical position. "

.
"The connoisseur might be defined as a Laconic art historian, and the art historian as a loquacious connoisseur" [The connoisseur can be defined as an art historian and laconic art historian as a loquacious connoisseur] .

"[...] How to avoid two parallel cuts, one that defines the work of art only by the subjective pleasure it brings to an individual, and one that forbids any value judgments to see in the implement a historical object and "culture" may be explained by the "Zeitgeist", the social and economic influences, fashion, marketing or psychology creators. ".

"History, memory remain not only materials and realities of the art, but one of its objectives. Art is a mode of access to the historicity of more essential than the reverse: the story as a means of access to art. "
"[...] A debate on the legitimacy and vitality of a meta-history of art [...] shows without doubt that there is no contradiction between history and standard, but any historical reflection begins to build on a theory of art but recall that the consciousness of the historical dimension of art is also supportive of some collective consciousness, which can form around a broader history, the a city, state, of a dynasty, it would help to relativize las prophecies on the death of art history, showing that the periods, environments, cultures, institutions invented at As a thousand and modulations within the historical discourse on art. "
"[...] In his case it was not a ready-made theory that the facts had to adapt at all costs, his approach was not to understand history from the outside. His ideas were developed in an ongoing struggle to interpret and explain to himself and others the experiences of the most intimate contact with the object - the empirical base is broad and substantial. "
"As historians we are" theorists "and" skeptics ", and this especially beautiful in the etymological meaning of these words, which mean looking. Look at historical events not to "judge" not to "defend", but to understand them in their development. This seems the only purpose of art history as a historical discipline. "(Julius von Schlosser, quoted by
"Considering the history of art not as mere art history knowledge, but as the intentions, it is becoming increasingly important from the standpoint of universal history, it takes [...] [...] place alongside conceptions of the world. "(Wilhelm Worringer in 1927 in Gothic Art,
"What is the" art history ", if his methods do not allow to open a perspective on the knowledge issue, to varying degrees, works? [...] The "art history" if it is pure fiction ideological? Should she not confront the "dangers" it would cause by renouncing his magic, becoming an instrument for all specific knowledge, the equal of philosophy, science, the other arts? "
"Whether it's theology, aesthetics, semiotics, it appears that some logocentrism could never be truly overcome when we approached the analysis of the image. "[...]" Perhaps only [some texts by artists and art critics] were able to escape this illusion by maintaining within the language a necessary distance between the order of discourse and the 'work as a referent irreducible. "