Art History 2nd Ed. (The Basics)

Description: Now in its second edition, this volume is an accessible introduction to the history of art. Using an international range of examples, it provides the reader with a toolkit of concepts, ideas and methods relevant to understanding art history. This new edition is fully updated with colour illustrations, increased coverage of non-western art and extended discussions of contemporary art theory. It introduces key ideas, issues and debates, exploring questions such as: What is art and what is meant by art history? What approaches and methodologies are used to interpret and evaluate art? How have ideas regarding medium, gender, identity and difference informed representation? What perspectives can psychoanalysis, semiotics and social art histories bring to the study of the discipline? How are the processes of postcolonialism, decolonisation and globalisation changing approaches to art history? Complete with helpful subject summaries, a glossary, suggestions for future reading and guidance on relevant image archives, this book is an ideal starting point for anyone studying art history as well as general readers with an interest in the subject. Review: The second edition of Art History: The Basics continues the authors' investments in making art history accessible to a variety of 21st-century readers. Clear and cogent, it reconsiders who and what "the basics" of art history are by freshening up the canon of intellectual debates, methodologies, and interpretations that form art history's discourse in the west and incorporating more recent and urgent conversations about gender, sexual orientation, de-colonialization, and "otherness" that continue to impact the discipline in radical and transformative ways. Predicating a text on a transformative model, as Newall and Pooke have done, reminds readers that art history is an inherently living discourse demanding new revisions as it adheres to new and changing contexts now and into the future. Jordan Amirkhani, Professorial Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art History, American University, Washington, DC Few art history textbooks today address so comprehensively the underlying issues and histories of art history the way this book does. Without a doubt, this book is the new companion of every serious art history professor and instructor. May F. El-Hage, art historian and curator, Beirut, Lebanon Art History: The Basics is a highly practical source book for students and scholars, which ambitiously attempts to answer the question: 'What is art history?'. Covering a broad spectrum of key philosophical debates, it is nevertheless written in clear, accessible language. The subject is refreshingly presented as evolving and dynamic and the new edition includes sections on urgent contemporary issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement and recent global perspectives. This is a welcome addition to the bookshelf for students, art historians and general readers. Katie Hill, Programme Director, MA Modern and Contemporary Asian Art, Sotheby's Institute of Art Newall and Pooke completed the second edition of Art History: The Basics in the middle of the global outbreak of the pandemic. In such a daunting and critical moment, this book first and foremost addresses two urgent questions: What is the relevance of art to the evolution of our civilization? How has art history been shaped by the turbulent events in human society? At a time when the history is being rewritten, Newall and Pooke's book reinforces the necessity, more than ever, of understanding that art, as a form of expression, enables us to explore new ways of perceiving the world, and that artists, as creators, shaped and advanced art history: so it expands and continues. Kejia Wu, Faculty Member, Claremont Graduate University; Columnist, the Chinese Edition of the Financial Times. The new and revised edition of Newall and Pooke's textbook not only introduces the reader to what actually constitutes the history of art, but also shows how the discipline has developed and changed through critical interventions into the subject from the social history of art through to postcolonialism. As such, it is essential reading for students studying the history of art or anyone else with an interest in the subject. Warren Carter, Lecturer in Art History, The Open University, UK Contents: Introduction to the second edition 1 Art histories and art theories Introduction What is art? What is art history? The classical concept of 'art' Plato's idea of mimesis Issues arising from art as imitation Medieval art and its interpretation Art as imitation in the Renaissance Giorgio Vasari and the origins of western art history Early writing on art Academies and the 'Hierarchy of Genres' Winckelmann, art history and the western Enlightenment Art as an expression of the 'will to create' Aesthetic comparison and contrast Connoisseurship and art history The limits of connoisseurship Bell's theory of 'significant form' The theory of art as expression Objections to Collingwood's theory Art as abstraction or idea Art understood as 'family resemblance' The Institutional Theory of Art Art history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Art history and the 1930s diaspora British Art History, the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes The 'New Art History' Beyond the 'New Art History' Summary Further reading 2 Formalism, modernism and modernity Introduction Formalist art theories and the avant-garde The formal components of painting and design Abstraction as process Formal language, abstraction and sculpture Observations on formal analysis Formalism as art practice and art theory Roger Fry and a British formalist tradition Avant-garde art and 'the crisis of taste' Greenberg and the dominance of modernist theory Modernism and the White Cube hang Objections to Greenberg's modernism Art after Greenberg Summary Further reading 3 Marxist and social art histories Introduction Who was Karl Marx? Art as ideology Contextual analyses David and the Paris Salon Reactions and responses to the Horatii The Horatii as political metaphor Iconography and iconology Iconology and 'intrinsic meaning' Art, alienation and 'species being' Art as commodity and a 'deposit of a social relationship' Superstructure and infrastructure Art and agency - 'life creates consciousness, not consciousness life' David's Horatii as a revolutionary manifesto The Horatii as a canonical painting of the French Revolution Tendency and social commitment - what should art and artists do? Malevich's Black Square and the 'zero of forms' Social interpretation and meaning Art and the 'social command': Soviet Socialist Realism and its legacies Social realism in Europe Critical theory, the 'Frankfurt School' and Gerhard Richter T. J. Clark and a British Marxist tradition New social and political constellations Summary Further reading 4 Semiotics and poststructuralism Introduction Introducing language and linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure Charles Sanders Peirce Developments of semiosis Art and semiotics Signs and representations of reality Modalities of the sign Challenging 'reality' Whose 'reality'? Structural analysis Syntagmatic analysis of images Discourse and power Discourse and 'metanarratives' Paradigmatic oppositions Binary oppositions and art Markedness Figurative language Social semiotics Poststructuralism and its critics Summary Further reading 5 Psychoanalysis, art and the fractured self Introduction Freud, psychoanalysis and psycho-sexual development The Oedipus complex The psyche's tripartite structure Instinctual energies, creativity and sublimation Surrealism and psychoanalysis Gombrich and psychoanalysis Klein, Stokes, Fuller and the 'Infant-Mother' paradigm Lacan: the mirror stage; the symbolic, the imaginary and the real Feminist challenges to the Freudian and Lacanian psyche Creativity, sadism and perversion A Freudian postscript: from symptoms to symbols Art and abjection Abjection, ambivalence and contemporary art Summary Further reading 6 Representations of gender, sex and sexualities Introduction Defining sex, gender and sexuality Classical representation of the human form Visualising gender difference Gender, status and power Challenges to gender boundaries Viewing the nude The gaze: the pleasure of looking Mary Cassatt's challenge to the male gaze Caught in the act: subverting the pleasure of the gaze Feminism and art history Feminist interventions in art Expanding feminism Contemporary art history and feminism Gender perspectives on contemporary art Developments in gender studies New paradigms of gender, sex and sexuality Queer theory and LGBTQIA+ Beyond gender: the body as sensorium and spectacle Summary Further reading 7 Art and art histories since the 1960s Introduction Art and 'paradigm shifts' Duchamp's readymades American hegemony and a new order Death of the author Art, objecthood and theatricality Art as commodity and concept The Institutional Theory of Art Limitations of the Institutional Theory Lyotard and the death of the 'metanarratives' New countercultures for the 1960s and 1970s Photography, cultural reproduction and oppositional postmodern cultures Approaching the postmodern and late modern: how soon is now? The contemporary as 'critical pluralism' Visual cultures and 'double-coding' Baudrillard and the four orders of the simulacra 'The End of History'? Relational Aesthetics Summary Further Reading 8 Postcolonialism, globalisation and art histor