Art History. Site Index. Art History Resources for Students, Enthusiasts, Artists and Educators - Artist Biographies - Art Timelines - Images and Picture Galleries. Art history. As a term, art history (also history of art) encompasses several methods of studying the visual arts; in common usage referring to works of art and architecture. Aspects of the discipline overlap. As the art historian Ernst Gombrich once observed, "the field of art history [is] much like Caesar's Gaul, divided in three parts inhabited by three different, though not necessarily hostile tribes: (i) the connoisseurs, (ii) the critics, and (iii) the academic art historians".[2] Art history is not only a biographical endeavor. Art historians often root their studies in the scrutiny of individual objects.
The historical backbone of the discipline is a celebratory chronology of beautiful creations commissioned by public or religious bodies or wealthy individuals in western Europe. Definition[edit] Methodologies[edit] Art historians employ a number of methods in their research into the qualities, nature and history of objects. Art historians often examine work in the context of its time. History of art.
The history of art is the history of any activity or product made by humans in a visual form for aesthetical or communicative purposes, expressing ideas, emotions or, in general, a worldview. Over time visual art has been classified in diverse ways, from the medieval distinction between liberal arts and mechanical arts, to the modern distinction between fine arts and applied arts, or to the many contemporary definitions, which define art as a manifestation of human creativity. The subsequent expansion of the list of principal arts in the 20th century reached to nine: architecture, dance, sculpture, music, painting, poetry (described broadly as a form of literature with aesthetic purpose or function, which also includes the distinct genres of theatre and narrative), film, photography and comics.
At the conceptual overlap of terms between plastic arts and visual arts were added design and graphic arts. Prehistory[edit] Paleolithic[edit] Neolithic[edit] [edit] Ancient art[edit]