Art History For Dummies
by Jesse Bryant Wilder, MA, MAT
Art History For Dummies®
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2007923988
ISBN: 978-0-470-09910-0
Manufactured in the United States of America
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About the Author
Jesse Bryant Wilder is the publisher and editor of the NEXUS interdisciplinary texts
series (www.nexusbooks.org), which includes Romeo & Juliet & the Renaissance; Macbeth
& the Dark Ages; Julius Caesar & Ancient Rome, From Republic to Empire; Antigone & the
Greek World; The Lion in Winter & the Middle Ages; The Harlem Renaissance; and The
Grapes of Wrath & the American Dream. Each NEXUS volume connects the history, art
history, art, music, and science of a major period to a literary work that reflects the
period.
Jesse has garnered numerous writing awards. He has written and edited hundreds of
articles on art, theater, cinema, and music for national and regional magazines and
newspapers, including American Theatre and Film Comment. He is the principal writer for
NEXUS.
Jesse is also the creator of the Web site Europe’s Most Spectacular Festivals
(www.eurofestivals.com) and the co-author of two medical books, Thyroid Disorders and
Stress and Your Body, published by the Cleveland Clinic Press. He is the author of several
screenplays and plays, a published poet and fiction writer, as well as a former lecturer in
the Kent State University Department of English.
Author’s Acknowledgments
I would like to thank several outstanding art historians for their advice and support.
Above all I am grateful to Dr. John Garton from the Cleveland Institute of Art and author
of Grace and Grandeur: The Portraiture of Paolo Veronese, for his highly insightful and
continual support throughout this proj- ect. I would also like to thank Stephen Fliegel,
Assistant Curator of Early Western Art, Cleveland Museum of Art; Dr. David Bernstein,
professor of History and Art History at Sarah Lawrence College; Dr. Francis V. O’Connor,
editor of Art for the Millions: Essays from the 1930s by Artists and Administrators of the
WPA Federal Art Project; and Dr. Jenifer Neils, chair of the Department of Art History and
Art at Case Western Reserve University, all of whom have been a great help to me as
writers and consultants for NEXUS projects. Their past support has rubbed off
significantly on this book.
I am very grateful to my supportive and talented project editor, Elizabeth Kuball, and my
acquisitions editor, Stacy Kennedy, under whose tutelage we developed a top-notch table
of contents. I also want to thank my agent Coleen O’Shea and her colleague Marilyn Allen
from the Allen O’Shea Literary Agency for offering me this project, as well as the editors
of Wiley Publishing for accepting me into their stable of writers.
I want to thank my excellent technical editor, Thomas Larson, PhD, Santa Barbara City
College; Wiley acquisitions director Joyce Pepple, for her tremendous support; and
Michelle Hacker, Carmen Krikorian, and Erin Calligan Mooney, for helping to acquire all
the images in this publication. I would also like to thank publisher Diane Steele for her
support.
In addition, I am grateful to sculptor Brinsley Tyrrell for the information he provided
regarding earthworks artist Robert Smithson, and to Harold B. Nelson, director of the
Long Beach Museum of Art, for sharing his vast knowledge on the Golden Age of
American Enameling with me. Above all I want to thank my wife, Gloria Wilder, who is my
muse, editor, and all-around helper as well as my very warm-blooded arts resource.
Dedication
I dedicate this book to my wife and best friend, Gloria Wilder, a great traveling partner, a
brilliant cook, an inspirational and simply superb middle-school art teacher, and a
painter, ceramist, and photographer with a very discerning eye.
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
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Contents
Title
Introduction
About This Book
Conventions Used in This Book
What You’re Not to Read
Foolish Assumptions
How This Book Is Organized
Icons Used in This Book
Where to Go from Here
Part I : Mankind in the Looking Glass: Art History 101
Chapter 1: Art Tour through the Ages
That’s Ancient History, So Why Dig It Up?
Did the Art World Crash When Rome Fell, or Did It Just Switch Directions?
In the Machine Age, Where Did Art Get Its Power?
The Modern World and the Shattered Mirror
Chapter 2: Why People Make Art and What It All Means
Focusing on the Artist’s Purpose
Detecting Design
Decoding Meaning
Chapter 3: The Major Artistic Periods and Movements
Understanding the Differences between a Period and a Movement
An Overview of the Major Periods
An Overview of the Major Movements
Part II : From Caves to Colosseum: Ancient Art
Chapter 4: Magical Hunters and Psychedelic Cave Artists
Cool Cave Art or Paleolithic Painting: Why Keep It a Secret?
Flirting with Fertility Goddesses
Dominoes for Druids: Stonehenge, Menhirs, and Neolithic Architecture
Chapter 5: Fickle Gods, Warrior Art, and the Birth of Writing: Mesopotamian Art
Climbing toward the Clouds: Sumerian Architecture
The Eyes Have It: Scoping Out Sumerian Sculpture
Playing Puabi’s Lyre
Unraveling the Standard of Ur
Stalking Stone Warriors: Akkadian Art
Stamped in Stone: Hammurabi’s Code
Unlocking Assyrian Art
Babylon Has a Baby: New Babylon
Chapter 6: One Foot in the Tomb: Ancient Egyptian Art
Ancient Egypt 101
The Palette of Narmer and the Unification of Egypt
The Egyptian Style
Excavating Old Kingdom Architecture
The In-Between Period and Middle Kingdom Realism
New Kingdom Art
Chapter 7: Greek Art, the Olympian Ego, and the Inventors of the Modern World
Mingling with the Minoans: Snake Goddesses, Minotaurs, and Bull Jumpers
Greek Sculpture: Stark Symmetry to a Delicate Balance
Figuring Out Greek Vase Painting
Rummaging through Ruins: Greek Architecture
Greece without Borders: Hellenism
Chapter 8: Etruscan and Roman Art: It’s All Greek to Me!
The Mysterious Etruscans
Romping through the Roman Republic
Part III : Art after the Fall of Rome: a.d. 500– a.d. 1760
Chapter 9: The Graven Image: Early Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic Art
The Rise of Constantinople
Early Christian Art in the West
Byzantine Art Meets Imperial Splendor
Islamic Art: Architectural Pathways to God
Chapter 10: Mystics, Marauders, and Manuscripts: Medieval Art
Irish Light: Illuminated Manuscripts
Charlemagne: King of His Own Renaissance
Weaving and Unweaving the Battle of Hastings: The Bayeux Tapestry
Romanesque Architecture: Churches That Squat
Romanesque Sculpture
Relics and Reliquaries: Miraculous Leftovers
Gothic Grandeur: Churches That Soar
Stained-Glass Storytelling
Gothic Sculpture
Italian Gothic
Gothic Painting: Cimabue, Duccio, and Giotto
Tracking the Lady and the Unicorn: The Mystical Tapestries of Cluny
Chapter 11: Born-Again Culture: The Early and High Renaissance
The Early Renaissance in Central Italy
The High Renaissance
Chapter 12: Venetian Renaissance, Late Gothic, and the Renaissance in the North
A Gondola Ride through the Venetian Renaissance
Late Gothic: Northern Naturalism
Northern Exposure: The Renaissance in the Netherlands and Germany
Chapter 13: Art That’ll Stretch Your Neck: Mannerism
Pontormo: Front and Center
Bronzino’s Background Symbols and Scene Layering
Parmigianino: He’s Not a Cheese!
Arcimboldo: À la Carte Art
El Greco: Stretched to the Limit
Finding Your Footing in Giulio Romano’s Palazzo Te
Chapter 14: When the Renaissance Went Baroque
Annibale Carracci: Heavenly Ceilings
Shedding Light on the Subject: Caravaggio and His Followers
The Ecstasy and the Ecstasy: Bernini Sculpture
Embracing Baroque Architecture
Dutch and Flemish Realism
French Flourish and Baroque Light Shows
In the Limelight with Caravaggio: The Spanish Golden Age
Chapter 15: Going Loco with Rococo
Breaking with the Baroque: Antoine Watteau
Fragonard and Boucher: Lush, Lusty, and Lavish
Flying High: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Rococo Lite: The Movement in England
Part IV : The Industrial Revolution and Artistic Devolution: 1760–1900
Chapter 16: All Roads Lead Back to Rome and Greece: Neoclassical Art
Jacques-Louis David: The King of Neoclassicism
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres: The Prince of Neoclassical Portraiture
Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun: Nice and Natural
Canova and Houdon: Greek Grace and Neoclassical Sculpture
Chapter 17: Romanticism: Reaching Within and Acting Out
Kissing Isn’t Romantic, but Having a Heart Is
Way Out There with William Blake and Henry Fuseli: Mythologies of the Mind
Inside Out: Caspar David Friedrich
The Revolutionary French Romantics: Gericault and Delacroix
Francisco Goya and the Grotesque
J. M. W. Turner Sets the Skies on Fire
Chapter 18: What You See Is What You Get: Realism
Courbet and Daumier: Painting Peasants and Urban Blight
The Barbizon School and the Great Outdoors
Keeping It Real in America
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: Medieval Visions and Painting Literature
Chapter 19: First Impressions: Impressionism
M & M: Manet and Monet
Pretty Women and Painted Ladies: Renoir and Degas
Morisot and Cassatt: The Female Impressionists
Chapter 20: Making Their Own Impression: The Post-Impressionists
You’ve Got a Point: Pointillism and Georges-Pierre Seurat
Red-Light Art: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Tracking the “Noble Savage”: Paul Gauguin
Painting Energy: Vincent van Gogh
Love Cast in Stone: Rodin and Claudel
The Mask behind the Face: James Ensor
The Hills Are Alive with Geometry: Paul Cézanne
Art Nouveau: When Art and Technology Eloped
Fairy-Tale Fancies and the Sand-Castle Cathedral of Barcelona: Antoni Gaudí
Part V : Twentieth-Century Art and Beyond
Chapter 21: From Fauvism to Expressionism
Fauvism: Colors Fighting like Animals
German Expressionism: Form Based on Feeling
Austrian Expressionism: From Dream to Nightmare
Chapter 22: Cubist Puzzles and Finding the Fast Lane with the Futurists
Cubism: All Views At Once
Futurism: Art That Broke the Speed Limit
Chapter 23: What You See Is What You Don’t Get: From Nonobjective Art to Abstract Expressionism
Suprematism: Kazimir Malevich’s Reinvention of Space
Constructivism: Showing Off Your Skeleton
Piet Mondrian and the De Stijl Movement
Dada Turns the World on Its Head
Surrealism and Disjointed Dreams
My House Is a Machine: Modernist Architecture
Abstract Expressionism: Fireworks on Canvas
Chapter 24: Anything-Goes Art: Fab Fifties and Psychedelic Sixties
Artsy Cartoons: Pop Art
Fantastic Realism
Less-Is-More Art: Rothko, Newman, Stella, and Others
Photorealism
Performance Art and Installations
Chapter 25: Photography: From a Science to an Art
The Birth of Photography
From Science to Art
Alfred Stieglitz: Reliving the Moment
Henri Cartier-Bresson and the “Decisive Moment”
Group f/64: Edward Weston and Ansel Adams
Dorothea Lange: Depression to Dust Bowl
Margaret Bourke-White: From Smokestacks and Steel Mills to Buchenwald and the Death of Gandhi
Fast-Forward: The Next Generation
Chapter 26: The New World: Postmodern Art
From Modern Pyramids to Titanium Twists: Postmodern Architecture
Making It or Faking It? Postmodern Photography and Painting
Installation Art and Earth Art
Glow-in-the-Dark Bunnies and Living, Genetic Art
Part VI : The Part of Tens
Chapter 27: Ten Must-See Art Museums
The Louvre (Paris)
The Uffizi (Florence)
The Vatican Museums (Rome)
The National Gallery (London)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)
The Prado (Madrid)
The Hermitage (St. Petersburg)
The Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam)
British Museum (London)
The Kunsthistorisches (Vienna)
Chapter 28: Ten Great Books by Ten Great Artists
On Painting, by Leonardo da Vinci
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, by Giorgio Vasari
Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo
The Journal of Eugène Delacroix
Van Gogh’s Letters
Rodin on Art, by Paul Gsell
Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) Almanac, edited by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc
Concerning the Spiritual in Art, by Wassily Kandinsky
The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait
Hundertwasser Architecture: For a More Human Architecture in Harmony with Nature, by Friedensreich
Hundertwasser
Chapter 29: Ten Brushstrokes That Shook the World
The Man Who Mainstreamed Oil Paint: Jan van Eyck
What’s That Smoke? Leonardo Da Vinci
Lost and Found in Rembrandt’s Shadows
Does the Guy Need Glasses? Monet and Impressionism
Pinpointing Seurat’s Style
The Frenzied Brush: Van Gogh
Paint It Blue: Picasso
Painting Musical Colors: Kandinsky
Paint-Throwing Pollock
Squeegee Painting and Richter
Appendix: Online Resources
: Further Reading
Introduction
M y goal in writing Art History For Dummies was to make it as useful, fun to read, and
handy as a good travel guide. This book covers a lot of art history, but not everything. I
focus on the Western art tradition and cover some art and art movements that other art
history books neglect.
Most art-history books these days weigh in at about 10 pounds. I made this book leaner
so you could stick it in your backpack and carry it to class without feeling weighted
down, or so you can take it on a long trip as a guidebook or carry it around a museum as
a handy resource.
As you read Art History For Dummies, you’ll journey around the world and travel back in
time. Reading many of the chapters is like going on a vacation to an exotic land in a past
life. You can hobnob with a Byzantine empress or an Egyptian pharaoh, attend the
ancient Olympics (the games were often depicted on Greek vases), or stroll through the
Ishtar Gate in ancient Babylon.
Why do some people study art history and others don’t? Probably because high schools
don’t often teach art history and colleges usually offer it as an elective, unless you’re an
art major. But art history is the visual side of history — they’re sister subjects. Studying
art history and history together is like adding pictures to text. It makes the overall story
clearer and more interesting. In Art History For Dummies, I often splice history and art
history together, giving you a context for the art.
Some people believe art history is a high-brow subject. With all those Italian and French
terms, it just has to be snobby, right? I disagree. I believe art history is an
everyman/everywoman subject because it’s about mankind’s common cultural heritage.
Art history mirrors human evolution. It shows mankind through the ages, from cave to
castle, jungle hut to urban high-rise. Each age for the last 30,000 years has left an imprint
of itself in its art.
About This Book
In this book, I’m your tour guide through the world of art history. The tour features the
greatest art and architecture ever created. On the journey, I point out the key features of
these works and structures; often, I suggest possible interpretations that I hope inspire
you to make your own interpretations. I also add spicy anecdotes and colorful facts to
make every stop on the tour fun.
This book is a reference — it’s something you can turn to again and again, dipping into it
to find whatever piece of information is most critical to you at the time. You don’t have
to read it cover to cover. Use the table of contents and index to find the subjects that
you’re interested in and go from there. Of course, if you want to start with Chapter 1 and
read through to the end, you can — but it isn’t a requirement to understand the
information in these pages.
Conventions Used in This Book
The conventions used in this book are pretty straightforward. When I introduce new
terms, I put them in italics and define them in context. I put e-mail addresses and Web
addresses in monofont so you can spot them more easily and know exactly what to
type.
When this book was printed, some Web addresses may have needed to break across two
lines of text. If that happened, rest assured that I haven’t put in any extra characters
(such as hyphens) to indicate the break. So, when using one of these Web addresses, just
type in exactly what you see in this book, pretending as though the line break doesn’t
exist.
What You’re Not to Read
Here’s a novel idea: Don’t read anything you’re not interested in. If you think Egyptian
tombs are dreary, or if Postmodernism makes you dizzy, skip those subjects. You don’t
have to remember everything you read, either. After all, I’m not testing you on any of this.
You can also skip anything in a sidebar — a gray box of text — without missing the meat
of what I’m covering. Sidebars often have interesting information, but they aren’t
essential to the topic at hand.
Foolish Assumptions
You don’t need to have taken remedial art history or even studied high school art to
understand and benefit from this book. This is Art History 101 and there are no
prerequisites! I assume you’ve at least heard of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Ceiling. But if you haven’t, it’s no biggie — you have now.
You don’t need any background in art history or art. I give you the background you need
as I go along.
I also assume that anything with the word history attached to it may scare you. It
conjures up visions of memorizing dates and isms in high school. That’s okay. I give
some dates and define some isms, but I don’t dwell on that side of art history. I prefer to
get into the fun stuff. Instead of putting dates and isms in the foreground of the subject,
in this book I put the story of art front and center. Bottom line: You won’t have to
memorize dates. In fact, you won’t have to memorize anything!
How This Book Is Organized
I break the chapters of Art History For Dummies into parts, described in the following
sections.
Part I: Mankind in the Looking Glass: Art History 101
Chapter 1 helps you decide which chapters you want to read first and which chapters
you may want to skip, at least for the time being. I’ve arranged the chapters in
chronological order. But you don’t have to follow that order; you can jump from
Surrealism to cave art if you like, or from the Renaissance to Impressionism.
In this part, I also introduce you to the tools and art concepts that will help you navigate
this book and the world of art and art history. These tools and concepts include
comparing and contrasting, looking at balance and pattern, reading visual narrative,
sorting out symbolism, and figuring out the artist’s intention.
Finally, in Chapter 3, I give you a quick rundown of the major art periods and
movements, from prehistoric art to Postmodernism and everything in between. You may
want to periodically refer back to this chapter as a quick reference to see how the periods
fit together and influence each other.
Part II: From Caves to Colosseum: Ancient Art
In this part, I look at Stone Age art and its roots in ritual and primitive religion. Next, I
examine the religious and political art of the first civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Then I explore ancient Minoan and Greek vase and mural painting, sculpture, and
architecture and tell you how Greek culture laid the foundation for the modern world. I
show you how Etruscan and Roman art are in some ways outgrowths of Greek art. In my
coverage of Roman art, I explain how closely art, architecture, and politics can be
interwoven.
Part III: Art after the Fall of Rome: A.D. 500–A.D. 1760
Classical art tumbled with Rome in A.D. 476. New religious-centered art styles emerged in
both Europe and Asia. In this part, I examine the glittering Byzantine art of the Eastern
Roman Empire (which outlived the Western Empire by about 1,000 years), early Christian
art in Europe, and Islamic art. I follow the evolution of religious art in Europe during the
Middle Ages, focusing on manuscript illuminations, relief sculpture, architecture,
tapestries, and painting. Then I explore the rebirth of classical art during the Renaissance
and the art traditions that grew out of this rebirth: Mannerism, Baroque, and Rococo.
Part IV: The Industrial Revolution and Artistic Devolution:
1760–1900
The Industrial Revolution transformed the world — and the way artists viewed and
depicted it. In this part, I show you how some artists tried to rewind the clock — their art
was a graceful throwback to classicism: Some grounded themselves in the glories of
unsullied nature, while others soared beyond the stench of industrial mills on the wings
of their imaginations. The Industrial Revolution also jumpstarted sweeping political
turnovers like the American and French revolutions. I show you how Romantic and
Realistic art reflected and often encouraged independence movements, democracy, and
social change.