What is Art History/Terminology of Art and Design

Art History/Art AppreciationArt historyThe study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style. This includes, Sculpture, Painting, Ceramics, Architecture, Metals, Jewelry. Anything, really.

Art AppreciationThe knowledge and understanding of the universal and timeless qualities that identifies art.

CHRIS BURDEN, Transfixed 1974 Performance

Michelangelo, Pieta, St Peter’sBasilia, 1498-1499.

Art Historians, The Questions They Ask.1. HOW OLD IS IT?2. WHAT IS IT’S STYLE?

Period, Region,Personal3. WHAT IS THE SUBJECT MATTER?4. WHO MADE IT?5. WHO PAID FOR IT?

Matthew Ritche, Installation, AT&T Stadium, Arlington, TX

Terms Art Historians UseTo Describe Art

FORM

● Refers to an object’s shape and structure.

● 2D: a figure paintedon a panel.

● 3D: the statue carved froma marble or wood block

COMPOSITIONHow the artist organizes the forms in an artwork

● Rule of Thirds● Golden Ratio are examples

MATERIAL● Materials can be oil or acrylic paint on

canvas, or wood panels. ● Can be a bronze casting, a marble or

stone carving. ● The material is a great indicator of

time an artwork was made because these were high technologies that were taught in schools during periods of time.

TECHNIQUE/PROCESS● How artists handle that material. ● A bronze lost wax cast is a technique● A marble carving is a technique.

LINE● How points and lines create shapes

and forms that move through space.● Lines can be thin or heavy, short or

long, straight or wavy. ● Use of combinations of types of lines

create the scene. TEXTURE

● Quality of the surface● Rough or smooth.

Terme Boxer, 2nd-3rd Century BCE.

Discobolos, Roman Copy, Original Greek Statue was in Bronze 460-450 BCE

COLOR● Additive color is light, white light

is a combination of all colors in the visible spectrum.

● RGB (RED, GREEN, BLUE)is the color system used for television/computer screens screens.

● Subtractive color is painting, printmaking. Using pigments to mix color. Mixing too many colors together make brown, black, dark colors. Subtracting colors break pigments down into their pure color.

● This could be plant, metals, or mineral based pigment or synthetic pigment. Print media defines this type of color as CMYK (CYAN MAGENTA, YELLOW, BLACK).

PERSPECTIVE● Organizational characteristic

of 2D works. Using systems of lines to define where forms are placed to mimicthree-dimensional space.

FORESHORTENING Foreshortening is the visual effect or optical illusion that causes an object or distance to appear shorter than it actually is because it is angled toward the viewer.

Additionally, an object is often not scaled evenly: a circle often appears as an ellipse and a square can appear as a trapezoid.

SPACE can be the 3D surface occupied by a statue. Space can be illusionistic, when painters are trying to depict an image in 3D space from a 2D image

MASS is bulk, density and weight of matter in space. The difference between a heavy stone cathedral or stone pyramids of one time period vs the light lofty structural components of a Gothic cathedral.

VOLUME is the space that mass organizes, divides, or encloses. The Margins of a 3D object

PROPORTION● Concerns the relationships of

parts of persons, buildings, or objects. This can be evaluated intuitively.

● Rules in figure drawing: The ⅔ - ⅓ principle of the human head.

● It can also be a mathematically-based relationship between elements of a building;for example, the heightof a column vs a diameterof a column.

CASTINGThe use of a mold to create the three-dimensional form. Use of plaster or sand to make a cast around a form to mass produce forms. Lost wax casting, or Ceramic slip casting are examples of the process.

CARVINGSubtractive process.The removal of material from a volume of material with tools.

RELIEFFigures projecting from a background of which they are part. A carving the degree of relief is designated high, low, or sunken. In the bottom picture, the artist cuts the design into the surface so that the highest projecting parts of the image are no higher than the surface itself.

Sunken Relief is also known as Bas Relief

NEXT CLASS: Thursday, January 21, 2016

GET THE BOOKGardener’s Art Through the Ages, 15th Addition. Student Copy ISBN: 978-1-285-83784

BEFORE NEXT CLASS

REVIEW Introduction, pages 1 - 14READ CH1 Art in the Stone Age, pages 15 - 29