Art Fundamentals Summary
± Art history is an academic discipline that seeks to reconstruct the social, cultural, and economic contexts in which an artwork was created. The basic goal of this work is to arrive at an understanding of art and its meaning in its original historical context. Art historians rely on a variety of documents and sources in order to conduct formal and contextual analyses.
± Art historians generally analyze works of art in two ways that are distinct from one another, but also interrelated. These two modes of analysis are called formal analysis and contextual analysis.
± Direct examination of the work of art is ideal because much is lost when we look at a reproduction rather than an original object ± In addition to understanding context, art historians seek to describe the formal qualities of artworks. Important terms used to discuss the formal qualities of an artwork include: line, shape and form, perspective, color, texture, and composition.
± There are three primary colors—red, blue, and yellow—from which all other colors are produced. ± Black and white are not hues; they are called neutrals.
± Artists use the techniques of hatching and crosshatching to shade objects and create an illusion of three-dimensionality ± Two-dimensional art processes and techniques are those that are created on a flat plane. They have height and width, but not significant depth.
± Sculpture is created in four basic ways: carving, modeling, casting, and construction ± Artists throughout time have worked in a variety of media, including drawing, printmaking, painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media, performance, craft and folk art, and architecture.
± An important architectural development was the use of the post-and-lintel construction technique in which a long stone or wooden beam is placed horizontally across upright posts. The famous Greek Parthenon is an example of post- and-lintel construction
± Art historians generally analyze works of art in two ways that are distinct from one another, but also interrelated. These two modes of analysis are called formal analysis and contextual analysis.
± Direct examination of the work of art is ideal because much is lost when we look at a reproduction rather than an original object ± In addition to understanding context, art historians seek to describe the formal qualities of artworks. Important terms used to discuss the formal qualities of an artwork include: line, shape and form, perspective, color, texture, and composition.
± There are three primary colors—red, blue, and yellow—from which all other colors are produced. ± Black and white are not hues; they are called neutrals.
± Artists use the techniques of hatching and crosshatching to shade objects and create an illusion of three-dimensionality ± Two-dimensional art processes and techniques are those that are created on a flat plane. They have height and width, but not significant depth.
± Sculpture is created in four basic ways: carving, modeling, casting, and construction ± Artists throughout time have worked in a variety of media, including drawing, printmaking, painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media, performance, craft and folk art, and architecture.
± An important architectural development was the use of the post-and-lintel construction technique in which a long stone or wooden beam is placed horizontally across upright posts. The famous Greek Parthenon is an example of post- and-lintel construction