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WHAT TO EXPECT FROM YOUR FIRST ART HISTORY COURSE Second Edition

Dear Reader, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, a popular art history textbook, opens with these words: “Except when referring to the modern academic discipline, people do not often juxtapose the words ‘art’ and ‘history.’ They tend to think of history as the record and interpretation of past human actions, particularly social and political actions. Most think of art, quite correctly, as part of the present – as something people can see and touch. Of course, people cannot see or touch history’s vanished human events, but a visible, tangible artwork is a kind of persisting event. One or more artists made it at a certain time and in a specific place, even if no one today just knows who, when, where, or why. … Art historians seek to achieve a full understanding not only of why these ‘persisting events’ of human history look the way they do, but also of why the artistic events happened at all.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Detail from Girl Reading (c. 1890)

I wrote this short guide to help those who are new to art history prepare for their courses. As a student of art history, you will learn how to decipher the pinnacle of human expression, and begin to understand how art from previous centuries forms a crucial part of the visual world that exists around you today. This guide goes over the types of courses that you will encounter and offers tips for studying, writing, and research. Art history will undoubtedly be one of the most writing and memory-intensive courses that you will take in college, but it will prove, I hope, to be extremely rewarding, as no other field offers so beautiful a history of the world as this one does.

Good luck!

Amy Caravaggista.com [email protected]

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A NOTE FOR STUDENTS }

I have compiled a page listing the FAQs that I have received from art history undergraduates over the years. It may be especially useful for those of you who are undecided about (or struggling with) art history as a major or career path.

Check it out.

TYPES OF ART HISTORY COURSES

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rt history survey courses aim to introduce students to a broad range of art from across a predefined time period and/or region. Survey courses are large lecture style classes led by a professor or advanced graduate student. Typically, these courses are held twice a week and each session lasts about an hour. These types of classes are memorization-intensive and rely on multiple choice, short answer, and/or short essay tests to test your knowledge about the course material. Surveys are often (but not always) accompanied by discussion sections. Discussion sections help to break the class into smaller groups and are ordinarily led by a graduate student TA. (If your survey class is small enough, you might not have or need a discussion section.) The content and scope of sections varies by class and university. Actively participating in section is part of your overall grade for the course. Participation can include simple discussion, writing a term paper, turning in reading responses, or going on class fieldtrips. Upper level lecture courses are almost always smaller than survey courses and often require the prerequisite of a survey course or two before you can enroll. While survey courses show students a range of art, upper-level lectures restrict their scope and focus on art from specific artists within a specific time period. For example, an upper-level lecture on Baroque art in Spain might keep lectures limited to a list of artists such as Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Zurbarán, Jusepe de Ribera, and Francesco Ribalta. Students might be given essay exams and/or a term paper and can usually expect a heavier, more advanced reading load than what is given in survey courses. In order to be eligible to enroll in Seminar classes, you will probably have to take prerequisites that are comprised of both survey and upper-level lecture courses. Seminars are small classes (often comprised of fifteen people or less) that explore a single artist or art historical topic in depth through discussion, reading, and writing. In most instances, the completion of a term research paper is the main assignment for the course. All of the above can vary from university to university, so always check with your department regarding course requirements and bring any concerns you have about expectations to your professor or TA.

A NOTE ON MEMORIZATION

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f you ask an art history major what the bane of their academic existence is, they will probably say

“Memorization!” Because most art history departments structure undergraduate coursework to be increasingly complex as you move up in class level, survey classes and upper level lectures are often almost entirely memorization-based. Professors of some upper level lecture classes will include essay exams or brief research papers in addition to testing your knowledge (memory) of the works and artists shown. The hope is that memorization will make you aware of the shifts artists’ styles and iconography throughout history, and that what you’ve memorized about individual artists’ works will be enhanced by the information presented in your lectures and readings. Memorization is stressed early on because you need to know the information presented in order to be successful in the next level of coursework, seminar classes. Once you have taken your survey and upper level lecture classes, you move on to the meat of art history — analysis — by taking seminars. Seminars are in depth examinations of an art historical topic; they focus heavily on reading, discussion, and writing. For instance, if you enroll in a seminar on Caravaggio’s art, there will likely be an assumption by your professor that you are familiar with Italian Renaissance art & history and the genesis of the Baroque movement. Your professor might have one or two sessions where they give a brief overview in order to make sure everyone is on the same page, but this is not always the case — and when it isn’t the case, this is when your memory and your prerequisites (or at least a willingness to study hard) become especially vital. To be successful in a seminar, you need to be able to make connections between artists and works of art and make arguments about stylistic development and iconography, and the best way to do this quickly while in the midst of a class discussion is to go through the mental “image bank” that you have developed through memorization. Adapted from this post on the Caravaggista Tumblr: http://bit.ly/ARTHmemorization

Study Tips | PAGE 1 Keep your syllabus close

Syllabi contain important due dates, test dates, and professor and TA contact information and office hours. They also list the topics that will be covered during each class session and the readings that are required or recommended for each session.

E Use flashcards

Use flashcards to review for tests. You will probably need to memorize the artist, title, date, and/or location of a work of art for your exams. It’s wise to jot down bullet points about a work’s important historical circumstances, such as their patron, whether or not the work was embroiled in controversy, etc., as these could come up in a question.

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Pay attention to your textbook

Pay attention to bold italicized or underlined terms in your textbook and review any terms you don’t know. While you could be tested on terms, it’s also useful to know them because you will hear them constantly and likely encounter them again in other courses.

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Don’t be shy

If you don’t understand a concept or simply have a general question, don’t hesitate to ask your professor or TA for help.

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STUDY TIPS| PAGE 2 | MAKE A Style Sheet Style sheets are a table comprised of artists, their time period/movement (e.g., 1600s/Baroque), their style (e.g., smooth brushwork, dramatic color), the kind of art they specialized in (e.g., genre scenes), and examples of their work. It’s a good idea to take this method a step further and add a column for ‘history’ – a catchall where you can list important events, people (patrons, religious/ political leaders, etc.), and ideologies that shaped the work of each artist listed. Here is an example of one of my style sheets from AP Art History. We were studying art from the 1700s, so this style sheet, which has artists from France, England, and Italy, shows me at a glance when each artist lived, how their styles differed, and it gives me a couple examples of their artwork to refer to. Artist

Style

Examples

pastel colors, fluffy brushwork, specialized Embarkation for Cythera (1717, Jean Antoine Watteau in fête galante, individual ‘charming’ style Louvre), L’Indifferent (1717), (1684–1721) and Two Cousins (1716) Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806)

Utopian outdoors, softness, curvaceous, The Bathers (1765), The asymmetrical, utopian aristocratic life, used Swing (1767), and The Confession of Love (1771) various angles

William Hogarth (1697 – 1764)

painted in series, moralist, frivolous pursuits The Marriage Settlement (c. can be wrong, humorous, interior stage-like 1743) and Breakfast Scene from settings Marriage à-la-mode

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon earthy colors (especially dark greens and Chardin browns), painted everyday life of the upper middle class, simple and refined paintings (1699-1779) Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778)

nightmarish imaginary settings, incredible use of shadows and perspective, etchings, series, inspiration from Roman architecture

Soap Bubbles (c. 1733/4), Back from the Market (1739), and Saying Grace (La Benedicite) (1740)

Carceri d’invenzione series (c. 1749-60)

Study Tips | PAGE 3

E Do the reading.

Art history involves reading about art as much as it does looking at art. That being said, don’t expect all your readings to be written by art historians because art history is an interdisciplinary field. Your readings for class do more than just give you supplementary material to coursework; they help enrich your analytical skills. Apart from doing the readings for your own intellectual development, there are “practical” reasons to do them. Your professor might pull test questions from your readings with or without warning you. Your TA might ask the class to discuss the readings during section, and if you’re called on and haven’t done them, it’s awkward, but it also tells your TA that you don’t care about the material enough to read whether or not that’s true.

If you just don’t have time to do all the reading required of you …

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Learn how to skim or speed read.

In higher level art history courses, reading can become too voluminous for you to juggle with your other coursework. At the least, read the introduction and conclusion paragraphs and then the first and last sentence of every paragraph in between. This will give you a general idea of what the author’s overall point is. You might want to take a class on speed reading or come up with personalized annotation techniques to help you remember key points.

STUDY TIPS| PAGE 4 | A note about EXAMS Professors want to know that you’ve done more than memorize names and dates; they want you to be able to enhance this information with the historical circumstances surrounding an artwork’s commission and creation. Exams are the way that they check to see if you have absorbed the course material. Testing methods vary by professor, but generally, there are some universal question types that professors love to use. In addition to multiple choice and fillin-the-blank questions, you can expect to encounter some or all of the following:

Common Exam Question Types

E Slide IDs

Identify the work of art, artist, date, location of the work, and/or the artist’s nationality.

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You will be shown a work of art and asked to make an educated guess as to its date, iconography, and a possible artist.

Unknowns

E Contrast

Compare & contrast a set of images which may be different in time period, artist, medium, purpose, etc. Both images may or may not be provided; your professor might show you one image and ask that you compare/contrast it from memory to an image that you have studied in class. These questions may or may not be timed.

E Short answer

Short answer questions usually ask for a brief response to a given prompt, image, or set of images. Depending on the scope of the question and your professor’s methods, they might be timed.

E Essay exams

Essay exams require you to respond to one or more prompts within a certain amount of time. Prompts are usually accompanied by images projected on a screen, but some might ask you to rely on your memory. The best way to practice is to set a timer for the length of time you will have for each essay and write using images from your study guide and readings. Some professors will give you sample questions to practice with.

Compare /

Compare/Contrast, Short Answer questions, and Essays are great opportunities to bring in material from your readings.

Tips for Test Day

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Understand the big picture

E Be well rested

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Make a list of key historical events, political changes, and philosophies that have been discussed in your course lectures and readings and try to relate these facts to artworks discussed in class (which might be as easy as reviewing your notes). You should also make a Style Sheet for each of the artistic movements and artists that you’re studying. It is never a good idea to go into any exam without a good night’s rest. You will need to rely heavily on your memory for slide identifications and comparisons and you need to be able to discuss your readings and class lectures, so rest is important. You should try to start studying well in advance of your test date so that you will be prepared, and able to sleep and relax, the night before.

Review troublesome artworks before the test

Sometimes the information you need to memorize for a test will refuse to stick in your mind. Make flashcards of these works and all related information and review them frequently in the hours before your exam. You might want to ask a friend or classmate to test you on these particular images. The artworks could also come to mind more readily if you can identify a unique feature or amusing detail of each work in question.

Do a “Mind Dump” when you get your exam

The minute that you are allowed to begin your test, do a “mind dump” of everything that you can remember or are afraid you will forget: names of artists and artworks, patrons, dates, gallery locations, names of important historical events or texts, key points from the readings, etc. You may or may not end up going back to this list during the test, but it could prove useful.

Research & Writing Tips

E Use jstor.

If your university has a subscription to JSTOR, use it! JSTOR has a vast digital collection of major art historical journals and articles. If your university isn’t a JSTOR subscriber, you can use JSTOR’s free “Register &

Read” program to access certain items for free. It may also be beneficial for you to take JSTOR’s free, self-guided Research Basics course. Use Artstor and the Google Art Project to find and explore works of art in incredible detail and discover new artists and styles. In order to use Artstor, you must obtain access through a subscribing institution. The Google Art Project is freely available. By having an account on either site, you can create customized image galleries that you can share with others. Each site has an impressive database of images, but only Artstor allows you to download images.

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artstor and The google art project

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Use RefWorks or a similar research management tool to manage and creUse refworks ate your bibliographies automatically for you when writing research papers. (or something similar) Using a tool like this will spare you the grief of having to untangle disorganized citations and research notes during and after the writing process.

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Learn the Chicago manual of style.

Learn the Chicago Manual of Style if you are planning to be an art history major or minor. Chicago is the standard style guide of choice for our field and knowing how to use it will save you time and effort when you have writing assignments.

Tips for Writing an Open-Ended Research Paper | PAGE 1

E Identify a topic

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Come up with an argument

You might receive an open-ended research paper assignment at some point during your studies. Don’t panic if you don’t know how to write an art history essay. The first step is to identify a topic for your paper. What artist or theme interests you the most and is relevant to your course? For example, with a broad topic like “feminist art history,” you could examine lots of different artists and paintings; with something more specific like “Artemisia Gentileschi’s paintings of Judith Beheading Holofernes,” you could focus on a feminist interpretation of a single artist’s work(s). Once you know what you’re writing about, come up with an argument (a thesis statement) that will drive your research and paper. (Your thesis might change as you do research and that’s fine; it’s simply helpful to have a general argument or problem that you’re trying to solve before you hit the stacks.) One way to come up with an argument is to simply look at the artwork you’re writing about and think about what you see. Is there anything usual about the work? Are you curious about the artist’s stylistic or compositional choices? Do you wonder about the reaction a contemporary viewer of the work might have? These are just a sampling of questions that can lead you toward taking a stance on a work of art.

Tips for Writing an Open-Ended Research Paper | PAGE 2 You may want to start your research by reading a biography of the artist that you’re writing about. This can help you understand how they developed artistically, who commissioned work from them, and who they influenced. It can also shed light on any of the artist’s personal opinions on art-making, religion, politics, etc. that might have influenced their art. An obvious place to begin researching is to look for books and articles written about the artwork(s) that you’re writing about. If you’re writing about an artist’s general body of work, try to narrow your focus to specific themes to make your research (and paper) more manageable.

E Do your research

If you are struggling to find sources, ask your professor for advice or see if your library offers an art history research guide. It is also a good idea to check the footnotes of any sources that you have found and read them to see if they reference anything that could be useful to your own research. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s publications division, MetPublications, and the Getty Research Institute’s Digital Books initiative are two free, open access online initiatives that could also provide you with valuable bibliographic resources. (Once you begin writing, don’t forget to cite as you write, since going back and citing your references at the end of the writing process can be a needless pain.)

Tips for Writing an Open-Ended Research Paper | PAGE 3

E Make an outline

Once you have a topic, a thesis statement, and (ideally) some research under your belt, it’s time to make an outline for your paper. Outlines are crucial to a successful paper because you will be talking about lots of different kinds of information, such as historical fact, physical descriptions of artworks, the opinions and findings of other scholars, and what you think. It might be helpful to think of your paper as a mystery that you are trying to solve: the introduction sets the scene of the crime (the artwork or issue at hand) , the body of the paper describes the mystery and how the evidence (your research) points to the solution (whatever it is you are trying to answer, argue, or prove). You might want to build your paper up to a dramatic denouement, where your strongest and most surprising piece of evidence to support your thesis comes at the end. Whatever way you approach outlining, it should represent the flow of your paper and how you will support your argument from the introduction through the conclusion, with the contents of each paragraph mapped out in a logical way.

E Start writing

Everyone has their own preference for when they begin to write. Some only begin writing after they have gone through each bibliographic source and made an outline; others like to write as they go. Though I encourage you to begin writing only once you have an outline, there’s nothing wrong with writing in a way that you’re comfortable with as long as you can convey your ideas clearly and provide strong support for your thesis. It’s a good idea to start writing well before your paper is due so that you have enough time to write rough and final drafts.

WHAT NOT TO DO

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Don’t be late on test day

This should be a given, but I’ve seen students frequently come to class late, miss the test questions, and expect the professor to run through a review of the exam from the beginning. Professors sometimes plan to continue with their lectures after exams, so depending on how long the test is and how long the class is, they might not have time (or want) to go back through the test questions. Similarly, don’t leave right after the test if a normal lecture follows unless you’ve made arrangements with your professor to miss it. Otherwise, it comes off as rude and speaks volumes to your professor about his or her students not caring enough about the class to stay.

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Don’t text/talk on your phone or fall asleep

Art history classrooms are almost always dark and it can be easy to get bored and let your mind wander. Try to stay interested. Resist the temptation to turn on brightly lit objects, as this is disruptive to your neighbors and, if the professor notices, to the whole class.

Don’t plagiarize on your papers

This is a given, but it can be tempting for art history papers, as this field can be extremely frustrating to write about. If you’re struggling with your papers, ask a friend, your TA, or your college writing center for help. Look to your course readings to see how art historians describe and come to their conclusions about art and try to use a similar method. Check to see if your university library has an art history research guide available; some of these guides include tactics for tackling the art history essay.

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~[ Table of Contents ] [Reading & Resources] E

ELKINS, JAMES. Stories of Art. New York: Routledge, 2002.

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GOMBRICH, E.H. The Story of Art, 16th Edition. London: Phaidon Press, 1995.

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HALL, JAMES. Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols, 2nd Edition. Boulder: Westview Press, 2007.

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HATT, MICHAEL & CHARLOTTE KLONK Art History: A Critical Introduction to Its Methods. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.

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KLEINER, FRED S. AND CHRISTIN J. MAMIYA. Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 12th Edition. Stamford: Thomson Wadsworth, 2004.

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VASARI, GIORGIO. The Lives of the Artists, Oxford World’s Classics Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

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Writing Art History Papers — A guide from UNC Chapel Hill.

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If you have questions about majoring in art history, check the Q&A section at Caravaggista.com or feel free to send Amy an (anonymous) “Ask” via Tumblr.

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Find more Recommended Reading, Research, and College & Career Resources at Caravaggista.com/Resources THIS PDF CAN BE PERMANENTLY ACCESSED AT: HTTP://CARAVAGGISTA.COM/WHAT-TO-EXPECT-FROM-YOUR-FIRST-ART-HISTORY-COURSE/

~[Table [Artworks of Contents ] ] IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE Edgar Degas, Visit to a Museum (c. 1879 - 1890), Museum of

Georges de la Tour, The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame

Fine Arts, Boston

(c. 1638 - 1640), LACMA

Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid (1657 - 1658), Rijksmuseum

Daniel Ridgway-Knight, Reverie (1866), Berkshire Museum

Gustave Courbet, The Artist’s Studio (1854 - 1855), Musée

Titian, Venus with a Mirror (1555), National Gallery of Art,

d’Orsay, Paris

D.C.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Girl Reading (c. 1890), Museum of Fine

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne (1622 - 1625), Gal-

Arts, Houston

leria Borghese

Fresco Panel Depicting Dionysus and Ariadne (Roman, 1st cen-

Edvard Munch, Starry Night (1922 - 1924), The Munch Muse-

tury), The Getty Villa

um, Oslo

Grechetto (Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione), Crucifixion (c.

Vincent van Gogh, Self -Portrait (Sept. or Oct. 1887), The Van

1660), Musei di Strada Nuova

Gogh Museum

Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Agatha Bas (s.d. 1641), Royal

Caravaggio, The Denial of St. Peter (c. 1610), The Metropoli-

Collection Trust

tan Museum of Art

Caravaggio, Penitent Magdalene (c. 1594 - 1595), Galleria

Rembrandt School, Christ and the Woman of Samaria (Dutch,

Doria Pamphilj

c. 1655), The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Caravaggio, David and Goliath (c. 1599), The Prado Museum

Caspar David Friedrich, A Walk at Dusk (c. 1830 - 1835), The

Caravaggio, David with the Head of Goliath (c. 1610), Galleria

J. Paul Getty Museum

Borghese

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Jewish Bride (Isaac and Rebecca) (c.

Valentin de Boulogne, Christ and the Adulteress (1620s), The

1665 - 1669), Rijksmuseum

Getty

Caravaggio, Saint Catherine of Alexandria (c. 1598), Thyssen-

Karl Friedrich Lessing, The Robber and His Child (1832), Phil-

Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

adelphia Museum of Art

Titian and Workshop, Girl Before the Mirror (after 1515),

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Reading from Homer (1855), Philadelphia Museum of Art Karl Brullov, The Last Day of Pompeii (1830 - 1833), The State Russian Museum

Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya Mary Cassatt, Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge (1879), Philadelphia Museum of Art

THANK YOU FOR READING WHAT TO EXPECT FROM YOUR FIRST ART HISTORY COURSE Second Edition

Written & Designed by Amy M. Martin

Creative Commons Copyright What to Expect from your First Art History Course, Second Edition, was published on January 7, 2015 under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Under the terms of this license, you may share and adapt the material, as long as you provide appropriate credit, a link to the license, and indicate any changes that were made. This work may not be used for commercial purposes. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the present work.

Questions? Comments? Feel free to send questions, comments, or suggestions to: amy [at] caravaggista [dot] com

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The Author Amy Martin is an independent Italian Renaissance & Baroque art historian. Her website, Caravaggista.com, stems from her passion for higher education and the advancement of digital art history. She hopes that this booklet helps new art history students enjoy their academic adventures in this field..