chapter outline
You Are Invited 16 Art Matters 17 Getting Started 20 Give It a Try 25 looking more closely: Comparative Analysis 28 Our Shared Human Inheritance 30
You Are Invited
Come have a closer look at the sculpture illustrated here (Fig. 0.1). What do you see? Has a brightly dressed per- former just tossed yet another cake on
the stack of frosted delights teetering atop his back? Skillfully thrown, it has landed, but the stack leans dangerously. The outcome of this trick is uncertain.
Introduction 16 Introduction 0.1 Yinka Shonibare, CBE, Cake Man, 2013. Unique life-size mannequin, Dutch-wax printed African textile, leather, gold, polyester, and plaster, 10 ft. 4 in. × 34⅝ in. × 47¼ in. (3.15 m × 88 cm × 120 cm). chapter outline You Are Invited 16 Art Matters 17 Getting Started 20 Give It a Try 25 looking more closely: Comparative Analysis
28 Our Shared Human Inheritance 30 The NigerianBritish artist Yinka Shonibare, CBE (b. 1962), commands our attention in Cake Man (2013) using a comical mixture of colorful African patterns, theatrical gesture, and a leaning tower of cakes. Once he has captured our interest, though, he suspends the narrative. Cake Man encourages us to wonder: How long before the cakes come tumbling down? This question (and any others we might ask) opens up the possibility of engaging more deeply with the sculpture. Shonibare uses humor and drama to make a statement about the human condition. Note that the figure’s head takes the form of a globe tracing Hong Kong’s stock-market activity from 2013. The more he acquires, the greater his
burden, suggesting that human greed leads to impossible bal- ancing acts. Whereas Shonibare makes visible the consequences of unchecked greed, the contemporary American artist Kerry James Marshall (b. 1955) considers an idea that oſten arises in the study of art: beauty. Marshall’s School of Beauty, School of Culture takes us into the world of a Black American hair salon (Fig. 0.2). Amid the expected primping and posing in front of heartshaped mirrors—remind- ing us of the supposed connection between physical attractiveness and romantic possibility an oddity in the foreground draws the curiosity of two toddlers. The boy squats to get a better look; the girl points in an attempt to show it to the adults, who pay no attention, despite the intensity of the object’s yellow color. What is this strange thing? To see the yellow image better, we must take another perspective. Bring your eyes parallel with the bottom edge of the page, and rotate the book so that the bottom right corner is closest to you, and look again. Closing one eye may help to bring it into focus. Marshall has manipulated the techniques of linear perspective to create an illusion: a deliberately cartoon-like image of a blonde woman appears in a space belonging to the Black
community. Conforming to a different style and point of view, this distorted image (an anamorphic projection) belongs to a different cultural and spatial realm, yet it casts a shadow here in the salon, both literally and figuratively. Even as Marshall’s painting explores ideas of race and beauty, it also expresses awareness of art history. Nearly five hundred years ago, Hans Holbein the Younger painted into The Ambassadors (1533) an anamorphic skull as a reminder of the inevitability of death and the fleeting quality of life (see Fig. 48.12). Take a moment to look at Holbein’s painting so you can see the specter that looms in front of the wealthy, powerful men. In School of Beauty, School of Culture, Marshall consciously makes reference to The Ambassadors not only to deepen the haunting effect of racial stereotypes but also to encourage us to think critically about the relationship between beauty and cultural biases in art history’s canon. With its own history rooted in European imperialism, art history has long idealized the art of western Europe and white North America at the expense of art of other cultures. By contrast, The History of Art: A Global View examines the meaning and significance of art from all six inhab- ited continents and their many
cultures. To learn about so much art is a tall order, requiring a balancing act. As much as we want to include every excellent artwork in this book, we have to combine a broad selection with the right number to maintain balance. Thus, this book strives for as much breadth and variety as possible while maintaining a substantive and coherent narrative. At times, the content may be unfamiliar and daunting. But, if Cake Man sparks your curiosity and if you can see how the anamorphic projections work in School of Beauty, School of Culture and The Ambassadors, you have everything you need to start learning art history. So, put your eyes, mind, and hands to work. You are invited to study the history of art from its earliest days to the present. Art Matters Artworks from all around the world make up our shared human inheritance. They leave a material record of human creativity, resourcefulness, yearning, and experience. By studying that record, we deepen our understanding of ourselves and our world. In other words, art matters. Consequently, art history delves into the matter, or mat- erials, that make up art, as well as the many ways that art makes an impact on human lives. To demonstrate this point more concretely, let us look briefly at five examples. Made
from a variety of materials, these artworks together suggest how study- ing art is a form of time travel, allowing us to peer into the past and helping us to reconstruct vanished cul- tures. They also reveal how art conveys power, shapes memory, and spreads ideas, thus making visible crucial aspects of societies. Art has been, and continues to be, an important component of the global economy, and as artworks circulate across great distances, they trace a web of human relationships. Artworks can also be instrumental in forging a shared identity, whether for a family, a village, a region, or a nation. A great work of art, whatever its form and material, can help us to see in new ways and call us to action. To learn what happened yesterday or a century ago, we can turn to written records. But what about cases without surviving records, or those places—technically, prehistoric cultures—where forms of writing had not yet reached? In the absence of writing, we can look to extant images, such as the Bangudae petroglyphs. One section features a pod of whales— including a juvenile riding the back of an adult swimming up the rock face (Fig. 0.3). Look closely: do you see them on the leſt side? Their sea is alive with turtles, seals, and fish. Deer, pigs, wolves, and
tigers thrive on the land (right side). Amid this zoological richness we find another creature, the human. Humans may be few, small, and not central to the composition, but their ingenuity is depicted through the presence of schematic boats (for example, the slight arc shape at the top right). Weapons, such as the harpoon already lodged in a whale, demonstrate human power too. Power and memory are recurring themes in art, par- ticularly in monumental architecture. At the ancient Mediterranean metropolis of Petra in modern-day Jordan, an enormous tomb (today commonly called the “Treasury”) was made for a ruler of the ancient Nabatean kingdom (Fig. 0.4). Sculptors carved the tomb directly into a sandstone cliff, making it an early example of rock-cut architecture. Its facade contains elements— such as columns and pediments—that generally appear on free-standing buildings, where they are structurally necessary. Columns, for example, help support a roof. At Petra such laboriously carved architectural elements are unnecessary to the integrity of the structure, so why were they used? The answer: to demonstrate the prestige of the royal patron. Specific architectural details of the Treasury were associated with other
Mediterranean centers of power from the same time period. Look at the top of the pedi- ment, where two sides of the triangle do not meet; this feature is known as a broken pediment. The combination of a broken pediment with a circular room, visible above the door opening at the center of the Treasury’s facade, originates in the esteemed city of Alexandria (Egypt). By incorporating this arrangement at Petra, patron and builders connected themselves to the sophisticated Alexandrians, attempting to prove their cosmopolitan attitude. Their choices demonstrate that visual motifs can travel from one locale to another, creating a network of shared visual culture. When visual forms and motifs travel, they usually acquire new associations, which may deepen existing meanings or completely transform them. In some cases, artwork is physically transformed, too. This eighteenth- century jacket, for example, was stitched and worn in northern Europe, but the cotton chintz from which it is made began its life as a flat piece of cloth made by arti- sans on the Indian subcontinent (Fig. 0.5). Between 1500 and 1800 CE, people from Indonesia to North America prized South Asian cotton cloth for its fine weave and bright, colorful patterns. Here, a Dutch designer
further transformed the Indian fabric by carefully cutting and piecing it so that the floral pattern precisely fit the jack- et’s tailored design. Notice how the large flower, with its petals fanning out above, would have sat at the base of the wearer’s back, emphasizing the slenderness of her waist. In its original flat form, that floral motif would have lacked that visual effect. The cloth’s travel and its transformation into a jacket remind us how objects connect people from across the world. 0.5 Woman’s jacket, 1750. Cotton chintz; jacket made in the Netherlands, fabric from the Coromandel coast of India, 22½ × 12⅝ in. (57 × 32 cm). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Through close analysis, we discover how art reveals much about cultures around the world. But art does not merely reflect society; it also has the power to shape it. For example, distinctive monuments can raise the profile of cities. The Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid (1950–2016) had this ambition in mind when designing the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the early twenty-first century (Fig. 0.6, p. 20). Planners envisioned for Baku a one-of-a-kind building that would draw people together and showcase the capital city’s redevelopment and cul-
tural achievements. Hadid, an award-winning female architect in a field dominated by men, transformed the vision into reality with the Heydar Aliyev Center, which houses a conference hall, auditorium, and museum. Hadid’s distinctive design rejects straight lines and sharp corners. The building, which appears both organic and futuristic, is integrated with its environment through walls that curve to become part of the surrounding terrace. Its exterior mass is broken up into a series of interlocking forms conveying movement. In the interior, the dissolv- ing of boundaries continues with light-drenched, fluid 1" 20 Introduction spaces. The center’s striking profile—different from every angle—is photogenic and inviting. Not surprisingly, the building has become a symbol of the city. Art has the power to shape our actions, visualize what is otherwise unseen, and make permanent something that is transitory. But art itself can also be transitory, changing either through the actions of the artist, the audience, the environment, or all three. In recent years, using the Internet and other advanced digital technolo- gies, artists have created interactive artworks that pose an alternative to the idea of the artist having complete control of the finished
product. An artwork may respond in real time to changes in weather or traffic patterns, for example. Alternatively, artists may invite audience participation to shape the form that the artwork takes. For example, Maya Lin (b. 1959), best known for designing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. (see Fig. 73.16), uses the Internet as a platform for a new memorial—this time to the planet. Alarmed by the rapid decrease in biodiversity due to human activity, Lin uses a website to bring together audio clips, photographs, videos, information, and maps all relating to the loss of species and habitats—in What Is Missing? (2009–present). She encourages viewers to add their own memories and observations to this multilayered digital memorial, thus allowing us all to bear witness to these losses. Like the natural world, the artwork itself is in a constant state of flux, and therefore cannot be captured in a static text- book illustration. Pause here and visit whatismissing.net to explore the website. Note how it is not merely a col- lection of information. How do Lin’s aesthetic choices affect your perception of the memorial? How does the experience of moving through the website compare to the experience of looking at a painting or
photograph? If you are so inclined, contribute to the artwork yourself. Getting Started As the preceding examples demonstrate, our goal in art history is to understand the meaning and significance of art. If you are new to art history, you may be uncertain about how to start. The best way to begin is with “close looking,” a process of carefully and intentionally exam- ining an artwork. Take a moment to look again, closely, at the opening two artworks of this chapter. Close looking will generate observations about the artwork’s notable characteristics and take us to the next step: posing questions. Some questions, such as “What is the strange, yellow thing pictured in School of Beauty, School of Culture?” (Fig. 0.2), direct us to look again at the artwork, paying special attention to particular forms. Other questions, such as “What happened in 2013 in the Hong Kong stock market that drew Shonibare’s interest?” 0.6 Zaha Hadid Architects, Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku, Azerbaijan, 2007–12. 21 Introduction (Fig. 0.1), take us beyond the artwork into surrounding contexts. Pursuing answers to these two different types of questions will generate either a formal analysis or a contextual analysis, respectively. A formal analysis explores the
visual, material charac- teristics—or “forms”—of the artwork, leading to an interpretation of the artwork’s message or meaning. For example, the distorted image of the blonde woman in Marshall’s School of Beauty, School of Culture can be said to represent the intrusion of a standard of beauty that only the children seem to notice, suggesting that the adults in the painting have different and more complicated relationships to that standard. By contrast, a contextual analysis considers the circumstances in which the artwork is created, how and by whom it is used, and how and where it is viewed. When exhibited in Hong Kong, Shonibare’s Cake Man directed special attention to Hong Kong’s history as a hub of global finance. To reveal an artwork’s meaning and significance, contextual analyses oſten use analytical frameworks from other disciplines, such as economics, sociology, religious studies, gender studies, and environmental studies. In the preceding paragraphs, we discussed formal analysis and contextual analysis separately. But in prac- tice the two are intertwined. On the one hand, formal analysis serves as the basis for contextual analysis, and on the other hand, awareness of context strengthens formal analysis. Here we examine four
artworks, going step by step through strategies of analysis. Take a look at this picture (Fig. 0.7). While you are looking at it, perhaps some questions will arise. Some of these questions—who made it, what is its title, when was it made, what is the medium— are questions of identification. We can answer these questions using the information in the caption: In 1903, Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945) made this print, Woman with Dead Child. Other questions may probe the picture’s subject matter, form, and meaning: Who are these figures and why do they appear as they do, in black and white, unclothed, without a background, one tightly embracing the other?
Generally speaking, these types of questions focus on how an artwork looks and why it looks that way. These questions spur formal analysis and interpretation. A formal analysis of Woman with Dead Child must consider its main formal elements. These elements may include line and shape. Here, Kollwitz uses dark lines as outlines to create a silhouette of human bodies against a background, and finer lines to trace the bodies’ supple contours, such as those of the knees and feet. As for shape, the two bodies intertwine to form a tight, irregu- larly shaped knot. Other formal elements include color,
which is used sparingly (as in the greenish triangle of formal analysis the method of examining and understanding an artwork’s form, including its medium and materials, formal elements, and principles of design. contextual analysis the method of examining and understanding an artwork by considering it in relation to its relevant context, whether historical, religious, social, and so forth. medium the generalized type of an artwork, primarily based on the materials used. print an image or artwork resulting from the mechanical transfer of a design, generally used to produce multiple copies. subject matter the subject of an artwork. background the portions of an artwork around and behind the central subject(s). formal elements the characteristics of line, shape, color, light/shadow, texture/ pattern, space/point of view, and (when relevant) time and sound. shape the external form of an object or figure. outline a line that marks the boundary of a shape. contour line the outline that defines a form. 0.7 Käthe Kollwitz, Woman with Dead Child, 1903. Seventh state: soft-ground etching with engraving, printed in black and overworked in green and gold wash on thick white
wove paper. 16⅜ in. × 18⅞ in. (42 × 48 cm). British Museum, London. 1"
22 Introduction negative space formed between the figure’s leſt foot and right knee at bottom leſt) and light, which picks out the child’s forehead and casts a deep shadow beneath the mother’s hand. Lines created through the techniques of hatching and cross-hatching create additional shadows that model the contours of faces and limbs. Patterns and textures are formal elements, too. The smooth texture of the child’s forehead contrasts with the knobby quality of the mother’s bony hand. Finally, Kollwitz uses space and point of view to impart both monumentality and intimacy, respectively. By nearly filling the entirety of the space, the two bodies seem massive, or monumental. By bringing the pair close to the picture plane (note the foreshortening of the mother’s leſt thigh) and at eye level, Kollwitz draws viewers into this intimate human drama. Aſter making note of formal elements in isolation, we can bring together our observations to formulate a sense of the artwork’s overarching style. Kollwitz has marshalled line and shape, color and light (and shadow), and texture in the service of naturalism. Rather than seeing in Woman with Dead Child an
accumulation of lines and marks, we are likely to see a mother clinging in unspeakable grief to her dead child. Kollwitz’s use of naturalism works in tension with expressionism, which permits a degree of exaggeration or simplification in the service of expression, as in the areas where the mother’s face essentially dissolves or where marks and smudges attest more to the actions of the artist’s hand than to the forms of the things represented.