The physical and rational certainties of the clockwork universe depicted by the 18th-century Enlightenment were shattered not only by new discoveries of relativity by Einstein and of unseen psychology ...
Eastern art has generally worked in a style akin to Western medieval art, namely a concentration on surface patterning and local colour (meaning the plain colour of an object, such as basic red for a ...
The Renaissance is the return yet again to valuation of the material world, and this paradigm shift is reflected in art forms, which show the corporeality of the human body, and the three-dimensional ...
In Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages, the dominance of the church insisted on the expression of biblical truths. There was no need to depict the reality of the material world, in which man w ...
While secular approaches to art history often emphasize individual creativity, the history of sacred art often emphasizes the ways that beautiful objects are used to convey symbolic meaning in ritual ...
The study of the history of art is a relatively recent phenomenon; prior to the Renaissance, the modern concept of "art" did not exist. Over time, art historians have changed their views about what ar ...
Both the making of art, the academic history of art, and the history of art museums are closely intertwined with the rise of nationalism. Art created in the modern era, in fact, has often been an atte ...
The art market can also be used to understand what “counts” as part of art history. Art dealers and auctioneers organize material for distribution to collectors. Two of the largest, and oldest, art ...
The experience of art history, as conveyed by art museums, tends to be organized differently from that of textbooks due to the nature of collections and the institutions themselves. Rather than a full ...
The Art of Oceania includes the geographic areas of Micronesia, Polynesia, Australia, New Zealand, and Melanesia. Nicholas Thomas’s textbook Oceanic Art treats the area thematically, with essays on a ...
Eastern civilization broadly includes Asia, and it also includes a complex tradition of art making. One Eastern art history survey textbook is John Laplante’s Asian Art. It divides the field by natio ...
The history of art in the Americas begins in pre-Columbian times with Indigenous cultures. Art historians have focused particularly closely on Mesoamerica during this early era, because a series of st ...
Although some of the books listed above attempt a global approach, they are universally strong in western art history. The books use representative examples from each era in order to create a story th ...
