Patricia Mathews

An introduction to any discipline is fraught with difficulties. Its challenging task is to provide the uninitiated with an overview of a field in which new research is ongoing, cultural roots are shifting, and methodologies and assumed knowledge are always in flux.

Yet a static body of knowledge seems to be essential for teaching, at least in traditional educational contexts. As a result, the information and interpretive methodologies of an introductory course tend to become fixed at some arbitrary point, dispersed across all levels of the discipline as knowledge, and normalized as a form of truth. Similar to other disciplines, art history’s resulting canon of major art and artists takes on the authority of the inevitable.

The very idea of the canon itself has been brought into question over the last few decades. Art historians have been taught that the canon is the product of careful culling to expose the artists of greatest quality. However, the awakening of the West to global concerns has shown that there is no universal agreement on the definition of quality. Rather, quality is the measure of a historicized set of standards derived from a specific culture at a given historical moment. In each case, one must ask who decides these standards, what is their investment in them, and on what principles they are chosen.

A canon, therefore, offers only a partial view of the scope of artistic practice. Since the time limitations of a chronological, introductory survey reduces even the canon to its minimal form, it cannot effectively acknowledge the scope of art, much less cover it with any level of complexity. Profound distortions occur when the entire history of Western art is distilled to fit into one or two semesters.

Nevertheless, the chronological survey of Western art based on the canon has been the foundation of the standard classroom curriculum. Such surveys typically misrepresent the history of art as a linear, coherent progression of canonic artists who produce visual innovations from one generation to the next, rarely touched by larger issues outside the world of art. Although it diminishes the stature of art and its history, the majority of art historians and teachers still strongly resist relinquishing this introductory format, envisioning alarmingly simplistic alternatives such as art appreciation “gut” courses that trivialize the study of art.

Much of this entrenched attitude results from the history of art history. Unlike many academic disciplines, whose birth can be traced at least as far back as the Enlightenment notion that all knowledge could be divided into separate branches and studied in reference to themselves, art history did not become a discipline until the late 19th century. Although several of its “fathers” theorized more sophisticated methodologies for the study of art (such as the great humanitarian scholar, Erwin Panofsky), by the mid 20th century the teaching and writing of art history had become aligned with the work of early 20th-century theorist Heinrich Wölfflin. Wölfflin compared Renaissance and Baroque art in terms of visual elements. The Renaissance cultural ideal stressed classical order, harmony, and human dignity, all elements that classify its art. The Baroque period, on the other hand, was one of great change, upheaval, and empire, and its art emphasized drama, movement, and emotion. Formal innovation became the standard by which art was judged and taught. When works of art did not fit these categories, they were simply dismissed as aberrant and of no value.

Wölfflin’s categories and comparisons also became the basis of art history textbooks written for introductory courses. Deriving from the 1920s, these weighty tomes—in pounds, not content—not only use comparison, but with few exceptions remain formal in their analyses. Slowly, very slowly, more social history has been included, but standard art history textbooks have changed little. They remain the staunchest bastion of traditional art history—based on visual analysis; canonic in their choice of artists; and simplistic, even superficial at times, in their analyses.

As a result of all these forces, introductory art history courses tend to be based on these same factors. Relying on textbooks, the traditional semester or year-long, beginner-level course continues to fetishize a chronological, diachronic model of art based on causality and teleology, supporting a linear model of history and an exclusive lineage of art. Students learn to visually analyze “major monuments” and works of art by canonic artists, and are tested on names of works, artists, and dates.

For a growing number of art historians, the questions have changed within the last two to three decades. In order to convey the dynamic, complex nature of art and its interaction with culture, more recent art historical approaches recognize that both the canonic artists and those excluded from it play a fundamental role in the production of cultural meaning. This questioning of traditional art historical narratives and methods arose in the 1980s with the rise of cultural theory and postmodern perspectives of meaning as multi-layered, multidisciplinary, and culturally bound. However, despite the greater acceptance of these methodologies in the teaching of upper-level courses, the introductory level remains largely immune to these new attitudes and approaches. The textbook still dominates introductory courses, and most teachers are loathe to give up the lecture format, faith in the study of the canon, and the focus on memorization.

My own introduction to art history course is not focused on the canon or visual analysis, nor is it based on a textbook, a chronological arrangement, or memorization. Visual analysis remains central to the course, but it is taught as a tool or language for the visual in all its manifestations, including the contemporary surrounding environment. Then traditional forms of interpretation within the discipline, from periodization and style to iconography, are considered. At this point, texts by classic writers such as Wölfflin and Panofsky are read against more contemporary writers such as Roland Barthes and Michael Baxandall. Next, more contemporary issues are examined; again through conflicting critical interpretations—the role of biography; critical reception of the artist; and various constructions of the artist, including the role of art and ideology in the construction of gender and race. The aim of the course is not the memorization of artists, works, and dates, but the development of critical thinking and visual literacy, and an awareness of the contingency of interpretative modes.

Perhaps most threatening to the idea of an introduction to a discipline arises in the context of multiplicity and difference. In our global economy, non-Western traditions are increasingly asserting their presence. Traditional approaches to art history and the history of Western art no longer have the cultural cachet they held during the undisputed reign of the West. Students want to learn and need to know about diverse cultural and artistic traditions. Traditional introductory courses should hardly be expected to cover even more information. The best solution from my perspective would be an introductory course that focused on multiple approaches to the discipline so students would be prepared to study any field of art.

Patricia Mathews teaches modern and contemporary art history at Oberlin College. She has published two books on late 19th-century French art, gender, and theory, and articles on feminist methodologies, artists, and gender theory in Art in America, Art Bulletin, Oxford Art Journal, and in several anthologies.