Art Historiography and Methods

1. understand the origins of the discipline of the history of art; 2. acquire the knowledge of its principal scholars and their contributions to the discipline; 3. understand the shifts in its methodological and theoretical timelines; 4. understand contemporary trends in the discipline; and 5. understand the subjective and theoretical dimensions of the practice of art history through the ages.

The course introduces majors in art history to the history and methods of the discipline. It surveys the approach and methods adopted by Gorgio Vasari’s Life of the Artists and its artistic biography approach. Johan Joachim Winkelmann, Jacob Burckhardt among others are explored. Topics such as determination of periods, stylistics and atelier attribution and provenance studies, the primitive and the progressive chronology applied to African art history constitute the core of this course.