art history

art history the study of works of art and architecture. In the mid-19th cent., art history was raised to the status of an academic discipline by the Swiss Jacob Burckhardt , who related art to its cultural environment, and the German idealists Alois Riegl, Heinrich Wölfflin , and Wilhelm Worringer. The latter three saw art history as the analysis of forms and viewed art apart from any function it serves in expressing the spirit of its age. Major 20th-century art historians include Henri Focillon, Bernard Berenson , Aby Warburg, Émile Mâle , Erwin Panofsky , and Ernst Gombrich; the succeeding generation has included Michael Fried, Rosalind Krauss, Donald Kuspit, and Giselda Pollack. Modern art history is a broad field of inquiry embracing formal questions of stylistic development as well as considerations of social and cultural context. Since the 1970s, a heightened awareness of gender, ethnicity, and environmental issues has marked the work of many art historians.

Bibliography: See A. Hauser, The Social History of Art (4 vol., 1958-60); M. Podro, The Critical Historians of Art (1982); H. W. Janson, History of Art (4th rev. ed. 1991).

art¹ / ärt/ • n. 1. the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power: the art of the Renaissance. ∎  works produced by such skill and imagination: his collection of modern art. ∎  creative activity resulting in the production of paintings, drawings, or sculpture: she's good at art. 2. (the arts) the various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance: the visual arts | [in sing.] the art of photography. 3. (arts) subjects of study primarily concerned with the processes and products of human creativity and social life, such as languages, literature, and history (as contrasted with scientific or technical subjects): the belief that the arts and sciences were incompatible. 4. a skill at doing a specified thing, typically one acquired through practice: the art of conversation. art² • archaic or dialect 2nd person singular present of be.