Essay Sample on Exploring the Evolving Field of Art History

Introduction

Art history as an academic field is the study of visual expressions and aesthetic objects in stylistic and historical context. In the past, art history focused more on decorative art, ceramics, architecture, sculptures, drawings, and paintings. However, over the past few years, art history as an academic discipline has diversely changed, focusing on more complex aspects such as visual culture. Art history majorly consists of the study of objects that were created by different cultural groups across the world, which convey importance, meaning, or that serves specific usefulness by visual means.

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Art history assists historians in analyzing various factors that include economic, religious, political, and cultural, that are portrayed in the visual aspect of the artwork (Arnold, 2020). Art historians focus on different elements to acquire meaning from art that includes identifying the process the artist followed when creating the art. Other factors include identifying the audience of the artist and the historical influence behind the art. The paper focuses on art history and the different aspects contributing to architecture design.

Natural and Human Threats to Art

Despite art being one of the best connections between the new way of life and the cultural practices of the people. There are challenges experienced in the field of art, which are both natural and human-made threats. Natural threats have continually affected the field of art, altering the meaning of the art and sometimes wholly destroying the art. Natural threats to art include fire, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, mudslides, tornadoes, and volcanoes. With natural threats being more likely to be unforeseen, it is impossible to protect artworks from the aftermath of natural destruction (Arnold, 2020). Examples of artworks affected by natural threats include the thirteenth-century Basilica of St. Francis and the little Italian town of Assisi, which were impacted by the 1997 earthquake. The earthquake led to significant destruction to the artworks, mostly because their walls consisted of lined painting. With the artworks destroyed, the meaning of specific is destroyed even after the attempted reassembling of the artwork. Therefore, nature has been identified as a significant threat to artworks across the globe and will continue to affect existing and developing artworks over time.

Human threats have also been a significant contributor to the destruction of artworks and the distortion of meaning from artworks. Vandalism acts in the museum have destroyed numerous artworks while other artworks have been smashed in events of war by different communities. Multiple cultural sites have been damaged during the bombing. Most historical sites hold significant cultural meaning for given societies, which is used to teach the future generation on the cultural practices of a given community, upon destroying the cultural sites, a lot of information is corrupted, slowly leading to loss of culture. Examples of artworks that have been destroyed by humans include the Mona Lisa artwork.

The painting was destroyed two times in 1956 by vandals, one throwing acid to the painting while the other throwing a rock to the painting. However, the authorities have recently learned from past events and currently protect the artwork with bulletproof glass. Another artwork that has been affected by a human is The Fall of the Damned, that was painted in 1620. The artwork was attacked in 1959 with acid, destroying most of the original piece. However, attempts made to recreate the original art piece has been made, the original version was destroyed. The original artwork being destroyed could lead to distortion of particular details from the art piece. Both natural and human threats are significant contributors to the loss of information in artworks, which could lead to misinterpretation by historians.

Architectural Innovation

Megalithic art is classified as the fourth prehistoric art. Megaliths were used in the creation of cyclopean stone age monuments, mainly in the Neolithic era. Various theories are surrounding the meaning of megalithic monuments. There being no actual meaning of the megalithic art, multiple speculations have risen, stating the collaboration of ancient groups according to the various engineering capabilities, hence art historians tend to focus on art as a death tool. (Barbier et al., 2017). Many historians believe that megalithic structures were a part of elaborate burial ceremonies, which acted as a public theater to expose the cohesion of the group. There have been disagreements between archaeologists on the nature of the communities that created the megalithic art. Megalithic art has been featured in various artworks not only to elaborate burial ceremonies but has been adopted in other places such as the Filippo Brunelleschi Dome of the Florence Cathedral.

Different architectural elements are used in the creation of megalithic artworks, with the simplest method being post-and-lintel. Different types go from wood structures to Greek and Egyptian stone construction to timber-frame buildings even in the day today steel and cast-iron constructions. However, the post-and-lintel limitation is the level of strength of the lintel material. Another method that is famous in creating openings in walls includes corbeling, which contains layers of stones being laid with each row projected past the row beneath continually until the opposing rows almost merge, which can be capped with a stone. Most of the megalithic tombs are present in Europe, which was used for multiple and single burials. Other tomb chambers were used known as a dolmen, which was made of huge stones using the post-and-lintel system. The structure was then closed with smaller rocks to form a cairn. There were other elaborate burial places called passage graves, which had a large cordial that led to multiple burial chambers. The New grange in Ireland consists of a three-part chamber, which also has a corbel vault. The passage grave design is also evident in the architectural design in the tholos tomb in Greece. The architectural design used in the creating passage graves has evolved and adopted in different architectural structures such as the pantheon in Rome. The architectural design used in creating passage graves is also evident in the design used in making the Florence Cathedral.

Conclusion

Art history in the context of academic study is the visual expression and aesthetic objects in stylistic and historical context. In the past, art history was more focused on decorative art, ceramics, architecture, sculptures, drawings, and paintings. In the past few years, art has evolved to focus on more intricate details that include visual culture. Art history assists historians in analyzing the various factors economic, religious, political, and cultural, which are portrayed in the visual aspect of the artwork. There are various identified threats towards artworks, which are either natural or human causes. Natural threats towards art include floods, fire, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, mudslides, tornadoes, and volcanoes. An example of artwork destroyed by natural threats consists of the little Italian town of Assisi. Human threats towards artwork include vandalism, with a prominent example being the Mona Lisa painting. Different elements are used in the creation of megalithic artworks, with the primary feature being the way passage graves are designed. The design has been adapted to various architectural designs, not only in designing graves but also in designing other buildings such as the Florence cathedral.

References

Arnold, D. (2020). Art history: A concise introduction. Oxford University Press.

Barbier, J., Kenny, P., Young, J., Normand, J. M., Keane, M. T., O'Sullivan, M., & Ventresque, A. (2017, October). MAAP Annotate: When archaeology meets augmented reality for annotation of megalithic art. In 2017 23rd International Conference on Virtual System & Multimedia (VSMM) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.