Welcome to /r/ArtHistory

Once I discussed this painting with my friend, he is quite a snob sometimes. He said it is not a significant picture that exploits the horror theme. I recently came across this painting again and realized that it still makes a big impression on me. And what from the point of art expertise? How would art students be told about this work?

Hey folks, I am looking for the earliest examples you might know of where people are depicted laughing.

We are discussing portraits in my art history class this week and everyone zeroed in on the emotional aspect being different pretty quickly but it got me wondering when we (humans) first portrayed laughter as something beautiful. I feel like so many ancient examples are very stiff or solemn, or people being wounded or dying. Looking for good old human happiness.

I recently got my first assignment and it’s to write a visual analysis of my favourite painting, sculpture or photograph.

There was no doubt in my mind that I would write about The Fallen Angel by Alexandre Cabanel, I haven’t even entertained the idea of choosing another piece, and I just wondered if others had strong thoughts or feelings and would know what they would choose immediately too.

hello! i am due a 1,500 word essay on a art/artichteture i been browsing but just curious what some of yall think if s really interesting piece i can get into while i look and a lil backstory about it. thanks!

I'm in search of bodies of work that are locations (cities, states, provinces, prefectures, countries, regions, continents, etc.) that have been personified

I really like The Glorification of Saint Ignatius and that's kinda the idea I'm looking for

There was also a museum I went to that had black stone statues out front of women that were the continents that I can't recall at the moment

There's really no limit to the time period or form. I just really love this idea

Hi! I'm a university art student working on an 8 page research paper about the Rococo movement and its connections with gender nonconformity and queer history. We're supposed to formally and contextually analyse a particular piece in connection with it and I chose Juno Borrowing the Belt of Venus by Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Le Brun for its sapphic undertones. Is there any academic sources you all know of that discuss this subject? Books and academic journals are preferable. I'm also discussing neo-Rococo art in this paper briefly, and the way it ties into similar attitudes towards queerness and politics. I've already done some surface level stuff and found some great sources on previous analyses of popular Rococo paintings through a queer lens but would be interested to know if there are any more historical texts on this subject too.

Edit: To be clear this post was not me asking anyone to do my work for me. I've done days worth of research for the paper so far and already found several books that may have useful info for me that I need to look for (since I can't access them for free using our database.) I was just asking in case anyone knew of some books I hadn't found that might be useful for my purposes. I apologize if I came off as lazy, I promise I didn't just come to Reddit first thing.

Hi everyone! I’m a 19 year old undergrad starting my bachelors in art history after community college. I wanted to come on here and ask for advise on being an art history student. I haven’t had much experience because of going to a community college first and i would love any help i can get on what you think i should start doing now. Thanks so much 😊

A light and engaging introduction and overview for the hobbyists to flick through. So that we can easily get our head around all the different movements and styles. But preferably more than just dry facts. So far I've found:

a) 'Art: Definitive Visual Guide' - Andrew Graham Dixon
b) 'Art: The Whole Story' - Stephen Farthing
c) 'The Short Story of Art' - Susie Hodge
d) Other?

I'd be getting Gombrich's 'The Story of Art' as well.
Art is my hobby and I'd love to get to know it better, be able to engage deeper, and in a more critical manner.

Thank you for any comments and/or suggestions!

Orientalism came from Europe "discovering," or rather gaining an interest, in the Ottomans, Central Asia, to the Japans. I belive Eastern art helped formulate impressionism and people like Giuseppe Castiglione blended the two but I'm not sure if the East learned from things like the Renaissance earlier than 20th century. Did the East (China or Japan) find a similar interest in the West that I would call Occidentalism or did they prefer to ignore Western art?

Hello, I wanted to know if anyone knew good reading sources on flower still lifes from the baroque era. This could be descriptions of the paintings or symbolism behind the flowers. I have an exhibition project for my art history class, and I’m currently struggling to find sources. Any help is appreciated, thank you!

Dated to around 3100BC

Hello à tous ! Je suis en licence 3 d'art plastiques (avec une part significative d'histoire de l'art et en anthropologie) et je voudrais en rentrer en 3ème année à l'école du Louvre par équivalence,je voulais connaitre vos expériences et votre avis sur mes possibilités d'entrée,quelle moyenne je dois viser etc. Passez une bonne journée :D

If anyone has some good readings/research on the depiction of women (or similar topics) in landscape painting that would great! I’m doing a research paper.

It’s particularly 16th-17th century European landscape paintings, but I’m sure I can draw parallels if it’s other.

🤓

Hey there . Im a Student and am REALLY interested in Art / Art History. IT seems top ve REALLY m'y subject abd think about studieng IT. What Jobs/ carrer choices are there for Someone With a art History degree?

(Btw Sry English IS not m'y First language)

so I just graduated with a BA in art history from the Courtauld Institute in London but now I'm completely stumped on how to turn an entirely theoretical and academic background into an actual (ideally high-paying) job. everything I've applied to has seemed to discard my degree as almost entirely useless, focusing more on sales, marketing and business experience, which I have very little of aside from some accounting work.

I'm hoping a master's degree will open some more doors to me but i don't know if they will be any more useful in reality and I'd rather not waste the money and time on something that won't help me. my career goal is to go into high ticket sales, an art investment advisory or dealership, and I'm looking at the more entrepreneurial side of things if i can. I've been thinking about the Sothebys Art Business MA, the Erasmus Mundus Arts and Heritage Management MA, and a banking and finance conversion MA (which is admittedly my last choice).

the problem is these all have very mixed reviews and i don't personally know anyone who completed them, so need some advice on if these are relevant to my plans, and if they are even worth applying to. so, please offer any advice or experiences you have as im really uncertain at the moment about everything, and any ideas of better courses to choose would be a life saver as well!

thanks guys :)

My first encounter with this is a cropped version. I only learned it was a bigger one when I tried reverse image search. The results say The Little Swing by Fragonard (1770) but given that The Swing is his most popular work, almost all the other results are about that painting instead of this one.

Any help is appreciated…though I believe the available info about it is really limited so not expecting much 🥲 ty in advance!

From Rothko's book "The Artist's Reality"

I'm currently reading Mark Rothko's "The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art."

I'm enjoying it & would like to read more of these.

Any recommendations?

I'm looking for essays for students who are just being introduced to contemporary art and need help understanding conceptual art, materiality, and critical analysis.

My students are really lacking an ability to critically analyze their work and their peers, which is to be expected to an extent in undergrad, but these guys really need some help.

I'm familiar with more grad school level essays, but I know its going to go over the majority of their heads at the moment, so I'm wondering looking back to undergrad, what are some awesome essays you remember reading or assigning?

Okay, I'm rewriting this because it got taken down, but I want to clarify: I am not asking anyone to complete schoolwork for me; I'm asking for clarification on one detail of a topic for which I did all the reading and supplemental work.

So, I'm posting the part of the discussion post that I have questions about--but once again--do not answer the discussion post question; answer the follow-up question for clarity:

"Mosques, churches, and the like are inherently sacred, and what 'modern' conversion of this site created a major controversy in the 1900s?" (again, 'the site' being referred to is the Hagia Sophia)

As I said in my OP, all the sources I was provided (all libretexts humanities) primarily talked about the significance of the Greek Orthodox Church being turned into a mosque in 1453. However, the question refers to the mosque being converted into a museum in the 1930s.

I know what the controversy was, but I'm having trouble understanding why it was controversial.

I have long been an admirer of art and art history. Since I have semi-retired and I able to travel for pleasure, going to museums, particularly art museums, is a big part of what I do on my travels. I particularly enjoy art exhibits that are retrospectives of a given artist, or that focus on a single artist and an aspect of their work.

I have often been surprised (pleasantly) how seeing such an exhibit has made me have a deeper appreciation, admiration, understanding, or love for an artist, especially when the artist was someone I either did not know much about (or anything at all), and then came suddenly to love. E.g., Paula Rego, an artist I had never heard of until I went to the museum devoted her work in Cascais, Portugal and was completely blown away. Or an artist who I knew fairly well, but did not really think that much of or consider the artist that interesting. E.g., Milton Avery, who I knew and sort of liked, and then completely reappraised and was wowed by a retrospective of his work I saw at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Or an artist that I already loved, and who I ended up with a deeper and more intense understanding and sense of. E.g., Lucien Freud after seeing brilliant, tightly focused collection of his work two years ago at the National Gallery in London.

I have now discovered a new category of artist: someone I was well-acquainted with, rather admired and found interesting, and who, upon seeing a concentrated collection of his work, came away with a real downgrade of my view of him. This is occurred today after visiting the Max Ernst Museum in Bruhl, Germany. There you will see a a lot of his covering, most of his "masterpieces," and work covering the entire span of his career. Having seen it now, I was really struck by how "interesting" he was from an art history point of view, e.g., he was in the midst of both Dada and then surrealism, and had a long and seemingly successful, high profile career. But he struck me as incredibly one-note. The visual vocabulary and concepts that he took up as tools early in his career basically stuck with them throughout and never seemed to vary much. It was just always one more variation on the same ideas, over and over again. As surrealists go (not my favorite, I admit), he is probably someone I like a bit better. But he never much moved beyond that, except in sculpture, and his sculpture is just really derivative, with him doing things that Brancusi, Arp, and Picasso just did a lot better, and explored more deeply.

My assessment of Ernst certainly was not helped by the fact that there was at the museum an amazing exhibition of Alberto Giacometti's work, spanning his entire career. To see where Giocometti began in sculpture, but then where he WENT, was just mind-blowing in contrast to where Ernst started and then went seemingly nowhere. To me, one thing that makes a great artist is the arc of the career, and to see where their passions and explorations take them, how they mature, rethink, and reinvent. With Ernst, I found none of that. Though apparently he was quite the lady's man. In any case, this got longer than I expected. But I wanted to get my thoughts down and share them why they were fresh. I would be particularly interested in hearing from people who think I might be being a bit too hard on Ernst. But in the end, I did really find his work, overall, as boring.