Art History explores how art forms like painting, sculpture, and architecture reveal the beliefs and values of people from different times and cultures in the earth’s history. To understand art, you need to enter a world of relationships between religion, philosophy, politics, patronage, function, cultural norms, and ethnicity. These relationships provide the context you will need in order to understand the significance of art for the people who made it. It is also necessary to learn the language of art as it is embodied in masterpieces from ancient to modern times. Through analyzing this visual language, you will come to understand how artists communicate their beliefs and values. This class will teach you to analyze, interpret, and interact with works of art and, in a sense, communicate with those who created them! In order to engage with art on this level, you must understand the concepts, characteristics, and use of art elements and principles for each art style we study.
Concepts
The concepts represent the beliefs and values of a particular period that give meaning and purpose to a work of art. The concepts help provide the context you need in order to understand the significance of the work for the people who made it, and the message that the art communicates.
Characteristics
Characteristics are the visual qualities typical of the art from a particular period. All the works of a period share similar characteristics. The characteristics grow out of the concepts, and so they reflect the beliefs of the period. Here are examples of some characteristics of art and architecture: realistic dynamic abstracted idealized quick rhythm post and lintel arch colonnade entrance porch pediment

Elements And Principles of Art
Elements (shape, line, color, texture, value, size, space) are the
individual components of visual qualities organized according to certain principles (rhythm/repetition, emphasis, variety, unity, balance). Together, the elements and principles constitute the language of art, and provide a visual means of
communication. Artists of a period communicate their beliefs and values through their characteristic use of the elements and principles of art. We describe elements and principles in order to explain how art communicates the concepts of its
time period and culture.
A concept underlying Egyptian art : the human soul can live forever if properly provided for
Characteristics of Egyptian art : twisted perspective, no modeling, flat space with little overlapping, slow steady rhythm
How Elements and Principles relate to characteristic visual qualities and communicate an underlying concept:
Shape: conventional and represented according to a strict cannon to show the most easily recognizable views of body features so that they would be recognized for eternity, ensuring the existence of the human soul
Value: no modeling was used in order to represent only what is permanent and thus eternal (light and shadow are temporal)
Space: flat with little overlapping so that important features would not be hidden, ensuring that everything represented would be recognizable for eternity
Rhythm: stable and controlled, just as the Egyptian view of what the afterlife would be like was stable and controlled by following the conventions of representation
1. (Artist’s name) (If the name is not known, leave it blank.)
2. Name of the work
3. Name of the period
4. Years the period covers
5. Chapter concept which relates to the work
6. Chapter concept which relates to the work
7. Characteristic of the period which applies
8. Characteristic of the period which applies

9. Explain how an art element communicates a key period concept.
10. Explain how an art principle (or element) communicates a key period concept.
Please number your facts on the backs of your flashcards! If you use index cards, 4” x 6” is the right size. Complete sets of flashcards are due at the beginning of the class period on test days.
De La Croix, Horst, Richard G. Tansey, Diane Kirkpatrick,
Gardner’s Art Through the Ages. 9 th ed. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
College Publishers
Kleiner, Fred S. and Christin J. Mamiya
Gardner’s Art through the Ages. 12 th ed. (Thomson/Wasdworth)
I use this text for additional images, and for enrichment material.
Abrams, Harry N.
Janson, H.W., A History of Art
A.P. Art History Slide Library
Tests will include multiple choice and fill in the blank questions taken from fact sheets for each period, identification of images from your flashcards, mystery identification of images you are not familiar with, and essays.