¿Qué es la historia del arte y para qué sirve? (Cécile Michaud) - PUCP

The class I'm going to give today is about art history. What is art history and what is it for? At first glance, the term art history may sound a bit contradictory. On the one hand, history is a discipline of the rational intellect, based on facts, on concrete processes. And on the other hand, art.

which in the collective unconscious is perceived as an intrinsic need of the human being, a process that comes out of impulses. One of the great missions of art history as an academic discipline is to reunite, to reconcile both poles. I'll give you an example.

This contradiction seems very big at first sight, but in the end, if you start to think about certain creations

for example, Renaissance, where most of the works of art were commissioned, then this opposition is not so strong, because finally a canvas of a Renaissance artist does not come out of a creative impulse, but it is a totally rational commission, in some way.

But going back to semantics, to the meaning, art historian, art historian,

history of art, history of the arts, there are many ways to talk about this discipline in all languages. So, these different names let us see the multiplicity of the discipline.

What is art? That's a big question. What should be studied at university? There are many forms of artistic creation, many forms of art. Traditionally, at university,

architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing and all the graphic arts were studied. For example, engraving. This tradition of academies in Europe

and it has been maintained. But over time, and fortunately, this field has become more and more open. In art history courses, not only these traditional subjects are studied, but also, for example, cinema, performance,

contemporary art in all its forms, the installations,

And, therefore, art history studies also show a more interdisciplinary approach. As we know, contemporary art has opened its borders. The borders between each artistic category are increasingly more fragile. Dance mixes with sculpture,

Dance mixes with sculpture, painting with sound art. There are many forms of creation and expression in contemporary art. This has been opened up. On the other hand, art history is studied in a different way, according to the countries. There are also traditions according to the countries.

In France, in the second half of the 20th century, when I studied art history, in France, we studied from the rock paintings, going from the Celtic orfebrery to contemporary art. At the same time, in Germany, a traditional art history career started with the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. That is to say,

On the one hand, we had a study of art before it was considered art.

and on the other hand, all the periods before the Middle Ages belonged to the archaeological career in Germany. It is interesting to see how there are several studies traditions of this discipline. It shows its versatility.

Now, beyond these various traditions, both thematic and evolutionary, what do we, art historians, do? Basically, art historians read images. We read images as

a scene with an intrinsic meaning, peculiar. That's what we call studying iconography or iconology, the profound meaning of a work. We also read images from their material and technical complexity. A painting is also a concrete object, a canvas or a wooden panel, a sculpture.

a house, a church. So we must understand and study it from a more material and technical point of view, so that we can also be able to preserve or restore it.

but also as a cultural object, as an image produced from an artistic context, not only artistic but also religious, political, cultural, specific.

Let's take an example. I've chosen a painting that I always like to take as an emblematic example to finally explain what art history is because it's very complete. It's the school of Athens by the artist Raffaele, an Italian artist from the Renaissance. If we look at this painting,

with a lot of attention, many questions will arise. Many characters are seen,

So, probably, one question would be: Who are they? Who are they? What do they represent? Why are they there, all together? Where are they? In an architecturally defined space, which we don't know yet what it is about, if it is idealized or real.

This would be the most iconographic part, to identify who these characters are, why they are here. In this case, Raphael has represented many ancient Greek scientists and philosophers.

but with contemporary faces, artists, people from the church, among others, aristocrats of the time. This is very interesting because it takes us to the other side, which is the image as a cultural object. Raphael here seeks that the spectator may, from his time, certainly, may have a direct link between

the scientists, philosophers, intellectuals, we could say, of the ancient Greek era, the artists and the contemporary era. What does this mean? It means that the artist, the painter, the architect, the sculptor,

is elevated to the status of liberal artist. That is, it is at the same level as a mathematician, a physicist, a philosopher. This is very important in the Renaissance context because it is the struggle to elevate the status of the plastic arts to the status of liberal arts.

Before, art was considered a craft, painting, sculpture. This is just an example to understand how an image can be read on many levels. I have mentioned only two. The third is the technical aspect.

This painting is a real object from the Vatican, Rome, Italy. It's a huge fresco that has been painted in three or four years with a specific technique, with helpers. There are many questions that surround it. But there is also a whole new part

which is a nuclear essence of art history as a discipline, and which can be seen in this painting as in many others. And what is the style? What is the style of an artist? It is something very difficult to define. We could say it is like his digital fingerprint. It is this "I don't know what" to use a French word, which makes one recognize

that this painting, this sculpture, this object is of this artist. His way of drawing, if we continue talking about Raphael in this case,

human bodies, certain proportions, the forms of hands, the type of color he uses, his conception of space, his type of compositions, his light, the way he uses light.

There are many stylistic elements that allow us to determine who is the creator. This is very important and has been key in the first decades of the discipline, because in this way the discipline has been able to become independent of history, for example.

Art historians had this as a monopoly. They could study the style of an artist. This led to the fact that, as the decades went by, we could already know, there are always exceptions,

how many paintings or what kind of paintings had been painted by this or that artist. Nowadays we can know with great certainty that what we have registered as Leonardo da Vinci's paintings are indeed the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. Always with the help of technique, by the way, because that's where the

the way he looks with ultraviolet light, with radiographs, all the more technological part that helps to make the attributions to this or that artist. But also the style, beyond

the style of an artist in particular, the styles have been a way of working for art historians. They have been identified as styles in art history. Baroque, Neoclassicism, Rococo, Art Nouveau,

In the 20th century, all the isms, which are no longer styles but movements, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, etc. This has allowed us to build a history of art, or a history of arts.

In the future, art history will allow us to understand what many people see as a kind of chaos of contemporary art creation.

This discipline has provoked some people to ask themselves: Has art history died? No, it hasn't died as a discipline, art hasn't died either, but we will have to find other ways to study artistic creation. And perhaps, as a last point,

I would also like to talk about the mission of the art historian. Obviously, art history, as we see, has the function of allowing us to understand artistic creation, which is a privilege of the human being: to create, to represent oneself.

Animals and plants have no other way to do that. Human beings have this great privilege. It allows us to understand a work of art in all its forms: aesthetic, conceptual, technical, cultural. And therefore, the mission or the role of the art historian in our society is very important.

because the art historian, by studying the artistic creation or its artistic heritage from all these approaches, and by becoming, therefore, an investigator, a teacher, a critic of art, a museum director, a gallerist, etc.,

has a very important role to play, and that is, through knowledge, to put this artistic heritage to value, to make it known, to make it known.

Perhaps in a country like Peru, where the link between the citizen and his heritage is still quite fragmented, quite fragile, I think that the role of the art historian is definitely a role of link and integration. What is the role of the art historian in the world of art?

Thank you.