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Second Edition

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM YOUR

FIRST ART HISTORY COURSE

Dear Reader, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, a popular art history textbook, opens with these words:

I wrote this short guide to help those who are new to art history prepare for their courses. As a student of art history, you will learn how to decipher the pinnacle of human expression, and begin to understand how art from previous centuries forms a crucial part of the visual world that exists around you today. This guide goes over the types of courses that you will encounter and offers tips for studying, writing, and research.

Art history will undoubtedly be one of the most writing and memory-intensive courses that you will take in college, but it will prove, I hope, to be extremely rewarding, as no other field offers so beautiful a history of the world as this one does.

Good luck!

Amy

Caravaggista.com amy@caravaggista.com

“Except when referring to the modern aca-demic discipline, people do not often juxta-pose the words ‘art’ and ‘history.’ They tend to think of history as the record and inter-pretation of past human actions, particular-ly social and political actions. Most think of art, quite correctly, as part of the present – as something people can see and touch. Of course, people cannot see or touch his-tory’s vanished human events, but a visible, tangible artwork is a kind of persisting event. One or more artists made it at a cer-tain time and in a specific place, even if no one today just knows who, when, where, or why. … Art historians seek to achieve a full understanding not only of why these ‘persisting events’ of human history look the way they do, but also of why the artistic events happened at all.”

{ A NOTE FOR STUDENTS } I have compiled a page listing the FAQs that I have

received from art history undergraduates over the

years.

It may be especially useful for those of you who are

undecided about (or struggling with) art history as

a major or career path.

Check it out.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Detail from Girl Reading (c. 1890)

A rt history survey courses aim to introduce students to a broad range of art from across a prede-fined time period and/or region. Survey courses are large lecture style classes led by a professor or

advanced graduate student. Typically, these courses are held twice a week and each session lasts about an hour. These types of classes are memorization-intensive and rely on multiple choice, short answer, and/or short essay tests to test your knowledge about the course material. Surveys are often (but not always) accompanied by discussion sections. Discussion sections help to break the class into smaller groups and are ordinarily led by a graduate student TA. (If your survey class is small enough, you might not have or need a discussion section.) The content and scope of sections varies by class and university. Actively participating in section is part of your overall grade for the course. Participation can include simple discussion, writing a term paper, turning in reading responses, or going on class fieldtrips.

Upper level lecture courses are almost always smaller than survey courses and often require the pre-requisite of a survey course or two before you can enroll. While survey courses show students a range of art, upper-level lectures restrict their scope and focus on art from specific artists within a specific time period. For example, an upper-level lecture on Baroque art in Spain might keep lectures limited to a list of artists such as Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Zurbarán, Jusepe de Ribera, and Francesco Ribalta. Students might be given essay exams and/or a term paper and can usually expect a heavier, more advanced reading load than what is given in survey courses.

In order to be eligible to enroll in Seminar classes, you will probably have to take prerequisites that are com-prised of both survey and upper-level lecture courses. Seminars are small classes (often comprised of fifteen people or less) that explore a single artist or art historical topic in depth through discussion, reading, and writing. In most instances, the completion of a term research paper is the main assignment for the course.

All of the above can vary from university to university, so always check with your department regarding course requirements and bring any concerns you have about expectations to your professor or TA.

TYPES OF ART HISTORY COURSES

I f you ask an art history major what the bane of their academic existence is, they will probably say “Memorization!” Because most art history departments structure undergraduate coursework to be in-

creasingly complex as you move up in class level, survey classes and upper level lectures are often almost en-tirely memorization-based. Professors of some upper level lecture classes will include essay exams or brief research papers in addition to testing your knowledge (memory) of the works and artists shown. The hope is that memorization will make you aware of the shifts artists’ styles and iconography throughout history, and that what you’ve memorized about individual artists’ works will be enhanced by the information presented in your lectures and readings. Memorization is stressed early on because you need to know the information pre-sented in order to be successful in the next level of coursework, seminar classes. Once you have taken your survey and upper level lecture classes, you move on to the meat of art history — analysis — by taking seminars. Seminars are in depth examinations of an art historical topic; they fo-cus heavily on reading, discussion, and writing. For instance, if you enroll in a seminar on Caravaggio’s art, there will likely be an assumption by your professor that you are familiar with Italian Renaissance art & his-tory and the genesis of the Baroque movement. Your professor might have one or two sessions where they give a brief overview in order to make sure everyone is on the same page, but this is not always the case — and when it isn’t the case, this is when your memory and your prerequisites (or at least a willingness to study hard) become especially vital. To be successful in a seminar, you need to be able to make connections between artists and works of art and make arguments about stylistic development and iconography, and the best way to do this quickly while in the midst of a class discussion is to go through the mental “image bank” that you have developed through memorization.

Adapted from this post on the Caravaggista Tumblr: http://bit.ly/ARTHmemorization

A NOTE ON MEMORIZATION

Study Tips | PAGE 1

E Keep your

syllabus close

Syllabi contain important due dates, test dates, and professor and

TA contact information and office hours. They also list the topics

that will be covered during each class session and the readings that

are required or recommended for each session.

E Use flashcards

Use flashcards to review for tests. You will probably need to

memorize the artist, title, date, and/or location of a work of art

for your exams. It’s wise to jot down bullet points about a work’s

important historical circumstances, such as their patron, whether

or not the work was embroiled in controversy, etc., as these could

come up in a question.

E Pay attention to

your textbook

Pay attention to bold italicized or underlined terms in your text-

book and review any terms you don’t know. While you could be

tested on terms, it’s also useful to know them because you will

hear them constantly and likely encounter them again in other

courses.

E Don’t be shy If you don’t understand a concept or simply have a general ques-

tion, don’t hesitate to ask your professor or TA for help.

Style sheets are a table comprised of artists, their time period/movement (e.g., 1600s/Baroque),

their style (e.g., smooth brushwork, dramatic color), the kind of art they specialized in (e.g., genre

scenes), and examples of their work. It’s a good idea to take this method a step further and add a

column for ‘history’ – a catchall where you can list important events, people (patrons, religious/

political leaders, etc.), and ideologies that shaped the work of each artist listed.

Here is an example of one of my style sheets from AP Art History. We were studying art from the

1700s, so this style sheet, which has artists from France, England, and Italy, shows me at a glance

when each artist lived, how their styles differed, and it gives me a couple examples of their artwork

to refer to.

Artist Style Examples Jean Antoine Watteau

(1684–1721)

pastel colors, fluffy brushwork, specialized

in fête galante, individual ‘charming’ style

Embarkation for Cythera (1717,

Louvre), L’Indifferent (1717),

and Two Cousins (1716)

Jean-Honoré

Fragonard

(1732–1806)

Utopian outdoors, softness, curvaceous,

asymmetrical, utopian aristocratic life, used

various angles

The Bathers (1765), The

Swing (1767), and The Confession of

Love (1771)

William Hogarth

(1697 – 1764)

painted in series, moralist, frivolous pursuits

can be wrong, humorous, interior stage-like

settings

The Marriage Settlement (c.

1743) and Breakfast Scene from

Marriage à-la-mode

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon

Chardin

(1699-1779)

earthy colors (especially dark greens and

browns), painted everyday life of the upper

middle class, simple and refined paintings

Soap Bubbles (c. 1733/4), Back from

the Market (1739), and Saying Grace

(La Benedicite) (1740)

Giovanni Battista

Piranesi

(1720–1778)

nightmarish imaginary settings, incredible

use of shadows and perspective, etchings,

series, inspiration from Roman architecture

Carceri d’invenzione series (c.

1749-60)

STUDY TIPS| PAGE 2 | MAKE A Style Sheet

Study Tips | PAGE 3

E Do the reading.

Art history involves reading about art as much as it does looking at art.

That being said, don’t expect all your readings to be written by art his-

torians because art history is an interdisciplinary field. Your readings

for class do more than just give you supplementary material to course-

work; they help enrich your analytical skills. Apart from doing the

readings for your own intellectual development, there are “practical”

reasons to do them. Your professor might pull test questions from your

readings with or without warning you. Your TA might ask the class to

discuss the readings during section, and if you’re called on and haven’t

done them, it’s awkward, but it also tells your TA that you don’t care

about the material enough to read whether or not that’s true.

If you just don’t have time to do all the reading required of you …

E Learn how to

skim or speed

read.

In higher level art history courses, reading can become too voluminous

for you to juggle with your other coursework. At the least, read the in-

troduction and conclusion paragraphs and then the first and last sen-

tence of every paragraph in between. This will give you a general idea

of what the author’s overall point is. You might want to take a class on

speed reading or come up with personalized annotation techniques to

help you remember key points.

STUDY TIPS| PAGE 4 | A note about EXAMS

Professors want to know that you’ve done more than memorize names and dates; they want you to be able to en-

hance this information with the historical circumstances surrounding an artwork’s commission and creation. Exams

are the way that they check to see if you have absorbed the course material. Testing methods vary by professor, but

generally, there are some universal question types that professors love to use. In addition to multiple choice and fill-

in-the-blank questions, you can expect to encounter some or all of the following:

Common Exam Question Types E Slide IDs Identify the work of art, artist, date, location of the work, and/or the artist’s nationality.

E Unknowns You will be shown a work of art and asked to make an educated guess as to its date,

iconography, and a possible artist.

E Compare /

Contrast

Compare & contrast a set of images which may be different in time period, artist, medi-

um, purpose, etc. Both images may or may not be provided; your professor might show

you one image and ask that you compare/contrast it from memory to an image that you

have studied in class. These questions may or may not be timed.

E Short answer

Short answer questions usually ask for a brief response to a given prompt, image, or set

of images. Depending on the scope of the question and your professor’s methods, they

might be timed.

E Essay exams

Essay exams require you to respond to one or more prompts within a certain amount of

time. Prompts are usually accompanied by images projected on a screen, but some might

ask you to rely on your memory. The best way to practice is to set a timer for the

length of time you will have for each essay and write using images from your study guide

and readings. Some professors will give you sample questions to practice with.

Compare/Contrast, Short Answer questions, and Essays are great opportunities to bring in material from your readings.

Tips for Test Day

E Understand the

big picture

Make a list of key historical events, political changes, and philosophies that

have been discussed in your course lectures and readings and try to relate these

facts to artworks discussed in class (which might be as easy as reviewing your

notes). You should also make a Style Sheet for each of the artistic movements

and artists that you’re studying.

E Be well rested

It is never a good idea to go into any exam without a good night’s rest. You

will need to rely heavily on your memory for slide identifications and compar-

isons and you need to be able to discuss your readings and class lectures, so

rest is important. You should try to start studying well in advance of your test

date so that you will be prepared, and able to sleep and relax, the night before.

E Review trouble-some artworks before the test

Sometimes the information you need to memorize for a test will refuse to

stick in your mind. Make flashcards of these works and all related information

and review them frequently in the hours before your exam. You might want

to ask a friend or classmate to test you on these particular images. The art-

works could also come to mind more readily if you can identify a unique fea-

ture or amusing detail of each work in question.

E Do a “Mind Dump”

when you get

your exam

The minute that you are allowed to begin your test, do a “mind dump” of eve-

rything that you can remember or are afraid you will forget: names of artists

and artworks, patrons, dates, gallery locations, names of important historical

events or texts, key points from the readings, etc. You may or may not end up

going back to this list during the test, but it could prove useful.

Research & Writing Tips

E Use jstor.

If your university has a subscription to JSTOR, use it! JSTOR has a vast

digital collection of major art historical journals and articles. If your uni-

versity isn’t a JSTOR subscriber, you can use JSTOR’s free “Register &

Read” program to access certain items for free. It may also be beneficial

for you to take JSTOR’s free, self-guided Research Basics course.

E artstor and

The google art

project

Use Artstor and the Google Art Project to find and explore works of

art in incredible detail and discover new artists and styles. In order to use

Artstor, you must obtain access through a subscribing institution. The

Google Art Project is freely available. By having an account on either site,

you can create customized image galleries that you can share with others.

Each site has an impressive database of images, but only Artstor allows you

to download images.

E Use refworks (or something similar)

Use RefWorks or a similar research management tool to manage and cre-

ate your bibliographies automatically for you when writing research papers.

Using a tool like this will spare you the grief of having to untangle disor-

ganized citations and research notes during and after the writing process.

E Learn the

Chicago manual

of style.

Learn the Chicago Manual of Style if you are planning to be an art his-

tory major or minor. Chicago is the standard style guide of choice for our

field and knowing how to use it will save you time and effort when you have

writing assignments.

Tips for Writing an Open-Ended Research Paper | PAGE 1

E Identify a topic

You might receive an open-ended research paper assignment at some point

during your studies. Don’t panic if you don’t know how to write an art

history essay. The first step is to identify a topic for your paper. What art-

ist or theme interests you the most and is relevant to your course? For

example, with a broad topic like “feminist art history,” you could examine

lots of different artists and paintings; with something more specific like

“Artemisia Gentileschi’s paintings of Judith Beheading Holofernes,” you

could focus on a feminist interpretation of a single artist’s work(s).

E Come up with an argument

Once you know what you’re writing about, come up with an argument (a

thesis statement) that will drive your research and paper. (Your thesis

might change as you do research and that’s fine; it’s simply helpful to have

a general argument or problem that you’re trying to solve before you hit

the stacks.) One way to come up with an argument is to simply look at

the artwork you’re writing about and think about what you see. Is there

anything usual about the work? Are you curious about the artist’s stylistic

or compositional choices? Do you wonder about the reaction a contem-

porary viewer of the work might have? These are just a sampling of ques-

tions that can lead you toward taking a stance on a work of art.

Tips for Writing an Open-Ended Research Paper | PAGE 2

E Do your research

You may want to start your research by reading a biography of the art-

ist that you’re writing about. This can help you understand how they

developed artistically, who commissioned work from them, and who

they influenced. It can also shed light on any of the artist’s personal

opinions on art-making, religion, politics, etc. that might have influ-

enced their art. An obvious place to begin researching is to look for

books and articles written about the artwork(s) that you’re writing

about. If you’re writing about an artist’s general body of work, try to

narrow your focus to specific themes to make your research (and paper)

more manageable.

If you are struggling to find sources, ask your professor for advice or

see if your library offers an art history research guide. It is also a good

idea to check the footnotes of any sources that you have found and

read them to see if they reference anything that could be useful to your

own research. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s publications divi-

sion, MetPublications, and the Getty Research Institute’s Digital

Books initiative are two free, open access online initiatives that could

also provide you with valuable bibliographic resources.

(Once you begin writing, don’t forget to cite as you write, since going

back and citing your references at the end of the writing process can be

a needless pain.)

Tips for Writing an Open-Ended Research Paper | PAGE 3

E Make an outline

Once you have a topic, a thesis statement, and (ideally) some research under

your belt, it’s time to make an outline for your paper. Outlines are crucial to

a successful paper because you will be talking about lots of different kinds

of information, such as historical fact, physical descriptions of artworks, the

opinions and findings of other scholars, and what you think. It might be

helpful to think of your paper as a mystery that you are trying to solve: the

introduction sets the scene of the crime (the artwork or issue at hand) , the

body of the paper describes the mystery and how the evidence (your re-

search) points to the solution (whatever it is you are trying to answer, argue,

or prove). You might want to build your paper up to a dramatic denoue-

ment, where your strongest and most surprising piece of evidence to support

your thesis comes at the end. Whatever way you approach outlining, it

should represent the flow of your paper and how you will support your ar-

gument from the introduction through the conclusion, with the contents of

each paragraph mapped out in a logical way.

E Start writing

Everyone has their own preference for when they begin to write. Some only

begin writing after they have gone through each bibliographic source and

made an outline; others like to write as they go. Though I encourage you to

begin writing only once you have an outline, there’s nothing wrong with

writing in a way that you’re comfortable with as long as you can convey your

ideas clearly and provide strong support for your thesis. It’s a good idea to

start writing well before your paper is due so that you have enough time to

write rough and final drafts.

WHAT NOT TO DO

E Don’t be late

on test day

This should be a given, but I’ve seen students frequently come to class late,

miss the test questions, and expect the professor to run through a review of

the exam from the beginning. Professors sometimes plan to continue with

their lectures after exams, so depending on how long the test is and how

long the class is, they might not have time (or want) to go back through the

test questions. Similarly, don’t leave right after the test if a normal lecture

follows unless you’ve made arrangements with your professor to miss it.

Otherwise, it comes off as rude and speaks volumes to your professor about

his or her students not caring enough about the class to stay.

E Don’t text/talk on your phone or fall asleep

Art history classrooms are almost always dark and it can be easy to get

bored and let your mind wander. Try to stay interested. Resist the tempta-

tion to turn on brightly lit objects, as this is disruptive to your neighbors

and, if the professor notices, to the whole class.

E Don’t plagiarize

on your papers

This is a given, but it can be tempting for art history papers, as this field

can be extremely frustrating to write about. If you’re struggling with your

papers, ask a friend, your TA, or your college writing center for help. Look

to your course readings to see how art historians describe and come to their

conclusions about art and try to use a similar method. Check to see if your

university library has an art history research guide available; some of these

guides include tactics for tackling the art history essay.

~[Table of Contents] [Reading & Resources]

E ELKINS, JAMES. Stories of Art. New York: Routledge, 2002.

E GOMBRICH, E.H. The Story of Art, 16th Edition. London: Phaidon Press, 1995.

E HALL, JAMES. Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols, 2nd Edition. Boulder: Westview Press, 2007.

E HATT, MICHAEL & CHARLOTTE KLONK Art History: A Critical Intro-

duction to Its Methods. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.

E KLEINER, FRED S. AND CHRISTIN J. MAMIYA. Gardner’s Art Through

the Ages, 12th Edition. Stamford: Thomson Wadsworth, 2004.

E VASARI, GIORGIO. The Lives of the Artists, Oxford World’s Classics Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

E Writing Art History Papers — A guide from UNC Chapel Hill.

E If you have questions about majoring in art history, check the Q&A section at

Caravaggista.com or feel free to send Amy an (anonymous) “Ask” via Tumblr.

E Find more Recommended Reading, Research, and College & Career Resources at

Caravaggista.com/Resources

THIS PDF CAN BE PERMANENTLY ACCESSED AT:

HTTP://CARAVAGGISTA.COM/WHAT-TO-EXPECT-FROM-YOUR-FIRST-ART-HISTORY-COURSE/

Edgar Degas, Visit to a Museum (c. 1879 - 1890), Museum of

Fine Arts, Boston

Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid (1657 - 1658), Rijksmuseum

Gustave Courbet, The Artist’s Studio (1854 - 1855), Musée

d’Orsay, Paris

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Girl Reading (c. 1890), Museum of Fine

Arts, Houston

Fresco Panel Depicting Dionysus and Ariadne (Roman, 1st cen-

tury), The Getty Villa

Grechetto (Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione), Crucifixion (c.

1660), Musei di Strada Nuova

Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Agatha Bas (s.d. 1641), Royal

Collection Trust

Caravaggio, Penitent Magdalene (c. 1594 - 1595), Galleria

Doria Pamphilj

Caravaggio, David and Goliath (c. 1599), The Prado Museum

Caravaggio, David with the Head of Goliath (c. 1610), Galleria

Borghese

Valentin de Boulogne, Christ and the Adulteress (1620s), The

Getty

Karl Friedrich Lessing, The Robber and His Child (1832), Phil-

adelphia Museum of Art

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Reading from Homer (1855), Phil-

adelphia Museum of Art

Karl Brullov, The Last Day of Pompeii (1830 - 1833), The

State Russian Museum

Georges de la Tour, The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame

(c. 1638 - 1640), LACMA

Daniel Ridgway-Knight, Reverie (1866), Berkshire Museum

Titian, Venus with a Mirror (1555), National Gallery of Art,

D.C.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne (1622 - 1625), Gal-

leria Borghese

Edvard Munch, Starry Night (1922 - 1924), The Munch Muse-

um, Oslo

Vincent van Gogh, Self -Portrait (Sept. or Oct. 1887), The Van

Gogh Museum

Caravaggio, The Denial of St. Peter (c. 1610), The Metropoli-

tan Museum of Art

Rembrandt School, Christ and the Woman of Samaria (Dutch,

c. 1655), The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Caspar David Friedrich, A Walk at Dusk (c. 1830 - 1835), The

J. Paul Getty Museum

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Jewish Bride (Isaac and Rebecca) (c.

1665 - 1669), Rijksmuseum

Caravaggio, Saint Catherine of Alexandria (c. 1598), Thyssen-

Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

Titian and Workshop, Girl Before the Mirror (after 1515),

Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

Mary Cassatt, Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge (1879),

Philadelphia Museum of Art

~[Table of Contents]

IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

[Artworks]

Art History Guides from Caravaggista.com

E Applying to Graduate School in Art History, Second Edition

E What to Expect From Your First Art History Course, Second Edition

E Caravaggista’s Guide to Caravaggio in Rome (Forthcoming, 2015)

Creative Commons Copyright

What to Expect from your First Art History Course, Second Edition, was published on January 7, 2015

under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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THANK YOU FOR READING WHAT TO EXPECT FROM YOUR FIRST ART HISTORY COURSE

Second Edition

Written & Designed by Amy M. Martin

Feel free to send questions, comments, or suggestions to:

amy [at] caravaggista [dot] com

Questions? Comments?

Amy Martin is an independent Italian Renaissance & Baroque art historian. Her website, Caravaggista.com, stems from her

passion for higher education and the ad-vancement of digital art history. She hopes that this booklet helps new art history stu-dents enjoy their academic adventures in

this field..

The Author