/lit/ - Literature

>>11184958
>>11184964
Art Historian here, Gombrich's Story of Art, Jansen's or Gardner's is the standard.

Gombrich undervalues or outright dismisses the social history that the field is focused on in modern scholarship. Formalist analysis has been blown out or improved in most cases, but that era are still great foundational books in 'the canon' of Art History. See also: Panofsky, Winklemann, all the old guard. I wish there was more Formalism taught but most are Marx (and later Foucault) ivory tower theory. Formalism was at its limits anyway, connoisseurship can't engage the broader questions (academia needs to sustain itself). Still, learning what makes an image work (Compositionally, symbolically, etc) will make you a god among your 'muh feeling' peers.

There is no survey course that will be comprehensive or adequate if you have more than a required interest. Even split into multiple courses, the depth and breadth of the influences and styles only get more complicated as time progresses. Find an older edition of Gardner's or Jansen's and flip through it until you find something that really catches you.

The best way to truly study is to find a movement you're interested in and work from there. The Art History field is actually quite small, so many movements have their leading experts and seminal works. Once you find something you like, it's very easy to just follow that thread to the next tertiary movement and keep digging deeper.

I have Aesthetics from Classic Greece to Present by Monroe Beardsley. Really great, dives into the source material itself and is very explicit when it cuts the material short or forgoes a deeper study. Don't let that fool you, it's dense. I'm still wading through Saint Augustine myself. Good rec.

I'm also big fan of John Berger. Not that he says anything particularly profound, but Berger is great because he reminds me why I got into art in the first place. He's really optimistic, and his writing itself is very unacademic, lyrical even. His essays particularly are really grounded in the personal experience of seeing a (>)beautiful work and the influence a work or a movement can have on individuals and ideas on a human level. He has critical work too, that has actual theoretical merit even, although most of these ideas are retroactively obvious now, most famously 'Ways of Seeing' and it's BBC program. After burying myself in academic theory for years, Berger is really refreshing and comforting. He never loses sight of the human element in work. I'd recommend the 'Moment of Cubism' for a good insight into his way of thinking. Solid theory work that is still grounded in real life. It's in his last book, Landscapes, but probably findable online too.

I'm an idort and can only youtube:
Sir Kenneth Clark - Civilization
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6qYjisp51M

Berger - Ways of Seeing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk&list=PLlhSx0L1hpaGKfq1qXe1vWUhG1EgIN9Yf
See you in the research library archives, anon.