/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.9208885]

Could I easily replace an art history course with a book or two on the subject?

[Anonymous No.9208907]

>>9208885
lol

[Anonymous No.9208939]

>>9208885
Yes, but it would be a shit course. My college had a obligatory 4 semester course on art history + a 2 semester course on national art history and demand still made them create african and oriental optional classes, amd we were expected to read anything from 5 or 6 essays and it became kinda ridiculous because some people had more credits in art history than even atellier courses.

Also, Gombrich is kinda outdated and even attacked by people who feel him and Panofsky fucked Warburg over (those people, Agamben and Didi-Hubermann come to mind, are right, btw).

[Anonymous No.9208970]

>>9208939
isn't the story of art updated frequently? what parts are outdated?

[Anonymous No.9209002]

>>9208970
The historiography behind it is outdated and doesn't work with the last 60 or 70 years of art that well.

Also, I haven't really read any specific critiques and it's been 4 or 5 years since I've read it but he glosses over some very important / interesting aspects of romantic / pre-gothic stuff and greatly underestimates 19th century art.

[Anonymous No.9209118]

>>9208885
It's a good book, worth reading either way.

[Anonymous No.9209363]

>>9208885
Depends on the kind of course.
Actual art schools have you taking like eight semesters of Art History.
I took a one semester art history course at community college and barely went to class but got an A because I read Gombrich though.

[Anonymous No.9209639]

>>9209363
I'm in community and required one fine arts elective. I'm split on Art History and Drawing, but I'm thinking classes with an instructor are far more useful for Drawing. Art History is a three semester sequence though, so a given course would be somewhat more in depth than that single semester overview one. And art history is something I can bring into literature and philosophy which I can't do with drawing, which is more just skill and perspective. Though also a single semester of anything isn't much.

[Anonymous No.9209660]

>>9208885
a 101 art history course, yeah

[Anonymous No.9209749]

>tfw you go to a stem school that literally doesn't have a single course even tangentially related to art
All of my humanities knowledge has to come from self-study
I wish I had friends to talk about The Recognitions with but shitposting on /lit/ is the closest I can get

[Anonymous No.9209837]

>>9208885
No. I've been going over some of my old art history notes recently and one class has, as a 'general introduction', 11 books just as a survey look of about 70 years. That's not including monographs or anything.

It's still a field that is very much alive though so if you want to gain an in-depth look at it I think it's worth the effort.

[Anonymous No.9209906]

Art Historian here, >>9208939 nailed it. Gombrich denies, glosses over, undervalues or outright dismisses the social history that the field is much more focused on in modern scholarship. His formalist analysis has been blown out or improved in virtually all cases, but this is still a great foundational book in 'the canon' of Art History. See also: Panofsky, Winklemann, all the old guard.

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. The standard survey book is Gardener's, find an older edition and flip your way through it until you find something that really catches you.

This >>9209749 anon is equally correct, 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 territary movement and keep digging deeper.

See you in the research library archives, anon.