What you will study
How was art part of people’s lives before 1800? Why does this matter when studying artworks from this period? To answer these questions, this module surveys an exciting range of artworks drawn from across the world and across history to help you deepen and broaden your art-historical knowledge.
The module is structured into four parts. Together, these trace the lifecycle of an artwork, beginning with the environment where it emerged, then focusing on how it was made, on how it was used and, finally, on how it was experienced. As a whole, these four parts will give you a sound understanding of key artworks and related historical and cultural issues. At the core of your learning lies four specially written books covering a range of case studies chosen to illuminate a facet of the relationships between art and life.
The first book, Art and its Environments, shows that artworks both structure and reveal how humans related to their natural environments before 1800. The first chapter is about landscapes, followed by chapters on forests, mountains, snowscapes and islands. You’ll learn about Dutch and Chinese landscape paintings, monumental constructions at Stonehenge and Versailles, and devotional paintings from Venice and Japan. You’ll also study Machu Picchu (Wayna Pikchu), imagery showing Frost Fairs on the Thames in London, illuminated manuscripts from medieval England and map-making in the South Pacific.
The second book, Art in the Making, is about the materials, work and technologies of art but also about the distinct social values placed on art-makers. The five chapters cover sculpture, ceramics, paintings, prints, and architecture. You’ll investigate the sixteenth-century Roman sculptor Michelangelo, works in granite by Mexican stone-carvers, cave paintings and Byzantine icons, prints on paper from ancient China and eighteenth-century England, ceramic artistry in Italy and China, and the making of vast domed buildings in early modern London and Constantinople (present-day İstanbul).
The third book, Art in Action, explores the many roles played by art once it has left the makers’ hands. Here, the five chapters are devoted to ritual, mobility, collecting, worship and honouring the dead. You’ll study how these activities both generated and deployed artworks, including whole Viking ships and great cathedrals as well as small jewels enmeshed in the trans-Saharan trade-routes. You’ll also work on aristocratic art collecting in England and the Ottoman Empire, sculptures made for west African divination rituals and the precious objects used in Inuit and European burial practices.
The final book, Encountering Art, is about what happens when somebody engages with an artwork in person. It shows that all of the bodily senses are vital in this, not just vision. Accordingly, the five chapters explore touch, hearing, taste, smell, and sight. You’ll explore ancient Greek ceramics, works by the seventeenth-century Roman painter Caravaggio, the art of Persian gardens and European natural history, urban design in early modern London, sacred spaces in Byzantium and northern Europe, and the various ways that vision was understood prior to the invention of photography.
You will learn
By studying this module you'll learn:
- how to investigate and understand artworks across a diverse range of contexts to form a solid foundation for further art-historical study or independent inquiry
- key art-historical terms, concepts, and issues relevant to art made before 1800
- skills of visual analysis and comparison crucial to art history, as well as critical reading and research skills that are highly transferrable
- about the art history of the Four Nations of the United Kingdom and also from across the world, including objects held in a range of museums, collections and also heritage sites.