Anyone who wants to study art history on their own outside a school, university, or another organized educational program currently has lots of options. From online articles to videos, books, virtual exhibitions, and even social media accounts, there have never before been more opportunities for interested learners to get an art history education outside of the classroom. However, structure is a little harder to come by, since the guidance offered by the traditional art history class is not readily available online. Except maybe here! These nine (the list keeps growing) points represent my best advice for getting the most out of your art history self study.
Independent art history students may also benefit from my advice for college art history students, which will give you a sense of what’s covered in structured art history classes.
If you’re studying art history in school, please follow your teacher’s guidance, which may be quite different than what’s in this post.
Advice for art history self study
Use objects to study ideas; don’t study objects for their own sake.
Art history is all about the artworks (often referred to as “objects”), which should be at the center of everything we do. However, we don’t just study objects in isolation; we also use them to understand the larger ideas that go beyond any single artwork. Don’t simply aim to become familiar with Michelangelo’s David; use it to learn something about the many larger ideas it illustrates, such as marble sculpture, the Italian Renaissance, naturalism, the heroic male nude, or the influence of the classical past. This is a much more fulfilling way to approach art history than simply getting acquainted with a sequence of individual artworks.
Go beyond the famous.
Your interest in a well-known artwork may be what inspired you to take up art history, but your experience will be severely limited if that’s all you ever explore. There’s a whole world of art out there, and the works you’ll end up enjoying the most are not necessarily the famous ones.
Learn from the experts.
Your education is only as good as the quality of the information on which you base it. If you’ve going to spend the time and energy to learn about art history (or any other topic), make sure you’re using reliable information from knowledgeable sources. Learn art history from trained art historians, well-respected museums, galleries, and auction houses, and reputable publishers, not amateurs and general-interest websites.
Remember that historical and cultural context is key.
Always pay attention to the context of an artwork and ask yourself how that’s reflected in the work itself. Quality art history resources will usually introduce you to the relevant ideas. Not only will your understanding of the artwork become richer when you appreciate it as a product of its time and place, but you’ll also learn so much about history, culture, religion, economics, literature, politics, philosophy, and our shared humanity in general. While it’s possible to enjoy art without knowing its relationship to its historical context, you’ll be missing so much of the good stuff in my opinion. You don’t have to be an expert in these things, since sources like art history books and museum exhibitions will usually give you the most relevant basics for a particular situation.
Realize that art history is not a science. Its rules are more like rules of thumb.
We love to divide art history into a series of periods, styles, and movements, each with definitive characteristics and a clear timeline of progression from one to the next. While it’s true that the most famous (“canonical”) works in each category do tend to display those traits, the full spectrum of art doesn’t always fit into these neat boxes. Not every artwork in a style has all the characteristics that textbooks tell us it’s supposed to, and not every artist followed the general trends of their time and place. Generalizations help us understand the big picture in art history, but they don’t tell the whole story.
Learn to think like an art historian.
Art history is not nearly as much about what you know as it is about how you think. Therefore, it’s worthwhile to practice thinking like an art historian. Learn to analyze art in terms of its visual qualities, subject matter, and historical context. Practice forming interpretations that you could explain and defend to other people. Familiarize yourself with what makes a compelling art historical argument or how you can use the art history you know to draw conclusions about an artwork you’ve never seen before. This will get you so much further than simply memorizing facts, and you can use these skills far beyond the art museum.
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Learn to think like an art historian.
Don’t forget to use your eyes.
It’s easy to get so wrapped up in learning facts that you stop truly looking at the art in front of you. Don’t fall into that trap, because visual art and the enjoyment we get from it are the reasons we’re here in the first place.
Think about how art connects to other art.
Art tends to relate to other art, even if it doesn’t seem that way at first glance. Artists always interact with each other, learn from each other, exchange ideas and techniques, and even copy each other (not necessarily in a bad way). Whenever cultures meet, artistic ideas are usually exchanged as well. And most artists look to the past for instruction, inspiration, and more. Sometimes, they choose to continue with tradition or adapt it in new ways; other times they decide to break with it altogether. But very few artists, if any, can really be said to work completely without the influence of past art. Try to identify which artworks and styles an artist followed, referenced, adapted, or reacted against – these answers can be really surprising – and your understanding will become so much richer. Try to connect art you’re seeing now to what you’ve seen, known, and learned about in the past, because that can help you start to understand unfamiliar traditions.
Think critically.
Don’t be a passive learner. Think critically about what you read. Ask questions. Delve deeper. Use more than one source to get a fuller perspective.
Bonus: Best books for art history self-study: This topic has become its own post now!
