Marcia Pointon - History of Art: A Students Handbook

This fully revised edition of the History of Art: A Students Handbook introduces students to the kinds of practices, challenges, questions and writings they will encounter in studying the history of art.

Marcia Pointon conveys the excitement of Art History as a multi-faceted discipline addressing all aspects of the study of media, communication and representation. She describes and analyses different methods and approaches to the discipline, explaining their history and their effects on the day-to-day learning process. She also discusses the relationship of Art History to related disciplines, including film, literature, design history and anthropology.

The fifth edition of this classic text includes:

information on why Art History is important and relevant in todays world

guidance on choosing a degree course

case studies of careers pursued by Art History graduates

advice on study skills and reading methods

a bibliography and further reading

detailed up-to-date advice on electronic resources and links to essential websites.

History of Art covers academic, training and vocational aspects of Art History, providing a wealth of information on the characteristics of courses available and on the relationship between Art History and the world of museums and heritage.

Marcia Pointon is Senior Research Professor at Norwich University of the Arts, Professor Emeritus in History of Art at the University of Manchester and Research Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Among her latest books are Brilliant Effects: A Cultural History of Gem Stones and Jewellery (2009), which was awarded the Historians of British Art Book Prize in 2011, and Portrayal and the Search for Identity (2012).

History of Art

A students handbook

Fifth Edition
Marcia Pointon

Fifth edition published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2014 Marcia Pointon

The right of Marcia Pointon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

First edition published by Allen & Unwin (Publishers) 1980
Fourth edition published by Routledge 1997

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Pointon, Marcia R.
History of art: a students handbook / by Marcia Pointon.5th edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. ArtHistoriographyHandbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title.
N380.P56 2014
709dc23
2013035364

ISBN: 978-0-415-63925-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-63924-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-08359-8 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman
by Book Now Ltd, London

Disclaimer

Although every effort has been made to trace copyright holders, this has not been possible in all cases. Any omissions brought to our attention will be remedied in future editions.

Many people have contributed to the revisions and to what amounts to the complete rewriting of large sections of this fifth edition of History of Art: A Students Handbook. The five anonymous readers came up not only with much needed encouragement to me to return, again, to a text I originally wrote as a fledgling lecturer but also with a raft of excellent ideas for improvement and updating.

In addition I would like to thank, for their readiness to give me specific advice, James Benedict Brown, Mary Roberts, Marc De La Ruelle and Cordelia Warr. Without the advice of Nick Brown, librarian at the Courtauld Institute responsible for serials, I could not have written large sections of relating to electronic resources, and without this the book would have been seriously deficient. Any lacunae or errors are, of course, entirely my own.

, an entirely new chapter on careers, simply could not have been written without the participants who, despite very busy lives, willingly sent me on request their succinct, informative and witty accounts of their professional lives since graduating in History of Art. I am deeply grateful for their generosity, as I am sure also will be the generations of students who stand to benefit from their example.

Caroline Osborne, Chair of the Association of Art Historians Schools Group and a teacher of History of Art at secondary-school level, gave up an entire evening to instruct me on the intricacies and politics of the public examination system in secondary education as well as responding by email to numerous questions. I hope her pupils find this new edition useful.

Finally I would like to thank Natalie Foster for her patience in sticking with me. It is longer than I care to remember that she first approached me about undertaking this new edition. For many years other professional tasks and life events militated against my getting down to it. In the end it has been an enjoyable process, and I am hugely grateful to Natalie for her persistence.

London and Motrone 2013

It was a relatively straightforward matter in 19789 when I was writing the first edition of this Handbook to describe what students would be likely to encounter if they entered a British university to study History of Art. There were comparatively few courses to choose from and those that there were tended to follow syllabuses that were similar. Design History was emerging as a distinctive discipline, but the now ubiquitous Visual Culture and Visual Studies were unknown, at least as terminology. The History of Art, following familiar routes, was taught to practising aspiring artists in what had been art colleges but were now for the most part polytechnics, and students in universities who were not practitioners focused on famous works of European art, mainly from periods prior to the twentieth century. By the time I was revising the fourth edition in 1997 the landscape had been transformed, with most higher-education institutions either having degreeawarding status or aspiring to that end. At the time of writing, in late 2013, a further group of erstwhile art colleges have become universities.

The introduction of student fees, and then the massive hike in those fee levels in 2012, has made the providers of courses in all arts and humanities subjects more aware of the competition they face and more ready to proselytize about what they see as the special strengths of what they offer. The study of recent and contemporary art has overtaken, in many institutions, the more familiar favoured periods. There has never been so much information available to prospective students, but simultaneously changes in the organization of A-level examinations have meant that it has become extremely rare for state schools to offer an A or AS level in History of Art.