Art History: The Basics

Now in its second edition, this volume is an accessible introduction to the history of art. Using an international range of examples, it provides the reader with a toolkit of concepts, ideas and methods relevant to understanding art history. This new edition is fully updated with colour illustrations, increased coverage of non-western art and extended discussions of contemporary art theory. It introduces key ideas, issues and debates, exploring questions such as: - What is art and what is meant by art history? - What approaches and methodologies are used to interpret and evaluate art? - How have ideas regarding medium, gender, identity and difference informed representation? - What perspectives can psychoanalysis, semiotics and social art histories bring to the study of the discipline? - How are the processes of postcolonialism, decolonisation and globalisation changing approaches to art history? Complete with helpful subject summaries, a glossary, suggestions for future reading and guidance on relevant image archives, this book is an ideal starting point for anyone studying art history as well as general readers with an interest in the subject.

Diana Newall is a Staff Tutor and an Associate Lecturer in Art History at The Open University and a Consultant Lecturer for Sotheby's Institute of Art. She is co-author of The Chronology of Pattern (2011), has published on Cretan art and is editor of Art and Its Global Histories, A Reader (2017). Grant Pooke is an Honorary Senior Fellow in Art History of the University of Kent and teaches for The Open University. He is the author of Francis Klingender: A Marxist Art Historian Out of Time (2008), co-author of Fifty Key Texts in Art History (2012) and Narratives for Indian Modernity: The Aesthetic of Brij Mohan Anand (2016).

Introduction to the second edition ; 1. Art histories and art theories ; 2. Formalism, modernism and modernity ; 3. Marxist and social art histories ; 4. Semiotics and poststructuralism ; 5. Psychoanalysis, art and the fractured self ; 6. Representations of gender, sex and sexualities ; 7. Art and art histories since the 1960s ; 8. Postcolonialism, globalisation and art histories