Closing Conclusions

For my final blog post, I wanted to explore a continuation of my reflections from class on how I understand art, and how my understanding has changed over the course of the semester. My understanding of ancient art especially has changed the most. Reading R. R. R. Smith’s essay, The use of images: visual history and ancient history, at the beginning of the semester and then again at the end of the semester was helpful in evaluating my own conceptions of the notion of “ancient art.” I was most surprised at how differently I understood Smith’s argument at the end of the semester compared to the start. I think Smith summed it up most succinctly when he argued that “ ‘Ancient art’ is a convenient collective misnomer for all these figured artefacts, but we should be aware that this is a very different, bigger and shaggier, beast from art in our own time.” (Smith, 64; emphasis added) I really like this imagery of ancient art as a “shaggier beast,” though I do think Smith should be careful in his conceptual othering of ancient cultures as he constructs their art as “beasts.” The point I believe he is trying to make is not that ancient art is uncivilized or less human, only that ancient notions of art are fundamentally distinct from modern notions, and we should be careful not to portray them according to modern conceptions. He condones “try[ing] to separate out ancient images from the wider visual and material history of antiquity” (Smith, 67), an argument that I have a newfound appreciation for after our semester of studies. In modern times, designating something as art privileges it’s aesthetic over every other aspect of it. Arguably, this designation can mislead the observer into a false way of looking at the object in question. To me, this is one of the biggest challenges modern art historians face in their attempts to study ancient art or material. How can we reconcile modern appreciation of an ancient object for its most fundamental aspect of aesthetic while accurately representing its history and function?

At the beginning of the semester, I wrote in my notes that “art” was an aesthetic manifestation of society’s desires and perspectives on decor. I think that my original understanding was inherently limited to what I perceived to be art, or what other people told me was art. I had never really questioned the societal impositions that clouded my understanding of the subject. As Professor Valentine pushed us over the course of the semester to challenge these modern [potentially mis]conceptions, I slowly came to the realization that art is much more complicated than a simple labeling of an object as such. What is the point of accepting an object’s label of “art” with no context or awareness? Reducing an object to a basic, singular visual representation fails to respect the multi-faceted dimensions of its very existence. The study of art history is not just memorizing objects and their context, but engaging on a deeper level with the object as a way to understand past peoples and their practices, to situate your understanding within the proper socio- and art-historical sphere of knowledge. Essentially, I learned that there is a fundamental and crucial difference in accepting something to be art because you are told it is art by a museum or a textbook, and understanding something as art. My definition and more personal understanding of the term has developed to include an emphasis on aesthetic above all else. This does not imply merely a visually-pleasing aesthetic; it’s emphasis on visuals is one of visual functionality, performing a function — be it religious, personal, private, political, etc. Additionally, I am significantly more aware of my own application of the term, the importance of context, and following from this, the consequent misconceptions that may accompany the usage of the term in practical application.

References:

Smith, R. R. (2006). The use of images: Visual history and ancient history. In T. P. Wiseman (Author), Classics in progress: Essays on ancient Greece and Rome (pp. 59-102). Oxford: British Academy by Oxford University Press.