Lesson One: The History of the Word “Art”

FYS 100

Creative Discovery in Digital Art

Spring 2002

History of the Word “Art”

Many things that we today call “art” were not intentionally created as works of art.

Paintings at Lascaux, 17,000-15,000 B.C.

Venus of Willendorf, 25,000-20,000 B.C.

History of the Word “Art”

The words for art in Greek (tekhne) and Latin (ars) don’t refer to the fine arts as we know them today.

Aristotle, in the 4th century B.C., characterized art as any human activity based on knowledge and governed by rules.

History of the Word “Art”

Not all activities that we consider to be art today were considered art in ancient Greece.Painting and sculpture were crafts to be learned, not art guided by inspiration.Poetry and music, on the other hand, were considered products of divine inspiration.

Nike of Samothrace, 190 B.C.

History of the Word “Art”

The idea of the liberal arts evolved after the time of Plato and Aristotle.

Martianus Capella was the first to speak of the seven liberal arts: Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music.

History of the Word “Art”

In the Middle Ages, art continued to be viewed as something someone learned rather than something a person was inspired to do.

The term “artista” came into use. However, it referred to either a craftsman or a student of the liberal arts.

History of the Word “Art”

In the Middle Ages, painters and sculptors were still considered craftsmen admired for their skill and technique rather than their artistic inspiration.

The Middle Ages adhered to the scheme of the seven liberal arts, but in the 12th century they divided them into two categories: the Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic) and the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music).

History of the Word “Art”

In the Middle Ages, the mechanical arts were added to the classification of the liberal arts.

Painting and sculpture were considered mechanical arts.

History of the Word “Art”

At the beginning of the Renaissance (14th to 16th centuries), painters and sculptors were still considered mere artisans.

This situation began to change in the 14th century, when painters, sculptors, and architects began to form a group separate from the mechanical arts.

History of the Word “Art”

Gradually, painters, sculptors, and architects gained respect.

There was a new emphasis on realism in painting and sculpture. A painter or sculptor was expected to learn mathematical perspective, optics, geometry, and anatomy.

Drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci,1452-1519

History of the Word “Art”

Painting and sculpture slowly began to be accepted as liberal arts, “sister arts” to poetry and rhetoric.

The modern concept of the “artist” thus began to emerge.

Maddalena by Raphael, 1482-1520

History of the Word “Art”

Plato (5th – 4th century B.C.) believed that poets, musicians, and prophets were divinely inspired by the gods.Renaissance thinkers returned to the classical idea of the divinely inspired poet, carrying this idea over to the painter or sculptor.

The Creation of Adam by Michelango,painted 1508-1512

History of the Word “Art”

Giorgio Vasari wrote about Renaissance artists in Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and ArchitectsHe said that a work of art had a certain “grazia.”By the 16th century, the artist was considered an educated and cultivated person whose genius was revered.

History of the Word “Art”

The emergence of art as a distinct and worthy intellectual pursuit is manifested in the founding of academies of art in the 16th and 17th centuriesAccademia del Disegno in Florence, 1562, founded by Giorgio VasariAccademia di San Luca in Rome in 1580’sRoyal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in France, 1648, where the term “beaux arts” began to be used

History of the Word “Art”

Charles Perrault listed in Le Cabinet des Beaux Arts eight “fine arts” – eloquence, poetry, music, architecture, painting, sculpture, optics, and mechanics

In 1746, Abbé Batteux published Les beaux arts reduits a un meme principe, in which he separated music, poetry, painting, and sculpture from the mechanical arts

History of the Word “Art”

It was not until 1880 that the word “art” (without “beaux” in front of it) appeared in any English dictionary.

“the skillful production of the beautiful in visible forms”