Main content
Course: Start here > Unit 2
Lesson 1: An introduction to art history- What is art history and where is it going?
- Art history and world art history
- Why do people become art historians?
- Why study art of the past?
- Art and Empathy
- A brief history of representing the body in Western painting
- A brief history of representing of the body in Western sculpture
© 2024 Khan AcademyTerms of usePrivacy PolicyCookie Notice
Why study art of the past?
Studying past art is crucial to understanding our culture, history, and ourselves. It fosters empathy, broadens perspectives, and enhances visual literacy. Art history reveals our creative potential and provides a record of what our ancestors valued. It's a key to unlocking our human identity. Created by Beth Harris, Smarthistory, and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- George Santayana is quoted as having said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
In a similar way, we study good art of the past in order that we might do original things, avoiding being derivative, and we study bad art of the past in order not to make those mistakes again.(3 votes)
Video transcript
(upbeat intro music) - [Narrator] Why is it important
to study art of the past? - [Instructor] Art history
is not just in the past, it is in the present and
when I teach art history, I'm teaching about the context and I'm trying to help students find those connections
between what happened then and why and what's happening now and why. Everything that we have
about where we came from, our culture, the ideas
that we've had in the past are all wrapped up in these artifacts and the arts that we look at. If we want to know more
about who we are today, we should really look at past arts. - [Instructor] I believe that
art is the underlying thread that informs our everyday life in ways that we might not even be aware of, and I think it is the language
that is important for us to understand how it
works and how we read it. Visual literacy is just as
important as written literacy and we're living in a visual world. - [Teacher] Studying arts
history helps us find points of connection with people from other places and other times. - [Teacher] One of the things
that I think my students get out of studying
art of the past is that they can start to empathize
and understand what it was like to live a life that is very different from their own. They understand that their
cultural frame of reference and their religious frame of reference is not the norm throughout
all time and space. I'm a Non-Westerner so I firmly that its important to study the traditions of other cultures, and not just privileged
the legacy of European art but understand also that other cultures produce important art and
some of the best artists. [Teacher] I think we
study the Art of the Past because we are fascinated about ourselves and own creative potential. And also really fascinated about our own deeper sense of where we come from. Art is this record that
the past has left us, that allows us to look back in time and understand what they cared about. What they really thought was precious. What they thought was worth recording and leaving for the future generations. We understand ourselves
and who we are as human. By understanding the art of the past. (upbeat piano music)