While people have always made objects that are rightly considered works of art, the idea of the arts is a separate category of human endeavor—distinct, that is, from other kinds of human activity such as hunting or food gathering or making in general—is a relatively modern construction.
In the forward to his monumental study of the medieval icon, Bild und Kult, translated Likeness and Presence in the American edition, Hans Belting explains the book's rather curious subtitle—A History of the Image before the Era of Art—in terms that immediately focus on the issues surrounding the idea of the visual arts, especially just what they are and how they function in c…
The transformation of the image from an efficacious to a reflective space is coincident with the rise of the very idea of the "arts." Before the era of art, the word art had much broader meaning than it does today. The Latin ars (and the Greek technē) referred to almost any branch of human endeavor—the work of the farmer, the shipwright, the military commander, the magic…
Shiner makes a convincing case that the arts are a modern invention, "not an essence or a fate but something we have made … [an] invention barely two hundred years old" (p. 3). One of the first to convincingly argue the point was Paul Oskar Kristeller in his 1950 essay "The Modern System of the Arts," but Shiner's argument is distinguished by its awareness…
Belting, Hans. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Bernard of Angers. Book of the Miracles of St. Faith (Liber miraculorum S. Fides). Text 34 in the "Appendix: Texts on the History and Use of Images and Relics," in Belting, Likeness and Presence, pp. 536–537. Chicago: Un…
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments