What Would Digital Art History Look Like?

Can the study of art history stop looking like ancient history itself? Can it transcend the old approaches and embrace the digital world? As digitized as art history has become in terms of merely creating online repositories of texts and images, it still lags in going fully digital in terms of using computers to aid in the analysis of art. A recent issue of Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation dedicated to the question of “Digital Art History” gathered experts in the field to weigh in on the potential advantages and disadvantages of studying art digitally. Is this a brave new world that will bring us closer than ever to understanding the great works of art, or will technology actually get in the way and separate us from the human element in the work, effectively erasing the traditional goal of studying art? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "What Would Digital Art History Look Like?"

[Image: Vincent Van Gogh. Starry Night, 1889. Extreme magnification via Google Art Project.]

Are We Living in a Second Gothic Age?

“[T]he Gothic era,” Bruno Klein writes in the introduction to Gothic: Visual Art of the Middle Ages, 1140-1500, “was a time of seeing, in which much was discussed in words, but even more conveyed with the help of images.” In this massive new study of the period published by h.f. Ullmann as part of the Collection of Art Epochs, we reunite with a generation powerfully like our own—a group of visual learners more comfortable with meaning filtered through images than through words. What separates this new book from previous encyclopedic surveys of the Gothic past is the photographic processes of the present. By zooming in and digitally manipulating images for maximum clarity and detail, Gothic: Visual Art of the Middle Ages, 1140-1500 pulls the distant past into our immediate future. Thrust literally face to face with this strangely different yet strangely similar time, we can ask, “Are we living in a second Gothic age?” Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Are We Living in a Second Gothic Age?"

[Image: Chartes Cathedral, Rose Window in the North Transept, circa 1230-1240. Copyright Achim Bednorz.]

[Many thanks to h.f. Ullmann for providing me with the image above from and a review copy of Gothic: Visual Art of the Middle Ages, 1140-1500, edited by Rolf Toman, text by Bruno Klein, photographs by Achim Bednorz, and produced by Thomas Paffen.]

Isn’t It Romantic?: Gauguin’s Nevermore Wins Poll

Quoth the voters, Nevermore! A recent Art Fund poll asking “Which of these people has captured your idea of romance in art?” came up with the answer of Paul Gauguin’s Nevermore (pictured, from 1897). Voters could choose from among five thought-provoking selections picked by a diverse team of experts. It’s more ironic than romantic, and fascinating, that the winner of a Valentine’s Day-themed poll reflects a much different view of Romantic than the hearts and flowers variety. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Isn't It Romantic?"