2011/08/23
art history
I’ve been rather ignorant of this discipline, and only saw categorization of historical style progressions as a taxonomic exercise. Over the years as I listened to classical music, I’ve gained at least one understanding of why there is a progression — something rooted in human expectation and its motivic innovation, I suppose (some fascinating papers on the subject of aesthetics here and here). But why this particular progression was never clear. Perhaps there was no rhyme or reason, I thought, just a coincidence.
So lately I’ve been considering whether there is some organization to better understand some milestones of (Western) art history, which get period labels like:
premodern, classicist, medieval, renaissance, baroque, rationalist, romantic, modern, and postmodern.
(Read the article)
