Hello everyone!
This past week one of my art history courses introduced me to an interesting website smarthistory.org . The website features a variety of art and art history related articles and essays, totally free for your educational enjoyment!
In class, the article that we looked at was Dante’s Divine Comedy in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Art by Matt Collins. In the article, Collins discussed how art in Florence impacted Dante as a person which ended up relating to Dante’s novel the Divine Comedy. Some of the topics brought up were the concepts within the novel in relation to Florentine art as well as specific examples of art that was created in response to the novel. Some of the art that was mentioned included drawings from Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli as well as The Florence Baptistry which holds many mosaic images on it’s ceiling.
During my own sorting through the website, I came across an interesting article called Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii by Tina Rivers Ryan. In 1974, Paik finished a report titled Media Planning for the Post Industrial Society—The 21st Century is now only 26 years away, which argued the importance of technology moving forward. Paik predicted that the world would soon become reliant on technology for much of daily use as well as the significance it would play as an artistic medium. Paik is considered to be the “father” of video art because of his groundbreaking use of televisual technologies to create the first ever piece of video art in the 1960s. The article then continues to give more detail about Paik and television as medium.
If you ever get the time to browse the website, I highly recommend it! If you’re the kind or person who isn’t into reading articles, there are also some great videos. You can browse by era or themes and topics, and there are even great pages for anyone to read about how to intellectually understand art, museums, etc. (even for beginners!).
It’s always great to have a plethora of resources such as this to refer to. Even if it doesn’t give you information you may be researching for, it might give you an opinion to pull your mind out of the gutter for a new perspective.
As always, thanks for the read! Have a great week and drop me a comment with any questions, suggestions, or concerns!
