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Reconsidering Contemporary Approaches to Teaching Art History
Vasari at the forefront (Kultermann, 1990), relied primarily on learning from
books based on texts rather than pictorial material (cf. Witcombe, 2008).³ At
the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Vienna School of Art History intro-
duced the stylistic analysis that had to be carried out by observing images.
This became the standard way of conducting university lessons and called
for the technology for the reproduction of visual material. With two projec-
tors allowing comparison of artworks, Heinrich Wölfflin set up the first art-
history-specific teaching method of compare and contrast,which continues
to dominate university lectures today. At the same time, in the tradition of
French art historical research, Émile Mâle introduced iconology which turned
from ‘surface’ stylistic analysis toward the deeper exploration of the mean-
ing (Kultermann, 1990). A depicted story invited the adoption of storytelling
as the dominant teaching method; an approach deeply rooted in human na-
ture since prehistoric gatherings around the fire. Despite its seemingly pas-
siveform,storytellinghasproven highlyeffectivein capturingandsustaining
the listener’s attention (Valenčič Zuljan & Kalin, 2020; cf. Harari, 2024).⁴ Thus,
the discursive aspect of understanding art has regained didactic relevance,
now grounded in the direct engagement with the visual source.
In the second half of the 20th century, the so-called new art history (Alpers,
1977) focused on the study of art from less conventional perspectives (Mikuž,
2011) and their nexus – contextualisation is about the interactions between
stakeholders rather than about bare art-historical facts. Didactically, this ap-
proach prioritizes process over content and tends to develop more com-
plex competences such as critical thinking, oral and written communication,
social acumen; accordingly, it relies less on practising mere memorisation
or on acquiring elementary skills. Since Belting (1983) proposed a dynamic
methodological frame in opposition to the history of art as an unchallenged
homogeneous evolution, the multiplicity of research paths eventually per-
vaded art history classrooms. If there is more to the analysis of an artwork
than stylistic determination, there has to be more to learning about art than
the reproduction of historical, biographical and formal facts. Consequently,
the hardship of didactic decisions goes beyond choosing the most suitable
methods for most effective learning to the point of balancing physical learn-
ing encounters with learning experiences in an intangible digital world.
³ Sutton (1967) describes concrete practices of this kind.
⁴ Harari (2024) exposes acquiring information arranged as stories as an effective alternative to
collecting information in a form of lists and Haven (2007) argues the same thought with scien-
tific proofs and cites several academic studies discussing the topic.
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