Open Educational Resources (OERs): Visual Art

This text was compiled, edited, and modified from Boundless Art History and Saylor Academy Art Appreciation and Techniques. It is intended as module reading for an undergraduate level introduction to art. I have uploaded it as individual pdfs to make its inclusion in LMS modules easier but if an educator chose to compress into a single document they would be welcome. Additionally, this is intended as a text that can be modified by educators to satisfy the interests and needs of their own course with only a non-commercial string attached.

This course is particularly focused on helping you develop visual literacy skills, but all the college courses you take are to some degree about information literacy. Visual literacy is really just a specialized type of information literacy. The skills you acquire in this course will help you become an effective researcher in other fields, as well.

Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning offers a comprehensive introduction to the world of Art. Authored by four USG faculty members with advance degrees in the arts, this textbooks offers up-to-date original scholarship. It includes over 400 high-quality images illustrating the history of art, its technical applications, and its many uses.
Combining the best elements of both a traditional textbook and a reader, it introduces such issues in art as its meaning and purpose; its meaning and purpose; its structure, material, and form; and its diverse effects on our lives. Its digital nature allows students to follow links to applicable sources and videos, expanding the students’ educational experiences beyond the textbook. Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning provides a new and free alternative to traditional textbooks, making it an invaluable resource in our modern age of technology and advancement.

Art appreciation is centered on the ability to view art throughout history, focusing on the cultures and the people, and how art developed in the specific periods. You cannot understand art without understanding the culture, their use of materials and sense of beauty. Art is also conveyed by the simple act of creating art for art’s sake. Every person is born with the innate desire to create art and similar to other professions, training is essential in honing skills to produce art.

Art history studies culture and people’s development through time using multiple art disciplines. Visual arts are one of the oldest forms of communication between humans and the fundamental beliefs of their culture. The historical background of art history has been written from the canon of wealthy individuals from Western countries focusing on well-known art and artifacts in isolated environments. To become more culturally inclusive, the textbook is written to redefine art history by discussing art from every continent, civilization, and unknown artists and comparing different cultures that existed at the same time.

Art history studies culture and people’s development through time using multiple art disciplines. Visual arts are one of the oldest forms of communication between humans and the fundamental beliefs of their culture. The historical background of art history has been written from the canon of wealthy individuals from Western countries focusing on well-known art and artifacts in isolated environments. To become more culturally inclusive, the textbook is written to redefine art history.

This textbook, produced by a team of art historians working within the CCC system, curates scholarly resources into a coherent textbook with chapter introductions, a comprehensive glossary, and explanatory editors’ notes. Throughout, it acknowledges and explores the historiography of art history and brings in global connections to provide a broader, more diverse, and more inclusive survey of art history from the Paleolithic through Gothic periods.

This course is called “Introduction to Art”. It might better be called “Introduction to Visual Culture” because that is what we are all engaged with from the moment we wake up until the end of our day. When you turn on your television, open your phone or computer, or simply walk outside you have already accessed visually any number of aesthetic objects that someone – for our purposes we’ll call her an artist – made choices about in its presentation.

This textbook presents a survey of art across time and space, as well as discussions on thinking and talking about art.