ABSTRACT
Art history is almost by definition a field that rests on “big data.” Traditional methods of training as well as interpretation—such as iconographic analysis—have required scholars to accumulate vast amounts of knowledge about visual tropes, for example. This chapter introduces the reader to the relationship between digital methods and art historiography. It locates debates in the digital humanities within the debates of art history itself, to see how the one field illuminates the areas of study in the other. The chapter raises questions as what is the relationship between digital methods and canonical art historiographic subjects of study? How are digital methods a critical new intervention in the theory and practice of art history? Which art-historical methodological approaches are best suited to digital epistemologies? And what is different (if anything) between digital art history and its predecessors?.
