ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some of the changing ideas regarding art and its interpretation. Art history has been described as the 'discipline that examines the history of art and artefacts'. Art historians generally date the origins of western art history to the publication of Vasari's The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Winckelmann is generally regarded as the founder of modern art history in recognition of his attempts to apply quasi-scientific methodology to the study of sculpture and architecture. The chapter considers the definitions of art and categories based on imitation, style, significant form, expression, as an activity understood as a metaphor of 'family resemblance', or as something which is institutionally created and sanctioned. Identifying the development and range of art theories since antiquity is mirrored by the emergence of the discipline of art history itself with the foundational contributions of Vasari, Winkelmann and the expansion of approaches into the twentieth century.
