Prominent critical art historians:
Since Heinrich Wolfflin's time, art history has embraced social history by using critical approaches. The goal of these approaches is to show how art interacts with power structures in society. The first critical approach that art historians used was Marxism. Marxist art history attempted to show how art was tied to specific classes, how images contain information about the economy, and how images can make the status quo seem natural (ideology). Clement Greenberg came to prominence during the late 1930s with his essay "Avant-Garde and Kitsch," first published in the journal Partisan Review in 1939. In the essay Greenberg claimed that the avant-garde arose in order to defend aesthetic standards from the decline of taste involved in consumer society, and seeing kitsch and art as opposites. Greenberg further claimed that avant-garde and Modernist art was a means to resist the leveling of culture produced by capitalist propaganda. Greenberg appropriated the German word 'kitsch' to describe this consumerism, though its connotations have since changed to a more affirmative notion of left-over materials of capitalist culture. Greenberg was often referred to as a Marxist art critic / art historian. While Greenberg is primarily thought of as a formalist art critic many of his most important essays are crucial to the understanding of Modern art history, and the history of Modernism.

Marxism has figured in the interpretation of art. Meyer Schapiro was the first post-War art historian prominent in the Academy at large to suggest that Marxism had important contributions to make to art historical method and thought. While he wrote about numerous time periods and themes in art, he is best remembered for his commentary on sculpture from the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, at which time he saw evidence of capitalism emerging and feudalism declining. Arnold Hauser wrote the first Marxist survey of Western Art, titled "The Social History of Art." In this book he attempted to show how class consciousness was reflected in major art periods. His book was very controversial when it was published during the 1950s because it makes gross generalizations about entire eras. However, it remains in print as a classic art historical text.

Influential Modernist art historians and art critics Barbara Rose and Michael Fried were instrumental in furthering the understanding and popularity of important American Contemporary art in the 1960s and 1970s. Both Rosalind E. Krauss and Lucy Lippard were also crucial influences in the same period. The introduction of postminimalist theory and radical art criticism of the 1970s and 1980s was characterized by art historian/art critics Krauss, Lippard and Griselda Pollock through their writing. T.J. Clark was the first art historian writing from a Marxist perspective to abandon vulgar Marxism per se. He wrote Marxist art histories of several impressionist and realist artists, including Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet. These books focused closely on the political and economic climates in which the art was created.

Linda Nochlin and Griselda Pollock are prominent art historians writing from a feminist perspective since the 1970s.


Semiotic Art History:
Semiotic art history is an approach to art historical analysis that borrows from the established theories of semiology. It seeks to uncover the codified meaning or meanings in an aesthetic object by examining its connectedness to a collective consciousness. Applying a language-based philosophy to visual media is inherently problematic and for that reason, art historians typically supplement its application with other methodologies that allow for political and historical considerations.

Art historians use semiotics in order to subvert the myth of art as an immediate and unmitigated vision of the world, a window through which the object can be viewed without external mediation. In a tradition that assumes that visual meaning can be intuitively uncovered, the complexity of imagery can only be adequately addressed in reading images as text. Standards of styalization and form replace words as signifiers of meaning. Just as dictionaries are inadequate in supplying true meaning to words, nature is insufficient as the ultimate reference for visual signs if the notion of the Platonic ideal is dismissed.

As opposed to iconography which seeks to identify meaning, semiotics is concerned with how meaning is created. Roland Barthes’s connoted and denoted meanings are paramount to this examination. In any particular work of art, an interpretation depends on the identification of denoted meaning—the recognition of a visual sign, and the connoted meaning—the instant cultural associations that come with recognition. The main concern of the semiotic art historian is to come up with ways to navigate and interpret connoted meaning.

Art historians do not commonly commit to any one particular brand of semiotics but rather construct an amalgamated version which they incorporate into their collection of analytical tools. For example, Meyer Shapiro borrowed Saussure’s differential meaning in effort to read signs as they exist within a system. According to Schapiro, to understand the meaning of frontality in a specific pictorial context, it must be differentiated from, or viewed in relation to, alternate possibilities such as a profile, or a three-quarter view. Schapiro combined this method with the work of Charles Sanders Peirce whose object, sign, and interpretant provided a structure for his approach. Alex Potts demonstrates the application of Peirce’s concepts to visual representation by examining them in relation to the Mona Lisa. By seeing the Mona Lisa, for example, as something beyond its materiality is to identify it as a sign. It is then recognized as referring to an object outside of itself, a woman, or Mona Lisa. The image does not seem to denote religious meaning and can therefore be assumed to be a portrait. This interpretation leads to a chain of possible interpretations: who was the sitter in relation to Leonardo? What significance did she have to him? Or, maybe she is an icon for all of womankind. This chain of interpretation, or “unlimited semiosis” is endless; the art historian’s job is to place boundaries on possible interpretations as much as it is to reveal new possibilities.

Semiotics operates under the theory that an image can only be understood from the viewer’s perspective. The artist is supplanted by the viewer as the purveyor of meaning, even to the extent that an interpretation is still valid regardless of whether the creator had intended it. Rosiland Krauss espoused this concept in her essay “In the Name of Picasso.” She denounced the artist’s monopoly on meaning and insisted that meaning can only be derived after the work has been removed from its historical and social context. Mieke Bal argued similarly that meaning does not even exist until the image is observed by the viewer. It is only after acknowledging this that meaning can become opened up to other possibilities such as feminism or psychoanalysis.


Divisions by period:
The field of Art History is traditionally divided into specializations or concentrations based on eras and regions. Such divisions typically include:

19th century
20th century Contemporary
21st century
Africa
Ancient
Ancient American or Pre-Columbian
Asia
Baroque
Medieval
Prehistoric
Renaissance
A number of sub-fields are included under each specialization. For example, the Ancient Near East, Greece, Rome, and Egypt are all typically considered special concentrations of Ancient art. In some cases, these specializations may be closely allied (as Greece and Rome, for example), while in others such alliances are far less natural (Indian art versus Korean art, for example).

Non-Western art is a relative newcomer to the Art Historical canon. Recent revisions of the semantic division between art and artifact have recast objects created in non-Western cultures in more aesthetic terms. Relative to those studying Ancient Rome or the Italian Renaissance, scholars specializing in Africa, the Ancient Americas and Asia are a growing minority.


Methodologies
Art historians employ a number of methods in their research into the qualities, nature and history of objects.

A formal analysis is one which focuses on the form of the object in question. Elements of form include line, shape, color, composition, rhythm, etc. At its simplest, such an analysis is simply exegesis, but it relies heavily on the art historian's ability to think critically and visually.

A stylistic analysis is one which focuses on the particular combination of formal elements into a coherent style. Often, a stylistic analysis makes reference to movements or trends in art as a means of drawing out the impact and import of a particular object.

An iconographical analysis is one which focuses on particular design elements of an object. Through a close reading of such elements, it is possible to trace their lineage, and with it draw conclusions regarding the origins and trajectory of these motifs. In turn, it is possible to make any number of observations regarding the social, cultural, economic, and/or aesthetic values of those responsible for producing the object.

Finally, many art historians use theory to frame their inquiries into objects. Theory is most often used when dealing with more recent objects, those from the late 19th century onward. A somewhat vague term, theoretical approaches to art can range quite broadly, from psychological analysis to aesthetics to Marxist critique and more.