NEWS
9/28/11 4:54pm
Art historian discusses the influence of medieval pieces on culture
The job of art historians is to discover the origins of artwork, but when it comes to art from early medieval periods, historians find themselves in a world shrouded with mystery. "We've got objects, but no fancy story to attach to them," said Sigrid Danielson, in her lecture titled "Art History and the Early Medieval Artist" at Elon University Tuesday evening. Historians saw the names of artists as "signifiers of ethnic identity and geographic origins of the object's creator," Danielson said. From the 1920s to the 1950s, schools of art history responded to the lack of information about early medieval art by focusing solely on the artist, specifically his or her ethnicity.