Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Picasso, Warhol, Dali, Matisse, Da Vinci, Pollock, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Chagall, maybe a Frida Kahlo in there.
Long before the current celebrity-obsessed age of social media, capital G great artists have been singled out, elevated, and praised.
We tend to associate art with individual artists who are considered geniuses, but is this really the right way to think about it?
We can actually pinpoint very particular moments in history where this way of thinking began.
What is the myth of the great artist? Where does this idea come from? And what exactly is greatness?
Hi, I'm Sarah Urest-Green, and this is Crash Course Art History.
The idea of the great artist and of art history as a series of celebrity biographies comes from a specific time and place, Renaissance Europe.
Before that, across the world and throughout history, a lot of art was made either collectively or anonymously, or at least without a lot of individual fanfare.
Take the medieval bestseller The Book of Hours from 15th century France.
The artist, En-Garon Quarton, produced many of its images, and yet he's not exactly a household name.
