AP® Art History—Semester A

Fauves out of Fauves artists recommend this course.

This course has been approved by the College Board, which indicates that the syllabus "has demonstrated that it meets or exceeds the curricular expectations colleges and universities have for your subject." Please contact sales@shmoop.com if you would like to add this course to your official record of AP course offerings.

It has also been granted a-g certification, which means it has met the rigorous iNACOL Standards for Quality Online Courses and will now be honored as part of the requirements for admission into the University of California system.


People have been making art for about as long as they've been people. Before there was civilization, before there was written language, agriculture, scientific knowledge, and law, there were a bunch of Paleolithic men and women sitting around in caves and painting the likeness of that one bison that got away. Or maybe it was a bison that they made a meal out of. We don't know. The nuances of artistic intention get kinda blurry when you hit the sextuple digits of prehistory.

But our point remains—the impulse to create art began with the very first humans, and it hasn't let up since. So it shouldn't be surprising that the study of art history ends up being a study of humanity—of societal beliefs, spiritual beliefs, historical events, political events, and psychological hopes and fears all reflected in art.

We know what you're thinking. No way you can extract that much interpretive insight from a single painting of a woman swinging in what looks to be a Little Bo Peep get-up.

And yet, that's just what we'll do, for all 250 of the required AP Art History artworks, and then some. There will be a lot of names you'll likely recognize (da Vinci; Picasso; The Starry Night), some you might not know, (Gentileschi; the Golden Haggadah; Allegory of Law and Grace), and some you're just going to have to be okay with not knowing (we don't know who "unidentified Egyptian artist" is, but boy, were they prolific).

But by the end of it all, you'll be prepped to both pwn the AP Art History exam and every highbrow cocktail party you ever find yourself in. In this first semester of Shmoop's crash course in AP Art History, you'll

  • learn how to read and analyze any work of art, focusing on such elements as the visual elements of form, function, content, and context. Then you can tell us what's going on here.
  • examine the evolution of art through major periods of history—from the prehistoric, to the medieval, to the modern.
  • get the lowdown on the major movements and trends in (mostly Western) art up to WWI. (Don't worry: we'll hit up Asian, African, and Indigenous American art more in Semester B).

The prospect of covering thousands of years and hundreds of artworks in just a few months may make you want to scream a little. But fret not. Shmoop's got the answers to the big questions. And puns to boot.


Unit Breakdown


  1. AP® Art History—Semester A - Thinking Like an Art Historian

    Before we throw you into the vast, hulking sea of art and art history, with nothing but a bristle brush and a chisel to defend yourself against such heavy questions as Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, we're going to help you stock up on some basic tools of formal analysis. After discussion of form versus function, content versus context, art labels and art categories, and what makes art historians tick, we'll apply it all to a quick rundown of prehistoric art.

  2. AP® Art History—Semester A - Pimping the Crib—the Cradle of Civilization

    The rise of civilization meant more crops, which meant more leisure, which meant more time for making a) babies and b) art. We're going to focus on the art part. With the same luxury of free time that we so often squander on watching cat videos, the ancient peoples of Sumer, Babylon, and Egypt made cool art…only some of which involved cats. In this unit, we'll take a look at the rise of written language, law, and religion, and their impact on art in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

  3. AP® Art History—Semester A - Drapery and Togas: Classic Art of Ancient Greece and Rome

    We'd be remiss if we didn't spend a chunk of this course waxing poetic about the Colosseum (it's seen better days, okay?), the Alexander mosaic, or the Doryphoros's bowl cut. That's this unit here.

  4. AP® Art History—Semester A - Medieval, Renaissance and Reformation Europe

    We'll be covering a lot of scope in this unit, from Islamic art and architecture in Spain, to examples of early Christian art (Byzantine, medieval), to Renaissance and Reformation art. We'll meet Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael before they were ninja turtles, and talk about the rise of artistic techniques such a linear perspective. Best of all, we'll meet Hieronymous Bosch, who was kicking it surrealist-style before surrealism was cool.

  5. AP® Art History—Semester A - Mend Europe’s Baroque-n Heart

    Gone are the days of unknown Egyptian artist this and anonymous Sumerian votive statue-maker. This unit is full of the big names that made some of the biggest movements in 16th- and 17th-century European art possible. We'll look at the stars of the Baroque, the stars of the Dutch Golden Age, and the stars of Colonial American art.

  6. AP® Art History—Semester A - Revolutionary Art to 1839

    What do you do when you think the art world is Baroque and you want to fix it? Why, you turn back to the good ol' days of Greek and Roman aesthetics, of course. And so Neoclassicism came to the fore. But we won't stop with the Neoclassical in this unit—we'll also look at the Rococo movement, the Romantic movement, and everything in between.

  7. AP® Art History—Semester A - So Black to You, Perhaps. So Red to Me

    Cameras are no big deal to us today, but the advent of photography and Impressionism (which took its cue from the photographic process) took the 19th-century art world by storm. Sure, the Impressionists received scathing reviews, but hey, we said storm.

    In this unit, we'll look at several new movements in art, from Impressionism to Post-Impressionism to Expressionism to Post-Expressionism? Cubism, and lots, lots more. What can we say? It was a brave Nouveau world out there.

  8. AP® Art History—Semester A - Thoroughly Modern Art

    Reeling from the impact of World War I, many artists turned to absurdist and avant-garde movements that defied convention. Cause what better way to stick it to Hitler, art school reject, up-and-coming dictator, and hater of everything but the most realistic of realistic genre paintings? Also on the up-and-up? Consumerism, mass media, and the youth culture of the 60s and 70s. Youths!

  9. AP® Art History—Semester A - Made in the Americas

    There's American art, and then there's American art. Unlike a lot of European art, indigenous American art has always been about aesthetics and active purposes—it works, and it looks good doing it. So we get a lot of monumental architecture, figural sculptures with ritualistic function, and wearable art (read: tunics, headdresses, and assorted bling). And even after European colonists crashed their party, indigenous American artists were able to preserve their traditions, while melding them with the best of the European art world. Resourceful much?

  10. AP® Art History—Semester A - Don't Stop Till You Ndop

    There's a reason Picasso borrowed so heavily from African art during his "African Period," even thought he a) failed to give it any credit, and b) missed the part about African art having a function beyond just sitting pretty in a museum. Most African art has an active purpose—whether ceremonial, devotional, or just plain practical. Also, some involve sticking blades into a power figurine. Always fun.

  11. AP® Art History—Semester A - Peking Under the Afghan

    The art of Asia and the Pacific is vast, diverse, multifaceted, and really hard to fit into a single course, let alone a single unit. But, uh, we're gonna try. Asian art features pretty much every genre you can think of. Miniature paintings? Check. Mosques? Check. Monuments to every imaginable incarnation of Buddha? You get a Buddha, and you get a Buddha—everyone gets a Buddha!

  12. AP® Art History—Semester A - Untitled #12

    Once we've trekked through time (from prehistory to pop art) and place (from Mesopotamia to the Middle East to Monet), there's no place left to go but the here and now. We get that contemporary art world gets a bad rap sometimes, but it's also diverse, inclusive, and envelope-pushing. And: it inspires audience participation, like when a whole bunch of museum-goers tripped over this giant crack in the Tate Modern. What's not to love?

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