Catalonia PAU History of Art study guide
Catalonia PAU History of Art · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The PAU (Proves d'Accés a la Universitat) History of Art exam is the university-access test taken by students in Catalonia who want to use Art History as one of their subject-specific examination results for admission. It is aimed at upper-secondary students (batxillerat) and, in the specific phase, at candidates who want to raise their admission score for degrees in art history, heritage, fine arts, humanities, or teaching. The Catalonia PAU History of Art study guide has 7 sections and about 3,194 words.
01Ancient and Classical Art: Prehistory, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome
The PAU asks you to recognise a prehistoric, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek or Roman work, place it in a period (an approximate date is enough), describe it with the correct technical vocabulary and explain how function shapes form. Precise terms earn marks as much as identification does.
531 words, about 3 min02Medieval Art: Early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic
Medieval art in the PAU covers Early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic, with particular weight on architecture and on the Catalan Romanesque and Gothic you can study in the MNAC and in Barcelona. You must read a building as a structural system and a programme of images, not as a list of parts.
460 words, about 2 min03Renaissance and Mannerism
The exam tests the Quattrocento and Cinquecento as a set of problem-solving moves - perspective, proportion, antique revival, the new status of the artist - and Mannerism as a deliberate departure from them. You will usually be asked to compare two works or to explain why a work looks the way it does.
435 words, about 2 min04Baroque and Rococo
Baroque is examined as a rhetoric of persuasion - light, movement, theatrical staging and the fusion of architecture, sculpture and painting - and Rococo as its courtly, decorative retreat. The exam wants you to distinguish the two, not to call everything before 1750 Baroque.
443 words, about 2 min0519th-century Art: Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism
The 19th century is where the exam tests the shift from the academy to the avant-garde. You must link style to the political situation and to new technical conditions - the railway, the collapsible paint tube, photography, the Salon and its jury.
433 words, about 2 min0620th-century and Contemporary Art: Avant-gardes to the Present
Twentieth-century and contemporary art is examined as a sequence of avant-garde programmes: each movement is a position on what art is for, and the exam expects you to name the programme, its date bracket and its formal consequences. Fauvism (Salon d'Automne, 1905): colour freed from description; Matisse, Derain.
459 words, about 2 min07Artistic Techniques, Materials and Formal Analysis
This domain is examined through the formal-analysis question and through technique questions attached to specific works. You need to name a medium correctly and show how that medium produced the look of the object.
433 words, about 2 min