Principles of periodization and the structure of the general history of art as a science
Within the boundaries of the subject of this scientific discipline, the problems of discovery, study, attribution, accumulation and preliminary classification of works (the so-called object approach) are solved. The study of the relationship between the general and the special is intended to carry out art history.

The history of art, as a section of universal history, is based on the key concepts developed by ancient culture and the Christian tradition of Western European civilization. Such forced Eurocentrism is primarily due to the fact that in Eastern cultures there are different ideas about historical time and space. The key concepts of European science include: ideas about the unified orientation of historical time from the Creation of the world to the Last Judgment (the principle of historicism of human and, in particular, artistic thinking), the concept of chronotope (the unity of time-place of creation of a work of art), a combination of accurate and intuitive methods of cognition, freedom of creative thinking, judgments and assessments, and much more. In the history of art history, many morphological systems have been developed. In antiquity, all the arts were divided into music (which was patronized by Apollo and the muses) and mechanical, or servile (slave), associated with physical labor despised by the ancient Greeks. In late antiquity, the concept of the "Seven Liberal Arts" was formed, divided into a trivium (grammar, dialectics, rhetoric) and a quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music). It was only during the Renaissance that the concept of fine arts as "elegant" (including architecture), as well as music, poetry, was formed; A long process of self-determination of varieties and genres of artistic creativity began.

The morphological system of genera, species, varieties and genres of art has historical dynamics, various author's concepts, a complex and contradictory structure. In various morphological concepts, skillful activity is divided according to the method of perception of works into "auditory" and "visual" arts (I. I. Ioffe), according to the ontological criterion - into spatial, temporal and spatial-temporal (M. S. Kagan), according to the functional structure - into "pictorial" (painting, graphics, sculpture) and "non-pictorial" or bifunctional (architecture, applied arts and design; S. Kh. Rappoport), into "linguistic" and "non-linguistic" (M. Reaser) on the methods of shaping, techniques and materials, features of perception (phenomenological approach). The most archaic "subject approach", now rejected by most specialists, divides the arts into pictorial and non-pictorial, or abstract. The subject of the display of fine art is supposedly exclusively external reality, non-visual forms of art embody the inner world of a person (A. P. Marder). Different types and mixed varieties of art are characterized by genre differentiation.

In the principles of periodization of the classical "history of art history", triadism can be traced. More often, there are three main eras: antiquity, the Renaissance and post-Renaissance art. In modern times - avant-garde, modernism, postmodernism. However, the art periodization is not fully consistent with the general historical one. For example, historians do not distinguish the Renaissance in a separate era, but attribute it either to the Middle Ages (the so-called medievaism) or to the beginning of the New Age (triad: Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the New Age), since it is in the XVI century that the formation of bourgeois, financial and economic social relations begins. In the history of art, the Renaissance is a separate era, since its significance is enormous, despite its brevity, which contradicts the status of a historical era. Moreover, along with the Italian in a separate era, many art historians, for example, O. Beneš, single out the Northern Renaissance. In some postmodern concepts (K. Grinberg, R. Krauss, A. K. Yakimovich), the beginning of the era of modernism is considered to be the post-Renaissance art of the XVI-XVII centuries.

Classical art history was formed by representatives of the German-Swiss and Austrian university schools: J. Burkhardt, A. Riegl, G. Wölflin, M. Dvořák, D. Frey, J. von Schlosser, F. Wickhoff, H. Sedlmayr and many others.

The formation of classical aesthetics in the Renaissance was associated with a binary opposition and the subsequent contamination of the concepts of "antiquity" and "modernity" (Latin antiquitas et actualitas). In the twentieth century, there was a need not only to oppose the classical to the modern, but also to the division of the latter, in the terminology of the American art critic R. Krauss, into the new (English modern) and relevant, consonant with its time (English contemporary). True classics are always relevant, although not modern, and the new is not necessarily relevant. Therefore, the classical binary opposition turns into a triad: ancient (ancient), new (modern), actual (effective).

The first work on the history of art - "Lives of the most famous painters, sculptors and architects", created by the Italian historiographer, painter and architect Giorgio Vasari - was published in the Renaissance, in 1550. It was followed by Karel van Mander's The Book of Artists and Joachim Zandrart's The German Academy.

In the Age of Enlightenment, J. I. Winckelmann in his History of the Art of Antiquity (Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums, 1764) was the first to try to separate the history of art from history in general, arranging in chronological order the works of ancient sculpture known by that time. He created the history of art, not the history of individual artists, as was customary before him, for example in the book of Vasari. He also formulated three recurring stages in the development of art: archaic, classical, and decadent (contemporary Baroque art). However, by setting a precedent, Winckelmann questioned the existence of the science of art itself. Trying to rise above the flow of time, in the absence of a sufficient amount of accurate data, he created his own speculative concept - the image of idealized classical art, very different from the one that actually existed.

In contrast to the historiographical and biographical approach to the history of art, the ancestor of which is J. Vasari, the history of art as a history of styles and schools, as well as the evolution of art forms, was first considered at the end of the eighteenth century by Abbot Luigi Lanzi.

The scientific status of art history has often been questioned, since this discipline is associated with the arbitrary isolation of the particular from the general context. Thus, the most important historical and cultural ties are broken. After all, it is not known exactly where the boundaries of universal history, the history of art, ethics, aesthetics, religion begin and end in a particular historical period and what are the boundaries of these periods. Each region, according to E. Panofsky, has its own chronology, which "makes sense only in relation to a specific place ... In other places, where events are filled with different content, historical time proceeds differently ". Therefore, the art historian, involuntarily or consciously, projects his desires and his own scientific ideas onto the "temporal space". From antiquity, and then from Vasari and Winckelmann to the present day, the history of art is predetermined by its interpretation. So, when studying individual works, the historian uses documents that themselves arose under the influence of these works, the wishes of customers, and often under their direct dictation. A vicious circle arises: the general can be understood only on the basis of the analysis of individual monuments, and the monuments, the selection of which is deliberate and arbitrary, can be evaluated in the light of the conceived historical concept. In addition, not all works have survived, and it is impossible to establish a complete picture from the survivors. Thus, the subjective view is presented as a historical fact. This circumstance was emphasized by J. Bazin, E. Garin, E. Gombrich and other researchers.

The traditional approach to the history of art is called diachronic (Greek dia - through, chronos - time). It involves the study of monuments in a strict chronological sequence. The other, more complex, is called synchronous (Greek syn - together, chronos - time). Using the synchronous method, states and processes occurring simultaneously in different places or at different times at similar stages of development are compared. Thanks to the synchronous approach, the linear-one-dimensional understanding of the development of art was replaced by a multidimensional one, in which similar, but not identical phenomena exist as if in parallel worlds. The unique experience of applying the synchronous method of studying art was demonstrated by the famous French architect, restorer and researcher of medieval culture E. E. Viollet-le-Duc. After the World Exhibition held in Paris in 1878, Viollet-le-Duc created an exposition of the "Museum of Comparative Sculpture" in the exhibition halls of the Palais du Trocadéró. The exhibits in this museum were arranged not in chronological order, but according to "styles" illustrating the stages of development of art forms that are repeated in different eras and in different places.

In the future, the methods formed in related sciences that have methodological significance in relation to art history (philosophy, aesthetics, cultural studies) were applied to the history of art: iconological analysis, a systematic approach, methods of phenomenological and semiological analysis, interdisciplinary and intermedial approaches. A separate problem is the use of precise, mathematical methods and statistical data.