Assessment Specifications

Level 3 Art History 2023

General information

Information relating to all achievement standards

Candidates will be provided with:

• one resource booklet for use with all 3 standards, containing 30 plates (5 plates for each area of study)
• a combined question-and-answer booklet for 91482
• a question booklet and a separate answer booklet for 91483 and 91484.

Candidates are encouraged to write a concise response of no more than 800–900 words (5–6 pages) for each standard. Assessment will be based on the quality of the response rather than its length.

Information in planning spaces will not be marked.

The assessment will be available to candidates in paper or digital format. Further information about digital external assessments can be found on the Digital Assessments: NCEA Online page.                                   

Candidates should be familiar with the artists, styles, meanings and contexts listed below.

Areas of study

1. Early Renaissance  (c.1300–1470s)

Artists:

• Pietro Lorenzetti
• Ambrogio Lorenzetti
• Fra Angelico
• Lorenzo Ghiberti
• Giotto di Bondone
• Filippo Brunelleschi
• Gentile da Fabriano
• Piero della Francesca
• Simone Martini
• Masaccio
• Paolo Uccello
• Donatello.

The Life of St Francis, fresco cycle in Upper Church at Assisi, traditionally attributed to Giotto, but now recently attributed to the Master of the St Francis Cycle.

Styles:

• Italo-Byzantine
• Florentine
• Classicism
• Sienese
• Naturalism
• International Gothic.

Meanings:

• Christian stories and themes, the life and role of saints, including Jesus and the Virgin Mary
• People: everyday life, wealth and status, portraiture
• Classical influences and the development of humanism
• Nature and landscape.

Contexts:

• Religious contexts (e.g. Christianity, Franciscan contexts, art and architecture as a setting for Christian rituals)
• Philosophical contexts (e.g. Humanism, classical influences) 
• Economic contexts (e.g. patronage, wealth and status, trade and banking networks, commerce)
• Political contexts (e.g. wealthy families, government, civic, religious and papal power, battles and war).

2. Late Renaissance (c.1470–1540s)

Artists:

• Andrea Mantegna
• Botticelli
• Bronzino
• Raphael
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Titian
• Pontormo
• Michelangelo
• Giovanni Bellini (including key works from 1460s).

Architecture:

• St Peter's Basilica
• The Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio
• The Sistine Chapel (interior only).

Styles:

• Mannerism
• Idealisation
• Regional styles (Florentine, Venetian, Roman)
• Naturalism
• Classicism.

Meanings: 

• Christian stories and themes, the life and role of saints
• People, everyday life, ideas about the individual, portraiture
• Classical themes, Neoplatonism and humanism
• Exploration of science and nature.

Contexts:

• Religious contexts (e.g. Christianity, art and architecture as a setting for Christian rituals)
• Philosophical contexts (e.g. humanism, Neoplatonism)
• Economic contexts (e.g. patronage, wealth and status, banking, maritime and trading networks)
• Political contexts (e.g. powerful families, government, civic, imperialist and papal power).

3. Early Modernism (1900–1940)

Artists:

• Pablo Picasso
• Ernst Kirchner
• Marcel Duchamp
• Joan Miró
• Wassily Kandinsky
• Piet Mondrian
• Hannah Höch
• René Magritte
• Umberto Boccioni
• Käthe Kollwitz
• Constantin Brancusi
• Salvador Dalí
• Henri Matisse.

Styles:

• Cubism
• Der Blaue Reiter
• Die Brücke
• Fauvism
• Futurism
• De Stijl
• Surrealism
• Dada.

Meanings:

4. Modernist Design and Architecture (1900–1960)

Designers and Architects:

• René Lalique
• Gerrit Rietveld
• László Moholy­-Nagy
• Sonia Delaunay (design works)
• Peter Behrens
• Vladimir Tatlin
• Frank Lloyd Wright
• Mies Van der Rohe
• Cassandre
• Walter Gropius
• Alexander Rodchenko
• Le Corbusier
• Marianne Brandt.

Art Deco Architecture:

• Chrysler Building
• Empire State Building
• Rockefeller Centre.

Styles:

• Modernism
• Bauhaus
• Brutalism
• De Stijl
• Constructivism
• Art Deco
• International.

Meanings:

• Modern life, advertising, corporate image, and leisure
• Change, modernity, urbanisation, technology, science 
• Domestic life
• Philosophy and politics: utopianism, socialism, communism.

Contexts:

• Modernity (e.g. technology and science)
• Economic contexts
• Social contexts (e.g. urbanisation, class change)
• Political contexts (e.g. communism, socialism, internationalism).

5. Modernism to Postmodernism (1940s–c.2000)

• Edward Hopper
• Robert Rauschenberg
• Dick Frizzell
• Judy Chicago
• Jackson Pollock
• Claes Oldenburg
• Roy Lichtenstein
• Barbara Kruger
• Mark Rothko
• Jacqueline Fahey
• Andy Warhol
• Colin McCahon
• Ralph Hōtere.

Styles:

• Abstraction
• Neo Dada
• Feminism
• Postmodernism
• Abstract Expressionism
• Pop Art
• Realism
• Modernism.

Meanings:

• Place
• Philosophy, spirituality and beliefs 
• Identity
• The everyday, popular culture, and consumerism 
• Ideas about art.

Contexts:

• Social contexts
• Economic contexts
• Political contexts
• Mass media.

6. Contemporary Diversity (after 2000)

Artists:

• Christian Boltanski
• Ai Wei Wei
• Bill Culbert
• Fiona Pardington
• Shane Cotton
• Andreas Gursky
• Mariko Mori
• Shigeyuki Kihara
• John Pule
• Damian Hirst
• Yayoi Kusama
• Lisa Reihana
• Michael Parekōwhai.

Architecture:

• Frank Gehry – Bilbao Guggenheim Museum
• Zaha Hadid – MAXXI National Museum of the 21^st century Arts, Rome
• IM PEI – Museum of Islamic Art, Doha
• Daniel Libeskind (Berlin) – Holocaust Museum.

Styles:

• Conceptual
• Deconstructivist
• Site-specific
• Anti-aesthetic
• Digital installation
• Collaborative.

Meanings:

• Reality
• Identity 
• Narrative
• Popular culture, commodification 
• Ideas about art, media, and culture.

Contexts:

• Globalisation, commodification
• The digital environment (e.g. new technologies, virtual realities, global net) 
• Challenging power and hierarchies (e.g. post­colonialism, populist movements)
• Environmental and cultural interactions.

Specific information for individual achievement standards

Candidates select two art works from the resource booklet.

Candidates answer ONE question:

• The paper will consist of ONE question. The question may be answered with reference to any one, or more, of the areas of study.
• Candidates will select TWO stylistic characteristics from a list provided in the question paper.
• Candidates will need to demonstrate their understanding of style through the analysis of their two selected art works.

Candidates answer ONE question:

• The paper will consist of SEVEN questions – one for each area of study plus an open question.
• Candidates will select ONE question to answer and select TWO art works to refer to in their response.
• Both art works may be selected from the resource booklet, or they may be art works of the candidate's own choice, or a combination of the two.

Candidates answer ONE question:

• The paper will consist of SEVEN questions – one for each area of study plus an Open question.
• Candidates will select ONE question to answer and select TWO art works to refer to in their response.
• Both art works may be selected from the resource booklet, or they may be art works of the candidate's own choice, or a combination of the two.

Art History subject page

Examination timetable