ABOUT THIS BOOK

Faced with an increasingly media-saturated, globalized culture, art historians have begun to ask themselves challenging and provocative questions about the nature of their discipline. Why did the history of art come into being? Is it now in danger of slipping into obsolescence? And, if so, should we care?

In Writing Art History, Margaret Iversen and Stephen Melville address these questions by exploring some assumptions at the discipline’s foundation. Their project is to excavate the lost continuities between philosophical aesthetics, contemporary theory, and art history through close readings of figures as various as Michael Baxandall, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Lacan, and Alois Riegl. Ultimately, the authors propose that we might reframe the questions concerning art history by asking what kind of writing might help the discipline to better imagine its actual practices—and its potential futures.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Margaret Iversen is professor of the history of art at the University of Essex and author of Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan, Barthes, among other titles. Stephen Melville is professor emeritus of the history of art at Ohio State University and author of Seams: Art as Philosophical Context and other works.

REVIEWS

“Iversen and Melville offer a sophisticated and well-written introduction to the central twentieth-century themes, theories, and methods of art history, and to how this history has been written. Filled with rich and probing accounts of many of art history’s most noted writers, this book shows how, through the writing of art history, deep changes have been encouraged and effected in our modes of contemplation and judgment.”

— Lydia Goehr, Columbia University

“Writing about the writing about writing the history and theory of visual art—this book, coauthored by two speculative and critical art historians, constructs an intriguing hall of mirrors that lures its reader into being inescapably reflective about our too often workaday discipline. Because of the richness, variety, and history of thinkers whom it addresses—from Hegel to Heidegger, to Riegl to Wölfflin, to Warburg to Panofsky, to Merleau-Ponty to Barthes, to Steinberg to Baxandall, to many contemporary theorists as well as practicing artists (and that’s to name only some)—this is a deep and thick study, often phenomenological in inclination, for all who are interested in the intellectual history of the history of art. ‘Theory,’ its authors convincingly assert, should never be a substitute for ‘methodology,’ and in that conviction they conclude with its curricular potential. Directed especially to those who are philosophically-inclined (and why would one not be?), this is a most thoughtful book that many will read and relish.”

— Michael Ann Holly, Sterling and Francine Clark Institute

"Margaret Iversen and Stephen Melville have written a challenging book, one that will attract the attention of all art historians. Offering an insightful account of the discipline's historiography that runs from Warburg to Didi-Huberman and insisting on the relevance of extra-disciplinary writing of philosophers from Heidegger to Nancy, they argue against art historical 'method' and in favor of the type of reflection prompted by a response to works of art themselves. Their phenomenological position emphasizes the active role of art in shaping its own reception and rejects the predetermined structure of knowledge often imposed on it in the name of history. The book asks for no less than a radical rethinking of the art historical enterprise."—Keith Moxey, Barnard College

— Keith Moxey

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1 What’s the Matter with Methodology?
Chapter 2 Historical Distance (Bridging and Spanning)
Chapter 3 On the Limits of Interpretation: Dürer’s Melencolia I
Chapter 4 What the Formalist Knows
Chapter 5 The Spectator: Riegl, Steinberg, and Morris
Chapter 6 The Gaze in Perspective: Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, Damisch
Chapter 7 Seeing and Reading: Lyotard, Barthes, Schapiro
Chapter 8 Plasticity: The Hegelian Writing of Art
Chapter 9 Curriculum

Notes
Works Cited
Index

REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you with an electronic file for alternative access.

Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.

It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.