The central problem is that once you enter into the verbiage you’ve already given up a good deal of ground to the theorists. But it is difficult for the historians to be vocal in their accusations. The historians, per theirs, accuse the theorists of airy speculation. The theorists, per their nature, accuse the historians of “mere” scholarship. Art historians and the theorists of art have been at quiet war with one another for a long time. There is some evidence for my interpretation. Its subject matter? The entirety of the history of art. We give you description and description alone. We give you a book that says nothing and simply is what it is. “Take that, art theorists! We give you a book with all art and no theory. I prefer to imagine a group of art historians sitting around a table with a sixth or seventh bottle of wine giggling to each other like schoolgirls. I prefer to think that it’s a piece of coyness. The silence, the unwillingness to address the largeness in the claim, is either a bit of coyness, astounding self-confidence, or a form of blissful ignorance. Here is art, from the dawn of (human) time until today. But despite the unwillingness to address definitions, the book itself is nothing but a massive, stupefying piece of chutzpah. If there are ideas here, they are latent in the book itself, hiding within the explanatory text for each work and in the decisions of what to include and not to include. 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You DieĪnd then the book begins in earnest.
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