Open University Set Books

The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology (Oxford History of Art)

Product DescriptionSynopsis
What is art history? Why, how and where did it originate, and how have its aims and methods changed over time? The history of art has been written and rewritten since classical antiquity. Since the foundation of the modern discipline of art history in Germany in the late eighteenth century, debates about art and its histories have intensified. Historians, philosophers, psychologists and anthropologists among others have changed our notions of what art history has been, is, and might be. This anthology is a guide to understanding art history through a critical reading of the field's most innovative and influential texts over the past two centuries. Each section focuses on a key issue: aesthetics, style, history as an art, iconography and semiology, gender, modernity and postmodernity, deconstruction and museology. More than thirty readings from writers as diverse as Winckelmann, Kant, Gombrich, Warburg, Panofsky, Heidegger, Lisa Tickner, Meyer Schapiro, Jacques Derrida, Mary Kelly, Michel Foucault, Rosalind Krauss, Louis Marin, Margaret Iversen and Nestor Canclini are brought together, and Donald Preziosi's introductions to each topic provide background information, bibliographies, and critical elucidations of the issues at stake. His own concluding essay is an important and original contribution to scholarship in the field. From the pre-publication reviews: 'Until now, anthologies about the history of art have tended to be worthy yet inert, plotting a linear evolution from the great precursors (Vasari, Winckelmann) to the founding fathers of the modern discipline (Wölfflin, Riegl, Panofsky) to the achievements and refinements of today's scholarship. The texts that Donald Preziosi has brought together provide something far more challenging: the juxtapositions and alignments between individual essays point the reader towards unresolved problems, ongoing debates, and paths not takenor not taken yet. In place of the consoling tale of intellectual progress, the collection defamiliarizes the whole field, and opens up a space for radical reflection on its basic procedures and assumptions. Definitely the best introduction to art history currently available.' Professor Norman Bryson, Harvard University 'Donald Preziosi has prepared an anthologyfrom the Greek, a collection of flowersof art history. His bouquet contains representatives from the discipline's two-hundred year history, arranged in standard and innovative methodological categories. Within each, the readings selected provide stimulating congruencies and contradictions that will inspire productive debate and contemplation. But what makes this anthology more than an arresting assemblage is the author's critical stance toward what he has wrought. His introduction and concluding chapter write around and under the subjects presented, emphasizing the 'art' of art history, its kinship with modernity's post-Enlightenment project, and its collaboration with the rise of nationalism. Thus the discipline's past is probed and questioned and made relevant for its present and future. The whole thereby addresses, without healing or concealing, the disciplinary ruptures of modernism. The book might also have explored further nature of art history's history within the emergent discourse of post-colonialism and the globalization of culture Yet the many new perspectives it does offer help to re-present the discipline for its readers, students, teachers, and curators, for other areas of humanistic inquiry, which are being subject to similar critiques, and for artists and the larger art community, for whom history, narrative, and an accounting of art's past have once again become vital issues' Professor Robert S. Nelson, Professor of Art History and Chair, Committee for the History of Culture, University of Chicago 'Rather than focusing on its Vasarian moment or on the later academic institutionalization of art history in the 19th and 20th centuries, Donald Preziosi, in The Art of Art History, constructs a reading of this hegemonic and reductive practice of making 'the visible legible' as one that is inextricably tied to the museographic paradigm of late 18th and early 19th centuries. This shift, he sees as equivalent in importance to the brought by the 'invention' of perspective. But the author goes further than to underline the implication of art history with the premises of modernity, he makes a strong case, in a vivid and inspiring prose, for a tighter equation between art history and modernity: an equation grounded in his insightful considerations (and meteoric formulations) of the epistemological setting, rhetorical operations political (colonialist) aims and schizophrenic yet all-invasive aestheticization of knowledge that, in the last two centuries, have fashioned what we will no longer dare to call the discipline of art history. The result is a flamboyant book that offers anything but a celebratory reading of art history. It does not constitute an articulation of canonical texts or an up-to-date menu of art historical currents, methods, or trends. Yet it manages to avoid none of these dimensions. Art history is not envisages as the learned discourse of modernity on a specific class of objects nor is it reduced to a genealogy of outstanding artist-subjects and their volatile constellations of contemporary subjects-readers. It becomes a practice wherein objects and subjects relate and relations often crystallize, under the unrecognized aegis of the fetish, this Other of art, since Preziosi concisely defines art as 'the anti-fetish fetish'. Far from the fantastic neutrality that is traditionally found in the format of such an historiographic endeavour, Preziosi frames his selection of text and threads through them with an array of different strategic voices, superimposed (to stress a spatial figure he is keen to discern) in order to elaborate a strong polemic position that situates art history as an enduring and well disguised fictional genre. In the process, the author courageously takes on the paradox that is at the core of his project: to introduce students to the coming out o art history... as art, one that is not necessarily meant to be our coming out of it but that certainly well establishes our motives to continue to shake its grounds and its multi-storied apparatus.' Professor Johanne Lamoureux, University of Montreal.What is art history? Why, how and where did it originate, and how have its aims and methods changed over time? The history of art has been written and rewritten since classical antiquity. Since the foundation of the modern discipline of art history in Germany in the late eighteenth century, debates about art and its histories have intensified. Historians, philosophers, psychologists and anthropologists among others have changed our notions of what art history has been, is, and might be. This anthology is a guide to understanding art history through a critical reading of the field's most innovative and influential texts over the past two centuries. Each section focuses on a key issue: aesthetics, style, history as an art, iconography and semiology, gender, modernity and postmodernity, deconstruction and museology.

More than thirty readings from writers as diverse as Winckelmann, Kant, Gombrich, Warburg, Panofsky, Heidegger, Lisa Tickner, Meyer Schapiro, Jacques Derrida, Mary Kelly, Michel Foucault, Rosalind Krauss, Louis Marin, Margaret Iversen and Nestor Canclini are brought together, and Donald Preziosi's introductions to each topic provide background information, bibliographies, and critical elucidations of the issues at stake. His own concluding essay is an important and original contribution to scholarship in the field. From the pre-publication reviews: 'Until now, anthologies about the history of art have tended to be worthy yet inert, plotting a linear evolution from the great precursors (Vasari, Winckelmann) to the founding fathers of the modern discipline (Wolfflin, Riegl, Panofsky) to the achievements and refinements of today's scholarship. The texts that Donald Preziosi has brought together provide something far more challenging: the juxtapositions and alignments between individual essays point the reader towards unresolved problems, ongoing debates, and paths not takenor not taken yet.

In place of the consoling tale of intellectual progress, the collection defamiliarizes the whole field, and opens up a space for radical reflection on its basic procedures and assumptions. Definitely the best introduction to art history currently available.' - Professor Norman Bryson, Harvard University; 'Donald Preziosi has prepared an anthologyfrom the Greek, a collection of flowersof art history. His bouquet contains representatives from the discipline's two-hundred year history, arranged in standard and innovative methodological categories. Within each, the readings selected provide stimulating congruencies and contradictions that will inspire productive debate and contemplation. But what makes this anthology more than an arresting assemblage is the author's critical stance toward what he has wrought. His introduction and concluding chapter write around and under the subjects presented, emphasizing the 'art' of art history, its kinship with modernity's post-Enlightenment project, and its collaboration with the rise of nationalism. Thus the discipline's past is probed and questioned and made relevant for its present and future.

The whole thereby addresses, without healing or concealing, the disciplinary ruptures of modernism. The book might also have explored further nature of art history's history within the emergent discourse of post-colonialism and the globalization of culture Yet the many new perspectives it does offer help to re-present the discipline for its readers, students, teachers, and curators, for other areas of humanistic inquiry, which are being subject to similar critiques, and for artists and the larger art community, for whom history, narrative, and an accounting of art's past have once again become vital issues' - Professor Robert S. Nelson, Professor of Art History and Chair, Committee for the History of Culture, University of Chicago; 'Rather than focusing on its Vasarian moment or on the later academic institutionalization of art history in the 19th and 20th centuries, Donald Preziosi, in The Art of Art History, constructs a reading of this hegemonic and reductive practice of making 'the visible legible' as one that is inextricably tied to the museographic paradigm of late 18th and early 19th centuries.

This shift, he sees as equivalent in importance to the brought by the 'invention' of perspective. But the author goes further than to underline the implication of art history with the premises of modernity, he makes a strong case, in a vivid and inspiring prose, for a tighter equation between art history and modernity: an equation grounded in his insightful considerations (and meteoric formulations) of the epistemological setting, rhetorical operations political (colonialist) aims and schizophrenic yet all-invasive aestheticization of knowledge that, in the last two centuries, have fashioned what we will no longer dare to call the discipline of art history. The result is a flamboyant book that offers anything but a celebratory reading of art history. It does not constitute an articulation of canonical texts or an up-to-date menu of art historical currents, methods, or trends. Yet it manages to avoid none of these dimensions. Art history is not envisages as the learned discourse of modernity on a specific class of objects nor is it reduced to a genealogy of outstanding artist-subjects and their volatile constellations of contemporary subjects-readers.

It becomes a practice wherein objects and subjects relate and relations often crystallize, under the unrecognized aegis of the fetish, this Other of art, since Preziosi concisely defines art as 'the anti-fetish fetish'. Far from the fantastic neutrality that is traditionally found in the format of such an historiographic endeavour, Preziosi frames his selection of text and threads through them with an array of different strategic voices, superimposed (to stress a spatial figure he is keen to discern) in order to elaborate a strong polemic position that situates art history as an enduring and well disguised fictional genre. In the process, the author courageously takes on the paradox that is at the core of his project: to introduce students to the coming out o art history...as art, one that is not necessarily meant to be our coming out of it but that certainly well establishes our motives to continue to shake its grounds and its multi-storied apparatus.' - Professor Johanne Lamoureux, University of Montreal.

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Caravaggio: A Life

Amazon.co.uk ReviewSynopsisFrom the PublisherAbout the Author
Nicholas Poussin once said that Caravaggio had come into the world to destroy painting. Helen Langdon's marvellous new biography Caravaggio: A Life suggests that rather than destroying painting the Milanese painter gave it a new lease of life. Upon his arrival in Rome Caravaggio boldly ended a tradition of Italian Renaissance painting, and created a radically new naturalistic style which continues to dazzle and influence today. Beautifully poised between biographical scholarship and artistic appreciation, Langdon's biography provides the reader with a complex, fascinating Caravaggio, still the rebel and outsider of the popular imagination, but also immersed in the Roman world of art, politics and patronage. Some of the finest sections of the book vividly bring to life the streets and brothels of early 17th-century Rome, which provided Caravaggio with the inspiration for so many of his early works. By contrast, the later sections which deal with Caravaggio's exile and commissions in Naples, Malta and Sicily seem rather brief and truncated, giving the final third of the book a rather unbalanced feel. This is however partly due to the elusiveness of Caravaggio himself--with little direct contemporary documentation on the painter, he often slips into the shadows, evading the scrutiny of the biographer.

But Langdon's achievement is to produce a compelling portrait of the artist which throws new light on his paintings. Here is a painter who is proud, difficult and arrogant, yet highly intellectual in his appreciation of the changing face of both Catholicism and scientific enquiry. Written with great historical clarity, and supplemented by 42 magnificent colour illustrations, Helen Langdon's Caravaggio is a worthy contribution to scholarly study of this artist. --Jerry BrottonOf all Italian painters, Caravaggio (C. 1565-1609) speaks most intensely to the modern world. His early works suggest a fascination with his own youth and sexuality and the trancience of love and beauty his later religious art speaks of violence, passion, solitude and death. Ugly, almost brutal-looking, Caravaggio was constantly embroiled in fights and entangled with the law; the prototype anti-social artist, he moved between the worlds of powerful patrons and the street life of boys and prostitutes. Helen Langdon uncovers his progress from childhood in plague-ridden Milan to wild success in Rome, and eventual exile and persecution in the South, and sets his work against the political, intellectual and spiritual movements of the day. Fully illustrated, her dramatic portrait shows Carravigio's life to be as sensational and enigmatic as his powerful and enduring art.A powerful and illuminating biography - the first in English for two generations - of one of the most popular painters of all time.Helen Langdon was born in Yorkshire. She has worked for the education department at the National Gallery, British Museum and National Portrait Gallery. Her books include studies of Salvator Rosa and Claude Lorrain, she was editor of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque sections of the Macmillian Dictionary of Art. She Lives in London.

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Khajuraho (Monumental Legacy)

Product DescriptionSynopsis
This book is an introduction to the magnificent world of the Khajuraho temples; their history, patronage, court culture, religion, iconography, and distinctive features of the sculptures and architecture. Addressed to the general reader by an expert on the subject, this book systematically describes the twenty-two temples and the three museums at the site.This text is an introduction to the world of the Khajuraho temples: their history, patronage, court culture, religion, iconography, sculptures and architecture. Addressed to the general reader by an expert on the subject, it systematically describes the 22 temples and three museums at the site.

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The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany

ReviewSynopsis
While it might be difficult to imagine a subject more specialized than the limewood sculptors of Renaissance Germany, there can be no doubting the quality of this book. The writing and the research on which it is based have always distinguished it and have ensured its durability during the 20 years since it first appeared - qualities which earned it the Mitchell Prize in 1980, the most prestigious award in the subject. The period covered by the book spanned the years leading up to the Reformation and were more or less co-extensive with the life of Durer. Baxandall opens with a brief account of the period and its art in southern Germany. He moves on to discuss three prime areas of circumstance visible in the sculpture: the material with which it was made, since this had important consequences for the forms the sculptors chose; the complex and sometimes unexpected functions which the sculptures served; and the profession and market in which the makers lived. Next, he assesses a particular problem of the period, the tension between the sense of group and the sense of individual prowess which arises in the sculpture and elsewhere: both 'German art' and individual style were being discovered at the time, and the book examines how both are registered in the carvings. Moving on to discuss the visual skills indigenous to Germany around 1500, the author then looks at a selection of carvings in more detail. The names of many of the sculptors are not well-known, or even recorded, but the great service of Baxandall's book is to emphasize their place in the development of western art and to remind us that not all the great works of the Renaissance emerged from the Franco-Italian tradition. (Kirkus UK)A detail examination of the craftsmanship and lives of German woodcarvers from 1475 to 1525 discusses their artistic styles, techniques of carving, and place in society.

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Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford Paperbacks)

Product DescriptionSynopsisAbout the Author
This book is both an introduction to fifteenth-century Italian painting, and a primer in how to read social history out of the style of pictures. It examines the commercial practice of the early Renaissance picture, trade in contracts, letters, and accounts; and it explains how the visual skills and habits evolved in the daily life of any society enter into its painters' style. Renaissance painting is related for instance to experience of such activities as preaching, dancing, and gauging barrels. This second edition contains an appendix, the original Latin and Italian texts referred to throughout the book, giving the student access to all the relevant, authentic sources.An introduction to Italian painting in the 15th century, and the social history behind it. The book covers the structure of the picture trade and its economic basis through contracts, letters and accounts. The author also illustrates how art history can be used to give insights into social history, by showing how the visual skills and activities of daily life can be related to the painters' style. Renaissance painting is related for instance to experience of activities such as preaching, dancing and gauging barrels. Finally, 16 concepts used by a contemporary critic, Cristoforo Landino, in his description of Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, Andrea del Castagno and Fra Angelico are described and illustrated, as a basis for looking at 15th century painting. In addition, this new edition has an appendix of the original Latin and Italian texts referred to throughout the book, providing access to the relevant, authentic sources.Michael Baxandell is Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition, Warburg Institute, University of London.

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Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art

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Examines the style and method of representation in painting, sculpture, and architecture and sets the standards for defining historical transformations.

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Venice and the Renaissance

Product Description
Pursuing the intersections of Venetian culture from the beginning of the sixteenth century through the first decades of the seventeenth, Manfredo Tafuri develops a story crowded with characters and full of surprises. He engages the doges Andrea Gritti and Leonardo Dona; architects and artists Sansovino, Serlio, Palladio, and Scamozzi; and scientists Francesco Barozzi and Galileo. He records the battle that was fought for architecture as metaphor for absolute truth and good government, and contrasts these with the myths that inspired them.

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Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity and Histories of Art

Product Description
The publication of Vision and Difference marked a milestone in the development of modern art history. Its introduction of a feminist perspective into this largely male-oriented discipline made shockwaves that are still felt forcefully today.
Drawing upon rich resources of feminist cutural analysis hitherto little applied to the visual arts, Griselda Pollock offers concrete historical analyses of key moments in the formation of modern culture to reveal the sexual politics at the heart of modernist art. Crucially, she not only provides a feminist re-reading of the work of canonical male Impressionist and Pre-Raphaelite artists including Edgar Degas and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but also re-inserts into art history their female contemporaries - women artists such as Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. Casting her critical eye over the contemporary art scene, Pollock discusses the work of women artists such as Mary Kelly and Yve Lomax, highlighting the problems of working in a culture where thefeminine is still defined as the object of the male gaze.
Now published with a new introduction by Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference remains as powerful and as essential reading as ever for all those seeking not only to understand the history of the feminine in art but also to develop new strategies for representation for the future.

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