"Quo Vadis, Hagia Sophia?" Art History's Survey Texts (co-authored by Larry Silver) (original) (raw)
AI-generated Abstract
The paper provides a comparative review of art history survey texts, addressing the foundational nature of these texts and their tendency to converge around a western canon. It discusses the influence of historical narratives on the interpretation of artworks across various periods and cultures. The authors emphasize the need for individual survey texts to highlight diversity in art historical discourse while acknowledging the challenges presented by traditional classifications.
Related papers
When 1 entered graduate school in the history of art at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York in the early 1950s, theory was the farthest thing from my mind. In fact, for me and for many of my cohorts, theory was a rather suspect concept, tainted as it was by theories of race (which dassified human beings hierarchically) and theories of quality (which dassified works of art hierarchically). We read the dassic works of the founding fathers, especially Aloïs Riegl and Heinrich WôlfHin (always on our own, never as part of courses). But no one sought to follow them in their quest for the foundations of the discipline-an enterprise that in any case seemed uninspiring compared with the joy and excitement of working with the "objects." Moreover, theoretical structures risked limiting the range and depth of individual creativity, or even collective creativity in the case ofregional or period styles.
The conference seeks to examine the shaping of art history as a discipline during the 19 th century in relation to artistic training and exchanges between artists and scholars. The development of art history has been associated with an array of socio-political and economic factors such as the formation of a bourgeois public, the politics of national identity and state legitimacy or the needs of an expanding art market. This conference aspires to explore yet another, less studied dimension: the extent to which the historical study of art was also rooted in an intention to inform contemporary artistic production.
"Living on the Byzantine Borders of Western Art," Gesta 35 (1996), 3-11
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.