The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology

Book Overview

Here is a new edition of Donald Preziosi's masterful selection of the most influential and innovative writing on art history of the past two centuries. The book includes over thirty pieces by seminal thinkers and writers from Winckelmann, Kant, and Hegel to Foucault, Carol Duncan, and Mary Kelly on such subjects as aesthetics and anthropology, postmodern automatons, semiotics and iconography, performative acts, the museum as ritual, digital art, and many others. Each of the book's eight thematic sections offers an introduction providing background information, further reading, and critical commentary on the issues at stake. This edition has been updated and expanded to include sixteen new selections by key figures from Giorgio Vasari to Walter Benjamin and Satya Mohanty, a new concluding essay from Donald Preziosi on the tasks of the art historian today, and an entirely new section on Globalization and Its Discontents. For students and teachers, artists and historians, and anyone interested in the evolution and purpose of art history, this anthology offers many fascinating insights.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199229848
• ISBN13: 9780199229840
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 600 Pages
• Weight: 3.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.6" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A book for the serious art student or enthusiast

This book is a must have for any college art history student. This is a reference book; not a book to be read from cover to cover like a novel. It gives one enough background and resources to pursue a specific aspect of art history. How I learned of this book was through a reccommendation from the Art History Department Chairperson at a SUNY school with a world wide reputation for producing outstanding graduates in the Arts.

Looking at Art History

This is a book for anyone interested in reading excerpts from original texts (by Helgel, Kant, Derrida etc.) about specific problems encountered in the field of Art History since, approximately, the creation of the modern concept of Art. It is divided into chapters about specific themes, with a short introduction, and bibliography. I would recommend Preziosis own book "Rethinking Art History" as a companion. This is not an easy book, as some angry reviewers discovered, but - how could it be? Art is about life, and life is a very complex thing. If you have absolutely no experience with philosophy or theory, then this might not be the right place to start. If, however, Art and Art History is something you are interested in, and have some basic knowledge of, this is a very rewarding book.

a keeper.

Preziosi challenges the prevailing attitude that the study of art historical methodology should be left for graduate/specialized work. Not so - this book opens a space for undergrad inquiry, though it doesn't exactly fill it either. It manages to contextualize themes/concepts (some better than others) into a larger intellectual history, without settling into arid hagiography. But it's more than intellectual history: in its own specific ways, the selections thoughtfully probe the limitations of historiography, and the inherent irony involved in history writing (though the reader is left to make many of these types of conclusions). Preziosi nonetheless provides different levels of accessibility in his introductions, as do the essays themselves, which are pitched at various theoretical levels - some are obviously beyond the undergrad level. The weakest section is that which deals with the Postcolonial: the selected essays, though important, really fail to grasp the complexities of Native North American art and Postcolonial discourse.

An Intelligent Anthology

I find myself in agreement with Patrick Deegan and the reader from L.A. as to this volume's quality, but less so as to its accessibility. In fact, I believe any intelligent reader should be able to approach this volume and, using Donald Preziosi's succinct commentary as a guide to context, derive valuable knowledge and material for critical thought from it. Readers seeking a simple monolithic approach to the subject of Art History will, needless to say, be disillusioned by the breadth and depth of this volume; readers with an active mind (regardless of whether they describe themselves as academics or not) will be delighted by it. As an example of the careful selection process that has gone into this anthology, I would point out the sequence of texts anthologized in Chapter 8, where the changes over time in critical readings of Heidegger's _The Origin of the Work of Art_ are well reflected in the subsequent essays by Schapiro, Derrida, and Melville. Having any one of these essays present in the volume would be valuable; having the full set allows the reader a far greater degree of insight into the matter of Heidegger's original essay. In short, a book I would strongly recommend to anyone who wants to think independently about art, and not just be told what to think about it.

The best anthology

As an art historian, I have found this to be the best anthology of writing about art history, but it is not a picture book or entry-level history of art. The other reviewers were correct in identifying this book as a specialized volume for academics, not an introduction for the general reader. This is not a drawback unless you expect something else. Professor Preziosi is a leading expert in art history's history and is respected widely for his erudition and comprehensive knowledge of the field. I assign it to my graduate students because the selection of important writings is excellent and Preziosi's introductions are so succinct and precise.