Critical Terms for Art History

by Nelson, Robert S.; Shiff, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780226571652
• ISBN10: 0226571653
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

The nature of the visual has, over the past decade, moved to the center of debates in the humanities. No longer simply the study of timeless masterpieces, art history as a discipline is now addressing some of the most basic questions about cultural production, questions such as how images function and how expectations and social factors mediate what we see. The new scope of art history has required a major expansion and reassessment of methods and terminology. Edited by Robert Nelson and Richard Shiff,Critical Terms for Art Historyis both an exposition and a demonstration of contested terms from the current art historical vocabulary. In individual essays, scholars examine the history and use of these terms by grounding their discussions in single works of art, reading each work through current debates and methods. This instructive combination of theory and practice allows readers to examine the terms as they are seeing them employed. In its wide representation of contemporary discourse,Critical Terms for Art Historyis a comprehensive effort to map historical and theoretical debates over the visual environment. Like its companion,Critical Terms for Literary Study,this book will prove an invaluable resource both for those beginning to learn about the visual theory and for scholars and historians.

Author Biography

Robert S. Nelson is Distinguished Service Professor of Art History and History of Culture at the University of Chicago Richard Shiff is the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art and director of the Center for the Study of Modernism at the University of Texas at Austin

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Mediation	p. ix
At the Place of a Foreword: Someone Looking, Reading, and Writing	p. xiii
Operations
Representation	p. 3
Sign	p. 20
Simulacrum	p. 35
Communications
Word and Image	p. 51
Narrative	p. 62
Performance	p. 75
Style	p. 98
Context	p. 110
Meaning/Interpretation	p. 128
Histories
Originality	p. 145
Appropriation	p. 160
Art History	p. 174
Modernism	p. 188
Avant-Garde	p. 202
Primitive	p. 217
Memory/Monument	p. 234
Social Relations
Body	p. 251
Beauty	p. 267
Ugliness	p. 281
Ritual	p. 296
Fetish	p. 306
Gaze	p. 318
Gender	p. 330
Identity	p. 345
Societies
Production	p. 361
Commodity	p. 382
Collecting/Museums	p. 407
Value	p. 419
Postmodernism/Postcolonialism	p. 435
Visual Culture/Visual Studies	p. 452
Social History of Art	p. 465
Afterword: Figuration	p. 479
List of Contributors	p. 487
Index	p. 492
Table of Contents provided by Rittenhouse. All Rights Reserved.