Customer Reviews

Critical Terms for Art History

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If you interested in reading about particular themes in contemporary art. This book covers a whole slew of art crit terms.

Each individual term is explored by its own essay. Each essay is written by a different author (mostly in the 80s and 90s). These essays are around 14 pages long, so these terms are explored rather in depth. The writing is so thick in this book it takes a good chainsaw to hack through 'em. But the effort is well worth it.

Here's the terms explored: Representation, Sign, Simulacrum, Word and Image, Narrative, Context, Meaning/Interpretation, Originality, Appropriation, Art History, Modernism, Avant-Garde, Primitive, Ritual, Fetish, Gaze, Gender, Modes of Production, Commodity, Collecting/Museums, Value, Postmodernism/Postcolonialism, and Figuration

My favorite essay so far is the one on Simulacrum.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in art criticism. It provides some interesing viewpoints.

you will find books such as this one. A Ph.D. is not required to understand it, but it will give you an intellectual workout, as it is not a beginner's handbook. You need to have read some art history (beyond the "what, where, when, who" level), and some art criticism, to see the rationale behind its chapter headings. It is also not a book about works of art as such, but about the special terms and concepts used in current interpretive writing on the "fine" arts (primarily arts of Western European derivation, but the contributors are sensitive in handling the cultural bias of their sources). ALL of the authors are distinguished authorities on the topics they discuss. I think it is a strength of this book that they do not share a homogeneous intellectual background, or ideological bias, and also that they are not all the same age, but made their greatest contributions at different points in the recent (roughly, between 1970 and 1990) "crisis" of art historical writing. The most useful feature of this book, to my mind, is that it provides carefully argued contextual analysis of critical terms which either 1) have a long history of use (and therefore need unpacking before we can grasp the "unconscious"--sometimes contradictory--values they impose on the works to which they're applied), or 2) have been recently introduced to enable an informed critique of traditional art history. The cumulative effect of the various essays is to demistify some of our more cherished assumptions about the value of art: its timeless messages, its inspired origins, its spiritual uplift, its higher expressiveness/beauty/perfections. In other words, if you hope for a "feel-good" treatment of art critical standards, this is not your book. And yet, if you can accept that making and using works of art are social activities, and like the other products and customs of human societies, are constantly in flux even as they depend for their existence on inherited techniques, formulas, and ideals, then this book will provide a wonderful "relief map" of the intellectual foundations of current art history/art criticism.

Most of these essays are written by extremely prominent art historians and critics, such as WJT Mitchell, Homi Bhaba, the late Michael Camille, Jas' Elsner, and Nina Kallmyer. Each writer explores a "charged" term currently used in art criticism, such as "representation," "social art history," "ugliness," and "beauty." In each essay, the writer explores the meaning of the term by applying it to a single work of art. Though the essays vary in difficulty, each is ultimately very rewarding. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the nuts and bolts of art criticism. An absolute must for journalists, art critics, and students.

This book does present scholarship that uses and (sometimes) defines a variety of themes and approaches to art criticism, but most of the writings are highly esoteric, randomly selected, and not always focused on the visual arts. If you don't already have a solid understanding of concepts like "Post Modernism" and "Commodity" don't expect any clear answers here. This is less of an explanatory textbook-type work, and more of a compilation of modern critical writing. Pre-requisite: PhD.