The Social History of Art, Volume 2 : Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque [Paperback]

Arnold Hauser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1990 | ISBN-10: 0415045797 | ISBN-13: 978-0415045797

First published in 1951 Arnold Hauser's commanding work presents an account of the development and meaning of art from its origins in the Stone Age through to the Film Age. Exploring the interaction between art and society, Hauser effectively details social and historical movements and sketches the frameworks in which visual art is produced.
This new edition provides an excellent introduction to the work of Arnold Hauser. In his general introduction to The Social History of Art, Jonathan Harris asseses the importance of the work for contemporary art history and visual culture. In addition, an introduction to each volume provides a synopsis of Hauser's narrative and serves as a critical guide to the text, identifying major themes, trends and arguments.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Unrivalled in its scope and ambition, Arnold Hauser's classic study can be placed alongside the writings of Schapiro, Wölfflin, and Panofsky as a critical contribution to the development of the history of art as discipline.
–Alan Wallach, College of William and Mary

This is an exciting, an irritating, a scholarly and an absolutely indispensable book.
–Art News and Reviews

Hauser's work repays reading because it was and remains the only comprehensive scholarly synthesis of the history of art from the perspective of historical materialism.
–Whitney Davies --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Arnold Hauser was born in Hungary and studied literature and the history of art at the universities of Budapest, Vienna, Berlin and Paris. In 1921 he returned to Berlin to study economics and sociology under Ernst Troeltsch. From 1923 to 1938 he lived in Vienna where he began work on The Social History of Art. He lived in London from 1938 until 1977, when he returned to his native Hungary. He died in Budapest in 1978. Jonathan Harris is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Critical Theory at the University of Keele. He is the author of Federal Art and National Culture: The Politics of Identity in New Deal America (1995), co-author of Modernism in Dispute: Art Since The Forties (1993) and co-editor of Art in Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical Texts (1992). --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 243 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (December 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415045797
• ISBN-13: 978-0415045797
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,208,567 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Proves that intellectual history has advanced since 1950, February 28, 2001

By 

Steve Miller (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Social History of Art, Boxed Set: The Social History of Art, Vol. 2: Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque (Paperback)

A very nice introduction to the volume points out the intellectual confusions and tensions throughout. A crude marxism and psychologism overlies a fairly traditional stylistic chronology. One realizes how important are later studies that emphasize patronage and actual political power as opposed to disembodied "forces" and "spirits."

Hauser is always provocative and sometimes amusing. There are surprisingly few examples or paintings analyzed in any detail and sometimes he goes off in such detail on literature that one wonders where the focus of the book truly lies.

This book is worthwhile reading to understand the roots of modern art history - for Hauser is responding to 19th century writers and sees Impressionism as the great watershed in his discipline. He is thus aware of the importance of his own historical nexus, yet is caught up in a kind of analytical conformity that all too often seems like a grey flannel suit imposed upon the art in question.