Art 119/192B, Spring 2012

Study questions for Steve Edwards’ “Introduction” to

Art and its Histories: A Reader

Your answers to the following questionsareyouronly response to this reading. They will be the basis for class discussion on February 6.

  1. What does Edwards (the editor) say the “role” of theanthology is? What does he hope the texts will throw light on?
  2. What are“source texts” and what do they provide evidence of?
  3. What do the texts in the “critical approaches” sections offer, and how does Edwards want the reader to consider them?

Naturalizing the Canon

  1. How does “naturalization” take us into the heart of the book? What is naturalization?
  2. What do art historians refer to as the canon of Western art?
  3. How do museums and books participate in the construction of the canon?
  4. What did Heinrich Wolfflin propose in 1915 and how did E.H. Gombrich later respond?
  5. What was the dominant mode of art until the early twentieth century?
  6. How is the canon best understood? What does it mean to “contest” the canon?
  7. What are the strengths of canonical art?
  8. What should those who which to challenge canonical art and judgement bear in mind?
  9. Why is the canon so tenacious?
  10. How does Edwards characterize the most substantial challenges to the canon of art?

Contesting the Canon

  1. When did the Western canon and the values it is based on begin to be challenged?
  2. What were the leading critical perspectives on the canon?
  3. When was the “avant-garde” and how did the artists associated with it challenge the canonical idea of “art”?
  4. What did E. H. Gombrich defend in his Romanes lecture of 1973? What are absolute criteria and what are “relativist” arguments in art history?
  5. Which artist was held by Gombrich to be the standard against other works of art could be objectively measured?
  6. What is the problem with Gombrich’s “objective” standard? What kinds of art cannot be measured by them?
  7. How would you evaluate a work of art by its aesthetic “effect” rather than appearance?
  8. What is the second impetus for re-evaluating the role of the canon that emerged in the wake of the1960s? Briefly state the argument against connoisseurship.
  9. What are the pros and cons ofconnoisseurship according to Edwards?
  10. What is the “second phase” in the development of new critical priorities in art history derived from?
  11. What was H.W. Janson’s reply to the question of why no women artists appeared in his History of Art?
  12. What was the range of feminist responses? List them.
  13. What have art historians like Linda Nochlin and Griselda Pollock argued?
  14. Why are “the claims made by traditional art history to embody universal human experiences… highly problematic”?
  15. How does “beauty” become problematized in the global context?
  16. How does the Western conception of “art”become problematic when applied to non-Western objects?
  17. What is a “post-colonial” perspective?
  18. What is a “Eurocentric” view?
  19. What is the origin of the word “canon” accordeing to literary critic John Guillory?
  20. Why is the title of the book plural “histories”?

Art History at the Market Place

  1. What is the “additional problem” particular to art history, not shared by literature or music?
  2. What is “the commodity status” of art history’s objects?
  3. How does the Art Market shape art history
  4. What is the “crisis of the canon” and in what three ways have art historians responded?
  5. What is Adrian Rifkin’s argument and how would art history disappear as a discipline if it were followed?
  6. What is “one important reason that the canon has not been fundamentally overhauled”? (p.13)
  7. What is the central aim of the critiques of the canon?

Conclusion

  1. What is Edwards’ conclusion about the value of canon critique?
  2. How could you apply these ideas to your senior thesis?

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