It's getting late, and I don't have time to develop a complete reply. But a few more points in response to James' post:
- James seems to misunderstand the remarks he quotes from me on conservation and historians of ancient art. My concern here is not any kind of "timeless" experience, but rather that those trained in the field should have a decent command of the nuts and bolts of what they study. How the objects are put together, what has damaged or threatens them, the process and techniques of creation at their most prosaic levels are what I'm interested in here, not the meeting of historical horizons.
- As I alluded to below, the involvement of linguistics in art history is not a recent perversion but part of the displicine's earliest history in its debt to philology, just for starters. To this extent James is complaining that the linguistic models he approves of have been replaced by those that he does not. Obviously this topic requires more elaboration than I can provide here, but that will have to stand for now.
- Which is not to say that art history lacks disciplinary distinctions between itself and linguistics, however much influence the latter has had. But words such as "masterpiece" and "genius" aren't much use in the classroom not simply due to nefarious new theories but because they are worn out and don't say much. "Masterpiece" has become so devalued as to have about the same impact as callling a work "wicked awesome"; and "genius" as a descriptive term obscures exactly what one wants to investigate.
- I'd agree that there is no single way to approach the field, and I'm happy to attend to any practice that offers productive results. At the end of this essay, for instance, our old friend James Elkins lays out criteria for psychoanalytical art history - the sort of stuff that sets my teeth on edge - that seem quite reasonable and acceptable even to me. But those trying to argue for a revival of out-of-favor methods need to recognize that these are hors de combat not merely for reasons of fashion or politics. And, one hopes, not attempt revival but a truly creative evolution, examples of which already exist. I think there are possibilities for one in the awakening interest in Riegl as a model of art historical study, for one. But I'm sure there are others.
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