two great tastes that taste great together

I'm talking about art and historiography, of course, the chocolate and peanut butter of the mind.  I was delighted to learn yesterday, via the Art History Newsletter, that the University of Glasgow has begun to publish The Journal of Art Historiography.  The first issue gets its Kunstgeschichte on with a focus on Viennese and German thought.  Warburg!  Riegl!  Novotny!  Just thinking about it makes me feel like . . . well, like I just ate a lot of chocolate and peanut butter and need to take a long nap.  More seriously, it's all very fascinating, if a bit heavy going at times.  The editors wisely put this interview (warning: pdf) with the late Michael Baxandall at the top, easing the reader in with a little lighter fare.  It's an engaging read, with citations that would provide a good reading list for an intro art history seminar on their own.  At times it's perhaps a bit too light or predictable (Baxandall liked Richard Wollheim, and admired Francis Haskell, though thought the latter went too far--more detail, please?), but one can't expect too much from a transcribed conversation, tantalizing though it may be.  And while I'd prefer that the journal published its articles on pages of their own and not as pdfs, I'm happy to see that they're up at all, and so I'll stop nitpicking and just be thankful for the free ice cream.  Or chocolate and peanut butter, as the case may be.

Comments

[Franklin]

Good to have you back.

[JL]

Thanks, but as I've said before: don't jinx it, man.

[Franklin]

Sorry. Goodbye and good riddance.

Seriously, Greg, Bunny, and me can't all be wrong about wanting to see your thoughts more regularly. I hope we do.

[Arthur]

Ich auch.

[peter reginato]

Me too...Peter

[CAP]

Re: Haskell going too far
Possibly Baxo picks up on Wollheim’s distinction (made in the preface to Painting as an Art) between the theoretical and anecdotal wings to art history. Wollheim cites T.J. Clark as a proponent of the former, Haskell as an advocate of the latter. The first ‘theorizes into existence something which, as far as I can see, is unsupported either by evidence or by general plausibility: that is, a social function that all works of visual art universally and of necessity discharge’ (p 10) while the second ‘leaves explanation as far out of reach as it ever was’ (op cit). Haskell is thus the dogged empiricist, collecting evidence ad hoc and piecemeal, leaving theory as an a posteriori task. Presumably, Baxo tilts for a more rationalist ambit. His Patterns of Intention would support it. Still, who wasn’t engrossed at some point with Rediscoveries in Art?

[bayrakçı]

Good to have you back.