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A History of Art History
An authoritative history of art history from its medieval origins to its modern predicaments
In this wide-ranging and authoritative book, the first of its kind in English, Christopher Wood tracks the evolution of the historical study of art from the late middle ages through the rise of the modern scholarly discipline of art history. Synthesizing and assessing a vast array of writings, episodes, and personalities, this original and accessible account of the development of art-historical thinking will appeal to readers both inside and outside the discipline.
The book shows that the pioneering chroniclers of the Italian Renaissance--Lorenzo Ghiberti and Giorgio Vasari--measured every epoch against fixed standards of quality. Only in the Romantic era did art historians discover the virtues of medieval art, anticipating the relativism of the later nineteenth century, when art history learned to admire the art of all societies and to value every work as an index of its times. The major art historians of the modern era, however--Jacob Burckhardt, Aby Warburg, Heinrich Wölfflin, Erwin Panofsky, Meyer Schapiro, and Ernst Gombrich--struggled to adapt their work to the rupture of artistic modernism, leading to the current predicaments of the discipline.
Combining erudition with clarity, this book makes a landmark contribution to the understanding of art history.-- "Apollo Magazine"
In this wide-ranging and authoritative book, the first of its kind in English, Christopher Wood tracks the evolution of the historical study of art from the late middle ages through the rise of the modern scholarly discipline of art history. Synthesizing and assessing a vast array of writings, episodes, and personalities, this original and accessible account of the development of art-historical thinking will appeal to readers both inside and outside the discipline.
The book shows that the pioneering chroniclers of the Italian Renaissance--Lorenzo Ghiberti and Giorgio Vasari--measured every epoch against fixed standards of quality. Only in the Romantic era did art historians discover the virtues of medieval art, anticipating the relativism of the later nineteenth century, when art history learned to admire the art of all societies and to value every work as an index of its times. The major art historians of the modern era, however--Jacob Burckhardt, Aby Warburg, Heinrich Wölfflin, Erwin Panofsky, Meyer Schapiro, and Ernst Gombrich--struggled to adapt their work to the rupture of artistic modernism, leading to the current predicaments of the discipline.
Combining erudition with clarity, this book makes a landmark contribution to the understanding of art history.-- "Apollo Magazine"
472 pages, Hardcover
Published September 3, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 11, 2020
This is a brainy book. For those pursuing advanced study of theories of Western art, it will be welcome. But for me as a layperson, it was a challenge. It confronted me with obscure terms like ‘ekphrases’ and ‘form’ as used in the disclipline of art history, plus words like tropology, maieutic, spolium, and topoi. These left me reaching repeatedly for a dictionary or specialist glossary.
Even more essential for deciphering this text is prior training in … theories of art history! Without such training, it's hard to crack this book's codes, such as its many allusions. What does the author wish to imply when alluding to an art historian's wish to “do Roger Fry over again, but after nature”? That kind of cryptic remark – and there are dozens like it in this book – will probably be lost on readers lacking background in philosophies of Western art. In any case it was lost on me.
The writer does furnish the reader with fragmentary background on many art historians – a good number of whom wrote in German – but then assumes that the reader is well acquainted with an almost equally large number of theoreticians writing in German from Schlegel onward.
It’s reasonable to expect attention to the influence of intellectual figures and their preferences, theories and rivalries. This book puts such things on a broad canvas, often in detail. But doesn’t art history also include other matters? Such as questions of who commissioned and paid for works of art, and why? And how historians or theoreticians have interpreted the roles of paymasters and brokers and their effects on the course of artistic development? Apart from one brief paragraph on the “secondhand art market” and a few scattered references to those acquiring art (including a single, vague reference to art as the object of plunder), I sensed that the historiography discussed in this book can’t be bothered with the likes of buyers, brokers, falsifiers and looters.
Going by the wealth of scholarship cited and the sophisticated inter-weaving of abstract argument, the writer’s expertise is not in doubt. He knows his stuff... or does he? At the outset of the book, he informs the reader that “the most widely read art-historical book of the twentieth century” was the work of Heinrich Wölfflin. But at the end of the book he announces that the “most widely read of all art historians” is Ernst Gombrich. Maybe there's some wriggle room between these two statements, a matter to be cleared up with re-editing. But the discrepancy left me in doubt.
Quite plausibly, this book will tower over its field. But for a non-specialist reader like me it was a bridge too far.
Even more essential for deciphering this text is prior training in … theories of art history! Without such training, it's hard to crack this book's codes, such as its many allusions. What does the author wish to imply when alluding to an art historian's wish to “do Roger Fry over again, but after nature”? That kind of cryptic remark – and there are dozens like it in this book – will probably be lost on readers lacking background in philosophies of Western art. In any case it was lost on me.
The writer does furnish the reader with fragmentary background on many art historians – a good number of whom wrote in German – but then assumes that the reader is well acquainted with an almost equally large number of theoreticians writing in German from Schlegel onward.
It’s reasonable to expect attention to the influence of intellectual figures and their preferences, theories and rivalries. This book puts such things on a broad canvas, often in detail. But doesn’t art history also include other matters? Such as questions of who commissioned and paid for works of art, and why? And how historians or theoreticians have interpreted the roles of paymasters and brokers and their effects on the course of artistic development? Apart from one brief paragraph on the “secondhand art market” and a few scattered references to those acquiring art (including a single, vague reference to art as the object of plunder), I sensed that the historiography discussed in this book can’t be bothered with the likes of buyers, brokers, falsifiers and looters.
Going by the wealth of scholarship cited and the sophisticated inter-weaving of abstract argument, the writer’s expertise is not in doubt. He knows his stuff... or does he? At the outset of the book, he informs the reader that “the most widely read art-historical book of the twentieth century” was the work of Heinrich Wölfflin. But at the end of the book he announces that the “most widely read of all art historians” is Ernst Gombrich. Maybe there's some wriggle room between these two statements, a matter to be cleared up with re-editing. But the discrepancy left me in doubt.
Quite plausibly, this book will tower over its field. But for a non-specialist reader like me it was a bridge too far.
August 23, 2021
Took all summer to shimmy my way through this morass of pure art knowledge. Can’t say I followed everything— this is an incredibly messy survey of a millennia of art historical thoughts— but maybe once a page there’s something fascinating, brilliant, or dead wrong. It’s obvious Wood is a scholar of the German renaissance— it keeps recurring and that’s where he goes deepest— and that may explain why he’s a little afraid to touch anything after 1960. Like Burckhardt, he doesn’t want to cast shadows over still young work that a later generation may finally decode.
April 10, 2021
'Inquiry into modern art is now inextricable from modernism's own confidence in its own content. There is no way out of this loop.
THIS IS WHY THE STUDY OF MODERN ART IS STILL AWAITING ITS HERESIARCH.'
THIS IS WHY THE STUDY OF MODERN ART IS STILL AWAITING ITS HERESIARCH.'
October 13, 2025
As somebody who knows very little about art history, I feel like I've been drinking from a fire hose reading this book. Many points of view, many names, many ideas that I probably wasn't up to catching with a casual read. It did make me want to read more about the history of art, rather than the history of art history (which I probably misunderstood on picking it up).
December 20, 2020
Dense; ironically, skipped or blew past too many art historians and critics, especially in the 20th century. Barely talks about the rise of museums.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews