Historiography (in Art History)

Otto Brendel (1901-1973)

by Katharina Lorenz

In: BRANDS, G. and MAISCHBERGER, M., eds., Lebensbilder I: Klassische Archäologen und der Nationalsozialismus Verlag Marie Leidorf. 193-206.

Giovanni Gasbarri - Lo studio degli avori bizantini in Italia tra ‘800 e ‘900 attraverso “L’Arte” di Adolfo Venturi

by Giovanni Gasbarri

in teCla. Rivista di temi di Critica e Letteratura artistica, 1 (2010), pp. 30-57

Giovanni Gasbarri - Byzantium in objects and objects from Byzantium: doubts, fakes and misunderstandings in historiography at the turn of the 20th century. The case of Giancarlo Rossi’s Tesoro Sacro

by Giovanni Gasbarri

in Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art II, Proceedings of the International Congress (Moscow, 1-5 dicembre 2010), in corso di stampa

Al di là delle Alpi

by Elena Franchi

in “IBC”, XVI, 4, 2008,  p. 30

Mentre la Francia introduce finalmente la storia delle arti nelle scuole e l'Europa rinnova l'interesse per la... more Mentre la Francia introduce finalmente la storia delle arti nelle scuole e l'Europa rinnova l'interesse per la disciplina, in Italia c'è ancora chi sostiene che sia una materia da abolire...

Dalle cattedre ambulanti all’insegnamento ufficiale: l’ingresso della storia dell’arte nei licei

by Elena Franchi

in “Ricerche di Storia dell’arte”, 79, 2003, pp. 5-20

(Un)Blocked memory. 2nd conference of Baltic art historians

by Kristina Jõekalda

published in kunsttexte.de/ostblick 2011, no. 4, 4 pp.

L’Antiquité Expliquée e i Monumens de la monarchie française di Bernard de Montfaucon: modelli per una storia illustrata del Medioevo francese.

by Elena Vaiani

in «Conosco un ottimo storico dell’arte…». Per Enrico Castelnuovo, scritti di allievi e amici pisani, a cura di M.M. Donato, M. Ferretti, Pisa 2012, pp. 337-346.

How to Do Things with Pictures: A Guide to Writing in Art History

by Andrei Pop

Published as a brochure by Harvard University's Expository Writing Center in 2008, 43 p.

A practical guide to writing art history papers for newcomers to the field. I am still fond of the intermezzo called... more A practical guide to writing art history papers for newcomers to the field. I am still fond of the intermezzo called "What is Art?"

National Art Museum Practice as Political Cartography in 19th Century Britain

by Chris Whitehead

in Knell S; Aronsson P; Amundsen AB; Barnes A; Burch S; Carter J; Gosselin V; Hughes S; Kirwan AM (eds), National Museums: New Studies from Around the World, Routledge 2010

This chapter will explore one of the key characteristics of nineteenth-century national museums in Britain: that of... more This chapter will explore one of the key characteristics of nineteenth-century national museums in Britain: that of mapping the world, both geographically, epistemologically and socially. I will argue that the national museum provided an institutional technology for mapping, while in its morphology it was, literally, a multi-dimensional map which constructed knowledge spatially, connectively and divisively, to represent cultural and natural hierarchies and relations and differences between things and between people. The chapter begins with a brief exploration of the notion of the museum as map by examining the use of cartographic technology within the context of institutional collecting and display of material cultures. Then, looking at the network of national museums in mid-nineteenth-century London, the chapter will discuss the importance of geography, mobility, travel, cartography and appropriation of objects within the organising structures of curatorial practice and knowledge construction with predominant reference to the notion of art and the idea of the work of art. Within this, the paper will also look at the nature of national museum representations of the home nation. Where was Britain’s place on the map? And what were the cartographical politics of national othering and selfing? In relation to the latter the paper will also consider the national museum as a cartographic technology for social mapping through which, in a post-1832 context, the social and moral order of the new British electorate was plotted. The chapter will conclude with a account of the apparently weak expressions of nationhood in mid-century national museums, enabling a view of Britain as cultural cartographer rather than as obvious cultural territory, and opening up a way of discussing the museum as space for theorising, whether explicitly or not, the complex political relations between places, cultures and peoples past and present.

Establishing the manifesto: art histories in the nineteenth-century museum

by Chris Whitehead

in Knell, SJ; Macleod, S; Watson, S (eds), Museum Revolutions: how museums change and are changed

This essay examines three proposals for the reconfiguration of the national museums in London dating from the 1850s... more This essay examines three proposals for the reconfiguration of the national museums in London dating from the 1850s and considers some of the issues they raise in relation to the study of the history and theory of museums and disciplinarity. The purpose of this is to focus on the importance of the museum as a forum for the development of the disciplinary practices of art history in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. I argue that the curatorial act of representing art history in museum display – situating collected objects three dimensionally, in relation to the transit and forms of engagement of imagined visitors – was actually constitutive of certain intellectual approaches and practices of art history as a discipline. The essay argues that the project of art museum display brought with it certain unique ways of thinking about, and configuring, art history, and these have been important for the intellectual and professional legacies of disciplinarity of which art historians are possessed, which guide and delimit practices and which govern where we site, and how we view, objects and history in or through objects.

Les vases attiques à figures noires restaurés dans le laboratoire de Raffaele Gargiulo à Naples: étude pratique d’un regard d’époque. », in: Brigitte Bourgeois (dir.), Une perfection dangereuse ». La restauration du vase grec, de Naples à Paris, XVIII-XIXe siècles. Paris, 2010 (Technè 32), 31-37

by Ludi Chazalon

Barocci: The Historiographical Challenge

by Ian Verstegen

from Federico Barocci, the Art of Painting, and the Rhetoric of Persuasion, PhD dissertation, Temple University, 2002

The introductory chapter from my dissertation, describing also the contents of the following chapters. The introductory chapter from my dissertation, describing also the contents of the following chapters.

Sprung, Joacim, A Study by Carl Larsson in Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne-atlas, (2011)

by Joacim Sprung

The following appendix (16 in total) is part of the diss. "Bildatlas, åskådning och reproduktion. Aby Warburgs Mnemosyne-atlas och visualiseringen av konsthistoria kring 1800/1900, (Picture-atlas, Visual Education and Reproduction. Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne-atlas and the Visualization of Art History around 1800/1900), 2011, pp. 165-175. The pagination and footnotes are identical to the diss.

Sprung, Joacim, A MISSING “ARTICLE” ON ABY WARBURG BY THE SWEDISH PROFESSOR OF ART HISTORY HENRIK CORNELL, (2011)

by Joacim Sprung

The following appendix (16 in total) is part of the diss. "Bildatlas, åskådning och reproduktion. Aby Warburgs Mnemosyne-atlas och visualiseringen av konsthistoria kring 1800/1900, (Picture-atlas, Visual Education and Reproduction. Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne-atlas and the Visualization of Art History around 1800/1900), 2011, pp. 176-178. The pagination and footnotes are identical to the diss.

Eesti aja muinsuskaitse rahvuslikkus/rahvalikkus. Muinsuspedagoogika ja „võõras“ arhitektuur aastatel 1918–1940

by Kristina Jõekalda

published in Mälu, ed. Anneli Randla. Tallinn: Eesti Kunstiakadeemia, 2011, pp. 73–139 (incl. summary "Nationalism and populism in the heritage protection of inter-war Republic of Estonia: Heritage pedagogy and ‘alien’ architecture in the period 1918–1940", pp. 137–139).

Paper Trails for the History of Fluxus and Zaj: Between Document and Art Practice // Papeles para la historia de Fluxus y Zaj: entre el documento y la práctica artística.

by Henar Rivière

published online and on paper by Anales de Historia del Arte, UCM, 2011

Fluxus and Zaj issue a challenge to the Historiography of Art as pioneers of Performance Art. Born in the beginning of... more Fluxus and Zaj issue a challenge to the Historiography of Art as pioneers of Performance Art. Born in the beginning of the sixties, both experimental Neo-Avant-Gardes inaugurated this new kind of artistic practice, which emphasizes eventuality and multiplicity, and thus excludes the creation of concluded, closed, lasting works of art. The present paper deals with the difficulties that such a practice poses to Art Historians. It does so by means of a methodological approach of historiographical reconstruction, to which a critical analysis is applied, allowing for new ways of interpreting and understanding this challenge. Moreover, being carried out as a comparative analysis between both Zaj and Fluxus, this article points out relevant affinities and differences between them, helping outline the character and singularity of each one.

Der Staufer Friedrich II. und die Geschichtsschreibung des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts

by Hannes Obermair

Theory reception: Panofsky, Kant, and disciplinary cosmopolitanism

by Mark A. Cheetham

Journal of Art Historiography, Number 1, 2010

Mark A. Cheetham, 'Theory reception: Panofsky, Kant, and disciplinary cosmopolitanism' 1-MAC/1
more
Mark A. Cheetham, 'Theory reception: Panofsky, Kant, and disciplinary cosmopolitanism' 1-MAC/1

Abstract: One of the most prominent philosophical legacies in the historiography of art history is Erwin Panofsky’s debt to Immanuel Kant. Structurally and thematically, Panofsky imports philosophy, embodied by Kant, into the body of the younger discipline. I will argue that it is Kant’s vision of cosmopolitanism governs the relationships between philosophy and art history for Panofsky. What I call "theory reception” – how Panofsky received Kant and how art history in the U.S.A. received Panofsky, however much he may have downplayed the theoretical aspects of his later work - was in part determined, as it often is, by political factors. I will also ask what would it mean for art history to be cosmopolitan now?  To approach these questions, we need to move away from both art history and philosophy to study the re-engagement with the term cosmopolitan in other contemporary discourses.

Vasari's Progressive (but non-historicist) Renaissance

by Ian Verstegen

Journal of Art Historiography 5 (2011).

Today’s scholarly understanding of Giorgio Vasari is richer than it has ever been yet still conflicted. While on the... more Today’s scholarly understanding of Giorgio Vasari is richer than it has ever been yet still conflicted. While on the one hand the sophistication of his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (Le vite de più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori) published in 1550 and revised again in 1568, has been amply documented, including the possibility of multiple authorship, it is not clear to what degree he is a ‘modern’ writer. A number of works have increasingly appeared that stress the precociousness of Renaissance notions of historical difference and relativity.1 On the other hand, a largely medieval textual approach has been detected in his work, for example in the demonstration that the structure of the Lives is basically the form of a medieval chronicle, and most startlingly Gerd Blum’s detection of numerology in the page numbers.

Reframing formalism in 1930 Italy. Longhi, Fiocco, Pallucchini

by Alessandro Del Puppo

Das Problem der Form. Interferenzen zwischen moderner Kunst und Kunstwissenschaft (1890–1960) / The Problem of Form: The Interplay between Modern Art and the Discipline of Art History and Theory (1890–1960). Internationale und interdisziplinäre Tagung des Kunstgeschichtlichen Instituts der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, 25–27 November 2011

In the crucial years running from the first Venice Biennale entirely organized under the auspices of the Fascist... more In the crucial years running from the first Venice Biennale entirely organized under the auspices of the Fascist government (in 1928), and the opening of First Roman Quadriennale (1931) – the main exhibition dedicated to art of “The New Italy” - we can see a clear counter-modernist restoration that subverted the previous interplay between modern art and formalistic art history theories.
The cultural, social and political context of 1930 Italy gives an interesting platform to stress and verify the tenure of previous formalist approaches and a new way of connecting the discipline of art history to the resources of contemporary art.
My purpose is to present and discuss three different cases in which that first formalism approach was significantly reformulated around the Thirties in Italy.