The shaping of art history : meditations on a discipline

Summary: "In this provocative book, Patricia Emison invites the reader to consider and reconsider how past thinkers - from Pliny and Alberti to Freud and Fried - have conceptualized the history of Western art." "What a book review attempts to be for a book, this extended essay attempts to be for several hundred years' worth of books in a field: an indicator of problems with the old attempts and hopes for the new ones. It is a defense of art history for those outside the field who question its reliability or even its importance; it is a critique of art history for those in the field who may have been preoccupied with looking at trees but who might be interested in trying to see the forest."--Book jacket.

Record details

ISBN: 9780271033051 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN: 0271033053 (cloth : alk. paper)
Physical Description: print
xii, 108 p. : ill ; 24 cm.
Publisher: University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press, c2008.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (p. [97]-99) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Why not just write biography? -- Toward a more chaotic definition of style -- Venturing somewhat beyond Freud -- Rated XX -- The bottom line -- Back to idolatry?