13 September 2006 | Journals, Theory
In the Summer 2006 Critical Inquiry, Jas’ Elsner writes, in the conclusion to his article on Riegl: “There is much value in treating art-historical discourse in general as ekphrasis. This is to say, it is rhetorical, with the aim of persuading an audience of a point or an argument; it is directed not towards some [...]
9 August 2006 | Theory
From the New Scientist: “[Neuroscientist] Vilayanur Ramachandran … claims to have discovered ‘the key to understanding what art really is.’ Semir Zeki … claims that great art can be defined ‘in neurological terms’ … [According to Ramachandran,] works of art that we appreciate or enjoy activate the same neural mechanisms that are activated when we [...]
25 May 2006 | Theory
What’s the latest with Bildwissenschaft? Christiane Kruse reviews several recent books on the subject and credits W. J. T. Mitchell’s 1994 Picture Theory with inspiring many of them. In What Do Pictures Want?, Mitchell’s latest, he explores the counterintuitive idea that pictures themselves have life and power and “do things to us that we don’t [...]
24 May 2006 | Theory
From the “mission” of Purdue University art history professor Elizabeth K. Mix (Menon): “I am proud of the fact that most people, when they first learn I’m an art historian, say ‘You don’t look like an art historian.’ I always say ‘Thank-you’ … What is the difference between someone in academia who invents jargon and [...]
19 May 2006 | Books, Islamic, Theory
Reviewing Making Cairo Medieval, edited by Nezar Alsayyad, Irene A. Bierman, and Nasser Rabbat, Mohammad al-Asad writes: “The dependence of a good number of the essays on the critique of Orientalism is a liability. A significant part of this critique of the Orientalist discourse has become repetitive, predictable, and consequently tired. It is time to [...]
28 April 2006 | Journals, Theory
From Artnet: “Is the influential October magazine, the flagship journal of art theory, a spent force? The editors of the newly released November certainly seem to think so. The 46-page inaugural issue of the parody mag offers a savage send-up of the widely copied, jargon-heavy style of October, via, among other things, contributions from ‘Lukács [...]
21 April 2006 | Ancient, Journals, Theory
In the latest issue of Antiquity, R. Alexander Bentley writes: “There is now a proliferation of new journals on almost every conceivable topic (e.g. Journal of Happiness Studies, Queueing Systems, Wear, World Pumps, with titles for archaeologists such as Anthropoetics, Archaeological Dialogues and Archaeoastronomy & Ethnoastronomy News), so that an author can publish almost any [...]
In Germany in the years after 1968, junior scholars forced a fresh reckoning with the discipline’s Nazi-era record; so again today, writes Daniela Stöppel in reviewing a new essay collection edited by Nicola Doll, Christian Fuhrmeister and Michael H. Sprenger. Especially valuable for reviewer Ines Katenhusen is the attention given to activities outside the academy, [...]
Contributor Ross Finocchio reports: “At NYU Friday night, Oxford philospher John Hyman refuted the claims of ‘neuroaesthetics’ researchers V. S. Ramachandran and Semir Zeki (last seen at the Columbia ‘Forum on Art and the New Biology of Mind‘). Hyman first challenged Ramachandran’s notion that ‘all art is caricature,’ in that it exaggerates the depicted’s essential [...]
In honor of Wayne Dynes’s recent apologia for German art-history scholarship, today we feature a 100% Germanocentric set of posts. [By the way, we're always looking for more foreign correspondents -- email us if you're interested.] For starters, in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Peter Geimer has returned to the question of iconoclasm. First tackling the [...]
In the latest Third Text, Stephen Shapiro reviews Benita Parry’s Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique: “The reward and challenge for a reader … is the treasure of encountering a critical practice fundamentally motivated by a Left experience of political community and self-critical commentary absent from many who position themselves within the academic field of postcolonial [...]
31 March 2006 | Theory
India’s Frontline interviews V.S. Ramachandran (who recently spoke at the “New Biology of the Mind” symposium): “I said [in The Emerging Mind] OK, here are ten laws of art. And I make it clear that these are not like laws of physics … They are trial balloons. While a majority of scholars were intrigued and [...]
16 March 2006 | Theory
In his new book Vom Bild zum Kunstsystem, Beat Wyss combines semiotics, systems theory and classical psychoanalysis into a model of artistic meaning, writes Niklas Maak in the Frankfurter Allgemeine. Wyss historicizes C. S. Peirce’s semiotic system, arguing that image structure is affected by local forms of knowledge and communication. For example, when Marc Bloch [...]
In the March Oxford Art Journal Dan Karlholm takes the measure of Donald Preziosi’s 2003 Brain of the Earth’s Body: Art, Museums, and the Phantasms of Modernity: “The book was intended as a sequel to his department-shattering or, at least, consensus-challenging Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science [1989] but it became a ‘rethinking [...]
