by Jon Lackman | 23 February 2010 | Books, Contemporary
Oxford University Press recently mailed us a new essay collection by critic David Levi Strauss, From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual. Strauss has remained relatively little known despite plaudits from Arthur Danto, John Berger, Dave Hickey, and others. Perhaps Oxford will change things (his previous collections were published by Autonomedia and Aperture). This book’s essays concern various contemporary artists as well as a few art writers. In a piece on Leo Steinberg, Strauss writes:
…the most serious challenge to the practice of art history is the reported loss of faith in the underlying principles on which it depends. In his influential essay The End of the History of Art? (1987), Hans Belting described this crisis as a “loss of faith in a great and compelling narrative, in the way that things must be seen” … [Steinberg] appears to be a steadfast defender of the traditional values of art hsitorical analysis, using the old tools of iconography and iconology handed down to him by his teachers rather than the newer ones favored by postmodernist theory. It is the way he uses these tools, and what he makes with them, that is different. But Steinberg’s work over the last 50 years has frequently drawn outraged responses and censorious remarks from defenders of the faith–forcing us to ask, Just what faith is being defended?
See here for a 2004 interview of Strauss by Hakim Bey.
