by Jon Lackman | 11 October 2006 | Books
Professor Jean Kempf, director of the Presses Universitaires de Lyon, reviews Roland Recht’s much-talked-about À quoi sert l’histoire de l’art? in ARHV: “This is a real publishing scandal – and I weigh my words carefully – but also an immense disappointment, as big as Recht’s reputation … At a moment when humanities publishing is in crisis, producing this kind of work amounts to intentional homicide … This magnum opus … is a little thing of 110 sparse pages, conducted in a conversational manner … I’m not sure I share his definition of art history, but in any case I agree with him that it’s prospering in the English- and German-speaking worlds while in France it’s languishing inside the university. However, his explanations don’t convince me, particularly because they’re little-developed and superficial.”
