by Jon Lackman | 6 November 2007 | Books, Modern, Teaching
In CAA Reviews, Juliet Bellow has published an essay, “Surveying the ‘Long Nineteenth Century’: A Review of Art-History Textbooks in the Field,” that evaluates the following texts: 19th-Century Art by Robert Rosenblum and H.W. Janson (2005); 19th Century European Painting: David to Cézanne by Lorenz Eitner (2002); Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History by Stephen Eisenman et al. (2007); and Nineteenth-Century European Art by Petra ten-Doesschate Chu (2006):
The good news is that these texts demonstrate there are as many histories of nineteenth-century art as there are definitions of the period. A wide variety of methodologies are represented, allowing scholars of varying orientations to find a text that corresponds with their preferred style in the classroom. In what follows I will argue that the textbooks under review exemplify, loosely speaking, four interpretive tendencies — formalist, biographical, political, and contextual — each with its own unique strengths and drawbacks.
And in case you believe, pace Stanley Fish, that a book can be judged by its first line, we offer you below the first lines of the four texts:
In 1776, that landmark year in transatlantic history, an astute visitor to the Royal Academy exhibition in London might well have noticed how frequently new ideas began to appear in, at first, familiar guises. [Rosenblum and Janson]
The current of thought, known as the Enlightenment, that was to transform the political and intellectual life of Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century began in an effort to reform society by subjecting its customs and institutions to a rational examination: the objective truth, once established, would infallibly lead to improvement. [Eitner]
The art, architecture and design discussed in this book was made in Europe and North America during a period of rapid and profound social and political modernization. [Eisenman et al.]
The death of Louis XIV (fig. 1-1) in 1715 marked the end of an era in France. [Chu]
