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The Intelligence of Art
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The Intelligence of Art
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| | | | Offering a refreshing analysis of the present state of art history, Thomas Crow moves the discussion of theory and method in art history away from models borrowed from other disciplines by presenting what he considers three of the most successful and challenging works in the literature of art history: Meyer Schapiro on the Romanesque portal sculpture of the abbey church of Sainte Marie in the French town of Souillac, Claude Levi-Strauss on the Native American masks of the Northwest Coast, and Michael Baxandall on the limewood sculptors of Renaissance Germany. Sketching the history of trends in art history -- from description and biography, to social-historical methods, to postmodernist approaches -- Crow sets out a course that affirms the rich and valuable tools of language and methodology developed by generations of art historians while recognizing the important contribution of recent theory in raising the interpretive stakes.
| PraiseTimes Literary Supplement
""Since Impressionism, we are all amateurs", said Picasso, referring to the dissolution of aesthetic values and settled procedures in painting. Thomas Crow echoes these words in his introduction to THE INTELLIGENCE OF ART, four lectures originally addressed to a mixed academic and lay audience at the University of North Carolina, when he remarks, reassuringly, that "in attempting to comprehend the scope of even one discipline, we are all amateurs a good part of the time". In keeping with the interdisciplinary spirit of that occasion, Crow chooses three model texts from widely different fields of art historical research to illustrate his argument, and this serves to focus attention on the salient issue of methodology. Before recounting these examples, he briefly summarizes the dominant currents in art-historical discourse this century, highlighting their inadequacies as means of making art intelligible. " 11/05/1999 |
| Author Bio| Thomas Crow | | Thomas Crow is Professor and Chair of History of Art at the University of Sussex. |
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