The Language of Art History [Paperback]

Each of the chapters in this volume is a response to theoretical and practical questions regarding the relationship between the art object and language in art history. Accessible to readers of all social science disciplines, the issues discussed challenge the boundaries to thought that some contemporary theorizing sustains.Each of the chapters in this volume is a response to theoretical and practical questions regarding the relationship between the art object and language in art history. Accessible to readers of all social science disciplines, the issues discussed challenge the boundaries to thought that some contemporary theorizing sustains.The first volume in the series Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and the Arts offers a range of responses by distinguished philosophers and art historians to some crucial issues generated by the relationship between the art object and language in art history. Each of the chapters in this volume is a searching response to theoretical and practical questions in terms accessible to readers of all human science disciplines. The editors, one a philosopher and one an art historian, provide an introductory chapter which outlines the themes of the volume and explicates the terms in which they are discussed. The contributors open new avenues of enquiry involving concepts of 'presence', 'projective properties', visual conventions and syntax, and the appropriateness of figurative language in accounting for visual art. The issues they discuss will challenge the boundaries to thought that some contemporary theorising sustains.1. Art history and language: some issues; 2. Presence; 3. Writing and painting: the soul as hermeneut; 4. Correspondence, projective properties, and expression in the arts; 5. The language of art criticism; 6. Baxandall and Goodman; 7. Figurative language in art history; 8. C?zanne's physicality: the politics of touch; 9. Conditions and conventions: on the disanalogy of art and language; 10. A minimal syntax for the pictolÒ