Studies of the old masters are often implicitly based on modern notions, which do not necessarily tally with ideas contemporary with the art of the time being studied. WithLooking for Lines, Paul van den Akker offers a survey of the concepts and controversies of artistic value since the eighteenth century. Drawing from the writings of art historians, critics, and philosophers such as Hogarth, Comte de Caylus, Goethe, Carl Schnaase, Burckhardt, Heinrich Wölfflin, and John Shearman, and focusing particular attention to the historiography of mannerism, van den Akker traces the evolution of aesthetic judgment over the past three centuries and at the same time scrutinizes it for clues to the way we see and think about art today.
Paul van den Akkeris a lecturer in the Department of Art History at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Preface
Introduction
Part I
1. The History of Art Balancing Between Realism and Stylisation
2. Historiography Repeats Itself: Arguments in Favour of Studying Non-Classical Styles
3. Wölfflin’s Classic Art and His Criticism of Mannerism
4. Jacob Burckhardt and Franz Kugler: Uneasiness Towards Mannerist Art
5. The High Status of Raphael’s Paintings and of Greek Art
Part II
Introduction to Part II
6. The Eighteenth-Century State of Antique Art
7. Taste,Manieraand the History of Art
8. The History of Antique Art and the Question of Taste
9. Winckelmann on Fine Characters and Contours
Part III
Introduction to Part III
10. The Flowing Lines as the Philosopher’s Stone
11. A Changing Point of View
12. Riegl’s Theory and Its Legacy
Epilogue: Visual Order in Figurative Art
Notes
Bibliography
Index of names
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