Writing Art History

“Iversen and Melville offer a sophisticated and well-written introduction to the central twentieth-century themes, theories, and methods of art history, and to how this history has been written. Filled with rich and probing accounts of many of art history’s most noted writers, this book shows how, through the writing of art history, deep changes have been encouraged and effected in our modes of contemplation and judgment.”

“Writing about the writing about writing the history and theory of visual art—this book, coauthored by two speculative and critical art historians, constructs an intriguing hall of mirrors that lures its reader into being inescapably reflective about our too often workaday discipline. Because of the richness, variety, and history of thinkers whom it addresses—from Hegel to Heidegger, to Riegl to Wölfflin, to Warburg to Panofsky, to Merleau-Ponty to Barthes, to Steinberg to Baxandall, to many contemporary theorists as well as practicing artists (and that’s to name only some)—this is a deep and thick study, often phenomenological in inclination, for all who are interested in the intellectual history of the history of art. ‘Theory,’ its authors convincingly assert, should never be a substitute for ‘methodology,’ and in that conviction they conclude with its curricular potential. Directed especially to those who are philosophically-inclined (and why would one not be?), this is a most thoughtful book that many will read and relish.”