Marjorie Greene <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>I didn't mean my list to be exhaustive!
sorry.
and i didn't mean that M.-D. Chenu's work was at all "discredited" or
even "old fashioned," nor anything less than very substantial
scholarship, essential preliminary spadework.
just that, in the [ancient] past (c.1930-60, say), Art Historians
(particularly) have made the fellow into a kind of unique Patron Saint,
projecting onto him all sorts of roles (e.g., "inventor" of Gothic
Architecture) which might just be a bit over-the-top as gross simplifications
of what is increasingly seen as *very* complex stylistic developments.
i may (well) be wrong, but Chenu was perhaps one of the first historians of
Theology to look at S's work in detail, from the point of view of her(?) own
particlar discipline; and the Met conference and Lindy Grant's book began the
process of deconstructing his life and work from an Historical persepctive,
the latter (though "officially" an Art Historian) utilizing --for the first
time, i believe-- an extensive
amount of unpublished (!!) original source material.
freeing him from the more or less exclusive domain of the Art Historians --as
well as re-evaluating his significance within the sequence of events within
that sometimes flakey discipline as that sequence is itself re-constructed--
is a very heartening thing to see, it seems to me. an exciting time to be
alive.
best to all from here,
christopher
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