Thomas Dowson wrote
>Art History has only ever reinforced a
>eurocentric, linear history of art that begins in Lascaux and ends in
>the Louvre. The real difficulty for art historians is not, as John
>says, finding enough material, but rather their ability to abandon a
>post-enlightenment definition of art.
- and -
>I am very aware of the way in which art historians,
>be they like Gombrich or TJ Clarke, bolster a eurocentric history of
>art. Surveys AND analyses of art that are very definitely not
>restricted to school libraries.
Having filed my PhD in Art History Last Year, I take great issue with
Dowson writes. First of all it is essentializing to reduce the entire field
to linear histories or to Gombrich and Clarke or to the suspect nature of
the art history survey text book. Similar statements could also be made
about particular areas or individuals in archaeology and anthropology. The
Art History department at my own institution (UCLA) offers a minor and a
major in Critical (what some call Social) Theory, has offered seminars on
topics ranging from Black Athena to Race, Nation State, and Museology, and
just last weekend had a conference on Race, Nation, and Modernity. We have
one anthropologist teaching in the department, many of our faculty apply
interdisciplinary approaches to their area of study, and students are
encouaged to acquire sub-specialties in other disciplines such as history
or anthropology. Many art historians see art as a modern construct and have
extended our domain to the entire range of material culture.
This is not to say that there aren't heavily entrenched conservative
segments in the discipline (as there are in other disciplines). Perhaps the
problem is conservative agendas that cross-cut the disciplinary spectrum as
well as displinarity itself which calls to mind Collingwood's observation
that such practices are like an act of dissection in which historical facts
are slotted into a scheme of pigeon-holes.
Louise Hitchcock
Louise A. Hitchcock, Ph.D.
Research Associate,
Institute of Archaeology, UCLA
and
Near Eastern Studies Center, UCLA
----------------------------------------
Lecturer,
Dept. of Anthropology,
California State University, Dominguez Hills
and Dept. of Art History, UCLA
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