Theory for Art History provides a concise and clear introduction to key contemporary theorists, including their lives, major works, and transformative ideas. Written to reveal the vital connections between art history, aesthetics, and contemporary philosophy, this expanded second edition presents new ways for rethinking the methodologies and theories of art and art history. The book comprises a complete revision of each theorist; updated and trustworthy bibliographies on each; an informative introduction about the reception of critical theory within art history; and a beautifully written, original essay on the state of art history and theory that serves as an afterword. From Marx to Deleuze, from Arendt to Rancière, Theory for Art History is designed for use by undergraduate students in courses on the theory and methodology of art history, graduate students seeking an introduction to critical theory that will prepare them to engage the primary sources, and advanced scholars in art history and visual culture studies who are themselves interested in how these perspectives inflect art historical practice. Adapted from Theory for Religious Studies by William E. Deal and Timothy K. Beal.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is an analysis of complex forms of art history. It covers a broad range of approaches, presenting individual arguments, controversies and divergent perspectives. The book begins by introducing the concept of theory and explains why it is important to the practice of art history.

Systems theory emerged in the mid-20th century along with related theories such as Cybernetics and Information Theory. Recently it has included Complexity Theory, Chaos Theory and Social Systems Theory. Systems theory understands phenomena in terms of the systems of which they are part. This book is about a systems theoretical approach to thinking about art. It examines what it means to look to systems theory both for its implications for artistic practice and as a theory of art. This publication provides a sustained discussion on the application of systems theory to an account of art.

What is socially engaged art history? Art history is typically understood as a discipline in which academics produce scholarship for consumption by other academics. Today however, an increasing number of art historians are seeking to broaden their understanding of art historical praxis and look beyond the academy and towards socially engaged art history. This is the first book-length study to focus on these growing and significant trends. It presents various arguments for the social, pedagogical, and scholarly benefits of alternative, community-engaged, public-facing, applied, and socially engaged art history. The international line up of contributors includes academics, museum and gallery curators as well as arts workers. The first two sections of the book look at socially engaged art history from theoretical, pedagogical, and contextual perspectives. The concluding part offers a range of provocative case studies that highlight the varied and rigorous work that is being done in this area and provide a variety of inspiring models. Taken together the chapters in this book provide much-needed disciplinary recognition to socially engaged art history, while also serving as a springboard to further theoretical and practical work.

Vermeer's Wager stands at the intersection of art history and criticism, philosophy and museology. Using a familiar and celebrated painting by Johannes Vermeer as a case study, Ivan Gaskell explores what it might mean to know and use a work of art. He argues that art history as generally practiced, while successfully asserting certain claims to knowledge, fails to take into account aspects of the unique character of works of art. Our relationship to art is mediated, not only through reproduction – particularly photography – but also through displays in museums. In an analysis that ranges from seventeenth-century Holland, through mid-nineteenth-century France, to artists' and curators' practice today, Gaskell draws on his experience of Dutch art history, philosophy and contemporary art criticism. Anyone with an interest in Vermeer and the afterlife of his art will value this book, as will all who think seriously about the role of photography in perception and the core purposes of art museums.

As the theoretical alignments within academia shift, this book introduces a surprising variety of realism to abolish the old positivist-theory dichotomy that has haunted Art History. Demanding frankly the referential detachment of the objects under study, the book proposes a stratified, multi-causal account of art history that addresses postmodern concerns while saving it from its errors of self-refutation. Building from the very basic distinction between intransitive being and transitive knowing, objects can be affirmed as real while our knowledge of them is held to be fallible. Several focused chapters address basic problems while introducing philosophical reflection into art history. These include basic ontological distinctions between society and culture, general and "special" history, the discontinuity of cultural objects, the importance of definition for special history, scales, facets and fiat objects as forms of historical structure, the nature of evidence and proof, historical truth and controversies. Stressing Critical Realism as the stratified, multi-causal approach needed for productive research today in the academy, this book creates the subject of the ontology of art history and sets aside a theoretical space for metaphysical reflection, thus clarifying the usually muddy distinction between theory, methodology, and historiography in art history.