Art Is Not What You Think It Is

Preziosi, Donald / Farago, Claire

Blackwell Manifestos

1. Edition February 2012
190 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd

ISBN: 978-1-4051-9239-2

John Wiley & Sons

Short Description

Art Is Not What You Think It Is presents a thought-provoking manifesto by two leading art historians which reconsiders current discussions on the idea of art, and offers new and challenging insights into its uses, meanings, and its very nature.

Further versions

Art Is Not What You Think It Is utilizes original research to present a series of critical incursions into the current state of debate on the idea of art, making manifest what has been largely missing or unsaid in those discussions.
* Links museology, history, theory, and criticism to the realities of contemporary social conditions and shows how they have structurally functioned in a variety of contexts
* Deals with divisive and controversial problems such as blasphemy and idolatry, and the problem of artistic truth
* Addresses relations between European notions about art and artifice and those developed in other and especially indigenous cultural traditions

List of Figures

Preface: Art Is Not What You Think It Is

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Art and/as Manifesto

First Incursion: Artistry and Authorship

Second Incursion: The Dangers of Art and the Trap of the Visual

Third Incursion: To See the Frame that Blinds Us

Fourth Incursion: Deconstructing the Agencies of Art

Fifth Incursion: Intersections of the Local and the Global

Sixth Incursion: Into the Breach of Art and Religion

Seventh Incursion: The Art of Commodifying Artistry

Index

Donald Preziosi is Emeritus Professor of Art History and Critical Theory at UCLA, and Former Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford. He trained in art history, classics, and linguistics at Harvard, and is the author and co-author of many books including The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology (2009).

Claire Farago is Professor of Renaissance Art Theory and Criticism at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is author and co-author of many books on art theory, historiography, and museums, and is an authority on the manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci. Her numerous publications include Re-Reading Leonardo: The Treatise on Painting across Europe 1550-1900 (2009).
Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago have previously collaborated as co-editors of Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum (2004).

D. Preziosi, University of California, Los Angeles, USA; C. Farago, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA