![]() In the case of art history, the raison d’être-the ultimate motive-is supplied by a direct visual encounter with great works of art. The yeast is supplied by direct acquaintance with the subject of study: the poem or novel or play, the mental itinerary a Galileo or Newton traveled, the actual work of art on the wall. These are aspects of a huge common inheritance, episodes that alternately bask in and cast illuminations and shadows, the interlocking illuminations and shadows that delineate mankind’s conjuring with the world.Īll this might be described as the dough, the ambient body of culture. We expect an educated person in the West to remember what happened in 1066, to know the plot of Hamlet, to understand (sort of) the law of gravity, to recognize Mona Lisa, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, or Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère. We teach and study art history-as we teach and study literary history or political history or the history of science-partly to familiarize ourselves with humanity’s adventure in time. Those are some of the answers, or some parts of the answer, most of us would give. To learn about art, yes, but also to learn about the cultural setting in which art unfolds in addition, to learn about-what to call it? “Evolution” is not quite right, neither is “progress.” Possibly “development”: to learn about the development of art, then, about how over the course of history artists “solved problems”-for example, the problem of modeling three-dimensional space on an essentially two-dimensional plane. “It is a question,” he says, “that elicits a complicated answer.” ![]() Roger Kimball begins The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art by asking why we teach and study art history. ![]() The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art, by Roger Kimball.
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