The Intelligence of Art (Bettie Allison Rand Lectures in Art History) - Softcover

Crow, Thomas E.

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9780807849002: The Intelligence of Art (Bettie Allison Rand Lectures in Art History)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807849006 ISBN 13: 9780807849002

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr, 1999

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With this book, Thomas Crow contributes a refreshing analysis of the present state of art history, the practice of interpreting art and making it "intelligible." He aims to relocate the discussion of theory and method in art history away from models borrowed from other disciplines by presenting what he considers three of the most successful and challenging works in the literature of art history: Meyer Schapiro on the Romanesque portal sculpture of the abbey church of Sainte Marie in the French town of Souillac, Claude Levi-Strauss on the Native American masks of the Northwest Coast, and Michael Baxandall on the limewood sculptors of Renaissance Germany.

Sketching the history of trends in art history--from description and biography, to more recent social-historical methods, to the latest wave of postmodernist approaches--Crow sets out a course that affirms the rich and valuable tools of language and methodology developed by generations of art historians while recognizing the important contribution of recent theory in raising the interpretive stakes. The Intelligence of Art offers nothing less than a concrete new way to grasp the infinitely complex operations of human intelligence in artistic form.

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Book Description:

"Crow has presented a rare set of reflections that might be termed a Bildungsroman whose characters are works of art as interpreted by art historians and anthropologists. . . . Immensely challenging to art historians, for whom this book will be a stimulation to rethink the ways art history is created. For philosophers, the lectures generate a wealth of questions that can be of great benefit to aesthetics and philosophy of art."-- Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

From the Inside Flap:

A refreshing analysis of the present state of art history by a leading scholar and critic, this book offers a concrete new way for interpreting art through the ages. Crow examines the works of what he considers three of the best examples of art history criticism, Meyer Schapiro on the Romanesque portal sculpture of the abbey church of Sainte Marie in the French town of Souillac, Claude L vi-Strauss on the Native American masks of the Northwest Coast, and Michael Baxandall on the limewood sculptors of Renaissance Germany.

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