The Social History of Art, Vol. 2: Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque - Softcover

Hauser, Arnold

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415199468 ISBN 13: 9780415199469

Publisher: Routledge, 1999

Synopsis

First published in 1951 Arnold Hauser's commanding work presents an account of the development and meaning of art from its origins in the Stone Age through to the Film Age. Exploring the interaction between art and society, Hauser effectively details social and historical movements and sketches the frameworks in which visual art is produced.
This new edition provides an excellent introduction to the work of Arnold Hauser. In his general introduction to The Social History of Art, Jonathan Harris asseses the importance of the work for contemporary art history and visual culture. In addition, an introduction to each volume provides a synopsis of Hauser's narrative and serves as a critical guide to the text, identifying major themes, trends and arguments.

About this title

About the Author:

Arnold Hauser was born in Hungary and studied literature and the history of art at the universities of Budapest, Vienna, Berlin and Paris. In 1921 he returned to Berlin to study economics and sociology under Ernst Troeltsch. From 1923 to 1938 he lived in Vienna where he began work on The Social History of Art. He lived in London from 1938 until 1977, when he returned to his native Hungary. He died in Budapest in 1978. Jonathan Harris is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Critical Theory at the University of Keele. He is the author of Federal Art and National Culture: The Politics of Identity in New Deal America (1995), co-author of Modernism in Dispute: Art Since The Forties (1993) and co-editor of Art in Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical Texts (1992).

Review:

"Unrivalled in its scope and ambition, Arnold Hauser's classic study can be placed alongside the writings of Schapiro, Wolfflin, and Panofsky as a critical contribution to the development of the history of art as discipline."
-Alan Wallach, College of William and Mary
"This is an exciting, an irritating, a scholarly and an absolutely indispensable book."
-Art News and Reviews
"Hauser's work repays reading because it was and remains the only comprehensive scholarly synthesis of the history of art from the perspective of historical materialism."
-Whitney Davies

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0415199468
• ISBN 13: 9780415199469
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 232