Art Is Not What You Think It Is - Softcover

Preziosi, Donald; Farago, Claire

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1405192399 ISBN 13: 9781405192392

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012

Synopsis

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

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Few phenomena in our lives are as inescapable as what we commonly refer to as art―yet few concepts are more elusive than the idea of art itself. So what does ‘art’ look like today? And what is its fate? Art Is Not What You Think It Is offers 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.

Revealing how conventional thinking about art is largely based on misconceptions about its history, Preziosi and Farago call for a radical rethink of the subject and its relationship to a wide swath of today’s world―from religion and philosophy to culture and politics. The authors probe a variety of issues, including the dangers of art and trap of the visual; the frame that blinds us; deconstruction of the agencies of art; the intersections of the local and global; the breach of art and religion, and commodifying artistry. Provocative and groundbreaking, Art is Not What You Think It Is will reshape conventional assumptions about the nature, meaning, and ultimate fate of art in today’s world.

About the Author:

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).

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1405192399
• ISBN 13: 9781405192392
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192