The Lure of the Object (Clark Studies in the Visual Arts)

With contributions by Emily Apter, George Baker, Malcolm Baker, John Brewer, Martha Buskirk, Margaret Iversen, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Karen Lang, Mark A. Meadow, Helen Molesworth, Marcia Pointon, Christian Scheidemann, Edward J. Sullivan, and Martha Ward            This latest volume in the critically acclaimed Clark Studies in the Visual Arts series examines the force of art history’s attraction to particular objects and the corresponding rhythms of attachment and detachment that animate the discipline. In a series of thought-provoking essays, distinguished curators, conservators, and scholars from various disciplines within the humanities consider how artists, the public, and art historians have encountered objects in periods ranging from the Renaissance to Surrealism and contemporary art. They grapple with the questions of how art and art history are shaped by the confrontation with the object―painted, drawn, and sculpted; lost, found, and ready-made; exhibited and conserved; made and unmade.
Art historian Stephen Melville provides the introduction to the volume. Other contributors include Emily Apter, George Baker, Malcolm Baker, John Brewer, Martha Buskirk, Margaret Iversen, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Karen Lang, Mark Meadow, Helen Molesworth, Marcia Pointon, Christian Scheidemann, Edward J. Sullivan, and Martha Ward.

Distributed for the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Stephen Melville is professor of the history of art at The Ohio State University, specializing in contemporary art, theory, and historiography. He has served as resident faculty at the Getty Summer Institute in Visual and Cultural Studies and as co-curator of As Painting: Division and Displacement, a major exhibition of contemporary painting.