Meaning in the Visual Arts Views from the Outside: a Centennial Commemoration of Erwin Panofsky

The purpose of this wide-ranging collection of essays, all by eminent scholars in the humanities and social sciences, is to explore the phenomenal explosion since World War II of interdisciplinary interest in the visual arts. The authors, who represent a cross-section of anthropologists, social historians, literary and film critics, historians of science, musicologists, and art historians, were part of a conference hosted by the Institute for Advanced Study to commemorate Erwin Panofsky, a former professor at the Institute who did much to inspire this trend. The conference drew inspiration from Panofsky's famous volume of essays, Meaning in the Visual Arts, in which the art historian, drawing upon material from many domains of intellectual and cultural history, sought to define how the visual arts convey not only aesthetic pleasure but intellectual sense as well. The essays in this volume illustrate in turn the ways in which thinkers in other disciplines perceive the relevance of the visual arts.


The contributors in the field of art history are Irving Lavin and David Summers; in anthropology, James A. Boon, Margaret W. Conkey, Shelly Errington, and Fred Myers; in history, Anthony Grafton, Donald R. Kelley, Randolph Starn, and Kristen E. S. Zapalac; in literature, Philip Fisher, Marc Fumaroli, W.J.T. Mitchell, and Wendy Steiner; in science, Martin Kemp and M. Norton Wise; in music, Carolyn Abbate, James Haar, Ellen Rosand, and Leo Treitler; in film, Thomas Y. Levin and Annette Michelson. Commentary is also provided by Horst Bredekamp, Willibald Sauerl,nder, Carl Schorske, and Craig Hugh Smyth.