"Art" has always been contested terrain, whether the object in question is a medieval tapestry or Duchamp's Fountain. But questions about the categories of "art" and "art history" acquired increased urgency during the 1970s, when new developments in critical theory and other intellectual projects dramatically transformed the discipline. The first edition of Critical Terms for Art History both mapped and contributed to those transformations, offering a spirited reassessment of the field's methods and terminology. Art history as a field has kept pace with debates over globalization and other social and political issues in recent years, making a second edition of this book not just timely, but crucial. Like its predecessor, this new edition consists of essays that cover a wide variety of "loaded" terms in the history of art, from sign to meaning, ritual to commodity. Each essay explains and comments on a single term, discussing the issues the term raises and putting the term into practice as an interpretive framework for a specific work of art. For example, Richard Shiff discusses "Originality" in Vija Celmins's To Fix the Image in Memory, a work made of eleven pairs of stones, each consisting of one "original" stone and one painted bronze replica. In addition to the twenty-two original essays, this edition includes nine new ones—performance, style, memory/monument, body, beauty, ugliness, identity, visual culture/visual studies, and social history of art—as well as new introductory material. All help expand the book's scope while retaining its central goal of stimulating discussion of theoretical issues in art history and making that discussion accessible to both beginning students and senior scholars. Contributors: Mark Antliff, Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Stephen Bann, Homi K. Bhabha, Suzanne Preston Blier, Michael Camille, David Carrier, Craig Clunas, Whitney Davis, Jas Elsner, Ivan Gaskell, Ann Gibson, Charles Harrison, James D. Herbert, Amelia Jones, Wolfgang Kemp, Joseph Leo Koerner, Patricia Leighten, Paul Mattick Jr., Richard Meyer, W. J. T. Mitchell, Robert S. Nelson, Margaret Olin, William Pietz, Alex Potts, Donald Preziosi, Lisbet Rausing, Richard Shiff, Terry Smith, Kristine Stiles, David Summers, Paul Wood, James E. Young

Critical Terms for Art History, Second Edition

Arts & Photography

Richard Shiff

Robert S. Nelson

History & Criticism

University of Chicago Press

Drawing on a broad foundation in the history of nineteenth-century French art, Richard Shiff offers an innovative interpretation of Cézanne's painting. He shows how Cézanne's style met the emerging criteria of a "technique of originality" and how it satisfied critics sympathetic to symbolism as well as to impressionism. Expanding his study of the interaction of Cézanne and his critics, Shiff considers the problem of modern art in general. He locates the core of modernism in a dialectic of making (technique) and finding (originality). Ultimately, Shiff provides not only clarifying accounts of impressionism and symbolism but of a modern classicism as well.

Cezanne and the End of Impressionism: A Study of the Theory, Technique, and Critical Evaluation of Modern Art

The first publication dedicated to Judd’s late works, which exemplify his radically new approach to color One of the most important American artists of the 20th century, Donald Judd (1928–1994) pioneered the use of industrial materials and fabrication in serial forms to redefine the relationships between artist, art object, viewer, and space, and usher in the Minimalist style. His signature work transformed in 1984 when he radically revised his approach to color after learning of an industrial process for shaping and enameling aluminum in an array of colors from a commercial color chart. In the last decade of his life, he created multicolored works of serial forms, both wall-mounted and free-standing, which reveal an entirely new engagement with color. Focusing entirely on Judd’s multicolored works, this handsome book features essays by leading scholars that illuminate this body of work and examine its relationship to his oeuvre as a whole. Judd was an important theorist in his own right, and his 1993 text, “Some Aspects of Color in General and Red and Black in Particular,” is reproduced here. An essential book on a groundbreaking artist, the volume includes images of dozens of multicolored works accompanied by preparatory drawings and collages, as well as photographs from the studio and the factory.

Donald Judd: The Multicolored Works

Donald Judd

Adrian Kohn

Marianne Stockebrand

William C. Agee

Rudi Fuchs

Yale University Press

Robert Mangold

Robert Mangold's gently curving, majestic paintings are among the most beautiful abstract works of the late twentieth century. Emerging in the 1960s, Mangold is often associated with Minimalism for his non-hierarchical compositions and use of simple geometric forms. His subtle colours and soft, hand-drawn figures also recall other sources, from traditional Greek pottery to the frescoes of Piero. Among the most accomplished painters working today, Mangold is collected in the world's pre-eminent museums.
This first comprehensive monograph assesses Mangold's contribution to contemporary painting, with essays by some of the most distinguished writers on contemporary art. Richard Shiff, Chair in Art at the University of Texas, Austin, interprets Mangold's art in the context of its broad cultural history; Robert Storr, curator at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, analyses the work in relation to late twentieth-century painting; Arthur C Danto, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, New York, examines in depth the Zone Paintings series; and art critic Nancy Princenthal presents a chronological history of the concepts in the work. Also included is a conversation with the artist's wife, painter Sylvia Plimack Mangold, on the sources behind his work, and artist's statements accompanied by photographs of the artist in his studio by their son, the noted filmmaker James Mangold.

Arthur C. Danto

Nancy Princenthal

Robert. Storr

Phaidon Press

Impressions of French Modernity: Art and Literature in France 1850-1900

International specialists in French art and literature come together in this volume to investigate modernité through painting, sculpture, the novel, diaries, dance, poetry, criticism and theory. Modernité had no simple definition. It grew out of a rapidly changing world: one of dramatic urban transformation. The experiences and impressions of individuals faced with this modern world engendered a new artistic genre. Beginning with Delacroix, Baudelaire and Gautier, Impressions of French Modernity moves on to Manet, Degas and Mallarmé through a broad sweep of familiar and unfamiliar works of art and literature. Its three main sections identify particular features of modernity: impressions of the Second Empire; innovations in form found in verbal and visual works or art throughout the period 1850-1900; and problems of identity surrounding the figure of the artist.

John House

David, Scott

Paul, Smith

Michele Hannoosh

James Kearns

Alan Krell

Joy Newton

Dee Reynolds

Manchester University Press

Once described as "the most beautiful painter's drawings in existence," Georges Seurat's mysterious and luminous works on paper played a crucial role in his short, vibrant career. This comprehensive publication surveys the artist's entire oeuvre, from his academic training and the emergence of his unique methods to the studies made for his monumental canvases. Accompanying the first exhibition in almost 25 years to focus exclusively on Seurat's drawings, this volume presents approximately 130 works, primarily the artist's incomparable conté drawings along with a small selection of oil sketches and paintings. In an effort to bridge the seemingly opposite goals of description and evocation, Seurat masses dark and light tones to abstract figures, exploits medium and paper to amplify radiating light, and engages with the Parisian metropolis, revealing urban types, the industrial suburbs and nineteenth-century entertainment. Though Seurat is perhaps best known as the inventor of Pointillism, this volume demonstrates his tremendous achievement as a draftsman and his fundamental importance to the art of the twentieth century. It includes carefully selected details of the work, as well as reproductions from pages of Seurat's sketchbooks, which have never before been published. Texts by Jodi Hauptman, Karl Buchberg, Hubert Damisch, Bridget Riley, Richard Shiff and Richard Thomson address specific aspects of Seurat's techniques, materials, and subject matter. They are rounded out by a chronology, a selected bibliography and a detailed checklist.

Georges Seurat: The Drawings

Jodi Hauptman

Karl Buchberg

Hubert Damisch

BRIDGET RILEY

Richard Thomson

Reference

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Richard Serra, Drawing: A Retrospective

SERRA, Richard

Michelle White

Gary Garrels

Bernice Rose

Magdalena Dabrowski

Lizzie Borden

The Menil Collection

Doubt (Theories of Modernism and Postmodernism in the Visual Arts)

Routledge

Terry Winters, 1981-1986

Matthew Marks Gallery

Georg Baselitz paints violent and distinctive imagery that is reminiscent stylistically of both German and American Expressionism. This title explores his development, revealing an artist whose concerns are derived from his experiences of post-war German society.

Georg Baselitz: A Retrospective

Norman Rosenthal

Carla Schulz-Hofman

Georg Baselitz

Royal Academy of Art

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Books by Richard Shiff