Gombrich among the Egyptians and Other Essays in the History of Art
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9467305 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susan Bush (0000-0003-1638-4515, Seattle University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 215-218 |
| Publication date | 2017-02-28 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal of Aesthetics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0904 • E-ISSN: 1468-2842 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/aesthj/ayw094 |
| OpenAlex | W2775617724 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
The jacket of this elegantly designed book features an engraving on an Egyptian lintel and the title within the title is emphasized in red as on the front pages inside. Only in the list of contents is there any indication that a large proportion of the text treats early Chinese art. Although Robert Bagley is indeed a well-known writer on early Chinese bronzes, apart from his area of expertise he may have had to teach a large share of introductory courses. In any case, his non-Western field of specialization provided him with a critical viewpoint on the basis for teaching practices in art history and for the survey texts that define them. As he notes in the introduction ‘Dealing with artistic traditions alien to those on which the discipline was formed has taught me to doubt some of its assumptions and most of its universals’ (9). The first three essays hit hard at these assumptions. ‘Styles, Periods, and the Life Cycle of the Goblin’ points out that ‘fictions’ such as the Gothic style and the period of the Middle Ages distort perceptions of works and their history. Using circular reasoning, architectural historians defined the ‘Gothic’ by listing certain features found in a chosen building to produce a ‘style’ that inevitably constricted their future choices. Here Bagley’s prose takes on a rollicking rhythm as he inveighs against big Style and the practice of classifying all art forms in one period label. The essay ends with the advice to think of style simply in terms of comparisons and to ‘write history as a story of accumulating choices’ (39)
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Listing (finance · Literature · Period (music · Style (visual arts · Visual arts · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology · Historical Astronomy and Related Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History
| Citations per year | 0.4 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2021 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |