Current Methodology of Art History

HA 3009 Period 2, 2006

James Elkins
(email jelkins@artic.edu)

Syllabus
Revised Sunday, January 8, 2006
This syllabus will be available at:
http://www.jameselkins.com/syllabi.html

This is a seminar on art historical methodology, intended to provide a grounding in current

theoretical questions.

Philosophy of the course

It is meant to complement other courses by exploring viable methodologies; the other

courses are intended as historical and historiographic inquiries into the discipline—i.e.
approaches that can no longer be implemented.

To understand contemporary art history it is helpful to know about various methodologies

(psychoanalysis, feminisms, institutional critique, semiotics, deconstruction, postcolonial
theory). But the textbook, Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts, argues that it is not
sufficient just to study methodologies because that leaves unsaid how a scholar knows
when to choose a given method, or which one is most important, or which is most apposite
to the art historical material at hand. Much art historical writing moves from one method to
another without justifying the transitions or choices (“now I will present some concepts
from Lacan… and here it is interesting to consider the concept of the liminal…”). Our
Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts is an attempt to step back and consider the desire for
theories and the ways of thinking about the relation between theories and art historical
material.

Ideally, Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts would be an “advanced” historiography
course, after the course that introduces psychoanalysis, semiotics, etc. In this course, the
student presentations serve to introduce the methodologies, and the textbooks serve to
question how those theories are usually taught and applied.
HA 3009 - 2 - SYLLABUS

Format of the course

The class will be conducted at a high level; most of the time we will critiquing texts rather
than expositing them. A basic understanding of the texts will be assumed at the beginning
of each class. You should read the assignments in advance of class, and take notes on them;
in class we’ll read through them and stop at problem points.

Continuous assessments:

(a) Participation

(b) A 2500 word paper on an individual historian. The paper consists of three parts:
i. A bibliography of the historian, as thorough as you can manage.
ii. An introduction to the historian’s work, including a very brief biography, a brief
overview of the books you’ve looked at, and an attempt to smmarize other
peoples’ opinions of the scholar
iii. A description of a single chapter or essay
iv. A critical analysis of the historian’s work. Can you use the historian’s methods
and approach? What are the historian’s strengths and limitations? What has been
written about the historian?
These papers will be assessed on (a) the amount of effort you’ve put in trying to get a sense
of the historian’s work as a whole, reading other books, etc.; (b) the amount of secondary
literature you have found (eg., critical reviews of the historian’s work); (c) the clarity of
your exposition of the historian’s arguments; and (d) the cogency of the criticisms you’ve
developed.

(c) Examination
This will be short answers only; 30 questions. We will discuss the format in class.

Textbook:

Yellow = textbooks to buy

Green = texts that will be posted online
Pink = texts that will be Xeroxed

One book to buy:

My book, Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts: Art History as Writing (University Park,
PA: Penn State Press, 1997), which is available online. Chapters of this book are identified
by name in the readings (for instance “Elkins, ‘On Half-Consciousness’”)

If you buy this online, please buy through my webpage: www.jameselkins.com (so I get a
20 cent commission).

Other texts will be posted online, or else available in triplicate on a table in the Visual
Resources lab in 3 Perrott Avenue. (Code: 3941.) This is an honour system: take one copy,
make a copy for yourself, and return the original.

Researching the paper:

Research should be thorough. I have prepared a research guide, at

www.jameselkins.com/research.html. Be sure to go through the entire listing on that
HA 3009 - 3 - SYLLABUS

webpage. I will be looking for sources accessible through the Boole Library that you
haven’t listed.

Plan on spending several days searching for bibliographic information. Texts in languages
you don’t read should still be listed.

Schedule of classes:

This year, History of Art have an unprecedented series of conferences, lectures,

exhibitions, and roundtables, and this class will be arranged to take advantage of them.

The most up-to-date schedule will be posted at www.imagehistory.org

First book series: The Art Seminar

Vol. 1, Art History versus Aesthetics (available in bookstores now)

Vol. 2, Photography Theory
Vol. 3, Is Art History Global?
Vol. 4, States of Art Criticism
Vol. 5, Renaissance Theory (April 2-3, Sunday and Monday)
Vol. 6, Landscape Theory (June 16-17, Friday and Saturday, in Ballyvaughhan)

Second book series: Theories of Modernism and Postmodernism

Vol. 1, Master Narratives and Their Discontents

Vol. 2, Richard Shiff, Doubt
Vol. 3, Stephen Bann, TBA
Vol. 4, Joseph Koerner (May 11 and 12, Thursday and Friday)
Vol. 5, Hans Belting (June 29 and 30, Thursday and Friday)
Vol. 6, Geeta Kapur (June 8 and 9, Thursday and Friday)

In addition there will be faculty study groups, to which you are also invited.

Schedule:

Be sure to do the reading before the class (except the first week).

Week 1—January 3 and 6

1: Introduction

First Theme: Periods and Periodization

2: Lecture: Periodization in art history

Assignment: a sketch of your periodization of art history
Reading: My essay on art history in Ireland, from Circa, available at
http://www.recirca.com/backissues/c106/arthistory.shtml
(This is for background, and will not be on the examination.)
HA 3009 - 4 - SYLLABUS

Week 2—January 10 and 13

1: Reading: My essay Master Narratives and Their Discontents, through chapter

on modernism

2: Reading: My essay The Master Narratives and Their Discontents,

Postmodernisms

Week 3—January 17 (Friday’s class is cancelled)

1: Reading: My essay The Master Narratives and Their Discontents,

From “Politics” to the end

Week 4—January 24 and 27

1: In preparation for the Modernism and Postmodernism lectures:

Reading: Joseph Koerner, selections TBA

2: Reading: Hans Belting, selections TBA

Week 5—January 31 and February 3

1: Reading: Hans Belting, selections TBA

2: Reading: Geeta Kapur, selections TBA

Week 6—February 7 and 10

1: Reading: Geeta Kapur, selections TBA

2: Discussion: summary of the Modernism and Postmodernism series

Week 7—February 14 and February 17

Second Theme: Methods

1: Reading: Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts, pp. 1-6, 11-13, 163-178

2: Reading: Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts, pp. 197-229

Week 8—February 21 and February 24

1: Reading: Schapiro, Heidegger, Derrida (readings to be announced); also

Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts, pp. 230-245

2: Reading: Michael Fried, essay on Courbet’s Burial at Ornans; also

HA 3009 - 5 - SYLLABUS

Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts, pp. 197-229

Week 9—February 28 and March 3

1: Reading: Art Since 1900, first two introductions

2: Reading: Art Since 1900, second two introductions

Week 10—March 7 and March 9

Third Theme: Renaissance Theory

1: Reading: Bob Williams’s essay on the systematicity of Renaissance art

2: Readings TBA; possibly excerpts from Leo Steinberg, Leonardo’s Incessant

Last Suppper

Week 11—March 14 (Friday’s class is cancelled)

1: Readings TBA

Week 12—March 21 and 24

Fourth Theme: Landscape Theory

1: Readings TBA

2: Readings TBA

Meetings to discuss papers:

There will be sign-up sheets to visit during my office hours (Thurs/Friday most weeks) to
work out your choice of paper topics.
Choices for papers:

The following list is of recommended authors and books.

If you read French, Italian, Japanese, or German, I may assign books in those languages.

Scholars who are coming to “Is Art History Global?” and “Photography Theory”:

Margaret Iversen
Jonathan Friday
Margaret Olin
Steve Edwards
Joel Snyder
Graham Smith
Jan Baetens
Diarmuid Costello
HA 3009 - 6 - SYLLABUS

David Summers
Andrea Giunta
Shigemi Inaga
Cao Yiqiang
Friedrich Teja Bach

Scholars who are coming to events later this spring:

Barbara Stafford
W.J.T. (Tom) Mitchell
Jonathan Crary
Stephen Bann
Stephen Eisenman
Kristine Stiles
David Freedberg (?)
Joseph Koerner
Whitney Davis

Important recent texts in art history:

Andrée Hayum, The Isenheim Altarpiece

Pierre Klossowski, Decadence of the Nude

Representing the Passions, edited by Richard Meyer

T. J. Clark, Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
Chapters not presented in class.

Thierry de Duve, Look, 100 Years of Contemporary Art, translated by

Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods (Ghent-Amstersam: Ludion, 2001).

Georges Didi-Huberman, L’Image survivante: Histoire de l’art et temps des

fantômes selon Aby Warburg (Paris: Minuit, 2002).

Rosalind Krauss and Yve-Alain Bois, Formless: A User’s Guide

(Cambridge, MA: Zone Books, 1997). ISBN 0-942299-43-4

Hans Belting, Art History After Modernism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2002).
-- or --
Hans Belting, The Invisible Masterpiece, translated by Helen Atkins (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2001).
Reviewed unfavorably by Charles Harrison in Bookforum 8 no. 4 (2002): 38.
-- or --
* Hans Belting, The Germans and Their Art: A Troublesome Relationship,
translated by Scott Kleager (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

Michael Ann Holly, Past Looking (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1999[?]).
HA 3009 - 7 - SYLLABUS

Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern

Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997 [sic: January 2000]). ISBN 0-
262-03265-1

Louis Marin, Sublime Poussin, translated by Catherine Porter (Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 1999). $18.95

Mieke Bal, Quoting Caravagio: Contemporary Art, Preposterous History

(Chicago: University of Chicago Pess, 1999). $45.00

Svetlana Alpers and Michael Baxandall, Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994).

Whitney Davis, Replications: Art History, Archaeology, Psychoanalysis

(University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1996).

Udo Kultermann, “Histoire de l’art et identité nationale” (I have an offprint)

Oskar Bätschmann, Einführung in die kunstgeschichtliche Hermeneutik, third

edition (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988).

Hubert Damisch, Traité du trait: Tractatus Tractus (Paris: Reunion des Musées
Nationaux, 1995)

Julia Kristeva, Visions capitales (Paris: Reunion des musées nationaux, 1998)

* Thomas Crow, The Intelligence of Art (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press, 1999).

* Rosalind Krauss, Bachelors (a new essay on Claude Cahun,

and several reprinted essays).

Benjamin Buchloh, Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).
ISBN 0-262-2454-3

Jacques Derrida and Paule Thévenin, The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998). ISBN 0-262-04165-0

Texts relevant to art historical problems, but not quite in art history:

l’Image, textes choisis et presentés par Laurent Lavaud (Paris: Gallimard, 1995).
Sites of Vision: The Discursive Construction of Sight in the History of Philosophy,
edited by David Levin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997). ISBN 0-262-
62129-0

Anthologies
HA 3009 - 8 - SYLLABUS

These are recent anthologies from which you may pick essays for your paper. I recommend
these as a last resort, because it takes an extra week to find the book and choose the essay:

The Subjects of Art History, edited by Michael Ann Holly, Keith Moxey, and Mark
Cheetham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)

Critical Terms for Art History, edited by Robert Nelson and Richard Shiff
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)

Kunstgeschichte: Eine Einführung edited by Heinrich Dilly, Wolfgang Kemp,

Willibald Sauerländer, and Martin Warnke (Berlin: Dietrich Riemer) ISBN
3-496-00950-0

Kunstgeschichte: Aber Wie? Zehn Themen und Beispiele (Berlin: Dietrich Riemer)
ISBN 3-496-00971-3

Academies, Museums, and Canons of Art, edited by Gill

Perry and Colin Cunningham (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)

The Changing Status of the Artist:, edited by Emma Barker, Nick Webb, and Kim
Woods (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)

Gender and Art, edited by Gill Perry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)

The Challenge of the Avant-Garde, edited by Paul Wood

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)

Views of Differences: Different Views of Art, edited by Catherine King

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)

Contemporary Cultures of Display, edited by Emma Barker (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1999)