Unfortunately, we couldn't attend today's lecture at the Hudson Institute here in Washington. It featured Roger Kimball talking about his new book, The Rape of the Masters. We found some excerpts at The New Criterion website; the book looks interesting:
"Why do we teach and study art history? A question that elicits a complicated answer. To learn about art, yes, but also to learn about the cultural setting in which art unfolds; in addition, to learn about--what to call it? 'Evolution' is not quite right, neither is 'progress.' Possibly 'development': to learn about the development of art, then, how artists 'solved problems'--for example, the problem of modeling three-dimensional space on an essentially two-dimensional plane.
"Those are some of the answers, or some parts of the answer, most of us would give. There are others. We teach and study art history--as we teach and study literary history or political history or the history of science--partly to familiarize ourselves with humanity's adventure in time. We expect an educated person in the West to remember what happened in 1066, to know the plot of Hamlet, to understand (sort of) the laws of gravity, to recognize The Venus of Urbino when he sees it. These are aspects of a huge common inheritance, episodes that alternately bask in and cast illuminations and shadows, the interlocking illuminations and shadows of mankind's conjuring with the world.
"All this might be described as the dough, the ambient body of culture. The yeast is supplied by direct acquaintance with the subject of study: the poem or play, the mental itinerary a Galileo or Newton traveled, the actual work of art on the wall. In the case of art history, the raison d'etre--the ultimate motive--is supplied by a direct visual encounter with great works of art. Everything else is prolegomenon or afterthought, scaffolding to support the main event, which is not so much learning about art as it is experiencing art first hand."
