The Books that Shaped Art History: From Gombrich and Greenberg to Alpers and Krauss

The Books That Shaped Art History provides an invaluable roadmap of the field by reassessing the impact of the most important texts of art history published during the 20th century. Each of the sixteen incisive chapters, focusing on a single book, is written by a leading art historian, curator or one of the promising scholars of today. In bringing these cross-generational contributions together, the book presents a varied and invaluable overview of the history of art, told through its most enduring literature. Each essay with writers including John Elderfield, Boris Groys, Susie Nash and Richard Verdi analyses a single major work, mapping the intellectual development of its author, setting out the premises and argument of the book, discussing its position within the field of art history, and looking at its significance in the context both of its initial reception and its legacy. Enlivening debates and questioning the very status of art history itself, this is a concise and brilliant study of the discipline and an invaluable resource for anyone interested in visual culture and its histories.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction mile Mle, Lart religieux du XIIIe sicle en France, 1898 by Alexandra Gajewski Bernard Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, 1903 by Carmen C. Bambach Heinrich Wlfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 1915 by David Summers Roger Fry, Czanne: A Study of His Development, 1927 by Richard Verdi Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of the Modern Movement, 1936 by Colin Amery Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Matisse: His Art and His Public, 1951 by John Elderfield Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character, 1953 by Susie Nash Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art, 1956 by John-Paul Stonard E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 1960 by Christopher S