Art theory is not followed outside of its discipline much. Art is another matter. Indeed John Berger, Henri Focillon and even Gombrich who made aspects of art and art history accessible to many come to mind. Are you making a distinction between Art and Art theory?
Thank you for your comments Camilla. You are right that I should have mentioned John Berger, an excellent example of an art promoter and educator. His case, in my view, is someone who is a popular read in college but not commonly used, debated, or referenced by art scholars in current debates about contemporary art. He might actually prove the argument that those who popularize the field wind up being not too respected by the insiders. Secondly, my attempt in the column was to try to consider how we explain the heart of those debates (which is what I understand as art theory) in the practice to a wider public. This is very different from narrating the history of art, which is rather the history of those debates. The history of science (a genre which has wonderful authors) is different from that too. The teaching of how something is made is also different from what I am discussing ( and I have had to face this fact because I once wrote a modest book about art technique). I agree some of these books are not interesting or important to all makers, but every practice is different, and as artists we are omnivorous readers. Last month I started a project, The Artist Reference Bibliography, which is an open source database with reading recommendations for artists and art students. The suggestions range from fiction and poetry to science and spirituality.
I contributed to your list. I wonder what you mean by popular. I’m thinking of most people with a liberal arts degree not so-much the NYT best seller list, like Stephen Jay Gould. But that’s ok. Books about Art and artists do make that list. Not so much books about theory.
I appreciate your response. Your writing raises good questions.
Yes, many artists do read widely, some Proust or mainly poetry, others are inclined to technical or gobble it all at once.
Art theory is not followed outside of its discipline much. Art is another matter. Indeed John Berger, Henri Focillon and even Gombrich who made aspects of art and art history accessible to many come to mind. Are you making a distinction between Art and Art theory?
Thank you for your comments Camilla. You are right that I should have mentioned John Berger, an excellent example of an art promoter and educator. His case, in my view, is someone who is a popular read in college but not commonly used, debated, or referenced by art scholars in current debates about contemporary art. He might actually prove the argument that those who popularize the field wind up being not too respected by the insiders. Secondly, my attempt in the column was to try to consider how we explain the heart of those debates (which is what I understand as art theory) in the practice to a wider public. This is very different from narrating the history of art, which is rather the history of those debates. The history of science (a genre which has wonderful authors) is different from that too. The teaching of how something is made is also different from what I am discussing ( and I have had to face this fact because I once wrote a modest book about art technique). I agree some of these books are not interesting or important to all makers, but every practice is different, and as artists we are omnivorous readers. Last month I started a project, The Artist Reference Bibliography, which is an open source database with reading recommendations for artists and art students. The suggestions range from fiction and poetry to science and spirituality.
Thank you so much for reading!
I contributed to your list. I wonder what you mean by popular. I’m thinking of most people with a liberal arts degree not so-much the NYT best seller list, like Stephen Jay Gould. But that’s ok. Books about Art and artists do make that list. Not so much books about theory.
I appreciate your response. Your writing raises good questions.
Yes, many artists do read widely, some Proust or mainly poetry, others are inclined to technical or gobble it all at once.
Anything popularized seems to cause an eye roll among the artist intelligentsia. Apologies, I’m under the Weather from vaccine.
Does George Kulber’s Shape of Time some to mind? He admired and translated Focillon’s Life of Forms in Art