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The Companion provides an accessible critical survey of Western visual art theory from sources in Classical, Medieval and Renaissance thought through to contemporary writings.

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In addition to outlining and describing various theoretical positions, the book's chapters articulate some assumptions that underpin them and raise more general questions about the nature of theorizing about art. In this way the Companion provides both an introduction to main themes of Western art theory and a source for critical enquiry into the purposes, possibilities and limitations of theory in the context of artistic practice.

The work can also be used alongside the three Art in Theory anthologies published by Blackwell, as a further art theory resource.

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Plates ix
 
Notes on Contributors x
 
Preface xvi
 
Part I: Tradition and the Academy 1
 
Introduction: Alberti and the Formation of Modern Art Theory 3
 Carolyn Wilde
 
1 The Classical Concept of Mimesis 19
 Göran Sörbom
 
2 Medieval Art Theory 29
 Hugh Bredin
 
3 Neoplatonist Aesthetics 40
 Suzanne Stern-Gillet
 
4 Renaissance Art Theories 49
 François Quiviger
 
5 Touch, Tactility, and the Reception of Sculpture in Early Modern Italy 61
 Geraldine A. Johnson
 
6 The Spiritual Exercises of Leonardo da Vinci 75
 Robert Williams
 
7 Academic Theory 1550–1800 88
 Paul Duro
 
8 Rhetorical Categories in the Academy 104
 Caroline van Eck
 
9 The Picturesque and its Development 116
 Andrew Ballantyne
 
Part II: Around Modernism 125
 
10 The Aesthetics of Kant and Hegel 127
 Jason Gaiger
 
11 E. H. Gombrich and the Tradition of Hegel 139
 David Summers
 
12 German Romanticism and French Aesthetic Theory 150
 Wendy S. Mercer
 
13 Expression: Natural, Personal, Pictorial 159
 Richard Shiff
 
14 Reading Artists’ Words 173
 Richard Hobbs
 
15 Nietzsche and the Artist 183
 Michael White
 
16 Wittgenstein, Description, and Adrian Stokes (on Cezanne) 196
 Paul Smith
 
17 Modernism and the Idea of the Avant-Garde 215
 Paul Wood
 
18 On the Intention of Modern(ist) Art 229
 Fred Orton
 
19 Anti-Art and the Concept of Art 244
 Paul N. Humble
 
20 Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades and Anti-Aesthetic Reflex 253
 David Hopkins
 
Part III: Critical Theory and Postmodernism 265
 
21 Marxism and Critical Art History 267
 David Craven
 
22 Walter Benjamin and Art Theory 286
 Howard Caygill
 
23 Bakhtin and the Visual Arts 292
 Deborah J. Haynes
 
24 Peirce’s Visuality and the Semiotics of Art 303
 Michael Leja
 
25 Conceptual Art 317
 Charles Harrison
 
26 Barthes on Art 327
 Margaret Iversen
 
 27 Foucault and Art 337
 Roy Boyne
 
28 Derrida and the Parergon 349
 Robin Marriner
 
29 What Consciousness Forgets: Lyotard’s Concept of the Sublime 360
 Renée van de Vall
 
30 Deleuze on Francis Bacon 370
 Ian Heywood
 
31 Feminisms and Art Theory 380
 Marsha Meskimmon
 
32 Psycho-Phallus (Qu’est-ce que c’est?) 397
 Mignon Nixon
 
Part IV: Interpretation and the Institution of Art 409
 
33 The Rules of Representation 411
 John Willats
 
34 Gombrich and Psychology 426
 Richard Woodfield
 
35 Hermeneutics and Art Theory 436
 Nicholas Davey
 
36 Reciprocity and Reception Theory 448
 Michael Ann Holly
 
37 The Paradox of Creative Interpretation in Art 458
 Carl Hausman
 
38 Interdisciplinarity and Visual Culture 467
 Charlotte Klonk
 
39 Against Curatorial Imperialism: Merleau-Ponty and the Historicity of Art 477
 Paul Crowther
 
40 The Institutional Theory of Art: Theory and Antitheory 487
 Garry L. Hagberg
 
Index 505

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