[Note to readers: this is an excerpt from the prospectus to the series; it

gives an idea of the layout and purpose. For more information, and to buy
books, visit www.imagehistory.org.]

The Art Seminar

A series of events, running from July 2004 to April 2007, and an associated
series of books.

Co-sponsored by the University College Cork,

the Burren College of Art,
and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Co-published by Routledge and Cork University

Press.

Series editor
James Elkins, mail@imagehistory.org

This material was originally posted at www.imagehistory.org.

Revised Sunday, February 25, 2007

Abstract
A series of seven books on theoretical issues in contemporary art. The series
will aim to be authoritative on its subjects, and each book will have an
introduction, a transcribed conversation, and a series of essays assessing the
conversation.
The Art Seminar 2

Nearest books
There is no competition for this series in Ireland, and almost no parallels
worldwide. The Dia Center in New York has produced a series of monographs
based on conferences, and the University of Nova Scotia at Halifax also
produced a series of books based on lectures. A third, somewhat distant
model for this series is the Birkbeck lectures on art at University College
London, published by Thames and Hudson.

Format
1. Each book will begin with an introduction, written by a younger scholar
(typically a recent PhD). The introduction will include a précis of the relevant
literature, to bring readers up to speed. The introductions will be
approximately 10-15 pages.

2. The next section will be “Starting Points”—essays considered by the

panelists to be crucial for understanding the current state of theorizing on
the subject. The texts may be previously published. It is anticipated that
most texts will be ones written by the panelists. “Starting Points” should
occupy no more than 40 pages.

3. The taped conversations themselves will run between forty and sixty
pages. The speakers will be sent transcriptions of the conversations, and
they will have the opportunity to add material, including footnotes.

4. The following section is called “Assessments,” and consists of responses by

scholars who did not attend the events. That way the series can be more
comprehensive and representative than it would be if it were limited to the
panelists.

5. Each book will end with two “Afterwords,” in which invited scholars sum up
the principal issues and prospects, based on the taped conversation and the
Assessments.
The Art Seminar 3

Sample Table of Contents: vol. 1, Art History versus Aesthetics

Series Preface, by James Elkins

1. INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
Robert Gero, “The Border of the Aesthetic”

2. STARTING POINTS
Joseph Margolis, “Exorcising the Dreariness of Aesthetics”
James Elkins, “Why Don’t Art Historians Attend Aesthetics Conferences?”

3. THE ART SEMINAR

Participants: Arthur Danto, Thierry De Duve, Diarmuid Costello, Martin Donougho,
David Raskin, Anna Dezeuze, Richard Woodfield, Dominic Willsdon, Francis Halsall,
Nicholas Davey, John Hyman, David Raskin

4. ASSESSMENTS
Diarmuid Costello, “Overcoming Postmodernism”
Anna Dezeuze, “Art History, Aesthetics, and the ‘Spheres of Experience’”
Dominic Willsdon, “The Aesthetics of the Small Deal”
David Raskin, “Dead and Deader”
John Hyman, “Art History and Aesthetics”
Francis Halsall, “Art History versus Aesthetics”
Richard Woodfield, “Aesthetics: Field and Discipline”
Ladislav Kesner, “On the Difficulty of Remaining ‘On One’s Own Patch’”
Joseph Margolis, “Toward Rapprochement”
Crispin Sartwell, “Starting From Scratch with Phenomenology”
Paul Crowther, “Aesthetics in Art History (and Vice-Versa)”
Mary Rawlinson, “Beauty and Politics”
Ján Bakoš, “Art History versus Aesthetics in East Central Europe”
Alexander Nehamas, “Beauty Links Art History and Aesthetics”
Ciarán Benson, “Eavesdropping”
Wendy Steiner, “Aesthetics and Art History: An Interdisciplinary Fling”
Mathew Rampley, “Art History Without Aesthetics: Escaping
The Legacy of Kant”
Keith Moxey, “Aesthetics is Dead: Long Live Aesthetics”
Christine Wertheim, “Why Kant Got it Right”
Eva Schürmann, “Art’s Call for Aesthetic Theory”
Harry Cooper, “Ugly Beauty (With Apologies to T. Monk)”
Adrian Rifkin, “An Aside: Or Something On Not Joining In”
David Getsy, “Other Values (Or, Is It an African or an
Indian Elephant in the Room?)”
Michael Kelly, “The Aesthetic / Art / Art History Triangle”
Margaret Iversen, “Beyond the Aesthetic/Anti-Aesthetic Position”
The Art Seminar 4

Michael Golec, “Warhol’s ‘Wow!’”

Michael Newman, “Ideas and Contexts in Art History”
Gregg Horowitz, “Aesthetic Knowing and Historical Knowing”
Stephen Melville, “Reckoning with Kant”

5. AFTERWORDS
Jay Bernstein, “Modernism as Aesthetics and Art History”
Marc Redfield, “Island Mysteries”

Notes on Contributors
The Art Seminar 5

Publishing, distribution
The series is published within Ireland by the Cork University Press. World
rights except Ireland and the U.K. will be controlled by Routledge.

Timetable
The series will be originated over a four-year period, 2004-2007; the books
will appear between 2005 and 2008.

Title Date of Delivered Books

event to press

Art History and July 11 December Nov.

1
Aesthetics 2004 2004 2005

Feb. March
Dec.
2 Photography Theory 26-27 15
2006
2005 2006

March March
Dec.
3 Is Art History Global? 12-13 15
2006
2005 2006
June 17
The State of Art 2005 / March 15 Dec.
4
Criticism October 2007 2007
11 2005

April 3 March 15 Dec.

5 Renaissance Theory
2006 2007 2007

June 17 April 15 Dec.

6 Landscape Theory
2006 2007 2007

Re-Enchantment April 17 March 15 Dec.

7
2007 2008 2008
The Art Seminar 6

List of titles

1. Art History versus Aesthetics

How is it possible to imagine the intersections of art history and aesthetics?
Given the time that has passed since the anti-aesthetic appeared as the
principal alternative to the modernist aesthetic, and given the current
interest in institutional critique, relational aesthetics, and identity politics, the
question of the relevance of aesthetics to art history is more pressing than
ever.

2. Photography Theory
Now that photography is accorded the status of a fine art in museological
practice, and is commonly taught in postgraduate programmes in history of
art, it becomes even more necessary to clarify the grounds on which that
valuation is based. Part of it comes from poststructuralist criticism including
such different voices as Roland Barthes and Rosalind Krauss; but
photography is also theorized using a mixture of historical, technical, and
vernacular criteria.

3. Is Art History Global?

One of the principal problems facing the discipline of art history is the
character of art historical practices throughout the world. There is a
difference, simply put, between the central tenets of multiculturalism, and
the ways that art history is actually practiced and taught in places such as
Beijing, Delhi, Santiago, and Bratislava. Irish art history is still measurably
different from art history in the US and even in England. That tension, rather
than abstract theorising on globalisation, is the focus of this final roundtable.

4. The State of Art Criticism

Co-edited with Michael Newman (School of the Art Institute)
Art criticism is spurned by universities, but widely produced and read. It is
seldom theorized, and its history has hardly been investigated. The
roundtable will consider the relation between criticism and art history,
especially in light of the recent October roundtable on the subject (which
gave evidence of the dissociation of academic art history and journalistic
criticism); in that light we will consider the possibilitiy of criticism becoming a
university subject.
This is composed of two paired events: one in Ballyvaughan, Ireland, in June
2005, and the at the Art Institute of Chicago in October 2005. Together the
roundtables will be the first of their kind, because they will include the full
range of theorizing from academic to journalistic.

5. Renaissance Theory
Co-edited with Robert Williams (UC Santa Barbara)
The Renaissance is at one and the same time a cornerstone of art history (it
provides many of Western art history’s founding concepts, as well as its
The Art Seminar 7

models for historical consciousness and historical writing), and a specialty

among other specialties, somewhat lost in the increasingly irrelevant past
before modernism. Here some of the world’s foremost Renaissance scholars
consider the position of their work in relation to contemporary art,
modernism, and other periods of art history.

6. Landscape Theory
co-edited with Rachael DeLue (Princeton)
The idea of this volume is to capture the current state of theorizing on the
representation of landscape in art. Artistic representations of landscape are
are studied in a half-dozen disciplines (art history, geography, literature,
philosophy, politics, sociology…), and there is no master narrative or
historiographic genealogy to frame interpretations. The book will attempt to
capture ways of talking about landscape in those disciplines and in related
fields such as landscape architecture and Geography.

7. Re-Enchantment
One of the most difficult questions in contemporary art and art history is the
place of religion and spirituality. Gestures of transcendence are ubiquitous,
but they are seldom admitted into serious discourse on art unless the work is
critical or religion. Artists who embrace various forms of private spirituality
can find places in the art world (eg, Bill Viola, Wolfgang Laib), but those who
represent the principal organized religions normally can’t. The gap between
artists and critics who talk openly about spirituality or religion, and academic
writers who eschew it, is enormous. Meanwhile art history is theorizing
transcendence in very interesting ways.