Art Has No History!: The Making and Unmasking of Modern Art

by John Roberts (Editor)

Overview

In this stimulating collection of essays, John Roberts draws together a wide range of work on some of the most important artists of the post-war period. Written by leading art historians and artist-writers, the essays take a sharply critical look at the construction of modern art history. The artists discussed include Francis Picabia, Robert Smithson, Ad Reinhardt, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Mary Kelly, Cindy Sherman, Victor Burgin and Laurie Anderson.

The extensive influence of post-structuralism on all schools of art history has brought about a widespread derogation of questions around intentionality and social agency. Free-ranging textual interpretation has come to outweigh causal analysis. Art Has No History! reverses this bias. Putting the artist back into art history, the essays reinstate the claims for historical materialism as a theory of the conflictual socialization of individuals. Acknowledging the dissemblances involved in the representations of artistic invention, the book challenges the self-image of traditional art history and the radical New Art History alike.

In his introduction, John Roberts gives a fascinating account of the vicissitudes of Marxist writing on art, from Max Raphael and Arnold Hauser to T.J. Clark and Griselda Pollock. Placing the debates on intention and agency in their wider political context, he refers to what he calls “the continuing influence of historical materialism on the best Anglophone art writing today.” Art Has No History! is a lively and iconoclastic contribution to that tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780860914570
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	08/17/1994
Pages:	324
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

John Roberts is Professor of Art and Aesthetics at the University of Wolverhampton. His books include The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday; The Philistine Controversy (with Dave Beech), Philosophizing the Everyday, and The Necessity of Errors. He is also a contributor to Radical Philosophy, Oxford Art Journal, Historical Materialism, Third Text, and Cabinet magazine. He lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

Roberts's introductory polemic, and the ten essays by British artists and writers, are meant to be provocative. Their highly valid point is that modern art has been heaped with ideological baggage-baggage that has ultimately detracted from the understanding of artistic production. The history of Modernism has attracted a great variety of ideologies, and art history has not been exempt from this trend. While this anthology is mainly concerned with historical materialism, its writings also illustrate how British art theory has been more militantly radical than in other countries. The essays focus on specific artists, from Picabia to Laurie Anderson, and how their creative intentions can be stripped from a welter of rationalizing critiques. The language and dialectics demonstrated here are not for the lay reader; the authors' arguments are clearly meant for students and specialists. Consequently, this publication is an elective purchase for specialized art collections.-Paula A. Baxter, NYPL

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