The Shaping of Art History

In this provocative book, Patricia Emison invites the reader to consider and reconsider how past thinkers—from Pliny and Alberti to Freud and Fried—have conceptualized the history of Western art. What a book review attempts to be for a book, this extended essay attempts to be for several hundred years’ worth of books in a field: an indicator of problems with the old attempts and hopes for the new ones. It is a defense of art history for those outside the field who question its reliability or even its importance; it is a critique of art history for those in the field who may have been preoccupied with looking at trees but who might be interested in trying to see the forest.