This reading reminded me a lot of the conversations we had in “Theories and Methods of Art History” last semester. One of the main goals of the reading was to establish a definition of ‘theory’ and put it in context with ‘methods’. An interesting moment for me was when the author stated they wanted to be careful to define a canon for critical theory. By doing so, we would include and exclude different works. Creating a theory is about an exploration of your own intellectual interests and questions, rather than following what is trendy.
The second chapter in our reading discussed how art works produced and reflected meaning. What is so obvious about art history, is that a lot of it is based on comparison. I have never really thought about how foundational comparison is within this field of study. Iconographic/iconological analysis is almost entirely rooted in comparison. We use similarities and differences to weight importance and get a better understanding of the history of the work. It is interesting to think how art history has changed simply because we have more works to compare to.
The third chapter