Field Notes on the Visual Arts (Book)

Seventy-Five Short Essays

Edited by Karen Lang

In Field Notes on the Visual Arts, 75 scholars, curators and artists traverse chronology and geography to reveal the meanings and dilemmas of art. 

Edition

What is the relation of art and history? What is art today? Why does art affect us? In Field Notes on the Visual Arts, 75 scholars, curators and artists traverse chronology and geography to reveal the meanings and dilemmas of art. The eight topic headings – Anthropomorphism, Appropriation, Contingency, Detail, Materiality, Mimesis, Time and Tradition – are written by historians of art, literature, culture and science, archaeologists, anthropologists, philosophers, curators and artists, and consider an astonishing range of artefacts. Poised somewhere between Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects and an academic volume of essays on art, Field Notes brings together voices generally separated inside and outside the academy. Its open approach to knowledge is commensurate with the work of art, aiming to make clear that the work of art is both meaningful and resistant to meaning.

Karen Lang is Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford (2019–20)

Introduction

Anthropomorphism
Elizabeth King, J. M. Bernstein,Carolyn Dean, Caroline van Eck, Finbarr B. Flood, 
Dario Gamboni, Jane Garnett and Gervase Rosser, James Meyer, Miya Elise Mizuta Lippit

Appropriation
Georg Baselitz, Kirk Ambrose, Elizabeth Edwards, Ursula Frohne, Cordula Grewe, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ian McLean, Saloni Mathur, Iain Boyd Whyte

Contingency
Linda Connor, Giovanna Borradori, Marcia Brennan, Mary Ann Doane, Angus Fletcher, Peter Geimer, Mark Ledbury, Chris Spring

Detail
Susan Hiller, Spike Bucklow, Johannes Endres, Carlo Ginzburg, Joan Kee, Spyros Papapetros, Joanna Roche, Nina Rowe, Alain Schnapp, Blake Stimson

Materiality
Martha Rosler, Caroline Walker Bynum, Natasha Eaton, Michael Ann Holly, Michael Kelly, Robin Kelsey, Alisa LaGamma, Monika Wagner, Oliver Watson, Tristan Weddigen 

Mimesis
Dexter Dalwood, Daniela Bohde, Helen C. Evans, Sarah E. Fraser, Thomas Habinek, Tom Huhn, Jeanette Kohl, Niklaus Largier, Peter Mack, Alex Potts

Time
Eric Fischl, Jan Assmann, Malcolm Bull, Darby English, Ludmilla Jordanova, Ajay Sinha, Gloria Sutton, Gerrit Walczak, David E. Wellbery

Tradition
Obiora Udechukwu, John Brewer, Jay A. Clarke, Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Hans Hayden, Gregg M. Horowitz, Susanne Küchler, Maria Loh, Ruth B. Phillips, Regine Prange

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