Art history as ekphrasis

Journal article

This paper makes a case for the essentially rhetorical nature of the art-historical enterprise: description is the key act which both translates the object's object-hood into words appropriable for art-historical argument and betrays that object-hood by making the object something other than it materially is, a word-picture. The act of description is not innocent; it is both the product of a series of genres for describing objects and it tendentiously helps the object into an initial verbal form amenable to the particular discussion the author has in mind. Different kinds of art history might be seen as different forms or styles of descriptive strategy, and it is perhaps time the discipline as a whole were less coy about one of its core procedures - one that is at least as important as looking itself. © Association of Art Historians 2010.

Authors: Elsner, J

• Journal: Art History
• Volume: 33
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 10-27
• Publication date: 2010-02-01
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8365.2009.00720.x
• EISSN: 1467-8365
• ISSN: 0141-6790
• Language: English