The Object of Art History

Roland Recht’s inaugural lesson, in fifty dense and elegant pages, punctuated by enlightening quotations, without any doubt provides the best introduction to the discipline. The author starts by painting a sweeping picture of the art historians of the Collège de France since Charles Blanc in 1878, before questioning their successive observations. He is thus prompted to decline the various readings of ornament, style and space, which range from the evolutionist thesis linked with the primacy o..