Methods & Theories of Art History: (introduction to criticism for students) Paperback – September 19, 2012

I'm working on an Art History double major and found this book to be incredibly useful/helpful (I just finished up my 4th out of 5 years in college). That being said these weren't the first times I had been introduced to most of these topics but they did help to clarify some ways of looking/thinking about them/deciphering between them. I didn't use the portion at the end that talked about applying these ideas to your writing but found the most value in framing different ideas and the questions each one allowed you to generate. I was writing a paper for one of my 400 level classes which required me to identify and single out different methods of analysis in the authors I was reading. While we had done this before our professor had a bit of a twist to the assignment; they always do don't they? Very different from what we would normally do with a paper (which would include trying to blend different ideas and methods together smoothly, instead we segmented them by their method and identified the strengths and weaknesses of each approach in respect to our object. The purpose of the class was to be more conscious and aware of the different methods/theories of writing in art history and the different questions those "tools" allow you to generate when you approach a work of art; also allowing you to make more informed choices on how to approach different artworks. Very informative and helpful :)

This book is amazing. I have recently returned to college for graphic design, and a teacher recommended this specifically and D'Alleva in general as a wonderful source for clear information and methods of analyzing artistic works of all kinds. I was uncertain how useful this would be, as this title specifies it is regarding art history theories, but I can't put it down. D'Alleva has a clear, easy writing style and the amount of information she has crammed into this slim volume far surpasses any Google search I've done. I seriously can't recommend this strongly enough, and I will be ordering EVERYTHING D'Alleva ever writes.

Great book explaining complicated ideas in an accessible way for anyone who is new to art criticism and theory. She does an excellent job at bringing hard to grasp critiques from Foucault, Heidegger, Derrida to Kristeva, Gadamer and Cixous into focus. A book that can be referred to over and over again.The only thing I found discouraging is that the print is rather small and I wish it had an ebook version on Kindle for easier reading.

This is a good book for any Art History student. It was a required book for one of my classes and I found it helpful. As usual Amazon had a great price for the book.

Using for an Art Theory and Crit class. It does a very good job of explaining the critical theories that have shaoed art history and how we process it. I really like how the end of each section shows how to apply that method with examples.

A good basic textbook. Not difficult to read and I learned new things despite being familiar with the subject.

This book has a lot going for it. It explains Panofsky's method of writing art history with brevity and authority. Panofsky invented the recognizable field of 'art history' through his systematic concern with epistemology (theory of knowledge). In context, Panofsky rejected both more formal (jargon term for strict visual analysis) and more idiosyncratic (poetic and interpretive) versions which might be termed the 'history of art' as opposed to 'art history.' Later art historians critiqued Panofsky saying that his method was great for the Italian Renaissance (and Durer), but lacked depth in other portions of the field which did not have as many symbolic images.This book introduces many ideas that anyone interested in art history must be conversant in, including radical utopian eschatology. However, Dr. D’Alleva advocates not just for understanding radical politics, but including it as a goal. The older generation of American academics working in the humanities adopted every stray cat the scientific academics tried to discard, Marxist economics (no economics professors who are taken seriously use this), psychoanalysis (currently in scientific crisis called the Replication Crisis - which means that everything psychiatry has written since Charcot worked in the Salpetriere hospital where he had Freud as a resident in the late 19th century is not science - according to the philosopher of science Karl Popper), and the spectrum of 1960s baby boomer identity politics (while knowledge is famously power, sadly for the identity studies, power is not knowledge).It makes sense for art history to use Marxist ideas, because art history (kunst geschichte) is grounded in history, and the way we today understand history (geschichte) is essentially a German invention by the philosopher Hegel. The systematic version of history that Hegel created, which can be brutally and partially incorrectly summarized as problem-reaction-solution, inspired Marx. Hegel inspired Marx through Feuerbach, who wrote Hegelian critiques of religion, and art history has the same vein of secularized radical eschatology that is contained in Hegel. Leftist politics in America has an element of hyper-Protestantism (Anglo-Saxon and Germanic Christianity) minus the God meme. This worldview attracts extreme people who, in another time, would be in religious movements like the Puritans - they deal with the evil of the world by inventing theories - which are then sacralized. Please read Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind" for a better critique of this worldview.I would put this book in the must read for art historians, but also be very careful what suggestions you put to use.

An excellent source. D'Alleva highlights various approaches utilized in art historical research. This book is a necessity to all within the field of art history