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The invention of art a cultural history
- "[In this book, the author] spent over a decade honing what he calls a "brief history of the idea of art." [He] finds that "the category of fine art is a recent historical construction that could disappear in its turn." He plausibly traces the 18th-century division between "so-called polite and vulgar arts" from a time when music, for example, was played at home or for "religious and civic occasions" to when it started to be played in concerts with no other goal than artistic enjoyment in and of itself: "On this high cultural ground, noble and bourgeois could meet as a fine art public, rejecting both the frivolous diversions of the rich and highborn as well as the vulgar amusements of the populace." It was the beginning of art as we experience it today. [He] cites examples from a wide range of forms, including Shakespeare's plays, Greek drama, Cellini's sculptures and Michelangelo's paintings. He discusses Asian art, pointing out how "the Japanese language had no collective noun for art' in our sense until the nineteenth century" and establishes that the phrase "Chinese art" is also a relatively recent invention, since before the 19th century no one in China grouped painting, sculpture, ceramics, and calligraphy together as objects" with something determinate in common. [He also] argues that people who complain about the "death of art" are really just failing to measure "the staying power of the established art system." -Dust jacket."
- "The invention of art a cultural history"