Vermeer's Wager: Speculations on Art History, Theory, and Art MuseumsReaktion Books, 2000 M10 1 - 272 pages Vermeer's Wager stands at the intersection of art history and criticism, philosophy and museology. Using a familiar and celebrated painting by Johannes Vermeer as a case study, Ivan Gaskell explores what it might mean to know and use a work of art. He argues that art history as generally practiced, while successfully asserting certain claims to knowledge, fails to take into account aspects of the unique character of works of art. Our relationship to art is mediated, not only through reproduction – particularly photography – but also through displays in museums. In an analysis that ranges from seventeenth-century Holland, through mid-nineteenth-century France, to artists' and curators' practice today, Gaskell draws on his experience of Dutch art history, philosophy and contemporary art criticism. Anyone with an interest in Vermeer and the afterlife of his art will value this book, as will all who think seriously about the role of photography in perception and the core purposes of art museums. |
Contents
7 | |
10 | |
1 Problems | 19 |
2 Images | 43 |
3 Objects | 75 |
4 Copies | 99 |
5 Etchings | 116 |
6 Photographs | 140 |
7 Commodities | 165 |
8 Donors | 174 |
9 Therapeutics | 197 |
10 Subjects | 210 |
References | 233 |
270 | |
Other editions - View all
Vermeer's Wager: Speculations on Art History, Theory, and Art Museums Ivan Gaskell Limited preview - 2000 |
Common terms and phrases
art historians art objects Art of Painting art-historical artist Barbara Piasecka Johnson Blankert Cambridge camera obscura catalogue century chapter Christopher Brown Collection commodity complex concerning contemporary criticism culture Cupid curatorial curators Delft depicted discussion donor Dutch Dutch painting Elaine Scarry etching example exhibition frame gaze Gazette des Beaux-Arts Godfried Schalcken Hague History Ibid illus institutions interpretation Ivan Gaskell Johannes Vermeer Jongh Lawrence Gowing Mauritshuis means Michael Baxandall modern Montias Musée museum object Museum of Art museum visitors National Gallery National Gallery Report Nelson Goodman nineteenth-century North Galleries oeuvre oil on canvas painter paintings by Vermeer Paris perception photographic pictorial world qualities relationship Rembrandt representation reproductions Rijksmuseum Room Saint Praxedis scholarship semiotics seventeenth-century Dutch therapeutics Thoré-Bürger tion trans University Art Museum Vermeer Studies Vermeer’s art Vermeer’s paintings Vermeer’s Woman Standing viewer virginal player visual wall Wielgus Woman Seated Woman Standing York