Aesthetics & Art Theory


Primary Sources   I   Aesthetics   


Theodor W. AdornoAesthetic Theory (1970, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor, 1997).

A. G. BaumgartenReflections on Poetry (1735, trans. K. Aschenbrenner and W. B. Holther, 1954).

Pierre BourdieuDistinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1979, trans. Richard Nice, 1984).

Edmund BurkeA Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757, eds. Adam Phillips, 1990).

Arthur C. DantoThe Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986).

Jacques DerridaThe Truth in Painting (1978, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod, 1987).

Terry EagletonThe Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990).

Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes, eds., The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics (2005).

Nelson GoodmanLanguages of Art (1969).

Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art" (1956, Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell, 1977, rev. ed., 1993).

G. W. F. HegelAesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art (1835, trans. T. M. Knox, 1975).

David Hume, "On the Standard of Taste" (1757, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller, 1963).

Fredric Jameson, "Globalization as a Philosophical Issue," The Cultures of Globalization (ed. Jameson and Masao Miyoshi, 1998).

--------------   Late Marxism: Adorno, or, The Persistence of the Dialectic (1990).

Immanuel KantCritique of Judgment (1790, trans. Werner S. Pluhar, 1987).

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc NancyThe Literary Absolute (1978, trans. Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester, 1988).

Georg Lukács, "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat," History and Class Consciousness (1968, 2d ed., trans. Rodney Livingstone, 1971).

Jean-François LyotardLessons on the Analytic of the Sublime (1991, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg, 1994).

Jean-Paul SartreWhat Is Literature? (1948, trans. Bernard Frechtman, 1949).

Friedrich Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism (1800, Peter Lauchlan Heath trans., 1978). 

Friedrich SchillerOn the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795, trans. Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby, 1967).

Friedrich SchlegelPhilosophical Fragments (1798–1800, trans. Peter Firchow, 1991).


Primary Sources   I   Art Theory   


Svetlana AlpersThe Art of Describing (1983).

Svetlana Alpers and Paul Alpers, "‘Ut Pictura Poesis’? Criticism in Literary Studies and Art History," New Literary History 3 (1972).

Frederick AntalFlorentine Painting and Its Social Background (1948).

Mieke Bal,Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary Art, Preposterous History (1999).

Mieke BalReading Rembrandt: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition (1991).

Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson, "Semiotics and Art History," Art Bulletin 73 (1991).

Stephen BannThe Inventions of History (1990).

Stephen BannThe True Vine (1989).

Michael BaxandallThe Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (1980).

Michael BaxandallPainting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (1972).

Michael BaxandallPatterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (1985).

Hans BeltingThe End of the History of Art? (1987).

Pierre BourdieuSociology in Question (1993).

David BrownBerenson and the Connoisseurship of Italian Painting (1979).

Benjamin H. D. BuchlochNeo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975 (2004).

Jacob BurckhardtThe Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore, 1958).

Victor BurginThe End of Art Theory (1986).

Norman BrysonTradition and Desire (1984).

Norman BrysonVision and Painting (1983).

Norman BrysonWord and Image (1981).

Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith MoxeyVisual Theory (1991).

Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith MoxeyVisual Culture: Images and Interpretations (1994).

David CarrierArtwriting (1987).

David CarrierPrinciples of Art History Writing (1991).

Mark Cheetham, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey, eds., The Subjects of Art History: Historical Objects in Contemporary Perspectives (1998).

T. J. ClarkThe Absolute Bourgeoisie (1973).

T. J. ClarkPainting of Modern Life (1985).

Douglas CrimpOn the Museum’s Ruins (1993).

Thomas CrowPainters and Public Life in Eighteenth Century Paris (1985).

Arthur DantoAfter the End of Art (1997).

Arthur DantoThe Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986).

Arthur DantoThe Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981).

Jacques DerridaThe Truth in Painting (1978, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod, 1987).

Carol DuncanThe Aesthetics of Power (1993).

Carol DuncanCivilizing Rituals (1995).

Paul Duro, ed., The Rhetoric of the Frame (1996).

James ElkinsDomain of Images (1999).

Henri FocillonThe Life of Forms in Art (1934, trans. Charles B. Hogan and George Kubler 1948).

Hal FosterThe Return of the Real (1996).

Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic (1983).

Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alian Bois, and Benjamin H. D. BuchlochArt since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism (2005).

Kurt Foster, ed., Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity (1999).

David FreedbergThe Power of Images (1989).

Michael FriedAbsorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (1980).

Carlo Ginzburg, "Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Holmes," History Workshop 9 (1980).

Ernst GombrichArt and Illusion (1961).

Ernst GombrichMeditations on a Hobby Horse (1963).

Ernst GombrichNorm and Form (1966).

Ernst GombrichSymbolic Images (1972).

Nelson GoodmanLanguages of Art (1976).

Clement GreenbergCollected Essays (ed. John O’Brian, 2 vols. 1986).

Arnold HauserThe Sociology of Art (1974, trans. Kenneth J. Northcott, 1982).

Michael Ann HollyPanofsky and the Foundations of Art History (1984).

Michael Ann HollyPast Looking: Historical Imagination and the Rhetoric of the Image (1996).

Wolfgang IserProspecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology (1989).

Hans-Robert JaussToward an Aesthetic of Reception (1982).

Martin JayDowncast Eyes (1993).

Chris Jenks, ed., Visual Culture (1995).

Amelia JonesBody Art/Performing the Subject (1998).

Salim Kemal and Avian Gaskell, eds., The Language of Art History (1991).

Wolfgang Kemp, ed., Der Betrachter ist im Bild: Kunstwissenschaft und Rezeptionsästhetik (1985, 2d ed., 1992).

Rosalind KraussThe Optical Unconscious (1994).

Julia KristevaDesire in Language A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (1980, ed. Leon S. Roudiez).

George KublerThe Shape of Time (1962).

Eunice LiptonAlias Olympia (1992).

Stephen MelvilleSeams: Art as a Philosophical Context (1996).

Stephen Melville and Bill Readings, eds., Vision and Textuality (1995).

Nicholas MirzoeffAn Introduction to Visual Culture (1999).

Nicholas Mirzoeff, ed., The Visual Culture Reader (1998).

W. J. T. MitchellIconology (1986).

W. J. T. MitchellPicture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (1994).

Keith MoxeyThe Practice of Persuasion: Paradox and Power in Art History (2001).

Keith MoxeyThe Practice of Theory: Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art History (1994).

Laura MulveyFetishism and Curiosity (1996).

Robert Nelson and Richard Shiff, eds., Critical Terms for Art History (1996).

Linda NochlinRepresenting Women (1999).

Linda Nochlin, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" Art News 69 (1971).

Linda NochlinOctober 77 (ed. Rosalind Krauss and Hal Foster, 1996).

Erwin PanofskyEarly Netherlandish Painting (1953).

Erwin PanofskyGothic Architecture and Scholasticism (1951).

Erwin PanofskyMeaning in the Visual Arts (1955).

Erwin PanofskyRenaissance and Renascenses in Western Art (1960).

Erwin PanofskyStudies in Iconology (1939).

Rozsika Parker and Griselda PollockOld Mistresses: Women, Art, and Ideology (1981).

Michael PodroThe Critical Historians of Art (1982).

Griselda PollockDifferencing the Canon (1999).

Griselda PollockVision and Difference (1988).

Donald PreziosiRethinking Art History (1989).

Jean-Michel Rabaté, ed., Writing the Image after Roland Barthes (1997).

A. L. Rees and F. BorzelloThe New Art History (1988).

Alois RieglProblems of Style (1983, trans. E. Kain, 1992).

Jacqueline RoseSexuality in the Field of Vision (1986).

Meyer SchapiroTheory and Philosophy of Art (1994).

Kaja SilvermanMale Subjectivity at the Margins (1992).

Lisa TicknerModern Life and Modern Subjects (2000).

Aby WarburgThe Renewal of Pagan Antiquity (ed. Kurt Forster, 1999).

Janet WolffResident Alien (1995).

Janet WolffThe Social Production of Art (1981).

Heinrich WölfflinClassic Art (1899, trans. Peter and Linda Murray, 1952).

Heinrich WölfflinThe Principles of Art History (1915).

Richard WollheimArt and Its Objects (1980).