Overview
"In this book, David Summers argues that current formalist, contextual and post-structural approaches to art cannot provide the basis for a truly global and intercultural art history. He believes that assumptions right at the heart of Western thinking about art must therefore be re-examined, and the new framework he offers is an attempt to resolve some of the problems that arise from doing so. At the core of the argument is a proposal to replace the modern Western notion of the 'visual arts' with that of 'spatial arts', comprising two fundamental categories: 'real space' and 'virtual space'. Real space is the space we share with other people and things, and the fundamental of arts of real space are sculpture, the art of personal space, and architecture, the art of social space. Virtual space, space represented in two dimensions, as in paintings, drawings, and prints, always entails a format in real space, thus making real space the primary category." Within this broad plan there is great richness of detail and vividness of description, based on a constant engagement with actual works of art, and the author's analysis of the concrete metaphors that lie behind our critical vocabulary is revealing and thought-provoking. New terms are carefully defined and explained in such a way that any reader can appreciate why such terminology is necessary and useful. The author insists that all art is made to fit human uses, and can never be separated from the primary spatial conditions of those uses. With its universal scope and its sympathetic understanding of the innumerable forms art takes, this book will stimulate people to think in new and fruitful ways about the human purposes of art, and also to think more deeply and critically about the relations between art, political order and technology.Synopsis
A sustained theoretical, historical, and critical essay is how Summers (history of art, U. of Virginia) characterizes this synthesis and confluence of his thinking about art over many years of teaching and research. His broad themes include facture, places, the appropriations of the center, images, planarity, virtuality, and the conditions of modernism. His premise is that there is no absolute and universal art-history chronology, and that traditions of art constitute independent or interactive shapes of time, but it is still necessary to have a consistent and familiar chronological framework. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Library Journal
In this erudite, generously illustrated (350 black-and-white), and sufficiently well-documented survey, Summers (art history, Univ. of Virginia) abandons the more common, synchronic "story" of world art, arguing that formalist, contextual, and poststructural approaches do not provide adequate bases for global and intercultural art histories. Setting forth an accommodating, diachronic, conceptual framework in which to understand the visual arts, he examines humanmade objects from many world cultures and time periods, from prehistory to the present. Defining art as "anything that is made" and distinguishing "real space" (the space that we share with other people and things) from "virtual space" (space in two dimensions), Summers situates the traditional visual arts (architecture, painting, drawing, and prints) within the more broadly defined "spatial arts." The book is fascinating, enlightening, original, and important to scholars and graduate students of art history and related disciplines (e.g., archaeology, anthropology). On the other hand, it may frustrate readers because of its difficulty, length, profusion of definitions, encyclopedic nature, and mostly abstract analyses. Strongly recommended, then, for art research and academic library collections.-Cheryl Ann Lajos, Free Lib. of Philadelphia Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.