[lbo-talk] Hayek, reading suggestions?

Charles A. Grimes cgrimes at rawbw.com
Mon Apr 7 15:46:09 PDT 2008


James Heartfield writes, `Count yourself lucky. Gombrich's books on art history are excellent...''

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Now you're going to make me sound like a liberal. Yes they are. But they are only the opening salvo. And you also need a good straight historical account with names and dates, Janson's text is good for that. But none of these really get down to understanding composition, pictorial space, color, the uses of the figure, etc. These are the formal means, the material basis of visual arts. Part of the problem is that most historians don't paint or practice a visual art themselves so they ultimately don't know what is going on at this level. And then too, most academics are not particularly good writers, so there is that.

Yes there are several good Hegel-inspired works on art and art history. You can start with (Hungarian) Arnold Hauser's The Social History of Art. Then get into the Philosophy of Art History, and the Sociology of Art.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hauser.html

There is also just about anything of (Mexican) Octavio Paz, see Children of the Mire, from Romanticism to the Avant Guard. Also (French) Nicolas Grimal's works on ancient Egypt, along with (German) Erik Hornung--these are hegel inspired on in the crude sense of studying the totality of a culture and locating the visual works within that context. But they are also definitely not English or American points of view. There is also a great book on Brunelleschi's Dome in Florence complete with geometry and engineering background. I've forgotten the title. It's in Italian and I managed to get at least some of it. You can't miss it on the architecture shelf, it will be among the biggest books there. The photos and detail are magnificent (B&W)

For a more informal works, there are Malraux's Voices of Silence and Metamorphosis of the Gods.

We have to argue later. I am supposed to be actually engaged in manual labor... Thank god's is a quarter to four.

CG



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