Subjectivity, historical imagination and the language of art history

Abstract

Analysing the writings of Michael Baxandall, Michael Ann Holly, Adrian Stokes and T. J. Clark, and responding to recent art historiographical interest in the foregrounding of subjectivity, this essay deploys Baxandall’s analysis of the verbal description of visual interest to attend to subjectivity’s functioning in relationtothe object and its history. Revealing significant continuities between Baxandall and Clark, the essay traces a genealogy of writers who, in different ways, deploy subjectivity in the service of ethical commitments to painting. The essay proposes rethinking subjectivity in art-historical writing through an expanded notion of imagination.

Keywords

• subjectivity
• language
• art history
• michael baxandall
• t. j. clark
• early modern painting
• imagination