Art History, Aesthetics, Visual Studies

Art history, aesthetics and visual studies today find themselves in contested new philosophical and institutional circumstances. This study explores the connections and differences between these three methods of investigating visual representation. What are the dominant aesthetic assumptions underlying art historical inquiry? How have these assumptions been challenged by visual studies? Are questions of quality, form, content, meaning and spectatorship culturally specific? Can we still define the parameters of what should properly constitute the objects of the history of art? Fifteen scholars answer these and other questions, critically examining the relationships among these three scholarly fields from their founding moments through to their contemporary practices.