Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist, and Society

by Meyer Schapiro

This fourth volume of Professor Meyer Schapiro's Selected Papers contains his most important writings--some well-known and others previously unpublished - on the theory and philosophy of art. Schapiro's highly lucid arguments, graceful prose, and extraordinary erudition guide readers through a rich variety of fields and the roles in society of the artist and art, of the critic and criticism; the relationships between patron and artist, psychoanalysis and art, and philosophy and art. Adapting critical methods from such wide-ranging fields as anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, biology, and other sciences, Schapiro appraises fundamental semantic terms such as "organic style," "pictorial style", "field and vehicle," and "form and content"; he elucidates eclipsed intent in a well-known text by Freud on Leonardo da Vinci, in another by Heidegger on Vincent van Gogh. He reflects on the critical methodology of Bernard Berenson, and on the social philosophy of art in the writings of both Diderot and the nineteenth century French artist/historian Eugene Fromentin. Throughout all of his writings, Meyer Schapiro provides us with a means of ordering our past that is reasoned and passionate, methodical and inventive. In so doing, he revitalizes our faith in the unsurpassed importance of both critical thinking and creative independence.

Genres: Art, Art History

253 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Richard Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many fine pages, but some tedium.

[Claude Lingen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theory and Philosophy of Art:
Style, Artist and Society

Meyer Shapiro

An in-depth, academic study of the concepts expressed in the title. He analyses the writings of a number of philosophers and historians of art and is critical of many of their views. Among the illustrious writers he considers are Heinrich Wölfflin, Aloise Riegel, Eugene Fromentin, Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Denis Diderot and Bernard Berenson.

To my way of thinking Shapiro has omitted some really important information. Firstly the most important omission is his failing to discuss the reasons why Western art has gone through so many changes since the early Greeks. These would include the striving for the ideal by the Greeks, the change to stylized Byzantine art brought about by the arrival of Christianity, the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi in the development of Renaissance art, Martin Luther’s role in Northern European secular art, the Enlightenment, the French, American and Industrial Revolutions and how they influenced the Impressionists to break with the academies, the changes in the concept of space and time by the inventions and Einstein’s theory of relativity, Theosophy, Freud, Existentialism, the Vietnam war, the culmination of the role Democracy has played in art since the Revolutions culminating in the vast variety of work individual artists are creating today.

For more on this hypothesis see the extract from my book in progress on the www.artcreativitycontroversy.com website.

I would also liked to have seen more images of the numerous comparisons he makes in the text.