"Art" has always been contested terrain, whether the object in question is a medieval tapestry or Duchamp’s Fountain. But questions about the categories of "art" and "art history" acquired increased urgency during the 1970s, when new developments in critical theory and other intellectual projects dramatically transformed the discipline. The first edition of Critical Terms for Art History both mapped and contributed to those transformations, offering a spirited reassessment of the field’s methods and terminology.

Art history as a field has kept pace with debates over globalization and other social and political issues in recent years, making a second edition of this book not just timely, but crucial. Like its predecessor, this new edition consists of essays that cover a wide variety of "loaded" terms in the history of art, from sign to meaning, ritual to commodity. Each essay explains and comments on a single term, discussing the issues the term raises and putting the term into practice as an interpretive framework for a specific work of art. For example, Richard Shiff discusses "Originality" in Vija Celmins’s To Fix the Image in Memory, a work made of eleven pairs of stones, each consisting of one "original" stone and one painted bronze replica.

In addition to the twenty-two original essays, this edition includes nine new ones—performance, style, memory/monument, body, beauty, ugliness, identity, visual culture/visual studies, and social history of art—as well as new introductory material. All help expand the book’s scope while retaining its central goal of stimulating discussion of theoretical issues in art history and making that discussion accessible to both beginning students and senior scholars.

Contributors: Mark Antliff, Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Stephen Bann, Homi K. Bhabha, Suzanne Preston Blier, Michael Camille, David Carrier, Craig Clunas, Whitney Davis, Jas Elsner, Ivan Gaskell, Ann Gibson, Charles Harrison, James D. Herbert, Amelia Jones, Wolfgang Kemp, Joseph Leo Koerner, Patricia Leighten, Paul Mattick Jr., Richard Meyer, W. J. T. Mitchell, Robert S. Nelson, Margaret Olin, William Pietz, Alex Potts, Donald Preziosi, Lisbet Rausing, Richard Shiff, Terry Smith, Kristine Stiles, David Summers, Paul Wood, James E. Young

CONTENTS:

List of Illustrations
Mediation / Robert S. Nelson
At the Place of a Foreword: Someone Looking, Reading, and Writing / Robert S. Nelson
OPERATIONS
1. Representation / David Summers
2. Sign / Alex Potts
3. Simulacrum / Michael Camille
COMMUNICATIONS
4. Word and Image / W. J. T. Mitchell
5. Narrative / Wolfgang Kemp
6. Performance / Kristine Stiles
7. Style / Jas Elsner
8. Context / Paul Mattick, Jr.
9. Meaning/Interpretation / Stephen Bann
HISTORIES
10. Originality / Richard Shiff
11. Appropriation / Robert S. Nelson
12. Art History / David Carrier
13. Modernism / Charles Harrison
14. Avant-Garde / Ann Gibson
15. Primitive / Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten
16. Memory/Monument / James E. Young
SOCIAL RELATIONS
17. Body / Amelia Jones
18. Beauty / Ivan Gaskell
19. Ugliness / Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer
20. Ritual / Suzanne Preston Blier
21. Fetish / William Pietz
22. Gaze / Margaret Olin
23. Gender / Whitney Davis
24. Identity / Richard Meyer
SOCIETIES
25. Production / Terry Smith
26. Commodity / Paul Wood
27. Collecting/Museums / Donald Preziosi
28. Value / Joseph Leo Koerner and Lisbet Rausing
29. Postmodernism/Postcolonialism / Homi K. Bhabha
30. Visual Culture/Visual Studies / James D. Herbert
31. Social History of Art / Craig Clunas
Afterword: Figuration / Richard Shiff