The Invention of Art: A Cultural History

by Larry Shiner

Book Overview

With The Invention of Art, Larry Shiner challenges our conventional understandings of art and asks us to reconsider its history entirely, arguing that the category of fine art is a modern invention--that the lines drawn between art and craft resulted from key social transformations in Europe during the long eighteenth century.

"Shiner spent over a decade honing what he calls 'a brief history of the idea of art.' This carefully prepared...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226753433
• ISBN13: 9780226753430
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Invaluable for understanding the Art world

This book is tough going at times but the result is a major contribution to understanding the world of the "fine arts" today. Written in a dispassionate tone throughout, it helps to put the Art world into a rational context and shows how the fine art institutions condition us to raise fine art to a near religious level of significance.