Theories of reference

• Autores: Christopher S. Wood
• Localización: Art bulletin, ISSN 0004-3079, Vol. 78, Nº 1, 1996, págs. 23-25
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Part of a symposium on art history and its theories. The writer discusses how “theory” has shunted the discipline of art history away from the study of reference—the capacity of a language to point to a real object or event—and toward the study of signification—the property simply of making sense. He shows that right now, art history operates with maximum theoretical integrity when it verges toward the extremes of empiricism and aestheticism: the truth of the fact, the truth of the work of art. He argues that although truth is clearly a little more elusive once one ventures into the wide district between these extremes, if art history is to regain some of the interdisciplinary prestige it had earlier in the century, it has to keep working this territory, and without abandoning theory. The way to do this, he asserts, is to worry again about all the things images do other than signify.