Can the canon burst?

• Autores: Christopher Burghard Steiner
• Localización: Art bulletin, ISSN 0004-3079, Vol. 78, Nº 2, 1996, págs. 213-217
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Part of a symposium providing a range of critical perspectives on rethinking the art historical canon. This canon, like any system based on taxonomic hierarchy, is only meaningful, and perhaps powerful, insofar as it excludes many works deemed uncanonical and therefore inferior. Recent attempts to reconfigure the art historical canon so as to include previously marginalized categories seem to have largely missed the point because it is the social structure of the canon itself that must be reconsidered rather than what is included or excluded from it. Any assault on the canon must begin by revealing its fetishized image of cultural sanctity and its fictitious creed of immaculate classification. Ultimately, both those who support the canon and those who seek to “open it up” should concern themselves with how much longer the misrecognition of the canon system can continue before the bubble bursts.