The State of Psychoanalytic Research in Art History

Abstract

In response to criticisms of established practices and ideas, new approaches to art history have emerged, particularly among modernists. Recent articles and symposia seeking to determine the broad goals and perspectives of art history have registered a growing sense of tension in the discipline, some would say of crisis. In this, the condition of art his-tory has much in common with sister disciplines like archaeology! and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis has re-cently received a serious challenge from the philosopher of science Adolf Griinbaum, who has questioned the validity of some of its basic procedures.

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Notes on contributors

Jack Spector

As his book The Aesthetics of Freud (1972) indicates, Jack Specter's research and writing have maintained an interdisciplinary emphasis, often linking Romanticism (The Murals of Eugène Delacroix at Saint-Sulpice, 2967, Delacroix's “Death of Sardanapalus,” 1975) and Surrealism with psychoanalytical issues. He has a book underway on the politics and psychology of early Surrealism as well as a study of late nineteenth-century criticism of Delacroix's art. [Department of Art History, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903]