Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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 and--given the extent and complexity of what he's discussing--admirably concise, well-organized book is the result. . . . Shiner's text is scholarly but accessible, and should appeal to readers with even a dabbler's interest in art theory."-- Publishers Weekly

" The Invention of Art is enjoyable to read and provides a welcome addition to the history and philosophy of art."--Terrie L. Wilson, Art Documentation

"A lucid book . . . it should be a must-read for anyone active in the arts."--Marc Spiegler, Chicago Tribune Books

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of Illustrations (p. xi)
• Preface (p. xv)
• Introduction (p. 3)
• The Great Division (p. 5)
• Words and Institutions (p. 10)
• Part I Before Fine Art and Craft
• Overview (p. 17)
• 1 The Greeks Had No Word for It (p. 19)
• Art, techne, ars (p. 19)
• The Artisan/Artist (p. 22)
• Beauty and Function (p. 24)
• 2 Aquinas's Saw (p. 28)
• From "Servile" to "Mechanical" Arts (p. 28)
• Artificers (p. 30)
• The Idea of Beauty (p. 33)
• 3 Michelangelo and Shakespeare: Art on the Rise (p. 35)
• Opening up the Liberal Arts (p. 35)
• The Changing Status of Artisan/Artists (p. 38)
• The Ideal Qualities of the Artisan/Artist (p. 45)
• Shakespeare, Jonson, and the "Work" (p. 47)
• A Proto-Aesthetic? (p. 53)
• 4 Artemisia's Allegory: Art in Transition (p. 57)
• The Artisan/Artist's Continuing Struggle for Status (p. 60)
• The Image of the Artisan/Artist (p. 65)
• Steps toward the Category of Fine Art (p. 67)
• The Role of Taste (p. 71)
• Part II Art Divided
• Overview (p. 75)
• 5 Polite Arts for the Polite Classes (p. 79)
• Constructing the Category of Fine Art (p. 80)
• The New Institutions of Fine Art (p. 88)
• The New Art Public (p. 94)
• 6 The Artist, the Work, and the Market (p. 99)
• The Separation of the Artist from the Artisan (p. 99)
• The Ideal Image of the Artist (p. 111)
• The Fate of the Artisan (p. 115)
• The Gender of Genius (p. 121)
• The Ideal of the "Work of Art" (p. 123)
• From Patronage to the Market (p. 126)
• 7 From Taste to the Aesthetic (p. 130)
• Learning Aesthetic Behavior (p. 133)
• The Art Public and the Problem of Taste (p. 137)
• The Elements of the Aesthetic (p. 140)
• Kant and Schiller Sum up the Aesthetic (p. 146)
• Part III Countercurrents
• Overview (p. 153)
• 8 Hogarth, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft (p. 157)
• Hogarth's "Hedonist Aesthetics" (p. 157)
• Rousseau's Festival Aesthetics (p. 159)
• Wollstonecraft and the Beauty of Justice (p. 164)
• 9 Revolution: Music, Festival, Museum (p. 169)
• The Collapse of Patronage (p. 169)
• The Revolutionary Festivals (p. 171)
• Revolutionary Music (p. 175)
• The Revolution and the Museum (p. 180)
• Part IV The Apotheosis of Art
• Overview (p. 187)
• 10 Art as Redemptive Revelation (p. 189)
• Art Becomes an Independent Realm (p. 189)
• The Spiritual Elevation of Art (p. 194)
• 11 The Artist: A Sacred Calling (p. 197)
• The Exalted Image of the Artist (p. 197)
• The Descent of the Artisan (p. 206)
• 12 Silences: Triumph of the Aesthetic (p. 213)
• Learning Aesthetic Behavior (p. 213)
• The Rise of the Aesthetic and the Decline of Beauty (p. 219)
• The Problem of Art and Society (p. 221)
• Part V Beyond Fine Art and Craft
• Overview (p. 225)
• 13 Assimilation and Resistance (p. 229)
• The Assimilation of Photography (p. 229)
• Varieties of Resistance: Emerson, Marx, Ruskin, Morris (p. 234)
• The Arts and Crafts Movement (p. 239)
• 14 Modernism, Anti-Art, and the Bauhaus (p. 246)
• Modernism and Purity (p. 246)
• The Case of Photography (p. 251)
• Anti-Art (p. 253)
• The Bauhaus (p. 258)
• Three Philosopher-Critics on the Division of Art (p. 263)
• Modernism and Formalism Triumphant (p. 266)
• 15 Beyond Art and Craft? (p. 269)
• "Primitive" Art (p. 270)
• Crafts-as-Art (p. 274)
• Architecture as Art (p. 278)
• The Photography-as-Art Boom (p. 282)
• The "Death of Literature"? (p. 284)
• Mass Art (p. 286)
• Art and Life (p. 289)
• Public Art (p. 297)
• Conclusion (p. 303)
• Notes (p. 309)
• References (p. 319)
• Index (p. 343)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

University of Illinois philosophy professor Shiner (The Secret Mirror, etc.) spent over a decade honing what he calls a "brief history of the idea of art." This carefully prepared and given the extent and complexity of what he is discussing admirably concise, well-organized book is the result. Looking forward as much as backward, Shiner finds that "the category of fine art is a recent historical construction that could disappear in its turn." He plausibly traces the 18th-century division between "so-called polite and vulgar arts" from a time when music, for example, was played at home or for "religious and civic occasions" to when it started to be played in concerts with no other goal than artistic enjoyment in and of itself: "On this high cultural ground, noble and bourgeois could meet as a fine art public, rejecting both the frivolous diversions of the rich and highborn as well as the vulgar amusements of the populace." It was the beginning of art as we experience it today. Shiner cites examples from a wide range of forms, including Shakespeare's plays, Greek drama, Cellini's sculptures and Michelangelo's paintings. He also discusses Asian art, pointing out how "the Japanese language had no collective noun for `art' in our sense until the nineteenth century" and establishes that the phrase "Chinese art" is also a relatively recent invention, since before the 19th century no one in China "grouped painting, sculpture, ceramics, and calligraphy together as objects" with something determinate in common. Essentially optimistic in tone, this book argues that people who complain about the "death of art" are really just failing to measure "the staying power of the established art system." A must for larger art collections, Shiner's text is scholarly but accessible, and should appeal to readers with even a dabbler's interest in art theory. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

In this well-illustrated book, Shiner (philosophy, Univ. of Illinois at Springfield) provides a convincing narrative of the social construction of modernism and dispels any claims of art's "universal status." He argues that the category of fine art itself is a recent invention dating from the 18th century. Social changes, such as market economies and the rise of the middle class, encouraged certain distinctions--fine art was distinguished from craft, the artist from the artisan, and refined pleasure from ordinary pleasure. The fine arts, it was said, are "a matter of inspiration and genius and meant to be enjoyed for themselves in moments of refined pleasure, whereas the crafts and popular arts require only skill and rules and are meant for mere use or entertainment." Museums appeared, the traditional patron was replaced by the consumer, and an emphasis on aesthetic value replaced that of function. As these developments evolved through the 19th century, the artist's image gyrated between bohemian nonchalance or dandyism and the artist as "secular saint-and-martyr," and such concepts as the avant-garde, art for art's sake, and the shock of the new made their appearance, eventually becoming the basis of 20th-century modernism. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals. R. M. Davis Albion College