‘What History, Whose History, History to What Purpose?’: Notions of History in Art History and Visual Culture Studies

Abstract

This article examines the study of visual culture as a kind of writing about cultural objects which accounts for their agency in culture. It take its cue from the claim, strongly advanced by French philosopher and art historian Hubert Damisch, that art ‘thinks’. Therefore, in order to explicate that notion the first part of the article is devoted to his conception of art and, by extension, of art history. In order to substantiate the aesthetics of art as agency, Damisch’s argumentation is followed, according to which art in its historical specificity engenders general, transhistorical and philosophical questions.