VISUALIZING DIFFERENCE IN ART HISTORY

Visualizing difference in art history could signify a collection of tales that generally spell out the past: these may have a source in fact but are embroidered to explain the present. Many are fables, tales to demonstrate a point or moral. A history of the visual arts, defined simply as a sequential description of the various objects we now classify as art, would be a pretty insignificant affair, probably of less general interest than a history of machinery, or a history of clothing. It would certainly be a history that remained on the fringes of what most people recognize as the central concerns of life. A history of art begins to look a little more interesting where it claims that art has a symbolic value, and that visual artifacts reflect important attitudes and ‘realities’ of the society in which they were produced.