Elkins assesses the standard text in the field, E. H. Gombrich's often revised The Story of Art, and the vision it promotes of art history as an orderly, chronological progression toward the pinnacle of art, "naturalistic skill," which the moderns then abandoned. Elkins dissects the many pitfalls of this simplistic approach, and envisions provocative alternatives, all the while musing on how to address the many tricky questions art historians confront, especially the challenge of how to integrate non-Western art into the story of Western art, and how to answer urgent questions about race, gender, sexuality, and even language itself.
From Booklist.
