Moshe Barasch 
Modern Theories of Art 1 
From Winckelmann to Baudelaire

This is an analytical survey of the thought about painting and sculpture as it unfolded from the early eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. This was the period during which theories of the visual arts, particularly of painting and sculpture, underwent a radical transformation, as a result of which the intellectual foundations of our modern views on the arts were formed. Because this transformation can only be understood when seen in a broad context of cultural, aesthetic, and philosophical developments of the period, Moshe Barasch surveys the opinions of the artists, and also treats in some detail the doctrines of philosophers, poets, and critics. Barasch thus traces for the reader the entire development of modernism in art and art theory.

About the author

Moshe Barasch was Jack Cotton Professor of Architecture and Fine Arts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He wrote numerous books including Icon, Theories of Art, and Modern Theories of Art I and II, all published by NYU Press. A winner of the Israel Prize in 1996, he was elected corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences.