From classical to post-modern: a beginner’s guide

My career at school and after was greatly enhanced by a series of books called The Bluffer’s Guide to….These gave mischievous advice, often on the reliable when-in-doubt-confuse-the-issue lines. A favourite of mine, still in use in emergencies, was: ‘I think Jack Kerouac was more a Franciscan Christian than Buddhist, don’t you?’

Martin Kemp’s Art in History is several clicks up the ratchet of sophistication, but, being a beginner’s guide, retains something of the character of a prop for the indolent. The curious title betrays a little uncertainty. It is one of the publisher’s ‘Ideas in Profile’ series which includes Shakespeare, Criticism and Politics. But why the preposition between ‘art’ and ‘history’? Why not just call it ‘Art’? I mean to say, they didn’t call the other titles Shakespeare in Theatre, Criticism in Literature or Politics in Government.

Perhaps this is because art historians are an insecure lot. Although Kemp, who is Emeritus Professor of History of Art at Oxford and an authority on Leonardo, is more secure than most and would perhaps disagree, art history can never quite decide what it is.