Reviewed by:

• What Was History Painting and What Is It Now? ed. by Mark Salber Phillips and Jordan Bear
• Alejandra Gimenez-Berger

History painting, as a mode of visual communication, reigned at the European art academies and set the tastes of elites as the highest form of expression from its inception in the early modern period to the rise [End Page 188] of modernism in the late nineteenth century. As the royal academies were challenged and superseded by modernist individualism, the interest in history painting and its subjects declined. Narrow definitions that reduced the genre to a tool for the powers of church and state, for didacticism turned indoctrination, and for the preservation of the power of authoritarian states contributed to the growing disinterest on the genre. As this volume makes clear, however, these are not the only contributions of the genre to the history of visual expression. In tracing the ways in which artists utilized the mechanics of the genre outside of the constraints set by the European academies, this volume may serve world historians in finding creative ways to decode the visual structures of history painting as they served not only to support, but to critique or subvert ideologies and artistic concepts.

This volume aims to show the ways in which the elements of history painting have persisted, and how, though much changed, the genre not only survives but affords artists means to call attention to "the great moral issues" of our time (p. 158). This argument is predicated on a revision of the definition of history painting as a whole, rejecting a rigid and all-encompassing understanding in favor of a heuristic approach, what Mark Salber Phillips calls "re-distancing." The essays follow the formal, material, and theoretical transformation of history painting chronologically, simultaneously organizing the timeline into three major themes. Appropriately, the first section is devoted to the role of the human as subject and viewer. Stuart Lingo's essay sets the stage as it demonstrates the tensions between visual narratives and the figures that were to enact them—arising as the original Albertian definition met artistic competition for creative figuration—as early as the sixteenth century. Then Susana Caviglia turns to the beholder in a brilliant reception study that challenges saccharine understandings of how the genre operated in the Rococo. Mark Salber Phillips' own essay looks at an important change in subject, from the grand to the mundane and from elevation to satire. Here we begin to see how demand shaped the genre—the theme of Part Two—as patronage shifted from church and state to competitive markets. The studies by Cynthia Ellen Roman, Jordan Bear, and Tim Barringer in this second section share a focus on audiences: their desires for particular imagery and the ways in which paintings mediated their anxieties. Here Jordan Bear deploys the idea of re-distancing most strongly.

The third section traces a greater geographic, thematic, and theoretical variety in the development of the genre. Six essays analyze the ways in which artists, working with some or many of the rudiments of history painting, responded to modernist aesthetics and later to postmodernist critique. James Nisbet and Mary K. Coffey explore the [End Page 189] encounter with, and destabilization of, the salient aesthetics of each period. Coffey's essay is particularly interesting as it analyzes Orozco's work at Darmouth from internally shifting distances: the local, the national, and the international. This section also includes two essays that delve into the appropriation of tropes of history painting in self-critical and strongly subversive ways: Elizabeth Harney's explores the ambiguity of Julie Mehretu's use of the genre for a critique of neoliberalism, while Michael Godby focuses on the explicit ways in which William Kentridge engages in a formalist and historicist critique.

The volume also includes two powerful essays on the evolution of history painting into art forms that, going beyond traditional media and defunct academic hierarchies, address the...

审核人：

• 什么是历史绘画，现在是什么？ed。马克·索伯·菲利普斯（Mark Salber Phillips）和乔丹·贝尔（Jordan Bear）
• 亚历杭德拉（Alejandra Gimenez）-伯格（Berger）

历史绘画作为一种视觉交流方式，在欧洲艺术院校中举足轻重，并将精英人士的品味作为其从现代早期创立到兴起的最高表现形式。[结束第188页]在十九世纪末期的现代主义。随着皇家学院受到现代主义个人主义的挑战和取代，对历史绘画及其主题的兴趣下降了。狭义的定义将这种体裁简化为教会和国家权力，教条主义转变为灌输，以及维护独裁国家的权力的工具，这导致对该体型的不满与日俱增。然而，正如本卷清楚表明的那样，这些并不是该类型对视觉表达历史的唯一贡献。在探索艺术家在欧洲学术界设定的限制范围之外利用流派技巧的方式时，本册可能会为世界历史学家寻找创造性的方式来解码历史绘画的视觉结构，因为他们不仅提供了支持，

本册旨在展示历史绘画元素的保留方式，以及尽管发生了很大的变化，但这种体裁不仅得以生存，而且还为艺术家提供了提倡人们关注当今时代“重大道德问题”的方式（第158页） ）。该论点是基于对历史绘画整体定义的修订，拒绝了僵化的，包罗万象的理解，而采用了启发式方法，即马克·萨伯·菲利普斯（Mark Salber Phillips）所说的“重新划分”。论文按时间顺序遵循历史绘画的形式，材料和理论转变，同时将时间轴组织为三个主要主题。适当地，第一部分专门讨论人类作为主题和观察者的角色。斯图尔特·林戈（Stuart Lingo）这篇论文为展示视觉叙事与实现它们之间的张力之间的关系奠定了基础。最早在16世纪，阿尔伯特最初的定义满足了艺术创作对艺术创作的需求，这才引起了视觉叙事与现实之间的张力。然后，苏珊娜·卡维格里亚（Susana Caviglia）在出色的接待研究中转向情人，挑战了糖精对洛可可风格的运作方式的理解。马克·索伯·菲利普斯（Mark Salber Phillips）的论文着眼于主题的一个重要变化，从大到平凡，从海拔到讽刺。在这里，我们开始看到，需求量如何改变了这一类型（第二部分的主题），因为赞助人从教堂和国家转移到竞争性市场。辛西娅·艾伦·罗曼（Cynthia Ellen Roman），乔丹·贝尔（Jordan Bear）和蒂姆·巴林格（Tim Barringer）在第二部分中的研究重点关注受众：他们对特定图像的渴望以及绘画表达焦虑的方式。在这里，乔丹·贝尔（Jordan Bear）提出了重新调整距离的想法。

第三部分介绍了该类型的发展中更大的地理，主题和理论多样性。六篇论文分析了艺术家在处理历史绘画的一些或许多基本知识时对现代主义美学以及后来对后现代主义批评的反应方式。詹姆斯·尼贝特（James Nisbet）和玛丽·科菲（Mary K. Coffey）探索[结束页189]遇到并破坏每个时期的突出美学。Coffey的文章特别有趣，因为它从内部，内部和国际转移的距离分析了Orozco在达茅斯的工作。本节还包括两篇文章，以自我批评和强烈颠覆的方式深入探讨了历史绘画的比喻：伊丽莎白·哈尼（Elizabeth Harney）的著作探讨了朱莉·梅赫雷图（Julie Mehretu）对新自由主义的批评的歧义，而迈克尔·戈德比（Michael Godby）则着眼于明确的批评。威廉·肯特里奇（William Kentridge）从事形式主义和历史主义批评的方式。

该卷还包括有关历史绘画演变成艺术形式的两篇有力的文章，这些文章超越了传统媒体和已废止的学术等级制度，着眼于...