The historiography of art history has been a potent theme in the discourses of the
discipline of the last thirty years. And the approaches and methods in the study of
the visual are probably more varied, and more vigorously debated, than in any
other area of historical enquiry. This is so much so that the interest in the practice
and history of the history of art history has at times appeared to be equal to
object-based study and it is arguable that this now forms part of the archive of the
discipline. There is of course no doubt that since the inception of art history as a
field of academic study, works of art have been ‘read’ in a variety of ways. These
different modes of description and interpretation inscribe meaning in to art and
it is here that art and its history are perhaps most intricately linked.
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