Julia Friedman at The Hedgehog Review:
Published by Hunters Point Press last year, the writings collected in Is Art History? cover seven decades of Alpers’s prolific professional life. Arranged chronologically, from a long scholarly article first published in 1960 to a book review that came out in 2023, the compilation offers a long-distance view of a storied career. The book is clearly a labor of love. It is hefty, at 420 pages of text plus color plates, complete with a red cloth cover with embossed gold lettering and a silky gray ribbon bookmark. The margins are extra wide (a rarity today). In addition to the color plates compiled at the end of the volume, there are black-and-white illustrations in the margins, for quick reference. This is one of many nods to the classic art history texts of yore. The foreword is by Barney Kulok, a young photographer who collaborated with Alpers, and the introduction is by her former student, now professor of art history at Stanford University, Richard Meyer. The absence of contributions by her colleagues, friends, or coauthors (who included the likes of John Berger, Michael Podro, Richard Wollheim, and Michael Baxandall), is a sad reminder that, as Alpers remarks: “Everyone I would have written for is dead.”
more here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.