Introduction: Canons and Art History / Anna Brzyski 1

1. Measuring Canons: Reflections on Innovation and the Nineteenth-century Canon of European Art / Robert Jensen 27

2. Canon and Globalization in Art History / James Elkins 55

3. Mere Exposure, Reproduction, and the Impressionist Canon / James Cutting 79

4. Imitation and Authority: The Creation of the Academic Canon in French Art, 1648-1870 / Paul Duro 95

5. Chinese Art, the National Palace Museum, and Cold War Politics / Jane C. Ju 115

6. Masculine Reason or Feminine Spirit: Gender Battles in the Werkbund’s Canonization of National Style / Despina Stratigakos 135

7. Courbet, the Decorative, and the Canon: Rewriting and Rereading Meier-Graefe’s Modern Art / Jenny Anger 157

8. The Multiple Masculinities of Canonical Modernism: James Johnson Sweeney and Alfred H. Barr Jr. in the 1930s / Marcia Brennan 179

9. “Gardner” Variety Formalism: Helen Gardener and Art Through the Ages / Barbara Jaffee 203

10. The Rembrandt Research Project: Issues and Controversies Raised by a Canonical Oeuvre / Linda Stone-Ferrier 225

11. Making Art in the Age of Art History, or How to Become a Canonical Artist / Anna Brzyski 245

12. Kinkade and the Canon: Art History’s (Ir)Relevance / Monica Kjellman-Chapin 267

13. Canons Apart and Apartheid Canons: Interpellations beyond the Colonial in South African Art / Julie McGee 289

14. Coda: Canons and Contemporaneity / Terry Smith 309

Bibliography 327

About the Contributors 355

Index 359

Anna Brzyski

Robert Jensen

James Elkins

James Cutting

Paul Duro

Jane C. Ju

Despina Stratigakos

Jenny Anger

Marcia Brennan

Barbara Jaffee

Linda Stone-Ferrier

Monica Kjellman-Chapin

Julie L McGee

Terry Smith

“[These essays] introduce a wide variety of complex and unsettled issues associated with the canon to the general reader at large. . . . Brzyski’s tenaciousness in revealing the mechanisms of canons is admirable. . . .” — Jennifer Ferng, Leonardo

“[These essays] introduce a wide variety of complex and unsettled issues associated with the canon to the general reader at large. . . . Brzyski’s tenaciousness in revealing the mechanisms of canons is admirable. . . .” —Jennifer Ferng, Leonardo

“Anna Brzyski’s anthology Partisan Canons fills a long-recognized need in the literature on the history of art. The essays in this volume approach the canon of works of art on which the discipline is built from a variety of perspectives: how did it come about, on what principles is it built, does it have universal validity? These thoughtful and probing texts promise to afford art historians and others insight into one of the most deeply naturalized values of this profession.” — Keith Moxey, author of, The Practice of Persuasion: Paradox and Power in Art History

“The subject of canons, a long-standing problem in literary studies, makes an impressive art historical debut in this authoritative collection of essays, which gathers together some of the most important critical voices in the contemporary study of the visual arts. Partisan Canons makes an important contribution to the discussion of values, power, and the social construction of artistic traditions.” — W. J. T. Mitchell, editor of, Critical Inquiry and author of What Do Pictures Want?

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