The New Art History

The 'new art history' names the theoretically driven turn from the 1970s onward that brought Marxism, feminism, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial critique into the discipline, contesting its traditional objects and assumptions.

Definition

The new art history is the body of critical, theory-informed approaches — feminist, Marxist, semiotic, psychoanalytic, and postcolonial — that from the 1970s reoriented art history away from connoisseurship and formalism toward the analysis of power, identity, and representation.

Scope

This topic covers the cluster of critical approaches that reshaped the discipline from the 1970s and 1980s: feminist art history, semiotic and post-structuralist analysis, psychoanalytic and ideological critique, and postcolonial perspectives. It examines how these approaches challenged the canon, the notion of the autonomous masterpiece, and the discipline's claims to objectivity, and how they relate to the broader field of visual culture.

Core questions

• How did critical theory transform the questions art history asks?
• How do feminist and postcolonial critiques rewrite the canon and the discipline's history?
• How do semiotics and psychoanalysis reframe the analysis of images?
• What is gained and lost when art history absorbs theory from other fields?

Key theories

Feminist intervention in art history

Griselda Pollock argued that feminism does not merely add women to art history but demands a structural rethinking of the discipline — its canon, its concept of the artist, and its complicity in producing sexual difference — through analysis of vision, ideology, and representation.

The new art history as critical turn

The programmatic collection edited by Rees and Borzello defined the new art history as a self-conscious, politically engaged break with positivist connoisseurship and formalism, importing social theory and critical methods to interrogate the discipline's foundations.

History

The phrase 'the new art history' was popularized by the 1986 anthology edited by Rees and Borzello, capturing a wave of feminist, Marxist, semiotic, and psychoanalytic scholarship that had been building since the 1970s. Griselda Pollock's Vision and Difference (1988) exemplified its feminist strand, and critical anthologies such as Preziosi's later consolidated these approaches as standard parts of the discipline, feeding into visual culture studies.

Debates

Theory versus the art object

Critics charge that the new art history can subordinate close attention to works to the application of imported theory, while its proponents argue that theory exposes the hidden assumptions and exclusions of supposedly neutral traditional method.

Key figures

• Griselda Pollock
• Norman Bryson
• Donald Preziosi
• Linda Nochlin

Seminal works

• reesborzello1986
• pollock1988

Frequently asked questions

What is the 'new art history'?

It is the theoretically driven turn in the discipline from the 1970s onward that brought feminism, Marxism, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial critique into art history, challenging the canon and the discipline's traditional assumptions.