On the question of a philosophical art history: philosophy, theory and thought

Abstract

Decades since the radicalising impacts of ‘theory’ have been levelled into disciplinary practice, what might be invited by a philosophical art history today? I outline the shape of this problem by retracing the presence of the philosophical in early art history, contextualising the emergence of theory in 20th-century continental philosophy’s self-examination, and surveying the impact and afterlife of the assimilation of French thought, as ‘theory’, into the Anglo-American academy. Faced by an ever-expanding ‘menu of methods’ and interpretive toolkits, the challenge for a philosophical art history today is to interrogate and reverse the conversion of what the French called thought (pensée) into what became theory. By considering the philosophy of thought developed by Gilles Deleuze, and his ideas of ‘superior empiricism’ and ‘constructivism’, I explore one route to such interrogation. I argue that a philosophical art history as a thoughtful art history moves away from preoccupations of methodology to a practice of problematology.