Explores what we actually see, touch, and experience when looking at art. Typically, art history is an enterprise of recovery--of searching out the provenance, the original intentions, the physical setting, and historical conditions behind a work of art. The essays in Compelling Visuality address some of the "other" questions that are less frequently asked--and, in doing so, show how much is to be learned and gained by going beyond the traditional approaches of art history. In particular, the contributors take up the commonly unexplored question of what is actually present in a work of...

Explores what we actually see, touch, and experience when looking at art. Typically, art history is an enterprise of recovery--of searching out the provenance, the original intentions, the physical setting, and historical conditions behind a work of art. The essays in Compelling Visuality address some of the "other" questions that are less frequently asked--and, in doing so, show how much is to be learned and gained by going beyond the traditional approaches of art history. In particular, the contributors take up the commonly unexplored question of what is actually present in a work of...

Art Is Not What You Think It Is utilizes original research to present a series of critical incursions into the current state of debate on the idea of art, making manifest what has been largely missing or unsaid in those discussions.

• Links museology, history, theory, and criticism to the realities of contemporary social conditions and shows how they have structurally functioned in a variety of contexts
• Deals with divisive and controversial problems such as blasphemy and idolatry, and the problem of artistic truth
• Addresses relations between...