Art History vs. the History of Art

During the relatively brief history of the history of art the study of American art has been at the periphery of the discipline. It may be that the focus of art historical scholarship, reflecting Bishop Berkeley's venerable dictum, has like art itself gradually moved westward, and is only now getting to England and America. But what the pattern of “main line” art historical scholarship has clearly followed closely has been contemporary perceptions of aesthetic quality. Able young art historians, especially those trained in traditions of formal analysis where connoisseurship is the basic skill and quality the primary measure of importance, have not unreasonably chosen to work in fields where the objects of study would yield the greatest aesthetic return. The second-class status of American art has been based on a fundamental and literal discrimination. American art has been perceived as generally of lower aesthetic quality than European art and, by virtue of a logical fallacy that equates the quality of scholarship with the perceived quality of the art being studied, it has therefore been largely snubbed by leading art historians.