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To scan the brochures of the major academic presses (at least in the United States) is to realize instantly that interdisciplinary scholarship is no longer a noman's land. Quite to the contrary, it is a territory that now embraces much of the most up-to-date thinking in the humanities across the board from classics to history and criticism as well as art history. Disciplinary boundaries, the modern versions of which can be traced back to the Renaissance, quaver precariously under the impact of contemporary scholarship. Authors doing what David Carrier (1987) has called 'artwriting' (examples might include Fried, 1980) ; (Clark, 1984) ; Bryson, 1985; (Krauss, 1985) simply write across the walls that once shut art history away from literary criticism and critical theory. Notions and tactics drawn not only from psychoanalysis but from Marxism, structuralism, post-structuralism, feminism, deconstruction, and post-modernism have reshaped the discourses of the humanities. Although the old territorial suspicions persist, today's climate offers opportunities to form new alliances across barriers that once divided us. In such an atmosphere, a volume such as the one under review should be heartily welcomed.
The book contains nineteen essays on such diverse artists as Michelangelo, Raphael, de Chirico, Ernst, Magritte, Cézanne, and Matisse (among others) grouped into categories as follows: 'Renaissance Topics', 'Proto Surrealism and Surrealism', 'The Position of the Artist in the Modern World', and 'Book Reviews'. The bulk of these rely principally on an 'auteurist' or 'pathographic' approach (Spitz, 1985) that weaves together strands from an artist's life history and works. Because of the range and diversity of the collection and the fact that it represents the work of multiple authors, it will not be possible here except in one or two cases to deal critically with individual statements. Apologies are thus due to authors whose essays are not directly cited. For the