New book on talking about art without reducing it

What is it to know visual art? In the anthology Knowing visual art, eight art historians examine how scientific analyses encounter the immediate expressiveness of artworks and how these perspectives together can deepen our experience of art.

The fundamental purpose of this volume is to explore how two interconnected but radically different spheres of knowledge and experience meet in the analysis of visual art: the epistemological rationality of scholarly methods and the experiential (visual and material) power and appeal of artworks. Examining medieval architectural spaces, contemporary video works, 19th-century prints, Antique sculpture, and paintings and drawings from the 17th to the 20th centuries, eight art historians strive to analyse knowledge processes and claims without reducing the expressive powers of the artworks.

– The book was Margareta Thomson´s idea. Art historians from Swedish universities met around one of the discipline’s basic questions: the meeting between scholarship and the visual art. The theme from the symposium later led to the book. The authors treat the same overarching question in relation to examples from their own areas of research. That is why the book offers a great and productive span between both the artworks and the ways to approach the question, says Sonya Petersson, one of the editors.

Authors Peter Gillgren, Dan Karlholm, Lena Liepe, Margaretha Thomson, Sonya Petersson, Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe, Mårten Snickare, Nina Weibull

Editors Margaretha Thomson & Sonya Petersson

Book info
ISBN: 978-91-88763-69-3, 978-91-88763-70-9 (pdf)
ISSN: 0083-6761
240 pages
Published in 2025
Hardcover
Series: Antikvariska serien 60
Price: 380 SEK

The volume is also available as open access.

Distribution via Stardist. Order or download here.

Contact for more information
Ulrika Gustafsson, Head of Publications, Editor, Kungl. Vitterhetsakademien, ulrika.gustafsson@vitterhetsakademien.se

The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities (Vitterhetsakademien) advances and funds research in the humanities and social sciences and in cultural heritage management. Its work is financed by donations and by public and private foundations. Vitterhetsakademien also owns and manages several historic buildings and sites: Skånelaholm Castle in Uppland, Stjernsund Castle in Närke, Rettig House in Stockholm (which houses Vitterhetsakademien’s offices), the villages of Stensjö in Småland and Borg on Öland, and the ruins of Gråborg on Öland.