Baxandall, Michael David Kighley 1933–

PERSONAL:

Born August 18, 1933, in Cardiff, Wales; immigrated to the United States, 1986; son of David Kighley and Sarah Isobel Mary Baxandall; married Katharina Dorothea Simon, 1963; children: Sarah Lucy, Thomas David Franz. Education: Downing College, Cambridge, B.A., 1954; University of Pavia, Italy, postgraduate studies, 1955-56; University of Munich, postgraduate studies, 1957-58.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of California, Department of Art, 405 Doe Library, Berkeley, CA, 94720-6020.

CAREER:

Art historian. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England, assistant keeper in department of architecture and sculpture, 1961-65; University of London, London, England, lecturer at Warburg Institute, 1965-72, reader, 1973-80, professor, 1981-88, emeritus professor of the history of the classical tradition, 1988—; Oxford University, Oxford, England, Slade Professor of Fine Art, 1974-75; Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, A.D. White Professor-at-Large, 1982-88; University of California, Berkeley, professor, 1986-96, emeritus professor of the history of art, 1996—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Warburg Institute junior fellow, 1959-61, and honorable fellow, 1988; British Academy fellow, 1982; Aby M. Warburg prize (Hamburg, Germany), 1988; MacArthur Foundation fellow, 1988-93; American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow, 1990; Wissenschaftskolleg fellow (Berlin, Germany), 1992-93.

WRITINGS:

German Wood Statuettes 1500-1800, Her Majesty's Stationary Office (London, England), 1967.

Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350-1450, Clarendon Press (Oxford, England), 1971.

Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, Clarendon Press (Oxford, England), 1972, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1988.

South German Sculpture 1480-1530, Her Majesty's Stationary Office (London, England), 1974.

The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1980.

Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1985.

(With Svetlana Alpers) Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1994.

Shadows and Enlightenment, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1995.

Words for Pictures: Seven Papers on Renaissance Art and Criticism, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2003.

Contributor to Tilman Riemenschneider: Master Sculptor of the Late Middle Ages, by Julien Chapuis, National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), 1999.

SIDELIGHTS:

Art historian Michael David Kighley Baxandall is highly regarded among art critics and his colleagues as a foremost authority on Renaissance art. Born in Cardiff, Wales, on August 18, 1933, he earned his B.A. at Downing College at the University of Cambridge before doing postgraduate work in both Italy, at the University of Pavia, and Germany, at the University of Munich. He began his career at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in the department of architecture and sculpture, but soon reverted to academia. He taught for many years in a variety of posts for the Warburg Institute at the University of London, eventually becoming a professor of the history of the classical tradition. In 1986 he immigrated to the United States to teach at the University of California at Berkeley, where he became a professor of art history.

The author of many books on the history of art, Baxandall has concentrated much of his attention on the means, methods, and philosophy of interpreting visual images. One the one hand, he believes that interpretation is important in that it maintains historic art as part of the culture. He has concerns, however, about the relevance of modern explanations for images from the past. In trying to understand how visual images were used by the artists who made them, those who view them now come to the images within a context of current social and psychological understanding that may or may not enhance their understanding of the images. Baxandall continues to examine the relationships among cultural influences, current and past social context, and artistic expression.

Another of Baxandall's recurring themes is the absurdity of using words to interpret visual images, despite the necessity of doing so. Michael A. Holly, writing in Invisible Culture, described this challenge as "the futility of explaining works of vision through verbal constructs"; he summarized this aspect of Baxandall's work as his concern that "past images, material objects of art, are forever beyond the capacity of present words to capture."

In Shadows and Enlightenment, Baxandall examines "the role of shadow in perception and understanding," according to Paul Mattick in his review for Art in America. Baxandall examines not only the visual use of shadow in eighteenth-century art, but also the philosophical and social implications of its use. In his review for the Art Journal, Douglas Dreishpoon stated that the book is an "articulate source" for readers "intrigued by the presence of painted shadows and … their historical significance."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Rifkin, Adrian, editor, About Michael Baxandall, Blackwell Publishers (Oxford, England), 1999.

PERIODICALS

America, December 26, 1981, William H. Slavick, review of The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, p. 428.

Art History, December, 1998, Michael Ann Holly, "Patterns in the Shadows: Attention in/to the Writings of Michael Baxandall," p. 467; December, 1998, "Aspects of the Critical Reception and Intellectual History of Baxandall's Concept of the Period Eye," p. 479.

Art in America, September, 1996, Paul Mattick, review of Shadows and Enlightenment, p. 33.

Art Journal, spring, 1987, David Carrier, review of Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures; spring, 1997, Douglas Dreishpoon, review of Shadows and Enlightenment.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, February, 1995, T.J. McCormick, review of Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence, p. 923; December, 1995, D. Topper, review of Shadows and Enlightenment, p. 605; June, 2000, J. Oliver, review of Tilman Riemenschneider: Master Sculptor of the Late Middle Ages, p. 1806.

Contemporary Sociology, July, 1996, review of Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, 2nd edition, p. 454.

Eighteenth-Century Studies, fall, 1996, Dorothy Johnson, review of Shadows and Enlightenment.

Encounter, February, 1987, review of Patterns of Intention, p. 49.

History: The Journal of the Historical Association, February, 1987, Christopher F. Black, review of Patterns of Intention, p. 83.

History Today, June, 1984, review of Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350-1450, p. 36; June, 1984, review of Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy, 2nd edition, p. 36; April, 1985, review of The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, p. 50.

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, fall, 1995, David Carrier, review of Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence; spring, 1996, David Carrier, review of Shadows and Enlightenment.

New Republic, July 14, 1986, Svetlana Alpers, review of Patterns of Intention, p. 34.

New York Review of Books, December 18, 1980, review of The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, p. 52; October 19, 1995, Hugh Honour, review of Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence, p. 17.

Times Literary Supplement, April 7, 1995, David Rosand, review of Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence, p. 12.

ONLINE

Invisible Culture,http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/ (April 28, 2008), Michael A. Holly, "Patterns in the Shadows," discussion of several of author's works.