History Painting Reassessed: The Representation of History in Contemporary Art

History painting was once the most prestigious and ambitious genre of art to be found in the salons and academies of Europe. Its dramatic decline in status in the 19th century and virtual disappearance in the 20th century raises the larger issue of whether the idea of history has come to an end. The series of essays in this book reflect on this important question through the analysis of the work of such artists as Jeff Wall, Robert Smithson, Gerhard Richter, and Louise Bourgeois. The authors examine how modern and contemporary artists have continued to engage with questions of history and its representation in a context in which our sense of history is inevitably filtered by the concerns of politics, gender, post-colonialism, and ecology.