Milena Bartlová’s What Does it Mean to Write Art history? is a contribution to the reflexions on the methodology of writing about art, both ancient and recent. It offers a point of view, which seems to be somewhat neglected by those who write scholarly texts on contemporary and modern art, thus becoming a valuable contribution to the discussion about the making of contemporary art history. The intrinsic division into “art” and “history”, proper to art history, drifts too much towards “art”. This seems to be totally acceptable when writing reviews; however, the author considers “writing history” to be a different task. She wants to emphasize the fact that, especially in the past quarter century, “writing history” has been subject to a broad methodological discussion in the field of historiography. The author believes that anybody who wants to write history (of anything) should bare that in mind in order to work in full knowledge of cause.
Jakub Stejskal
