The Invention of Art

"A lucid book . . . it should be a must-read for anyone active in the arts."-Marc Spiegler, Chicago Tribune Books

With The Invention of Art, Larry Shiner challenges our conventional understandings of art and asks us to reconsider its history entirely, arguing that the category of fine art is a modern invention—that the lines drawn between art and craft resulted from key social transformations in Europe during the long eighteenth century.