ABSTRACT
A sensible, sensitive and intelligent young person once told me why she had never taken a course in art history: “There’s only so long,” said she, “that I can sit and listen to the teacher tell me to notice the dominant greens and blues.” Artistic details-the folds of a dress, the tree at whose foot the shepherd is sitting, the dominant greens and blues-are to art history what dates are to general history, the picayune items, meaningless in themselves, that discourage the student who does not see past them to the larger story. Every art class is full of such details, and every student of art must learn to pay attention to them. The subject would not exist without them. But they themselves are not the subject.
