ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasises the importance of Marxist and social histories for understanding culture, ideology, gender, the sub-conscious and the postcolonial/decolonial in approaches to art and its broader institutional context. However, Marxist-inspired social art histories are not just concerned with the material production of art. Considering some of the principles and applications of Marxism to a social art history, Panofsky's trichotomy illustrates an approach to structuring and ordering initial questions about context and meaning that social art histories typically address. This chapter introduces the aspects of Marxist and social theory and how such might be used to explore works of art and to situate art history as part of a broader social discourse. For Theodor Adorno, art’s opacity and refusal to signify – its ‘mute resistance’ in the face of the culture industry – registers its redemptive power. But perhaps the most cogent legacy of a holistic Marxist tradition has been the belief in purposive human agency.
