Roland Recht on the Purpose and Crisis of Art History

In an interview published by Éditions Textuel, Roland Recht, professor at the Collège de France and art critic, offers a pessimistic diagnosis of contemporary society as lacking a clear vision of the future. He examines the contradictions facing art history: it is used to legitimize blockbuster exhibitions and the art market, yet its authority as a hermeneutic discipline rather than an exact science is often denied. Recht argues that advancing research in art history requires developing a methodology that guarantees objectivity, thereby escaping the arbitrariness he sees prevailing in art criticism. He distinguishes between hermeneutics and criticism, noting that for contemporary art he relies solely on his own intuition—a risky approach. Recht also calls for redefining art history's role in preservation, valorization, and dissemination of heritage, which is too often left to politicians focused on economic profitability of museum spaces. He criticizes museums built in the last thirty years as triumphal hymns to architects, often disregarding the artworks themselves. His program includes resisting the spectacularization of art, training curators, and reinvesting in school education to promote visual literacy as civic education.