Ancient History, Recent History: An Ongoing Exmination of Art History Survey Texts was a continuation of Fessler’s interest in the eroticized language used in art history textbooks to describe paintings of rape and abduction. The 6-page spread, published in Ms. magazine in March/April 1993, followed her 1991 Art History Lesson book that examined a quote by H. W. Janson from Fessler’s college textbook History of Art, and preceded her 1994 Art History Lesson installation.

In this piece, Fessler focused on a quote from a widely used textbook that had been revised only four years earlier, Frederick Hartt’s Art: A History of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture. Hartt’s description of Ruben’s Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus refers to the rape depicted in the painting as an “act of love … that draws the spectator upward in a mood of rapture.” The painting depicts Castor and Pollux, sons of Jupiter, abducting the daughters of Leucippus. The quote continues “The female types … are traversed by a steady stream of energy….”  “…The very landscape heaves and flows in response to the excitement of the event.”

Ancient History, Recent History: An Ongoing Examination of Art History Survey Texts, by Ann Fessler; Ms. magazine, March/April, 1993; p 46–51; Volume III, Number 5