Category: CORE course

writing with art (rather than about art)

Consider how the Soane’s Museum, conceived as an “archive”, could inform your own practice of writing with art (rather than about art)?

What does that even mean?

And here lies the crux of my difficulties, I think. I am unable to understand this method of working, this very philosophical practice.

In the other courses we are dealing a lot with Jacques Derrida who seems to epitomizes this way of thinking. For instance, in the course ‘Philosophy and…’ we are reading the English translation of Che Cos’è la Poesia? (1988) published in A Derrida Reader1, and in the introduction to the piece the editor says:

As always, Derrida works to abolish the distance between what he is writing about . . . and what his writing is doing.

In this case he’s writing about “poetry, the poem, or as he will finally call it: the poematic”, and so his writing is being positioned as closing in on poetry itself.

It seems odd to me to describe writing as “doing” anything. Does writing “do” poetry or literature? It seems to be taking the activity away from the writer, the writing that the writer does becomes self-generating or generative of further writing.

The introduction carries on:

Reference without referent, this poem defines or describes itself even as it points beyond itself to the poetic in general.

These texts (inevitably?) make a lot of assumptions on the readers knowledge, or they make spectacular leaps of metaphor which leave you wondering just how much you were oblivious to in that little sentence.

As an example, here Derrida is referring to his response to the initial query—“ ‘Che cos’è la poesia?’ (What is poetry? or more literally, What thing is poetry?)”—he claims:

. . . the answer sees itself (as) dictated (dictation). I am a dictation, pronounces poetry, learn me by heart, copy me down, guard and keep me, look out for me, look at me, dictated dictation, right before your eyes: soundtrack, wake, trail of light, photograph of the feast in mourning.

. . . la réponse se voit dictée. Je suis une dictée, prononce la poésie, apprends-moi par coeur, recopie, veille et garde-moi, regarde-moi, dictée, sous les yeux: bande-son, wake, sillage de lumière, photographie de la fête en deuil.

Why those particular words stressed? What significance do the references to death have – “wake”, “photograph of the feast of mourning”? Why specifically a photograph of the feast of mourning? How do these relate to “soundtrack” or “trail of light”? Are they very personal things, or, if I was to read more Derrida, would they re-occur at significant points. Why do I need to know this?

For me, there is a touch of meaning, a fleeting glimpse in the corner of your eye of another world of content slipping by without your having the dexterity to turn and comprehend it in time. On the one hand it’s frustrating to be left straining at thin air in the wake of meaning, on the other there is such a nearness to it that you hope against hope for the leap of the electrical spark of comprehension, the short-circuit to take place.

  1. Peggy Kamuf ed., A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, Columbia University Press, New York, 1998

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The Art of Art History

It occurred to me, driving home from Sainsbury’s with the weekly shop, that it could be said we’re not interested in art per se. All we’re dealing with is Art History, and talking about it as the Art of Art History1. Which strikes me as a paradoxical: we’re learning about these historians and how they viewed the progress of art but not looking at the art itself. Hegel theories get illustrated as an aside with examples of Art, when shouldn’t we look at the art to show how they generate Hegel’s theories? Perhaps the latter is easier, as—although the theories usually originate from artworks—they often become tenuous when applied back onto them. The theories by necessity deal with an ideal that rarely finds adequate expression in the world.

It’s tacitly understood, I think, that they (the tutors) are expecting us to take it to a next stage and apply what we’ve learned to art works and also to recognise these theories in other contexts, see how they’ve progressed and informed other theorists or artists. We are being taught Art History as a strictly historical sequence. Every theorist has their place in the sequence. With writings it’s perhaps much easier to deal with moves towards or away from previous writers. The matter of influence.

However, in the same way that Art History has found it hard to get away from the impression of a progression in art works (à la Hegel, Winckelmann) is it mistaken/distracting to judge Art History itself as progressing? If we are to talk of an “Art of Art History”, if it’s an Art then the same principles and developments that it theorizes can equally be applied back onto it. Indeed, if Art History is to be seen as another branch of Art then will the study of it take Art into new areas which will then become fodder for Art Historians.

Maybe Art History will be the revitalization of Art.

Of course, artists themselves have already started questioning art historical institutions. Andrea Fraser, Mark Dion, anyone who has been invited to curate an exhibition of works from an art institution’s collection have all rewritten the histories of these works in relation to each other. Is this different from if an Art Historian were to do something similar? Or would an Art Historian do something else with a similar effect/intention in mind? I think these days it’s an artificial distinction to make between Artists and Art Historians, the roles are interchangeable. This probably has some effect on the argument itself.

  1. Taken from Donald Preziosi ed., The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, OUP, Oxford, 1998, but also used to describe the course by the tutor, Astrid Schmetterling.

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COURSE—Framing Art—The Origins of Cultural Authenticity

Texts:

  • Quatremère de Quincy, Antoine. Ethical considerations on the Presentation of Works of Art [1815], Arthème Fayard, Paris, 1989, pp. 15–48 (transl. Jean-Paul Martinon)
  • Hegel, G. W. F. The Philosophy of History, transl. by J. Sibree, Dover, 1956, pp. 16–20
  • Inwood, Michael. A Hegel Dictionary, Blackwell, London, 1992, extracts: pp. 27–8, 101–3, 110–2, 118–9, 242–3, 274–5

After the First Reading

I’m having real problems seeing the relevance of Hegel’s piece to the seminar’s subject, and consequently his relation to Quincy.

To recap, this week’s lecture and seminar is entitled “the Origins of Cultural Authenticity” and the notes talk about these texts as “key texts in the origin of museums” and that the session will “introduce the key areas of investigation into the study of museums” and look “at the theoretical foundations of the museum and its relationship to the writing of art history.” Later we are asked to consider the notion of destination and what religious or historical references does it call for.

As far as I can see, there is no direct discussion of museums in the Hegel text. Therefore, the concepts and ideas discussed in it must have a general application to the subject, if we are to accept that it is relevant, and we must assume so, otherwise there is a major flaw in the session, or some kind of cruel joke/test taking place.

The hook, the entrée, must be this concept of “destination.” So how does Hegel deal with this?

Notes from Re-reading

What is “Reason”? Obviously not ‘reasoning’, as I initially understood it. It comes across as a more physical thing. Also, there is an emphasis on movement, development: “destiny”, “ultimate” – “. . . implies that that design is destined to be realized.” “Reason” is not an application but an attribute – which is inherent in an object? This is what confused me, the transferral of human faculties to concepts or objects – need more info on this.

So, I understand the example of the Roman Empire as a product of understanding, but how does it follow that an empirical fact (“its collapse”) is a “work of negative reason”? Understanding produces the concept which is described (I think somewhat confusingly) as an existing entity which sounds physical (although I suppose the RE is only an idea, not of the empire as a physical thing and negative reason is a feature of this idea (“entity”) which causes it to collapse and speculative reason causes the development of a new order. This seems an odd way of describing it.

Definition of ‘entity’: “being, existence, the existence of a thing as contrasted with its attributes.”

Is it the concept that is the entity? Or the actual collection of people and objects that make up the RE? Does it matter? The collection of people can still have, as part of its nature, the seeds of collapse, as much as the concept can.

‘Design’ is ‘destiny’. It inevitably works itself out. Is ‘import’ potential and ‘realization’ actual?

On the stage on which we are observing it—Universal History—Spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality.

(the ‘stage’ of history)

. . . the shape which the perfect embodiment of Spirit assumes—the State.

. . . that all [qualities of Spirit] are but means for attaining Freedom;. . .

[Matter] strives after the realization of its Idea; for in Unity it exists ideally.

Does Matter become Spirit on attaining it’s ‘central point’ (essence, freedom?)?

Spirit is self-contained existence.

–freedom, self-consciousness?

. . . it may be said of Universal History, that it is the exhibition of Spirit in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially.. . . so do the first traces of Spirit virtually contain the whole knowledge of that History.

. . . it is the freedom of Spirit which constitutes its essence.

This consciousness arose first in religion, the in-most region of Spirit; but to introduce the principle into the various relations of the actual world, involves a more extensive problem than its simple implantation; a problem whose solution and application require a severe and lengthened process of culture.

[which seems quite patronising]

Culture is the process by which Spirit is brought to consciousness, and:

. . . the thorough molding and interpenetration of the constitution of society by it, is a process identical with history itself.

“. . . the Christian principle of self-consciousness—Freedom” as opposed to “. . . the principle of Freedom generally”?

The History of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of Freedom; a progress whose development according to the necessity of its nature, it is our business to investigate.

In the process before us, the essential nature of freedom—which involves in it absolute necessity—is to be displayed as coming to a consciousness of itself (for it is in its very nature, self-consciousness) and thereby realizing its existence. Itself is its own object of attainment, and the sole aim of Spirit.

First conclusion

I think I have a better understanding of Hegel’s argument. To address the question of ‘Destination’, for Hegel this works by the development of Spirit to self-consciousness, and freedom. And this, outside of religion, is done by Culture – hence art/museums perform a didactic function – in this case to progress Spirit.

Quatremère de Quincy?

So how does Quatremère de Quincy relate to Hegel and the session’s subject?

His piece begins by stating that “Everyone now believes in the idea that collecting works of art and presenting them in what we now call Cabinets or Museums is the secret behind the well-being of the arts”, but proceeds to suggest that this is in fact denuding the works of their meaning, reducing them to “dull artifacts” and that by so doing we have stifled the development of any future masterpieces.

. . . no one will question the fact that art has to carry on perpetuating itself; but this must be driven by its own nature, not by some self-referencing game.

Could this be a similarity to the working out of the Spirit in Hegel?

No one is able to judge a work of art except by reference to an abstract notion of perfection which never changes. No one can now identify mitigating circumstances that have led artists to modify their technique or legitimise mistakes which, at first, came across as weakness or lack of genius. When seen in museums, works of art no longer retain the context or the circumstances which produced precisely those characteristics which for centuries generated admiration and awe. [. . .]

To what wretched destiny do you condemn Art if its products are no longer tied to the immediate needs of society? [. . .] We must stop pretending that the artworks themselves are preserved in those depositories. Their material relics may have been transported there; but not the network of ideas and relationships that gave the works their lives.

Is QdeQ saying that by divorcing the works from their original contexts we are breaking their possibility of destiny? Or their possibility of being useful as culture and hence as a means to develop Spirit in Universal History?

As much as I now understand the texts much better, I really don’t see how they relate in anything but a superficial way. I’ll have one more go at it tonight and see if I receive the lightning bolt of knowledge.

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Gombrich/Danto—The Story of Art/After the End of Art

There’s too many quotes and not enough explanation in the following post, but I’m moving houses this weekend and I’m not certain when I’ll have internet access again, so I’d like to post it as it stands and return to it when I’m back online.

Introduction

Following a reading of Gombrich’s The Story of Art, I want to draw some parallels with Arthur C. Danto’s After the End of Art, my main subject-matter being the idea of progress in art.

I originally thought I could see a conflict between the two writers, but I realised that actually they seem to complement each other instead.

I came to The Story of Art with a very sceptical attitude, regarding it as a rather a forced distillation of the subject. The premise of a single volume presenting the complete history of art seemed to create more problems than it solved by demanding that everything fall into place in an overarching structure. On a practical note, I also found the form of the book off-putting – the size and weight mean that casual reading is impossible, requiring a reader who is willing and able to devote time and effort to the book – not necessarily a bad thing of course, but it prevents it from being an easy read.

Being an (imminent) art-history student also skewed my reading of the book. I was not so much interested in the subject matter (although I found I learnt a lot from these) as in the connecting dialogues – the justifications for the movement from one chapter to the next, the explanations of the reasoning behind the actions of the individuals or groups treated in the text. It was here that I felt I would find the real meat of the book, the foundations of Gombrich’s system made clear.

After the first reading I went back over the book, pulling out quotes in preparation for this piece, and at the same time I happened to read Arthur C. Danto’s After the End of Art which revised my view of Gombrich’s work, ultimately making me feel much more generous towards it.

Progress?

Progress is a ubiquitous concept in art history. But how is it defined? With respect to Art we could say that over time one artwork influences another, and when looked at from a historical perspective the resulting collection of works can be seen to have a development.

Gombrich: . . . I have tried to tell the story of art as the story of a continuous weaving and changing of traditions in which each work refers to the past and points to the future.. . . a living chain of tradition . . . (p.595)

Danto: . . . if earlier work were not preserved and studied, there would be no possibility of a progressive developmental history, only a kind of natural evolution. (p.62)

The question of the destination of this progression remains open, whether there is a goal or not; whether this progression is in terms of quality or some other characteristic; or whether progress just carries on forever with no purpose.

Danto: . . . the progress has to be in representations that look more and more like visual reality, and hence is a matter of painters handing down their craft from generation to generation. (p.49)

Gombrich’s ambiguous stance over progress

Gombrich is often at pains to distance himself from a concept of art history defined by progress. So, although he says at one point (in the context of artists seeking to be different in their works):

Gombrich: I have tried to make this constant change of aims the key of my narrative, and to show how each work is related by imitation or contradiction to what has gone before. (p.9)

. . . which gives an impression of progression based on supercession, he tempers this by saying a few sentences later:

Gombrich: There is one pitfall in this method of presentation which I hope to avoid but which should not go unmentioned. It is the naïve misinterpretation of the constant change in art as continuous progress. (p.9)

There is a recognition of change specifically as quantitative progress coupled with warnings of the dangers of seeing that as also qualitative.

Gombrich: . . . we must realize that each gain or progress in one direction entails a loss in another, and that this subjective progress, in spite of its importance, does not correspond to an objective increase in artistic value. (p.9)

Gombrich: But we must not forget that art is altogether different from science. The artist’s means, his technical devices, can be developed, but art itself can hardly be said to progress in the way in which science progresses. Each discovery in one direction creates a new difficulty somewhere else. (p.262)

Fait accompli

Later in the book this becomes a fait accompli for Gombrich:

Gombrich: We know very well that in art we cannot speak of progress in the sense in which we speak of progress in learning. A Gothic work of art may be just as great as a work of the Renaissance. (p.341)

Alternative reasons for change

Gombrich: It has often been said that ancient art declined in these years [of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire], and it is certainly true that many secrets of the best period were lost in the general turmoil of wars, revolts and invasions. But we have seen that this loss in skill is not the whole story. The point is that artists at this time seemed no longer satisfied with the mere virtuosity of the Hellenistic period, and tried to achieve new effects. (p.131)

Gombrich: If the picture looks rather primitive to us, it must be because the artist wanted it to be simple. (p.136)

Gombrich: The great works of the Italian Quattrocento masters who followed the lead given by Masaccio have one thing in common: their figures look somewhat hard and harsh, almost wooden. The strange thing is that it clearly is not lack of patience or lack of knowledge that is responsible for this effect. (p.300)
Gombrich: . . . we may find Reynolds disappointing. But it would hardly be fair to expect of him an effect at which he was not aiming.. . . we may find it difficult fully to appreciate the originality of Reynolds’s treatment. (p.467-8)

Gombrich: It is easy to point to faults in [Blake’s] draughtsmanship, but to do so would be to miss the point of his art. (p. 490)

Gombrich: In former times, the style of the period was simply the way in which things were done;. . . In the Age of Reason, people began to become self-conscious about style and styles. (p.478)

Development from basic to advanced

Gombrich: But, if we compare it with the countless representations of the same theme which preceded it, we feel that they have all been groping for the very simplicity that Raphael has attained. (p.316)

Environmental conditions

Gombrich: The atmosphere of the lagoons, which seems to blur the sharp outlines of objects and to blend their colours in a radiant light, may have taught the painters of this city to use colour in a more deliberate and observant way than other painters in Italy had done so far. (p.325)

Habits/accepted notions

Gombrich: . . . the painters of the Middle Ages were no more concerned about the ‘real’ colours of things than they were about their real shapes. (p.326)

Panofsky’s Alternative

As an alternative to the idea of progress:

Danto: . . . Erwin Panofsky, according to which [art’s history] consists in a sequence of symbolic forms that replace one another but do not, as it were, constitute a development. (p.65)

Eternal Styles?

There is the suggestion that Art doesn’t progress so much as that at any one time any artistic style is possible, with social, and some technical considerations dictating which styles actually happen.

Danto: . . . we live and produce within the horizon of a closed historical period. Some of the limitations are technical . . . And some of the limitations are stylistic . . . (p.44)

Wölfflin: Even the most original talent cannot proceed beyond certain limits which are fixed for it by the date of its birth. Not everything is possible at all times, and certain thoughts can only be thought at certain stages of the development.
Danto: . . . what is a work of art at one time cannot be one at another . . . (p.95)

Narrative?

Danto draws on the narrative as the defining characteristic of modernist art history, of which Gombrich is a part.

Danto: Both theorists [Gombrich and Sir Karl Popper] are concerned with what Popper speaks of as the “growth” of knowledge, and hence with an historical process representable via a narrative. (p.50)

Gombrich: When people talk about ‘Modern Art’, they usually think of a type of art which has completely broken with the traditions of the past and tries to do things no artist would have dreamed of before. Some like the idea of progress and believe that art, too, must keep in step with the times. Others prefer the slogan of ‘the good old days’, and think that modern art is all wrong. But we have seen that the situation is really more complex, and that modern art no less than old art came into existence in response to certain definite problems. (p.558)

Gombrich: The day’s events only turn into a ‘story’ when we have gained sufficient distance, to know what effect (if any) they have had on later developments.. . . the story of artists can only be told when it has become clear, after a certain lapse of time . . . a story that dealt first and foremost with the solution of certain artistic problems, solutions, that is, that determined the course of future developments. (p.599-600)

And, according to Danto, since the mid ’60’s that narrative has ended, with the consequence that ‘art’-as defined by that narrative-has ended:

Danto: . . . the end of art—a somewhat dramatic way of declaring that the great master narratives which first defined traditional art, and then modernist art, have not only come to an end, but that contemporary art no longer allows itself to be represented by master narratives at all. (p.xiii)

But that is not the end of art as such:

Danto: It was not my view that there would be no more art, which “death” certainly implies, but that whatever art there was to be would be made without benefit of a reassuring sort of narrative in which it was seen as the appropriate next stage in the story. (p.4)

Danto: My only claim on the future is that this is the end state, the conclusion of an historical process whose structure it all at once renders visible. So it is, after all, very like looking at the end of the story to see how it came out, with this difference: we have not skipped anything, but have lived through the historical sequences which led us here: that this is the end of the story of art. (p.46)

Danto: . . . the end and fulfilment of the history of art is the philosophical understanding of what art is . . . (p.107)

So, what happens outside of history?

The “era of art” begins in about A.D.1400, in Hans Belting’s view, and though we consider the images made before then “art,” they were not conceived as such, and the concept of art played no role in their coming into being.

Danto: It was not that those images were not art in some large sense, but their being art did not figure in their production, since the concept of art had not as yet really emerged in general consciousness, and such images—icons, really—played quite different role in the lives of people than works of art came to play when the concept at last emerged and something like aesthetic considerations began to govern our relationships to them. (p.3)

Conclusion

At first I was tempted to decry Gombrich’s ambivalence (?) towards treating his book as a story of progress. But having read Danto I can see that the history of art as continual develpment and progress towards representative quality is not so out of the question. As has obviously been the case, it demands or a treatment like Gombrich’s (?).

Where it seems to fall down is at either end of the account – exiting the narrative of history we cross over into pre-art or post-art/history as described by Belting and Danto respectively.

Danto’s view make sense to me. And it’s given me a less judgemental view of Gombrich. It suggests that existing theories of artistic progress in ‘historical’ times are still sufficient and don’t necessarily need to be rethought, allowing us to concentrate on developing theories for the other periods.

  • Ernst Gombrich, The Story of Art (London: Phaidon, 1950; 16th edition, 1995; reprinted 2005)
  • Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art
  • Heinrich Wölfflin, Principles of Art History: the Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art, trans. M. D. Hottinger (New York: Dover Publications, n.d.), ix. Quoted in Danto, After the End of Art, p.44
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