green aN Osford History of Art ea] | The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology New Epition Edited by Donald Preziosi UNIVERSITY PRESS(Oxford University Pres, Great Clarendon Steet, Oxford oxa 60 Oxord Univesity Press isa department ofthe University of Oxford Te fucters the Univesity’ objective of excelene in research, schlachip, snd education by publishing worldwidein Oxford New Yok Auckland Cape‘Town Dares Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Dethi Shanghst Taipei Tosont> With office in Argeatina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic Fence Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Postugal Singapore South Korea Switzrlind Thallind Turkey Ukesine Vitam Osford is a reyistered tade mark of Onforé University Press in the UK and in cern other countries Publiched in the United Seates : bby Oxfont Univesity Press Ine, New York Introduction and tx selection © Donald Precio 2009 ‘The mont sights ofthe auchor have been asserted ‘Database right Oxford University Pres (makes) Fist publched rpg Secoail evn 2009 Allright esrved. 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Lad ISBN 978-o-19-922981-0 F357 918642Contents Introduction t Donald Preziosi, Art History: Making the Visible Legible 7 Chapter 1 Art as History Pee Introduction | 3 Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects 2 Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture 4 Whitney Davis, Winckelmann Divided: Mourning SSS the Death of Art History Michael Baxandall, Patterns of intention Chapter 2 ‘Aesthetics Z Introduction $5 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement 6 Georg Withelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosophy of Fine Art fo 'D. N. Rodowick, Impure Mimesis, or the Ends of the Aesthetic 8% William Pietz, Fetish 109 Chapter 3 Form, Content, Style Introduction 15 Heinrich Wolff 9 Emst Gombrich, Style 29 David Summers, Form, Nineteenth-Century Metaphysics, and the Problem of Are Historical Description ut David Summers, Siyle 44Chapter 4 Anthropology and/as Art History eee Introduction Sr Alois Riegl, Leading Characteristics of the Late i Roman Kenstwollen : oe a5 § Aby Warburg, Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America 163, Edgar Wind, Warburg's Concept of Kultrwisienschaft and its Meaning for Aesthetics 189 Claire Farago, Silent Maves: On Excluding the Ethnographic Subject from the Discourse of Art History 195 Chapter 5 Mechanisms of Meaning eye tHe EEE EEE eee Pe Cee Per Inteoduction as Erwin Panofsky, Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art a0 Hubert Damisch, Semiotics and conography 236 Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson, Semiotics and Aut History: A Discussion of Context and Senders 243 Stephen Bann, Meaning/Interpretation 236 Chapter 6 Deconstruction and the Limits of Interpretation Tnwoduetion a7 eee cee ee Serre eer eee Stephen Melville, The Temptation of New Perspectives 7% Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art 284 Meyer Schapiro, The Still Life as a Personal Object: A Note on Heidegger and Van Gogh 296 Jacques Derrida, Restitutions of the Truth in Pointing (Pointure] jor Chapter 7 Authorship and Identity ee Tatroduction 37 Michel Foucault, What is an Author 3a Craig Owens, The Discourse of Others: Femi and Postmodernism 335 Mary Kelly, Re-Viewing Modemise Criticism 352Judith Butter, Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and BE Feminist Theory 336 of the Late Rey Chow, Postmodern Automatons 367 E FE 7 ‘Amelia Jones, Every Man Knows Where and How oper: Beauty Gives Him Pleasure’: Beauty Discourse 16a and the Logic of Aesthetics a5 ubturwissenscbaft i‘ ‘Jennifer Doyle, Queer Wallpaper 39r 9 iuding the ical i Chapter 8 Globalization and its Discontents curse of Art History 5 fulton a Timothy Mitchell, Orientalism and the = Exhibisionary Order 409 ‘nology: Carol Duncan, The Act Museum as Ritual 4 issance Are no Walter Benjamin, The Work of Artin the Age = ae ofits Technological Reproducibility 465 seas Satya P. Mohanty, Can Our Values be Objective? pipes On Ethics, Aesthetics, and Progressive Politics “3 ind Senders i on 7 Marquard Smith, Visual Culture Studies: Questions 7 of History, Theory, and Practice 7 Aterpretation Maria Fernandez, ‘Lifelike’: Historiczing Process and Responsiveness in Digital Art 468 Norra oe Donald Preziosi, Epilogue: ‘The Art of Art History 488 iow Perepecti eee Coda, Plato's Dilemma and the Tasks Work of Are 284 of the Art Historian Today 504 sssonal Object: 298 Notes 310 Trath jot List of Texts 364 List of Mlustrations 366 = Biographical Notes 389 pr 1: Feminists Glossary we 335 ritiism 38 Index stosrein itsactual urban context the all that is hidéen and presumed all that is obscured in that wider and commodification, hidden by 2 fll view in the museum itself istinguished in modernity apart xe framing commentaries of this long been seen as fundamental xt the nature of reality; indeed to 'y modetnity-specifc reification Abyattistry is notsome marginal yelay world in which we live; the hat still wish to term ‘art ader evtical relevance and social “ity to reckon with the challenge ceways it does so in human soci- do anything les today would be histories, the poignancy of arts rath of art's promise to being: a cintersetionsand recreations of t Oxford, 2008 Donald Preziosi Art History: Making the Visible Legible, .° 1998 ‘Ast bistory is one of a nctwork of interselated institutions and professions whose overall fonction has been to fabricate ahistorical past that could be placed under systematic observation foruse in the present. As with its allied fields—artcrticisit, aeithétic philosophy, art practice, connoisseurthip, the art market, museology, tourism, commodity fashion systems, and the her tige industry-thearthistorical discipline incorporated an arnalgam of ana- lytic methods, theoretical petspectives, rhetorical or discursive protocols, and epistemological technologies, of diverse ages and origins. Although the formal incorporation of ar history into university curric~ tla began in Germany in the 1840s, by the end of the nineteenth century the greatest number of academic programmes, professorships, students, and advanced degrees conferred were in the United States rather than in Europe, a situation even more marked a century laterThere were differing circuma- stances and justifications for its academic institutionalization in Europe and its former colonies, and the early profession was variously allied with or pat terned after the methods of philosophy, philology, literature, archaeology, vatious physical seiences,connoisseurship, or atcritcism 2 Nevertheless, wherever arthistory was professionalized,ittook the problem of arusalty asits general area of concern, consteuingits objects of study-—indi- vidual works of art, however defined—as evidentiain nature. It was routinely {guided by the hypothesis that an artworkis reflective,emblematior generally representative of is original time, place, and circumstances of production. Art ‘objects ofall kinds came to have the status of historical documents in the dual sense that (x) each wns presumed to provide significent often unique and, on. ‘occasion, profoundly revealing evidence for the character of an age, nation, person, or peopl; end that (2) their appearance was the resultant product ofa historical milieu, however narrowly or broadly framed. "The later sense has regularly included the various socal, cultural, politi- cal, economic, philosophical, or religious forces arguably in play at apart lar time and place, Characteristically, disciplinary practice was devoted to reconstructing the elusive ‘realities of such afnbient forces—from the inten- tion thet might be ascribed to an individual makes, to more general historical forces or citcamstances. In short the principal aim of all art historical seedy has been to make artworks more fally giblein and tothe present, ‘Since the institutional beginnings of art history there has been only loose and transitory consensus about the efficacy of various paradigms or analytic DONALD PREZIOS! 7methods for rendeving aevorks adequately legible, the key issue being the quantity znd quality of historical or background information sufficient toa envineing interpretation of a given object. As criteria of explanatory adequacy have changed overtime, and the purposes to which any suchunder, standings might be putin the present have varied widely over the past twp centuries there has been considerable disagreement regarding the extent's> ich an are object can be take, legitimatey.asindieative or symptomatic of «ishistorical milieu, Forsome,art historical inteipretation was complete and sufficient with the explication of work’ relationship toan evolving stylistic system manifested fither by an individual arts (a particular corpus of work or aus) or by a broader aesthetic school or movement. For others interpretation involred the articulation of interelaionships between stylistic develapment and the unfolding ofan arts biography or (xin the case ofthe siteenth- century Get and historian Giorgio Vasari regional and national style culminating in the gnthetic work ofa great artist like Michelangelo) inthe present For some, explication approached adequacy only with the aticalaton of an object's larger historical ‘Context foregrounding the works documentay ot ‘presentational status and its ciscumstances of production snd reception * “There has also been no abiding consensus about the limits or bownd- ales of art history's object-domain, For some, that domain was properly fhe corpus of traditional ary items comprising the ine ar of painting and sculpture, and the architecture of ruling clases or hegemonic Institue tions. Such a domain of atention was normally justified by reference either to shared criteria of demonstrable skill in execution o: to what was docu, ‘Pented (or postulated) as self-conscious aesthetic intent, Charactedstialy {his excluded the greater mass of images objects, and buildings produced Pyheman societies. For others, the purview of disciplinary attention ideally incorporated the lates the conventional ine arts occasionally forming die, tinguishable subset o idealized canon of historical artefacts The situavion ve {farther compounded by the modern muscologieal attention given to virtually ny icem of material culture, conflating current exhibitionary value (its righ 2llty ot poignancy within the formal logic ofan unfolding system of stylistic ‘ot intellectual fashion) with soca, culeurl,or historia! importance. ‘The filler network of associated discourses and professions of which art bistory isan integral and co-constructed facet has only begun tobe examined ~sbyart historians and others, often under the discursive umbrella of sulted ‘history or visual culture studies. Critical historiogeaphie accounts of the dice rical artefacts The situation is icalattention given to virtual texhibitonay valve (song, unfolding system ofstylistic historical importance. + and professions of which art 2as only begun to be examined liscursive umbrella of cultural Jngraphic accounts ofthe dis- 2) unresolved questions about study; (2) the fragmentation historical objeces across dif- theoretical assumptions; and varadigms of explanation and tion, deen biographical and genea- srative accounts chatting the » or as unproblematic reflec- or place), or accounts of the logies. Nevertheless, the fol- | i t | E lowing observations may be applicable to a broad spectrum of this network. of practices Tn addition to a shared concern with questions of enuslity and evidence, the most fundamental principle underlying all these interrelated fields has been the assumption that changes in artistic form signal changes in individual ox collective mentality ot intention. Most commonly, the artefact or object is taken asa specific inflection of some personal or shared perspective oncertain ideas, hemes, or values—whether the objects construed as reflective or con- structive (orboth) of such ideas. A corollary of this set of assumptions is that changes in form (and atti- tude) are themselves indicative ofa éraectory of development; an evolution oF overall dection in mentality which might be matesilly charted in stylistic changes overtime and space. Such a figure (or thape) i time has often been interpreted as evidence fora shape of time itself a spiritual teleology or evo- lution. For some, artistic phenomena have been construed as providing key documentary evidence for such spiritual or socal evolutions. ‘The most pervasive theory ofthe art objec in ar history a8 well as in con- ventional aesthetic philosophies wasits conception asa medium of communi- cation or expression. The object was construed withia this communicational or linguistic paradigm as 2'vehicle'by means of which the intentions, values, stsitudes, eas, political or other messages or the emotional state(s) of the zaker—or by extension the maker’ social and historical contexts—were conveyed, by design or chance, to targeted (or circumstantial) beholder. ‘This was linked tothe widespread presumption in art history and elsewhere that formal changes exist order to effect changes in an audience's understand- ing of what was formerly conveyed before the in{tervention of the new object. For some art historians artworks were seen as catalyes for social and cultural change; for others they were the products of such changes. In either case, the ‘analytical object was commonly sited within a predicative or propositional framework so as to be pertinent to a patticular family of questions, the most basicof which wast in what way's this objecta representation, expression; reflec- tion, or embodiment ofits particular time and place—thatis,a trace or effect of the peculiar mentality ofthe person, people, or sociery that produced it? In the history of at history there were elaborated a variety of criteria, classifying objects of study according to their ability to convey such informa sion, For tome, the presumptive semantic ‘carrying capacity’of certain kinds of objecis wasa function of traditional hierarchical distinctions between ine’ and ‘applied’ arts although notions regarding the semantic densities of al kinds of objects have varied widely among historians over Common to these hypotheses was a facet of at historical practice shared with ite allied discources and institutions—namely, a fundamental concern with siting its objects of study within a discursive field, chetorical framework, ‘or analytic stage such thet the work’ specifiable relationship to pertinent aspects of is original environment may be construed causally in some sense. Art history was closely allied with (indeed has been ancillary to) museo- Jogy in this fixing-in-place of individual objects within the ideal horizons of a (potentially universal) history of artistic form—with the assignment, in short, of locus or ‘address'to the work within a finely calibrated system of chronological or geographic relationships of causality or influence. DONALD PREZIOS 9From the sequential juxtaposition of objects in museum space to the for~ matting of photo or slide collections (material or virtual) to the curricular composition of university departments, disciplinary practice has been char acteristically motivated by a desire to constaue the significance of works as a function oftheir relative postion in an unfolding historical or genealogical scheme of development, evolution, progress or accountable change. Such schemata have framed objects within broad sectors of social and intellectual history, and within the evolving careers of single artists, in essentially similar ways. In this regard, the given object is a marker of difference, in a massive differential and relational system, from other objects—a situation clearly reflected in the very language of description, evaluation, and criticism of art Crucial to the articulation of art history a8 a eystematic or even ‘scien tific historical discipline in the nineteenth century was the construction of ‘a centralized data mass to which the work of generations of scholars have contributed, Thie consisted of a universally extendable archive (potentially coterminous, by the late ewentieth century, with the material culture ofall hhuman societies) within which every possible object of study might find its unique and proper place relative to all others, Every item might thereby be sited (and cited) as referencing or indexing another or others. A principal riotivation for this mative labour over the past two centuries has been the assembly of material evidence for the construction of historical narratives of social, cultural, or cognitive development. ‘Grounded upon the associations of similarity or contiguity (or metaphor and metonymy) among its incorporated specimens or examples, this discip- Tinary archive became a critical artefact in its own right; itself a systematic, panopticinstrumene for the calibrating and accounting for variation in con- finuity,and for continuity in variation and difference, Such an epistemologi- cal technology was clearly central o,and a paradigmatic instance of the social and political formation of the modern nation-state and its various egitimiz- ing paradigms of ethnic uniqueness and autochthony.or evolutionary progress ‘or decline in ethics, aesthetics, hogemony,or technology. “Arthistory shared with ite allied fields, and especially with museums, che fabrication of elaborate typological orders of specimens’ of artistic activity linked by multiple chains of causality and influence over time and space and across the kaleidoscope of cultuces (wiich could thereby be interlinked in ‘evolutionary and diffusionist ways), This immense labour on the past of gen exations of historians critics, and connoisseurs wasiin the service of assigning to objects a distinct place and moment in the historical ‘evolution’ of what thereby became validated a the pan-human phenomenon of artas a natural sand legitimate subject its own right; as cultural matter of deep significance because of whatit arguably revealed about individuals, nations, or races. From the beginning, the principal concern of historians and critics of the visual arts was the linkage of objects to patterns of causality assumed to est betweesi objects and makers, objects and objects, and between all of them and their various contemporary contexts. Underlying this was a family of organic metaphors linked to certain common theories of race in the early ‘modern petiod: in particular the presumption ofa certain demonstrable kin~ slip, ger tnd care! gene whi tior has thu his: lial dat the Fr up de fir ae le bv th escts in museum space tothe for= ‘al or vrtual) to the curticular plinaty practice has been char= te the significance of works asa ding historical or genealogical 5,07 accountable change. Such cectors of social and intellectual ‘le artists in essentially similar rkes of difference, in a massive sx objects—a situation clearly valuation, and criticism of art. a8 a systematic or even ‘scien sptury vas the construction of E generations of scholars have xtondable archive (potentially vith the material culture ofall object of study might find its Every item might thereby be snother or others. A principal ast owo centuries has been the tion of historical narratives of ity or contiguity (or metaphor vnens or examples, this discip- own tight; itself a systematic, 2ouating for variation in con~ srence, Such an epistemologi- ligmaticinstence of the social state and its various legitimie- hony or evolutionary progress *hnology. especially with maseums, the specimens’ of artistic activity ence over time and space end ald thereby be interlinked in 1se labouron the part of gen- vasin the service of assigning historical ‘evolution’of what enomenon of artas a natural almatter of deep significance duals, nations ot races. historians and erties of the of causality assumed to cxist ts, and between all of them erlying this was a family of theories of race in the early ‘ncertain demonstrable kine ship, sameness, or homogencity among cbjects produced or appearing ata given time and in a particular place. Ie yas claimed that the products ofan vidual, stu, nation, ethnic group, clase, genes or race could—if read careflly and deeply enough—be shown to share certain common, consist- nique properties or principles of formation, Corresponding t this ‘was @ teinporal notion of the art historical ‘period’ marked by similar homo- agencities of style, thematic preoccupation, or technical approach to formal construction or composition, Att history and anuseology traditionally fabricated histories of form as surrogates fr or parallels to histories of persons o peoples narrative stagings which served (on the mode of forensic laboratory science) to llustrate, dem onstrate, and delineate significant aspects of the chaacter, level of civiliaa- tion, or degree of social or cognitive advancement or deline ofan individual ornation.Artobjects were ofdocumentary importance ins faras they might have evidential value relative tothe past’ causal lations tothe present, and thus the relationship of ourselves to others. The academic discourse of art history thereby served as a powerful modern concordance for systematically linking together aesthetics, ethics, and social history providing essential vali- dating instruments forthe modern heritage industry and associated modes of the publicconsumption of objects and images, From its beginnings, and in concert with its allied professions, art history ‘worked to make the past synoptically visible co that it might function in end ‘upon the presentjso thatthe present might be seen as the demonstrable prod suc ofa particular past; and so that the past go staged might be Framed as an objec of historical desire: gated as that from which 2 modern citizen might desire descent. ‘The broad amalgam of complementary fields in which the modern diccip- line of art history is positioned never achieved fixed or uniform institutional integration, Nevertheless in the long run its looseness, and the opportunistic adaptability ofits component institutions and professions, proved particu- larly effective in naturtlicing and validating the very idea of ast as a‘universal’ hhuman phenomenon, Thus framed as an ober of study, the art of at history simultaneously became a powerful inserumene for imagining and scripting the social, cognitive, and ethical histories of all peoples. ‘Asakeystone enterprise in making the visible legible, art history made of its Iegibilities a uniquely powerful medium for fibrcating, sustaining, and transforming the identity and history of individuals and nations “Th principal product of at history has thus been modernity itself