Chapter looks at the
traditional approach to Art History exemplified by Ernst Gombrich's The
Story of Art.
Gombrich aimed to demystify
the subject, to "bring intelligible order" to help the new reader of
Art. He tells the story through the eyes of the artists: "There really is
no such thing as Art. There are only artists". In doing so he resorts
almost to idolatry to the great artists: '[they have] given their all in these
works, they have suffered for them, sweated blood over them, and the least they
have a right to ask of us is that we try to understand what they wanted to do'.
At this
point, one can almost predict Howells' and Negreiros' challenging, slightly
cynical view of this and similar treatises. They further point out
that Gombrich deliberately sets his book out as a story, an unfolding panoply
of the history of art.
The chapter then summarises
Gombrich's book quick time, a pursuit the authors admit is an 'outrage' in its
brevity (so how much more of an outrage is my
summary below?)
Briefly the story goes:
•
prehistoric, Egyptian, Greek, Roman;
•
Christianity and the need to decorate the new
places of worship - Romaneque perid;
•
Gothic, and the consequent elevation of Italian
artists, notably Giotto, one of the first "great artists";
•
Renaissance - the period of the 'conquest of
reality' and the development of oil painting (accredited by Gombrich to van
Eyck);
•
17th/18th century development of more personal
art (landscapes of Blake, for example);
•
During ninetheenth century, Gombrich sees
artists viewing themselves as 'a race apart', with the consequences of more
individuality and opening new possibilities for art;
•
This evolved into Impressionist movement - Manet
and Monet and the post Impressionists led by Cezanne;
•
First half of twentieth century is
'experimental', away from traditional art to Cubism, and the work of Picasso;
Now we get to the point of
H&N's chapter as they make following points:
1. The
history of art is narrative and imposes order. Why? They point to our
psychological need to create an illusion of order. I would argue that they miss
a trick here, especially in light of their analysis later in the chapter,
namely that the need is not psychological but a function of the Westernised
model of pseudo science that actively seeks explanation by classification and
analysis. Inevitably this is arbitrary and to a large degree a function of the
author, who is himself part of the culture that justifies and rewards the
proponents of the pseudo science;
2. Gombrich
makes his heroes (plenty of examples in the text, p68). H&N state this is
because Gombrich wishes to colour his narrative and that he places the artist
over the art.
H&N are concerned with
the classical histories of art typified by Gombrich for a number of reasons:
1. The cult of artist over art in traditional
histories eclipses the arguably more
important impact of sociological factors. This is accentuated by the obsession
of art historians with attribution, such that, for example, Man
Wearing a Gilt Helmet has been disattributed as a Rembrandt painting
altogether, thus rendering it almost worthless in terms both of art history and
value. Yet, as the authours muse, nothing in the painting has changed, it is
merely our perception that only Rembrandt can paint a Rembrandt.
2.Gender too plays its
part. There are literally no famous female artists, a fact taken for granted by
Gombrich, but why? H&N more or less answer this themselves: that the Zeitgeist of
the 1950s (when Gombrich first wrote) was not to question male supremacy in the
same way as later generations would.
3.There are twin related
problems for the classical history of art text: they are Eurocentric - written
by Europeans largely for Europeans - and therefore offer primacy to European
art over say Chinese or Islamic art (although I
would add in the latter case this is at least partly explained by the primacy
of word over image in Islamic faith) and other forms of art: sculpture,
architecture and, latterly new media.
4. That we should even try
to understand what artists are trying to do. Is it not possible that their
motives were not as simple as paying the bills by doing what they were (very) good at?
5. That history of art is
tied up with the commercial art market; the emphasis on context and attribution
leads to concentration on works and artists (note the disattribution of Man
Wearing a Gilt Helmet)
H&N then perform
something of a volte face during
an extended analysis of Guernica, Picasso's
mural depicting the bombing of the town by the Luftwaffe in 1937.
They conclude, quite simply, that Guernica
IS an example of art as a statement, i.e. more than financial or
aesthetic value.
Their point
does, I think, have resonance for photography as it is just such works as Iwo Jima and the naked Vietnamese
girl that bring the horror of war directly to the living room. If Guernica is art, then do not
these images equally qualify?
In the Key
Debate section, H&N turn to the work of Kesner, a Czech art specialist
who is a very critical of the art history community, claiming 'a near ignorance
of world art' is 'a badge of their professional status'.
•
•
But, interestingly, Kesner is a supporter of
Western ideas in the history of art. He claims that only Western working
concepts: it was on account of these that 'works of other traditions have been
discovered as objects worthy of preservation, care, aesthetic mediation,
scholarly investigation in the first place.' He is a supporter of the Western
tradition as he considers it is the only one that answer such questions as why
an object looks the way it does, what it its meaning, why was it produced. Only
the Western tradition, Kesner says, has been able to be enriched by the contact
with other cultures.
•
•
He adds that an alternative - a truly
muliticultural history - would treat works of art in the specific
spatiotemporal horizon of their production. This would lead to art history
based on a 'dense mosaic of narrowly defined cultural groups....irreconcilable
with the 'need to meaningfully organise this diversity into larger plots and
narratives...'.
•
•
As H&N point out, the chapter has then gone
full circle, from describing and challenging the received wisdoms of
traditional history, then ending with 'challenging the challenge', i.e, in simple
terms, maybe the Western art tradition is not so bad after all as it provides
the only realistic framework for the analysis, classification and reasoning of
art in general.
•
•
Of course, what H&N could have
gone on to say is why bother at all? Is the goal of analysing, classifying and
reasoning of art a worthwhile one? Why not simply accept art as it IS? It is,
after all, visual. There is a certain irony in using words to describe visual
culture. It is a very Western tradition even to desire the academic study of
art; other cultures seem to have managed very well for centuries producing the
output without the need to analyse the whats, hows, and whys of the
production.
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