Observing Art Facts, Meaning, Theory ‘[Art history] has nothing whatsoever to do with deduction or speculation: what it publishes are not aesthetic judgments, but historical facts which might then serve as a subject for inductive research. The benchmarks of the history of art are as little of an aesthetic nature as political history serves as the subject for moral judgments [ … ] the question whether a painting is beautiful or not is actually not in any way justifiable in the history of art, and the question for instance of whether Raphael or Michelangelo, Rembrandt or Rubens achieved greater perfection is an art historical absurdity. Moriz Thausing (1838-84) ‘The Place of Art History as an Academic Discipline [Wissenschaft]’ (1873) Giorgio Vasari – Self Portrait (1566-68) Giorgio Vasari – Frontispieces of The Lives of the Most Excellent Architects, Painters and Sculptors (Florence, 1550 and 1568) Cimabue (ca. 1240-1302) L: Maestà (1280) R: Flagellation of Christ (1280s) Giotto – Kiss of Judas (1305) Arena Chapel, Padua. ‘Giotto truly eclipsed Cimabue's fame just as a great light eclipses a much smaller one. Hence, Cimabue was, in one sense, the principal cause of the renewal of the art of painting, but Giotto, though his follower, inspired by a praiseworthy ambition and helped by Heaven and his own natural talent, was the man whose thoughts rose even higher and who opened the gates of truth to those painters who have subsequently brought the art of painting to that level of perfection and grandeur at which we see it in our own century.’ Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, trans. Julia Conway Bondanella (Oxford, 1991) ‘Cimabue,’ p. 13. ‘I have endeavoured not only to tell what such men [i.e. artists] did but, as I narrate, to pick out the better works from the good ones, and the best works from the better ones, noting with some care the methods, colours, styles, traits, and inventions of both painters and sculptors. To inform those readers who would not know how to do so for themselves, I have investigated as carefully as I knew how the causes and origins of their styles as well as the improvement or decline of the arts which have occurred in various times and among different peoples.’ Vasari, Lives of the Artists, trans. Julia Conway Bondanella (Oxford, 1991) Preface to Part 2, p 48. undefined Giorgio Vasari The Garden of Gethsemane (1569) The turn to a ‘positive science’ • ‘The aestheticizing approach has been a great disadvantage for the reputation of a discipline which has only recently been successfully inaugurated ... It created the impression that history of art represented a sort of intellectual sofa – a sort of snack which carries with it the threat of indigestion - and not a hearty intellectual fare, a field fraught with difficulties and satisfaction like any other scholarly endeavour. For these reasons, the history of art has been unnecessarily often associated with aesthetics, and we are here all the more admonished to clarify the distinguishing characteristics more strongly than the common elements.’ Moriz Thausing ‘The Place of Art History as an Academic Discipline [Wissenschaft]’ (1873) Moriz Thausing (1838-1884) ‘I can imagine the best history of art in which the word ‘beautiful’ does not at all occur. Art historical judgments are limited to the conditions under which a work of art was created, as these are discovered through research and autopsy.’ Moriz Thausing ‘The Place of Art History as an Academic Discipline [Wissenschaft]’ (1873) In Defence of Vasari …. ‘To those who think I have excessively praised some artisans either old or modern, and that drawing comparisons between the older ones and those of this era would be a laughing matter, I do not know how else to reply except that I intended to give praise not simple-mindedly but, as they say, with respect for places, times, and other similar circumstances; in truth, taking the example of Giotto, no matter how highly praised he was in his own day, I do not know what would be said of him and other older artisans if they had existed in Buonarroti's time; moreover, the men of this century, which has reached the peak of perfection, would not have attained the heights they have reached if those who came before had not been as they were, and it can be believed, in short, that what I have said in praise or in blame was not said maliciously but only to speak the truth, or what I believed to be the truth. But one cannot always have in hand the goldsmith's scales.’ Vasari, Lives of the Artists, pp. 509-10 Friedrich Gröger Portrait of Carl Friedrich von Rumohr (1802) Carl Friedrich von Rumohr (1785-1843) Author of Italienische Forschungen (Italian Enquiries) (Berlin, 1827) Pioneer of the ‘Philological Method’ borrowed from historians at the Humboldt University, Berlin The Historical Critical Method Origins in the interpretation and criticism of biblical and classical texts: Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1821) - Roman History (Berlin, 1811-1832) David Strauss (1806-75) – The Life of Jesus, critically Analysed (Tübingen, 1835-36) Leopold Ranke (1795-1886) – German History in the Age of the Reformation (Berlin, 1839-47) Based on systematic and critical reading of historical source texts Guided by belief in objectivity and idea of presenting history ‘as it really was’ (Ranke) Gustav Friedrich Waagen (1794-1868) Director of the Art Gallery, Berlin Author of Über Hubert und Johann van Eyck (Breslau, 1822) First catalogue raisonnée Use of historical sources and critical analysis of their reliability Text, letter Description automatically generated ‘The information preserved for us by Vasari about Johann van Eyck … has been contradicted in many ways, and moreover its credibility has been challenged due to his claim that he has no source. It cannot be denied, he provides no guarantor for what he says about van Eyck. And yet he is not entirely silent about his sources. In the paragraph where he deals with van Eyck and many other Netherlandish painters, he says, when discussing the painter Lambert Lombard: “Domenico Lansonio of Liège, a highly learned man with fine judgement in all matters, told me many things about the excellent qualities of this Lambert in his letters”.’ Waagen, Über Hubert und Johann van Eyck, pp. 4-5 Text, letter Description automatically generated ‘The reader should not expect any literary accomplishment … when establishing individual facts that provided a point of support in obscure periods, I found it necessary to present them in an intricate manner and their connections extensively, since any benefit that I can bring to others with my work rests on the reliability of the details, I can assure, have been fully weighed up, examined and inspected in every way.’ Rumohr, Italienische Forschungen, Vol. I, p. ix. A picture containing text, receipt Description automatically generated Text, letter Description automatically generated Text, letter Description automatically generated The Idea of Positive Science (1) ‘ … just like the physical sciences, research [into culture] culminates in the establishment of constant relations between facts …. ‘The entire secret of our practical progress, 300 years, is encapsulated here: we have separated out and defined pairs of facts [i.e. causes and effects], such that whenever the first appears, the second one never fails to follow …’ Hippolyte Taine, Essais de Critique et de l’Histoire (Paris, 1858) p. xxiv and xxvv Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893) The Idea of Positive Science (2) ‘The key ideas are as follows: (1) An emphasis upon verification (or some variant such as falsification): Significant propositions are those whose truth or falsehood can be settled in some way. (2) Pro-observation: What we can see, feel, touch, and the like, provides the best content or foundation for all the rest of our non-mathematical knowledge. ‘ Ian Hacking, ‘Positivism’ from Hacking, Representing and Intervening (Cambridge, 2012) p. 41 Positivism, objectivity and their problems • Examples of Art Historical Positivism •Research into who painted / sculpted / engraved / installed what, where and when (questions of provenance, attribution etc.) •Research into the life history of artworks (who owned them, how much they were sold for etc.) •Catalogues raisonnées •Topographical Studies •Iconological dictionaries • ‘Research into sources leads, as every expert knows, to the singular item; hence the results of my research disintegrated into a series of ragged treatises, for which I could provide no external coherence. In order to avoid repetition of this, it therefore seemed all the more necessary to determine the point of view from which I was grasping the individual objects. I was thereby prompted, against my wishes and initial purpose, to reach into the domain of theory …’ Rumohr – Italienische Forschungen, p. ix •‘The hundreds of pictures in a gallery … Art History places them in a context they do not possess in themselves, and for which they were not painted, and from which there arises a sequence, a continuity, under the influence of which the painters of these pictures stood without being aware of it.’ • • • • • •Gustav Droysen, Historik. Enzyklopädie und Methodologie der Geschichte (1858) (Munich, 1958) p. 35 A picture containing text, indoor, different, several Description automatically generated David Teniers the Younger Archduke Leopold in his Art Gallery in Brussels (1647-51) ‘ … if historians are to contribute distinctive knowledge, annals of events have to be ordered according to some principle. The alternative … amounts to nothing more than a “planless conglomeration of human actions.” But what might serve as an ordering principle? This question in turn raises other questions. Does history have meaning? Shape? Pattern? Direction? Stages?’ John Hall, Cultures of Inquiry (Cambridge, 1999) p. 35. •‘The topics of socio-historical inquiry are not pre-formed things in the world itself. Instead, inquiry draws aspects of the world into focus through concepts like “industrialisation”, “social movement”, “coup d’état” and “citizenship” … we are best served by assuming that these organizing rubrics are not only historically saturated but also mediated by a welter of meaningful interests that shape inquiry.’ • •John Hall, Cultures of Inquiry (Cambridge, 1999) p. 33 •Some art historical examples: • •Renaissance •Medieval •Modern(ism) / modernity •‘Early’, ‘late’ •Baroque, Classical / Neoclassical, Gothic •Italianate •Avant-garde •Archaic • Max Weber (1864-1920) ‘Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy’ (1904) ‘The quality of an event as a “social-economic” event is not something which it possesses “objectively.” It is rather conditioned by the orientation of our cognitive interest, as it arises from the specific cultural significance which we attribute to the particular event in a given case.’ On the Methodology of Social Sciences (Glencoe, 1949) p. 64 and 80. Max Weber (1864-1920) ‘There is no absolutely "objective" scientific analysis of culture. ... All knowledge of cultural reality ... is always knowledge from particular points of view. ... An “objective” analysis of cultural events, which proceeds according to the thesis that the ideal of science is the reduction of empirical reality to “laws,” is meaningless [because] the knowledge of social laws is not knowledge of social reality but is rather one of the various aids used by our minds for attaining this end.’ On the Methodology of Social Sciences (Glencoe, 1949) p. 64 and 80. •‘Knowledge is not produced by passively perceiving individuals, but by interacting social groups engaged in particular activities. And it is evaluated communally and not by isolated individual judgement. Its generation … must be accounted for by reference to the social and cultural context in which it arises. Its maintenance is not just a matter of how it relates to reality, but also of how it relates to the objectives and interests a society possess by virtue of its historical development.’ • • •Barry Barnes, ‘Conceptions of Knowledge’ in C. Harrison, ed., Modernism, Criticism, Realism (London, 1984) p. 104 Objectivity in Interpretation • Case Study 1: The Nature of Modernism • Art works For Clement Greenberg the rise of modern painting was dominated by the quest for artistic autonomy in the face of popular culture (‘kitsch’). The logic of modernism was driven by an emphasis on the physicality of painting, resulting in a flattening of the pictorial space and, eventually, abstraction. Greenberg, Clement (1939). ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch,’ in Partisan Review Vol. VI No. 5, pp. 34-39. •For Thomas Crow the flatness of modernist art was a positive engagement with popular culture, and in particular, with the flat surfaces of advertising posters. • •Thomas Crow, ‘Modernism and Mass Culture in the Visual Arts’ (1985) •For Rosalind Krauss, modernity brought about a crisis in subjective experience, as a result of which modernism was concerned with interrogation of identity. •Consequently, for Krauss, it is surrealism, rather than abstraction, that is of key importance. • •Krauss, Rosalind, Amour Fou. Photography and Surrealism (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1985). Case Study 2: The Meaning of Olympia • Edouard Manet Olympia (1863/65) Left: Titian, Venus of Urbino (1534) Right: Giorgione / Titian, Dresden Venus (1510-11) Goya, The Naked Maya (1797-1800) Edouard Manet Olympia (1863/65) Gustave Courbet Bathers (1853) ‘I want to argue that, for the critics of 1865, sexual identity was precisely what Olympia did not possess. She failed to occupy a place in the discourse on Woman, and specifically she was neither a nude, nor a prostitute: by that I mean she was not a modification of the nude in ways which made it clear that what was being shown was sexuality on the point of escaping from the constraints of decorum — sexuality proffered and scandalous.’ T J Clark, ‘Preliminaries to a Possible Treatment of “Olympia” in 1865,’ Screen 21.1 (1980) p. 32 ‘Let me make what I am saying perfectly clear. Olympia refuses to signify — to be read according to the established codings for the nude, and take her place in the Imaginary. But if the picture were to do anything more than that, it (she) would have to be given, much more clearly, a place in another classed code — a place in the code of classes.’ T J Clark, ‘Preliminaries,’ p. 39 For Clark, therefore, Olympia is a failure: Peter Wollen, ‘Manet: Modernism and Avant-Garde,’ Screen 21.2 (1980) p. 15 ‘This, it seems to me, is the point where Timothy Clark, in his exegesis of Olympia, is most confused. 'The signs of social identity are as unstable as all the rest'. Does he really think that class identity is something necessarily clearly and definitely fixed? That a successful prostitute might carry the signs of more than one class seems inadmissible to him. Yet a prostitute, particularly one who employs a servant, wears jewellery, refuses to be abject as she should and to abhor luxury, simply is not an unambiguous proletarian …. Wollen, ‘Manet,’ p. 16. ‘The problem lies in the very project of Realism, the idea that there is Reality and here am I (and Olympia, and Manet, and Courbet) and I can recognise my place in it — tied down, got right, given an identity …’ Wollen, ‘Manet,’ p. 17. Here, therefore, is the difference between these interpretations. For Clark, Olympia has all sorts of ambiguities and lack of clarity because Manet failed to convey the class / sexual identity of the prostitute consistently, For Wollen, Olympia has all sorts of ambiguities because it reflects the contradictory and ambiguous nature of reality ‘Fundamentally, the problem is whether to accept or reject contradiction in the real, whether to categorise all inconsistencies as signs of cognitive dissonance or failure to signify, or possibly as reflections in knowledge of a contradictory reality’ Wollen, p. 20 But the point is that no appeal to objective facts can settle this argument. Historical Narration • •Hayden White (1928 - 2018) - history as a kind of writing that maps historical events onto narrative structures (‘emplotment’). White, Hayden, Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe (Baltimore, 1973) p. 5 White, Hayden, Metahistory, pp. 6-7 White, Hayden, Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe p. 7 •Consider the tradition of artists’ biographies, which involves constructing a narrative about the artist’s life, using emplotment according to a particular literary genre. Thus, Artemisia Gentileschi is heroic, Suzanne Valadon is romantic, van Gogh is tragic …. …. Tracy Emin is satirical