Universiteit Utrecht
Faculteit der Letteren
Studiegebied Geschiedenis
Art and its Canon
Towards a New Approach to the History of Art
Promoter: Dr. J. Segal
Annelies Monseré
0253855
Masterthesis
Master Moderne Tijden
1
Table of contents
Introduction
3
1. Art history and its canon
5
1.1 Introduction to the problem
5
1.2 Naturalising history of art and its canon
6
1.3 Deconstructing history of art and its canon
11
1.4 Contemporary approaches
20
1.5 Towards a new approach
24
2. The case of Abstract Expressionism
27
2.1 Short introduction to the legitimation of abstract art
27
2.2 Contemporary legitimation by art critics
30
2.2.1 Reception of Abstract Expressionism
30
2.2.2 Clement Greenberg
33
2.2.3 Harold Rosenberg
36
2.2.4 Conclusion
40
2.3 Criticism
41
2.4 Legitimation in referencebooks
43
2.4.1 Ernst Gombrich
43
2.4.2 Hugh Honour and John Fleming
45
2.4.3 Marilyn Stokstad
48
2.4.4 David Summers
51
2.5 Conclusion
3. Referencebooks
56
57
3.1 Ernst Gombrich
57
3.2 Hugh Honour and John Fleming
60
3.3 Marilyn Stokstad
63
3.4 David Summers
66
4. Towards a new way of writing art history
72
4.1 Methodology
72
4.2 Coherence and quality
74
Conclusion
79
Bibliography
80
2
Introduction
“The canon of art history, like the caste system in India, is a rigid hierarchical system which
excludes “impure” categories of art and reduces certain classes of objects to the status of
untouchable. Recent attempts to overthrow the seemingly uncompromising stipulations of the
canon have resulted instead in “opening it up” and enabling certain hitherto marginalized art
forms to slip inside (as if unnoticed), only then to be ranked according to well-entrenched
criteria. The canon has not been overthrown; it has simply been expanded and reconfigured.” 1
Here, art historian Christopher Steiner criticizes the canon of art in a very fundamental way. The canon
of art will be the central topic of this paper. After showing how the canon of art has been defined and
criticized, I will research how art history has been written after modernist and postmodernist critiques of
the canon. I will demonstrate that none of these art histories have been completely fulfilling and I will try
to show new ways of writing art history.
The History of Art as a scientific endeavour has gone through a lot of changes since its
institution as a professional discipline in the 19th century. Still, its object, the canon of art, hasn’t
changed that much. Art history and the canon of art have an intimate relationship. The canon is
considered to be the prime object of the art historian, while art history helps to legitimise the canon. The
canon of art is supposed to be a collection of artworks of supreme and eternal value that is worthy of
being studied. This is still the dominant way of teaching art history in high school and even at
universities.
From the second half of the 20th century onwards, however, the concept of the canon has dealt
with a lot of criticism. Modernist as well as postmodernist perspectives claim that the canon doesn’t
represent a collection of artworks of eternal value, but is constructed along ideological, social,
economical, gender and cultural lines. Art history as such, is seen as a Eurocentric endeavour, serving
and legitimising the cultural tastes of a small minority of the Western elite.
I will demonstrate that these are valid criticisms. The problem is that these criticisms do not
show how art history can be rewritten. What is the alternative to the traditional art history writing?
Should art history and its canon be abandoned and art be studied from other perspectives such as
sociology or anthropology? Or should we also get rid of the concept “art” altogether and just study all
cultural artefacts without acknowledging any difference between them? I will claim that this is all not
desirable and I will try to formulate how art history can be written in a new way.
1
Christopher Steiner, ‘Can the Canon Burst?’, Art Bulletin 78(1996) 213-217, aldaar 213.
3
In this survey, I will first exam how art history legitimises the canon and how this process has
been criticised from different perspectives. I will also formulate alternative ways of looking at art history
and the canon that might help saving art history without ignoring the criticisms. Then I will look in more
detail at how art history and the canon work. I will research a specific case, namely the presence of
Abstract Expressionism in the canon of art history. After showing how the place of this art movement in
the canon was legitimised by contemporary art critics, I will look at how art historians defend the place of
Abstract Expressionism in the canon in reference books about the history of art. I will show when they
ignore and when they acknowledge the modernist and postmodernist critiques. After evaluating these
reference books, taking in account their strengths and their weaknesses, I will try to show how a history
of art can be written from the alternative perspective on the canon and art history, as offered in the first
chapter.
4
Chapter 1: Art history and its canon.
1.1 Introduction to the problem
The term ‘canon’ is derived from the Greek word ‘kanon’, which means ‘rule’ or ‘standard’. 2 The word
was used in Christian disputes in the fourth century. In these debates the canon signified a series of
preferred texts – which are now associated with the Bible and the work of certain early theologians – in
opposition to rival Christian teachings. This implies that the canonical tradition is based on a process of
active selection and repression. 3 Thus canonization, whether ratified by church, state, or some other
cultural agency, is not simply a designation by category, but an act that exalts one thing over another. 4
The canon at stake in this survey, is the canon of art. The canon, in this case, is a collection of artworks
that are supposed to be of exceptional value.
Though the canon has been contested from many perspectives, it is still very common to think
of art within the framework of the canon. Generally the canon is seen as a natural phenomenon, not as
a process of active selection and repression. This is the viewpoint of the internal history of art. It states
that art functions independently of the outside world and only refers to herself. The history of art is not
determined by conditions outside the realm of art. The canon of art is a collection of art works of
exceptional artistic value and this can be objectively proven by art historians, justified by tradition.
Formalism is the most purely internal or natural approach. Works of art are judged by their formal
qualities, and other considerations are irrelevant. Iconology is another approach that sees the canon as
natural which was formulated by the German art historian Panofsky. Though this methodology does
place artworks in their historical context, the quality of art seemed self-evident and independent of its
context. More recent approaches, like the perspective of the philosopher Arthur Danto, also cling to the
idea of the truthfulness of the canon. However, changes in the canon occur through history, but after
‘the end of art’, this is when art has come to philosophical understanding of itself, the true meaning of art
becomes clear and with the true object of art history, the canon.
From the external point of view, the concept of the naturalness of the canon has been attacked.
This viewpoint claims that art and the appreciation for art is dependent on external factors such as the
social, economical, political and ideological context of the art work and of art consumption. The canon of
art is thereby constructed by these factors. From the postmodern point of view, however, this approach
was attacked for being too reductionist.
Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon. Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories (London 1999) 3.
Steve Edwards ed., Art and its Histories: A Reader ( New Haven, London 1999) 9.
4 Hilde Hein, ‘Institutional Blessing: the Museum as Canon-Maker’ in: Monist 76 (1993) 556-575, aldaar 556.
2
3
5
The division between the internal and the external viewpoint is often not as sharp as mentioned
above. In most stories of art, both approaches are combined. Still, within traditional art history, the
internal point of view is dominant, while external factors are been taken in account. For my survey, the
criticisms formulated from the external point of view are very important. I believe, however, that after
deconstruction, alternatives should be formulated and reductionism should be avoided.
I will examine all these approaches in order to clarify the problem evolving around art history’s
relationship to the canon and to see what alternatives critics have formulated. Finally, I will formulate an
alternative way for looking at art history and the canon and demonstrate what such a history of art
should do.
1.2 Naturalising the history of art and its canon
The most dominant approach to art history to date is the one initiated by the German 18 th century
philosopher Immanuel Kant and developed by the art historian Edwin Panofsky. One of Kant’s main
themes evolved around the question “How is knowledge possible?” He claimed that knowledge doesn’t
exist independently from the knowing subject, namely man. All men possess universal and timeless
categories, which make knowledge possible.5 According to Kant, knowledge is not limited by historical
or local contexts. His aesthetic philosophy is a logical consequence of this view. According to the theory
of aesthetics formulated by Kant, certain works of art have the capacity to provoke a universal
recognition of their extraordinary quality. The existence of the beautiful is thus something located in the
human response to objects rather than in the objects themselves. By making the capacity to recognize
artistic quality part of the definition of human nature, Kant’s theory offered a basis for the identification of
canonical status with the judgement of tradition.6 When certain art works are judged to be of great
artistic value in different époques, they are masterpieces. Though the assumptions and conclusions of
his philosophy have been deeply critiqued, the basic principle that the mind substantially constitutes its
world has persisted in many variants to the present, and has been deeply formative for our
understanding of art.7
The art historian Erwin Panofsky is the founding father of the iconological methodology. His
method, iconology, is still very much influential today. Iconology has two aspects: first, the art historian
must “re-create” the work by attempting to intuit the artistic “intentions” that went into its creation and
then submit it to archaeological investigation.8 He was aware of his cultural predispositions, but
believed, as Kant did, that he could and should transcendent them in order to come to objective
Michiel Leezenberg en Gerard de Vries, Wetenschapsfilosofie voor Geesteswetenschappen (Amsterdam 2001) 49-51.
Keith Moxey, ‘Motivating History’, Art Bulletin 77(1995) 392-401, aldaar 397.
7 David Summers, Real Spaces. World Art History and the Rise of Western modernism (London and New York 2003), 30.
8 Keith Moxey, ‘Motivating History’, Art Bulletin 77(1995) 392-401, aldaar 397.
5
6
6
information about his subject. As a result, he had to adapt himself to the intentions of the works.9 This
methodology is hermeneutical. Hermeneutics tries to interpret its object by placing it in its context.10
Because of the theoretical elimination of the subjectivity of the historian, this approach has no way of
dealing with issues of artistic merit. Panofsky’s solution was to claim that “greatness” of works of art was
self-evident and artistic achievement would disclose itself to the historian in the course of his
investigation. This comes close to Kant’s idea that aesthetic quality is universal and the ability to
recognise this is part of human nature. But Panofsky’s method would make it even easier to recognise
masterpieces. Panofsky claims that when a “masterpiece” is compared and connected with “less
important” works of art, the originality of the invention, the superiority of its composition and technique,
and whatever other features make it “great”, will automatically become evident – not in spite but
because of the fact that the whole group of materials has been subjected to one and the same method
of analysis and interpretation.11 Panofsky’s methodology proved very influential. Even to this day,
scholars try to re-create the intentions of the past, and validate those intentions by archaeological
investigation. His relegation of the question of artistic excellence to the realm of self-evidence effectively
wove itself into the fabric of tradition.12 Ernst Gombrich, one of the most influential art historians of the
20th century, supported this point of view. He argued that whereas the study of historical circumstance
would significantly affect our appreciation of the art of the past, it was no substitute for the connoisseur’s
capacity to discern “quality”.13 For Gombrich, the canon “offers points of reference, standards of
excellence which we cannot level down without losing direction. Which particular peaks, or which
individual achievements we select for this role may be a matter of choice, but we could not make such a
choice if there really were no peaks but only shifting dunes.”14
Recent scholars such as art historian Keith Moxey, claim that this self-evidence of artistic quality
is profoundly conservative. It is dedicated to the support of the status quo and gives the canon of art
history a scientific respectability.15 Besides this rather political, but valid, objection to this internal view of
the canon, many recent scholars have, equally validly, critiqued this view’s point of departure, namely
the Kantian concept of human nature. The humanist conception of human subjectivity as something
stable, continuous, autonomous, and not liable to modulation according to circumstances of time and
place has undergone devastating criticism from perspectives and disciplines diverse as psychology,
Moxey, ‘Motivating History’, 397.
Leezenberg en de Vries, Wetenschapsfilosofie voor Geesteswetenschappen, 135.
11 Ibidem, 396-397.
12 Ibidem, 397.
13 Ibidem.
14 E. Gombrich, Art History and the Social Sciences: The Romanes Lecture for 1973 (Oxford 1975) 24.
15 Moxey, ‘Motivating History’, 397.
9
10
7
sociology, anthropology and feminism. Their main point is that human nature is not stable, but is
conditioned by her local and historical context.16
Within this approach, some have taken this criticism seriously. Art historian Anita Silvers is an
example. She has chosen a midway between the internal and external perspective. In her article “The
Story of Art is the Test of Time”, she attempts to explain how changes occur within the canon. She still
clings to the idea that the value of an art work is intrinsic. 17 So, she struggles with the question how the
canon can change.18 Evidently, she states, history supplies reasons to support revivals and
revaluations; consequently, it promotes change. But history also results in the canonization of some
works, and in so doing it promotes stability as well as alternation, tradition as well as revision.19
Canonical status does not depend on properties of the works themselves, nor on their relations with
other works of art, but instead on their relation to a different kind of artefact, narratives which tell the
story of art.20 She continues to defend the idea that art refers primarily to itself, and is not determined by
other fields within society. It does not matter to her if art historical subjects inspire their own stories, or if
they are no more than fictions constructed by clever art writers. Whatever the answer to that question is,
she claims, will be consistent with the view that art is autonomous in the sense that it grounds itself. 21
As iconology, a hermeneutic approach, has no way of legitimising art history’s canon, self
evidence of quality is invoked, without mentioning on what grounds a work of art is or is not a part of the
canon. This led to a highly exclusionary approach, where the traditional Western canon was legitimised
on very arbitrary grounds. Formalism showed a ground on which to defend the naturalness of art
history’s canon, by affirming the centrality of formal qualities and unity, over and above issues of
content.22 The canon is a collection of artworks with the highest formal qualities, such as superior
harmonies of lines and colours, balance, formal tension and so on. This seems a very inclusive principle
as all cultural artefacts can be included upon formal qualities. It prescribed no hierarchy between
different mediums, cultures or genres. But if form provided a principle of inclusion for art – and so for
period and cultures – that had been excluded by classical European critical standards, so that all
European art could take a place in a universal scheme of art and history, this inclusiveness was by no
means unproblematic.23 For to see non-Western artefacts as aesthetically significant purely by virtue of
harmonies of line and colour, organic unities, or the like is to implicitly degrade the often complex social
Ibidem, 398.
Anita Silvers, ‘The Story of Art Is the Test of Time’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49 (1991) 211-224, aldaar
217.
18 Silvers, ‘The Story of Art Is the Test of Time’, 218.
19 Ibidem, 214.
20 Ibidem, 222.
21 Ibidem, 223.
22 Paul Crowther, ‘Cultural Exclusion, Normativity, and the Definition of Art’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 61
(2003) 121-131, aldaar 122.
23 Summers, Real Spaces, 33-34.
16
17
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or ritual context that determine the production of such works in the first place. 24 Even in the art of the
European tradition itself, the reduction of images to form favours only certain features, obscuring,
distorting or passing over others as art-historically irrelevant.25 The idea that art is essentially ‘formal’
emerges only in the late 18th century, together with a more radical representationalism within art. 26 The
formalist answer to this critique would be to argue that in talking of art we are necessarily and
exclusively dealing with criteria of aesthetic worth, and that factors other than formal harmony do not
play a role in this. Though formal harmony is theorized by Western aestheticians, it is of universal
significance as all cultures can become receptive to it. Still, formalist insistence on harmonies of lines
and colour and so on is based on a particular cultural preference that assimilates the products of other
cultures on its own exclusive terms.27 Moreover, it is still not clear when formal features are “interesting”,
“beautiful” or “significant”, and many formalists, similar to iconologists, resort to the idea that quality can
only be recognized by a sensitive few on an intuitive basis.28
A very recent internal perspective on the history of art is the one of Arthur Danto, an American
art critic and philosopher. He claims that in the 1960’s art had ended as it had fulfilled its essence. He
argues that there is a kind of transhistorical essence in art, that is everywhere and always the same, but
only discloses itself through history. He didn’t identify this essence with a particular style of art. 29 He
puts it as follows: “As an essentialist in philosophy, I am committed to the view that art is eternally the
same – that there are conditions necessary and sufficient for something to be an artwork, regardless of
time and place. I do not see how one can do the philosophy of art – or philosophy period – without to
this extent being an essentialist. But as an historicist I am also committed to the view that what is a work
of art at one time cannot be one at another, and in particular that there is a history, enacted through the
history of art, in which the essence of art – the necessary and sufficient conditions – are painfully
brought to consciousness.”30 In short, the essence of art reveals itself through history.31 If the essence
of art is not identified with form, what is this essence than? The concept of art, Danto argues, must be
consistent with everything that is art. It immediately follows that the definition entails no stylistic
imperatives whatever, irresistible as it has been, at moments of artistic revolution, to say that what has
been left behind “is not really art.” So, essentialism in art entails pluralism.32
Crowther, ‘Cultural Exclusion, Normativity, and the Definition of Art’, 122.
Summers, Real Spaces, 28.
26 Ibidem, 28-29.
27 Crowther, ‘Cultural Exclusion, Normativity, and the Definition of Art’, 122.
28 Ibidem, 123.
29 Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art. Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton 1997), 28.
30 Danto, After the End of Art, 95.
31 Ibidem, 196.
32 Ibidem, 197.
24
25
9
The essence of art, or “what art wants”, is according to Danto the philosophical understanding
of what art is. The end of art consists in the coming to awareness of the true philosophical nature of
art.33 This understanding is achieved in the way that understanding in each of our lives is achieved,
namely, from the mistakes we make, the false paths we follow, the false images we come to abandon
until we learn wherein our limits consist, and how to live within those limits. Here Danto claims that other
essentialist accounts of art had the essence wrong. Danto claims: “The difficulty with the great figures in
the canon of aesthetics, from Plato through Heidegger, is not that they were essentialists but that they
got the essence wrong.”34 In this way, the story of art is a progressive story, it is the story, as it were, of
a progressive degree of philosophical adequacy.35
How does he view the canon of art then? This becomes clear when he compares himself to the
philosopher George Dickie. Dickie holds that a work of art in the classificatory sense is an artefact of a
kind created to be presented to an artworld public.36 In short, an artefact can be called art, when the
artworld decides that it is art. According to Dickie this definition of art is no guarantee of any degree of
value but leaves art open to the full range of evaluative assessment.37 This means that the canon holds
no truth about the value of art. Danto however, claims that: “the difference, philosophically, between an
institutionalist like Dickie and myself is not that I was essentialist and he was not, but that I felt that the
decisions of the art world in constituting something a work of art required a class of reasons to keep the
decisions from being merely fiats of arbitrary will. And in truth I felt that according the status of art to
Brillo Box and to Fountain was less a matter of declaration than of discovery.”38 This means that the
canon is a fixed given, the collection of truly great artworks that have contributed to the philosophical
understanding of art. It is the task of the artworld to discover those artworks, not to declare them as
artworks.
As art has fulfilled its historical essence, the philosophical understanding of itself, an age of
pluralism has come into being. Everything is possible in art now, there is no longer a “pale of history”. As
the history of art has ended, art isn’t forced to move this history forward anymore.39 This does not mean,
however, that art criticism is no longer possible anymore. Danto claims: “The question is what kind of
person you are. Moral criticism survives into the age of multiculturalism, as art criticism survives into the
age of pluralism.”40
Ibidem, 32.
Ibidem, 193.
35 Ibidem, 66.
36 Crowther, ‘Cultural Exclusion, Normativity, and the Definition of Art’, 123.
37 Ibidem.
38 Danto, After the End of Art, 195.
39 Ibidem, 197.
40 Ibidem, 37.
33
34
10
The story of art, recounted in this way, is highly Eurocentric. It is based on Western philosophy,
namely Hegelian philosophy. It only includes artworks in to the canon in as much as they contribute to
the fulfilment of art’s self understanding. The frame Danto puts on artworks is highly exclusionary and
the artworks that are included are made by Western men. The canon is fixed and naturalised. Moreover,
the fact that his story of art is a developmental story, all cultures and social groups who do not work with
this concept are excluded. This concept of art history and its canon is a prototype of the internal
perspective on art. Art is an autonomous phenomenon with its own development. The outside world
doesn’t constitute to it and has no impact on it. This means that art is a pseudo religious realm and the
canon is kept intact by its aura.
1.3 Deconstructing art history and its canon
The internal history of art presents the tradition in art history that openly defends the canon of art.
Although this approach has been radically criticised, it is still very much in use. In 1974, the art
philosopher George Dickie formulated a thoroughly external definition of art that incorporated the main
objections to the internal perspective. Art is not art because it has a higher value than other artefacts. It
is art, simply because of the fact the it takes place in the context of art, the artworld. A work of art is an
artefact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public.41 More recently, the objections against
the internal history of art have been clearly reformulated by art historians like Christopher Steiner. He
claims that the canon is a structure which is in a continuous process of reproducing itself, mediating its
identity through market forces, and negating the social conditions of its production by covering the
tracks of its arbitrary and subjective formations.42 Aesthetic judgements can not be made under
objective conditions free from moral, political, economic and social influences. In this way neither art,
nor the canon, are autonomous. The canon is kept into place by its aura. One way the canon of art
history removes itself from the objective conditions of social life is by elevating itself above the “stream
of life” and thereby achieving a certain detachment from historical processes and the fields of social
production. In this way the canon system uses a religious discourse to keep itself intact. 43 The
autonomy of art is part of a pseudo religious discourse and not an uncontested reality. Most art
historians who took these criticism seriously broke with the internal perspective and turned to an
external or post-modern perspective on the canon.
Instead of claiming that art is autonomous, the external history of art states that art is mainly
determined by its historical and local context. This can include economical, political, ideological and
Willem Elias, Tekens aan de Wand. Hedendaagse Stromingen in de Kunsttheorie (Antwerpen 1993) 104-105.
Christopher Steiner, ‘Can the Canon Burst?’, Art Bulletin 78(1996) 213-217, aldaar 217.
43 Steiner, ‘Can the Canon Burst?’, 217.
41
42
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social factors. The history of art is a story that develops itself parallel to the story of society. Art
historians who are part of this intellectual tradition advocate a structural methodology to confront their
object of study. Structuralism does not only want to “understand” its object, it also wants to “explain” it.
Structuralists break with the Kantian concept of knowledge. Structural approaches explain social and
other phenomena by analysing structures, such as language, social class, economical relations and so
on. Structures are constants that stand outside the subject, outside men, and so, they can be called
“objective”.44
The canon of art history is determined by these structures. Thus, it has nothing to do with
universal aesthetic quality. What people see as aesthetic quality is determined by the structure in which
they live. Different perspectives from outside the historical discipline have brought a structural analysis
of art and its canon. What each of these challenges has tried to do, art historian Steve Edwards claims,
is to underline the different ways in which the supposed universal norms of canonical art history were
built on an implicit conception of both artist and viewer: a conception that conforms to a very specific
and very small section of even the European public.45
All criticisms have been formulated from various perspectives and have various origins. One
origin of these criticisms lay in the revival of Marxism within many intellectual circles that took place in
the wake of the 1960s. For art historians this revival led to questioning the ideological role of art in class
society and to searching for moments when artists had identified themselves with the labouring classes.
This perspective challenged the dominant view that suggested the making and viewing of art was above
social and political interests. Much traditional art history claimed to speak in the name of universal
human experience; in contrast to such universalist assumptions Marxist historians insisted that works of
art had to be seen as the products of specific social actors working in particular social conditions and
emphasised the historical production and consumption of meanings and values. 46 After the challenge of
the avant-garde and neo-Marxism came the challenge of the ‘new social movements’: the women’s
liberation movement, the gay liberation movement and a range of anti-imperialist and anti-racist
movements.47 The claims made by traditional art history to embody universal human experiences are
rendered highly problematic when the experience of women, minorities and the non-Western peoples is
broached. Another challenge to the canon was post-modernism. As post-modernists claimed that
everything is historically conditioned, beauty and quality in art is not universal, but shaped by historical
and local circumstances. This idea is not new, hermeneutical and structural approaches both addressed
the historicity of the valuation of art. Postmodernism radicalised this point of view. Both hermeneutical
Leezenberg en de Vries, Wetenschapsfilosofie voor Geesteswetenschappen, 158.
Edwards ed., Art and its Histories: A Reader, 9.
46 Ibidem, 6.
47 Ibidem, 7-8.
44
45
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and structural approaches claimed that there was a way to escape, to a certain extent, the historicity of
the historian. They did this by hanging on the concepts like progress, universal concept of beauty, social
class, cultural capital and so on. Postmodernists claimed that none of these concepts have universal
meaning, thus they can not provide any coherence in the story of art. On the one hand, the canon, as a
collection of supreme artworks of eternal beauty, is non-existent. On the other hand, it can not be
explained by concepts like gender or social class. From this follows that there is no alternative way of
writing a history of art.
Now I will turn to external and postmodern approaches in detail, in order to show how they view
art history and its canon. I will discuss the following perspectives: Marxism, neo-Marxism, sociology,
gender studies, New World history and the new cultural turn.
Marxists and neo-Marxists claim that aesthetic quality of an artwork is dependent on the
ideological and socio-economical context. Marxist art historians do not want to strip art of their context;
they want to expose which contextual factors are due to the basis of the art work. However, there are
also vulgar Marxist approaches that consider art as pure superstructure, as a reflection of the economic
proportions. Marx has never formulated it this way himself.48 The economy is the most dominant field
within society, but this does not mean that all changes within other fields are dependent on the
economic developments. How, then, do Marxist art historians approach the canon? The canon is not a
collection of the best art in the world, but is constructed and dependent on the ideological and socioeconomical context in which the canon is established.
The neo-Marxist art historian Nicos Hadjinicolaou claims in his book “Art History and Ideology”
that all art history is biased and a product of a bourgeois ideology. He revolts against art history as a
history of artists. This conception of art history considers the artist as central to the declaration of its
work. He claims that this approach is part of the bourgeois ideology. According to this ideology the
creative individual is the centre of the world. However, according to Marxist interpretations of society,
the individual is determined by the economic structure of society. He suggests that art history should be
explanatory and not interpret the work. He thereby distances himself from the phenomenological
approach, where the researcher must become one with the research object. An intrinsic analysis of art
works must be avoided, because this approach cuts the object off from the context. This structural
approach therefore implies a radical demystification of art.
According to Hadjinicolaou, the term "art" is a problematic term because it implies a value
judgement. Therefore he rather uses the term “visual ideology”, a term that can refer to any image.49 He
Frans Jozef Witteveen, ‘Een Bril voor het Onschuldige Oog: Marxisme, Neo-marxisme en Post-marxisme in de
Kunstgeschiedenis’ in: Marlite Halbertsma en Kitty Zijlmans eds., Gezichtspunten. Een Inleiding de methoden van de
Kunstgeschiedenis (Nijmegen 1993) 175-211, aldaar 181.
49 Nicos Hadjinicolaou, Kunstgeschiedenis en Ideologie (Nijmegen 1973) 137.
48
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believes that there are no objective criteria to judge art, so, he wonders: "Why are some art works seen
as masterworks?" This brings us close to the question “how is the canon constructed?” He states that
the aesthetic functioning of an art work is never independent of the ideology of that art work. People
create pleasure in a picture because they ideologically recognise themselves in the visual ideology of
the art work. The canon is therefore the collection of artworks in which a dominating class recognises
her ideology.
His analysis of art history pays attention to important aspects that are neglected in the internal
history of art. Still, his reductionism is extreme. He does not incorporate any other way of looking at art
than in its relation to ideology and eventually to the economical basis of society. His alternative for
traditional art history is an art history based on the principles of historic materialism. This can only lead
to even more extreme reductionism, which leaves everything out that does not fit into the picture of
Marxism. The questions asked by some Marxist art historians might be valid and inspiring, but many of
their answers are oversimplistic and reductionist.
Sociology offered a new perspective on the relationship between art and society. Within the
sociological perspective art is seen as a social construction. Sociologists look at how art functions within
social networks. Their objects of study are the different social agents within the art world: the artist,
public, the art critics, the purchasers, and so on.50 In this way, sociological approaches played an
important role in the demystification of art and imply a radical rejection of the internal history of art.
One of the most important sociological studies on art is written by the French sociologist Pierre
Bourdieu. In “Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste” Pierre Bourdieu examines the
social function of cultural consumption.51 Bourdieu claims that taste is determined by the class to which
someone belongs. Cultural preferences are mainly stipulated by one's educational level and social
context; as a consequence, taste is not a natural gift. Bourdieu refers to good taste as “cultural capital”.
Taste is a sign of unavoidable social difference. Cultural capital grants a certain social status. As a high
social status is precious to many, there is a continuing fight for the legitimate or good taste. Adhering to
a good taste is always accompanied with rejecting other tastes.52
The socially accepted hierarchy in the arts reflects the social hierarchy of those who consume
arts according to Bourdieu.53 Studying the canon according to this theory would imply that the canon of
art is not a collection of the best artworks based on objective criteria, but a reflection of social hierarchy.
Good taste constructs the canon, but what makes the dominant class decide what good taste is?
Ton Bevers, ‘Kunst, Geschiedenis en Sociologie’ in: Marlite Halbertsma en Kitty Zijlmans eds., Gezichtspunten. Een
Inleiding de methoden van de Kunstgeschiedenis (Nijmegen 1993) 241-270.
51 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London 1984).
52 Bourdieu, Distinction, 56.
53 Ibidem, 1.
50
14
Changes occur when people of lower class adjust themselves to the good taste, when they acquire the
cultural capital of the dominant classes. In an everlasting attempt to distinguish themselves from the
lower classes, the higher class will change their standards. But still, he can not explain why the canon
changes in the way it does; neither can he explain why the canon shows so much continuity. Some
“masterpieces” are accepted by almost every class in society as being from great aesthetic value. So,
these art works lose their “distinction value”.
The class relatedness of cultural tastes and the hierarchy in the arts is an interesting
contribution to the debate about the canon of art. Bourdieu gives an alternative to Marxist accounts by
avoiding economic determinism. Still, his account is also deterministic in the way that the canon is fully
determined by the fight for cultural capital. In his study he leaves out the artworks themselves
completely, as if they had no part to play in the analysis of the canon of art. This makes his account
simplistic in one way, as there is a clear answer to how the canon is constructed, and incomplete in an
other way, as he has no way of dealing with change and continuity in the canon.
Gender studies has devoted much attention to the canon of art and how it came into being. This
discussion evolved around the essay written by art historian Linda Nochlin with a very clear and
troubling question as title: “Why have there been no great women artists?”54 The different answers that
are given to this question run parallel with the different visions within gender studies. A first response
was an attempt to incorporate female artists in the traditional story of art. The fact that women are
excluded from the canon of art history was seen almost as an accident that could be fixed with little
effort.55 This vision was quickly rejected, as soon as it became clear that women were not only excluded
from the canon, but also from the art practice. The fame of a great artist does not come from nowhere.
Women were generally excluded from art academies.56 Also, the canon presents an arbitrary hierarchy
between different art disciplines. Traditionally, all the disciplines that were mainly practiced by women
such as textiles, are excluded from the canon. Some scholars within gender studies claim that women
are different, and should therefore be judged by different standards.57 Another thing gender studies
address is the fact that female artists have often been misinterpreted by male historians. This is why art
history should be rewritten by female art historians. The art historian Karen-Edis Barzman states
correctly that there is no way of guaranteeing that art history written by females would be more “truthful”
than by males.58 These approaches still want to integrate female artists in the canon. They strive to
Marlite Halbertsma, ‘Vrouwenstudies Kunstgeschiedenis’ in: Marlite Halbertsma en Kitty Zijlmans eds., Gezichtspunten.
Een Inleiding de methoden van de Kunstgeschiedenis (Nijmegen 1993) 212-240, aldaar 219.
55 Halbertsma, ‘Vrouwenstudies Kunstgeschiedenis’, 220.
56 Ibidem.
57 Ibidem, 222.
58 Karen-Edis Barzman, ‘Beyond the Canon: Feminists, Postmodernism, and the History of Art’, The Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism 52 (1994) 327-339, aldaar 329.
54
15
bring into balance one of the gendered asymmetries of the dominant culture.59 For this purpose they
have to broaden the definition of art, so women could be included in the canon of art. By doing this,
they would be refusing the arbitrary hierarchical distinctions imposed upon objects by art history itself. 60
The problem is that they will make “art” and “the canon” so inclusive as to render it meaningless as a
term of distinction.61
Another objection against broadening the canon form a post-modern point of view. Art historians
influenced by postmodernism, as Karen-Edis Barzman, reject the canon and with it the possibility of
finding a canon that represent the absolute and true collection of the best artworks ever. As other
postmodernists, she repudiates “grand narratives” or “master-readings”. She claims that feminist art
historians who try to integrate women into the canon, are basically just constructing a new masterreading.62 She wants to write a post-modern feminist art history. According to her, feminist art historians
might serve their own interests best at this point by refusing finality in the fixing of meaning.63 She does
not think that including women in the canon is an adequate solution to the problem, as the divide
between canonical and non-canonical art will still exist and still be arbitrary, as there are no objective
standards. It is more important to inquire into the discursive effects of canonicity in general. 64 This is
also the point of view of art scholars influenced by the cultural turn and postmodernism.
New world history has challenged the canon as much as gender studies. New world history
does not try to deal with the whole world, but it compares experiences across the boundary lines of
societies and examines interactions between peoples of different societies as well as analysing largescale historical patterns and processes that transcend individual societies.65 A principal concern of most
contemporary world history is to construct alternatives to Eurocentric understandings of the past.66
These historians try to understand the exceptional position of Europe in the world. They reject
teleological assumptions about the dominance of Europe in world history and try to find other ways of
looking at the relations between Europe and the rest of the world.67 Traditional history concentrates on
the nation state, and doing this it has taken cultural distinctiveness, exclusive identities, local
knowledge, and the experiences of individual societies as the principal concerns of their studies. 68
World history shows how these entities are connected and interdependent. The New World History tries
Barzman, ‘Beyond the Canon’, 328.
Ibidem, 329.
61 Ibidem.
62 Ibidem, 331.
63 Ibidem, 333.
64 Ibidem, 334.
65 Jerry H. Bentley, ‘The New World History’, in: L. Kramer, S. Maza, eds., A companion to western historical thought
(Blackwell, Malden, Oxford 2002) 393-416, aldaar, 393.
66 Bentley, ‘The New World History’, 393-394.
67 Ibidem, 394.
68 Ibidem, 395.
59
60
16
to find an alternative for the old modernization theories, by sociologist Max Weber and others. These
views see European dominance as the result of cultural traits that favour innovation, such as
rationalism, strong work ethic, inquisitiveness and so on.69 This dominance was primarily economical,
but in other domains, Europe seems to have this leadership, too. One of these domains is culture.
European art is overrepresented in the canon of art. The idea of beauty embodied in the canon
is based on Western notions of beauty. When non-Western objects have appeared in the canon they
have usually done so at moments when Western artists have appropriated them for their own ends. It is
usual, in this way, to find European artists take up the artefacts of so-called ‘primitive cultures’ as a
resource with which to break the grip of academic norms in their own culture. These objects are
presented by Western artists and historians in terms of an immediacy, directness or vitality that has
been lost to Western culture. While such an account appears to celebrate non-Western art it results in
two problematic outcomes: firstly it contrasts a stereotypical view of non-Western cultures as simple and
authentic to the complex and developed culture of the West. Secondly, while non-Western artefacts
figure in this argument the spotlight remains fixed on Western artists like Picasso, or Kirchner, who used
them to reinvent the art of their own culture. It has frequently been observed that even when nonWestern objects are treated as worthy of attention in their own right, this involves the projection of a
Western conception of art onto objects made in the light of very different priorities and concerns. 70
Not only the art of the canon is predominantly European, the story of the canon is a Western
story, based on concepts as “modernization”, “progress” and “development”. It is not easy to incorporate
non-Western art in this Western story. The attempt of New World History to find new ways of looking at
the world, questioning concepts as “modernization”, “progress” and “development”, could be a fruitful
way to deal with the canon of art. It could show how influential these concepts are within the canon.
Most canonical art works are works that “helped the history of art move forward”. They initiated a new
style, a new ideal of how art is supposed to look like. Beyond the concept of development and progress,
the canon as it now exists, would be unthinkable. All the above mentioned approaches also work with
those concepts, without questioning them much, so New World history can provide some new insights.
Nevertheless, the New World history can not really provide an answer to the question how the canon
would function then.
After a long period, from the 1950’s onwards, in which structural approaches within history were
dominant, older approaches gained some renewed interest with historians around the 1980’s. Along
with changes in methodology, the object of history changed once again. Not only structures seemed to
matter, but also humans and their actions. Agency re-entered the historical discourse. Lynn Hunt claims
69
70
Ibidem, 398.
Edwards ed., Art and its Histories: A Reader, 9.
17
in her introduction on “New Cultural History” that economic and social relations are no longer prior to or
determining of cultural ones; they are themselves fields of cultural practice and cultural production –
which cannot be explained deductively by reference to an extra cultural dimension of experience. 71 The
New Cultural History distances itself from explaining and discovering large structures, that determine
society, but it does not represent a simple return to an old form of phenomenological approaches.
Historian Patricia O'Brien states we now confront the challenge of a history of culture that can neither be
reduced to the product of social and economical transformations nor return to a world or ideas cut free
or them.72
The new cultural history is heavily influenced by post-modern thought. It refuses to write “grand
narratives”. It rejects the idea that objective knowledge of the world is possible, neither through
phenomenological nor through structural approaches. Following post-modern thinkers, such as the
French philosopher Michel Foucault, they claim that every aspect of human society is historically
conditioned. So, historians themselves are historically conditioned and can not step outside their own
local and historical context. The task for history is according to Foucault the following: “[…] it must
record the singularity of events outside of any monotonous finality; it must seek them in the most
unpromising places, in what we tend to feel is without history – in sentiments, love, conscience,
instincts; it must be sensitive to their recurrence, not to isolate the different scenes where they engaged
in different roles.”73 There is no continuity in the past, so the historian should not try to create this non
existent continuity. These ideas are not new, phenomenological and structural approaches both
addressed the problem of the historicity of the historian, but they are radicalised within postmodernism.
From this point of view, the canon of art is totally historically conditioned and holds no truth
whatsoever about the quality of the works within it. The consequence of this radical point of view is that
history as a science can’t give us any information about the past.74 The historical text does not refer to a
period in the past, but only refers to itself. Most historians within the new cultural history don’t go as far
as Foucault. Most historians, like George Iggers, would agree that society is partly constructed by texts,
but they claim that texts are also constructed by society.75
Influenced by the cultural turn and postmodernism, scholars from different disciplines tried to
construct an alternative way, outside of art history, to approach art. This project is called “visual studies”.
Margaret Dikovitskaya states that there are roughly three visions on Visual studies: the first sees visual
studies as an appropriate expansion of art history; the second group views the new focus as
Lynn Hunt, ‘Introduction: History, Culture and Text’ in: Lynn Hunt ed. The New Cultural History (Los Angeles 1989) 7.
Patricia O’Brien, ‘Michel Foucault’s History of Culture’ in: Lynn Hunt ed. The New Cultural History (Los Angeles 1989) 26.
73 Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Selected Essays and Interviews (Ithaca 1977) 139-140.
74 Leezenberg en de Vries, Wetenschapsfilosofie voor Geesteswetenschappen, 110.
75 Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century. From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge
(Middletown 1997) 133.
71
72
18
independent of art history and more preoccupied with technologies or images related to the digital and
virtual era; and, finally, the third group considers visual studies as a field that threatens and selfconsciously challenges the traditional discipline of art history.76 She defines Visual Studies as follows:
"The scholarship that rejects the primacy of art in relation to other discursive practices and yet focuses
on the sensuous and semiotic peculiarity or the visual can no longer be called art history - it deserves
the name Visual Studies”.77 She claims that there are significant differences between art history and
visual studies. Art history pretends to know what art is, and gives a platonic definition of art. Art
historians see art as an autonomous phenomenon, whereas visual studies see art as a human
construction. This claim ignores all the new directions art history has taken under influence of Marxism,
sociology, gender studies and so on. On the other hand, art historian William Innes Homer claims that
visual studies turn away from these new approaches within art history that break with the concept of the
autonomy of art and concentrate on structures. Visual studies want to return to the image as their object
of study, instead of structures.78 Dikovitskaya also expresses her concerns about visual studies being a
return to Kantian aesthetics, cut loose from all contexts. So, what exactly are visual studies? Is it a
middle way between hermeneutic and structural approaches, or is it a radicalisation of one or the other?
What do visual studies contribute to the study of the canon? On the one hand, they want to
include all images, art and non-art, into their field of research. So, they reject the canon as a standard
for their study. What art is, is not self-evident, but a human construct. On the other hand, scholars within
visual studies want to fully concentrate on the image itself and not on the context in which it is made and
received. Visual studies do not want to explain concepts, such as the canon of art, from one point, as
sociologists or Marxists have done. This is a noble goal, but the problem is that no alternative is given to
the internal and the external history of art.
1.4 Contemporary approaches to art history and its canon
How have art histories been written after all the challenges against traditional ways of writing on art?
One response to the crisis of the canon has been a conservative retrenchment that insists on the eternal
verities and sees the new versions of art history as so many kinds of intellectual vandalism. A second
and most dominant response, is to expand the traditional range of art object studies and to alter the
vocabulary for talking about them. Women and non-Western artists are given a place in the canon, art is
seen within its context, the concept of the genius is abandoned. However, it can be argued that in this
approach the basic structures and values of traditional art history remain fundamentally unchanged.
76
4.
77
78
Margaret Dikovitskaya, ‘A Look at Visual Culture’, Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism 29 (2002)
Dikovitskaya, ‘A Look at Visual Culture’, 4.
William Innes Homer, ‘Visual Culture: A New Paradigm’, American Art 12 (1998) 6-9.
19
Journal articles and books continue to appear on the same artists, the same periods and national
schools receive paramount attention; the artistic commodity remains in the foreground, and so on. This
is basically a modernised version of traditional art history, where critical challenges have been
incorporated, but were the most fundamental criticisms have been avoided.79 A third approach
abandons the concept of the canon and of art history altogether and only studies art in function of social
relationships, cultural values, political conditions, etc.80 This is a valid way of approaching art, but it does
not resolve anything. Art is used as historical source. These sources tell the historian something about
the past, but the historian can not say anything about the work of art as a work of art.
The search for an alternative is hard, ready answers do not exist. It is easy to conclude that it is
better to give up the project of art history, stating that it is an Eurocentric discipline that will never be
able to overcome its problems. Still, I believe that art history can be relevant to us. With the art historian
David Summers, I agree that in times of globalisation where people speak of a ‘clash of civilizations’,
these civilizations might at least know something about one another, about the fabric of one another’s
histories, lives and values. This is a task to which the history of art can contribute.81 Students in high
school now are still confronted with a thoroughly traditional art history. If this needs to be changed, and I
believe it does, than an alternative should be offered. This is necessary because art history is not a
specialist academic discipline with little impact on the way most people encounter works of art. Artworks
are always organised into some schema of presentation that draws on art historical models. The kind of
information provided, the links established between different artists and their works, the sequence of
objects, and what is included and excluded all cast the work of art in a particular light. The standard way
in which art history has organised and presented works of art is as part of a single narrative of
evolutionary progress structured around individual artists, and it has had an immense influence on how
people encounter artworks.82 If the political and philosophical objections to traditional art history are
taken seriously and it is an acknowledged fact that art history has an immense influence on how people
see art, then a new kind of art history is needed.
Simple answers to the problems evolving around art history and the concept of the canon are
impossible. The internal history of art can be critiqued from multiple points of view. The first objection is
that the history of canon itself has proven that aesthetic appreciation changes through time, so the
internal history of art has no means to deal with change within the canon. A second objection is the fact
that it holds a view of a human nature that is stable and able to transcend its own historical context. This
has been falsified by other disciplines, such as psychology, anthropology and sociology. Finally, it is
Edwards ed., Art and its Histories: A Reader, 11.
Ibidem, 11.
81 Summers, Real Spaces, 11.
82 Edwards ed., Art and its Histories: A Reader, 2-3.
79
80
20
virtually impossible to ignore the fact that the canon has Eurocentric and sexist traits. The main problem
with the external approach is that it always implies reductionism. It explains the canon from one point,
for example ideology or distinction, and leaves art itself out of consideration. The external as well as the
internal history of art provides a master narrative that quiets down all other perspectives. Visual Studies
are aware of these problems, but they don not offer any alternative. Abandoning the canon altogether
does not seem to bring more light to this matter, either, because then art history is useless.
Different scholars claim that art history and some kind of canon must be maintained. Edwards
points at another valid point why abandoning the canon altogether is impossible. “One important reason
that the canon has not been fundamentally overhauled is the strength indeed, in recent years, the hyper
– ventilation of the art market. As long as the commodity trade in works of art endues, and it will do so
for as long as capitalist society exists, some artists will rise and others fall, but the canon is likely to
remain in place.”83 Ignoring the art market is not the solution, says Edwards. He argues that the most
useful critiques on the canon, do not try to displace the canon, but try to foreground its role in the
constitution of knowledge. “The fact that the canon is likely to continue for the foreseeable future makes
these critical challenges more, not less, relevant because these positions force us continually to
confront the values of which we make art’s histories. I am suggesting here that the canon cannot be
abandoned but as long as it exists forceful criticisms of its structures and priorities will be needed.” 84
The more radical art historian Griselda Pollock makes a similar point. Although she sees that being an
art historian can easily imply self-identification with the hegemonic tradition embodied in institutionalised
art history, she still argues that feminist art historians cannot hide outside the domain of art history, like
gender studies, because then they leave the canon in tact.85 “We cannot simply decamp. That would
leave artists to the effects of art history’s canonising discourses, which, in real terms, may seriously
damage chances of being able to work and live as an artist if you belong to a non-canonical social
group.”86 This is a useful contribution in the process of thinking for a way out of the impasse. But, it does
not offer new insights on how the story of art should be told, after the structures and the priorities of the
traditional art history have been criticized.
Another problem related to criticising without formulating a alternative is fragmentation. Pollock
shows how at present the resistance is fragmented into special studies, each pursuing its own agenda
in the name of a radical identity politics. On the one hand these groups should be able to find some
common ground, otherwise defending your own minority will soon equal excluding other minorities. On
the other hand, it would be counter-productive to seek to abolish difference for such an ideal of
Ibidem, 13.
Ibidem, 13.
85 Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon. Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories (London 1999) 11-12.
86 Pollock, Differencing the Canon, 11-12.
83
84
21
universalism without particularity retains an imperialist notion of imagined sameness and unity. She
sees a way out, though: “Differences can co-exist, cross-fertilise and challenge, be acknowledged,
confronted, celebrated and not remain destructive of the other in an expanded but shared cultural
space.”87 This is a useful insight that should be a central thought when another way of looking at art
history is been constructed, but it is not clear how this co-existence can be established.
Another clue of how art history could look like when it moves beyond internal, external and postmodern perspectives comes from philosopher David Carrier. He agrees with the external approach that
the traditional canon is an historical product of patriarchy. But for him this is not a reason to abandon it.
He suspects that giving up some version of a canon will be difficult.88 The canon should not demand
uniformity, instead it should provide the basis for potential dialogue, generating enough agreement to
make talking profitable, creating enough disagreement to give us reason to keep talking. He claims that
the objectivity of the canon lies in the fact that there is lots of agreement. 89 This approach recalls Jürgen
Habermas’ theory of communicative action. The philosopher Habermas fights the postmodern
assumption that there are no standards and that standards are not needed. “If we have no such
standard, one which escapes a “totalising self-referential critique”, then distinctions between the naked
and the masked, or between theory and ideology, lose their force. If we do not have these distinctions,
then we have to give up the Enlightenment notion of “rational criticism of existing institution”, for
“rational” drops out.”90 Shortly, without standards no form of criticism is possible, which leads to
profound conservatism. Standards can be found through communication, as Habermas believes in the
possibility of communicative rationality.91
How does the author of a story of art leaves space for “talking”? On the one hand the author
could tell multiple stories about art and place them next to each other in no hierarchical order, and let
the reader “decide”. On the other hand, the author could also do what art historian Keith Moxey
suggests. He states that the subjective attitudes and cultural aspirations of the art historian become just
as important an aspect of the narrative as the works that are its object. So, there is no canon beyond
that which we ourselves construct.92 He pleads for a motivated history. Historians should not try to
legitimate a pre-established canon, but it would be better if they pursued their own motives for engaging
in the process of finding cultural meaning in the art of the past. By doing this, a contest of voices will
arise in which a struggle for dominance would result in the hierarchization of different discourses.
Although, new hierarchies will be establishes, there will be so many alternatives, that none of them will
Ibidem, 11.
David Carrier, ‘Art and its Canon’ The Monist 76 (1993) 524-534, aldaar 524.
89 Carrier, ‘Art and its Canon’, 530.
90 Elias, Tekens aan de Wand, 267.
91 Elias, Tekens aan de Wand, 271.
92 Moxey, ‘Motivating History’, 399-400.
87
88
22
be regarded as “master narrative”.
93
The call for a motivated history thus does not assume that the
historian’s motives are accessible, but rather it insists on the historian’s power to articulate and promote
relevant political agenda’s.94
All these approaches have one central problem. As they see art as a construct without any
basis, they have no fulfilling way of dealing with quality in art. As they do not believe in a universal base
for art, their notion of quality is completely dependent on their own perspective. Though most are very
clear about their perspectives and aims, there is no reason to see their approach to quality as nonarbitrary. Art historian Paul Crowther tries to tie a universalist concept of art, and thus cultural
conservatism, to a left-wing project.95 Crowther firmly objects to the anti-foundationalist approaches of
scholars like Keith Moxey. He claims that these hard relativist approaches are tacitly racist as they
utilise an analytic framework which grossly distorts the significance of non-western representation by
implicitly degrading the importance of making. In its reductive eagerness to stigmatise the aesthetic as a
merely western construct, Crowther claims, it attacks a notion that is fundamental to non-western
traditions, and that is, indeed, probably many thousands of years older then its western
conceptualisations.96 Thus Crowther argues that it is true that the terms art and the aesthetic are
western concepts, but what they conceptualise is something of transhistorical and transcultural
significance.97 This shared foundation of art is centred around ‘formative power’. The work qua
representation must be understood to have at least some difference from that which it represents. There
is a formative power at work in and through the sensible and/or imaginative particularity of the
medium.98 Crowther argues: “This extraordinary bonding is intrinsic to the making and direct perception
of representation, and is composed of varieties of aesthetic experience.”99 A complex zone of
experience is intrinsic to representation and to Crowther, the production of artefacts grounded in such
experience cuts across historical and cultural boundaries and need a name of its own – even if it is not
pursued separately from functional or ritual context.100 In short, in all cultures, artefacts are made that
gain an additional element to their function. This element demands a different category, namely art. The
category art, though existent since human culture, has been formulated in the West as through its
political and economic expansion, the west has developed cultural contexts and techniques whereby art
Ibidem, 400.
Ibidem, 401.
95 Paul Crowther, ‘Defining Art, Defending the Canon, Contesting Culture’, British Journal of Aesthetics 44 (2004) 361-377,
aldaar 399.
96 Crowther, ‘Defining Art, Defending the Canon, Contesting Culture’, 370.
97 Ibidem, 368.
98 Ibidem, 369.
99 Ibidem, 369.
100 Ibidem, 371.
93
94
23
and the aesthetic have been developed as specialist interests in their own right. 101 Finding a common
ground for all art in the centrality of “making” might be a useful insight to come to an inclusive definition
of art. Still, the problem of quality is not addressed. Crowther believes in objective standard for defining
quality and the canon. An artwork opens up new possibilities of aesthetic experience by its creative
difference from other representations. Crowther claims that this is the basis of an authentic canon of
major works and artists or creative ensembles.102 Central to defining quality here is, like within many
internal perspectives, development. He does acknowledge that within many cultures, development is not
an issue and women long didn’t have the opportunity to participate in the development of an art
medium.103 Still, Crowther sees no problem in excluding them from the canon. In the end, his definition
of quality in art is not inclusive at all.
1.5 Towards a new approach
Point of departure for the alternative I will formulate is that the object of art history, the canon, is
constructed. As Keith Moxey, I think art historians should not try to legitimate an established canon, but
should be able to make their own construction. A history of art should contain destruction and
construction, because criticism should be followed by an alternative. But, in turn, this alternative can not
claim absolute truth. Still, it should not be arbitrary. On what basis should a canon be constructed?
Here, I agree with Keith Moxey who claims that the rationale for including or excluding different genres
of image production should depend on historical circumstances, educational needs, and political
considerations.104
It should be a broad political program, I will present here. It should not be in function of identity
politics, but should take interest in criticisms of multiple perspectives. History of art needs, in the first
place, to step away from the idea that the canon is a natural phenomenon and that artistic quality is selfevident. In this way the canon is constructed on very arbitrary grounds. The canon can not be seen as a
collection of universal masterpieces, but as a collection of artworks that are, according to the art
historian, interesting to be studied for defined reasons. Moreover, the story of art can not be told as a
teleological story, as for example the story of Danto. The idea of “progress” and “evolution” is very
exclusionary. All non-Western art, to begin with, is doomed to lay outside “the pale of history”. The same
counts for art of minorities or art in media that did not “contribute to the history of art”. It is clear that the
coherence in a story of art can not be constructed along these concepts. Possibilism is chosen above
determinism. Determinism, as Danto’s, leaves artworks out when they do not fit into his scheme.
Ibidem, 371.
Ibidem, 371.
103 Ibidem, 375.
104 Keith Moxey, The Art of Persuasion. Paradox & Power in Art History (Ithaca and London 2001) 120.
101
102
24
Moreover, the political objection to the use of these Western concepts is as strong. All artworks that
didn’t contribute to the Western success-story of art are eliminated. For similar reasons, the division
between low art and high art should be eliminated. The fact that different kinds of art exist can be
acknowledged, but these division do not need to be hierarchised.
In opposition to some adepts of Visual Studies, I believe the difference between art and other
visual artefacts can be maintained as long as this division is not used in a qualifying way. With Keith
Moxey, I agree on the view that art is one of many practices, a visual form of making meaning
comparable in its procedures to other forms of imagery, and that these practices can be viewed as
equivalent to one another. There is no insistence on the primacy of art, but its distinctiveness is
recognised.105 It must be acknowledged that art is a Western concept, but this should not mean that the
concept has to be abandoned. The Western concept of art enjoys global recognition and enables nonWestern cultures to find types of artefacts equivalent to those prestigious in the European tradition, thus
allowing them to compete. The Western art concept has been recognized by non-Western cultures only
very recently though, and very partial. A recognition of the origins and function of this concept, however,
reveals how the notion of art necessarily transforms the way in which the artefacts of non-Western
cultures were once understood.106 Art historian James Elkins suggests that true multiculturalism should
not only take its subject matter but also its interpretative methodologies from the cultures it studies.107
This idea suggests that non-Western methodologies are not as much in flux as Western methodologies
are. Of course, these methodologies can be interesting to art historians, but there is no reason to see
them as more valid then Western art history. An analogy can be made with what Karen-Edis Barzman
claimed about art history written by women, namely that there is no way of guaranteeing that such an
approach would be intrinsically more truthful than any other approach. It would be more fruitful to give a
new definition to “art” and its canon.
Through different times and spaces, there have been made cultural artefacts that can be called
art. It is important to incorporate them all into a canon of art, in order to give an inclusive account on the
history of art. This means including non-Western art and all kind of media, in order not to exclude art
made by minorities as women. Central to a new approach, is the abandonment of the concept of
“progress” as a way to find coherence in the story of art. There are local continuities and changes.
These do not lead to overall progress. My general plea, then, is to broaden the canon. This broadening
should not leave intact traditional assumptions about the canon. The newly included works will affect
Moxey, The Art of Persuasion, 116-117.
Ibidem, 117.
107 James Elkins, ‘Book Reviews’ in: Art Bulletin 86 (2004) 373-381, aldaar 378.
105
106
25
traditional notions related to the canon as universality, naturalness and progress. It will show how these
traditional views on art are just one very cultural specific view on art.
This is the broad starting point of my project. Some central problems are still left open: how
should coherence be created in the story of art? Which artworks should be selected and on what
grounds? I hope to have made my aims regarding the rewriting of art history clear. In the next chapters,
I will take a closer look at four reference books on the history of art. First, I will focus on one art
movement, namely Abstract Expressionism, and show how the place of this movement in the canon
was legitimated. Then I will look at how the four chosen referencebooks function in general, and look at
how they address art and quality in art. I will do this in order to see more clearly how art history and its
canon are seen in these attempts to write a story of art. I will show the defaults and the strengths of
these attempts and see of some aspects of these approaches are useful for my own project of rewriting
art history.
26
Chapter 2: The Case of Abstract Expressionism
In this chapter, I will address a quite recent art movement; Abstract Expressionism. After showing how
abstract art in generally was legitimated by critics and artists, I will turn to the contemporary legitimation
of Abstract Expressionism. Finally, I will show how recent referencebooks legitimate the place of this art
movement in the canon. Throughout the chapter, I will focus on how all these different approaches deal
with art history and its canon.
2.1 Short introduction to abstract art and its legitimation.
“[…] a work of art, a painting for example, is worth looking at primarily because it presents a
composition or organization of color, line, light and shade. Resemblance to natural objects,
while it does not necessarily destroy these esthetic values, may easily adulterate their purity.
Therefore, since resemblance to nature is at best superfluous and at worst distracting, it might
as well be eliminated.”108
This quote from Alfred H. Barr Jr., who was founding director of The Museum of Modern Art in New
York, represents one of the most dominant legitimations of abstract art. This does not imply that all
abstract artists agreed with this legitimation, some have made statements against the purity in art.109
Some artists, however, have also helped to build this legitimation.
Art historian Mark Cheetham claims that this purity ideal has platonic roots. He argues that
Platonic essentialist metaphysics empowered the initiation of abstract painting to a very considerable,
but not exclusive, extent. As Plato saw the world, as we encounter it, as a shadow of the essence of
true reality, art, which imitates that world, was even further removed from the truth. Cheethams main
argument goes as follows: “I argue that Plato himself – and those who construct apologies for art in
reaction to his ideas – hypothesized a perfect art form that would escape the charges of inadequacy by
being non-mimetic. I claim in addition that the founders of abstraction from Gauguin to Mondrian quite
unambiguously answered Plato with their new art. For these philosophers and painters alike, purity is
the touchstone for what art must become if it is to be valid metaphysically and therefore functional within
society.”110
Though this was not the only way to look at abstract art, in its initial phase it was mainly
legitimated by artists and critics alike because of the following claims: superiority of purity, abstract art
Alfred H. Barr Jr., ‘Cubism and Abstract Art’ in: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood ed., Art in Theory. 19002000. An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Malden, Oxford, Carlton 2003) 381-383, aldaar 382.
109
Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, ‘Statement’ in: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood ed., Art in
Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Malden, Oxford, Carlton 2003) 568-569, aldaar 569.
110
Mark A. Cheetham, The Rhetoric of Purity. Essentialist Theory and the Advent of Abstract Painting
(Cambridge 1991) 11.
108
27
as the only way to show truth and as the only path which will lead to progress. The idea of progress
towards higher truth is Hegelian. The German philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) is the founding
father of a system of inevitable and purposeful history, that nevertheless tries to understand each
époque in its own terms. Every phase in history has its own intrinsic value, but is also part of a linear
evolution towards greater selfreflection and freedom.111 For the adepts of abstract art this self reflectivity
and freedom in art equalled abstraction. This art was self reflective as it tried to search for the essence
of art and it was free as it freed itself from the old function of art; mimesis.
These thoughts are formulated very clearly by the abstract artist Piet Mondrian. “One can rightly
speak of an evolution in plastic art. It is of the greatest importance to note this fact, for it reveals the true
way of art; the only path along which we can advance. Moreover, the evolution of the plastic arts shows
that the dualism which has manifested itself in art is only relative and temporal. Both science and art are
discovering and making us aware of the fact that time is a process of intensification, an evolution from
the individual towards the universal, of the subjective towards the objective; towards the essence of
things and of ourselves.” 112
This universalism has important political implications. Firstly, this universalism, as Mondrian
defined it, is highly exclusionary. The most excluded principle and individual of all is the female. In
Mondrians art philosophy, there was no place for women.113 A woman could never be an artist, because
her defining feminine principle is passive, form receiving material, whereas the male is imbued with
force that shapes this material according to higher principles.114 The apolitical state of purity envisioned
by abstract painting in this tradition, on the other hand, is profoundly conservative. Once the truth is
reached, no deviations from it will be accepted in art and in this way it strictly curtails any further
change.115
This leads a lot of critics to the conclusion that abstract art implies authoritarianism. Some even
see abstract art and its theory as philosophically related to the Nazi Regime and its ideology. 116
This was not a monolithic legitimation. Roughly, there are two categories: the materialist and the
idealist approach. An early statement of the artist Man Ray is a clear example of the materialist point of
view: “Throughout time painting has alternately been put to the service of the church, the state, arms,
individual patronage, nature appreciation, scientific phenomena, anecdote and decoration. But all the
marvellous works that have been painted, whatever the sources of inspiration, still live for us because of
111
Michiel Leezenberg en Gerard de Vries, Wetenschapsfilosofie voor Geesteswetenschappen (Amsterdam
2001) 117.
112
Piet Mondrian ‘Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art’ in: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood ed., Art in Theory.
1900-2000. An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Malden, Oxford, Carlton 2003) 387-393, aldaar 389.
113
Cheetham, The Rhetoric of Purity, 121.
114
Ibidem, 122.
115
Ibidem, 138.
116
Ibidem, 135.
28
absolute qualities they possess in common. The creative force and the expressiveness of painting
reside materially in the color and texture of pigment, in the possibilities of form invention and
organization, and in the flat plane on which these elements are brought to play. The artist is concerned
solely with linking these absolute qualities directly to his wit, imagination, and experience, without the
go-between of a ‘subject.’“117 In terms of art history and the canon, this view implies the formalist
approach. All works, figurative or non-figurative, can be included in the canon, as long as they possess
absolute formal qualities.
In the idealist approach, the abstract forms refer to more than “absolute formal qualities”,
namely to universal truths. Abstract art is thus intrinsically superior to figurative art. An example of this
view is a statement by Hans Arp: “The works presented here are constructions of lines, planes, forms,
colours. They seek to approach the ineffable truth concerning mankind and the eternal. They turn away
from everything egotistical in man. […] The illusionistic images produced by the Greeks, and the
illusionistic painting of the Renaissance, have led human beings to overestimate their own kind, have
led to division and discord. […] Anonymity had been usurped by celebrity, by technical bravura. Wisdom
has perished.[…] Wisdom was the feeling for an essentially shared reality, for the mystical, for the
indeterminate indeterminable, for the greatest determinacy of all. Representation is imitation, spectacle,
rope-dancing. No one denies there are rope-dancers of varying degrees of ability. But art is reality, and
the reality we share must assert itself beyond all particularity. The ‘new art’ is as new as the oldest pots
and vessels, the oldest cities and laws, and has loon been practised by the oldest peoples of Asia,
America, Africa, and most recently during the Gothic Age.”118 This implies that illusionistic art is banned
from the canon.
As said, this was not the only legitimation of abstract art. A less dogmatic viewpoint comes from
The Association Abstraction-Création founded in Paris in February 1931 to organize ‘manifestions’ of
non-figurative art. Artists in the exhibitions were Hans Arp, Albert Gleizes, Jean Hélion, Auguste Herbin,
Frantisek Kupka and Georges Vatongerloo. The association claimed that non-figuration is a purely
plastic culture which excludes every element of explication, anecdote, literature, naturalism. 119 There
are two ways to attain this non-figuration: abstraction, as certain artists have came to the concept of
non-figuration by the progressive abstraction of forms from nature and creation, as other artists attained
non-figuration direct, purely via geometry. They did not value one approach above the other, their only
Man Ray, ‘Statement’, in: : Charles Harrison and Paul Wood ed., Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology of
Changing Ideas (Malden, Oxford, Carlton 2003) 277.
118
Hans Arp, ‘Introduction to a Catalogue’, in: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood ed., Art in Theory. 1900-2000.
An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Malden, Oxford, Carlton 2003) 276-277, aldaar 276-277.
119
Association Abstraction-Création, ‘Abstraction-Création : Editorial Statements to Cahiers nos.1, 1932 and 2,
1933’ in: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood ed., Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology of Changing Ideas
(Malden, Oxford, Carlton 2003) 374-376, aldaar 374.
117
29
aim was to compose a document of non-figurative art.120 Their anti-dogmatic view led to the equation of
abstract art and freedom. They worked within the context of Nazi-Germany and Communist Russia, and
fiercely rejected all regimes where free thought is contested. They pleaded for freedom on all levels of
society. This also meant freedom in art. The Association Abstraction-Création argued: “No one can
determine in advance the course of subsequent art. Any attempt to limit artistic efforts according to
considerations of race ideology or nationality is intolerable. We commit this second journal to total
opposition to all oppression, whatever kind.”121
2.2 Contemporary legitimation by art critics.
2.2.1 Reception of Abstract Expressionism
The legitimation of Abstract Expressionism resembles the legitimation of abstract art in many ways. The
legitimations are varied and very contradictory in many cases. Abstract Expressionism is an art
movement in the US, that started in the mid-forties and ended in the early sixties. This movement was
also called the New York School. Their style was predominantly abstract, though not exclusively. Nor
were all works expressionistic. Dominant figures within the movement were Mark Rothko, Barnet
Newman, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.
Art historian Ellen Landau analyses in her introduction to “Reading Abstract Expressionism” the
history of reception of the art movement. She claims that the refusal of so many of Abstract
Expressionism’s practitioners to define their stylistic and thematic ambitions opened the way for other
spokesmen with their own agendas – most notably the critics Clement Greenberg and Harold
Rosenberg – to step into the breach.122 The abstract expressionists were generally disinclined either to
give a name to what they were doing or even to conceive of themselves as a definable group. But from
the very start there were others, critics, curators and art dealers, more than willing to assume the task of
demarcation. As early as 1945, the New Yorker’s art reviewer, Robert M. Coates, who is believed to
have first used the term “Abstract Expressionist” observed that a new school of painting was developing
in the US.123
According to Landau, the mythologizing of Abstract Expressionism took place in the 1940’s. In
short-lived specialty publications issued between 1946 and 1949 the themes , assumptions, intellectual
ambience, and contextual parameters that were of interest to a specific group of New York artists and
Association Abstraction-Création, ‘Abstraction-Création : Editorial Statements’, 374.
Ibidem, 375.
122
Ellen G. Landau ed., Reading Abstract Expressionism. Context and Critique (New Haven and London 2005)
6.
123
Landau ed., Reading Abstract Expressionism, 7.
120
121
30
writers during and immediately after WW II, were firmly established. Most prominently featured in these
little magazines were shared expressions of a heroic belief in the centrality of the individual unconscious
and desire. These texts show mutually accepted issues and intentions. Central points of departure were
the European philosophical model of existentialism, American pragmatism and Jung’s promotion of the
generative role of primitivism and myth. This led to an aesthetic that valorized emotion, authenticity, and
risk.124
During the 1950s Abstract Expressionism established authority as an art movement. Articles
appeared in bigger art journals such as Art News and the Partisan Review. Two discourses around the
art movements appeared; one around Harold Rosenberg and the other around Clement Greenberg.
Greenberg argued against the overvaluation of heroism and individualism of the art movement, in an
attempt to put the movement within the high art culture. In the 1960’s the place of Abstract
Expressionism in the canon was consolidated.125 By 1965 Greenberg’s pre-eminence was well
established while Rosenberg’s began to wane.126
By the 1970’s both interpretations, Greenberg’s and Rosenberg’s, lost credibility, but still
remained very dominant in the mainstream legitimation of the movement. New interpretation paid more
attention to the intellectual, social and political contexts. The movement was studied from different
perspectives such as social studies and historic materialism. In this way, critics from the 70’s countered
the established canon of the movement and broadened it in many ways. Far more attention was paid to
the so-called “formative years” and to the women within the movement.127 The roots of the movement
were also expanded. They were not restricted to Cubism; but to sources ranging from cave art to
Mexican Muralism, American Indian pictographs, and sand paintings, and highlighting the contributions
of Surrealism, were included. In short, Jungian psychology, surrealism and primitivism became more
important to the understanding of the movement.128
In the 1980s art historians and art critics were trying to get away from dogmatic views on
Abstract Expressionism. Either they were too formalist, like Greenberg’s, or too political. 129 Art historians
were trying to find new significations in this art by taking a closer look at the statements of the artists
themselves.130 During the 1990’s art historians were still trying to redefine the art movement. This was
mostly done by looking at it from different perspectives like gender, black and homosexual.131
124
Ibidem, 5.
Ibidem, 18.
126
Ibidem, 19.
127
Ibidem, 33.
128
Ibidem.
129
Ibidem, 48.
130
Ibidem, 48-51.
131
Ibidem, 62-69.
125
31
Within many legitimations following themes are present: the contested European lineage of
Abstract Expressionism, intellectualism and formalism against individualism and romanticism, the
politics evolving around the movement and artists’ intentions.
Abstract Expressionism is often seen as a movement which tries to merge Cubist and Surrealist
innovations. In this way the movement has a strong European lineage. Though he detested Surrealism,
the art critic Clement Greenberg was a vigorous defender of this view. The story of abstract art begins in
Europe, but finds its ultimate expression in the US.132 Other scholars, as William Rubin, art historian and
curator of the MoMA, stressed the Parisian roots of the movement against the chauvinistic desire of
some to argue the “virgin birth” of Abstract Expressionism.133 But this lineage is very much contested.
The predecessors to the Abstract Expressionists, the American Abstract Artists, active in the 1930s,
expressed the authenticity and autonomy of the modern movement in the US in their statements. 134 In
this way they did argue for the virgin birth of the movement. Later on, Harold Rosenberg had taken
greater pains to counter Greenberg’s emphasis on providing a European stylistic lineage for the
developing Abstract Expressionism. He agreed with Greenberg that young Americans had appropriated
modern painting, but explained this appropriation in different terms. It was not the fulfilment of the
European project of abstract art, but the “individual sensual, psychic and intellectual effort to live
actively in the present.”135
This statement touches another important theme: intellectualism and formalism against
individualism and romanticism. Again, the interpretations of Rosenberg and Greenberg are oppositional.
Rosenberg follows to Motherwell who sees the art movement “a fundamentally romantic response to
modern life – rebellious, individualistic, unconventional, sensitive, irritable.”136 This approach connected
Abstract Expressionism with Beat Culture, a subculture in which art and life were deemed
inseparable.137 But it also fed the criticisms in more conservative circle. Conservative critics claimed
that Abstract Expressionism was yet another example of the lack of discipline championed by Beat
poets and musicians. It was a dangerous example of “the cult of unthink.”138 Other critics in defence of
Abstract Expressionism, like Thomas Hess of Art News, tried to free aesthetics from personalities, in
order to show how they constituted an art movement.139 Greenberg also wished to avoid individualism
and romanticism. He didn’t place Abstract Expressionism in the Beat Culture, but in the High Culture.
132
Ibidem, 8.
Ibidem, 12.
134
‘American Abstract Artists: Editorial Statement 1938’, in: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood ed., Art in
Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Malden, Oxford, Carlton 2003) 396-397, aldaar 396.
135
Landau ed., Reading Abstract Expressionism, 9.
136
Ibidem, 13.
137
Ibidem, 16.
138
Ibidem, 1-17.
139
Ibidem, 13.
133
32
Connected to this argument, Greenberg also defended the autonomy of High Culture. Still, it
was an increasingly popular argument that “the private drama of the Abstract Expressionist canvas”
could also embody wider relevance.140 Moreover, the emancipated dimensions of Pollock’s new painting
technique, was seen as evidence for the Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann’s assertion that “in this
country, it should be understood that modern art is the symbol of our democracy.”141
Abstract Expressionists did not make too many claims about their artistic intentions. Still, some
did, but many critics like Greenberg, ignored these artist’s intentions. For example Greenberg’s
congratulatory statement in “Feeling is All”(1952) contradicts every word Newman ever uttered about
the theoretical and philosophical values he attached to artistic creativity.142 Later critics would take into
account the artist’s statements.143
Taking a look at these themes, it becomes clear that the alternate interpretive positions
presented by Greenberg and Rosenberg showed a basic polarity that would continue to influence
significantly both Abstract Expressionist artistic practice and the greater elaboration of contexts for its
reception throughout the following decades.144 For that reason I will take a closer look at the approaches
of Greenberg and Rosenberg.
2.2.2 Clement Greenberg
The art critic Clement Greenberg has played the most central role in the legitimation of the Abstract
Expressionists. No one, early on, defended the Abstract Expressionists with Greenberg’s passion or
placed them within the Modernist canon.145 Greenbergs early articles were written in the 1930s, a
period of considerable artistic confusion in the United States, with four major movements contending in
a stylistic free-for-all: the "Americanscene" painters, the social realists, the cubist-influenced painters of
the "American Abstract Artists," a group formed in 1937; and, finally, the surrealists. The first two of
these movements held no interest for Greenberg; to him, they were simply kitsch in the service of
political programs. He also despised surrealism, because, in his judgment, they were seeking to return
to the fictional notion of painting as a window into an imaginary world.146 In the end, for Greenberg,
abstract art was the only way art could go.
In his essay form 1939 “Avant-garde and Kitsch”, he takes a clear stand concerning the quality
of art. Though standards have changed over time, there is still a lot of agreement, which makes the
140
Ibidem, 10.
Ibidem.
142
Ibidem, 24.
143
Ibidem, 25.
144
Ibidem, 9.
145
David Carrier, ‘Art and the Single Critic’ in The Nation, 266 (1998) 33-36, aldaar 33.
146
Michael J. Lewis, ‘Art, Politics and Clement Greenberg’, in: Commentary, 105 (1998) 57-62, aldaar 59.
141
33
distinction between art and kitsch possible. The Old Masters are celebrated justly through times. In the
past, however, wrong or irrelevant reasons were given for doing so.147
This stand implies a justification of the canon of art as a collection of artworks of exceptional
value. Greenberg argues: “All values are human values, relative values, in art as well as elsewhere. Yet
there does seem to have been more or less of a general agreement among the cultivated of mankind
over the ages as to what is good art and what bad. Taste has varied, but not beyond certain limits […]
There has been an agreement then, and this agreement rests, I believe, on a fairly constant distinction
made between those values only to be found in art and the values which can be found elsewhere.
Kitsch, by virtue of a rationalized technique that draws on science and industry, has erased this
distinction in practice.”148
In his search for how quality can be discerned, he turns to Kant. Kant held that the “judgement
of taste” always “precedes” the “pleasure” gained from the esthetic “object.” Greenberg goes even
further and claims that the esthetic judgement does not so much precede the “pleasure” as enables you
to commit yourself to it. As a consequence of the judgement of taste, pleasure is received. “If the
judgement of taste precedes the pleasure, it’s in order to give the pleasure. And the pleasure re-gives
the judgement.”149
How is the spectator able to judge? He must get rid of the “subjective”. This means whatever
particularizes him as a self with practical, psychological, interested, isolating concerns. In esthetic
experience the spectator more or less distances himself from that self. He becomes as “objective” as he
does when reasoning, which likewise requires distancing form the private self. The greater – or “purer” –
the distancing, the more accurate your taste becomes. 150 Not everyone is able to make good
judgements about art. He claims that the best taste, cultivated taste, is not something within the reach of
the ordinary poor or of people without a certain minimum of comfortable leisure.151
A central distinction between art and kitsch is autonomy. While kitsch has a function outside the
realm of art, art only refers to itself. “Art is autonomous; it’s there for its own human sake, sufficient to its
own human self, but this doesn’t seal it off from society or history. What its autonomy does mean is that
it serves humanity on its own terms, i.e., by providing esthetic value or quality. Art may provide other
things as well, but if it does so at the cost of esthetic value, it deprives humanity of what is uniquely art’s
Clement Greenberg, ‘Modernist Painting’ in: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood ed., Art in Theory. 1900-2000.
An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Malden, Oxford, Carlton 2003) 773-779, aldaar 779.
148
Clement Greenberg, ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’ in: Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture. Critical Essays
(Boston 1961) 3-21, aldaar 13.
149
Greenberg, Homemade Esthetics. Observations on Art and Taste (New York and Oxford 1999) 8.
150
Ibidem, 17.
151
Ibidem, 28.
147
34
to give.”152 Art experience, as art itself, is intrinsic. Esthetic intuition is never a means, but always an end
in itself, contains its value in itself, and rests in itself.153
Autonomy, quality and purity in art are intertwined in Greenbergs thought. This leads him to the
conclusion that abstract art is superior, as it does not refer to anything outside itself. Every art medium
has to be rendered pure, and in its ‘purity’ it will find the guarantee of its standards of quality as well as
of its independence.154 Every art medium has to employ its unique features and throw out all the rest.
About painting Greenberg claims: “Flatness alone was unique and exclusive to that art. The enclosing
shape of the support was a limiting condition, or norm, that was shared with the art of the theatre; color
was a norm or means shared with sculpture as well as the theatre. Flatness, two-dimensionality, was
the only condition painting shared with no other art, and so Modernist painting oriented itself to flatness
as it did to nothing else.”155
Thus, according to Greenberg, the avant-garde saw the search for its mediums unique features
as its mission. How did this avant-garde movement arise? Here, again, Greenberg turns to the
philosopher Kant. According to Greenberg, he was the first to criticize the means itself of criticism, and
therefore the first real Modernist. To Greenberg, modernism was the intensification, almost the
exacerbation, of a self-critical tendency that began with Kant.156 Thus, the essence of Modernism lies in
the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself – not in order to
subvert it, but to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence.157
The avant-garde is a uniquely Western phenomenon. Western civilization is not the first to turn
around and question its own foundations, but it is the civilization that has gone furthest in doing so. 158 A
superior consciousness of history, historical criticism, made this possible. Therefore, Greenberg claims,
it was no accident that the birth of the avant-garde coincided chronologically – and geographically, too –
with the first bold development of scientific revolutionary thought in Europe.159 Though the avant-garde
is a Western phenomenon, it has universalist claims, Greenberg maintains. Therefore, he constructs
continuity with the past and with non-Western cultures. Firstly, he insists that Modernism has never
meant anything like a break with the past. Modernist art develops out of the past without gap or break,
and wherever it ends up it will never stop being intelligible in terms of the continuity of art. 160 Secondly,
152
Ibidem, 65.
Ibidem, 4.
154
Clement Greenberg, ‘Modernist Painting’ in: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood ed., Art in Theory. 1900-2000.
An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Malden, Oxford, Carlton 2003) 773-779, aldaar 775.
155
Greenberg, ‘Modernist Painting’, 775.
156
Ibidem, 774.
157
Ibidem.
158
Ibidem.
159
Greenberg, ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’, 4.
160
Greenberg, ‘Modernist Painting’, 778.
153
35
he notes that Western artists seek connection with non-Western art traditions. “To prove that their
concept of purity is something more than a bias in taste, painters point to Oriental, primitive and
children’s art as instances of the universality and naturalness and objectivity of their ideal purity.” 161
In short, Greenberg’s legitimation is based on the premise of historical necessity. Nothing in the
nature of abstract art compels it to be so. The imperative comes from history, from the age in
conjunction with a particular moment reached in a particular tradition of art.162 So, to Greenberg, there is
no other explanation for the present superiority of abstract art than its historical justification. 163 This also
implies that this superiority will not last. “[…] I do not maintain that they are the only valid standards
through eternity. I find them simply the most valid ones at this given moment. I have no doubt that they
will be replaced in the future by other standards, which will be perhaps more inclusive than any possible
now.”164
2.2.3 Harold Rosenberg
Harold Rosenberg (1906-1978) was one of the most important members of the postwar community of
New York critics and artists. He produced an enormous amount of essays, books, catalogues and
collections, and had done much to make space for Modernist art in the United States. He was a great
champion of first-generation New York School painters like de Kooning, Pollock, Rothko, Gorky, Kline
and Newman. Rosenberg has drawn out the significance of Abstract Expressionism as a historical and
political phenomenon, in a totally different manner than Greenberg. He also provided the movement with
aphorisms and phrases like “the tradition of the new” and “action painting”. 165
Rosenberg defends the vision that Abstract Expressionism or Action Painting was not a
continuation of the abstract movement in Europe, but something else. There was a different motive for
extinguishing the object, which was not the same as in other abstract or Expressionist phases of
modern art.166 The New American Painting was, according to Rosenberg, not “pure art,” since the
extrusion of the object was not for the sake of the aesthetic. “The apples weren’t brushed off the table in
order to make room for perfect relations of space and color. They had to go so that nothing would get in
the way of the act of painting. In this gesturing with materials the aesthetic, too, has been subordinated.
[…] What matters always is the revelation contained in the act.” 167 Rosenberg argues that the centrality
Clement Greenberg, ‘Towards a Newer Laocoon’, in: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood ed., Art in Theory.
1900-2000. An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Malden, Oxford, Carlton 2003) 562-568, aldaar 566.
162
Greenberg, ‘Towards a Newer Laocoon’, 568.
163
Ibidem, 567.
164
Ibidem, 567.
165
Casey Blake, ‘The Defense of Good Ideas’, The Nation 242 (1986) 526-529, aldaar 526.
166
Harold Rosenberg, ‘The American Action Painters’, in: Ellen G. Landau ed., Reading Abstract
Expressionism. Context and Critique (New Haven and London 2005) 189-198, aldaar 191.
167
Rosenberg, ‘The American Action Painters’, 191.
161
36
of the act was an American feature as one American painter after the other began to see the canvas as
an arena in which to act – rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyse, or “express”
an object, actual or imagined.168
This new painting does not constitute a School, according to Rosenberg, as a School is the
result of the linkage of practice with terminology. All individual artists within Abstract Expressionism,
however, need an own terminology.169 This represents a clear break with the European heritage. “The
French artist thinks of himself as a battleground of history; here one hears only of private Dark Nights.”
Though Rosenberg emphasises the individuality of each artist, he does acknowledge that it is strange
how many segregated individuals came to a dead stop around the 1950s and abandoned, even
physically destroyed, the work they had been doing.170 He claimed that the revolution against the given,
in the self and in the world, which since Hegel has provided European vanguard art with theories of a
New Reality, had re-entered America in the form of personal revolts.171
This implies that not only the act, but also the actor is central to art. Rosenberg argues that a
painting is an act, inseparable from the biography of the artist. Moreover, in the act of painting, every
distinction between art and life has broken down. It follows, Rosenberg argues, that anything is relevant
to the study of art. Anything that has to do with action – psychology, philosophy, history, mythology,
hero worship; anything but art criticism.172 This individualism is always central in Rosenberg’s discourse.
Even in his youth, when he flirted with Marxism, he never abandoned his vision of the individual as the
central, most important player in any drama.173 In a 1966 essay, “Virtuosos of Boredom,” he defined
Action Painting as follows: “Action Painting was an attempt to overcome the individual’s loss of identity
by concentrating on the act of creation and self-creation as the exclusive content of painting.”174
Rosenberg claims that the movement is, with the majority of the painters, essentially a religious
movement. The conversion to the movement, however, has been experienced in secular terms. The
result has been the creation of private myths.175 “Some formulate their myths verbally and connect
individual works with their episodes. With others, usually deeper, the painting itself is the exclusive
formulation, it is a Sign.”176 This point of view is connected to his claim that modern art is connected to
religion and metaphysics. He acknowledges that modern art, at least on its surface appears to be more
168
Ibidem, 190.
Ibidem, 190.
170
Ibidem, 194.
171
Ibidem.
172
Ibidem, 191.
173
Ashton, ‘On Harold Rosenberg’, 615.
174
Ibidem, 622.
175
Rosenberg, ‘The American Action Painters’, 193.
176
Ibidem, 194.
169
37
closely allied with science and technology than with sacred images, ideas, or personages. 177 In the last
hundred years, art seems to have reversed its role, and has aimed to strip man, nature, and events of
glorifying attributes. Its main aim seems to be de-mystification. All artworks of the past and of the
present have been re-evaluated according to a single standard: the aesthetic. In this way art is made
indifferent to truth or reality.178 Rosenberg despises this formalist approach and their claim that it does
not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted . This is, according to Rosenberg, the essence of
academism. To him there is no such thing, he goes on, as a good painting about nothing. 179 Rosenberg
acknowledges that the power of this formalist approach is very strong within modern art, but still claims
that art has a strong affinity with man’s most mysterious power of creation.180 The question how to be
inspired is central in this revolutionary age, argues Rosenberg. “What state of mind will bring to
individuals and groups the enlightenment they need in our constantly changing situations?” 181 Though
intellectually, modern art is oriented toward science and technology, on a less visible level, art has never
left the province of religion and metaphysics.182 This is especially true for abstract art and Abstract
Expressionism. Though art lovers still connect the notion of religious art with paintings of madonnas,
crucifixions, and saints, the art of the 20th century shows that experiences of the absolute and the
transcendental achieve their essential expression in abstract art.183 The paintings of De Kooning,
Rothko, Gottlieb and Pollock are a perfect example of this. Unlike Greenberg, he claims that their work
is not purely formal and cut off from society, but concerned with subject matter. The Abstract
Expressionists, according to Rosenberg, are struggling to express universal and absolute statements in
an individual vocabulary.184 This tension is very important within the thinking of Rosenberg. Art is not an
autonomous realm, independent from society, but it is also a fiercely individual endeavour.
Modernist art is more than the solution of formal aesthetic problems; it is, according to
Rosenberg, “the one opportunity that human beings have within our society to make something
themselves and in that way make their own selves.”185 The individual is stuck within its historical limits
and must exploit the spaces that are left open as a way of transcending them. Rosenberg’s insistence
on the recognition of historical limits explains what at first glance are the most perplexing aspects of his
position: his belief that Modernism generally and Abstract Expressionism in particular were political
movements, and polemic against the image of the artist as a romantic embodiment of unbridled spirit
Harold Rosenberg, ‘Metaphysical Feeling in Modern Art’, Critical Inquiry 2 (1975) 217-232, aldaar 217.
Rosenberg, ‘Metaphysical Feeling in Modern Art’, 217.
179
Ibidem, 228.
180
Ibidem, 218.
181
Ibidem, 221.
182
Ibidem, 222.
183
Ibidem, 225-228.
184
Ibidem, 231.
185
Blake, ‘The Defense of Good Ideas’, 527.
177
178
38
and individual revolt. Artists and critics who denied the social and political context of Modernism were
guilty, he claimed, of “an arid professsionalism” that rendered art a harmless “social resource” to be
celebrated, catalogued safely filed away. A truly political art embodied the artist’s self-consciousness
about the historical pressures that shaped his or her work. Political consciousness is a necessity for art,
Rosenberg claims, otherwise art turns into decorations of the capitalist society.186
Society needs art, but art also needs society. Rosenberg is convinced of the fact that no
substantial problem of art is soluble by art alone.187 The tension between individual gesture and
universal claim can only be solved by society. Art has not got the same social role of religions in earlier
cultures. Art cannot cure cultural chaos, no matter how effective it may be in giving body to the
metaphysical absolutes of individuals.188 Art is not a substitute for ethics and hard thought.189 According
to Rosenberg, it follows that modern art can have no other social aim than the continuing revolt against
domination by tradition.190 Conformity threatens art by threatening the individual; this is most clearly
seen, he claims, in the history of what has happened to all totalitarian countries.191
Unlike Greenberg, Rosenberg challenges, on the basis of his believe in the individual, the
materialist conception of history. He argues that history will continue to behave like history, that is, it will
bring forth everything except what is logically expected of it.192 This means that art critics do not need to
look for a fixed development within art and celebrate the art that move along this development. Art
criticism must be passionate and partial and must recognize the heroism of modern life.193 Moreover,
the art critic must distinguish the qualities of each artist’s act.194 Greenberg fit Modernism in an
evolutionary process leading to two-dimensional flatness. Rosenberg, on the other hand, saw Abstract
Expressionism as a gesture of liberation from the inevitability of history, an embrace of freedom that
once and for all banished the false distinction between art and life.195 When writing the history of art, the
art historian should focus the history of the separate arts upon one history, the history of man, and the
insights of the past upon the understanding of the present.196 Here, Rosenberg pleads for a contextual
history of art.
Why then was he so hostile to the collective liberation that followed Abstract Expressionism,
culminating in Pop, Op, Minimalism, happenings, Conceptual Art and the rest? Was the end of High
186
Ibidem, 529.
Ibidem, 528.
188
Rosenberg, ‘Metaphysical Feeling in Modern Art’, 232.
189
Ashton, ‘On Harold Rosenberg’, 616.
190
Rosenberg, ‘Metaphysical Feeling in Modern Art’, 232.
191
Ibidem, 232.
192
Ashton, ‘On Harold Rosenberg’, 618.
193
Ibidem, 619.
194
Rosenberg, ‘The American Action Painters’, 196.
195
Blake, ‘The Defense of Good Ideas’, 526.
196
Ashton, ‘On Harold Rosenberg’, 619.
187
39
Modernism not a return to the rebellion of the Dada-movement, so highly valued by Rosenberg? To
Rosenberg it wasn’t. Duchamp’s moustache on the Mona Lisa and his “ready-made” sculptures
challenged the bourgeois elevation of art to a realm separate from, and ultimately irrelevant to, everyday
life. Such works destroyed the ideology of the museum as a secular chapel for aesthetic contemplation.
A drawing by De Kooning erased by the postmodern artists Robert Rauschenberg, Rosenberg argued,
had exactly the opposite impact: “The bland display by conservative curators of relics of subversion,” he
wrote, “has the effect of heightening the cohesion of the art world.”197
The explosion of new styles, supported by all the organs of mass publicity and marketing,
represented less a liberation of the artist from the burdensome heritage of high Modernism than it
showed the new power of “post-vanguard” professionals, dealers and museum curators.198 The agency
of the artist fell victim to the public relations machinery of the official art world.199
2.2.4 Conclusion
Abstract Expressionism has been legitimised from quite different perspectives. Perspectives with
implicitly and explicitly different views on art history and the canon. Greenberg is a clear example of the
internal history of art. Art is an autonomous realm and quality can be discerned by erasing the
subjective. Abstract art is superior as it only refers to itself and is most autonomous. This legitimation of
abstract art is firmly rooted in an idealist philosophical tradition, from Plato over Kant to Hegel. Central
features are; the search for truth and essence beyond the visual world, self reflectivity, historical
necessity and progress. In the search for essence, all particulars, such as mimesis, emotion, etc., are
erased. Abstract art is seen is the highest form of self reflectivity, as it reflects on what is truly unique to
its own medium. Evolution towards greater self reflectivity is inevitable and this fact makes abstract art
a historical necessity. This is a very exclusionary legitimation, which tends to authoritarianism. It leaves
no place for other movements to exist next to it. This legitimation has led to a lot of criticism.
The other popular legitimation of the place of Abstract Expressionism in the canon is based on
the idea that art does refer to something beyond art. It rejects the materialist and formalist approach of
Greenberg and embraces spiritualism. Rosenberg is the central figure within this approach. From this
perspective, art history is not a field separate from the history of man, it should be contextual history.
There is no fixed development within history, so the art historian doesn’t need to show objective
developments, but should be passionate and partial. How can one discern quality from this starting
point? Art, according to Rosenberg, should be rebellious, politically committed and reaching for absolute
Blake, ‘The Defense of Good Ideas’, 526.
Ibidem, 529.
199
Ibidem, 526.
197
198
40
statements. He does not explicitly state how to judge the quality of an artwork. He does claim that
artworks should be addressed in their own terms. All these criteria leave a lot of space for arbitrariness.
2.3 Criticism
Both approaches have been criticised from various perspectives. One of the most popular criticisms
directed against Greenberg was not so much against his formalism, but against his political stand. This
view would become crystallized in a book by Serge Guilbaut, ‘How New York Stole the Idea of Modern
Art’ published in 1983, which placed Greenberg's opinions on art in the context of his anti-Communism.
Greenberg, in Guilbaut's influential reading, was to be understood as an aesthetic cold warrior, one who
promoted American art as a vehicle of American hegemony. This reading was quickly accepted, and
taught at universities.200
Though this criticism is interesting, it will not be central in this survey, as it does not touch the
basis of the practice of art history and its canon. Though one could derive the idea from this view that
the canon is merely a political decision, this view should be discarded. Political decisions have an
impact on the cultural canon, but decisions made do not always have the desired outcome. Moreover,
other factors, like philosophical, economical and social contexts should also be considered. Claiming
that the canon is the toy of politics would be a very reductionist point of view. Still, it would be interesting
to look if art historians who write on Abstract Expressionism acknowledge this critique or they ignore it.
The most basic critic against Greenberg’s approach is its authoritarianism and its
exclusiveness. His history of modern art is, according to Danto and many others, the history of
purgation, or generic cleansing, of ridding the art of whatever was inessential to it. The political parallels
to these notions of purity and purgation are easy to draw for many critics, whatever Greenberg’s own
politics actually were. Danto puts it as follows: “It is not surprising, simply shocking, to recognize that the
political analogy of modernism in art was totalitarianism, with its ideas of racial purity and its agenda to
drive out any perceived contaminant. […] You cannot use the idiom of purity, purgation, and
contamination and at the same time take easily to the postures of acceptance and toleration.”201
Leaving the political connotations of Greenberg’s quest for purity and essences, this approach
is very exclusionary within art history. The canon of Modern Art as presented by Greenberg leaves out
anything that did not help forward the history of art, art that didn’t search for the essence of its medium.
Surrealism, for example, could never be included into the canon, as it lay outside the pale of history. It
happened, but it was not part of the progress.202 Even more problematic is how to incorporate non-
Lewis, ‘Art, Politics and Clement Greenberg’, 60.
Danto, After the End of Art, 70.
202
Ibidem, 9.
200
201
41
Western art into his story of art. Greenberg’s universal story of art uses a highly Western concept of art,
based on Western philosophers as Kant and Hegel. The majority of Western and non-Western art
doesn’t have the aim of reaching an art that only refers to itself. This criticism is equally valid when it
comes to Rosenberg’s approach. The criteria he uses for judging quality are also Western and
exclusionary like rebellion, politically adequacy.
Greenberg’s autonomy statement has been attacked on many grounds. First, it can be stated
that no art is ideology – free. If art chases autonomy, and it exists only for itself, it degenerates into
ideology no less. The neo-Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno claims that emphasis on autonomous
works is itself socio-political in nature.203 Moreover, Adorno claims that even if autonomy could be
established, it is not desirable: “When a work is merely itself and no other thing, as in a pure
pseudoscientific construction, it becomes bad art – literally pre-artistic. […] As eminently constructed
and produced objects, works of art, even literary ones, point to a practice form which they abstain: the
creation of a just life.”204 Cheetham expresses a similar concern when he claims that in trying to escape
the danger of impurity, art’s purity can entails art’s loss of its definitive freedom, autonomy, and potential
to effect change.205
Journalist Tom Wolfe attacked both Greenberg and Rosenberg in his book ‘The Painted Word’,
published in 1975. Both art critics claimed that the Abstract Expressionists were artists who worked
independent of the art world. Especially Rosenberg feared the disappearance of Bohemia after the
decline of Abstract Expressionism. ”Having left the rebellious semi-underworld of bohemia art has
become a profession taught at universities, supported by a public, discussed in the press, and
encouraged by the government.”206 Wolfe, however, argues that a modern artist always needs
psychological double-tracking, in order to be successful. 207 On the one hand, he needs to make antibourgeois values his own, but on the other hand he needs to be “picked up” by the bourgeoisie and the
cultural elite.208
How do reference books approach this art movement? Do they follow perspectives related to
Greenberg and Rosenberg or do they try to incorporate the more recent approaches? Reference books
differ a lot from each other. Take for example two source books on Modern Art: Herschel B. Chipp’s
“Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics” and “Art In Theory, 1900-1990” by
Charles Harrison and Paul Wood. Whereas Chipp included Abstract Expressionist statements and
Theodor Adorno, ‘Commitment’ in: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood ed., Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An
Anthology of Changing Ideas (Malden, Oxford, Carlton 2003)779-783, aldaar 782.
204
Adorno, ‘Commitment’, 782.
205
Cheetham, The Rethoric of Purity, xiii.
206
Blake, ‘The Defense of Good Ideas’, 526.
207
Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word (1975 New York), 12..
208
Ibidem, 12-13.
203
42
critique in a section he called “Contemporary Art: The Autonomy of the Work of Art”, Charles Harrison
and Paul Wood used many of the same entries in their source book, but classified them under “the
individual and the social,” a significantly different rubric. It is not hard to see that Chipp seeks connection
with Greenberg, while Harrison’s and Wood’s approach is much closer to Greenberg.209 Now I will take
a closer look at four reference books on art history: “The Story of Art” by Ernst Gombrich, “A World
History of Art” by Hugh Honour and John Fleming, “Art History” by Marilyn Stokstad and “Real Spaces”
by David Summers.
2.4: Legitimation in reference books
2.4.1 Ernst Gombrich
Gombrich’s book “The Story of Art”, is a widely spread and read book. It is not intended as a
referencebook, it is more an introduction to art for young people. The title suggests that there is only one
story to tell. This point of view seems a logical consequence of his definition of the canon. For
Gombrich, as seen above, the canon “offers points of reference, standards of excellence which we
cannot level down without losing direction.”210
Standards of excellence become visible through time. Only through the passing of time, the art
historian can see which influence an artist had on future art and what contribution an artist made to the
history of art.211 This is why Gombrich does not believe in the concept of contemporary art history.
There is not enough historical distance to judge contemporary art and the art historian will be easy
influenced by fashion and commerce. This fashion industry, according to Gombrich, will exist as long as
there are people with enough money and free time.212 Still, when a certain art movement has been part
of the fashion industry, this does not imply that the works of art which originated from this art movement
can not be of any value. Gombrich claims that though art lovers and art historians do not agree with or
take interest in the trend of a movement anymore, the paintings in themselves can still appeal to
them.213
This also seems to be his point of view on Abstract Expressionism. Though Abstract
Expressionism was popular within a certain trend, it is still appealing to the artlover today. On what
ground is it still appealing? Or more broadly put, how does Gombrich legitimate the place of Abstract
Expressionism in the canon? Describing the art movement,
Gombrich clearly acknowledges
209
Landau ed., Reading Abstract Expressionism, 2-3.
E. Gombrich, Art History and the Social Sciences: The Romanes Lecture for 1973 (Oxford 1975) 24.
211
Gombrich, Eeuwige Schoonheid, 600.
212
E. H. Gombrich, Eeuwige Schoonheid (Houten 1995) 599.
213
Gombrich, Eeuwige Schoonheid, 599.
210
43
legitimations by Greenberg and Rosenberg. Like Greenberg, he places Abstract Expressionism in the
history of European abstract art. Since World War II, according to Gombrich, the developments in art
point to formalism, especially within the field of painting. A painting is appreciated when it is painted
well. What it represents is of minor or no concern to the art lover. This leads the way to abstraction. To
paint here, means to put paint on a canvas in a superior way. 214 This recalls Greenberg’s search for the
essence of the art medium. Gombrich also agrees with Greenberg that the Abstract Expressionists
wanted to create something unique in a world where so many things are the product of mass production
and standardization. This becomes obvious, according to Gombrich, when looking at the huge formats
and at the interest in the materiality of the paint.215 Still, though Gombrich acknowledges these aims and
concern, they are not central to his appreciation of this art movement. As mentioned above, Gombrich
believes that one does not need to accept the theories of an artist to like his or her work. Gombrich
claims that, when looking at many of these paintings, the observer will develop preferences and
understand what the artists were trying to do.216
He openly agrees with Rosenberg on the difference between avant-garde and movements like
pop art.217 The avant-garde, from World War I onwards, was truly rebellious and anti-bourgeois. The
artists had to be brave, while being mocked at by the press and the art critics.218 As Rosenberg,
Gombrich claims that the explosion of new styles, after Abstract Expressionism, were supported by all
the organs of mass publicity and marketing, and as such represented less a liberation of the artist from
the burdensome heritage of high Modernism than it showed the new power of “post-vanguard”
professionals, dealers and museum curators.219 The agency of the artist fell victim to the public relations
machinery of the official art world.220 Gombrich seems to agree with both Greenberg and Rosenberg
that postmodern art, or art after Abstract Expressionism, has not brought forward much interesting. He
does not want to discuss pop art in his book, as for him, this art movement is a pure example of fashion,
without further qualities.221
Still, to Gombrich freedom in art is more desirable than dogmatism. Though freedom has not
always led to the most interesting art, freedom in art should be seen as a blessing. The attempts of
Communism to control art from above have made this clear. He acknowledges that through the
confrontation with Marxist art, art in the West was also caught up in the turmoil of the Cold War.
Rebellious art would never have had acquired so much official support outside of the context of the Cold
214
Ibidem, 602.
Ibidem, 606.
216
Ibidem, 605.
217
Ibidem, 611.
218
Ibidem, 610.
219
Blake, ‘The Defense of Good Ideas’, 529.
220
Ibidem, 526.
221
Gombrich, Eeuwige Schoonheid, 610.
215
44
War. This rebellious art was used to sharpen the contradiction between the democracy of the West and
the dictatorial state system of Communism.222
The only Abstract Expressionist he addresses extensively is Jackson Pollock. To Gombrich,
Pollock’s development from Surrealism to Abstract Art, represented a break in his oeuvre. Though he
places Pollock in his story next to European abstract artists like French painter Soulages and Russian
painter de Staël, he pays a lot of attention to the influence of non-Western art on Pollock’s abstract
work. Gombrich claims that there is no doubt about the Chinese, Buddhist and the native Americans.223
Not only formal affinities are acknowledged, but also concerns about subjectmatter. As Gombrich sees
it, abstract art was not only in function of finding the formal essences of the medium, but tried to reach
beyond art. Religious concerns were central to this art movement. But these concerns were, unlike what
Rosenberg claims, a continuation of European abstract artists obsession with mysticism and the search
for a higher truth.224
It is still not obvious why certain modern art movements deserve their place in the canon and
others do not. When he discusses Franz Kline and Pierre Soulages briefly, he addresses his own
preferences. He claims that Soulages’ work is more interesting, though the nuances of the brushstrokes
evoke three dimensions in both artists works, the structure of the paint of Soulages is more pleasing.225
This is a very formalist point of view. As seen in chapter 1, it is a highly arbitrary and exclusionary view.
Moreover, it can legitimate the Western view, while claiming that judging art by form is universalist.
2.4.2 Hugh Honour and John Fleming
Now I will turn to an extensive reference book on the history of art, written by Hugh Honour and John
Fleming, “A World History of Art”. The title of the book suggests that there is no such thing as “the”
history of art and that their story is by no means all including or universal. In the introduction to the book,
Honour and Fleming claim that their aim was to give a summary, more so than to give an interpretation
and an evaluation of art.226 Even when avoiding as much as possible interpretation and evaluation,
somehow the authors need to legitimate the choices they made. Why is an artwork or an art movement
valuable enough to be included in their history of art? Abstract expressionism is included in their story.
What are their reasons for doing so?
222
Ibidem, 616.
Ibidem, 602-604.
224
Ibidem, 605.
225
Ibidem, 605.
226
Hugh Honour and John Fleming, Algemene Kunstgeschiedenis. Negende, herziene en uitgebreide druk
(Amsterdam 2000) 12.
223
45
First I will show how they encounter the emergence and the fall of abstract expressionism. Then
I turn to how they give meaning to this art movement and which art critics they are following and which
not.
Abstract expressionism has, according to the authors, mainly its origins in two movements
within European modern art: abstract art and surrealism. The authors see European abstract art, like the
art of Mondrian, Léger and the Bauhaus designers, as an implication of cubism. Cubism led to the idea
that art could be and maybe should be abstract.227 Only in this way an artwork could be truly
autonomous. The idea of autonomy comes from the Romantic desire of making art and music that refers
only to itself, because this will give the highest esthetic experience.228 These artists were mainly active
right before and during the first world war. Their art was predominantly geometric, as they believed that
laws parallel to those in geometry and mathematics, formed the basics of art. In spite of their esoterical
and intellectual character, the authors argue, abstract art was seen as a model for the ideal harmony
between humans and their environment. In this way abstract art gains a social message that connected
this art to contemporary political and social theories.229 Immediately, a mixture of Greenberg and
Rosenberg is obvious. The idea of autonomy is profoundly Greenbergian, but the authors note that this
autonomy does not stand in the way of societal relevance.
While abstract art had rational tendencies, the other main origin of abstract expressionism;
surrealism, was irrational. According to the authors surrealism was born out of the dada movement. The
first surrealist manifest was written by the poet André Breton in 1924, who would become the leader and
the theoretician of the movement. Surrealism found its ideological origins in the psycho-analysis of
Freud and their aim was to unite dream and reality to climb up to a more absolute reality, namely
surreality. They tried to avoid all control of their conscious in order to dig into their unconsciousness. 230
These two movements, abstract art and surrealism, were irreconcilable in Europe. The authors
claim that Americans saw no problem in uniting rational and irrational tendencies in modern art. 231 The
emergence of abstract expressionism, according to the authors, coincides with the exodus of
intellectuals and artists out of Europe right before World War II, to escape Nazism. In this way,
American artists came in touch with European abstract artists and surrealists. Free from the dogmatic
aspects of both movements, they picked up ideas from them.
The common ground of the abstract expressionists was, according to the authors, their feverish
energy and their extreme positioning, their love for huge formats and all had the feeling they lived in the
227
Honour and Fleming, Algemene Kunstgeschiedenis, 797.
Ibidem, 783.
229
Ibidem, 797.
230
Ibidem, 809.
231
Ibidem, 835.
228
46
same problematic human situation, the difficult fate of being an American right after World War II.232
Though the authors claim that they did not form a movement, Honour and Fleming argue that their
artworks were the expression of feelings and thoughts the artists all shared.233
The book describes two main reasons for the decline of abstract expressionism, one external
and one internal. First, they claim that in the postwar consumer society there was no place for the
soberness and self-control of the abstract expressionists.234 The figurative images of Jasper Johns and
Robert Rauschenberg seemed more in tune with the time.235 Second, the purist tendencies that followed
abstract expressionism were discredited as the last phase of Modernism. The authors claimed that the
work of art referred to itself in an unusual fashion. Not only these radical purist tendencies like
minimalism and post painterly abstraction lost credit, but their forbearers, like abstract expressionism,
too.236 The generation that followed this purist and modernist epoch, turned against these tendencies
and claimed that they represented the new academism.237
This book pays a lot of attention to the individual artists within abstract expressionism. It focuses
on the artist’s intentions and biography. Both are taken as important explanatory factors for their
artworks. They do not seem to find a way out in between individual intentions and social tendencies.
The main problem is that they do not even try, as they ignore it. In the introduction to the chapter they
pay a lot of attention to the political and social background of the period, but afterwards they do not
intertwine this background with the artist’s biographies and statements. As a consequence, artist’s
statements are taken for real without any contextual notes.
The same problem arises when they turn to how this art was received. The authors claim that it
was in the first place the art critics who formulated the aims of the abstract expressionists, especially
Harold Rosenberg. They go on quoting Rosenberg, without wondering if the artists actually agreed on
his view or giving arguments why his view on the movement is valuable.238 In short, the authors
suppose that the intentions of the artists can explain their art and these intentions can be known by art
critics.
When looking at how they describe the reception of Abstract Expressionism, it is remarkable
that they only mention Rosenberg and leave the other important critic on this movement, Clement
Greenberg, aside. They do mention Greenberg, when they are talking about the decline of Abstract
232
Ibidem.
Ibidem, 836.
234
Ibidem, 843.
235
Ibidem, 844.
236
Ibidem, 857.
237
Ibidem, 869.
238
Ibidem, 836.
233
47
Expressionism.239 His dogma of purism and self reflexivity in art was, it seems when reading the text,
the reason for the decline of the movement, but offered no valuable interpretation of it. They claim
explicitly that Greenberg is a product of the Cold War, but they do not explain much why.
Though the authors say that they try to avoid valuation, they claim that some artists are more
valuable then others. They prefer Jackson Pollock to Willem de Kooning as the latter lacks the
refinement and neurotic liveliness of Pollock’s works.240 Mark Rothko is seen as maybe the greatest
painter of the movement, as he is definitely most aware of the spiritual dimensions of abstract art. 241 As
these criteria can not be seen as universal, it is difficult to see why they are valid in this case. Their
valuation of artists seems very arbitrary.
2.4.3 Marilyn Stokstad
Stokstad’s book is simply called “Art History”. It is intended as a referencebook and as such wants to be
both comprehensive and inclusive. Stokstad also wanted to write a thoroughly contextual art history.
Abstract Expressionism is discussed in it. On what grounds does Stokstad legitimate the presence of
this art movement in her book?
Abstract Expressionism is addressed in Chapter 29 ‘Art in the united States and Europe since
World War II’. A whole subchapter is dedicated to it. While the subchapter ‘Postwar European Art’,
including artists like Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti only counts two pages, eleven are dedicated
to Abstract Expressionism. As breeding ground for the movement, Stokstad points at the group of the
American Abstract Artists, the political program of Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA),
Surrealism and Cubism.
The American Abstract Artists was a group that originated in 1937 to promote the abstract
tradition of the European avant-garde. Stokstad claims that “for those Americans tired of the Great
Depression and worried by the growing signs of the coming war in Europe, the pleasures of what they
called “pure” art seemed compelling.”242 According to Stokstad the American Abstract Artists provided
an important training ground for some of the critics and artists made the US an important player within
the art world after Word War II.243 Another important factor in this shift towards modernism in American
art was Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), formed in 1935. This was a broad program
to help get Americans back to work after the Depression, it had remaining effect until 1943. 244 Among its
initiatives were programs to support the arts, including the Federal Theater Project, the Federal Writers’
239
Ibidem, 844.
Ibidem, 836.
241
Ibidem, 839.
242
Marilyn Stokstad, Art History (New York 1999) 1104.
243
Stokstad, Art History, 1104.
244
Ibidem, 1104-1105.
240
48
Project, and the Federal Art Project. These programs had a profound impact on the arts community. By
paying a salary, it allowed painters and sculptors to devote themselves full–time to art and to think of
themselves as professionals in a way few had been able to do before 1935. Stokstad claims that NYC’s
painters began to develop a group identity, as they had now time to meet each other in cafés. The
Federal Art Project also gave New York’s art community a sense that high culture was important in the
US. This program, with its financial support and cultural consequences, was crucial to the artists later
known as the Abstract Expressionists, who would shortly transform NYC into the new art capital of the
world.245
After pointing at social, economical and cultural circumstances in the US that form part of the
background of Abstract Expressionism, she turns to the European lineage. The rise of fascism in
Europe and the outbreak of World War II stimulated a considerable amount of leading European artists
and writers, like André Breton, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Piet Mondrian and Fernand Léger, to move to
the US. Though these émigrés kept to themselves, Stokstad claims that their presence provoked fruitful
discussions among American abstract artists.246 Surrealism was the most important European influence.
Stokstad points out that “the main result of this new American fascination with Surrealism was the
emergence of Abstract Expressionism, a term that designates a wide variety of work – not all of it
Abstract or expressionistic – produced in New York between 1940 and roughly 1960.247 Still, cubism
also had a enormous influence on the movement, according to Stokstad. “The artists who would
become known as Abstract Expressionists found inspiration in Cubist formalism and Surrealist
automatism, two very different strands of modernism. From the Cubists they learned certain pictorial
devices and a standard of aesthetic quality. From the Surrealists they gained a commitment to
examining the unconscious and the techniques for doing so.”248 Unlike European surrealists, who took
over the notion of the unconscious from Sigmund Freud, Americans were more influenced by Carl Jung,
with his theories about the collective unconscious. This preference, according to Stokstad, is a
consequence of the fact that Abstract Expressionists were dissatisfied with what they considered the
provincialism of American art in the 1930’s. In Jung, they found a formula to connect the individual with
the universal. They could find the universal themes within themselves.249 Here she agrees with
Rosenberg’s point of view on Abstract Expressionism. These artists tried to reach beyond art. Their art
did not only refer to itself, but tried to reach universal statements.
245
Ibidem, 1105.
Ibidem, 1112.
247
Ibidem, 1112.
248
Ibidem, 1112.
249
Ibidem, 1112.
246
49
Stokstad has clearly taken notice of more recent approaches, originating in the 1980s and
1990s. Her story about Abstract Expressionism is neither a purely internal nor external perspective, as
she tries to combine both. Art, to her, is not a phenomenon cut off from society, but it is not completely
determined by society either. She combines artistic intentions with social, economical and political
contexts. She also pays considerable attention to the formal phase of the movement and to female
abstract expressionists. Still, the traditional canon of Abstract Expressionism stays central in her
exposé. Women and early works are addressed separately, in the beginning or at the end, but not in the
main part. In the main part, she makes the traditional distinction between action painting and colour field
painting, and pays attention to Archile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Clifford Still, Barnet
Newman and David Smith. Unlike Greenberg, she pays a lot of attention to biographies and personal
statements.
The book cast light on specific problems in separate ‘boxes’. One of those addresses the
concept of the mainstream. She claims that one of the central convictions cherished by modernist
artists, critics and historians has been the existence of an artistic mainstream, the notion that some
artworks are more important than others – not by virtue of their aesthetic quality but because they
participate in the progressive unfolding of some larger historical purpose.250 She places Greenberg in
this tradition. She acknowledges that Greenberg’s view that the mainstream of modern art was flowing
away from representation and easel painting toward abstraction and large-scale murals may have also
influenced Pollock’s formal evolution at this time, but his shift in working method was grounded in his
own continuing interests in both automatism and nature.251
She first gives a mainly internal explanation of the demise of Abstract Expressionism. She
claims that by the end of the 1950s NY critics were dismissing second-generation Abstract
Expressionists as “method actors” who faked genuine subjectivity and were accusing members of the
first generation, such as de Kooning, of faltering. Abstract Expressionism had lost its critical edge.252
Afterwards, she gives a more external perspective on the fall of the art movement. The 1960s was a
watershed period in the history of modern art, she claims. The modernist faith in the transformative
power of art waned during that decade. Although the Minimalists continued to believe that the history of
art had a coherent, progressive shape and that art represented a pure realm outside ordinary
“bourgeois” culture, the purity, honesty, and clarity of their art were not meant to change the world but
to retreat from it.253 In short, the artists who built on abstract art after the 1960s, abandoned
250
Ibidem, 1116.
Ibidem, 1115.
252
Ibidem, 1121.
253
Ibidem, 1134.
251
50
Rosenberg’s faith in the political relevance of art, and relied solely on Greenberg’s interpretation of
abstract art.
How does Stokstad deal with quality? She does not make too many statements about quality in
art and about why some artists are included and others are not. Still, about Rothko she remarks that the
best of his mature paintings maintain a tension between the harmony they seem to seek and the
fragmentation they regretfully acknowledge.254 This statement suggests a very expressive conception of
art. The way she ends her book reinforces this idea as she concludes with a quote of Robert
Motherwell (1915-1991), a major NY School painter: “Most people ignorantly suppose that artists are the
decorators of our human existence, the esthetes to whom the cultivated may turn when the real
business of the day is done. But actually what an artist is, is a person skilled in expressing human
feeling…. Far from being merely decorative, the artist’s awareness….is one…. of the few guardians of
the inherent sanity and equilibrium of the human spirit that we have.”255 Ending a book about world art
history with this quote is problematic as it suggests that all art is about guarding the sanity and
equilibrium of the human spirit. This view also focuses very much on the individual artist, which is a very
Western concept.
2.4.4 David Summers
Summers’ exposé about American Expressionism is totally different than that of the three other books.
Summers does not discuss the movement as such, but only focuses on one art work made by an
Abstract Expressionist, namely the Rothko Chapel by Mark Rothko. This exposé is part of chapter 7,
“The Conditions of Western Modernism”.
The chapter starts of with this statement: “In this final chapter I will not offer a history of the
works of art we call ‘modern’, nor will I try to say when modernism might have begun or ended, or try to
account for all the kinds of works of art falling within these disputes boundaries, tasks especially
daunting when ‘art’ is treated as broadly as it has been in the preceding chapters. Instead, I will keep to
the theme of what I called conditions of presentation, trying to characterize the formation of Western
modernity as a tradition of place and image-making among other traditions. The chapter’s few
illustrations are mostly intended to demonstrate familiar works and patterns of meaning in different
terms.”256
Summers claims that there are multiple modernities. But the modernity discussed in this chapter
is the Western variation. This is not just a variation, though, as Summers argues that the systems of
254
Ibidem, 1119.
Ibidem, 1167.
256
Summers, Real Spaces, 549.
255
51
energy, transportation, communication and commerce originating in Western science, technology and
capitalism have connected the world in utterly unprecedented ways. According to Summers, modernist
art itself has become global in ways that will only become increasingly important in the future. Still, these
cultural connections do not simply constitute the spread of Western modernity, rather they are, in all
cases, interactions and adaptations, many of which are still to be negotiated.257
Local human worlds have, Summers argues, been constructed, maintained and continually
developed and changed in any number of ways and earlier cultures in the West in important respects fit
this general scheme. But the strain of the Western tradition culminating in modern technology has
achieved an ever more successful reduction of given nature to ‘natural resources’ awaiting extraction,
analyses into elements, concentration, distillation and use. The ancient definition of mechanics, the
intervention in the causes of nature for human ends, has given way to the prospect of an essentially
post-natural world, assuming a future of endless technological progress and economic development.
Rather than taking its place among historical cultures, this continually self-transforming system is clearly
often perceived as threatening to undermine and engulf them.258
Modernism in European painting, according to Summers, emerged as a more or less continual
transformation of virtuality from the late Middle Ages onward. From then onwards, patrons began to
demand paintings that, while their subjects might continue to be religious and political in the context of
traditional institutions, were also made for private purposes and for in new destinations. For their part,
painters began to be praised for skills of illusionism and for individual powers of invention and execution.
Connoisseurs and amateurs appeared, who understood the pleasures and difficulties of the arts
themselves, and who could distinguish one hand or ‘manner’ from another. This in turn urged new
definitions of art in general, to which older uses of art were largely irrelevant, even as older art might be
appreciated as ‘art’ in the new sense. These definitions provided new criteria for collecting, and, from
aristocratic beginnings, collections of art underwent progressive democratisation with the institution of
the public museums that have been part of the modern world since the 19 th century. Artists meanwhile
increasingly became speculators in their personal imagination and skill, part of broader patterns of
speculative commerce in art.259
Subjectivity became a central concern within art. Summers claims that many of the levels of
modern Western subjectivity have straight-forward counterparts in familiar and representative art
movements: Impressionism represents sensation; abstraction represents schematic intuition;
Expressionism represents feeling and temperament and Surrealism represents the unconscious. The art
257
Ibidem.
Ibidem, 552.
259
Ibidem, 550.
258
52
of these movements may involve the universalising assumption that, since all experience is
represented, any image, or all art, must have a place somewhere on this continuum of subjectivity. It
has been Summers’ sustained attempt to show that these systematically related understandings of art
are highly culturally specific, and that people in most cultures have not made and used what we call art
as if these assumptions were true.260
The idea of progress in art is another Western assumption that raises certain obvious
intercultural difficulties. It creates a scale relative to which some things are ‘early’, others ‘late’, some
‘primitive’, some ‘advanced’, some ‘developed’, others ‘undeveloped’, some ‘first’, others ‘third’, all the
while defining advancement in its own terms. According to the arguments of Summers’ book, to call
such schemes reductive is not to say that there is no progress, but rather to say that progress is local,
partial and focused.261 According to Summers, the characteristic modern Western world has been
formed by two great forces, capital and technology. If these continue to be thought of in terms of the
universal historical inevitability, then the conceptual reduction of historical cultures must become an
actual destruction. Summers claims that we should think of capital and technology not as inevitable
developments but as resources in themselves, with good and bad sides, raising the demand for new
kinds of choices in relation to human needs, then other prospects begin to open up.262
He ends this chapter by discussing the Rothko Chapel by painter Mark Rothko. He has devoted
so much attention to the Rothko Chapel because it brings the themes of this chapter closer to the
present and at the same time provides a summary of themes from earlier chapters. The chapel repeats
an ancient circumambulatory form, but it is the paintings that articulate circumambulation. There is no
relic, no stone, no centre.263 The Rothko Chapel is thus, according to Summers, archaising while
avoiding any attempt at revival. Important is that for Rothko, as for all of us, historical forms came to
hand in ways they could not have for those who invented, replicated and refined them. For Rothko they
were available for what might be called historical or cultural construction, a use of historical forms at a
remove from historical traditions, forms maintained in relation to forms of other traditions.264
It is not the virtuality of the paintings that is central to his discussion, but the real space, how the
paintings function within the space they are presented. This presentation is discussed in detail.
“Rothko’s unframed paintings are on heavy stretchers, and ground colour wraps around the stretchers
together with the canvas. The paintings are thus set forward from the wall in the same way their large
facing surfaces are coloured, cast shadows. This three-dimensionality is fundamentally important to
260
Ibidem, 625.
Ibidem, 642.
262
Ibidem.
263
Ibidem, 650.
264
Ibidem, 651.
261
53
their presence, especially in contrast to the doorways, which as positive openings might be seen to
complete the two outer panels of a polyptych on the east and west walls. As much as the doorways may
complement the paintings, however, they are not like panels in a polyptych because they abut the floor;
they immediately add human scale, and the scale of human movement, to the short list of significant
elements. This scale at once establishes the terms for the actual presence in the chapel of the observer
and contrasts that scale to the scale of the paintings.”265 According to Summers, real space is more
fundamental than virtual space, because every virtual space has a format. In these paintings, a format
for virtual space asserts itself as format in real space, and assumes the presence and scale in real
space such assertion will permit.266
This insistence on three-dimensionality is very much in contradiction with Greenberg’s
interpretation. For Greenberg, the painting is a world in itself, and a thoroughly two-dimensional world.
Though Summers pays a lot of attention to the material of the painting, this materiality refers to
something else. Greenberg sees materiality as an intrinsic value. Summers puts it as follows: “While
acknowledging floor, doorways and upright, moving observer in their rectangular, upright and stationary
formats, the paintings are suspended in ways we do not see, as paintings usually are. Suspension is a
last, powerful survivor of the easel, the ‘little ass’ that supports canvas or panel as paint is applied,
before the format is a ‘window’. Again, given the few elements, Rothko’s paintings might be said to
assert that suspension is essential to painting, and in effect ‘suspends’ the materiality of painting, or
gives it other values.267
Summers’ view on abstract art is not unlike Greenberg’s. He states that the modern Western
aesthetic-formalist view of ‘fine’ art grew up together with the gathering of works of self-referential
quality into collections, ultimately into the institutional spaces of museums. These changes in the
institutional purposes of art made resembling and narrative ‘subject-matter’ secondary to ‘form’,
effectively relegating images to more popular and technological ‘media’, Greenberg saw these images
as ‘kitsch’. The purest art of ‘form’ itself, ‘abstract’ art, is in fact often called ‘non-representational, ‘nonobjective, or ‘non-figural’.268 Summers goes on to state that this aesthetic-formalist view of art underlying
abstraction is broader than abstraction, and is in itself iconoclastic in the straightforward sense of
ignoring images even when they are present. This kind of aesthetic appreciation requires that the
observer always looks through and around whatever images he finds in the art of any tradition to their
more essential ‘forms’ and their relations.269
265
Ibidem, 647.
Ibidem, 647.
267
Ibidem, 647.
268
Ibidem, 252-253.
269
Ibidem, 253.
266
54
Noteworthy is that Summers, as Rothko himself, does not consider Rothko’s painting as
abstract. Rather than being removed from reality, they are in real, active and intimate relation to
observers. Summers claims that they are also not abstract in the sense of being non-figural. His later
work was connected to his early figural paintings. They had simply continued to transform in the
direction of greater purity and immediacy.270
Rothko’s paintings have often been discussed in terms of the sublime. Summers also does this.
But, this sublimity does not arise by comparison to landscapes.271 He compares Rothko’s work to the
artworks of Monet and Cézanne, where the support had come to be treated as if it were a direct
confrontation of eye and undifferentiated light, and therefore with sublime force. The transparencies and
opacities of Rothko’s paintings proceed form such a basis, according to Summers. Here Summers
touches another theme that had been important in the discourse about Abstract Expressionism; the act
of painting. “The space of this behindness is a kind of pictorial space, only to be made by brushing
pigment in medium on canvas, and only existing in the way it does here as the specific, unrepeatable
act of its making.” But again, this pictorial virtual space is not autonomous. “This light, as if from an
utterly undeterminable source and distance, and certainly seen ‘through a glass darkly’, is closed off in
spare successive layers of the same colour, finally by opaque black. This is another pictorial space, and
therefore a construction in pictorial space, a kind of repoussoir which, rather than counterposing
‘foreground’ and ‘background’ in a virtual space, links pictorial space with the surface of the painting and
with the space of the chapel itself.”272
Summers included this artwork not only because it fitted in his scheme, but also because it is a
work of high quality. How does Summers define quality? He declares that the overall effect of the chapel
is much more moving than he had supposed it would be before seeing it and that the effect is one at
once of greater presence but also of the acceptance of human fragility and fate. The glimpsed light is far
away but unavoidable and urgently present at the same time. Question is whether this experience is
personal or universal. Summers seems to claim the latter.
He argues that the painters who would become known as ‘Abstract Expressionists’, under the
immediate pressure of World War II passed through a period in which they attempted to revert to a
universal archetypal consciousness. When Rothko made the artworks for the chapel, he had abandoned
the dreamvirtual space of suggestive biomorphic forms and automatic writing to the beginning of the
articulation of an utterly different universality, expressly based on human cardinality, living movement
270
Ibidem, 648.
Ibidem, 647.
272
Ibidem, 648.
271
55
and place.273 Summers seems to project his own perspective on art on the art of Rothko. Question is
whether his own perspective is universal.
In his quest for a universal world art history, a lot is left unsaid when it comes to individual
artworks. Art is only encountered from his own perspective and with his own conceptual tools. He
doesn’t cope with more specific historical circumstances. The Cold War, the debates around freedom
and authoritarianism are all left untouched.
2.5 Conclusion
All four chosen reference books paid considerable attention to Abstract Expressionism. The
legitimations of the art movement by Rosenberg and Greenberg are highly exclusionary, so it is no
wonder that these views are implicitly or explicitly critiqued by all four books. Even when they draw on
some of the perspectives of Greenberg or Rosenberg, they do not see these approaches as truthful. As
Gombrich is the only author who starts from a fixed concept of quality in art, he is the only author who
has a coherent way of dealing with quality in art. His formalist approach suggests an objective standard
for his selection. I have argued that this standard is exclusionary and arbitrary, and is as such
undesirable. Honour and Fleming and Stokstad do not wish to define quality in this exclusionary and
arbitrary way. However, these authors do not find another way to legitimate the place of Abstract
Expressionism in the canon. Even Summers, who makes much greater pains to define art and
modernism, can not find a valuable common ground where to judge quality upon.
This problem is the reason why formalist approaches, like Greenberg’s, are still popular as how
to deal with quality in art. The result of the external criticisms, art critic Lewis argues, is not an
improvement upon the cultural vitality of an earlier age but a distinct and disastrous decline. “If, then,
students in America's art schools continue to invoke "Greenbergian formalism"-and they do--that is
because in a shifting sea, without fixed positions, it is a comfort to have a landmark, even a theoretically
hateful one. As a foil, perhaps even as a secret ideal, a number of the things Clement Greenberg stood
for--austerity, high intellectual integrity, the devotion to formal perfection--may, if we are lucky, be with
us for some time to come.”274 This is a central problem to the writing of a world art history. On the one
hand, the story of art should be non-discriminatory, but on the other hand it shouldn’t end up in total
arbitrariness. I now investigate how the four referencebooks try to deal with these issues in general.
273
274
Ibidem, 649.
Lewis, ‘Art, Politics and Clement Greenberg’, 62.
56
Chapter 3
Now I want to take a closer look at the chosen reference books. First I will try to find out the aim of the
author. What visions on art history and the canon are explicitly formulated? Furthermore, I will figure out
what is implicitly said. Therefore, I will look at the table of contents and the selection made in the book.
Does the table of content show a traditional evolutionary story of art or does it show another structure
beyond the idea of progress? Does the selection equal the traditional canon or does it expand or even
abandon the idea of the canon? How is the selection legitimated? After this I will evaluate what
criticisms formulated on art history and the canon the author has acknowledged. If criticisms are taken
seriously, how did the book deal with them? Has the author found an adequate way to deal with them?
In the end, I will evaluate what is interesting in their approach and can be used within a new model for
the canon and for art history as a whole.
3.1 Ernst Gombrich
First, I will discuss a very well know reference book on art; “The Story of Art” written by the equally
famous art historian Ernst Gombrich. This book does not claim to be a reference book, but it is used as
such. Gombrich argues that this book is an introduction to readers in their teens who have just
discovered the world of art for themselves. It wants to offer a framework that should enable the young
readers to place works of art, styles and periods.275 This book wants to show coherence within the
history of art and it wants to aid the reader in forming an opinion on works of art by revealing as much
as possible the artist’s intentions.276 In order to do so, Gombrich wants to place works of art in their
broader historical context. He claims that revolt against the earlier generation is the principal motor of
change within the history of art.277 With this mechanism, Gombrich shows coherence into the story of
art. Art historian Bradford Collins claims rightly that Gombrich places art within its art historical context,
not within its broader historical context. “For Gombrich,” Collins states, “art is less an elevated sphere
than one apart. He believes that the artist, like the scientist, operates essentially in response to
developments in his field.”278 But, in contrast with science, these developments don’t equal progress. In
science, the scientist can legitimate his discoveries through rational arguments. Every progress in art,
275
E. H. Gombrich, Eeuwige Schoonheid (Houten 1995) 7.
Gombrich, Eeuwige Schoonheid, 8.
277
Ibidem, 9.
278
Bradford R. Collins, ‘History of Art/ The Story of Art (book review), in: Art Journal 48 (1989) 90-95, aldaar
92.
276
57
on the contrary, is at the expense of other qualities within art. Gombrich calls this progress “subjective
progress” and claims that it doesn’t implicate objective growth of artistic value.279
He does acknowledge the fact that his story of art suggests objective progress. The
chronological tale of the history of art suggests that every work of art had to be made and the evolutions
in art are inevitable and equal progress.280 So, it would be foolish to reject the art of one’s own time.
This is why, Gombrich cynically remarks, art critics are unable to value contemporary art in a negative
way. They would look foolish if they don’t accept the inevitable art of their time.281 Gombrich openly
despises art historians and art critics who see every new fashion in art as a positive cultural progress.
If Gombrich does not want to show progress within art and he does not see developments in art
as informative sources for history, what is he trying to offer in his introduction? Throughout the book,
aesthetic pleasure seems to be Gombrich’s primary concern. Collins argues rightly that the love of art,
and not the love of history, is the proper basis for Gombrich’s study.282 Still, Gombrich does
acknowledge that “art” didn’t have the same meaning throughout different times and cultures. 283 But, he
does continue to make a claim for an unproblematic love of art of other cultures and times to our/his
own aesthetic standards. Gombrich does try to evaluate every art work in its own terms. He claims that
in every time and culture, people have made masterpieces that are able to give us aesthetic pleasure.
He sees no problem in calling objects art, as long as we realize that they had a different meaning in
other times/cultures.284
Although artist’s intentions matter to Gombrich, he claims that the art lover does not have to
accept an artist’s theory of art, in order to admire his works of art.285 Gombrich tries to avoid theory as
much as possible in his book in order to avoid snobbism. He claims that for the enjoyment of art, only
one thing matters: keeping an open mind. Theory can spoil this openness. 286 To the artist, however,
theory can be fruitful. Still, no theory holds the absolute truth, but every theory holds some truth that can
lead to the most beautiful masterpieces.287
Here, Gombrich comes to his point of departure: there is no such thing as art, there are only
artists; men and women, who have the gift to compose colours and forms until the composition is
“good”.288 There will always be artists, but to make the products of these people art, there is a public
279
Gombrich, Eeuwige Schoonheid, 9.
Ibidem, 612.
281
Ibidem, 613.
282
Collins, ‘History of Art/ The Story of Art (book review)’, 92.
283
Gombrich, Eeuwige Schoonheid, 15.
284
Ibidem, 15.
285
Ibidem, 605.
286
Ibidem, 36-37.
287
Ibidem, 596-597.
288
Ibidem, 597.
280
58
needed. This public needs to be open-minded, but also needs to make sure that tradition is still alive.
So, young artists can build on that tradition.289 His attitude towards contemporary art is made perfectly
clear when he claims that the maker of a Persian tapestry probably did not want to do anything more
than make a beautiful cloth, and that it would be good if contemporary artists took over this attitude.290
Innovation is not valued very highly as it does not necessarily contribute to the enjoyment of art, but
rather to snobbism.
Gombrich makes a clear distinction between masterpieces and “taste”. There will exist a stream
of objects that responds to fashion, as long as there are people with enough money and time to buy and
make it. In his book, Gombrich only included art works of the greatest value and perfection, and he
wanted to exclude his personal preferences as well as what’s in fashion.291 As he intended, his
introduction can be seen as an introduction to the canon. He does this, because, he claims, the most
famous art works are indeed also the best art works to many standards.292
But what are these standards? How does he legitimate the canon? Though he is not very
explicit about this matter, he does hand some clues in his text. As Anita Silvers, another defender of the
internal approach to art mentioned in Chapter One, he claims that the story of art is the test of time.293
Only through the passing of time it becomes obvious what contribution an artist made on the story of art.
This contribution is most visible in the way the artist influenced other artists. Here Gombrich claims that
an influential work of art can be seen as a masterpiece.294 This conflicts with earlier statements in the
book. He advocates that the contemporary artist can learn something from the anonymous maker of the
Persian tapestries, who did not intend to be original at all. He was not an innovator, but just very skilled
at his work. This also implies that he could never have had a big impact on other artists. Still, Gombrich
claims that these are masterpieces in their own right. Here it becomes obvious that his Western
approach of art is hard to combine with world art history. He can not offer a valid definition of the canon
or of art, that can include all the objects he includes in his story of art. There is a tension between his
primary concern of aesthetic enjoyment and legitimation of the canon.
Other aspects he contributes to masterpieces are also random and problematic. At one point he
says masterpieces are as human beings – they show different aspects of themselves every time you
encounter them. An art work is an exciting world in itself with its own laws and adventures.295 This
statement confirms his clinging to the internal point of view on art. But it also excludes objective
289
Ibidem, 597.
Ibidem, 617.
291
Ibidem, 8.
292
Ibidem, 8.
293
Anita Silvers ‘The Story of Art Is the Test of Time’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49 (1991)
211-224, aldaar 217.
294
Gombrich, Eeuwige Schoonheid, 600.
295
Ibidem, 36.
290
59
judgement, as it is dependent on the observer if he or she sees something different in the art work every
time. Still, Gombrich claims that valuation is not subjective. Personal tastes have nothing to do with it.
One of the aims of this book, the author argues now, is to show the reader how to separate personal
taste from recognizing objective superior mastery.296 Exactly how this should be done, as well as how
the canon is legitimated, stays a mystery.
The criticism of the art historian Christopher Steiner, mentioned above, is very adequate in this
case. The canon of art, as presented in Gombrich’s Story of Art, removes itself from the objective
conditions of social life by its elevation above the “stream of life”. In the story, he claims that aesthetic
judgements can be made under objective conditions free from moral, political, economic and social
influences. In this way, art is an autonomous realm and the canon is kept in tact by its aura.297 Gombrich
does acknowledge that art has been used as propaganda, like during the Cold War, but this only
influenced what was in “fashion” for a while, not the construction of the canon of art. 298
Gombrich’s story of art is a clear example of an internal point of view on the history of art. In this
way, it is a Eurocentric defence of the traditional canon of art. It is Eurocentric in the way that it features
mainly European art works and when it encounters non-Western art, it does so from a Western
conception of art. It is traditional as the canon he presents includes major artworks as presented in the
capital European museums and he does not make any attempt to broaden it in order to include
minorities.
Still, in two ways his approach can be meaningful for the writing of a different art history. First,
he turns against the idea of progress in art. Though this is a point of departure that is needed when
trying to write a world art history, he has no other way of dealing with this issue than mentioning it in the
introduction and in the conclusion. He is honest enough to acknowledge that his book, with its
chronological order, contributes to the idea of progress in art. Second, he turns against the Western
concept of innovation as primary to art. This is connected to the first point. As it is impossible to
encounter non-Western or old Western art with this concept, the canon can not be legitimated around
the concept of innovation.
As he dismisses almost all the criticisms of the external point of view on art history and the
canon, he does not try to find a practical answer to those criticisms. The three books I will discuss now
have acknowledged these criticisms more than Gombrich.
296
Ibidem, 626.
Christopher Steiner, ‘Can the Canon Burst?’, Art Bulletin 78(1996) 213-217, aldaar 217.
298
Gombrich, Eeuwige Schoonheid, 616.
297
60
3.2 Hugh Honour and John Fleming
The book by Honour and Fleming is, unlike Gombrich’s, intended to be a reference book. This implies
that the authors’ primary concern was to give a summary and not so much an interpretation or
evaluation of the history of art.299 According to the historian Peter Burke, this is the minimal aim of the
book. Their higher aim is twofold: they try to shed assumptions about art being intended primarily for
aesthetic enjoyment and they claim that works of art cannot be fully understood unless related to the
circumstances.300 Again, both aims are very much unlike Gombrich. Though he also notes that aesthetic
enjoyment was not a primary concern to most artists of the past and in other cultures, he sees no
problem in approaching these objects from this perspective. Honour and Fleming do acknowledge this
problem, and try to see each object in its own right. Moreover, while Gombrich saw art as an
autonomous realm, Honour and Fleming feel the need to place art into its historical context. In putting
aside aesthetic pleasure and the autonomy of art as points of departure, they hope to encounter nonWestern and older art in their own terms. In this way, their approach is hermeneutical, inspired by
Panofsky. Panofsky, as mentioned above, has developed a method, iconology, that is still very much
influential today. His method has two aspects: first, the art historian must “re-create” the work by
attempting to intuit the artistic “intentions” that went into its creation and then submit it to archaeological
investigation.301
If art is not aesthetic enjoyment, then what is it? Art, according to the authors, is the way in
which men and women have given visual expression to what has occupied them; their longing for
sensual satisfaction, the need for self-knowledge and self-control, dreams and passions, hope and
fear.302 In this way, they try to avoid the concept of progress in art. Their point of departure is a universal
human nature. Human beings are drawn to symmetry, decoration and harmonic colour combinations.
These correspond, according to the authors, to the two most elementary human longings: creating order
in nature and establishing individuality by showing differences between groups of people. 303 Still, they
are not able to avoid Western dichotomies based on the idea of progress, as they equate simple with
old and complex with modern.304
As they see artworks as more then objects of aesthetic satisfaction, as products of our universal
human nature, they suggest that artworks can teach us about ourselves and about each other. The
299
Honour and Fleming, Algemene Kunstgeschiedenis, 12.
Peter Burke, ‘A world History of What?’, in: Art History 6 (1983) 214-217, aldaar 215.
301
Keith Moxey, ‘Motivating History’, 396.
302
Honour and Fleming, Algemene Kunstgeschiedenis, 12.
303
Ibidem, 25.
304
Ibidem, 25.
300
61
creation of artworks is what distinguishes us from animals. That is why art history is an essential feature
of the human history.305
Art history, Honour and Fleming claim, shows continuity as well as change, but shows no
progress. Still, some works deserve to end up in their reference book and some not. Throughout the
book no definition of quality is given. As they are using a hermeneutic approach, they try to appreciate
every art within its own terms. It follows that they, just as Panofsky, ca not deal with artistic quality. Also
like Panofsky, and unlike post-modernists, they still cling to the idea of masterpieces and the canon.
They define masterpieces as artworks that transcend their historical limitations and have a timeless
attraction, independent of the artist’s intentions.306 The works of art they selected for their reference
book pretty much coincide with the traditional canon of art. Still, taking a look at the table of contents,
they pay considerable attention to non-Western art. But most of the time they only describe this art in
connection with their encounter with the West. This is very notable in the introduction to those chapters,
as the described historical context almost always features their relationship towards to West. Moreover,
this book has a very classical structure. It is basically the traditional story of Western art, that suggests,
against their intentions, evolution and even progress. Non-Western art seems to have no part in this
Western success story and seems to be included almost as an excuse.
The explicit legitimation of their selection is not very satisfying either. They claim that,
considering the size of their research topic, they focused on their attention on historically important
places and periods.307 As they reject the idea of progress it is not clear why some places and periods
are more important than others. Afterwards, they claim that influential artworks form the backbone of art
history. The canon is a selection of artworks that are influential to contemporary artists. In this way it
promotes change and continuity.308 Some great artworks might be ignored at first, but they will find their
place in the canon, if they are worth it, in the end. In this way they suggest that true talent will shine
through no matter what, and they do not take into account that minorities do not have equal chances.
The legitimation of individual artworks is even more problematic. They heavily rely on praising
adjectives to show why these artworks are valuable. They also depend on romantic notions about art,
like the concept of genius. This is very much the case when they address the works of Henri Rousseau.
They claim that there is no doubt about his genius.309 Though it is their aim to show artworks in their
contexts, their legitimation of quality suggest that art is an autonomous realm.
305
Ibidem, 31.
Ibidem, 30.
307
Ibidem, 12.
308
Ibidem, 30.
309
Ibidem, 773.
306
62
They are, again unlike Gombrich, willing to learn from the criticisms formulated from the
external point of view. They see art as part of the structure of society, because art is the expression of
religion, moral codes, esthetic preferences and a social system. In Marxist fashion, they claim that
artworks are a means to keep social hierarchies in tact.310 They included sections on the discrimination
of black people and women in pictures.311
They have also taking note of the criticisms formulated by the New World History. They show
how from the 19th century onwards, non-Western art was seen as an early stadium of the human
evolution as derived from Darwin. They claim that these artworks are neutralized by including them in
the historical narrative.312 Though this is a very valid remark, it is not obvious how they are escaping this
problem, as their approach is very much influenced by this same historicism. Furthermore they claim
that non-Western art loses much of its meaning, when presented within a European context.313 But
when they discuss the influence of this non-Western art on the modern artists of the beginning of the
20th century, they do not pay attention to the fact that these artists where only interested in the formal
aspects of their work.314
In their reference book, Honour and Fleming try to combine the search for the meaning of a
work of art with a description of the historical circumstances in which the artwork was made. They do
both, but the chief problem is the lack of connection between the paragraphs on the historical context
and the more detailed art-historical narrative which follows.315
Honour and Fleming gave in their book a comprehensive overview of artworks made through
history. In this, they do the exact opposite of what art historian Keith Moxey has prescribed; a motivated
history. Instead of acknowledging that the canon is constructed, they suggest that by abandoning some
Eurocentric points of departure, like progress, a true narrative of art can be written.
The way Honour and Fleming deal with the problems around art history and the canon has been
to expand the traditional range of research objects and to abandon Western concepts like evolution and
progress. It is a modernised version of traditional art history, where some critical challenges have been
incorporated and but the most fundamental ones have been ignored.
310
Ibidem, 26.
Ibidem, 28.
312
Ibidem, 740.
313
Ibidem, 769.
314
Ibidem, 773.
315
Peter Burke, ‘A world History of What?’, in: Art History 6 (1983) 214-217, aldaar 215.
311
63
3.3 Marilyn Stokstad
“I firmly believe students should enjoy their art history survey. Only then will they learn to
appreciate art as the most tangible creation of the human imagination. To this end we have
sought in many ways to make Art History a sensitive, accessible, engaging textbook.”316
“Art History”, unlike “The Story of Art” and “A World History of Art”, represents the joint effort of a team
of scholars and educators. Stokstad, the editor of the book, claims that single authorship of a work such
as this is no longer possible, as the world has become too complex and the research on and
interpretation of art too sophisticated.317 But this is not the only reason for choosing collaboration
instead of single authorship. “An individual view of art may be very persuasive – even elegant – but it
remains personal; we no longer look for a single “truth,” nor do we hold to a canon of artworks to the
extent we once did.” All contributors, Stokstad claims, have independent views and the capability of
treating the art they write about in its own terms and its own cultural context. 318 This aim coincides with
the aim of Honour and Fleming. Still, the emphasis here lays much more on the historical context than
on the artist’s intentions and they pay much more attention to the interaction of both. In this way,
Stokstad wanted to write a contextual history of art. It is her aim to not treat the visual in a vacuum but
within the essential contexts of history, geography, politics, religion, and culture; and to define the
parameters – social, religious, political, and cultural – that either constrained or liberated individual
artists.319
“Art History” is intended as a reference book for students. In this way it is both comprehensive
and inclusive. It was the author’s goal to reach beyond the West to include a critical examination of the
arts of other regions and cultures, presenting a global view of art throughout the centuries. This implies
that they do not only want to cover the most famous artworks of the most prominent media, but also
drawings, photographs, works in metal and ceramics, textiles, and jewellery. So, they try to find a middle
way between the traditional canon of art and artists and artworks not previously acknowledged. They
also claim to have drawn throughout on the best and most recent scholarship, including new discoveries
and new interpretations of well-known works.320
Stokstad has a clear view on what the discipline of art history is. “Art history, in contrast to art
criticism, combines the formal analysis of works of art – concentrating mainly on the visual elements in
the work of art – with the study of the works’ broad historical context. Art historians draw on biography to
316
Stokstad, Art History, 6.
Ibidem,6.
318
Ibidem.
319
Ibidem.
320
Ibidem.
317
64
learn about artists’ lives, social history to understand the economic and political forces shaping artists,
their patrons, and their public, and the history of ideas to gain an understanding of the intellectual
currents influencing artists’ work. They also study the history of other arts to gain a richer sense of the
context of the visual arts.”321 This is ultimately again a very hermeneutical approach, in which art is
studied within its context. It is also a thoroughly external point of view on art history. Like Honour and
Fleming, but unlike Gombrich, Stokstad clings to the idea that art can not be understood as an
autonomous realm, cut off from society.
It is clear how she wants to approach art, but how does she define art? She sees art as the
ultimate expression of human faith and integrity as well as creativity.322 This is a broad, but vague
definition of art. It does exclude a strictly structural approach to art. Stokstad firmly rejects the Marxist
analysis of art: “Marxist art historians once saw art as an expression of great social forces rather than of
individual genius, but most people now agree that neither history and economics nor philosophy and
religion alone can account for the art of a Rembrandt or Michelangelo. The same applies to
extraordinary ‘ordinary’ people, too, who have created powerful art to satisfy their own inner need to
communicate ideas.”323 Here, she injects a pseudo-religious legitimation of the artworks presented, into
her narrative. Though she first claims that there is not one story of art, but multiple stories, here she
suggests that certain artworks have universal value, independent of any context. The ambivalence
between universalism and pluralism, does not get resolved in this book.
Stokstad does acknowledge that there are many different ideas of art and beauty. But how can
a contemporary viewer encounter these objects, made with a very different intention than the possible
intentions of this viewer. Stokstad claims that the viewer has to enter into an agreement with artists,
who, in turn, make special demands on us. “We re-create works of art for ourselves as we bring to them
our own experiences. Without our participation they are only hunks of stone or metal or pieces of paper
or canvas covered with ink or colored paints.”324 How the balance between the demands of the viewer
and of the artist is made, is very unclear.
In their introduction, it is clear that the contributors have taken notice of multiple criticisms on art
history and its canon, but how do they deal with it within the text? When it comes to their selection, it
must be noted that again primarily the canonical works are included, though they expanded the canon
they constructed with artworks in less canonical media and artworks of minorities. The revised edition of
1995 has included even more traditional canonical works, on “popular demand”. 325 The needs of the
321
Ibidem, 28.
Ibidem, 8.
323
Ibidem, 24.
324
Ibidem, 21.
325
Ibidem, 7.
322
65
potential readers seem to have a big impact on the selection. They preferred works that are easily
accessible to students in the US above other works.326 Art historian Mark Miller Graham notes correctly
how Stokstad limits herself to high culture. Single monuments are discussed, not works in series. He
argues rightly that the book’s fixation on key monuments and masterpieces as being “representive,“
rather than on monuments in series, exemplifies the survey approach, where art history is a succession
of great works, minus their series. This is how, again and again, it is possible to claim extra-historical
standing for masterpieces.327
Like Honour and Fleming, Stokstad deals with the problems around art history and the canon by
expanding the traditional range of research objects and abandoning Western concepts like evolution
and progress. She does this far more thoroughly than Honour and Fleming. The inclusion of women is
credible, they are not included as an excuse. Moreover, the contributors have avoided Western and
romantic notions as genius, exceptionality and so on. Still, this is a modernised version of traditional art
history, where critical challenges have been incorporated, but the most fundamental criticisms have
been avoided.
3.4 David Summers
Summers “Real Spaces” is a very different project from all the previous. He explicitly tries to fashion a
conceptual basis for a history of art able to serve a broad intercultural conversation.328 He evaluates and
for a large part rejects other approaches to the history of art and goes on formulating his own model.
He attacks internal as well as external approaches. First he analyses formalist art history. In
principle the idea of form promised access to all kinds of art. In practice, it arose together with Western
modernism and historicist ideas of evolution and development and was an unreliable means of
engaging the art of cultures outside the European tradition.329 In the last thirty years, Summers
acknowledges, the rejection of formalist for contextual art history has meant the rejection of the idea of
quality, of the principles of design, and of ‘internal’ formalist art history, based on the assumption that
form itself undergoes ‘development’ or ‘evolution’.330 Still, he is not convinced by the alternatives handed
over from the external art history. Whether post- Cold War art historians regard cultures as ‘ideologies’
or as consumerist ‘lifestyles’, the solutions offered by these reductive, totalising Western alternatives
continue to encounter the massive resistance of cultures themselves.331 Semiotics, for example,
326
Ibidem, 6.
Mark Miller Graham, ‘Gardner’s Art through the Ages’ Art Journal 55 (1996) 99-103, aldaar 101.
328
Summers, Real Spaces, 11.
329
Ibidem, 28.
330
Ibidem, 34.
331
Ibidem, 11.
327
66
operates from the assumption that works of art are ‘texts’, which, however this metaphor might be
understood, he rejects as reductive and ethnocentric.332
Moreover, formalism, structuralism and post-structuralism, depart from the postulate of what
Summers calls the “pictorial imagination”. Pictorial imagination is the virtual space of a work of art and is
separated from actual size.333 This concept is linked to the Western idea that the world is formed by
human imagination, an idea that is central to the philosophy of Kant. Summers claims that Kant’s basic
principle that the mind substantially constitutes its world, and does so by an initial act of imagination,
has persisted in many variants to the present, and has been deeply formative for our understanding of
art.”334 This imagination is not universal, but culturally defined. This is why the postulate of the virtual
space can’t form the point of departure for a World Art History. ‘World Art History’ of the subtitle of his
book, is, according to Summers, not a global history, which he sees as both undesirable and impossible,
but the discipline of art history itself, now faced with the task of providing the means to address as many
histories as possible nearly enough in their own terms to permit new intercultural discussions.335
What is his conceptual alternative to make these intercultural discussions possible? He starts
from the concept “real space”. This is a universal concept which is the point of departure for his analysis
of art: ”Real space is ultimately defined by the human body, more specifically by the body’s finite
spatiotemporality, its typical structure, capacities and relations. These are what I shall call conditions of
real space. We are finite in being of one or another extent and in being mortal, and these two finitudes
are joined in the succession of our growth, maturation and decline.”336 This conditional basis of human
activities, according to Summers, is for all intents and purposes common and universal, and at all times
we live and act within these limits. Art is part of these human activities and works both with and against
conditions.337 In this way, Summers claims to have found a universal common ground for all art. Still,
real space can also be a principle of difference as real spatial conditions never exist in themselves and
are always culturally shaped.338 Still, the ‘anthropomorphism’ of the conditions and values of real space
provides the irreducible basis for the meanings given to the world in which we must find ourselves in any
cultural circumstance, and for our self-understanding through that world.339
Starting from this common ground he has formulated categories in terms of which the art of
many traditions may be meaningfully addressed and compared, categories in terms of which Western
332
Ibidem, 26.
Ibidem, 35.
334
Ibidem, 34.
335
Ibidem, 12.
336
Ibidem, 36-37.
337
Ibidem, 37.
338
Ibidem, 53.
339
Ibidem, 38.
333
67
art itself must be addressed differently.340 Six main concepts are explained in six chapters. The seventh
chapter addresses the conditions of Western modernism.
The first chapter introduces the concept “facture”. This concept points to the fact that all art “has
been made”. Summers claims that since pure configurations do not occur in themselves, but only in
specific instances, even the simplest artifacts may have particular characters simply as a result of
having been made.”341 Differences of this “being made” are arbitrary. Arbitrariness descends from a
word meaning ‘to intervene’, and an arbiter is one who comes between, who changes a given situation
by effecting a judgement. Following these leads, three factors bear upon arbitrariness. The first is the
separation, or relative isolation, of groups realizing shared configuration; the second is the intervention
and judgement of a maker or makers’ and the third are changes that occur by dint of repetition of the
form.342 The centrality of facture also implies that much more attention is paid to material and
technology. Summers argues: “Technological differences have provided a criterion for the classification
of periods of human history altogether – the Old and New Stone Ages, the Bronze Age, […] – but the
history of art, while it stands in the closest possible relation to the history of technology, is not simply
defined by technology, and there are many possible relations between to two.”343
Chapter Two, “places”, turns on the proposal that “places, as real social spaces, provide the
possibility for the actual statement of difference”344. Places unite groups, but they exclude as well as
include, and are therefore also fundamental to the institutionalisation of differences among groups. 345
This concept is relevant for the study of art as the culturally specific characteristics of artefacts and
images are meaningful in ways that determined their appearance in places, or division of places, in the
social spaces, or ‘world’ for which they were made and in which they were used. 346 The chapter
discusses the concepts of difference, sex, centres and diasporas, boundaries, paths, to name a few, all
in their spatial meaning.
Chapter 3 is called “The Appropiation of the Centre,” and it gathers Egyptian, Akkadian, Roman,
Khmer, Chinese, and French examples to articulate the change from cultures in which rulers
appropriated the centre to those that tend toward inclusive and non-hierarchical arrangements.347 This is
relevant to his project as it shows how rulers shape the real space. The three remaining concepts that
are universal, according to Summers, in the way that they are methodological tools for all art, are
“image”, “planarity” en “virtuality”.
340
Ibidem, 653.
Ibidem, 63.
342
Ibidem, 64.
343
Ibidem, 71.
344
Ibidem, 123.
345
Ibidem, 117.
346
Ibidem, 118.
347
James Elkins, ‘Book Reviews’, Art Bulletin 86 (2004) 373-381, aldaar 374.
341
68
Summers claims to be able to address all cultures with this scheme. But what are cultures?
Summers defines cultures as systems of real spatial usages as well as the values and beliefs that are
associated with these usages. As cultures are enacted and defined by real spatial usages then in
principle anyone can belong to any culture. Anyone might have learned any system of real spatial
usages and associated values.348 This is so, Summer argues, because all cultures are variations on the
conditions of human real spatiality, and quite independently of one another, cultures may share closely
similar real spatial patterns. This does not imply that all cultures are essentially the same. As every
culture considers its real spatial usages and associated values as absolute, cultures seem
incompatible.349
How is anyone, as part of a specific culture, able to encounter art of other cultures? He
acknowledges the fact that works of art are always made in and for certain institutional circumstances,
but that they do not remain in those circumstances, and that if they survive at all, they inevitably take
their places in new patterns of use and meaning.350 Still, Summers mainly wants to focus on the first
uses of an art work.351 First Summers takes a historicist point of departure: “In fact, one of the deepest
and simplest projections into unfamiliar art we can make is the assumption that we understand its
purpose, and as a matter of basic historical procedure, it should be assumed that we do not immediately
understand purpose, and that any understanding we might think we have because of the analogy of
familiar to unfamiliar is merely hypothetical and provisional.”352 How, then, does knowledge about art
arise? Summers claims that: “as it becomes possible for me to think of my own real spatial habits and
expectations as culturally specific, it also becomes possible for me to think of the conditions of my
embodied existence and of the space in which I find myself as analytic categories – over and above
their particular historical forms. Comparison yields a third term – a universally shared third term –
relative to which any number of further particular judgements may by made.” 353 The idea of being able
to transcend own historical conditions is a very phenomenological, and thus Western, idea.
Another problem is how to bring this model into practice. Here, Summers gives an example:
“Rather than describing, say, a large stone in the centre of a ring of small stones, then trying to figure
out what it might mean, we may inform that someone, or some group of people, moved these stones
and set them out in this way, then ask how and why that might have been done, and why it is like other
348
Summers, Real Spaces, 55.
Ibidem.
350
Ibidem.
351
Ibidem, 56.
352
Ibidem, 63.
353
Ibidem, 58.
349
69
things those or other people have done.”354 This is a methodology not substantially different from
contextual or hermeneutical art history.
Moreover, his scheme, as so many other schemes, has no direct answer how to define quality.
Summers claims that the scheme is based on the principle that art is about the great many ways in
which the possibilities afforded by the world we find ourselves sharing in common have been shaped
and changed.355 It follows that the history of art he presents, cannot be understood as a history of ‘great
works’, or as a chain of works of the ‘highest visual quality’. Still, he argues that it should not therefore
be concluded, just because aesthetic quality is not primary for historical explanation, that quality is not a
historical issue, or, even worse, that there are no great works of art at all. He discards the Marxist and
sociological point of view by claiming that if the best artists often gather around wealth and power, and
their works tend to serve as examples for others, that is simply one of a number of historical patterns,
and no way to claim that quality is purely constructed and thus non-existent. “To deny quality has the
effect of nullifying the many accomplishments of all traditions and denies the validity of the immediate
interest taken in the art of one tradition by members of another, interest that may have the most
important consequences.”356 This may be a valid argument, but how does Summers discern quality? He
acknowledges that within a culture their values, and so also their discourses on the idea of beauty, is
seen as absolute. Within one culture different ideas of beauty can co-exist, but still, the debate about it
is culturally shaped. How can Summers qualify art from outside his own culture? Again he relies on the
idea that he can transcend the borders of his own culture. He does not seem to follow the postmodern
critique of the historicity of the author. Moreover, even if we accept that he can transcend his own
cultural boundaries, still it is not clear how quality is defined.
Taking a look at the selection Summers made, it is notable that the choices he made, are not a
variation on the traditional Western canon of art. Though he did include Western “masterpieces”, there
are an equal amount of other non-Western art works included. More important than this is that these
artworks are not included as an excuse, while the traditional success story of Western art stays intact.
As the scope of the book is very broad, Summers claims to not have tried to be comprehensive, but
rather to provide examples and concepts to facilitate further discussion.357 Though some chronology is
left in tact, it is not the central ordering principle, as it was in the books of Gombrich, Honour and
Fleming and Stokstad. Thereby, the Western concept of progress is completely abolished.
Though this is a very important accomplishment, it does not make it free from Eurocentrism. Art
historian James Elkins argues in Art Bulletin: “It would be tempting, from the standpoint of some
354
Ibidem, 27.
Ibidem, 12-13.
356
Ibidem, 58.
357
Ibidem, 12.
355
70
contemporary scholarship, to say that Real Spaces is a dead end, a sensitive and informed but
ultimately – against its author’s own wishes – Eurocentric attempt to construct a single intellectual
edifice for all world art.”358 Summers’ whole scheme depends on the idea of a shared basal experience
of the world. Elkins wonders correctly how many of the “real spaces” Summers describes would be
common to all observers and how many are reports on his own experience.359
In spite of the many criticisms that can be formulated, this is a very important attempt to write
world art history, while taking criticisms seriously throughout the whole book. Still, as he has no way of
dealing with quality, he is unable to formulate a meaningful alternative to the traditional canon of art
history.
In the next chapter I will try to formulate a more concrete alternative to write a world history of
art. This project should show new ways to teach art in a non-exclusionary way, but without falling into
the trap of arbitrariness.
358
359
Elkins, ‘Book Reviews’, 377.
Ibidem, 375.
71
Chapter 4: Towards a new way of writing art history.
4.1 Methodology
James Elkins talks about five ways in which art historians can deal with the broadening of the canon. He
talks explicitly about broadening the canon with non-Western art, but these five approaches could also
be acknowledged when talking about broadening the canon with other “left-out” art. I will place the four
approaches discussed before and my own alternative within this model. The five mentioned approaches
all agree that the maintenance of traditional Eurocentric art history is undesirable and the broadening of
the canon is needed.
In the first approach art history can remain essentially unchanged as it moves into world art.
The traditional subject matter of art history, high art, mainly Western painting, sculpture, and
architecture, can be augmented by looking at non-Western art, trusting that the new material will
produce organic changes in the discipline’s interpretative methods and politics. This is the position of
monographic treatments of non-Western art that appear in scholarly journals, as well as specialized
write-ups in commercial magazines and auction catalogues.360 The reference books of Gombrich,
Honour and Fleming, and Stokstad are part of this tradition. Gombrich doesn’t fit in completely, as he
doesn’t wish to alter the discipline’s interpretative methods and politics. As the canon is seen as natural,
Gombrich’s point of view suggests that when non-Western art is encountered, masterpieces within it will
shine through, no matter what.
This approach is problematic, as non-Western artworks are addressed from a Western art
concept. The approach of both Honour and Fleming and Stokstad tries to incorporate non-Western art
into their story of art. They both use a hermeneutic approach. It is noteworthy that this hermeneutical
approach is far more thorough when they address non-western art than when they address the
traditional canon. This stems from the fact that non-Western society didn’t have the concept of the
autonomy of art. This is in se no problem, but it separates non-Western art very clearly from Western
art. There is coherence in the Western story of art, but not in the world story of art.
The second approach claims that art history can redefine and adjust its working concepts to
better fit non-Western art. Elkins argues that this is Summers’ position. This approach admits other
histories and “other modernisms” beyond the Western one. The philosophical ground of this approach
can be found outside of art history, in linguistics. Point of departure is the idea that languages are
inherently commensurate, so it can make sense to write a world art history based on a single language
360
James Elkins, ‘Book Reviews’, 377.
72
of art. This is a realist position in the philosophical sense, because it depends on the conviction that
there is a shared basal experience of the world.361
All human beings share some experience, human beings all encounter the world with the
human body. But this shared experience is, I believe, very minimal. The cultural interpretation of this
being in the world is very strong. With Summers, I agree that this interpretation, this ‘second nature’, as
he calls it, comes to be seen as absolute, as a ‘first nature’ within every culture. I do not agree that a lot
of the shared experience survives. As a consequence, I do not think art should be addressed in ‘one
language’. Still, Summers’ concepts are a very important step in addressing all art in a coherent way,
without resorting to a thoroughly Western concept of art.
The third approach is the approach of a plurality of art historians who pay close attention to the
languages of different cultures, in an attempt to understand the artworks through the concept their
makers and viewers would have known. Languages of art, in that view, are not commensurate;
otherwise, there would be less reason to learn foreign languages to study visual art.362 This is a
thoroughly contextual and hermeneutical approach, with its known problems. What can the art historian
do when there are no surviving non-Western terms? In such cases it will be necessary to analyse
indigenous and colonial uses of Western terms.363
In this third approach, art history can go in search of indigenous critical concepts: in current
scholarship, the principal alternative to Summers’ approach is to leave the Western words to one side
and attempt to locate terms that were in use in the non-Western cultures under study.364 Though the use
of foreign terms has always been valuable to art history, Elkins argues that when fundamental critical
terms are non-Western, art history might lose its conceptual, cultural, and disciplinary foundation.365
The fourth approach is a radicalised version of the third. Here, Western interpretative strategies
are being avoided. Art historians who chose this approach do not only address the words in which the
artwork was originally interpreted, but also try to avoid Western methodologies.366 The problem here is
that there is no way of guaranteeing that such an approach would be intrinsically more truthful than any
other approach. Non-Western methodologies, how interesting they might be, offer no ready answer to
the problem of world art history. They are, as Western methodologies, equally contested and in flux.
In the fifth approach, art history disperses as a discipline. This is the approach that sees Visual
Studies as a substitute for art history, as art history has no way of dealing with world art history. As I
Ibidem.
Ibidem.
363 Ibidem.
364 Ibidem.
365 Ibidem.
366 Ibidem.
361
362
73
stated before, I don’t believe this is the way to go. As it doesn’t offer a clear alternative to traditional art
history, it leaves it intact.
From my perspective, the two most promising attempts to write a world art history out of the four
books I’ve addressed are the one of Stokstad and the one of Summers. Stokstad’s attempt is still based
on an idea of universal quality. Summers’ attempt has a lot to offer, but has its problems, too. First, the
book is basically only explaining his concepts, and isn’t a world art history in se. His universalist basis of
art is interesting, as it is a very inclusive approach. But, it is a very thin basis, and it doesn’t bring very
new insights into the methodology of art history. Another objection to the book as a starting point for the
study of art, is that it is very difficult and in this way not very accessible.
My approach will be based on the third approach. This is a thoroughly hermeneutical approach,
as it tries to put art in its context, even researching the language in which it was addressed. But it is still
a Western methodology. This should not be a problem in se. Hermeneutics, as art history has its origin
in a European and Eurocentric philosophy and point of view, but it shouldn’t be thrown away for that
reason, as long as the art historian and the reader are aware of the fact that it is. Originally, these
Western methodologies had exclusionary treats. The universal assumptions of these methodologies
were Eurocentric, sexist or elitist. It is important to see that not all universal assumptions are
exclusionary. The universal base Summers claimed for art was not exclusionary, but, his base was, as
stated above, very thin.
4.2 Coherence and quality
This leads me again to the problem of coherence and selection. In a world art history, there
should be coherence, as every story needs coherence; otherwise world art history would be an
encyclopaedic endeavour. As a tool an encyclopaedia on world art is very useful and even necessary,
but it will not bring students to a comprehensive understanding of art and art history. As stated before,
coherence should not be obtained by concepts as progress and overall evolution. Those concepts lead
to an overrepresentation of Western art. Aesthetic value can’t be the basis for coherence either, as
there is no universal basis for formalist quality in art. Still, art and quality in art are not totally arbitrary
concepts.
First, I will recapture how art and quality in art are addressed in the four chosen reference
books. Gombrich claims that quality in art can only be discerned trough the passing of time. Only
through the test of time, it becomes obvious what contribution an artist made on the story of art, what
influence he or she had on future artists. This statement suggests that artworks of superior quality aided
a development within an art medium. Gombrich does make a clear distinction between a universal
progress within the history of art that is to him non-existent, and local developments within art. Still,
74
within his book, another approach to discerning quality is central, namely the formalist approach. An
artwork is of exceptional value when it is exceptionally well made. Not all artworks that are
“exceptionally well made”, however one would define this, were very influential. When addressing
Abstract Expressionism, he exclusively focuses on the formalist approach. Not at one point does he
consider what influence these artists had or could have in the future.
Honour and Fleming do not want to judge art; they only want to give an introduction to art
history. This is impossible, as they have to make a selection. Moreover they do judge, witness of that
are the many valuating adjectives. They claim that they dominantly paid attention to the historical
important periods. They do not define what this means. Looking at how they address quality within
Abstract Expressionism, they use standards that can not be used universally. For example, they prefer
Jackson Pollock to Willem de Kooning as the latter lacks the refinement and neurotic liveliness of
Pollock’s works. Mark Rothko is seen as maybe the greatest painter of the movement, as he is definitely
most aware of the spiritual dimensions of abstract art. The genius concept is still kept intact and they
claim that true talent will shine through, no matter what. Their wish not to valuate art actually helps
legitimating the traditional canon of art and adds to its “naturalness”. But they can not give a universal
base for art and quality in art that is inclusive.
Stokstad also ignores defining quality in art explicitly. She starts from a universally shared
human nature, as she defines art as the ultimate expression of human faith and integrity as well as
creativity. Art has universal value, independent of any context. In this way, neither history and
economics nor philosophy and religion alone can account for the art of a Rembrandt or Michelangelo.
The same applies to extraordinary ‘ordinary’ people, who have created powerful art to satisfy their own
inner need to communicate ideas. The fact that she names Western artists such as Rembrandt and
Michelangelo as examples of art that transcends its context is to my opinion meaningful. Moreover, it
seems doubtful that all humans that made art saw their art as the ultimate expression of human faith
and integrity as well as creativity, no matter how these concepts are defined. Like with Honour and
Fleming, Stokstad’s refusal to define quality in art implicitly legitimates the traditional canon of art. She
starts from a universal human nature, but is not capable to define this nature precisely.
Summers also starts from a universal human nature, but does take great pains to define this
nature. Still, though he clings to the idea that quality in art can be discerned, he does not define it.
Quality seems to lie in what an artwork can tell the observer about the universal base of human
existence. Rothko’s chapel shows “greater presence but also of the acceptance of human fragility and
fate.” The universality Rothko presents is expressly based on human cardinality, living movement and
place. Main problem with Summers’ interpretation is that he is unwilling to ask the question whether this
universality is truly universal or whether it is felt as a universality by himself.
75
How do I want to address art and quality in art in my project for art history? Though I do not
believe there is a universal standard for discerning quality in art, ‘quality’ is not an empty concept. There
are standards for discerning quality in art; they are just not universal in the way that there is one
standard for all art works. When, in a reference book, an artwork is selected and thus valued, it should
be made clear by what standards this is done. Still, this tends to be arbitrary. Moreover, not all
standards are meaningful. There is a difference between plain personal tastes, like preferences for
certain colours, themes or compositions, and valid quality standards.
First, I will try to define art in a meaningful way and then I will address standards of quality. Art
historian Paul Crowther claims that the essence of art lays in its “additional value” to its functional value.
He argues that this intrinsically significant aesthetic “for its own sake” character is not an exclusionary
trait. Disinterestedness is not defined as a psychological state of contemplative detachment, like it is
defined by Kant and other Western art philosophers. Crowther gives the following example: “While the
desire for victory may impel a tribe to perform a war dance, it is surely possible for the participants to be
caught up in and to enjoy the rhythms and drama of the dance for its won sake, rather than in terms of
its anticipated practical consequences.”367 Architecture is also a telling example to validate this
definition. Most architectural works are primarily concerned with their use value. However, some
architecture exceeds this significance.368 In this way, a distinction between art and other artifacts can be
made: if a work is to exceed its practical documentary or ritual functions, this necessitates that it is
positively different from images that remain only at the functional level. 369 I think this is a valuable
definition. I do not agree with Crowther that this definition legitimates the traditional canon. I think this
definition leaves space for discussion, but gives a basis to this discussion. Taking this definition as a
starting point, the canon could still be formed along gender, cultural, political and social lines. This will
be dependent on the selection.
It is necessary to address the problem around quality in order to be able to make a selection in
a reference book. If personal tastes can be defined, valid quality standards should be defined, too.
Crowther claims to have found a universal solution to the problem. He starts from an internal point of
view and thereby defends the truthfulness of the canon. Quality in art, according to Crowther, occurs
when representations are able to achieve something distinctive by extending the logical scope of a
specific medium through innovation or refinement. This implies that historical distinctiveness is
constitutive of a work’s aesthetic value.370 Crowther claims that innovations and refinements that an
Crowther, ‘Cultural Exclusion, Normativity, and the Definition of Art’, 128.
Ibidem’, 128.
369 Ibidem, 129.
370 Paul Crowther, ‘Defining Art, Defending The Canon , Contesting Culture’, British Journal of Aesthetics 44(2004) 361-377,
aldaar 375.
367
368
76
artist adds to a medium’s logical scope do not remain essentially tied to any race, class, or gender
interest. They can be used, abused, and creatively transformed according to circumstances. 371 But, as
women and non-western racial groups have been institutionally excluded from participation in the
development of the canon, they are excluded from art history. According to Crowther, this is not a
problem, if society was organised in a different way than they would have had a place in the canon.
“Canonical judgements, in other words, would be determined by the kind of productive activity being
judged, rather than by the identity of the judges.”372 As stated in Chapter 1, I firmly disagree with this
point of view. There is no reason to exclude art media that were practiced by women, neither artefacts
that were made within a culture that places emphasis on repetitions of the same.
From different perspectives, different definitions of quality have been formulated. I will
summarize some approaches to quality here that have the intention to be non-exclusionary. A quality
standard within modern Western art that has had an immense influence on how to view art is originality.
An artist is in some respect, conceptual or formal, new and in this way this artwork offers new
possibilities to other artists. In some internal accounts on the history of art, originality leads to overall
progress within art. Others, like Gombrich, note that there are only local and historical developments
that do not lead to overall progress. Used in this way, originality could also be used when addressing
some artworks of non-Western origin. Still, a lot of Western and non-Western artworks would be
excluded from the canon when using this approach as the only standard. Another factor, that both
Crowther and Gombrich use, is “refinement”. An artwork is from a high quality when it refines the scope
of its medium. This can imply that the artwork is “well made”, this is a formalist approach, or that it is
conceptually refined. Quality for Stokstad and Summers, however, seems to lay in what the artwork
expresses about human nature. As “originality” and “refinement”, this standard is hard to discern.
Adapting these standards, a historical horizon will be necessary. Originality and refinement can only be
discerned by comparison. These standards seem valid to me as they exceed personal tastes. It should
still be asked how these standards can be combined in a coherent definition.
Coherence in the story of art can be obtained by using this definition of art as the point of
departure. Chronology can be maintained as some type of art is present in any society. Chronology
does not have to imply a linear progress in the story of art. This can be avoided in the same way
Summers has avoided this problem: by making the definition of art the major focal point and chronology
as an aid to the story.
371
372
Crowther, ‘Defining Art, Defending The Canon , Contesting Culture’, 374.
Ibidem.
77
Conclusion
In this paper, I have demonstrated that a new way of addressing art history and its canon is needed.
After showing the reasons why this must be done and giving clues of how this could be done, I have
looked at how more recent reference books have incorporated new views on art history and its canon. I
have done this in detail by focussing on one art movement, namely Abstract Expressionism. Afterwards,
I have linked their individual views on this art movement to their overall view on art history. I have shown
how they deal with the recent criticisms on the discipline of art history, and looked if they had valuable
solutions to those problems. In the end, I have formulated my own alternative more clearly.
In the course of this research, I have concluded that most of the criticisms concerning the canon
of art are valid, but modernist as well as postmodernist theoretical approaches have not been able to
formulate satisfying alternatives. Still, some theories provided art historians with promising new
perspectives. The multiple ways art historians have reacted to these problems have never been fully
satisfying, but there are some positive signs.
In spite of the fact that the discussed reference books do not fully address the problem and as a
consequence have no adequate answer to it, traditional art history has not completely been left intact.
Widely spread reference books like the ones of Honour and Fleming and of Stokstad might not even be
close to offering students and amateurs a non-discriminatory and coherent story of art, still, they already
do pay attention to cultural objects and artists that used to be excluded from the canon. Moreover, they
explicitly incorporate criticisms on the canon and reject Eurocentric notions like progress. In short, they
give the reader some clues how to deconstruct the canon, but they do not show on what basis to
construct a different story of art. The attempt of David Summers is even much more promising, but far
less accessible to a broad audience.
What needs to be done to be able to write art history without resorting to traditional notions of
art and the canon of art? Art histories are not going to be fulfilling as long as they do not start from a
clear definition of art and quality in art. The problem is that this definition should be non-discriminatory,
but also non-arbitrary. In this paper I have formulated some new ways to look at art history and some
clues to define art and quality in art. Still, further research is needed to be able to formulate a coherent
and satisfying basis for art history. This should be a more positive project. It should consider how
different artworks are judged by different standards. It should make a clear distinction between arbitrary
standards and valid standards. Most important will be the construction of a coherent body of standards
that can be put into a scheme to avoid arbitrariness. Without a solid definition of art and quality in art, art
historians will keep on looking for “easy” solutions as formulated by the external, the internal and the
postmodern approach to art history.
78
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