Canonical Art Historians

Immanuel Kant

• Biography & historical context

• Key arguments

• Strengths

• Weaknesses

Biography & historical context

• German philosopher

• 1724-1804

  • Age of Enlightenment

Key arguments

Critique of Judgement (1790)

1. Differentiates & legitimises aesthetic judgements vs. cognitive judgements

• The judgement of taste = aesthetic judgements = ‘the judgement that something is or isn’t beautiful’

• Cognitive judgements as objective & rational

• Aesthetic judgements as subjective

  • Contemplative, NOT cognitive

2. ‘Purposiveness without a purpose’

• In nature, a beautiful object exhibits the harmony and intentionality of a (divinely) designed object, yet serves NO actual practical function or defined end

  • Because we cannot prove a divine designer

  • This purposiveness is perceived as beauty (i.e. a rose being beautiful)

• We judge art in a similar way

  • Implication: Artist as divine creator (the presumptive source of the purposiveness of the universe)

3. Disinterested judgement

• True aesthetic judgements must NOT be dependent on:

  • Reason

  • The material existence of the object

  • The object serving a desired/practical/moral/ sensorial use

= ‘art for art’s sake’

3. Subjective universality

• Only by liberating one’s judgement from (1) the material condition of the object and (2) the aims & desires of the viewer, can the judgement have claims to universal validity

Strengths

1. Kant was more willing than others to explore outside the canons of ‘good taste’

• Enlightenment thinking emphasised freedom of imagination, unmediated by a concept/rule = NOT necessarily about following established standards/mirroring material truths

• vs. Winckelmann: believed that beauty followed fixed rules/canons of good taste, based on ancient Greek art = singular ideal of beauty

Weaknesses

1. Overemphasised distinction between the mind & body

• Aesthetic judgement is more refined than purely sensory forms of pleasure (e.g. eating) since it necessarily involves the ‘higher’ faculty of contemplation

2. Assumes a singular, neutral observer

Canonical Periods of Art Historiography

Age of Enlightenment

• America & Europe

• 1680-1820

• Key ideas:

  • The subject is liberated from the dictates of tradition, religion, & old rules of conduct

    • The human (white man) as a unique, autonomous, self-reflexive human

      • E.g. Kant: ‘have courage to use your own understanding!’; emphasis on ‘freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters’

  • In reality, was also when the political economy of slavery was at its height

    • The social & intellectual freedom of white men was directly founded on the subjugation of non-white bodies

    • Susan Buck-Morss: ‘we cannot continue to construct Western histories as a coherent narrative of human freedom’

Clement Greenberg

• Biography & historical context (4)

• Key arguments (Formalism: 2; Kitsch & Avant-Garde: 3)

• Weaknesses (Formalism: 2; Kitsch & Avant-Garde: 2)

Biography & historical context

• American art critic

• 1909-1994

• Championed ‘American-type painting’ as the culmination of modern art (esp. Jackson Pollock & Abstract Expressionism)

• Significantly influenced by Kant BUT many believe he misunderstood him

Key arguments

Formalism

1. Form offers the only firm basis on which to make judgements of quality of individual artworks

2. Modern art was driven by a need to entrench itself more firmly within its own area of competence

• Pure aesthetic value lies in medium-specificity

  • E.g. modernist painting should prize abstraction, which refers to the properties of painting itself (i.e. pictorial flatness)

Kitsch & Avant-Garde

3. Kitsch is the opposite of Avant-Garde, but both are products of the same changes in modern society and arise alongside each other

• ‘Cultural breakdown’: loss of a unified, organic culture shared by all; due to industrialisation & increased variation in demographics

  • As a result, ‘creative activity dwindles to virtuosity’ ‘yet nothing new is produced’

Avant-Garde

• ‘Advance guard’/’vanguard’ in French

• Culture of a small intellectual elite (formal culture)

• Abstract art about the act of art-making itself (‘Art for art’s sake’)

  • ‘Content is to be dissolved so completely into form’

Kitsch

• Culture of the masses

• A manufactured product artificially made for profit, NOT an authentic cultural expression

  • Popular, commercial, mass-produced, cheap, sentimental art

  • Works that imitate art

    • Relies on the availability of a fully matured cultural tradition

    • YET mechanical & operates by formulas

    • Don’t challenge/intellectually enrich the viewer; only provide an instant emotional gratification

• Industrialisation & urbanisation led to new urban working class (i.e. peasants moving into cities)

  • Possessed ‘universal literacy’

  • YET little cultural education & time/energy to engage w/ challenging art

  • At the same time, lost their taste for folk culture

  • Capitalist industries hence stepped in to meet this demand

Dangers:

1. Possible for kitsch to become a universal culture

• If society continues to favour kitsch, true culture will wither

2. Possible for Avant-Garde to die out

• Avant-Garde now needs to rely on the bourgeoisie (middle class), which conversely prefers kitsch

4. While the Avant-garde serves truth and independence, Kitsch serves propaganda, power & conformity

• Avant-Garde ‘succeeded in ‘detaching’ itself from society’ and then ‘proceeded to turn around and repudiate revolutionary as well as bourgeois politics’

• Kitsch: BOTH capitalist & totalitarian regimes (Nazi Germany/Stalinist Russia) use kitsch to control the masses

  • Because Kitsch appeals to emotion & familiarity

  • Easy to use to reinforce authority & obedience

5. Defends Avant-Garde elitism

• Avant-Garde’s goal: to keep culture moving in the midst of ideological confusion and violence

  • Hence is NOT elitist for its own sake, BUT as a defense mechanism preventing the degradation of art

  • Need to experiment & push the boundaries of the artistic medium

    • ‘By no other means is it possible today to create art and literature of a high order’

Weaknesses

Formalism

1. Greenberg’s theory of taste as supposedly apolitical & self-contained was, in fact, undergirded by his own politics

• e.g. Greenberg’s direct ties to the CIA

• e.g. contemporary cold war politics & the importance of soft power: American self-representation as a ‘free’ nation which prized artistic freedom, individualism, & self-expression

2. Presupposes the universal viewing subject

• BUT is actually based exclusively on European & American art; white male straight artists

Kitsch & Avant-Garde

1. His theory of Avant-Garde was NOT the popularised understanding at the time, nor is it how we think of Avant-Garde today

2. Avant-Garde is NOT apolitical

• The shift in artistic focus to formalism is, in itself, motivated by the contemporary socio-political climate (e.g. a desire for objectivity & direct, evidential experience)

• Especially when Avant-Garde fashions itself in opposition to realism (& hence ‘propaganda')

• Like all art, Avant-Garde exists within an economy & hence politics

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

• Biography & historical context (3)

• Key arguments (2)

• Strengths (4)

• Weaknesses (6)

Main reference: Michael Hatt and Charlotte Klonk. ‘Hegel and the Birth of Art History’, Art History: A Critical Introduction to its Methods (Manchester, 2006), 21-39.

Biography & historical context

• German philosopher

• Born in Germany & lived/worked there all his life

• 1770-1831

• Interest in art was confined to works of art, NOT the perception of art/beauty etc. (unlike Kant etc.)

Key arguments

1. Art both reflects and serves the development of the human mind

• The Absolute Idea (‘Geist’) realises itself in the material world, as art

  • Human self-understanding (‘blueprint of the world’)

  • Connected to the idea of divinity

2. Art & the Idea developed in historical stages

(1) Symbolic stage: the material world was insufficiently mastered by the mind; awareness of the Absolute Idea remained obscure

(2) Classical stage: mind found a perfect expression of itself in the physical form of the human body

(3) Romantic stage: painting pointed beyond the material world towards pure spirituality

(4) Hegel’s own time: art has been supplanted by the purely mental constructs of philosophy

• The human mind has become fully self-aware = no longer needs to articulate the Idea in sensuous form

• Propecy about art’s dissolution

• BUT art can still be useful in addressing other aspects of life which might otherwise be forgotten

Strengths

1. Historicising impulse; Accounts for the historic specificity of art using a common benchmark

• Seeks to explain how meaning in art develops over time & space

• Recognises that every artwork is inherently rooted in its own time & culture (‘The artist is the child of his time’)

• vs. Kant’s timeless & universal principles of aesthetic experience

2. Links different historical forms of art with each other & the present

3. Includes diverse time periods, cultures & artworks

4. Explains how past art can be interpreted from another historical vantage point (hermeneutic problem)

Weaknesses

1. Ironically falls victim to its own claims for the historical specificity of creation

• Hegel’s 1818-1829 lectures on aesthetics were published posthumously and based mainly on transcripts by members of his audience, interspersed w/ the views of his students

= difficult to reconstruct Hegel’s original thinking

• Reminds us of the problems inherent in definitively reconstructing the events of any historical period, much less generalise its contemporary culture & thought

  • e.g. E.H. Gombrich: we should focus on individual achievements of artists > broad historical periods

    • Warned against talking in terms of collectives, which lend themselves to political & cultural misuse (e.g. totalitarian attitudes)

    • BUT similarly historically specific perspective: WW2 & Cold War; Communism (centred around collectivity) was seen as a threat to Western liberal democracies

• Also brings attention to its own formulation within Hegel’s specific personal & historical context

  • e.g. religious bias: Hegel was Christian

  • e.g. overemphasis on rational thought (art as a reflection of rational thought) is a reflection of Hegel’s acculturation during the Enlightenment period

  • Hence, the Idea CANNOT be used as a universal & timeless standard to judge all other cultures (Hatt & Klonk: ‘Historians can make no claim as to whether or not their narratives intersect with anything beyond themselves’)

2. The metaphysical existence of the ‘Absolute Idea’ is unverifiable

3. Teleological

• Straightforward narrative of unfolding advancement & intellectual progress

• Hence overgeneralised (tendency to overlook unique formal characteristics of artworks in a bid to fit all artworks into this framework)

• AND Eurocentric: Europe’s self-fashioning as the apex of human spiritual evolution, is materially demonstrated by its art

  • The ‘quality’ of non-European art as necessarily reflective of their extent of civilisation/cognition

4. Although historically specific, does NOT adequately link artistic expression w/ contemporary social conditions

5. Incorrect assumptions were made due to methodological limitations in historiography (e.g. Hegel didn’t view sculptures irl; made incorrect archaeological statements e.g. unaware that paint on ancient Greek sculptures faded over time)

6. The history of art may NOT be a developmental one in the first place (i.e. projection of value judgements not necesarily involved in the actual process of artistic creation)

• To what extent is the art of a period dependent on the periods preceding it?

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

• Comparisons

  • Winckelmann

  • Vasari

Winckelmann

Similarities

• Both agree that art is primarily a vessel for ideas

Differences

• Disagree on which ideas are principally conveyed

  • Hegel: Absolute Idea (i.e. divinity)

  • Winckelmann: NO specific idea to act as a common criterion for comparison

Vasari

Differences

• Vasari did NOT posit art as the expression of a deeper cognitive ideal; development based on purely formal logic

  • Unlike Hegel, the development of art was NOT rooted in larger histories of society/culture

• Different subjectivities: Vasari was BOTH a theorist & practising artist

Alois Riegl

Heinrich Wölfflin

Argued that transformations in the formal characteristics of art were a result of changes in people’s visual perceptions

Vs. Hegel’s emphasis on changing intellectual content

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten

Aesthetica (1750)

• Biography & historical context (2)

• Key arguments (3)

Biography & historical context

• German philosopher

• 1714-1762

Key arguments

1. Cognitive & sensual knowledge as distinct BUT non-hierarchical

• Sensation as ‘truth as known through the senses’

• Sense perception can be perfected WITHOUT translating it into logical thought

  • But rather, through refining one’s taste

2. The aim of art is to create sensory knowledge refined through taste

• The perception of beauty = the perception of perfection

  • We conceive of such beauty NOT rationally, but by taste (= extremely clear sense perception)

• Hence, art should NOT ‘imitate’ nature rationally (= mimesis) BUT create ‘perfect wholes out of indistinct images made extremely clear’

3. Aesthetic judgements of beauty are subjective

• Because judgements of beauty are made through sense perceptions, which are themseves shaped by taste (i.e. how refined one’s sense perceptions are)

E.H. Gombrich

The Story of Art (1950)

• Biography & historical context (3)

• Key arguments (3)

• Strengths (1)

• Weaknesses (5)

also see Katy Hessel

Biography & historical context

• Austrian art historian

• 1909-2001

• Historical context: WW2 & Cold War

  • Fled from Vienna to London in 1936

Key arguments

1. Stressed a focus on the individual achievements of artists > broad historical periods

• E.g. ‘There is no such thing as art, there are only artists.’

• Challenged the habit of talking in terms of collectives, which lend themselves to political & cultural misuse (e.g. totalitarian attitudes)

  • BUT this belief was motivated by his historical context: WW2 & Cold War; Communism (centred around collectivity) was seen as a threat to Western liberal democracies

2. At the same time, acknowledged that facts cannot speak for themselves without some preconceived organising principle

• Gombrich’s organising principle: artistic influence

  • E.g. in ‘The Story of art’, constructed a singular & linear story of art detached from other social developments

3. In ‘The Story of Art’: the historical development of art as a 5-act play

Act I: human proportions were studied mathematically

Act II: the near-loss of that knowledge in the Middle Ages

Act III: the rediscovery of Classical knowledge in the Renaissance

Act IV: the elaborations of the Baroque and Rococo

Act V: the ambiguous, partly tragic ending, in which Modern Art deliberately turned against its naturalistic heritage

Strengths

1. Appears to approach art w/ an open mind & encourages readers to do the same

• Acknowledges that there is no one definition of Art

• Acknowledges that Art is an artificial concept (‘Art (with a capital ‘A’) is a made-up construct’)

• Validates the subjectivity of taste & empowers the viewer’s personal taste

  • There are no wrong reasons for liking an artwork, but there ARE wrong reasons for disliking an artwork (e.g. habit/prejudice)

  • The value of a picture does NOT solely lie in its aesthetic beauty

Weaknesses

1. We cannot trace a singular thread of artistic development predicated on influence

• The title of the book ironically reveals its own subjectivity & incompleteness: a ‘story’, rather than ‘history’ of art

  • Fantastical, exciting

  • Deliberately & actively constructed

  • Implies a definitive end

2. Gombrich’s narrative of influence will always be incomplete due to the historically unequal visibility of art-makers

• Art-making has always depended on resources, educational opportunities, travel, etc.

3. Eurocentric

• Only 22/637 pages are devoted to non-European & North American art

• Teleological: establishes an exoticising hierarchy of artistic development on the grounds of race

  • E.g. ‘Strange beginnings: Prehistoric & Primitive Peoples of Ancient Americas’

4. Misogynistic

• First female artist only appears in the 16th edition

  • Gender is not mentioned at all (e.g. why there aren’t any other women in the book)

• Vs. large foldout spreads for male artists e.g. Jackson Pollock

5. Reifies the mystery of the artistic genius

• Significance of Artist’s will in deciding the visual appearance of an artwork

• Driven by an unexplainable ‘sensation’

• Poor artists did not achieve anything when trying to follow laws of art, YET great masters could break them and yet achieve a novel kind of harmony/beauty

Katy Hessel

The Story of Art without Men (2022, 2024)

• Key arguments (3)

• Strengths (1)

• Weaknesses (5)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz & his disciple Christian Wolff

• Key arguments (1)

Key arguments

1. Sensation as confused, thought as lucid

• Sensation as a primitive/preliminary stage of the same knowledge

• That same knowledge is represented most clearly by logical thought

  • Sensation cannot be made lucid without transforming it into thought (& into systematic discourse)