Art Histpry Art Bulletin PDF

Art>
Author(s): Hollis Clayson, Tom Cummins, Natalie Boymel Kampen, Richard J. Powell,
Martin J. Powers and O. K. Werckmeister
Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 367-391
Published by: CAA
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3046116
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A RANGE OF CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
Art> < History
latter, but their point remains nonetheless valid. It is clear

Materialist Art History and
that what functions for the interpretation of the aesthetic
Its Points of Difficulty does not simply translate unmodified to the explication of
the sociohistorical. But the structural incommensurability
Hollis Clayson and frequent temporal discontinuity between art and nonart
Art is perforce embedded in history; texts are always and does not tempt me to abandon a sincere attempt to struggle
everywhere conditioned by forces that are outside their own with recalcitrant "contextual" materials by trying to build
articulation. There are two responsibilities for the materialist linkages, in Thomas Crow's words, "between art objects and
art historian as a result: (1) imaginatively reconstruct the contiguous, intermediate zones of social practice that are not
past, and (2) reenact the lost connections. (Ideally the two are integral to the artist's professional culture."2 And, indeed,
linked insofar as the self-conscious performance will temper contextualization (miserable mechanical term) need not be
the historical work of the imagination.) To promote and naive or mechanical; contextualizing an artwork also involves
problematize the execution of those two tricks, especially in an account of the ways artworks resist contextualization. In
the classroom, I have assembled a "Materialist's Primer." I any case, the potential costs of abandoning "context" are just
intend it to be useful to beginners but suitable for certain too high: formalism, cynical solipsism, or the imposition of
veterans as well. Like a checklist cum conscience, it might pure ideology (when knowledge is needed instead).3
guide and prod but without imposing limits or dictating any But my idealist "historicist" avowals prompt numerous
particular outcome. ticklish questions. For example: Do I conceptualize "art" and
The materialist always works two shifts. She goes in search "history" as separate entities, as completed products? What
of the elusive connections between "art" and "history" in the is the status of the real in my system? Of representation? Is
archives and the library, trying to pinpoint and recuperate the visual image an effect of the real, or constituent of it? To
through research the specific conditions of art's existence in what degree are objective or subjective procedures foreseen?
social relations and institutions. And then she performs the I struggle to address these and other vexing questions by
affinities in writing or speech for her constituency. (Tall flagging seven points of extreme difficulty and perplexity for
orders!) In my examination of what underlies the materialist materialists as we try to adjudicate the relations between art
two-step, I advocate the (old-fashioned) reclamation and and history, to maneuver between the cultural and the
material.
explanatory use of historical data as the centerpieces of a
critical "historical" art history, while I assess some of the
philosophical and social obstacles in the path of its uncompli- Part One: Difficulties for a Historical Discipline
cated realization, both on the printed page and embodied in
the lecture hall. Point 1: Faith in the facts?
My fundamental premise is that a visual artifact must be

Relativism leads directly to a questioning of the ideal of
interpreted or explained in terms of factors external to it, in
objectivity, because it undermines the belief that people
view of the hors texte of history (the exploration of which will
can get outside of themselves in order to get at the truth.
never, of course, be exhaustive). It follows that the "history" I
If truth depends on the observer's standpoint, how can
evoke is pertinent but extrinsic to the "not-history" of the
there be any transcendent, universal, or absolute truth, or
visual text. Cautions have been issued against the innocent
at least truths that hold for all groups for many genera-
scrutiny of nonart materials, of what is often dubbed "con-
tions? We are arguing here that truths about the past are
text." Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson warn, for example,
possible, even if they are not absolute, and hence are
that "it cannot be taken for granted that the evidence that
worth struggling for.-Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and
makes up 'context' is going to be any simpler or more legible
Margaret Jacob4
than the visual text upon which such evidence is to operate."1
This caveat schematizes the complex connections between [Ideas]-what the history of art lacks the most, masochistic
artistic and social practices and tends to homogenize the discipline, that for thirty years has obeyed a dream based
Laurel Bradley, Tom Cummins, Julia Sagraves, and Pat Simons have my
2. Thomas Crow, "Codes of Silence: Historical Interpretation and the Art
thanks for their suggestions and encouragement. of Watteau," Representations, no. 12, Fall 1985, 4.
1. Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson, "Semiotics and Art History," Art
3. It goes without saying that "contextualization" without a theory of the
place of art production in a larger sociohistorical whole would be not only
Bulletin, LXXIII, no. 2, 1991, 176. For an elaboration of Bryson's worries about
banal but also merely empiricist.
"context," see his "Art in Context," in The Point of Theory: Practices of Cultural
Analysis, ed. Mieke Bal and Inge E. Boer, New York, 1994, 66-78. 4. Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth about
History, New York, 1994, 6-7.
368 ART BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 1995 VOLUME LXXVII NUMBER 3
in Comte that has turned into a nightmare, replacing with the real that allows us to unmask the elisions and
ideas with facts. As if facts were not already ideas, everyone untruths in the text; to show what the text did not and cou
has known that at least since Nietzsche.--Regis Michel5 not say; to show what its makers did not and could not know
(prevented by their "false consciousness").
Objectivity and positivism were casualties of the poststructur- In recognition of these practical and political difficulties
alist juggernaut. The historians Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob some have sought to redefine the relationship betwee
acknowledge the destabilizing force of relativism but believe representation and the real, attempting to bridge the chasm
that a reasonably true "truth" about the past is still attain- between them. Raymond Williams, for example, argued tha
able, while the art historian Michel would surely have cultural practices are themselves constituents of social real
misgivings about even open-eyed and tempered searches for ity. "Language," Williams wrote, "is a constitutive element
"facts." Indeed the warmly welcomed and feted death of material social practice . . . , [it] is in fact a special kind of
pure factuality is the biggest challenge facing empiricist art material practice: that of human sociality."9 New Historicis
history today, but good can come of this for the materialist. such as Chartier and Greenblatt have gone even further by
The acknowledgment that the "objects" of our study cannot effectively erasing the difference between the historical a
be wholly separate from its "subjects," from us the interpret- the textual. They treat cultural history itself as a text. Ar
ers, fosters an essential reorientation in materialist thinking: cannot depict or represent the "world," they might argue,
the salutary reconceptualization of our work as the explana- because it composes reality. Focusing less on the "what" and
tion of "texts"-articles in social circulation permeable to "who" of representation, they foreground the "why"
diverse understandings, rather than closed, static, material representation itself and the nervousness in Western cultu
artifacts.
about what it means to represent something.'0
Lee Patterson identified the Achilles heel of the New
Point 2. Mimesis and representation: The tyranny or the Historicist enterprise: "To adopt an interpretive meth
death of the objective referent? that assumes that history is not merely known through bu
constituted by language is to act as if there are no acts oth
It is surprising but undeniable that the inclusion of the
than speech acts.""1 Indeed, a nonrepresentational act (e.g.,
fourth estate in serious realism was decisively advanced by
shooting someone) is clearly more concrete than a "speec
those who, in their quest for new aesthetic impressions,
act" (writing a letter describing having shot someone).
discovered the attraction of the ugly and pathological.--
Eric Auerbach6 short, the cultural and social worlds are separable and can,
most cases, be told apart. More to the point: conflatin
The representations of the social world themselves are thematerial with symbolic processes threatens to depoliticiz
constituents of social reality.-Roger Chartier7 our work.
That said, however, our search legitimately reunites th

Materialist art historians have been informed by the Marxisttwo spheres insofar as we are trying to identify the symbol
tradition and tend accordingly to operate on the assumption codes that governed societies and their artists. We should sti
that the real is prior to culture. We can, therefore, findbe searching for Erwin Panofsky's "'symbolical' values (whic
ourselves at a real loss when we face the incommensurabilityare generally unknown to the artist himself and may even
of the textual (the visual) and the material. Particularly when emphatically differ from what he consciously intended
confronted with something like the pungent, subject-heavy express)."'2
forms of nineteenth-century European literary and artistic
realism memorably discussed by Auerbach, the least imagina-Point 3. Production/authorship: Handling the artist and
tive commentators have taken troubled refuge in reflection her group
theory (the belief that the aesthetic mirrors or is the homol-
ogy of the material). The boundary between the made-up Men make their own history, but they do not make it just
and the made-real, to borrow a phrase from Stephen Green- as they please; they do not make it under circumstances
blatt,8 has always been a highly charged frontier in material- chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly
ist art history. Traversing that line has posed challenges, encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The
some unmet. Typically, in practice, we have tended to claim a tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a night-
privileged, because thoroughly researched, acquaintance mare on the brain of the living.-Karl Marx'3
5. "[Id~es]-ce qui manque le plus A l'histoire de l'art en France, discipline 8. Stephen Greenblatt, Humanities Center Workshop discussion, North-
masochiste, qu'opere depuis trente ans un reve comtien qui tourne au western University, Oct. 24, 1994.
cauchemar, remplacer les id~es par les faits. Comme si les faits n'&taient pas 9. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, Oxford, 1977, 165.
de'j' les id~es, tout le monde sait cela depuis Nietzsche au moins"; Regis 10. Greenblatt, (as in n. 8).
Michel, "De la non-histoire de l'art," in David contre David, Louvre Conf6r- 11. Lee Patterson, "Historical Criticism and the Claims of Humanism,"
ences et Colloques, Paris, 1993, I, xiv. Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature,
6. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Litera- Madison, Wis., 1987, 62. My thanks to Sandra Hindman for the reference.
ture, trans. Willard R. Trask, Princeton, N.J., 1953, 505. 12. They are the object of Panofsky's "iconography in a deeper sense";
7. Roger Chartier, "Intellectual History or Sociocultural History? The Erwin Panofsky, "Introductory," Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the
French Trajectories," 1982, quoted by Lynn Hunt, "Introduction: History, Art of the Renaissance (1939), New York, 1962, 8.
Culture, and Text," in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History, Berkeley, 13. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (2nd ed., 1869),
1989, p. 7. New York, 1963, 15.
ART> < HISTORY 369
identification, what Lisa Tickner calls "the founding process

The mediations between any intellectual or artistic work
and one's experience and participation in society are of subjectivity."'19 This leaves the materialist struggling as
never one-to-one; they are never direct. I mean,usual
no to encompass both the idiosyncratically individual as
painter can paint his political experience like that, and well
if as the collective components of the artist's identity (to
he tries to do so he paints a poster, which has perhaps reckon
a with subjectivity and ideology), and to struggle with
good value as a poster.-E. P. Thompson'4 the visual and nonvisual components and traces of self-
formation, but now with more diversified and nuanced
[What do we mean] when we talk about a certain represen-
theoretical models for doing so than hitherto. The modern
tational practice inhering in the culture of a class[?] We
materialist packs tools for handling racial and gender differ-
mean that the practice somehow participates in that
ences as well as class in her fin-de-sibcle portfolio.
class's whole construction of a "world." We are talking of
overlap and mutual feeding at the level of representa-
Point 4. Artworks in social circulation: Different
tional practice, at the level of symbolic production (ideol-
ogy).-T. J. Clark'5 audiences, multiple viewers, divergent meanings
Feminist film theory rooted in an ahistorical psychoanalyti-

Elucidating the terms of an individual artist's links to his
cal framework that privileges sexual difference actively
work and exposing the sinews of ideological alliance between
suppresses recognition of race, reenacting and mirroring
the author and her class formation have always been central
the erasure of black womanhood that occurs in films,
concerns for materialist art historians; we have traditionally
silencing any discussion of racial difference--of racialized
essayed both a critique of ideology and an account of the
sexual difference.-bell hooks20
formation of subjectivity. But those standing problems-
powerfully spelled out by Marx, Thompson, and Clark The recognition that an artwork's "meaning" is not fixed,
above-took on new political density and complexity in that
the its message depends upon the investments of the
face of two challenges: (1) the famous gauntlet thrown down
onlooker, is one of the most fertile discoveries, indeed one of
by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault in announcing the
thethemes, of post-1970 art history. The appreciation that
"death of the author,"'6 or at least the end of the assumption
works of art are constituted by different viewers in different
that the meaning of a text is set and controlled by its maker;
ways at different times and places has moved to the center of
and (2) the feminist reply. disciplinary orthodoxy, and belongs there.21 But bell hooks
As Foucault put it: "In short, it is a matter of depriving reminds
the us that the interpretation of culture performed by us
subject (or its substitute) of its role as originator, andnow
of can unwittingly fall prey to the distortions and shortcom-
analyzing the subject as a variable and complex function ofof the instruments we use and the identities we inhabit.
ings
discourse."'7 But the demise of the artist did not mean the
Be careful (watch out).
same thing for men and women, since women had not had
the longstanding authority of artistness. That the call for the Point 5. From history to histories: The progressive but
termination of authorial power came just when women artists conceptually problematic addition of women's and
were conjuring it for themselves (or when it was being gender studies22
summoned up on their behalf) struck many feminists, myself
included, as politically dubious. A treatise on etching is necessarily a treatise on the mental
And other developments have affected the examination of powers of great men.-Philip Gilbert Hamerton23
"artists." The increasingly systematic use of psychoanalytic
The other is the phantasm of historiography, the object
methods in art history, for example, especially as used by
that it seeks, honors, and buries.-Michel de Certeau24
British feminists, has rejuvenated interest in examining
afresh the psycho/sexual contours of the subjectivity of the "Women" is historically, discursively constructed, and
artist.'8 Not considering "personal" traits of the artist as always relatively to other categories which themselves
determinants of art making seems unimaginable at this stage change; "women" is a volatile collectivity in which female
in the development of art history. Also of current importance persons can be very differently positioned, so that the
and influence is the realization that the visual text serves to apparent continuity of the subject of "women" isn't to be
constitute artistic identity, and can in fact be instrumental in relied on.-Denise Riley25
14. E. P. Thompson in MARHO, Visions of History: Interviews with [13 20. bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze," Black Looks: Race and Representa-
Historians], New York, 1983, 6. tion, Boston, 1992, 123.
15. T. J. Clark, "In Defense of Abstract Expressionism," October, no. 69, 21. Diverse feminist scholars have rallied around the problematic of female
Summer 1994, 35. spectatorship like a flag, and have produced extraordinary work. See, e.g.,
16. Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in Image-Music-Text, ed. camera obscura, nos. 20-21, May-Sept. 1989, a special issue on "The
and trans S. Heath, New York, 1977, 142-48; and Michel Foucault, "What Is Spectatrix."
an Author?" in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, ed. 22. Subaltern and gay and lesbian studies would need to figure here also in
Josue V. Harain, Ithaca, N.Y., 1979, 141-60. a longer essay.
17. Foucault (as in n. 16), 158. 23. Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1834-1894), preface to Etching and Etchers,
18. See, e.g., the special issue of Art History, xvII, no. 3, Sept. 1994, ed. London, 1868. My thanks to Martha Tedeschi for the reference.
Margaret Iversen, "Psychoanalysis in Art History." 24. Michel de Certeau, The Writing ofHistory, New York, 1988, 2.
19. Lisa Tickner, "Men's Work? Masculinity and Modernism," Visual 25. Denise Riley, "Am I that Name?" Feminism and the Category of "Women" in
Culture: Images and Interpretations, ed. Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, History, Minneapolis, 1988, 1-2.-
and Keith Moxey, Hanover, N.H., 1994, 47.
Hamerton's words were written more than a century ago and able?) consequences for the woman professor and her stu
sound suitably beyond the pale. No one would any longer dents.
dispute the enrichment and reorientation of art history by This problem is the mirror image of the "death of th
the examinations of the cultural products of subversive and author" dilemma (presented under Point 4). Students wan
hitherto overlooked or even suppressed elements of society. teachers to be authoritative, but if women attempt to meet
The modern field, for example, to ponder only one area that that expectation, in the words of Nadya Aisenberg and Mon
has enjoyed an abundance of such scholarship, has been Harrington, "A major problem for women ... in developin
completely transformed by histories of women's art written a voice of authority is that they encounter resistance t
over the past ten to fifteen years.26 authority in women from the moment they begin to claim
But nowadays the interrogator of the elemental triangular it."31 And it becomes even worse if women decide not to be
nexus Women-Gender-Art faces problems and issues un- conventionally authoritative (authoritarian), not to take ref
known by art historians of earlier generations. In the plus uge in male impersonation. If women instructors endeav
column, there are: (1) the discovery that male and female to level with students, and to do so in an interactive and
histories are not separable; and (2) the identification of friendly way, the students will like the professor and her class,
gender (socially constructed or performed sexual difference) but will judge her as less competent than others in her
as a new fulcrum of historical/analytical work.27 In the minus command of her subject matter. To quote Paula Treichler:
column (or at least prominent on the list of serious obstacles "Thus behaviors judged as traditionally male-a lecture
and vexations) fall: (1) excesses of identity politics in which format, little student give-and-take, the transmission of a
the authority of "female experience" distorts critical in- given body of content, little attention to process-seem also
quiry;2s (2) the dubious longing for the valorized or vilified to signal professional competence."32 The moral of the story:
Other evoked by de Certeau; and (3) the problems with the conveying forthrightly to students the nature and substance
category "women" confronted by Riley. of your investment (psychological, political, what have you)
in the visual culture you profess may carry a price tag-the
undercutting of your own authority. Will you pay? (Can you
Part Two: Challenges to Practitioners afford it?)
Point 6. Writing and professing art history:
Finding a voice Point 7. Writing and teaching: Speaking to whom?
How do I tell them who I am, why I read the way I do? [A public intellectual is] a person [who] uses both deep
What do students need to know about their teachers?-
knowledge and broad speculative ability to speak with
Alice Kaplan29 authority on a wide range of issues of the day.-Janny
Scott, New York Times, 199433
Writing cannot be done in a state of desirelessness. The
pose of fair-mindedness, the charade of evenhandedness,
The public is different from the audience: the latter can
the striking of an attitude of detachment can never be
beexamined empirically, and should be.... The public is
more than rhetorical ruses; if they were genuine, if the a prescience or a phantasy within the work and within the
writer actually didn't care one way or the other how things
process of its production. It is something the artist himself
came out, he would not bestir himself to represent
invents, in his solitude-though often in spite of himself,
them.-Janet Malcolmso and never quite as he would wish.... It is ... when the
public becomes either too fixed and concrete a presence
We already implicitly stage our authority in the classroom
or too abstract and unreal a concept, that a radical
with every word uttered and gesture made; we should openly
sickness of art begins.-T. J. Clark34
stage objectivity's funeral at the same time. The challenge is
Both [Raymond Chandler and William Faulkner] under-
this: we need to convey to students what our interest is in the
material we are adjudicating, but without overwhelming stood that a writer's creativity, integrity, and performance
pedagogy with parti pris. But candidly acknowledging areaperpetually threatened by the urge to defend or assert
stake in the topic at hand, while perhaps simultaneously himself, and to be praised by his peers and superiors. And
forswearing autocratic teaching modes that embody objec- they realized that the more an author fulfilled these
tive professorial authority, can have unsettling (undesir- natural and healthy needs by satisfying his reviewers, the
26. Among the key scholars (in alphabetical order) are Kathleen Adler, 32. Paula A. Treichler, "Teaching Feminist Theory," in Theory in the
Rosemary Betterton, Whitney Chadwick, Anna Chave, Deborah Cherry, Classroom, ed. Cary Nelson, Urbana, Ill., 1986, 86.
Briony Fer, Tamar Garb, Anne Higonnet, Maud Lavin, Patricia Mathews, 33. Janny Scott, "Journeys from Ivory Tower: Public Intellectual Is Re-
Linda Nochlin, Rozsika Parker, Griselda Pollock, Lisa Tickner, and Anne born," New York Times, Aug. 9, 1994, A13. Edward W. Said's new book
Wagner. (Representations of the Intellectual, New York, 1994)-it appeared as I was
27. Credit for these developments cannot be restricted to a few individuals writing this-apparently makes an important contribution to the discussion
but Natalie Zemon Davis and Joan Wallach Scott were of central importance. of this figure.
28. "Who we are becomes what we know; ontology shades into knowledge"; 34. T. J. Clark, Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the Second French
see Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking, New York, 1989, 113-19. Republic, 1848-1851, Greenwich, Conn., 1973, 12, 15.
29. Alice Kaplan, French Lessons: A Memoir, Chicago, 1994, 174. 35. William Appleman Williams, "Foreword: Concerning Such Matters as
30. Janet Malcolm, "The Silent Woman," New Yorker, Aug. 23-30, 1993, Authors, Reviewers, Readers, and Even the Book Itself," The Contours of
148. American History, New York, 1973, 1. My thanks to Tim Clark for the
31. Nadya Aisenberg and Mona Harrington, Women ofAcademe: Outsiders in reference.
the Sacred Grove, Amherst, Mass., 1988, 75.
ART> <HISTORY 371
more he would write to and for his reviewers. The writer

A Sculpture, a Column, and a Painting:
would thus warp his own insights and perceptions, and
turn away from his true audience.-William Appleman The Tension between Art and History
Williams35
Tom Cummins
The three final epigraphs prompt us to ponder the public or

I encounter nearly every day the instability of the equation
audience sought, constructed, and reached through our
"Art> < History." Around the corner from where I work, I
writing and speaking. What constitutes--or should consti-
pass a Henry Moore sculpture standing at the center of a
tute-the readership for imaginative, high-stakes, intellec-
large square base of marble with deeply cut, radiating lines.
tual work? Is it time to branch out or hunker down? Do we
Made of bronze, the smooth, rounded, abstract shape rises to
passively allow institutional affiliations rather than politicalmemorialize and monumentalize in artistic terms the historic
and social goals to demarcate our audience(s)? Is this the
act and place where, on December 2, 1942, the first self-
logic of communication that you espouse, whether actively or
sustaining controlled nuclear reaction was achieved. Called
passively? And is it a logic that can realistically be eluded?
Nuclear Energy in the techno-poetic language of modern
I complete this essay as Newt Gingrich licks his chops at
history, the sculpture often conjures up for me, when I stop
the prospect of his likely take over as Speaker of the U.S.
to look at it, to think about it, the "ground zero" of a city
House of Representatives. No, I have not figured out how a
several thousands of miles away where other metal was
tenured university materialist/feminist (oxymoron?) who
reconfigured fifty years ago into twisted, toxic, abstract
places a premium on bodily classroom reenactments of the
shapes and left to consecrate the act. Art is greater than or art
history of art can realistically contest those in power. I
is less than history, but they are never equal, never the same
struggle on my own with the questions I have posed, and
thing. Somewhere in between them, I am reassured that the
address them in the seminar room, but I am far from
still very vivid apocalyptic nightmares of my youth have a
resolving what to do about them beyond continuing to foster
reality. In that reassurance and somewhere in between
critical thinking in person amongst students (the noble work
art > < history, the historicism of modernism in all its various
of instating bourgeois doubt). I plead guilty to throwing
meanings is for a moment arrested, calling forth an opportu-
down a gauntlet before my readers that I would not be able
nity for historical materialism.1 The two terms, art and
entirely to lift myself, but the questions asked deserve your
history, are set in perpetual tension and brought together
thought even if you, too, will find yourself unable to answer
anew at the moment of the present.
them decisively (yet).
Art as a material form, no matter how recently made,
appears before us in the present as the presence of the past
and asks us, among many other things, to engage with
Hollis Clayson is associate professor of modern art and Charles
history in particular ways. We must consciously or uncon-
Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence at Northwest-
sciously respond, and I choose to respond as a historical
ern University. She is the author of Painted Love: Prostitution in
materialist. In doing so, however, I recognize that the
French Art of the Impressionist Era (1991), and is writing a
categories of art and history are not fixed and that their
history of art in Paris during the Franco-Prussian war [Depart-
relationship is a permanent state of tension, as already
ment of Art History, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.
implied by the equation "Art > < History." Equally I recog-
60208].
nize that neither history nor art have always, everywhere
been thought to exist among all cultures of the world.
History and art constitute the defining gap between Europe
and the peoples without them, to paraphrase Eric Wolf.2
They are also Europe's ongoing "gift" to those peoples.3 I
1. I am referring to Walter Benjamin's use of historical materialism as a

criticaljuxtaposition of the present and the past that breaks up any continuity
of "progress," as against a historicism that establishes a causal connection
between various moments in history and gives an eternal image to the past. In
many ways this essay is developed from a personal reading of his "Theses on
the Philosophy of History" and reflections on how I think about my work as
an art historian; see W. Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," in
Illuminations, ed. H. Arendt, New York, 1969, 253-264.
2. Eric Wolf, Europe and the People without History, Berkeley, 1982.
3. "Our world hasjust discovered another world (and who will guarantee us
that it is the last of its brothers, since the daemons, the Sibyls, and we
ourselves have up to now been ignorant of this one?) no less great, full, and
well limbed than itself, yet so new and so infantile that it is still being taught its
ABC; not fifty years it knew neither letters, nor weights and measures nor
clothes nor wheat nor vines"; M. de Montaigne, "On Coaches," in The
Complete Works ofMontaigne, trans. D. Frame, Stanford, 1948, 693 (emphasis
mine). The same notion of giving both writing and the arts to the natives is
found in many 16th-century texts; see, e.g., the comments on the education
of Indians by the missionary Motolinia in his History ofthe Indians ofNew Spain,
trans. F. Steck, Washington, D.C., 1951, 295-300. The basis of European
colonial and postcolonial relations is about giving and the debt that is
incurred, a debt that can never be repaid, and hence is always to be serviced.
would add, however, that history and art as conceived within neously. I feel compelled in 1995, in Chicago, somehow to
the terms of historicism are always given and received and unite Hadrianic Rome and the triumphalism of 1930s'
that the relation between Europe and not Europe is only the Fascism as they stand equally before me, the viewer, in the
extreme of this exchange, an exchange that begets an form of an object that, if it appeared in the books of H. W.
indebtedness to an originary past from which progress Janson, Vitruvius, or William Bennett, would be integrated
emanates, a past locatable only within the elite history of into another kind of history, one that is seamless, unitary,
Western culture. To avoid the hierarchy implied in the universal, affirmative.
exchange does not mean looking forward in anticipation of The power to build and to transport such monuments is
future progress. It means making both art and history crystallized here in the art of architecture. It is the same
present while remembering that things actually did happen, power capable of moving and controlling our bodies and the
were made, that it is all not just a "text." bodies of those who have come before us. One must suggest,
"There is," writes Walter Benjamin, "no document of therefore, the historical contingency between the one power
civilization which is not at the same time a document of as expressed by the production of the column in ancient
barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of and the other power as expressed by the column's
Rome
barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it appearance
was in modern America, if one takes seriously Benja-
transmitted from one owner to another."4 As I drive to the min's dialectic between barbarism and civilization. Other-
Art Institute of Chicago, I pass by Soldier Field where the wise, the immediate reality of the physical object as a
great spectacles of the end of "the century of progress" concrete fragment from the past stands metonymically for a
(football games, rock concerts, religious meetings, and politi- history that is universal, a history that is not occupied by
cal rallies) are staged. Soldier Field takes the form of ancient people who live it in entirely contradictory forms and
amphitheaters and, like so many other neoclassical buildings situations. Art therefore comes to substantiate a better
in the United States and Europe, it recalls the prodigious history of transcendent values devoid of human relations.6
debt owed to our classical heritage as the foundation of Yet I argue that the tension between history and art is at the
Western civilization. Across the street, on the waterfront, is core of the lived moment in which those values are always i
an actual work of classical art, a fragment that gives material dispute and/or contestation. Part of my desire is somehow to
presence to the past. An 18-foot column from Ostia, Rome's conjure them up again, not as nostalgia but as the very real
port of call, stands in erect solitude, a monument both from presence of Benjamin's dialectical relation of civilization and
and to our Western heritage, topped by a fine Corinthian barbarism as the monument is transferred to us.
capital. At the corners of its square base are sculpted four For example, in the same summer of the eleventh year of
groups of bound sticks. On the dedicatory plaque is written Fascism, Antonio Gramsci wrote from prison in Apulia to his
in both Latin and English, lest anyone not understand the wife:
relationship between this particular base and its superstruc-
ture: "This column Twenty Centuries old ... Fascist Italy I am curious to learn how Delio [Gramsci's oldest son]
with the sponsorship of Benito Mussolini presents to Chi- came to want to read [Uncle Tom's Cabin] and whether
cago ... in Honor of the Atlantic squadron led by Balbo when he receives it, someone will be able to historicize it
which with Roman daring flew across the Ocean in the for him, placing emotions and religious feelings in which
eleventh year of the Fascist era." the book is steeped in time and space. This is a difficult
Fascism's calendar is gone (am I to suppose that I am thing to do with a young boy, if it is done seriously.7
standing, looking at the column, in the seventy-second year
of the Fascist era?) but the gift and its debt remain. The Five days after the letter was written, Balbo and his men
breccia column and fine Corinthian capital have survived the marched, in celebration of the heroic deeds to which Chica-
go's column is dedicated, under the Arch of Constantine,
pleas of Alberto Tarchiani, Italy's anti-Fascist ambassador to
the United States, to have it removed.5 The presence of stating that the Via dei Trionfi was no longer an artistic and
ancient art and history are clearly not equal here. There is a cultural monument but a "live element in the life of Rome."8
vacillation between the heroics of a modern political figure The concern and worry that Gramsci expressed in his sixth
and the spolia of the past. The column allows me to think year of imprisonment about the seriousness and difficulty of
historically, but not within the terms of a sequential universal understanding, of explaining the relationship between art
narrative. It is rather to think historically within a temporal and history to his son was justified beyond measure as the
condition that permits juxtapositions, transgressions, and architecture of the past effortlessly became a "live element in
the contradictions of different periods to exist simulta- the life of Rome" through the spectacle of the State.
4. Benjamin (as in n. 1), 256. 8. Segre (as in n. 5), 258.

5. The fortieth anniversary of the event commemorated by the column was 9. It was out of curiosity, while bicycling with my own son, that I stopped to
celebrated on Columbus Day in Chicago with the surviving members of look at the column and by coincidence that I was reading Gramsci's letters
Balbo's crew marching in a parade with Mayor Richard Daley (1968). "The from prison. While I had not then read the letter cited here, I remember the
parade was the high point in a series of events including, conferences and difficulties he describes as I tried to talk to my son in front of the column.
exhibits, on the theme of 'Italy-USA Air Progress' "; Claudio Segre, Italo Gramsci is right that it "is a difficult thing to do with a young boy, if it is done
Balbo: A Fascist Life, Stanford, 1987, 264-65. seriously."
6. Kurt W. Forster, "Critical History of Art, or Transfiguration of Values?" 10. M. de Certeau, The Writing ofHistory, trans. T. Conley, New York, 1988,
xxv-xxvI.
New Literary History, III, no. 3, 1972, 468.
7. Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison, ed. and trans. L. Lawner, New
York, 1989, 258.
ART> <HISTORY 373
How history and art are brought into relationship is always atof a book on Maya art and hieroglyphics. It opens with the
issue. I am reminded of it not only by the incidental spaces lines:
and objects of where I happen to be and what I make of
them,9 but also as an art historian whose focus of research is Bored with the smothering ubiquity of Western art? Tired
Pre-Columbian and colonial Latin American art. The tempo- of endless, nit-picking footnotes on Michelangelo or
ral differences of that art and history are indexed by the Manet? Disenchanted with the pompous jargon of "new"
names of the discoverer (Columbus) and namer (Amerigo art history?
Vespucci) of the New World. As Michel de Certeau suggests, Go South, young art historian! Look no further than
they are the terms that very much mark the liminal point of your continent. Redirect your "gaze" toward Maya Mesoa-
the writing of history as "a 'modern' history of writing." merica, ponder ancient cities as fabulous as the ruins of
Describing an allegorical image of Amerigo Vespucci stand- Pompeii, and enjoy without guilt an art as exciting as
ing before a recumbent naked woman, the Indian "America," anything you've ever seen in Europe.16
de Certeau sees the engraving giving form "to the conqueror
[who] will write the body of the other and trace there his own I am reminded, I am intended to be reminded, of Horace
history." What is initiated in this interaction is "a coloniza- Greeley's remark of nearly a century ago-"Go West, Young
Man!"-and of the policy of Manifest Destiny. The review
tion of the body by the discourse of power. This is writing that
conquers. It will use the New World as if it were a blank,
presupposes taking possession of the Americas, their histo-
'savage' page on which Western desire will be written."10 The
ries and art as if they were virgin territory, there merely for
unity between the subject and the object of the writing of the taking. Calling for the study of Pre-Columbian art and
history is ruptured.11 history in this way relies upon a trope as old as the conquest
The relationship between history and art, of course, of the Americas itself. The trope displaces that history onto
existed in the Americas in various forms before Columbus, allegory, just as it is imagined in the naked maiden of the
Amerigo Vespucci, and the rest arrived. For example, the engraving described by de Certeau. The call to go "South of
Aztec conceived of various types of histories and they the Border" also recalls Raleigh's famous line in Discoverie:
produced different pictorial genres in a variety of media to"Guiana is a countrey that hath yet her mayden head."17
give them form.12 And in Quechua, the language of the Inca, Studies of Pre-Columbian and Latin American colonial art as
the past can be expressed as being experientially known by directed from the north to the south must remember these
the speaker if the speaker is in the presence of ancienttropes, their histories, and what they have meant and still can
objects such as ruins.13 Certainly, the Maya have been notedmean. Raleigh's line implies the force of rape, and rape is
always a socially sexed crime that must be contextualized
most recently for the interaction of historical recording and
their artistic production. within a larger system of gender politics. Whether the action
It is important, I feel, to recognize that art> <history is
is physical or metaphysical, whether its object is a woman, a
not solely the domain of Western civilization. At the same man, a "countrey," or an art form, that object is always
time, I would not like to lose sight of the fact that we arepositioned as feminine. 18 The Americas have always been
practicing, producing our history, not Aztec, Maya, or Inca gendered feminine and the "gaze" is certainly gendered
history. The Aztec, Mayan and Inca peoples produced andmasculine.
continue to produce histories for themselves in relationship Raleigh's words and their echo in the call to a certain kind
to ancient and modern art.14 Our production is, however, of practice of Pre-Columbian art history are one form of the
what concerns me here and it is, in part, what de Certeau desirous gaze cast by history. But I am also reminded of a
means when he speaks about the rupture between subject very different form of history's gaze as imagined by Benja-
and object. The rupture has allowed for the production of min. Benjamin recalls seeing Paul Klee's painting called
autonomous linguistic artifacts (specific languages and dis-
Angelus Novas, and through the painting he describes how he
courses-history, anthropology, law, art history, etc.) that by imagines the Angel of History to appear, looking at history's
their separation/distinction from the things and bodies thatwreckage at its feet, and wishing to make whole what has
they report, describe, and analyze, transforms them.'5 been smashed. Benjamin's image also conjures up for me
Among other things, I regard de Certeau's words as aanother painting, a late seventeenth-century Peruvian colo-
caution against an unreflected belief in the neutrality of nial history painting that tries to do just that, tries to make
method and theory which can be turned elsewhere whenever whole what has been smashed.
they have seemingly exhausted the object of their study. This The painting, by an unknown artist, hangs in the Jesuit
is the difficulty that I have with a recent, enthusiastic review
church in Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Inca empire. The
11. De Certeau here locates the historical rupture between providential or 14. I am not suggesting that there is some kind of essential Maya, Aztec, or
messianic time and "homogeneous empty time" as articulated by Benjamin other native American form of history that has survived unmediated for the
(as in n. 1), 261. past five hundred years.
12. Elizabeth Boone, "Aztec Pictorial Histories: Records without Words," 15. De Certeau (as in n. 10), xxvr.
in Writing Without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes, ed. 16. Samuel Y. Edgerton, review of S. D. Houston, Maya Glyphs, Art Bulletin,
LXXIII, no. 1, 1991, 158-59.
E. Boone and W. Mignolo, Durham, N.C., 1993, 50-76; and Serge Gruzinski,
The Conquest of Mexico, trans. E. Corrigan, Cambridge, 1993, 6-69. 17. W. Raleigh, Discoverie, as cited in Louis Montrose, "The Work of
13. See Rosaleen Howard-Malverde, The Speaking of History: 'Willapaakush- Gender in the Discourse of Discovery," Representations, no. 33, 1991, 32.
ayki' or Quechua Ways of Telling the Past, University of London Institute of 18. I have paraphrased Montrose's discussion (ibid., 32) of Raleigh's
Latin American Research Papers xxI, London, 1990. passage because he succinctly gets to the issues underlying this trope.
subject is a double wedding that conflates time and space. In some ten years because a descendant of one of the conquista-
the left foreground stand Martin Garcia de Loyola, nephew dores, Crist6bal de Maldonado, insisted on his prior rights to
of the founder of the Jesuit order, and his bride Beatriz Clara her fortune. He laid claim to her estate because he had laid
Coya, daughter of Sari-Tupac, one of the last Inca rulers. claim to her body in 1566. In that year, at the age of eight,
The fapade of Cuzco's cathedral appears in the background. Beatriz was raped by Crist6bal de Maldonado in an "act" of
In the middle ground are Beatriz's royal ancestors, her father betrothal; "and he consummated the marriage, having mari-
and her great-uncle Tupac Amaru. In the right foreground tal relations with her in peaceful possession."'19
stand the daughter of Beatriz and Martin, Ana Maria, and The historical tropes of possession such as "Guiana is a
her husband, grandson of Saint Francis Borgia (Francisco de countrey that hath yet her mayden head" are not just texts.
Borja), with Madrid in the background. Between the two And bringing history to art is notjust context.
couples, in the center, are the two Jesuit saints Ignatius of The painting of Beatriz and her daughter is not the same
Loyola and Francis Borgia. thing as history, however. And that is what makes the
The painting assumes a coherence and wholeness in terms engagement, the encounter with the painting both compel-
of both historical narrative and pictorial composition, easily ling and necessary. One must stand before the painting in
recounted, easily described: one form of art > <history. But the consecrated space of the Jesuit church to look at it, often
the painting is no more capable of rendering whole what has surrounded by music and incense, by talk and human odor.
been smashed than Klee's/Benjamin's Angel of History. In the painting differences of time, space, ethnicity, and race
Here the equation "Art> < History" appears reconciled, are marked and are collapsed, representing no place or time
seemingly capable of giving vision to the unification of in particular, a vision of utopia inhabited by historical
Jesuits and Inca in a scene of "magical realism." But the figures. Art can offer this kind of vision of simultaneity. One
bodies that seem intact, complete, whole, existing peacefully is therefore invited to fill that "no place" with various times
in the same space of history, disintegrate when confronted by and events, not in a linear sequence of causality but simulta-
historical materialism. One need only think about the figure neously. The painting can be completed anew by whomever
of Beatriz's great-uncle Tupac Amaru in the background. stands in front of it, and not only by the remembrance of
Martin de Loyola, Beatriz's husband, captured him in 1570 Dofia Beatriz and the others as narrated above, but perhaps
and brought Tupac Amaru to Cuzco where he was beheaded also by thinking of the painting as it was made and seen some
in the plaza. Martin himself lost the head on his shoulders. In one hundred years later than those events, and/or of seeing
1598, as leader of an expeditionary force against the Araua- it now in Cuzco, in Peru, with others. If the painting is seen in
canian Indians, he was killed, and his head was taken and this way, the work of art is no longer a thing to be possessed
kept as a ceremonial drinking cup until 1641, when it was by a guiltless, timeless "gaze" but a site that extends beyond
returned in a treaty. its frame to where the tension between art and history is
What of the wedding itself? Beatriz appears as both manifested in the present, and where an art historian must
virginal bride and mother. The appearance of bodily self- engage with the work.
possession seemingly erases the object of colonial desire. But
as the richest heiress in Cuzco, Beatriz was more than her
body, and she therefore had not been allowed to marry her Tom Cummins works in the area of Latin American art and has
Inca cousin although papal dispensation had been given. published articles on Pre-Columbian Ecuadorian ceramics and
Instead, she was forced by the viceroy to betroth Martin colonial Peruvian painting [Art Department, University of Chi-
Garcia de Loyola in 1580. Even this wedding was delayed cago, 5540 South Greenwood Avenue, Chicago, Ill. 6063 7].
19. For the petition by Crist6bal de Maldonado to Philip II in 1577, see

Coleccidn de documentos iniditos para la historia de Chile desde el Viaje de
Magellanes hasta la batalla de Maipo, 1518-1818, ser. 2, Iv, Santiago de Chile,
1960, 208.
ART> <HISTORY 375
ber, declared art dead after a certain date; they had their
On Not Writing the History of aesthetic objects, too: statues, cameos, silver, paintings on
Roman Art marble, and these demanded both refined classicizing tastes
and an appreciation of fine materials and complex tech-
Natalie Boymel Kampen niques.' But the moment we ask, WHICH ROMANS?, the
A centipede was strolling along when a journal editordifference between ART and material production comes into
came by and asked, "How do you know which foot to put sharp relief. The Romans who wrote about art, who collected
down first?" it, were men of the urban elites, largely from the city of Rome or
It was days before the centipede could walk again, and other metropolitan centers, and for them the value in an
weeks before she could stroll. object came from its luxurious or evocative materials, the
degree of its resemblance to nature (in other words, its
Looking at this title, ART> <HISTORY, makes me think technical excellence or its relation to a classical ideal), or its
that typography is still the frustrated mirror of thought; the ability to remind the viewer of other-ennobling-times and
art historian keeps trying to figure out how to put the two places. The ART of these men resonates with the Neoclassi-
parts into conversation, how to get the > < to lead the one cism of Winckelmann, but for a later generation it posed the
element inside the other. So what should this essay do burdensome problem of how to identify Romanness in
besides bemoaning the problem? My training is in Roman Roman art, how to put together this slice of Roman art with
art, so the ideas I'll put forward here are born of some all the others out there and make a coherent narrative of it.2
problems that arise from working in this field; Roman art Those others, the provincial and frontier monuments, the
seems to me to pose an interesting challenge not only to the coins and pots, the things made for enslaved and freed men
ever-more destabilized terms ART and HISTORY but also to and women, for soldiers or artisans, or for prosperous
the processes of writing ART HISTORY. I address nonelite individuals and families in towns and rural areas all
two
over, these refused to fit into the narrative, refused to be
primary questions: how do we understand the concept of
audience? and how might we more effectively engage mul- silenced by a formalist early twentieth-century art history
tiple social categories such as gender and class as we discuss that could not find a place for them as long as it still tried to
the production as well as the reception of visual materials? write a coherent history of style. Thus, in thinking about the
Just because the terms ART and HISTORY are so unstable decorative forms of late antiquity and the origins of medieval
at present doesn't mean I'm not duty bound, as are we all, to art, Alois Riegl associated Roman production with the early
keep wondering what they might be or how to talk about Middle Ages rather than the Greek world; this functions as
them. But to be a feminist working on Roman art is to be both in an attempted solution to the problem of where to put
the position of having always to confront the arbitrariness of Roman art in a historical narrative and, at the same time, as a
modern ideas about these two terms. After all, the Roman art capitulation to the linear notion of history. Nevertheless,
that I study-the political monuments of the provinces, the Riegl's insistence on the impossibility of restricting the object
shop signs, the statues of naked middle-class matrons-has field, of screening out the "decorative arts" or the provincial,
long been marginalized by traditional art history as interest-
constituted an implicit admission of the difficulties of that
ing (maybe) but unlovely; yet it, like the coins, the stamped
very capitulation.3
pottery, and the mundane wall paintings that share so much To write a history of Roman art has flummoxed pretty
with New York coffee-shop murals, constitutes the material much everyone who's ever tried, because we authors have
production of a world in which the category of ART differs continued to regard history as at least in part linear and art
substantially from that of the postmedieval world. The as at least in part aesthetically motivated.4 Neither assump-
container ART must stretch so wide that it begins to change tion seems to work here.5 No artist names, so no mono-
shape altogether, and the term, in its early modern and
graphs. No single development, so no narrative history. No
modern senses, must be replaced by "material production"
ability to make a convincing separation between "high" and
with its implications of the writing of a history broader than"low"
a art, "center" and "periphery," or "fine" and "minor" arts,
narrative of objects in their relations to one another. The
so no traditional way to produce a unitary history of Roman art.
Romans had their own category of ART-Pliny, we remem-The best attempts to write a history of Roman art have
I am especially grateful to the following people for reading and commenting the 20th century; see Brendel (as in n. 2) for what remains the most
on this paper and for their many fine ideas: Jules and Pauline Boymel,interesting and thorough discussion of the issues.
Alexandra Broches, John Clarke, John Dunnigan, and Barbara Kellum. 4. The most recent effort at a general text for classroom use, N. and A.
Errors and ineptitudes are all mine. This essay is for Richard Brilliant's Ramage, Roman Art, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1991, attempts a synthesis in
sixty-fifth birthday. which provincial material and monuments for the lower strata are often
1. See esp. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, bks. 35-36; and G. Becatti, Arteincluded in chapters whose order is nonetheless determined by the chronol-
e gusto negli scrittori latini, Florence, 1951. ogy of imperial dynasties. The authors' recognition of the problems of writing
2. See esp. O.J. Brendel, "Prolegomena to a Book on Roman Art," Memoirs such a history remains muted in the interests of keeping the book accessible
of the American Academy in Rome, xxI, 1953, 9-73, enlarged and updated as the novice.
to
Prolegomena to the Study of Roman Art, New Haven/London, 1979. My paper 5. Even the use of the handbook format, its media/technology emphasis
owes a great deal to repeated readings of Brendel's work since Richardbreaking up coherent narrative, fails to challenge the fundamental assump-
Brilliant introduced me to it in 1965. tions of the discipline; see, e.g., M. Henig, ed., A Handbook of Roman Art: A
3. A. Riegl, Spaitr6mische Kunstindustrie, Vienna, 1927 (note the conjunction Comprehensive Survey of All the Arts of the Roman World, Ithaca, N.Y., 1983.
of art and industry in the title). Of course, this by no means exhausts the Clearly, the other way of thinking about > <, as art is greater than
historiographic examples one could give of the way the period question history/history is less than art, is implicit in this approach, but the handbook
"What is Roman about Roman art?" came to be answered in the first half of seems unable to address the conceptual problems of such a statement.
struggled with these problems in exemplary ways. Two from borders constantly blur and deserve to be seen as ways of
the experimental days, post-1968, bear reconsideration, describing HISTORY rather than carving it up). Its corpus of
especially since both were given little or no discussion in documentation is primarily but not exclusively visual, and its
"The State of the Field" on ancient art in this journal some goal is a comprehension of the interplay between social (etc.)
years ago.6 Richard Brilliant's book on Roman art divided forces and their visual articulation.
the material-architecture, painting, sculpture, cameos, and In the construction of their books, Brilliant and Bianchi
so forth-into two sections, the first dealing with themes and Bandinelli also point to the impossibility of a linear and
artistic categories and the second with chronology.7 He tried seamless history of Roman art. Precisely because they repre-
to present both category and chronology as strategies for sent this kind of history as being illusory, they fail at a
understanding the fragmenting production of a giant and moment of potential success. Neither author finds a way to
long-lived empire, and thus insisted on the impossibility of a overcome the split between what seems to cooperate with
single narrative, even as he reified such a narrative in the traditional history-as-chronology and what won't cooperate.
chronological section of the book. Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinel- How much does a dialectic born of oppositions rather than
li's contributions to the series "The Arts of Mankind," Rome: multiple contending forces, a falling into binaries, have to do
The Center of Power and Rome: The Late Empire, seem driven by with this problem, I wonder?
a comparable ambivalence.8 His earlier work and politics Bianchi Bandinelli's Marxism offered him a valuable tool
had led him to a commitment to class analysis and to a for fragmenting historical unity, but the tool was itself too
concern with the way class might function as a determinant of embedded in a unitary discourse (based on the binaries arte
style, and as a consequence his books gave far more attention aulica: court/ patrician/upper-class art; and arte plebea: plebe-
than the work of any other author at the time to the material ian/lower-class art-both terms difficult to translate not least
production associated with people of the lower strata and of because their author used them with a certain freedom) to do
the nonelite provincial world. Bianchi Bandinelli divided the the job at the time. Class as a central variable, a category of
material to place art from the Republic through the mid- analysis, to use Joan Scott's phrase, had too much of its own
second century C.E. in the first volume and that of the later "history" to be able (particularly in the late 1960s in Italy) to
second century through the fourth in the second; clearly, his give ground to the concept of category per se.o1 Antiracist
hope was that ideas could unify the material around broad and anti-imperialist discourses, feminism and struggles over
period designations. Yet the persistent problems of chronol- sexual identity, among other forces active in the 1970s
ogy continue to emerge as he tries to figure out how to deal clearly had much to do with the way class came to be seen by
with court portraiture, with its tendency to dominate modern some as A (not THE) crucial variable in the relationships of
scholarship and its introduction of a linear narrative.9 Simi- human beings in time (which doesn't, I think, mean that
larly, chronology has to be violated when Bianchi Bandinelli "relations of production" in the Marxist sense cease to be
deals with the apparent formal relationships between hard-to- crucial to any understanding of history). The best result of
date monuments from the northern and western provinces this emergent awareness of multiple categories seems to be
(those that fail to conform to the stylistic chronologies of the the ability of the categories to insist on the multiplicity of
city of Rome or of Hellenized urban centers) and their formal histories; they render a single linear or universal history
connections to objects made for the lower strata in Italy and impossible and reveal the way different communities read history
elsewhere (including regions such as Asia Minor, where through their own social/political/etc. locations and investments.
urban centers and small towns reveal very different ap- But how then to avoid a kind of provincialization of
proaches to style). Thus both contributions, that of Brilliant history, how to keep us from the blinders of a narrow (rather
and that of Bianchi Bandinelli, offer up the seriousness of the
than a broad) identity politics as the foundation for particu-
larized histories of art? Couldn't I write a history of Roman
problem with an honesty that still cannot overcome Roman art's
resistance to contemporary strategies for writing history. provincial art in Gaul, of the art of Roman working people,
There are some things in these two histories of Roman art or of any other "subset" of Romans who would then become
that I think future authors might want to salvage and learn disconnected from other subsets until there was nothing to
from. Both Brilliant and Bianchi Bandinelli understand the hold it all together? Or is that the idea of some vulgarized
elision between art and artifact in the Roman world. They deconstruction of Roman/Art/History? And why foster the
understand the way we moderns refuse to acknowledge the illusion that there is anything that can be "held all together"?
peculiarity of using the category ART as a container for Perhaps the answer to some of these questions rests in the
things that Romans wouldn't have put into it. By this analogy between the way Roman art history has traditionally
understanding, and here feminist art historians since been the written and the changing understanding of the struc-
early 1970s have come to the same conclusion, the two open ture and history of empire in general and the Roman empire
in particular. What I mean by this is that a conventional or
up the possibility of writing a different kind of art history.
This art history could become a cultural> <political> <so- hegemonic nineteenth-century view of empire might see its
cial history (what I really mean is that these disciplinary center as utterly dominant, as shaping the lives and cultures
6. B. S. Ridgway, "The State of Research on Ancient Art," Art Bulletin, 9. For an important effort to rethink the way Roman portraiture is
LXVIII, no. 1, 1986, 7-23. traditionally studied, see E. K. Gazda and A. E. Haeckl, "Roman Portraiture:
7. R. Brilliant, Roman Artfrom the Republic to Constantine, London, 1974. Reflections on the Question of Context," Journal of Roman Archaeology, vi,
8. R. Bianchi Bandinelli, Rome: The Center of Power, 500 B.c. to A.D. 200, 1993, 289-302.
trans. P. Green, New York, 1970; and idem, Rome: The Late Empire: Roman 10. See J. W. Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,"
Art, A.D. 200-400, trans. P. Green, London, 1971. American Historical Review, xcI, 1986, 1053-75.
ART> <HISTORY 377
of the colonized metropolitan populations, and its provinces discourses in multiple communities and, at the same time, to
as outside of any history not also dominated or narrativizedlocate these temporally in relation to one another. Does this
by the center; this was often the "Roman Empire" put into sound like an argument in favor of writing history rather
writing by historians until quite recently."I To write a history
than a distinct art history?
of Roman art within this intellectual framework was ex-
An exemplary version of the kind of history I'm looking for
tremely difficult, perhaps impossible until the political and
is Simon Price's Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in
cultural changes of the late 1960s forced a confrontation
Asia Minor, because the author focuses on the way a specific
between critiques of imperialism and critiques of cultural
region interacted both with its own traditions and internal
production and representation. At that point, and Brilliant
differences and with the imperial authority at Rome.'2 His
and Bianchi Bandinelli demonstrate this, empire ceasesdocuments
to are visual and also textual (he is, after all, writing
have an agreed-upon meaning and a hegemonic character,
history), with inscriptions, legal opinions, historical texts,
and so the narrative of chronology as dominated by the
and other records combined with sculpture, architecture,
center, by Rome's elites, ceases to hold.
and other artifacts to make a picture of cultural activity as it
What would happen, then, if we decided to follow through
exists in time. Price demonstrates the possibility of under-
on a kind of break-up of empire, a fragmentation of the
standing complex patronage structures in urban and rural
dream of hegemony, and constructed instead a writing of
areas and of seeing the function and meaning of diverse acts
history based on concepts of community and collectivity?
What if we inserted these decentering concepts into ofthepatronage. He shows how to read monuments as visible
actions
traditional structures of art history, structures still at play in by a set of communities trying to find ways to speak to
a distant power while continuing to preserve at least the
the space between the Individual (e.g., the artist, the patron,
the viewer) and Impersonal Forces (e.g., economics, context, illusion of autonomy and tradition. At no point is Asia Minor
rendered a static and changeless environment or separated
ideology), and allowed them to disrupt the traditions? And
from a larger Mediterranean sphere, nor is its art considered
did so with a sense of the multiplicity of categories that shape
communities? Here is what I mean: to write A historyseparable
of from production in Rome and other provinces.
And Price's consciousness of class diversity, of differences
Roman art will not be possible given the magnificent complex-
ity of Roman society, its extent and diversity in time betweenand rural and urban environments and among degrees
place (and never mind the Swiss-cheese quality of of the"Hellenization" reveals the illuminating possibilities for
evidence), and the range of objects, media, typologies, writing a decentered history with the aid of multiple catego-
messages, and so on. So why not try to write a setries. of The point is that he has looked beyond the crude
interlocking histories based on the existence of recognizableoppositions of center/periphery, Rome/province, individual/
communities in the Roman world? The art historian would impersonal forces, object/text, or object/context, and wound
study communities of different kinds, not simply as objects up writing something that really helps clarify the terms Art
but as fluid and dynamic entities constantly interacting withand History and their relationship.
other communities; she would look for the historical and Now, could one also include other, more intimate (at least
cultural materials that might illuminate local practices and apparently) features of communities to see what would
ideas, materials that might help to describe who produced happen to this process of writing art history? My concern
works of art, for whom, for what reasons, and under what with issues of gender, sexual identity, class, and ethnicity
historical and cultural circumstances. Communities could be leads me to ask this question in the full consciousness that the
administrative, as in provinces or urban centers; cultural, as list of categories is far from complete and that the first two
in Latin speakers or Gallic Senones; gendered, as in men and categories are as yet far less explored by Romanists than the
women but also those who call normative gender intosecond two. There must be a place for looking at the ways
question (e.g., eunuchs or tribades [women who behave likethat communities define themselves visually through gender,
men and seduce other women]); class/rank/status, as in sexuality, and the like. This might allow us to do away with
different kinds ofworkers, slaves, elites; and so on. It is in thesuch unified and monolithic concepts as The Viewer, The
interactions of such communities with other communities Audience, to move into a history writing that included a play
that one could locate the possibility of moving from staticbetween the localized and specified viewing population and
descriptions of subsets to another kind of history, one in ourselves. Could we not, then, engage a wider range of
which a linear narrative dominated by a center might be possible ways of looking, ways of understanding the signals
subverted. One should be able to plot continuities and and pleasures of style and the messages of meaning that
changes through time at the same moment that one consid- would give human identity and presence to the notion of
ers the conversations, the conflicts, the willful or unconscious Context?
ignorance of one community in relation to others. The goal For example, using the splendid foundation that Price
would be to use visual and textual materials in order to provides, one might incorporate the extensive new scholar-
understand the nature of overlapping as well as conflictingship on benefactions in Asia Minor, gifts of money for
11. Interesting examples of new ways to understand empire can be seenemerges

in in the writing of, e.g., P. Garnsey and R. Sailer (The Roman Empire:
the work of G. Mosse (Nationalism and Sexuality, New York, 1985) Economy,
and Society, and Culture, Berkeley, 1987); G. Woolf ("World-Systems
Benedict Anderson (Imagined Communities, London, 1983), as well as inAnalysis the and the Roman Empire," Journal of Roman Archaeology, III, 1990,
publications of the 1980s edited by R. Guha and the Subaltern Studies Group 44-58, with earlier literature); and S. R. F. Price (Rituals and Power: The
(e.g., Subaltern Studies, I, 1982) and the anthology Nationalisms and Sexualities,
Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor, Cambridge/New York, 1984).
ed. A. Parker et al., New York, 1992. The shifting view of the Roman empire 12. Price (as in n. 11), passim.
building, urban ornamentation, ritual, and celebration.13 My conclusion is that ART + HISTORY = ART HISTORY
The artistic and epigraphic evidence allows us to look at the is no more credible than ART > < HISTORY. Maybe HISAR-
things women and men wanted to connect with their names, TIFACTORY or THEIRARTHISTORIES or something
at gender- and rank-specific preferences in benefaction; it hokey like that would better capture the multiplicity of
permits an understanding of the crucial role family identity histories and the impossibility of HISTORY in any unitary
plays in public giving and coordinates well with Price's sense at the same time that it permitted an appreciation of
arguments about the way in which cities establish identities the inseparability of art/artifact from other kinds of historical
and compete with other cities through the erection of documentation. I'm advocating for art history some ideas
monuments and the performance of rituals. Changing pat- that Roman art forces on me, and at the heart of these is the
terns of patronage may also signal changes in interpretive
notion of community and the necessity of multiple social
practices as well as in ideas about how a thing should look or
categories in play at every stage in the process of writing
what it should mean. The material evidence allows, too, for a
decentered histories.
link between benefactors and knowable segments of the
One last thing: I promise never to write a book called The
audience, and it enables us to specify a part of THE
History of Roman Art. Instead, I think we should extend the
AUDIENCE. The concrete definition of WHO sees, a defini-
notion of community still further and write our art histories
tion that gives viewers names, ages, class, or rank, and thus
far more collectively than we have been doing (maybe even
breaks up the monolithic AUDIENCE, has powerful implica-
write them as histories along with historians?). A History of
tions for our understanding of the way in which a monument
comes into being; the strategies it uses for addressing its Roman Art by a collective of authors (not, however, the
audiences become clearer, and it takes on a necessarily ubiquitous and frustrating Handbuch format or a compartmen-
dynamic relationship with monuments and audiences at talized effort with each person working alone on her chapter)
other times and places. could be a real pleasure and every bit the challenge to art
I am certainly not suggesting anything that people work- history as a discipline that it would be to Roman art history.14
ing on Roman art and archaeology haven't been doing in
some measure all along. What I am suggesting is that we have
each been doing pieces and ignoring other pieces, writing
local histories as if there were no OUT THERE or as if they Natalie Boymel Kampen writes about Roman imperial art and
were HISTORY in the singular, caring about audiences feminist art history. She is the author of Image and Status:
without caring about their gendered, ethnic, classed, and Roman Working Women at Ostia (1981) and co-author of
other motives for resisting, accepting, or misinterpreting Women in the Classical World (1994), and editor of the
messages, and sometimes failing to imagine that those forthcoming Sexuality in Ancient Art [Department of Women's
histories were more than the sum of their monuments. Studies, Barnard College, New York, N. Y. 10027].
13. See, e.g., M. T. Boatwright, "The City Gate of Plancia Magna," in

Roman Art in Context, ed. E. D'Ambra, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1993, 189-207.
14. Elaine K. Gazda and others have been considering, with realistic
trepidation, the possibility of such a project in Roman art, but I have heard
little about such collective work other than anthologies for postclassical art
history.
ART> <HISTORY 379
discourse often appears to be a classic case study of a

Art, History, and Vision
discipline and its disciples on the verge of a reformation.
RichardJ. Powell Of course, all late twentieth-century changes in focus or
theoretical modifications seem inconsequential and minus-
Where there is no vision, the people perish.' cule in comparison to the broad foundations that were
originally laid for the discipline by scholarly precursors such
It is against this double hegemony of a History with a
as Vasari, Winckelmann, and others. Given modern art
capital H and a Literature consecrated by the absolute
history's origins during the Renaissance, as well as its
power of the written sign that the peoples who until now
institutionalization during the Enlightenment, the disci-
inhabited the hidden side of the earth fought, at the same
pline's overtures to Western, rationalist, and epistemological
time they were fighting for food and freedom.2
traditions are fundamental to its very existence. Still, the
A lot of these patterns-some of the different designs ofcurrent, lively debates about the appropriate subject matter
these fancy quilts- ... I got them out of a quilt book. and
.... methodologies for art history suggest that, even within
But lots of them are made-up quilts. See, there's nothe buttresslike boundaries of the past, new ideas abound
pattern for those. Ijust sit down and start sewing them up.
which significantly redirect one's eye, mind, and imagination
I call them make-ups.... And like that wheel [tape-
to other visual territories.
recorder reel] going around there-I can look at that For all of the voiced concerns and warnings about the
wheel and imagine me a quilt from it. I can take me some
contemporary tendency to expand an already established,
paper and cut out a pattern and piece me up a quilt just
time-honored body of important, study-worthy art objects,
like that. . .. I guess I'd call it a Tape Recorder quilt. That
what is lost in the din and cry of "collapsed standards" is the
would be my name of it, since that's its name, ain't it?3 fact that every generation of art historians introduces new
material-both the previously unexamined material and the
Most scholars would agree that what distinguishes today's art
hardly "glanced-at" material-for contemporary study and
history from yesterday's art history is what appears to be an
investigation. A significant part of this process--expanding
immoderate and, at times, zealous emphasis on redefining
the range and scope of appropriate subject matter for
the "appropriate" subject matter and methodologies for theart-historical research-also entails having the intellectual
discipline. For traditionalists, the introduction of subject
confidence and professional daring to reexamine and reas-
areas such as race and gender studies, the media arts, and sess the canonical, almost iconic works in our field. Possess-
interdisciplinary and cultural studies signals an assault ing
on the freedom to contest past interpretations and scholarly
such time-honored premises in art history as: the aestheticassertions-on the basis of previously unearthed facts, new
superiority of easel painting, monumental sculpture, and research tools, different theoretical strategies, and a growing
international network of informational resources-is one of
architecture; the inherent virtuosity and almost predestined,
privileged position of certain nationalities (mostly of North-
the challenges of being an art historian today.
ern European ancestry) and classes of people in worldOften, in the debates between the cultural relativists and
culture; and the intrinsic and insoluble status, historically
the defenders of artistic hierarchies, what is missing is an
speaking, of the discipline. When confronted by contempo- acknowledgment on both sides of the power of the art
rary methodological approaches to art that incorporate suchhistorian to enthrone the subject at hand or, at least, to
notions as a professed, cultural relativism, interpretations
situate "the visual" temporarily at the center of a discourse.
based on modern economic, political, and semiotic theories,The very act of writing about, looking at, and researching
and highly suggestive literary and psychoanalytic critiquessomething-whether
of it is mundane or novel, vintage or
works, artists, and/or cultural settings, traditional art histori-
contemporary, inconsequential or important-makes it excep-
ans decry these current enterprises as antithetical to solid,tional and potentially significant. Both the traditional art
serious art-historical scholarship, viewing them as subversive historian and the "new" art historian share this aesthetic
and hopelessly political acts. authority: to draw one's attention to select, visual material in
It is necessary to begin this discussion with a description world
of culture, and to point out/invest it with meanings and
the impasse between the traditional approaches to art history significations which might complement or transcend literal
and many contemporary approaches because of its relevance and/or social interpretations. Art history, unlike other disci-
beyond art history. While some may prefer to see this jockey- plines in the humanities, privileges sight-and its attendant
ing between various schools of art-historical thought act as of inquiry, insight-in the explication of knowledge. The
art historian's broad understanding of artistic production
something which concerns only art historians, I prefer to see
the debate as something larger: evidence of a general shiftenables
in her or him to examine their subject from a decidedly
the humanities away from insularity and complacency, andvisual perspective (apart from the purely social, historical,
toward an interdisciplinary mind-set and an invigorating and/or literary points of view, which nonetheless have their
interrogation of the humanities itself. For art history, this
place in art history), and it is especially this skill-the ability
1. Prov. 29:18; and James Hampton, from his notebook, ca. 1950-64, in 2. Edouard Glissant, "History and Literature," in Caribbean Discourse,
Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, James Hampton and the Throne of the Third HeavenCharlottesville,
of Va., 1992, 76.
the Nations Millenium General Assembly, Washington, D.C., 1986, n.p. 3. Pecolia Warner, interviewed by William Ferris, in Afro-American Folk Art
and Crafts, Boston, 1983, 105-6.
1 Photographer unknown,
James Hampton with The
Throne of the Third Heaven
of the Nations Millenium
General Assembly, ca. 1950.
Washington, D.C.,
National Museum of
American Art, Smithsonian
Institution (photo:
National Museum of
American Art)
to interpret work largely on its own, pictographic, intravi-

The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millenium General
sual, transverbal terms-that makes the art historian's role
Assembly (ca. 1950-64), is a dazzling testament to the modern
in the humanities so intrinsic. art assemblage, spiritual enthronement, and "vision"? Un-
Recognizing the art historian's ability to convey the special-der the heading "modern sculpture"? Under the generic
ness, the importance, and/or the significance of the visual category "art of the United States"? Or among representa-
(especially in this era of interdisciplinary explorations and tions of the spiritual in modern art? Unfortunately, Hamp-
cross-fertilizations) is of the utmost importance at this particu- ton's creation is usually discussed within the terms of "out-
lar juncture. As art historian Barbara Maria Stafford has so sider" and/or African American art: categories that, while
eloquently written, artists, curators, educators, and art histo-useful and informative in their own, respective, highly
rians possess "unique skills and have indispensable insightsspecialized ways, frequently obstruct more comparative and
to contribute to society" in what she describes as the general complex readings. Indeed, Hampton's photographic por-
shift away from "a text-based" culture toward a culture trait (or "self-portrait," inasmuch as he orchestrated this
increasingly dependent on "the visual." One might extendportrayal of himself), standing in front of his Throne (Fig.
Stafford's notion of the "universalization of vision" even 1)-found among his belongings shortly after his death, like
further, and suggest that in today's world of technological some mysterious sign from beyond the maker's grave-
imaging and media arts saturation, there is also a greatunderscores
need how historically self-conscious and aesthetically
multidimensional Hampton was.
for special insights and "vision" which can be directed toward
late twentieth-century cultural complaints, social unrest, and Many underappreciated works, like Hampton's Throne,
geopolitical restructurings. The ability to differentiateemploy
be- "the vision thing," which though joked about and
tween the real and the virtual, the constructive and the scorned by political pundits, represents much of what late
revelatory, on the one hand, and the counterproductive and twentieth-century discourse in the humanities and sciences
the masked, on the other, seems especially suited to the aspires toward: a sophisticated synthesis of intellect, imagina-
requirements and challenges of today's art historians.4 tion, and purpose, all assembled in the service of humankind
Although frequently referred to in a disparaging and and universal understanding. Hampton's carefully arranged,
mocking way, the notion of someone having "a vision" is a once-discarded furniture pieces, transformed into thrones,
concept that, in this period of methodological sampling and platforms, pedestals, crowns, bases, disks, and tablets, fes-
cultural reassessment, owes much of its existence and cur- tooned and layered with winged cardboard constructions
rency to those art historians who study artists and artistic and light bulbs, and then reconfigured and painstakingly
traditions that are outside of the conventional, art-historical covered with silver and gold tinfoil, is a post-atom bomb,
categories. For example, where does one place the Washing- Sputnik, and civil-rights movement sanctuary for the God in
ton, D.C., artist and itinerant preacher, James Hampton us all. Assembled over a fourteen-year period and housed in
(1909-1964), whose singular and extraordinary life's work, a Washington, D.C., rented garage (where it was miracu-
ART> <HISTORY 381
lously "discovered" by the outside world and saved fromand

theused, if only by a chosen few.8 Similarly, Hampton's
junk heap only a short period after Hampton's death), vision
thisof a kind of seat and/or "landing pad" for God's divine
vision by Hampton pays tribute not only to God and country, has a counterpart in the religious altars, devotional
mercy
shrines, and heterodox assemblages of Kongo-based cul-
but also to a community of believers and visionaries, whose
designs on the universe are rarely acknowledged.5 tures, from the spiritual axis of Mbanza Kongo in Central
Although museum-bound today, Hampton's Throne and to the Kongo/Angolan-influenced communities dis-
Africa
persed throughout South America, the Caribbean, and the
its garage setting once served as a religious site: a place
where probably no more than a few, eccentric, stalwart, United States.9 Novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale
Hurston's
religiously like-minded individuals gathered, sang gospel circa- 1930 description of a Pentecostal "chapel" in
music, raised a modest collection, read from the Bible, Florida bears comparison with Hampton's Throne in that
both installations--cloistered, assemblagelike, and distin-
witnessed to one another, and in general created a spiritual
guished by a proliferation of scintillating, light-transmitting
community in the midst of a forgotten and neglected portion
elements- relied on a spiritual leader and a small contin-
of the nation's capital. With their liturgical and devotional
gent of followers for their full aesthetic realization.'l
focus directed toward Hampton's winged, glittering cre-
The works and creative milieus of marginalized artists such
ation, the other attending "saints" must have considered
as Hampton, while the products of an extraordinary inner
themselves rather special, lucky, and even blessed, to have
and outer vision, have only recently been the recipients of
experienced and been part of such a strange, yet inspiringlimited institutional acceptance, mainstream critical inquiry,
atmosphere. Hampton-a General Service Administration and/or art-historical sanctioning. Commenting on the recent
janitor-and his fellow church members-probably of the changes within selected museums and other institutional
same undereducated, underpaid, and undervalued socioeco-
arbiters of "quality" and historical significance (as pertain-
nomic stratum as himself-could take comfort in the fact
ing, in particular, to Hampton and other African American
that, while society at large considered them inconsequential
artists), Dr. Elizabeth Broun, director of the National Mu-
or marginal, in the collective brilliance and shine of Hamp-
seum of American Art, writes:
ton's sheltered Throne, they were God's chosen people, they
were loved, and their existence mattered.6 Art world hierarchies cannot be underestimated, and
The communal nature of practically all Afro-U.S. forms their

of role in limiting what we see and understand must be
worship-from the shared visions and common voices on theacknowledged. They may appear disguised as "objective
standards" or cloaked as the "historical record," when in
subject of conversion found among more traditional African
Methodist Episcopalian, United Methodist, and Baptist con- fact they represent the conventions of cultural domi-
gregations, to the outward, often impulsive expressionsnance of .... It can only increase our admiration for these
[African American] artists ... to realize how much cour-
spirit possession found in many black Pentecostal
churches-is often forgotten when Hampton's Throne is age was required to persevere. But finally, the reasons for
discussed. Preferring to see the artist and his creation as celebrating their achievements rest less on ideals of social
"asocial," "idiosyncratic," "obsessive," and even "mad," these justice than on the artworks they cherished-so rich,
scholars miss the essential point about "vision" and its power vibrant, and expressive that without them, the larger
to illuminate and enlighten those individuals who enter into picture of American art is unacceptably compromised and
its realm.7 Although the small community of worshipers who impoverished. It is no longer possible to imagine a
museum of American art without the works of these vital
knew Hampton, had seen the Throne, and had experienced
both of them in a functioning, religious context were not artists. Their accomplishments do not just diversify the
forthcoming when (upon the "discovery" of the Throne) the record of American art; they redefine it. I I
call went out to learn more about the circumstances surround- Which brings us back to the issues of vision and revisions
ing its creation, one should not lose sight of the fact that the within the discipline, and their relevance to what we define as
Throne and its ancillary components were meant to be seen art history. Like Hampton's Throne, the current status of art
4. Barbara Maria Stafford, Body Criticism: Imagining the Unseen in Enlighten- emphasizes its isolated obsessiveness, which (according to Gould) verges on
ment Art and Medicine, Cambridge, Mass., 1991, xvii-xix. These notions of art madness.
history's peculiar place among other humanities disciplines resonate as well 8. Theophus H. Smith, Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black
America, New York, 1994, 57, describes this "communitarian intent" in the
in the critical perspectives of Anthony Vidler in "Art History Posthistoire," Art
Bulletin, LXXVI, no.3, Sept. 1994, 407-10. religious expressions of many peoples of African descent in North America as
5. National Museum of American Art Associate Curator Lynda Roscoe "a ritual strategy."
Hartigan, whose areas of expertise include Joseph Cornell, 19th- and 9. Robert Farris Thompson, "A Chart for the Soul: The Kongo Atlantic
20th-century African American art, the works of self-taught artists, and James Altar," in Face of the Gods: Art and Altars ofAfrica and the African Americas, New
Hampton, has almost single-handedly provided art history with the coreYork, 1993, 47-107.
scholarship on Hampton's Throne, virtually from its entry into the National 10. Hurston's description of the Florida chapel, "a place of barbaric
Museum of American Art's permanent collection in 1970 to the present. splendor," decorated with banners, embroideries, "images bought and
6. Labor historian Robin D. G. Kelley, in his lecture "Yo' Mama'screated by Mother Catherine," and "an altar glimmering with polished brass
Disfunktional!: Black Urban Culture and the Predicament of Social Science" and kerosene lamps," is a remarkable invocation of Hampton's luminous
(given at Duke University, Durham, N.C., Nov. 7, 1994), has questioned the Throne of almost thirty years later. See Zora Neale Hurston, "Mother
all-too-frequent social-science strategy of regarding the cultural expressionsCatherine," in Negro: An Anthology, ed. Nancy Cunard, 1934, repr., New
of peoples at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale as either "insignifi- York, 1970, 39-42.
cant" or "pathologic." 11. Elizabeth Broun, "Introduction," Free within Ourselves: African-American
7. See Stephen Jay Gould, "James Hampton's Throne and the Dual Nature Artists in the Collection of the National Museum of American Art, Washington,
D.C., 1992, 11-12.
of Time," Smithsonian Studies in American Art, I, no. 1, 1987, 47-57, for a view
of Hampton's Throne that, apart from some very insightful observations,
history is situated (depending on who is talking about it)

between enshrinement, contestation, transition, and rediscov-
Art and History: Exploring the
ery. It is comprised of layer upon layer of assorted materials Counterchange Condition
and intellectual intentions: gilded histories, recycled cultural
detritus, ornament, and tinsel. Aimed toward celebrations of MartinJ. Powers
the spectacular and the extraordinary in the universe of In the late twentieth century, one challenging problem in the
human-fashioned things, art history dutifully chronicles relationship of art to history is how to connect the multiple
evidence of visual accomplishment and conceptual insight.
histories of the diverse peoples we now study. In the past the
But it is also interested in more modest yet potentially
discipline focused, understandably, on that history most
awe-inspiring products of a utilitarian, devotional, and/or
familiar to the majority of European and American students-
mundane nature. Whether the object of art history is a
the history of Europe and America. Formalism made brief
Roman temple from the first century B.C. or an Afro-U.S.
excursions into non-European cultures relatively easy. Neatly
altar from the mid-twentieth century A.D., its formal aspects,
arranged and readily memorized, the pageant of artistic
purposes, social and/or performative dimensions, associa-
styles offered a way to encounter alien cultures free of
tions across the cultural range, and political implications-
both within its period of origin and beyond-form the basis uncomfortable questions about ethnicity. Traditions of art
for a study of society's achievements, failures, and ambitions. may sometimes still be taught this way, but the media,
Like the Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millenium government organizations, and political pundits no longer
General Assembly, art history continues to be a visionary's speak of them that way. The subject matter of our discipline
enterprise, making that, at times, ineffable leap from mental can no longer avoid implication in debates about "diversity"
image and intent to a thing-made-in-the-world and realiza- and "multiculturalism." Now, almost any statement about
tion. And while certain social scientists, behaviorists, and European culture may become charged by virtue of its
cultural elitists might have us think otherwise, vision and implied exclusion of other peoples. Claims about non-
insight are not the sole domain of the individual who is Western cultures, likewise, have been construed as a threat to
university-educated, academy-trained, and/or privileged in Euro-American traditions. In theory most historians are well
some other material or societal fashion. The objects of art aware of this, but in practice it is less often recognized how
history are just as likely to be discovered in a garage or intimately claims about European culture are linked to
storefront church in Washington, D.C., as they are in the claims about whatever is not. If I say, for instance, that
museum storerooms or artists' lofts of New York City's art "traditional Chinese society was hierarchical and nonegalitar-
districts. At this time in cultural history, when methodologi- ian," I am suggesting to the average undergraduate that
cal doubts and theoretical and/or interdisciplinary incur- traditional European society was nonhierarchical and egalitar-
sions from seemingly all sides of the intellectual spectrum are ian. If I speak of "Western values such as meritocracy," I am
the order of the day, it might be beneficial-and even our telling students that such notions never occurred to people
saving grace as art historians-not to lose sight of art in other cultures. Such distortions are easily generated
history's tremendous and historic capacity to be panoptic: because in the current world order our understanding of
not so much in the Foucault-like sense of surveillance by a "Western" culture resembles less a figure on a ground than a
discomfiting, apprehensive jailer or overseer, but in the "counterchange" design. In such a design each figure shapes
sense of a visionary who, with the authority that comes from its "ground" so as to produce another figure, and vice versa,
sight (art and history) and insight (vision), is secure in the much like an Escher engraving.2 Let us refer to this state of
knowledge that the discipline (or the "Throne") is a site of affairs as the "counterchange condition." This condition
assembly, accountability, and potential. raises challenges both for pedagogy and research, but it may
offer opportunities as well. As a student of a non-European
Richard J. Powell, associate professor of art history at Duke tradition I would like to explore some of these challenges
University, has written widely on art and culture in the African and opportunities here.3
diaspora. He is currently completing a book on black culture and art Few would argue with the premise that the study of
in the twentieth century and investigating subjugation and agency Western culture has long been treated as an independent
in nineteenth-century images ofblacks [Department of Art and Art enterprise; yet we should recognize at the start that the
History, Duke University, Durham, N.C. 27708-0764]. contingent status of the term "West" is not new. This is so
both for theoretical and historical reasons. As has been noted
by a variety of theorists, a concept such as "West" has little
significance except as a means of creating some sense of
collective identity in contrast to a hypothetical "other" (the
term is a bit trendy just now but makes the point).4 Histori-
cally, when scholars speak of Western cultural values, they
generally have in mind a collection of liberal ideals that
acquired prominence in cultural and political discourses
between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, calling to
mind such keywords as: liberalism-implying religious and
artistic tolerance-egalitarianism, meritocracy, and individu-
ART> <HISTORY 383
alism.5 Although these ideals evolved over a rathertrast longto Europe.9 This strategy made good use of the long-
established
period of time, the term "West" collapses this process into a classical trope associating the Orient with despo
tism,
single, timeless essence, as if the "West" had no history. It is but the psychology of such arguments was even bett
generally assumed, moreover-on the right and on thethe rhetoric. By projecting the faults they found
than
left-that these ideals evolved uniquely in the West, inonto carefully constructed portrayals of Asia, Eur
home
quarantine from other cultures. pean ideologues could expurgate, emotionally and rhetor
Upon reflection, this is a rather odd set of suppositions, those practices they wished to exclude from the new
cally,
considering that none of these ideals was particularly con- they were constructing for the "West."
identity
spicuous prior to the eighteenth century. It is just at The
this other rhetorical use of Asian culture (and, presum
ably, other non-European cultures) was as a means
time, and often in the same writings, that Asian culture
appears prominently as a necessary foil to the emerging
liberating Europe from its own traditions. This was necessar
concept of the "West." In their attempts to situatefor theEnlightenment writers because European tradition,
discussion of human societies on more rational, universalistic
that time, was not particularly tolerant, egalitarian, merit
grounds, writers such as Hobbes, Montesquieu, Voltaire,cratic,
and or individualistic. These "Western" values evolved in
Raynal repeatedly contrasted the monarchies of Europe opposition
with to a tradition still very much informed by absolu
those of "Asia." In doing so, they constructed a counter-
religious dogmas and ideals of inherited privilege.10 Conse-
quently,
change design specifying a collective identity for both.6 The when Voltaire and Raynal attacked feudal licen
discourse of modernity was inflected with Asian tonalities
and the power of the Church, they found it expedient to ci
from the start. an empirical alternative from outside the European trad
Rhetorically speaking, Asia and other non-Westerntion,
re- namely, China, with its examination system and t
merit-based
gions figured in this discourse in two ways: as negative principle of worth underlying it." China w
example and as positive model. Thus, critics of French
also useful in constructing a concept of natural ethics with
which to combat the moral authority of the Church.12 In su
absolutism were adept at expounding the horrors of Turkish
despotism with a view to liberalizing politics at home.7 ways,
But both the positive and negative uses of "Asia" help
eighteenth-century intellectuals to argue for change.
critical minds immediately saw through the rhetoric. Accord-
The need for an essential contrast in the construction of
ing to Franco Venturi, as early as the eighteenth century
Abraham-Hyacinte Anquetil-Duperron showed how "Orien-modern theories of culture has continued from the eigh
tal Despotism" had become little more than a symbolteenth
"used century to the present, and perhaps necessarily so
insofar
by Westerners ... in their attempts to oppose, reform, or as modernity has come to be understood as some
even justify the absolute monarchs of their own countries."8 other than the classical European tradition. Even
thing
He grasped, in other words, the degree to which claimsMichel
for Foucault had to turn to a fictitious "Chinese" encyclo
reform depended upon the fabrication of an essentialpedia
con-when considering the nature of logical systems in
Many thanks to Celeste Brusati and Zoe Strother for thoughtful comments many values we now regard as typically modern. Many thanks to Zoe Strother
and suggestions which very much improved this essay. for this reference.
1. John Fairbank comes close to saying this; see J. K. Fairbank, ed., The 8. Venturi (as in n. 7), 137-38.
Chinese World Order: Traditional China's Foreign Relations, Cambridge, Mass., 9. For a discussion of the use of China as an "essential contrast," see C.
1968, 5-6. Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern
2. I am uncertain of the origins of the term "counterchange," which is China, Urbana, Ill., 1991, 171-73.
discussed by E. H. Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of 10. For a demythologized account of early modern European intellectual
Decorative Art, Ithaca, N.Y., 1979, 89. history, see S. Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, New
3. Related topics have been discussed by many. However, because my York, 1990, esp. 14-28, 108-37.
expertise is hardly adequate even to the task of dealing with China, I shall not 11. Raynal particularly admired the Chinese notion that the monarch had
venture far beyond my own field. It is hoped that some remarks offered here a responsibility to the people and could be deposed when this responsibility
may resonate for students of other non-European cultures. For one set of was neglected. He also praised the relatively egalitarian social order of China:
contrasting approaches, see E. H. Gombrich "They Were All Human "This institution [hereditary nobility], to which we owe so many indifferent
Beings-So Much Is Plain," Critical Inquiry, xIII, no. 4, Summer 1987, ministers, ignorant magistrates, and bad generals, is not established in
China, where nobility does not descend by hereditary right. The fame any
686-99; and J. Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnog-
raphy, Literature and Art, Cambridge, 1988. Thanks to David O'Brien for citizen acquires, begins and ends with himself." Though this is somewhat
bringing the latter work to my attention. idealized, Raynal was correct in stating that, outside the imperial institution,
4. For an analysis of the concept of the "other" as it applies to China, see the hereditary aristocracy constituted a distinctly minor part of the govern-
Zhang Longxi, "The Myth of the Other: China in the Eyes of the West," ment apparatus in China, by comparison with Europe at that time. See Abbe
Critical Inquiry, xv, no. 1, Autumn 1988, 108-131. Raynal, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of
5. N. J. Smelser, "The Politics of Ambivalence: Diversity in the Research Europeans in the East and West Indies, trans. J. O. Justamond, 8 vols., London,
Universities," Daedalus, cxxII, no. 4, Fall 1993, 40ff, mentions egalitarianism 1783, I, 162-64.
and meritocracy as typical features of Western liberalism. Some 18th-century 12. The interest of Enlightenment intellectuals in Chinese institutions has
intellectuals would have been more likely to associate such ideals with China been noted often but is rarely discussed by major historians of the period.
(see n. 10). For a review of the history of liberal ideals in 19th-century Europe, Only recently have sinologists dared to offer critical accounts of the
see Wilson H. Coates and H. V. White, The Ordeal of Liberal Humanism: An relationship between European and Chinese political thought. For a taste of
Intellectual History of Western Europe, New York, 1970, 11, chap. 1. the latter, see Walter Demel, "China in the Political Thought of Western and
6. See F. Venturi's enlightening "Oriental Despotism,"Journal of the History
Central Europe," in T. H. C. Lee, ed., China and Europe: Images and Influences
of deas, xxiv, no. 1, 1963, 133-42. in Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, Hong Kong, 1991, 45-64, esp. 52-58; and
7. Ibid., 133-34. Henrika Kuklick, The Savage Within: The Social History of Gunther Lottes, "China in European Political Thought, 1750-1850," in ibid.,
British Anthropology, 1885-1945, New York, 1991, shows how the discipline of 65-98.
anthropology in its early stages was used to provide evidence and support for
general, that is, in abstraction from the European tradi- ethnic or cultural essence, then "beliefs" provide a means
tion.13 The same need may also be detected in the evolution discussing those internal, motivating forces that ultimate
of art and its historiography. If one considers those moments explain changes in style. Even now, the identity of the "W
when the courtly, classical, and mimetic traditions of Euro- is constructed largely in terms of supposedly unique "belie
pean art gave way to more "modern" (i.e., nonclassical) such as individualism or egalitarianism, and the "threat" o
styles, China and Japan were often manifest in the rhetoric, Asian culture is articulated in terms of certain beliefs thou
either as alternative models or with the aim ofjustifying more to be inherent-perhaps, genetically programmed-in O
universal generalizations about art-the "natural" English ental peoples.16
garden, the Impressionists, the Abstract Expressionists, and Possibly the art-historical term most intimately tied to
more recent American artists come to mind.'14 discourse of national essence is "influence." In the context of
The point here is not to make a claim for Asian "influ- nineteenth-century nationalistic concerns, "influence" pro-
ence," for to speak of influence would suggest that "West" vided a normative account of cultural interchange and
and "East" enjoyed independent essences, two figures on two diffusion. Of course, there is nothing inappropriate about
separate grounds. The point is that the rhetorical and tracing the flow of techniques, arguments, and institutions
analytical uses of non-European cultures-positive, nega- from one social group to another, and nowadays the term
tive, and mystifying-have necessarily been part of the "influence" is often used in a fairly neutral sense to mean "B
discourse of culture ever since European peoples began took X from A." But not so long ago it was assumed that, if
self-consciously to redefine their identity as something other culture B adopted something from culture A, this showed
than their own past. As the discourse of modernity emerged, that culture A was superior and this, in turn, explained why
premodern European culture assumed its role alongside the borrowing took place. The phenomenon, its explana-
non-European cultures as positive or negative example in tion, and its moral lesson were one and the same.17 Within a
the newly constructed identity. context of multicultural debates, the ethical dimension of the
If one accepts this, the consequences for our discipline are essentialism implicit in key art-historical terms is difficult to
hard to ignore, for the history of art grew to maturity at a ignore, for the moral correlate of cultural "essence" is race.18
time when Europeans were intensely concerned about defin- The counterchange condition suggests that most cultural
ing the national identities and essences of non-European research is in some sense comparative. If this is so, how can
peoples as a necessary consequence of colonialist expan- historians of art escape the electrified web of ethnic innu-
sion. 15 The issue of national identity is implicit, in fact, in endo when speaking of different cultures, of which Europe is
three important, traditional art-historical terms, namely, now only one? Moral righteousness is of limited help in a
"style," "belief," and "influence." world where no one can transcend partiality of perspective.
What we call "style" is an important means whereby social Indeed, concerned scholars are becoming more conscious of
groups project their constructed identities and stake their the inevitable conflicts arising between different interest
claims in the world. It may have been precisely for this reason groups, all of whom maintain that their hearts are on the
that nineteenth- and much of twentieth-century art history left.19 And just as current thinking challenges positivist
stressed the "national" and personal element in style, since it claims for objectivity, so it seems doubtful that anyone is truly
was thought to be the visual counterpart of some internal free of those emotions so powerfully informing cultural
essence. Just as style allows social groups to project both an identity.20
identity and a set of claims, the history of style allowed Some have sought relief in an extreme reading of relativ-
historians to reinterpret these projected identities in a ism but this, too, has come under fire in recent years, even on
manner agreeable to their own concerns. the left." Such a reading suggests moral and emotional
Like the traditional concept of style, "belief' is based upon neutrality, and this, in turn, implies some privileged stand-
an essentialist epistemology. It explains style as a projection point. Sometimes, what appears as open-minded relativism
of some belief which characterizes the essence of some can mask a surprisingly patronizing disposition: "We know
those
national group. Thus, if "style" is the "reflection" of people do not share our liberal, Western values, but
some
13. Zhang Longxi ([as in n. 4], 108-13, 127-31) politely but forcefully 17. The concept of "influence" has come under criticism in the past
exposes the cultural provincialism of such influential thinkers as Derrida, decade, principally by M. Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical
Foucault, and Barthes. Explanation of Pictures, New Haven, 1985, 58-62. See also, M. J. Powers,
14. A great deal has been written about Chinese "influence" on English Art and Political Expression in Early China, New Haven, 1991, 21-23.
gardens. One of the most balanced treatments is O. Siren, China and Gardens 18. In a recent article Walter Benn Michaels put the matter well: "It is only
of Europe ofthe Eighteenth Century (1950), Washington, D.C., 1990. For a more the appeal to race that makes culture an object of affect and that gives notions
detailed discussion of China and the aesthetic thought of French intellectu- like losing our culture, preserving it, stealing someone else's culture,
als, see D. Wiebenson, The Picturesque Garden in France, Princeton, N.J., 1978, restoring people's culture to them, and so on, their pathos .... Race
39-47, 73-78, 101-3. The fascination of recent American artists with Asian transforms people who learn to do what we do into thieves of our culture, and
art and thought is well known, but one book that documents this romance people who teach us to do what they do into destroyers of our culture; it
particularly well is G. Gelburd and G. De Paoli, The Transparent Thread: Asian makes assimilation into a kind of betrayal and refusal to assimilate into a form
Philosophy in Recent American Art, exh. cat., Hempstead, N.Y., 1990. of heroism"; see W. B. Michaels, "Race into Culture: A Critical Genealogy of
15. A good discussion of this issue can be found in N. Dirks, ed., Colonialism Cultural Identity," Critical Inquiry, xvIII, no. 4, Summer 1992, 684-85. Most
and Culture, Ann Arbor, 1992, 1-15. historians of art will confess, I think, that "influence" readily suggests such
16. The point here is not that people have no beliefs, but that they do not things as the loss, preservation, or betrayal of culture, even when all that is
always say what they believe. Moreover, the fact that people may cherish meant is a species of referentiality.
certain principles does not require us to assume that these constitute the 19. Chicago Cultural Studies Group, "Critical Multiculturalism," Critical
motive for stylistic change. Regarding the Asian threat, see Samuel P. Inquiry, xviii, no. 3, Spring 1992, 530-55, esp. 532-35.
Huntington, "The Coming Clash of World Civilizations," New York Times, 20. Smelser ([as in n. 5], 48-53) provides a cogent argument for the
June 6, 1993, E19. psychological basis of logical strategies adopted by intellectuals of all
ART> < HISTORY 385
that's OK." Should anyone challenge the uniqueness of birth," while what was happening in Suzhou at the same
liberal values, relativism accuses the challenger of projectingtime [i.e., conscious references to past styles] is considered
Western values onto other cultures. It thus permits theso radically different that concepts such as "originality,
academic to retain liberal values, by definition, as a diagnosticcreativity and orthodoxy" might well need a major redefi-
nition.25
feature of the "West," while appearing to be a model of
tolerance. Such positions, in my view, encourage condescen-
sion, not comparison. If we cherish egalitarianism, individu-
Clunas is asking how it is that admiration for a classical past
alism, and meritocracy, then let us say so. This does not in
should be interpreted as part of a creative rebirth in Europe
any way denigrate non-European traditions if we understandbut not in China? In such instances, the double standard
that there never was a hermetically sealed essence of Western
destroys any possibility of comparison.
culture; what we call Western culture might just as well be Let us consider an alternate approach that recognizes the
counterchange condition and attempts to benefit from it.
conceived as a fractal network permeated with patterns from
all over the globe. Moreover, it is not obvious that what we
Formalist accounts of art which, arguably, first made accept-
call liberal Western ideals are unique to the West. able the academic study of non-European arts, afford a
The problem of how to study non-European cultures
classic example of a counterchange condition. One cannot
responsibly has been with us for some time, yet, as Edward offer a credible interpretation of this European theory
Said noted recently, "we have not yet produced an effectivewithout implying claims about art theory outside of Europe.
national style that is premised on something more equitableIn the writings of Roger Fry, what we call a formal approach
and noncoercive than a theory of fateful superiority, whichtotoart was given as an alternative to classical, mimetic
some degree all cultural ideologies emphasize."22 But this
theories. One might ask what this has to do with art theory
need not be the case. Many terms now common in art- outside of Europe? Fry himself provides the answer. In his
historical writing already avoid some pitfalls of nationalist
time an alternative discourse of art was needed because, by
thinking. Consider the word "discourse." Though widely the late nineteenth century, classically derived theories of art
were too culture-specific to accommodate either "modern"
used, it is not always appreciated that it frees the historian
from the essentialist premises of a term such as "belief."European art or those non-European arts that wealthy
Unlike beliefs, elements of a discourse need not be intrinsic
collectors were then avidly amassing.26 Fry proposed just
to any particular person or group, but may be freely such an alternative in "An Essay on Aesthetics" (1909). In
appropriated by competing groups for different ends. this essay Fry questioned several venerable assumptions of
Skirting essentialism, however, is not enough. In order European
to aesthetics, sometimes drawing upon his knowl-
make positive use of the counterchange condition, it will edge
be of Chinese painting to test or expand standard assump-
necessary to rethink previous comparative strategies. Tradi-
tions about art. The long scroll format, for instance, called
tionally, comparisons between China and the "West" often into question classical criteria of pictorial unity, because the
employ a hidden double standard. As Michael Sullivan entire
has picture could not be viewed all at once. He also
explored the seminal idea that elements of design, in
noted, in this Catch-22 world of East/West comparison, "for
Zao Wu-ki to be stimulated by Jackson Pollock showed howthemselves, have the power to elicit emotional responses.27
derivative he was; for Mark Tobey to be influenced by The first and most important of these elements was the
Chinese calligraphy showed how receptive he was."2" The "rhythm of the line with which the forms are delineated. The
drawn line is the record of a gesture, and that gesture is
same caveat applies to the old saw about Chinese attachment
to the past. James Cahill has been combatting this stereotype
modified by the artist's feeling which is thus communicated
in his writings for years.24 More recently Craig Clunas has
to us directly.'"28
observed: Fry had learned the peculiarities of Chinese handscrolls
from Lawrence Binyon's Painting in the Far East (1908), which
There can be little or no justification for seeing what washe reviewed in an article published in 1910.29 Throughout
happening in [Renaissance] Europe as a dynamic "re- that book Binyon argued for the view, expressed by early
persuasions to questions of cultural identity. The lesson seems to be that it is 23. M. Sullivan, The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art, Berkeley, 1989, 194.
better to start by recognizing these emotions than to dismiss them in a 24. See, e.g., J. Cahill, The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-
righteous flourish. Century Chinese Painting, Cambridge, Mass., 1982, 46-53.
21. I tend to agree with the Chicago Cultural Studies Group ([as in n. 9], 25. Clunas (as in n. 9), 92. Clunas's Superfluous Things represents a
540) that "if it is to critique international liberal discourse, comparative departure from standard sinological procedure in that he compares 17th-
workmust resist the normative 'universals' and the flattening effect typical of century China to 17th-century Italy, rather than to the "West." The results he
corporate multiculturalism; but it may also have to reject the faith in the obtains are, understandably, nontraditional.
unlimited power of relativism." 26. Fry recognizes the inability of traditional European aesthetics to
22. E. W. Said, "Representing the Colonized: Anthropology's Interlocu- accommodate either non-European art or the most recent modern art in R.
tors," Critical Inquiry, xv, no. 2, Winter 1989, 215. Despite Said's undeniable Fry, "Oriental Art," Quarterly Review, ccxII, no. 422, 1910, esp. 225-26. I am
contribution to raising consciousness of skewed constructions of non- indebted to Rosalyn Hammers for this reference.
European cultures, his work has come under criticism on the right and the 27. I first learned about the curiously convoluted history of Fry's interest in
left. It may be well to bear in mind Clifford's cautions in this regard: Chinese art from a paper by Roslyn Hammers, "Roger Fry's Socialist Designs
"Orientalism's predicament is an ambiguous one that should be seen not in in the Art of Omega, Cezanne and China," written for a seminar at the
terms of a simple anti-imperialism but rather as a symptom of the uncertain- University of Michigan, 1989. My comments and analysis in the following
ties generated by the new global situation. It is important to situate Said's paragraphs rely considerably upon her insights and documentation.
book within this wide perspective, for it would be all too easy to dismiss 28. R. Fry, "An Essay in Aesthetics," in Vision and Design (1920), New York,
Orientalism as a narrow polemic dominated by immediate ideological goals 1924, 33.
in the Middle East struggle"; Clifford (as in n. 3), 256. 29. L. Binyon, Painting in the Far East, London, 1908, 75-76. For the
review, see Fry (as in n. 26).
Chinese critics, that what matters most in painting is "expres- the status of a mere ornament for Fry's imperialist ambitions
sion, not merely likeness."30 Binyon also embraced the More important, such an approach robs the historian of the
Chinese admiration for the expressive powers of linear possibility of understanding "illusion-versus-expression" dis-
"rhythm" (his rendering ofqiyun). Fry, in his review, heartily courses as anything other than a peculiar symptom of th
subscribed to Binyon's sympathies.31 With this in mind, it is essence of European culture in the modern epoch. If we are
not too surprising that Fry's description of rhythm could well truly to entertain the possibility of general theories about
serve as an introduction to classical Chinese theories of art, in culture, as our ancestors in the eighteenth century set out to
which the illusion- versus-expression dichotomy figures con- do-yet wish to avoid nationalistic rhetoric-in the end i
spicuously. Indeed, Fry closed his "Oriental Art" essay with a might be better to face the possibility that the illusion-versus
grand appeal to "modern" painters to embrace "Asian" expression trope is not unique to the "West."
aesthetics. Having been once exposed to the masterpieces of This need not cause anxiety. Indeed, one could see in it an
"Eastern art," he hoped that "our artists will develop a new opportunity to make positive use of the counterchange
conscience, will throw over all the cumbrous machinery of condition, for in such a case it is evident that any description
merely curious representation. . . freeing [art] from all that of the "modern" theory of art limited to the European
has not immediately expressive power."32 Having essential- experience is incomplete. If we speak of "liberal Western
ized "East" and "West," Fry was able to construct modernity theories of art, which emphasize the artist's individual
in art as a condition in which direct expression of the artist's touch," we are implicitly excluding China, but that is a
uniqueness (say, through "rhythmic" brushwork) takes prior- distortion of the record. On the other hand, if we say
ity over mimesis, a criterion that clearly admits both "mod- "modern theories of art were influenced by art theories from
ern" European art and the art of China and Japan.33 Even the East," we have distorted the European situation as wel
today the European half of Fry's formulation still survives in (private emotions, after all, had been a topic for European
some writings about modernity. What happened to the other artists and critics for the better part of a century by that time)
half?. What this means is that the historical and conceptual param-
The nineteenth- and twentieth-century rejection of mi- eters of the phenomenon in question cannot be framed
metic standards in deference to expressive ideals is regarded adequately within the limits of just one cultural tradition
as one of those great achievements unique to Western Rather, they must be developed dialectically in comparison
culture. How do we deal with the fact-emotionally and with related phenomena in other cultures, when such can be
historically-that one of the chief ideologues of this move- found.
ment threw his weight behind key terms and issues embed- How will one know if related phenomena can be found?
ded in traditional Chinese criticism?34 The situation is Traditionally one works from definitions, but definition
distinct from, say, Picasso's use of non-European art, for imply
Fry a chimerical "essence" and, moreover, are too easily
was not reading modern sentiments into works of another adapted to the goal of excluding non-European works on the
culture. Quite the contrary, he was entertaining constructsbasis of superficial criteria. From the perspective of the
Euro-American intellectual tradition-from which we cannot
found in Chinese sources from early times, such constructs
escape-it is more practical to examine statements in other
being made accessible via the work of Binyon and Herbert
Giles, albeit, through the filter of late Romantic interpreta-
languages and ask, "if this had been written by a European,
tion.35 within what body of issues would one situate it?" This
To try to make sense of this situation in terms of "influ- approach makes it more difficult to impose a double stan-
ence" would lock us into the rhetoric of nationalism-let us
dard. Consider the following two well-known statements by
put that option aside. A more fashionable approach might be dynasty writers: "I write to express my mind and paint
Song
to dismiss Fry's interest in Chinese art theory as part oftoa set forth my ideas, that is all"; "If anyone discusses
painting in terms of verisimilitude, his understanding is
colonialist discourse designed to disguise European exploita-
tion of Asia, hiding appropriation beneath a camouflage nearly
of that of a child.... Poetry and painting share the
"appreciation." But this interpretation would not so muchsame, basic rule: natural genius and originality."36 If these
remarks had been written by an eleventh-century Italian,
expose colonialism as promote it, for it effectively reduces
the Chinese discourse-which had its own social agenda-to they would most likely be situated within the historiography
30. Binyon (as in n. 29), 8, 43, 50, 66. Binyon was not fastidious about verisimilitude as a standard in painting. This is discussed by Hammers (as in
n. 27), 21-23. It will occur to many that the sentiments expressed by Fry were
footnotes, but from the pages just cited it is evident that he had been reading
Zhang Yanyuan's early 9th-century account of Chinese theories of painting. in some ways typical of the period. At the close of "Oriental Art" Fry (as in n.
See also Hammers (as in n. 27), 20-21. 26), 239, adds, diplomatically, that by rejecting the ideal of verisimilitude,
Western artists will merely be "returning to their own long forgotten
31. Binyon (as in n. 29), 66, 68-69; and Fry (as in n. 26), 228-29, 232-33.
32. Fry (as in n. 26), 239. tradition." The notion that medieval artists were consciously expressive,
almost in a modern sense, was not unique to Fry but may be found also in
33. Note that Fry seems to assume that mimesis still holds the theoretical
high ground among his contemporaries. Worringer and is implied in the writings of the Blue Rider group as well.
34. Those readers who at this moment find themselves formulating 36. I do not mean to suggest that the translation of Chinese texts is
"transparent." Nonetheless, in general, Susan Bush's account of Song literati
arguments to the effect that Fry was not "influenced" by Binyon might pause
and ask themselves why this is so important. For my argument here theory it is has stood the test of time, and specialists are well aware of the large
body of written material backing her translation here. For the relevant Song
beside the point. The significant fact is that Fry recognized in the Chinese
writings something we would call a kindred discourse. dynasty texts and translation, see S. Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting: Su
Shih (103 7-1101) to Tung Ch i-ch'ang (1555-1636), Cambridge, 1971, 31-32,
35. H. Giles, An Introduction to the History of Chinese Pictorial Art, Shanghai,
187.
1905. This book, written with Binyon's help, contains even more explicit
renderings of Chinese theories of art, including Su Dongpo's rejection of
ART> <HISTORY 387
of self-expression, self-representation, artistic autonomy,

From a Better History to a
and so on. Indeed, such sentiments might even be cited in
standard accounts of the rise of Western culture and re- Better Politics
peated piously on television miniseries as testimony to the O. K. Werckmeister
unique importance of self-expression, originality, and creativ-
ity in the "West." In light of this, excluding such statements
from studies of the rhetoric of artistic autonomy simply A Better History
because they were first uttered in Chinese would amount to The historical inquiry into the art of the past-up to the
suppressing evidence because it failed to match the standard immediate past-should not be a matter of contention for an
ethnic stereotype. Can we afford to make such practices part academic discipline that calls itself the history of art, no
of our standard methodology? matter how complicated its procedures, and no matter how
If we can assemble texts in Chinese-or any other lan- uncertain its results. It is the function of art past and present
guage-that would fit under the rubric of artistic autonomy in the culture of our own time which makes the art-historical
inquiry subject to the need for continuous clarification. The

had they been written in Italian, we can greatly expand the body
of material from which we construct general theories about more straightforwardly the categorical distinction between
self-representation, the construction of gender, the commodi- historical and current perspectives is being acknowledged,
fication of culture, or anything else. Recognizing that the the less will art history be marred by methodological, or even
persuasive power of our concept derives from its heuristic theoretical, self-doubts, as it seems to be today. For historical
value and not from its resemblance to some ding an sich, scholarship the first order of business has always been the
neither East nor West can claim hegemony over it. This is critical
an verification of its sources as to their trustworthiness,
and the self-reflection about the good faith of disinterested
essential premise for cross-cultural studies and the formation
of truly useful historical concepts. Indeed, the concept mustinquiry. However, since in the past decade social, moral,
be capable of throwing light on both cultures and will remainsexual, or ideological claims and convictions have been
provisional, to be adjusted further as we learn more about brought to bear on the art-historical inquiry as never before,
other traditions. But for the moment, it will need to meetwe have come to observe a theoretical overdetermination of
rigorous standards; it will have to accommodate the peculiari-
art-historical studies that has cast doubt on the feasibility of
the inquiry and its acknowledged goal, an objective knowl
ties of two very different yet unmistakably similar discourses-
not entities. Whatever we formulate in the end-I will not edge detached from those claims and convictions.
endorse any particular thesis here-it will be a concept
In an influential article that appeared in 1972, Kurt
whose heuristic value outstrips that of any fashioned within
Forster called for a "Critical History of Art" to counteract
the confines of a single tradition. In the final analysis,whatI he called a "Transfiguration of Values," that is, values of
believe it is only in this way that peoples regarded as "alien"
privilege and wealth. Such a transfiguration, he contended,
can be accommodated, with dignity, to a necessarilywas
local
the ideological agenda of the conservative art history
frame of understanding. then prevailing, which tended to celebrate the accumulated
treasure of artworks in public museums and private collec-
tions as a sequence of aesthetic achievements attained by
human ingenuity, talent, and feeling. "One can only try to
MartinJ. Powers, associate professor at the University ofMichigan,
is the author of Art and Political Expression in Early China and
hint at some of the deeper motivations for this state of affairs
could
other essays on politics, rhetoric and pictorial style. He is completing it be that art history as a compensatory, better
history-in
a book on the role of ornament in discourses ofpolitical and personal contrast to the bloody struggle and chaotic
events
identity in early China [Department of the History ofArt, University of history-ascribes to art a powerful, redemptive
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48109]. role?"' Forster put forth his challenge in the conviction that
"critical art history" could expose such a "better history" on
the strength of an expanded historical record about art. This
conviction matched the upsurge of liberal political self-
confidence in the wake of campus rebellions and mounting
public opposition against the war in Vietnam, which reached
its high point with the presidential campaign of Senator
George McGovern in the year Forster's article appeared. For
Forster, and for many of his readers, the exposure of an
aesthetically overdetermined history of art as a manufac-
tured ideology to suit past and present power implied an
optimistic view about the political efficacy of cultural critique
part of a democratic reassertion of dissent which is at the
heart of liberal education.
For a critical reading of this text my thanks go to Elizabeth Grady and Diane
Miliotes.
1. K. W. Forster, "Critical History of Art, or Transfiguration of Values?"
New Literary History, III, 1972, 459-470, esp. 468.
1:--;~11144
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Today and
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Today, an ostensible mode of social critique informscrucial art as they are for a reassessment of political democracy
history in the United States much more widely than it did after
in the end of its confrontation with Communism, might
1972, but the engagement with the political history of the lend some contemporary topicality to my studies, and hence
present time is much less apparent. What seems to prevail encourage
is my audiences' engagement with my subjects, met
with less success than I had anticipated. In the academic year
a relativistic assertion of "histories" particular to individuals
1993-94, I experienced some instances of a recoil from
or social groups, diffident and defiant at once, but uncertain
or unconcerned about their commonality, about their chances history on a number of occasions in the course of standard
of success in a capitalist economy bereft of the socialist
pursuits as an academic art historian: an undergraduate
course,
alternative, and hence about their political practicality in a a graduate seminar, and a public lecture. They are
democratic system of government. The more stridentworth
the retelling, for on these occasions, my contemporary
social critique, the more emphatic the historical disclaimers.
historicist perspective turned out to be at variance with the
Heavy-handed defensive terms such as determinism, causal- manifest ideological concerns of the various audiences in-
volved.
ity, intention, economism, essentialism, and so forth are
quickly pronounced as warnings not to approximate particu-
lar social agendas too closely to historical realities where they
"Why
might be exposed as complaints or wishes rather than as Go On with Paul Klee?"
verdicts subject to verification by disinterested parties. In the fall of 1989, my book on Paul Klee's career during the
Self-
professed uncertainty about the reality of history bespeaksFirst World War and the unsuccessful Communist Revolution
uncertainty about the viability of politics. of 1919 in Germany had just appeared.2 I was about to write
a sequel in the same format on Klee's career during his exile
This climate of dehistoricized dissent appears at variance
in Switzerland, from his emigration in 1933 to his death in
with the stark political impact of historical events we have
1940.
been witnessing in the last decade: the disintegration ofThe new book would deal with the artist's efforts to
socialist and the expansion of democratic government world-prevail in the economic slump of the Great Depression; his
suppression by the National Socialist regime, and his tenta-
wide, the Gulf War, the structural crisis of the now uniformly
tive but futile efforts at accommodation with the new authori-
capitalist world economy, and the repercussions of all these
events on the economic, social, and political situation of ties
the until he decided to leave the country; his detachment,
United States. For me, the demise of socialist governments while
in in exile, from anti-Fascist cultural ventures and alli-
ances in Western Europe in order to pursue an imaginary
1989-91 has accelerated the urgency for a historical revision
confrontation with Fascism on the terms of his own art; and
of the Marxist tradition that informs my thought. As a result,
I have attempted to focus more directly than before the on impact
a of all of this on his public career in Switzerland, a
political history of art, dealing with the key terms Commu-
militantly neutral country during the years leading up to the
nism, Fascism, and democracy as competing ideologies in World War. In short, the sequel would show the artist
Second
the public art of the twentieth century after the First World
even more subject to the pressures of history than the earlier
volume.
War. However, my expectation that those political concepts,
ART> <HISTORY 389
I launched the project in a graduate seminar with would

ten have some topicality, I thought, now that the break-
students during the months of September to December down of socialist economies had focused attention on the
1989, concurrent with the daily news of one Communist
persistent structural problems of the worldwide capitalist
government after another falling in Eastern Europe, andeconomy
of itself, with the notion of a global economy dominat-
the wall breached in Berlin, my native city. However, as often
ing the political debate.
happens to students of Klee, and perhaps also because of the During a drawn-out visual analysis of Diego Rivera's mural
self-reflective mode of artistic and art-historical culture
Mexico, Today and Tomorrow in the stairways of the National
prevailing during the eighties, we were drawn into thePalace in Mexico City, which culminates in a group of
workings of Klee's own, introspective efforts to detach
worker, peasant, and soldier looking up to Karl Marx for
himself from the drama of the outside world-the tenacious
guidance to a socialist society as the ultimate goal of Mexican
persistence of his themes, the deliberate change of his
history (Fig. 1), I asked the students for comments about the
pictorial style, the autobiographical reassessment of his
relationship of industry, agriculture, and the military in the
artistic posture. The short-term result was a study of Klee's
United States today. I soon found out that they were unaware
theatrical self-presentation in a series of press photographs
of, and uninterested in, the basic components of current
taken on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, six months
before his death.3 As the seminar became deflected into economic and social history-subsidized agriculture, conver-
sion of the defense industry, shrinkage of the industrial labor
considerations of Klee's artistic self-confinement, the most
critical student, politically left-wing like myself, asked whyforce-and
we its attendant geopolitical events-the failure of
should be concerned with such a recondite theme at this the Uruguay Round, the Nafta agreement, the granting of
juncture of historical drama, particularly in view of most-favored-nation
the status to the People's Republic of China.
Nor did these students care to consult the historical litera-
political topicality I claimed for my work. I have since reacted
ture about the Great Depression, independent of the art-
to the challenge by a reorientation of the project, extrapolat-
historical literature, for the purpose of understanding the art
ing the historical "background" for Klee's work in exile into
an independent study, a political history of art from of
thethe time. Remarkably, none of them would have ques-
tioned the ascendancy of a political history of art, in favor of,
Great Depression to the Second World War.4 The new
project will cover events and monuments of a different ordersay, a predominantly aesthetic, literary, or biographical
approach. To them, subscribing to "art and politics" seemed
than a modern painter's pictorial self-reflection: the capital
a matter of course, all the more so since they tended to
architecture of Moscow and Berlin, the Paris World Exposi-
tion of 1937, the "Degenerate Art" show in Munich, profess
the an existential investment in art-historical topics
meeting of Leon Trotsky, Andre Breton, and Diego Riverawhich at they would be quick to call "political." Exasperated by
such a discrepancy between historical ignorance and political
Coyoac in. Conceptually, the project will be structured accord-
ing to the key political notions informing artistic culturepretense,
at I asked the group what they thought about the
notion of an end of history, as advanced in Francis Fukuya-
the time: art and industry, art for the people, totalitarianism,
ma's widely discussed recent book.5 When no answer was
anti-Fascism, revolution. It will be a large but necessary
forthcoming, I exclaimed: "You are Fukuyama! History has
detour for the writing of Paul Klee in Exile as the political
ended for you, since you are unaware of the history you live!"
history of an artist's career. However, I would eventually find
out that my reorientations were at variance with what I
perceive to be the prevailing mood of academic art history
"Can You Match Mukhina?"
today.
In the winter quarter of 1994, I taught my undergradu
lecture course on Soviet art from 1917 to 1945 for the secon
"You Are Fukuyama!" time. The class was smaller than three years earlier, when
In the fall quarter of 1993, I taught a graduate seminar about Soviet Union, under President Gorbachev, still existed-
the idea of revolutionary art during the Great Depression perhaps because interest in things Soviet had subsided after
from the Soviet Union to the United States to a class of the end of the confrontation with them. In presenting Soviet
eleven students. Its premise was that the Depression height-art after the April Decree of 1932, I diverged from its past
ened the public awareness of an interconnected world schematic condemnation as a dark foil for the exaltation of
economy so much that the interactions of public artistic
"modern" art as the art of democratic freedom. Aligning
culture with economic, social, and political processes came tomyself with recent British and German reassessments of
be aligned with worldwide ideological confrontations be-the period, I took "Stalinist" art seriously on its aesthetic
tween Communism, Fascism, and democracy. The seminar terms as a frightening, and hence compelling, ideological
2. 0. K. Werckmeister, The Making of Paul Klee's Career, 1914-1920, 165-82. Preliminary versions of two sections have been published: "The
Chicago, 1989; reviewed by Marcel Franciscono, Art Bulletin, LXIII, 1991, Summit Meeting of Revolutionary Art: Trotsky, Breton, and Rivera at
695-98.
Coyoacain, February 1938," Actes du XXVIIe Congres International d'Histoire
3. 0. K. Werckmeister, "Die Portraitfotografien der Zfircher Agentur
d'Art, Section 2, Strasbourg, 1992, 157-70; and "The International of Modern
Fotopress aus Anlass des 60. Geburtstag von Paul Klee am 18.Art:
Dezember
From Moscow to Berlin," in T. W. Gaethgens, ed., Kiinstlerischer
1939," inJ. Helfenstein and S. Frey, eds., Paul Klee: Das Schaffen im Todesjahr,
Austausch-Artistic Exchange: Akten des XXVIII. Internationalen Kongresses ffir
Bern, 1990, 39-58. Kunstgeschichte, Berlin, 1993, 553-74.
4. The project is described in O. K. Werckmeister, "Walter Benjamins 5. F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, New York/Toronto,
Passagenwerk als Modell fuir eine kunstgeschichtliche Synthese," in A. 1992.
Berndt et al., eds., Frankfurter Schule und Kunstgeschichte, Berlin, 1992,
Oftm??
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2 Vera Mukhina, Industrial Worker and Kolkhoz Worker, 1937. 3 0. Garvens, Der Bildhauer Deutschlands (The sculptor of
Moscow, VDNCh Exhibition Grounds (photo: author) Germany), published in Kladderadatsch, LXXXVI, no. 49, 1933, 7
expression of the oppressive but deliberate pursuit of Soviet "You Are Promoting Hitler!"
policy during the decade from the First Five-Year Plan to the In the same winter term of 1994, I participated in a public
beginning of the Second World War. I projected to the class symposium at my own university on the subject of German
some stunning color close-ups of Vera Mukhina's steel art during the Weimar Republic with a lecture entitled
"Hitler the Artist." I proceeded from the historic fact that
sculpture Industrial Worker and Kolkhoz Worker of 1937 (Fig.
2), which I had taken on my last visit to Moscow the year Hitler's professional and hence social status until 1914, when
before. This, I said, was the supreme propaganda image of he volunteered as a German soldier for the war, was that of
Bolshevik certainty about the trajectory of world history, thean artist, an artist, to be sure, of petty ambition, of failed
ultimate direction it would take, and the active engagement training, and of no achievement, but an artist all the same. I
of the working class to make it happen. Pointing out the attempted to show how, after Hitler's taking office in 1933,
contradictions of popular assent to a political ideology his keen oversight of cultural policy regarding the arts was to
enforced by a totalitarian government, with its interrelated. some extent shaped by his early professional ambitions and
components of mass support and mass terror, I asked the disappointments, and how National Socialist propaganda
students whether under our own conditions of democratic transfigured these concerns of his into the image of a
creative, visionary artist-politician (Fig. 3). Both these even-
freedom we could envisage a course of history that was worth
not just expecting, but politically supporting and strivingtual
for.consequences of Hitler's early career, I argued, ac-
Yet, in spite of my careful distinctions between forecast and
counted for his use of the arts not merely for ideological but
agenda, between expectancy and wish, the class could not also for
bepolitical purposes of the greatest import: the staged
encouraged to express what they wanted the historical suppression of modern art to whip up public sentiment for
the accelerated elimination of Jews and for the imminent
future to bring. The tentative expectations some of them
attack on the Soviet Union; and the planning of grandiose
finally ventured to voice were skeptical, if not downright
gloomy: unemployment, economic crises, environmental state architecture on the model of ancient Rome as the
disasters, regional wars, and nothing to be done. anticipated
This corollary to a war of conquest.
undergraduate class was in no mood to match, or confront, However, no matter how chilling my story of political ma
Mukhina's image on the terms they were entitled to as
crime and historical catastrophe, no matter how graphic m
citizens, the interconnected terms of historical reason and
juxtapositions of Nazi art works with photographs of N
political democracy. atrocities, a small but vocal minority of the audience accu
ART> <HISTORY 391
These propositions entail conceptual realignments between

me of promoting the memory of Hitler and thus objectively,
politics,
if not intentionally, contributing to the current resurgence of historical experience, and scholarly objectivity as
premises and working conditions of the academic pursuit
neo-Nazi sentiment in Germany, my native country. These
accusations seemed to be prompted by two common assump- which made my students and audiences uneasy. They were
tions, one cultural, the other historical. First, to historicize not ready to match the commonplace historicized view of art
National Socialist culture was seen as tantamount to a with a historicized view of themselves. The resulting disparity
historical vindication. Second, to call Hitler an artist on was due either to a fatalistic acquiescence in being the object
account of his historically documented professional status of macropolitics beyond change, or to a political overvalida-
was to make him a beneficiary of the assumption that art, in tion of artistic culture averse to any historical experience that
might diminish its importance. The introspective, sexually
spite of its millennial complicity with oppression, is in the
overdetermined, emotionally charged-up single-issue micro-
final analysis both good and true. No matter how insistently
politics which I encountered with graduate students in
my defenders in the audience tried to validate the sustained
particular nearly always comes in tandem with theoretically
inquiry into an ugly past for the political consciousness of
braced professions about the impossibility of objective histori-
democracy, and to exempt the definition of art from moral
cal knowledge and with emphatic rejectioris of historical
rectitude, my critics were unwilling to let go of their idealiza-
causality. History is being discounted because it is viewed in a
tion of art as the preserve of political freedom.
passive rather than an active mode, not as a political
challenge to but as an infringement on the freedom of the
individual.
A Better Politics The detachment of a self-deluding "politics," focused on
To some extent these disparities were inevitable, since mineartworks, from historical experience may have to do with the
is the eccentric view, in the literal sense of the term, of current
a disillusionment with the political institutions of
German art historian with a Marxist intellectual tradition democratic government on account of their diminishing
working in the United States, the country with the longest responsiveness to a social crisis apparent to a majority of
constitutional continuity of democratic government. Within people. Thus, to call a group of graduate students "Fukuya-
these parameters, I am holding on to a left-wing political mas" is notjust a taunt, but also a challenge to find an answer
posture that is shared by a minority of Americans, not just to Fukuyama's sobering question: "For virtually everybody in
the
intellectuals; and I am compelled, in light of recent events, to developed world today, it is reasonably clear that liberal
reassess the political history of twentieth-century art anddemocracy
the is vastly preferable to its major competitors,
political history of art-historical scholarship. The reassess-
fascism and communism. But is it worthy of choice in itself?
ment has led me to emphasize two propositions: Or does liberal democracy leave us still fundamentally
unsatisfied?"6 It seems that it does, to judge from the
1. Even though new approaches to art-historical scholarship
impression that art history in the United States has become a
may be prompted by political, or at least ideological, con-
field for diffuse social dissent, an arena for the multiple
cerns, their results must eventually be acceptable to scholars
"voices" of those who do not expect their votes to count-in
of different political persuasions who may not care for the
short, a "better politics" than the ongoing one.
question raised but, as long as they act in good faith, will be
able to deal with the answer on the grounds of evidence.
Otto
2. A political history of art in the twentieth century, which is Karl Werckmeister, born in Berlin in 1934, teaches at
international in scope, depends on a comparative historical Northwestern University. His latest book is Citadel Culture
clarification of key political concepts-that of political democ-
(1991). In progress are The Political Confrontation of the Arts:
From the Great Depression to the Second World War,
racy first and foremost-independent of the traditional
aesthetic concerns of art communities no matter how exalted 1929-1939 and Icons of the Left [Department of Art History,
their ideological extrapolations may be. Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. 60208-2208].
6. Ibid., 284.

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Art>

Art> < History

latter, but their point remains nonetheless valid. It is clear

My fundamental premise is that a visual artifact must be

That said, however, our search legitimately reunites th

identification, what Lisa Tickner calls "the founding process

Feminist film theory rooted in an ahistorical psychoanalyti-

more he would write to and for his reviewers. The writer

The three final epigraphs prompt us to ponder the public or

1. I am referring to Walter Benjamin's use of historical materialism as a

4. Benjamin (as in n. 1), 256. 8. Segre (as in n. 5), 258.

19. For the petition by Crist6bal de Maldonado to Philip II in 1577, see

11. Interesting examples of new ways to understand empire can be seenemerges

13. See, e.g., M. T. Boatwright, "The City Gate of Plancia Magna," in

discourse often appears to be a classic case study of a

to interpret work largely on its own, pictographic, intravi-

lously "discovered" by the outside world and saved fromand

The communal nature of practically all Afro-U.S. forms their

history is situated (depending on who is talking about it)

of self-expression, self-representation, artistic autonomy,

inquiry subject to the need for continuous clarification. The

I launched the project in a graduate seminar with would

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These propositions entail conceptual realignments between

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