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A Method for Studying the Documents of Modern ArtAuthor(s): Herschel B. ChippSource: Art Journal, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Summer, 1967), pp. 369-373Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/775068

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Herschel B. ChippA Method for Studying theDocuments of Modern Art

In contrast to the scrupulous attention to fact thatcharacterizes the best of scholarship in modern art, a cer-tain casualness is often apparent when art historians andcritics deal with theoretical statements by artists. Fre-quently, these statements are employed out of contextand without sufficient respect for their original mean-ings, merely to add color to an author's text or to vali-date his own opinions. Yet this theoretical material,which may be in the form of essays, interviews, opinionsgiven in letters or in panel discussions, etc.-materialoriginating from the only witness to the act of creating awork of art-when properly studied in its context mayprovide the scholar with valuable insights into the ideol-ogy underlying the work of art. This is not at all to saythat such documentary or theoretical material should betaken at its face value or that it can be utilized in thesame way as the carefully reasoned system of a philoso-pher. Rather, it is the aim of this essay to show thatwhen such original contemporary material is carefullyselected and then placed in the ideological context inwhich the document came into existence, and when it isevaluated in terms of the personal and intellectual capa-bilities and experiences of the person making the state-ment, it can provide a valuable source for a deeper un-derstanding of the ideology and hence of the work of artitself.The method proposed, which may seem to some asunduly searching, is, of course, more a guide than a sys-tem of investigation. It should be applied, naturally,with the aim of understanding to the fullest the inten-tions of the writer, both said and unsaid. But it shouldalso be applied in a spirit which is sympathetic to theproblem of a painter or sculptor who may be expressinghimself in a medium in which he may not have hadmuch experience. Even if the study of theoretical docu-ments in terms of their contexts, as proposed here, resultsin only partial success, still the frequent misuse of quota-tions out of context might be corrected.

In taking up the study of documents of another ageand from a different environment the central problemarises immediately: how should we begin to evaluatethese ideas, considering that they have emerged from adifferent cultural context, that they have been condi-tioned by complex personal attitudes, and that they havebeen inflected by the precise situation and the mediumthrough which they were expressed?1General factors bearing upon theoretical documentsof this kind may be summarized under four headings.

(1) The general cultural context of the age, and inparticular those ideas and theories of greatest inter-est to the artist, whether they come from science, his-tory, literature, political or social theory, or fromother periods of art.As an example, Henry Van de Velde's theories of thenew art, which were basic to the Art Nouveau movement,were deeply influenced by the earlier social theories ofWilliam Morris. And Mondrian's adherence to Theoso-

phy while he was painting in a style indebted to Art Nou-veau and prior to the development of his characteristicabstract art based on an equilibrium of opposites, is acircumstance of undeniable significance. Also, Andr6 Bre-ton's interpretations of Freud and his interest in autom-atism as manifested in art are fundamental to an un-derstanding of Surrealist theory. None of these examplesof the influence of the cultural context upon a particu-lar ideology has been studied sufficiently.

(2) The specific ideological milieu in which the writ-er formulated and tested his own ideas and thoughts,such as his circle of friends and acquaintances andhis contacts with critics, poets and writers.For example, Guillaume Apollinaire was a close friendof many artists, including Robert Delaunay; he wrote apoem about Delaunay's paintings and engaged in discus-sions with him on the subject of the possibilities of ex-pression solely by means of color. Some of his writingson Orphism are indebted to these conversations, and De-launay's own statements were influenced as well.(3) The medium through which the ideas were trans-mitted, insofar as it conditioned the intellectual andemotional attitude the writer assumed in addressinga specific audience: his choice of language, his logi-cality or absence of it, and perhaps even the kind ofideas chosen.

'A useful guide to the student in analyzing texts such asthose discussed here has been developed by ThomasMunro (COLLEGE ART JOURNAL[New York], XVII, 2,Winter 1958, pp. 197-198.) His outline poses matter-of-fact questions which, although intended to apply tocriticism, are also relevant to theoretical texts such asthese. When answered, they can aid in a recreation ofthe ideological environment that may add greatly to anunderstanding of the meaning of the text.369 Chipp: A Method for Studying the Documents of Modern Art

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For example, a thought inevitably would be ex-pressed with quite different emotional overtones and in-tellectual formulations if an artist were engaged in thefree-for-all of a spirited argument with other artists at acafe than if he were collaborating with an art historianfor a monograph on his work. If the former situation oc-curred when he was unknown except to a few other art-ists and the latter when he had become an internationalfigure, then the ideas themselves might well have beeninflected by the different audience and his different re-lationship to it.In addition, the situation precipitating a particularstatement may have been an important factor in deter-mining how and what was said. It may have been a re-sponse to an attack, or it may have been only a desire toexplain something to the public. In recent years manyartists have readily taken up the pen at the request of mu-seum and gallery directors and many have appeared be-fore the public in panel discussions and in film, radioand television interviews. These and other media act asagents for transforming ideas as they appear in the mindinto other forms with different possibilities and limita-tions. These factors should be considered when one seeksthe meaning of the ideas.

(4) The writer's personal qualifications as a theoret-ician, as they might be conditioned by his educationand past experience with ideas, and his present atti-tude toward the written or spoken word as a meansof conveying intentions.An academic training may provide either a viablefoundation for individual development, as with HenriMatisse, or it may impose rigid shackles that can be

broken only by an act of force. Written and spoken ideasmay be a fertile source of plastic images, as with OdilonRedon, or they may seem to the artist to pose the threatof "literary ideas" that should be resisted at all costs.In the application of such a method it must be as-sumed, of course, that writings and statements by artistsare potentially valid as source material for study of themeaning of the art. Remembering that artists are notonly immersed in the ideas and attitudes of their envi-ronment but, furthermore, are the sole participants inand witnesses to the act by which the work of art is cre-ated, their observations are frequently the only first-handdocuments. Studies of artists' statements, therefore, sup-plement historical and critical studies of style, and arenot necessarily directly involved with the same problems.The artists' statements, emerging from the actual timeand ideological milieu of the works of art, go back be-yond later writing on the subject, possessing the potenti-ality of yielding direct insights into the moment and themood of creation.Not all critics or even all artists are willing to con-sider seriously the words of artists as relevant to their art.

C. J. Ducasse believes that "the artist's business is topractice art, and not to talk about it," and that aestheticideas are the proper realm only of philosophers.2 Heeven mistrusts what critics say, advising the art lover to ig-nore both artist and critic as distractions from what heconsiders the proper attitude of the viewer, which is sim-ply "listening for feeling impact." Some artists, fordifferent reasons, share Ducasse's suspicion of the artistin the role of theoretician. Cezanne admonished EmileBernard, even while the young man was completing anarticle on his painting: do "not be an art critic, but paint,therein lies salvation."

Some contemporary artists (although their numbersare becoming fewer) believe that the sources of their artlie in such a personal area of feeling that no words cantouch it, or else they feel that what they do is so differentfrom anything that has been done in the past that nothought can express it. Some are like Houdon, who mod-estly denied any knowledge of what he called the "ArtTerms" used by critics, and who explained that he didnot "use the new Dictionary and understand very littlethese brand new words, ingenious though they be."3Hence, he continued, "I leave that matter to theLearned, striving only to do well without aspiring tospeak well."Let us also note that the most common objectionraised by some artists to discussing ideas on art is thatthey "paint them, not talk about them." But it is remark-able how rarely artists' statements deal with so-calledpurely "painterly ideas" (if, indeed, strictly speaking,there are any such ideas), and how frequently they dealwith beliefs, attitudes, and intentions, just as do those ofother informed and thoughtful persons who speak oftheir life interests.Charles E. Gauss demonstrated his great faith in art-ists' writings by basing a book upon them, and he firmlyanswered Ducasse's mistrust by reminding us that an art-ist is concerned primarily with the creative process andnot with aesthetics.4 He pointed out the chief fallacy of

2 C. J. Ducasse, The Philosophy of Art (New York: Dial,1929), p. 2. Cited with a rejoinder in Charles E. Gauss,The Aesthetic Theories of French Artists (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins, 1949), pp. 5-6."Cited in Letters of the Great Artists, Vol. 1, Ghibertito Gainsborough, ed. Richard Friedenthal (London:Thames and Hudson, 1963), p. 240.4 Gauss, The Aesthetic Theories of French Artists, loc.cit. For another defense of artists as theoreticians, basedprincipally upon the writings of Delacroix, Gauguin,and Van Gogh, see Alfred Werner, "Artists Who Write,"ART JOURNAL (New York), XXIV, 4, Summer 1965, 342-347.

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Ducasse's objections: "WVe o not go to the theories ofthe artists to find the answers to aesthetic problems butturn to them as materials for philosophic study."Probably the greatest statement of faith in the valueof artists' ideas was expressed by Charles Baudelaire.When defending Richard Wagner as a critic, he wrotethese impassioned words:I have heard many persons attack the great extent ofhis faculties and his high critical intelligence as areason for a mistrust of his musical genius, and Ithink that this is the proper occasion to refute a verycommon error, the principal root of which is perhapsthe most miserable of human sentiments, envy. 'Aman who reasons so much about his art is not capa-ble of naturally producing beautiful works,' saythose who would thus strip the genius of his reason-ableness, and would assign to him a function purelyinstinctive and in short, vegetal . .. I pity thosepoets whom only instinct guides; I believe them in-complete. In the spiritual life of the initiators a cri-sis inevitably arises, when they desire to rationalizetheir art, to discover those obscure laws by virtue ofwhich they have produced, and to draw from thisstudy a series of precepts of which the divine end isinfallibility in poetic production ... it is impossiblethat a poet does not harbor a critic. The reader willnot, therefore, be astonished that I consider the poetas the best of all critics.5The willingness of most modern artists to expresstheir ideas (and the relevance and quality of many of

these) bear out Baudelaire's judgment of Wagner, so thatwhile we may not treat their statements as an aestheticsystem, we can look to them for invaluable ideas whichbear upon their thinking and ultimately upon their art.The most conclusive evidence, however, of the valueof this type of source material is in the usefulness to arthistorians of several collections of documents, all ofwhich have appeared since 1945. Chief among these is A rt-ists on Art by Robert J. Goldwater and Marco Treves.6Although covering the broad period from the Early Re-naissance to the present, and limited to rather brief pas-sages, the authors' discriminating selections of significantmaterial useful to the art historian and student has madethis book a standard reference. Professor Goldwaterclearly expressed his high valuation of artists' statementsin the introduction:

When such opinions have been presented, not as ob-jective, professional criticism, but in relation to the

artists'own creationthey have been included here;often they are more revealing than the abstractwords and conventional phrases of a generalizedaesthetic.7ElizabethG. Holt'sLiterarySourcesof Art Historysincludesfewerbut longerselections,and is concernednotonly with art theorybut alsowith otherliteraryanddoc-umentary material as well. The first edition includesmaterial up to the eighteenth century; it has been re-printed in two paperbackvolumes,and a third volume,which includes the nineteenth century,has been added.The material in the third volume is more theoreticathan that in the firsttwo, and since most of it is by art-ists, it is more relevant to the presentdiscussion.Gauss'Aesthetic Theoriesof French Artists is an analysisfromthe point of view of aestheticsof selectedpassagesby art-ists of the chief art movements rom Courbet to Surrealism. In this book the ideasof the artistsareconsiderednrelation to contemporary esthetictheories.Other books take as their field a broad range of

thought embracingliterature and social theory duringcertainages.EugenWeber'sPathsto thePresent9 onsistsof selecteddocumentsdealingwith Europeanthoughtaswell as with art from Romanticism to ExistentialismThere are severalother useful compilations,the earliestand the most extensiveof which were publishedin Ger-many.Thus, there are availablein these and other collec-tions manytheoreticaldocumentsthat are potentiallyofreal value. Unfortunately, n generalonly brief excerptof most of the documents have been published, andhence their potentialrichnessof ideas has not fully beenrealized.1oAnd only in a few caseshave the documentbeen selected, studied and comparedwith the view ofprovidinga deeper understandingof the ideologyof anartistor amovement.11

' Charles Baudelaire, "Fragments sur le Beau, la Podsieet la Morale," Varietes Critiques, II (Paris: Cr?s, 1924),pp.189-190'Artists on Art, eds. Robert J. Goldwater and MarcoTreves (New York:Pantheon, 1945).

'Artists on Art, eds. Goldwater and Treves, p. 11.'Literary Sources of Art History, ed. Elizabeth G. Holt(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, 1947). Expandedand revised as A Documentary History of Art, 3 Vols.(New York:Doubleday Anchor, 1957, 1966).SPaths to the Present: Aspects of European Thoughtfrom Romanticism to Existentialism, ed. Eugen Weber(New York:Dodd, Mead, 1960).0 A notable exception is the excellent series of docu-ments published in their entirety by George Witten-born, Inc., New York, under the general title The Docu-ments of Modern Art, ed. Robert Motherwell. Also,Modern Artists on Art, ed. Robert L. Herbert (NewYork: Prentice-Hall, 1964), includes ten selected docu-ments in their entirety.

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The points of study outlined above would attemptto define an ideological context for the documents, thusextending their meanings, and, hopefully, would eventu-ally lead to a deeper understanding of the art. Accordingto this method, a document is seen not only as a theoret-ical view of an artistic problem but also as the product ofbroad environmental conditions.This approach-a contextualist one, in which theobject of study is viewed in relation to its ideological en-vironment-has been anticipated in both art history andaesthetics. It follows the method developed by the Vien-nese school of art history, which evolved toward the endof the nineteenth century within the Austrian Instituteof Historical Research at the University of Vienna. Theseart historians-chiefly Alois Riegl, Franz Wickhoff andMax Dvorak-considered art and theories of art to bepart of the larger whole of cultural history, and theythought that both might often be influenced and evendetermined by wholly non-artistic events. Their workand that of their students projected art upon a broaderplane than had previously been thought relevant, andenriched and vitalized its study by viewing it in relationto a social and cultural context.12 Their work further-more opened the way for the study of non-Western andexotic arts, such as African, Oceanian, folk, child and thedecorative arts, which by direct or indirect means haveenriched and inflected the concepts of the mainstream ofmodern art.This attitude and these specific influences have beenconsidered within the larger field of a study of style byMeyer Schapiro, who profoundly illuminated all of theseand other related problems.13 Schapiro views art styles aspossessing the power of formulating in the deepest sensethe group emotion and thoughts of the culture. He be-lieves that the characteristics of style are determined onseveral different levels: by the emotions and thoughts ofthe individual, by the views of the group, of the nationand even of the world. By this view he opens up the pos-sibility of a complex interaction between the culture andthe work of art whereby the art gains in viability by rea-son of its source in the living culture.Contextualism is the term employed by Stephen C.Pepper for one of the major hypotheses of aesthetictheory.14He sees it as a synthetic rather than an analyticprocess, and with its origins in the historic event. Thisprocess attempts to recreate the historic event in the liv-ing present, thus perceiving it in its full reality as an ex-perienced as well as an intellectually conceived phenome-non.

Erwin Panofsky has in his search for the deepermeanings in works of art so expanded the boundaries ofart history that it can no longer be satisfied with historyonly as a factual discipline. His fundamental article oniconology describes a method for revealing the deepestpossible meanings of historical facts. He outlines threeprincipal levels of meaning in the subject matter of a

work of art.15His aim is to penetrate from apparentmeanings-the lowest level-to intrinsic or symbolicmeanings-the highest level-which in the deepest andmost profound sense constitutes the "content" of thework of art.The first or lowest level, "primaryor natural subject" A few studies have recently appeared where a docu-ment has been studied and annotated similar to thepoint of view expressed in this article. Hermann, Parishas announced a series of small volumes each of themdevoted to a single document. Under the title "Miroirsde l'Art," directed by Pierre Berbs and Andrde'Chastel,the series includes Apollinaire, Les Peintres Cubistes(including an excellent analysis of the evolution of themanuscript); Denis, Du Symbolisme au Classicisme,Theories; and Signac, D'Eugene Delacroix au Neo-im-pressionisme.L.-C. Breunig has collected Apollinaire's writingson art and has made useful annotations on them: Guil-laume Apollinaire, Chroniques d'Art (1902-1918), Paris,Gallimard, 1960. Edward F. Fry's extensive collection ofdocuments on Cubism is sometimes abridged but in-cludes brief but valuable notes on most of them: Cubism,New York, McGraw-Hill, 1966.The "Sourcesand Documents in the History of ArtSeries" edited by H. W. Janson for Prentice-Hall, ofwhich only one, Impressionism and Post-impressionism,1874-1904, is concerned with modern art, also includesbrief notes on the documents or their authors. A volumeon Abstract Expressionism is announced."For a recent clear and brief outline of the method, seeFriedrich Antal, "Remarks on the Method of Art His-tory, I," Burlington Magazine (London), XCI, February1949, 49-52

Hippolyte Taine also formulated about the sametime as the Viennese a philosophy of art on the basis ofhis belief in the close interaction of art and culture. Hewrote: "The work of art is determined by an ensemblewhich is the general state of spirit and customs surround-ing it." Philosophie de l'art (Paris: Hachette, 1903), p.101." Meyer Schapiro, "Style," Anthropology Today, ed. SolTax (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1952), pp. 287-312. In this article Professor Schapiro investigates sodeeply many other fundamental aspects of the problemof methodology that it has become a basic study un-matched in theoretical art-historical literature. I amdeeply indebted to him in this article and elsewhere.4"Stephen C. Pepper, World Hypotheses (Berkeley: Uni-versity of California, 1942), Ch. X."Erwin Panofsky, "Iconography and Iconology: An In-troduction to the Study of Renaissance Art," Studies inIconology (New York and London: Oxford UniversityPress, 1939). Reprinted in Meaning in the Visual Arts(New York,Doubleday Anchor, 1955).

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matter," may be transposed for use in studying a writtentext as the primary or the apparent, literal meaning ofthe ideas presented. It is comprised of the facts as statedand their relationships.The second level of meaning consists of "secondaryor conventional subject matter," where the apparent lit-eral meanings in the simple form of the first level areconnected to larger themes and concepts which are partof our general cultural and historical knowledge. In thecase of a written text we might paraphrase Panofsky tosay that on this level we relate the specific ideas underdiscussion to broad "secondaryor conventional ideas."The third level of meaning involves a synthesis com-posed of the apparent ideas of the first level, the generalcultural and ideological context of the second level to-gether with relevant ideas from other humanistic disci-plines. On this high level the knowledge and wisdom ofscholars and of evidence from other related fields isbrought to bear on the ideas concerned. On this level weare permitted an insight into the intrinsic meaning orthe "content" of the subject matter.

The method that prevailed on the two lower levels,called iconography, or the description of images, is trans-formed on the third level into iconology, or the scienceof the study of the meaning of images. Similarly in thestudy of ideas we may, through a close study of the con-texts and by reference to the study of related ideas inother disciplines, be able to penetrate from the apparentor literal meanings of ideas to their intrinsic meanings,or, in the deepest sense, their "content."Some penetrating thoughts on the value of a studyof the context of a work of art for an understanding of ithave been stated by James S. Ackerman.16First of all, hecondemns art historians' excessive concern with historicaldevelopments, which he believes tends to engulf both theartist and the work of art in an evolutionary trend. Hebelieves that it is only by studying the art in terms of itscontext that it may be freed sufficiently from arbitraryclassifications to permit its intrinsic qualities to be re-vealed. Professor Ackerman considers creative activity it-self to be a primary value, outweighing conventional ab-stract constructs, such as the myth of "development," andthe dogma of an "avant-garde" in art. He writes:

Starting with the premise of the autonomy of theindividual work, we would seek out the intentionand the experiences of the artist as he produced it.By autonomy I do not mean isolation, because theexperiences of the artist inevitably bring him intocontact with his environment and traditions; he can-not work in a historical vacuum. So we would needto know what the artist had seen and done before,what he sees and does now for the first time, what heor his patron wishes to accomplish, how his inten-

'"James S. Ackerman, "Art History and the Problem ofCriticism," Daedalus (Cambridge, Mass.), Winter 1960.

tions and solutions mature in the course of produc-tion. Every tool of history must be at hand to under-stand all this, and some new ones, too, such as thoseof psychology and other social sciences. In short, wewould formulate the history of art primarily interms of contexts rather than developments.17When the attitudes and methods suggested here areconsistently and relevantly applied, the statements of art-

ists and other similar documents of modern art may be-come more meaningful and hence more useful to the arthistorian. By recreating the conditions, facts and ideascontributing to the appearance of the document he mayproceed from the merely factual statement, with its ap-parent meaning, to the deeper intrinsic meaning, with allits richness of association and implication. Such an un-derstanding of documents may help to avoid the commonfault, the expedient use of texts out of context for endsother than those intended by the original author. Butmore importantly, by providing an ideological contextfor a theoretical document, then analyzing the ideas ac-cording to a relevant method, one may gain valuable ad-ditional information on the conceptions underlying theart, and eventually a deeper insight into the art itself.17Ackerman, ibid., p. 261.This article is based on the introduction to the author'sforthcoming reference book, The Theories of ModernArt: The Twentieth Century. MR. CHIPP is Professor ofHistory of Art at the University of California, Berkeley,and is Curator of Modern Art at the University ArtMuseum. U

373 Chipp: A Method for Studying the Documents of Modern Art

DELACROIX'S HAMLET STUDIES(Continued from page 351)

Despite the intellectual qualms he may have hadabout "romantic eccentricities," and despite the conces-sions to French ("Voltairean") taste in the lithographs,Delacroix was clearly fascinated enough by Shakespeare'sHamlet to overrule most of his hesitancies. The conces-sions are there, though whether as nods to the earlieraesthetic or signs of Delacroix's own yearnings for classi-cal order can perhaps only be decided with full analysisof the painter's mind rather than his art. Rather thanBaudelaire's comment that the great artist cannot glorifythose elements which he has to excess, it might be said,with Yeats, that the will strives towards the mask, thatthat which a man is strives towards that which he wouldbe. On the one hand, the will, the ego, the particular,subjective beauty and value; on the other, the mask, ,the"anti-self," the universal, objective truth and fact. And,as with Yeats, Delacroix the intellect was concerned withthe attributes of the mask while Delacroix the painterwas controlled by those of the will.The author is an associate professor of English at TempleUniversity. His field is English and American literaturewhich often leads him toward research in art. 0