review-the end of art history

7/27/2019 Review-The End of Art History

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The End of the History of Art? by Hans Belting

Review by: Joyce BrodskyThe Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Winter, 1987), pp. 309-311Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/431873 .

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Reviewsconstitutesthe reenfranchisement f art. Must artbedefended as sui generis? As ineliminable? Asnonredundant? f the first, it is not just Plato andKant who have disenfranchisedart, but Dickie aswell, for he sees works of art as a functionof socialrelations. And if art is made to depend on interpre-tationin the way that Dantosuggests, why is this notitself a kind of disenfranchisement?There are noanswers to these questions, and these are the ques-tions thatpress in fromevery side. Indeed, if we areto believe Danto's earliersuggestion about the sortsof questionsthat make a text art, then his philosophi-cal essays must themselves be works of art.This, I think, is precisely what Danto wants todeny in the two essays that follow. These deal withthe relation of philosophyto literature.Thereare, asreadersby this time will have come to expect, manydigressions in the telling, but in the end Dantodefends the view that philosophy is different fromliterature n that "philosophy wants to be more thanuniversal: it wants necessity as well" (p. 154).Literature,by contrast,does not purport o be true ofevery possible world. It purportsrather o be true ofevery reader who reads it. Nor, we are told in theessay which follows, is literaturea kind of philoso-phy. Here, at last, we find Dantoon trackonce more,for art(it seems in this, the penultimateessay of thevolume) is not philosophy and cannot be disenfran-chised by supposing that it is. Literaryart "is theidea made flesh" (p. 178); philosophy parades setsof disembodied ideas which it portraysas necessaryand universal. The two, afterall, are not the same.But this conclusion finds little support n the finalessay of the volume which was delivered as thefourth Mandel Lecture, and accordingly sets out toexplore the relation between human evolution andart. Using the model of arthistoryexplored earlier,Danto suggests that history is a productof thought,and, acknowledgingHegel, he thinks that while artcould "not have been the chief means of humanevolution" there was "a historical momentin whichit was that." Why? Because art, as we have alreadybeen told, "reached a stage where it contributed othe internal development of human thought" (p.204). Art, we are told yet again, reached its end bybecoming philosophy. But this is bewildering, forcontrary o whatDanto has promised in this volume,art in the final essay just is philosophy, and so, inDanto's terms, remains sadly disenfranchised.Per-haps Danto thinks that posthistorical art will benonphilosophicaland so "fully art," but if he makesa case for this in the presentvolume, I have yet todiscover and understand t. DAVID oviTzUniversityof Canterbury,New Zealand

309BELTING, HANS, The End of the History of Art? TheUniversity of Chicago Press, 1987, xiii + 120pp., $16.95.In two provocativeessays about the historyof art-its contemporaryplight and its development fromVasari's Lives of the Artists, published in 1550-Belting raises many of the crucial questions thatshould have disturbed he praxisof most scholars in"the discipline," but so far has only informed themethods of the very few. On the first page of hisbook he raises what he considers to be the centralissue: while artists are makingart and art history asan academic discipline survives, "what does standseriously in questionis thatconceptionof a universaland unified 'historyof art' which has so long served,in differentways, both artist and art historian" (p.ix). In the last sentence of his book, when heindicates the directionthat the discipline might take,he pays that long overdue respect that has eludedGeorgeKubler'sTheShapeof Time, by sharing n itsproposal or an "anthropologicallygroundedconcep-tion of artistic productionas a paradigmof humanactivity, a possibility which was most recently ex-plored, in a generaltheoryof thehistoricityof artandits products,by George Kubler" (p. 94). However,in the firstessay, Belting rightly rejectsone aspectofKubler's approach-the morphological-as anotherversion of stylistic history (p. 18).

But like Kubler before him, Belting undercuts heramificationsof his astutequestionsand insights. Heis perhaps nostalgic for the modernism that post-modernism has appropriatedas only anotherstyle,and perhaps even for a unified history of art-although one very different from the traditionalnarrative.For Kubler,continuityresides in morpho-logical development, as emendation of a Focillon-like "life of forms." Belting rightly eschews suchstructuralist trategies, but instead,opts for a state ofsuspension because now "one must live with thispluralism of styles and values which apparentlycharacterizesour society, if only because thereis noexit in sight" (p. 56). In the example of postmodernarchitecture,"architecturalstyle no longer testifiesfor progress and utopia and against yesterday'sconventions. Architectsno longer set theirbuildingsagainst ideals of outmoded architecture,but rathersingle out historical prototypes which then becomeavailable as models. This, too, is an 'end of thehistoryof art' " (p. 55). He rejects the postmodernenterprisethat introduces"antimodern deals of artwhich in fact are only illusory alternatives. Theresulting confusion threatensto discourage anyonehoping to single out the essential problems, or todetermine their bearing on our present historicalsituation"(pp. 55-56; emphasis is mine). He singlesout Suzi Gablik's Has ModernismFailed?, Rosalind

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310E. Krauss'sThe Originalityof the Avant-Garde ndOther Modernist Myths, and Hal Foster's Post-Modern Culture, as examples (p. 114). He alsorejects the hermeneuticalenterprise because "toooften the interpreting rthistoriansets himself up asa second artist, a 're-creator'of the work. I wouldlike to avoid this conceptionof a 'work' " (p. 21).But as Beltingbrieflydiscusses, and ust as brieflyrejects, all contemporarystrategies and in turn-formalism,positivism, and the encompassing,unify-ing andprogressivehistories of artthat have definedthe traditionsince Vasari-the logic of refusalreallyleaves one with no exit. Like ArthurDanto in TheDeath of Art, Belting labors under the burden ofHegel's transformation f art into spirit-art becom-ing philosophy or criticism-but his pictureof thatultimatedemise is more complex than Danto's one-dimensional story about the rise, development, andend of representation.Vasari's narrativeaboutorigins and cycles, geniiand masterpieces, situated the norm in nature andclassical art. Belting identifiesthat story with a kindof "criticism of valuation" by an artist, for artists,who were Vasari's contemporaries.The shifts incriticism priorto the creation of the discipline of arthistory in the nineteenthcentury maintainedsomekind of a unityof praxisand theory. The rise of arthistory as a separate pursuit, estranged from themaking of art, resulted in the notion of the "art-work," the normof which was located in antiquity,but the model functionedwithin the discipline as aguide to excellence, not as a model for the artist. Itinstructedarthistoriansaboutwhat to includeand toexclude in a narrativeabout masterpieces.While itborrowed some of Vasari's ideas, it severed hiscentralconcern with the art of his own time. Mostnineteenth-centuryand many twentieth-centuryarthistorianshave been totallyuninterestedn the art oftheir contemporaries.Aesthetics and philosophy-not art history-rep-resentedthe story of the modem style, which evenfurther estranged the historical discipline from themaking of art. Because art historians refused, orcould not encompass what appeared o be a radicalcritiqueof the tradition,they courtedthe destructionof theirdiscipline. Butif in postmodernism ritics areartists and artistscritics who quote and appropriatethe whole of past artand its histories-even modernart, thereby denuding it of its radical position bydefining it as "only a style"-is the history of artreopenedas a discipline?Not so for Belting.I think that many of the problems that Beltingencounters as did Danto)arise fromwhat he consid-ers art history to be the historyof. "Art history, aseveryone knows, studies the vehicles of representa-tion, namely, works of art" (p. 57), and "in ourcontextit bearswitnessto the importance f speaking

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aboutrealitywheneverwe speak about art . . . whicheither as image or counterimagealways participatesin adialogue with a recognizable orm of reality" (p.26). While Belting acknowledges the importanceofrecognizing that art history "itself practices rep-resentation," that is, it "endows art with a mean-ingful history of its own distinct from generalhistory" (p. 57), I think the fault lies in identifyingart with representation n relation to reality.If art, however, is considered to be an activityinvolving conventions within different systems ofcommunication, hen a history of art would resemblewhat history itself has become, i.e., a mapping ofsocial institutions and patterns of behavior. Thatwould grounda generaltheoryof the historicityof artin human actions and institutions. Pluralistic dis-courses would then become necessary in order todiscuss the different kinds of things made as pat-ternedactivities in varieties of contexts. This mighthelp account for the fact that the same object canentermany systemsatdifferent imes and be a partofdifferentsystemsat thesametime. If an object is firstmade as an embodimentof a magical or religious orpolitical event, or to serve craft functions or to bedecorative, it can then become an artwork whenappropriated y an art system. It may also accountfor an object that serves the faithful in a religiouscontext,to be, atthe sametime, a vehicle of complexintellectual or formal play for the literati. Beltingacknowledgesthe complexity that might reside in asingle object, qua Kubler,butnot thecomplexitythatarises fromunderstandinghat art is a social activitythat functions through the use and emendation ofconventional signs in particular ystems.As I previously indicated, at the very end of thelastessay Beltingacknowledges hehistoricityof art,butthroughhis dissatisfactionwith pluralismand thevariousforms of postmodern riticism, he abortsanypossible directionhis inquiry might take. However,in his essays he summarizes for art historians the"state of the discipline," and providesthem with aplace from which to begin its transformation.Per-haps pluralisticdiscourses will prevail, rather thanthe notion of "a discipline," in orderto understandwhatpeople madein the pastforthose events that wenow call art, and whatcontemporary rtistsdo in allthe contexts in which they act. If thatis the case, wemighthaveto acknowledge hatthestoriesheretoforetold in arthistorywereperhapsone-dimensional,butnot that the historyof art is at an end.The nostalgiafor a normand for a model of value(the classic) has plagued art history (as it has mosthumanisticdisciplines)from its inception.Wearinessin the light of a great variety of art events anddiscourses capsulated under the postmodernrubricbetraysthat same arthistoricalhabit. Belting's quotefrom the artist Herve Fischer should begin our



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Reviewsrevision. "Art is not dead. What is finished is itshistoryas a progress towardthe new" (p. 4).

JOYCE RODSKYUniversity of Connecticut

Eco, UMBERTO.rt and Beauty in the Middle Ages.Yale University Press, 1986, 131 pp., n.p.A nicely producedbook with its stylish jacket-goldletteringon a detail from Les tres riches heures duduc de Berry-Art and Beauty in the MiddleAges isitself a sort of miniature. Who could resist anoverview (advertised span: sixth- to fifteenth-century)that takesup no morethan one hundredandfourteen pages'?As it turns out, alas, the title ismisleading and the monograph itself a disappoint-ment. One hopes that, being brief, it will be conciseandelegant. Not so. It is, so to speak, a long-windedbook with a lot left out. Perhapsit can be recom-mended to neophytes as a sampler, a miscellany ofexcerpts and summaries, intriguing fragments.Boethius, Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, and DunsScotus are represented along with some non-household names such as Geoffrey of Vinsauf,Witelo, Robert of Grosseteste, and Theodulf ofOrleans. Some nice bits: here, for example, isBernardof Clairvaux,takinga stand andgoing on tomarvel at the Romanesquesculptureandornamenta-tion that he is constrained o deplore.

Wewho have urned side rom ociety,relinquish-ing for Christ's sake all the precious and beautifulthings n theworld, ts wondrousightandcolour, tssweet sounds and odours, the pleasures of taste andtouch, for us all bodily delights are nothing butdung . . (p. 7).In the cloisters . . . why do the studiousmonkshaveto face such ridiculous monstrosities?What is the pointof this deformedbeauty, this elegant deformity'?Thoseloutish apes'?The savage lions'?The monstrous cen-taurs? The half-men'?The spotted tigers? The soldiersfighting'?The hunters sounding their horms? . . Inshortthere is such a diversityof figures, such ubiqui-tous variety,thatthereis morereadingmatteravailablein marble han n books, and one couldspendthe wholeday marvellingat one such representationather haninmeditatingon the law of God. In the name of God! Ifwe are not ashamedat its foolishness, why at least arewe not angryat the expense'? Ibid.)

Eco's comments on this and other passages areinformalandperceptive.Perhapsone should not askfor more. Since aesthetics (for better or for worse)had yet to be invented, any book on medievalopinions is going to be somethingof a scrapbook.Ifthereare good scrapswell-arranged,why cavil? But

311the chapter headings suggest organization, one that isthematic ratherthan chronological. The "aestheticsof proportion" traces Pythagorean influences; St.Augustine s creditedwithoriginating he "aestheticsof light." There is a ratherperfunctoryaccount ofsymbol and allegory. Eco explains the scholasticpreoccupation with establishing beauty as a "tran-scendental," hence a necessaryconcomitantof beingin general, as a move to undercut the Manicheandoctrines of the Cathariand the Albigensians whosaw the world as a place of perpetual conflictbetween good and evil, darkness and light, fair andfoul. The issues raised by the problem of "tran-scendentals," though technical, are of great philo-sophicalinterest, and I wish that Eco had hadmore tosay about them. On the other hand, it is hard to dothat without a specialized vocabulary. In the discus-sion of Aquinas (the only authorto get a chaptertohimself) thetechnicalitiesbecomeobtrusive.Perhapsthis is because Eco has devoted a whole book toAquinas(IIproblemaestetico in Tommasod'Aquino[Milan, 19561) and is involved in the detail. Forwhateverreason, Eco's usual perspicuousstyle sud-denly ossifies.

[Aquinas]proposedanexistential ontology, in whichtheprimaryaluewas ipsumesse, the concrete act ofexistence. He superimposed he constitutiveanddeter-miningcombinationof essence andexistence uponthatof matterand form. For Aquinas, the quo est did notexplain the ens; formwithoutmatterwas nothing....In this ontology, the hyperuranicworlds were over-takenby life and it is scarcely necessary to stress theradical import of this new Thomistic conception ofthings for the mediaevalmentality(p. 75).

What audience is Eco addressing? A hard ques-tion. The introduction is no help since it does notsquare with the text. For example, Eco writes:my constant concern is to establish how the theoriescurrentat the time were related to its actualsensibilityand its actual artisticproducts.My purposein clarify-ing aesthetic theory is to discover how far it corre-spondedto, andhow far it divergedfrom, the realitiesof theage-to discoverwhatmeaningfulrelationstherewere between mediaeval aesthetics and the other as-pects of mediaevalcultureand civilization (p. 1).

But the book does not deal with these issues. Thepassage quoted above from St. Bernard is about asclose as he ever gets to talking about art. Wherepassing allusions occur, they are drawn from familiarsecondary works by, e.g., Panofsky, Hauser, orHuizinga.Perhaps it is not to the author but to the publisher,Yale University Press, that one should take one'scomplaints. There is no mention of art in Eco's


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