Review of Harrison, Wood and Gaiger 'Art in Theory 1648-1815: An Anthology of Changing Ideas' more

Harrison, Charles, Paul Wood and Jason Gaiger, eds. Art in Theory 1648-1815: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Oxford and Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 2001, 1220 pp. $79.95 (£70.00) cloth, $44.95 (£18.99) paper. This is the third in a series of Art in Theory volumes that have so far covered the periods 1900-1990 and 1815-1900. It is a large volume that has been industriously produced for the academic book market, presumably targeted at students for use as a textual resource to supplement art history programs. The volume for 1900-1990 is currently used for the UK Open University’s course A316 Modern Art: Practices and Debates. The other two volumes have yet to find academic homes. It is easy enough to see how the volume covering 18151900 might complement a fairly traditional course on nineteenth century art history, in an area already well served by compilations. It is difficult, though, to imagine a use for the volume under review, except as a textbook for a future course written by its own editors. It has no scholarly apparatus to offer guides to further enquiry: no systematic reference to interesting or controversial books or articles, or textual editions and reprints. Its introductions are perfunctory and uninspired: the general introductions offer history as context, the particular offer information about author and text. Explanatory notes are kept to an absolute minimum. Reading the book is an act of duty rather than enjoyment. The only points in its favor are its bulk and consequent coverage. There’s a greater volume of textual resources than in its competitors, the classic works by Eitner and Holt. I am, however, reminded of the title of an old TV comedy, Never Mind The Quality. Feel The Width. This is most unfortunate because it could have been a very interesting book. The Editors tell us that behind the Art in Theory project they have “worked with the idea of a modern art always in mind” (p. 3) and that their attention “has been primarily concentrated upon the practices of painting and sculpture as fine arts” (p. 5) Consequently they have extremely narrow visions of what is modern in modern art, of the nature of modern art itself, and of a suitable narrative that might link the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the twentieth century. If they had taken to heart the message promoted by Kristeller’s classic essay ‘The Modern System of the Arts’, mentioned in their bibliography, they might have appreciated the hazards of classification involved in talk of ‘fine art’. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, probably published too late for their use, now offers important insights into the difficulties surrounding both ‘art theory’ and ‘aesthetics’ as well (see my review of the encyclopedia in the September 2001 issue of Art Bulletin). To be ‘modern’ has been interpreted as ‘il faut être de son temps’ but ‘being of one’s time’ can certainly entail exploiting the products of another’s time and culture too. Picasso raided the history of art, as did other modernists and previous ‘modern’ artists, including Hogarth. This also applies to texts. Should this volume include texts written in other languages at other moments in cultural time? In this context the contemporary vernacular translations of classical texts by authors such as Longinus and Cicero, not to mention countless others, had a formative effect in modern thought. And although Leonardo wrote the notes for his Trattato della Pittura in the early sixteenth century, they were not published in Italian and French until 1651. Only then did they gain general currency amongst artists and writers. They were translated into English in 1721, republished at the end of the eighteenth century and retranslated in the early years of the nineteenth century. These texts were not regarded as antiquarian sources but important resources for the practice of contemporary art. They were used. The logic of Art in Theory 1648-1815 is based on a connoisseur’s precious approach to objects, not on the production, re-production and reception of texts. The Editors’ preciousness towards the fine art object leads to other exclusions as well: “Much of the most influential work of the recent past has consciously sought to blur the boundaries of art history and cultural studies, or to expand the purview of the former to include issues hitherto deemed the proper concern of the latter. Numerous books and exhibitions have featured an interest in, say, science or the body, in sexuality or surveillance, or have issued from a redirected emphasis on the so-called ‘minor’ arts as important sites of women’s creativity. … [But] we have to draw our boundaries somewhere.” (p. 5) Out go extracts from the Marquis de Sade and Captain Cook; neither the erotic, the exotic nor the pornographic surface their ugly heads in the index. The distinction between the fine and minor arts is anachronous for the eighteenth century and misrepresents twentieth century artists’ activities as well. Landscape gardening smuggles its way into the book through a substantial discussion of the picturesque, so why no recognition of the substantial interest in chinoiserie and the oriental amongst patrons and artists? If the Editors claim that they have no interest in decoration, they would also have to rule out a great deal of early twentieth century art as well. How are they going to gain a purchase on all of the erotic art produced in the period, unless they argue that because it’s erotic it’s not art? How are they going to capture the revolution involved in Hogarth’s print-making activities without comparing them to Henry Fielding’s ‘new province of writing’? Caricature was one of the most important art forms of the period. Why should they ignore that when they have a full section on ‘Dissent and Disorder’ in their 1900-1990 volume? The book’s ‘structure’ is a poor substitute for a strategy for providing materials for a coherent analysis of all of the eddies and currents in the important movements of thought about ‘art’ in the period. Different historians will vary in their priorities. One important topic relates to the ways in which works of art were made available for consumption and discussion in the public domain. Another concerns the terms of theorization and criticism. Linking the two together would be the analysis of the workings of the imagination and judgment. These themes provided foci around which debate changed and developed through the period. It would be inappropriate in a review of this length to criticize the Editors’ individual selections, instead I will conclude with an observation of my own. By starting their discussion of ‘Imagination and Understanding’ with an extract on the association of ideas from Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the Editors missed a major opportunity to kick off with a much more promising player, Thomas Hobbes. Not only did Hobbes develop a theory of imagination, understanding and speech based on the exercise of power, he offered an acute analysis of the Church’s abuse of its power through the use of images. He also analyzed the traps created by classical philosophical analysis in understanding the working of the imagination. An extract from his Leviathan (1651), including an extract from the important chapter ‘On Daemonology, and other Reliques of the Religion of the Gentiles’, would have illustrated the important effects of the Reformation on attitudes towards art and established the link between art and the imagination. This would have offered grounds for debate over the role of illusion in art including, amongst many other things, Rubens’ (Catholic) emphasis on its power and Constable’s rejection of its attractions for the hoi polloi in the diorama. This topic opens out into debates over the role of rationality and gender in responses to art, not to mention attitudes towards allegory and debates over pictorial surface (on which the Editors missed a golden opportunity with their extract from Boschini). The notion of picture as hieroglyph became important to nineteenth century debates but unsurprisingly it was not mentioned here or in the volume 1815-1900. A great deal of important and useful work on art history has been done in the past two decades that has a direct bearing on the possible contents of this book. As it stands, this book does not reflect that work, not least because it doesn’t surface in an acceptable scholarly apparatus. In an ideal world a compilation should act as a spur to further investigation, not as a cheap alternative to a collection of original texts. RICHARD WOODFIELD The School of Art and Design Nottingham Trent University, UK