vcs01introduction

8/8/2019 vcs01introduction

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Topic 1

IntroductionRead the debates about it (drawback: the debates

assume knowledge of the literature)

Read the introductory textbooks (drawback:

some of them represent particular viewpoints and

dont begin with an overall survey of the field)

Read selected essays, journals, or anthologies

(drawback: the picture that emerges is haphazard)

Consider your own visual world as a starting

place. Which theorists, artists, artworks, and visual

practices interest you?

Approaches to visual culture:

Note: this material was originally posted on www.jameselkins.com, under Syllabi. Send all comments to [email protected]


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Models for the shape of the visual world:A. Outline models

1. Erwin Panofskys model

(Panofsky: a mid-twentieth century German art historian)

ClassicalMedievalRenaissanceBaroqueModern

Postmodern

Note that:

A. This doesnt include any popular art, although Panofsky was

one of the first to write about film

B. This doesnt include methods or theories, because for Panofsky

the purpose of the classification was to orderhistory

Concepts, names, and works:

Periods

Panofsky, Erwin

Periodization


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3. Erwin Panofskys debate with Franz Boas

Boas was a mid-century anthropologist; Panofsky mentions an exchange

he had with Boas over the periodization of history.

Boas thought that all artworks and artists are different, so that there is no

sense in lumping them together.

Panofsky called this atomism, and noted that it destroys the possibility

of history.

The opposite tendency, which would also collapse history, would be to saythat all art is one thing, a single enterprise (e.g., creativity), and so there

is no sense in subdividing it.

Panofsky pointed out that all of us periodize and arrange automatically, so

neither option is realistic.


Monism

Atomism


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Chinese incense burner, Han Dynasty, 113 BC

An example ofinadvertentperiodization

This Chinesebronze object

looks baroque

The cloud

pattern forms

remind Westernviewers of rococo

ornaments and

18th c. Chinoiserie

It may seem easy

to overcome this

Western prejudice,

but the literature

on Chinese art is

full of terms likeClassical,

Baroque, and

rococo.

Periodization is

automatic,

whether it isWestern or not.


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4. The concept of the expanded Renaissance

In this schema, the Renaissance was the turning point in (Western) art

history:


Expanded Renaissance

Inadvertent periodization

ANCIENTCLASSICALMEDIEVALRENAISSANCE

BaroqueNeoclassicalModern

Postmodern


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5. An alternate to the expanded Renaissance: expanded modernism


Expanded modernism

PREMODERNAncientMedieval

RenaissanceBaroqueRomanticismRealism

MODERNPostimpressionism

CubismAbstractionSurrealismAbstract ExpressionismPostmodernism


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6. An example of non-Western megaperiods

(Something an Africanist might imagine.)

AFRICAN ART

Saharan rock artEgyptianNokDjennIfe and BeninColonialPostcolonial

EUROPEAN ARTASIAN ARTAMERICAN ART


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NONWESTERN ART

WESTERN ARTPre-modern artModern art

INTERNATIONAL POSTMODERN ART

7. An art-world version of the same:

Questions about this outline:

A. Is there such a thing as international postmodern art?

Global art?

B. Is international postmodern art of equal importance to non-

Western art, or equally important as a division of history?


International postmodern

art

Globalism


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8. Postmodern appropriation

In some postmodernism, objects and images from all cultures are equally

available. When artists take at will from different periods of history, the

strategy is calledappropriation.It leads to something like the following sense of history:


Appropriation

PREMODERN = HISTORY(no divisions)

THE PRESENT

This is close to monism, but with no theory about the unity of history.

An advantage of this approach is that it removes the anxiety that history

causes: there is no need to worry about past achievements, or what

directions history points us in...


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9. Oscillating history

This is associated with the German art historian Heinrich Wllflin (early

20th c.)

He identified two movements in history, a classical or classicizing

moment, and a subsequent baroque or elaborative moment:

ClassicalMedieval (=Baroque)Renaissance (= Classical)BaroqueModern (= Classical)Postmodern (= Baroque)


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Ultimately, this reduces to an oscillation:

Classical

BaroqueClassicalBaroqueClassicalBaroque


Heinrich Wlfflin

Oscillating history

Style analysis

formal analysis

In order to reduce history in this fashion, Wlfflin looked only at stylisticcharacteristics of works (color, space, line, motion, clarity) and not at

social and political meanings.

The kind of art history he promoted is now called style analysis. It is a

good candidate for an opposite to visual studies because it is narrowlyformal.


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10. Life history

An ancient Roman way of ordering history is by making an analogy to a

human life:

infantia, adulescentia, maturitas, senectus =infancy, adolescence, maturity, old age

The idea would be that every culture goes through this naturallyevery

civilization dies.


Winckelmann

Vasari

Infancy, adolescence,

maturity, old age

The life-history model is associated with two art historians:

Giorgio Vasari (16th c.), the first to write an art history in the West

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (18th c.)


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1. Infancy: Archaic Greek art (600-480 BCE); 14th c. Italian painting from Giotto onward.

2. Adolescence: Greek Early Classical period (480-450 BCE); Italian 15th c. painting.

3. Maturity: Athenian art of the 5th and 4th c. BCE.; the High Renaissance (beginning of the

16th c.).

4. Old age: the century before Alexander the Great, through Hellenistic art, to the rise of Rome in

the 1st c. BCE. ; Italian mannerism and academic art in the later 16th c., and on into the 17th or

18th centuries.

Examples, from Winckelmann (for Greek art) and Vasari (for Italian art):

Drawbacks:

A. How can you explain what happens when the culture keeps going?

B. Is it logical to assume cultures grow and decline like people?


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11. Paradoxical history

This has been theorized by several recent writers, who are on our list ofnames:

Jacques Derrida (contemporary French-Algerian philosopher)

in a text called The Post Card

Mieke Bal (contemporary Dutch theorist)

in a text called Quoting Caravaggio: Preposterous HistoryA time line might look like this:

The idea here is that our own lives influence what we see and think of

the past, so really all time lines have to run backward.

POSTMODERNISMModernism

RenaissanceMiddle Ages

Classical GreecePrehistory Concepts, names, and works:

Mieke Bal

preposterous history

Jacques DerridaThe Post Card


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12. Models of postmodernism

A particular problem is posed by postmodernism. How important is it?

And what kind of period (or megaperiod) is it?

One model, partly following the philosopher Arthur Danto, would have it

that history itself ended with Warhol or with the inception of what is

normally called postmodernism:

BEFORE ART

PrehistoryClassical Greece and RomeMiddle Ages

ARTRenaissanceBaroqueModernism

AFTER ARTPostmodernism


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Another way of looking at it is that postmodernism isnt a period at all,

but a condition, something that need not be succeeded by anything that we

would recognize as a period.

It is like the endgame in some chess games: a condition in which bothplayers might make moves indefinitely, and neither could ever win. There

are no new moves left to discover, and nothing interesting remains in the

game.

Endgame theory was discussed in the 1980s and is associated, for

example, with Sherrie Levine.

NORMAL PERIODSClassicalMedievalRenaissanceBaroque

Modern


Condition

of postmodernism

Endgame theory

Arthur Danto

Sherrie Levine

ABNORMAL PERIODSPostmodernism


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Models for the shape of the visual world:B. Pictorial models

You can be more free in imagining the shape of history if you leave the outline

model (or time-line model) and let history take whatever shape you want.

For example:


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The standard story of Western art history, but arranged on a map.


(be able to name the 8 steps)

Th l f d ( ) d h h R b R bl l


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The usual narrative of modernism (top) and the art historian Robert Rosenblums alternate:


Rosenblum; and be able to reproduce the two maps.


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A map done Little Prince-fashion,

by an SAIC student:


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Another map done by an SAIC student, using the metaphor of standing at

the shore of the ocean:


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Workshop:Making your map of history

Points to keep in mind:

Be thorough: think of your entire visual world, in all cultures. Dont leave

out TV, etc., and if you think of writers, philosophers, teachers, etc., put

them in.

Dont forget to put yourself in, but maybe not at the center, or not in just

one place.

Be completely honest: put things the way they seem to you, not the way

you think they might really be.

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