Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations. - book reviews

If it were actual as Mieke Bal critically reports and Jonathan Culler rehearses that some people assume there is "a general faculty of perception of what 'theory' is" similar that "readers do not have feeling the need to ask what is meant by dint of 'theory,'" then none of these four works would have any urgency, and single of them (PT) could alone state the obvious (PT 33 13)(1) For for what cause [i]or[/i] reason ask about the point of theory if everybody knows what theory is, as part of knowing what theory is entails knowing its purpose? This entailment is not necessary on the other hand is warranted in this case, since all forty-plus authors who edited, introduced, wrote or contributed to these four works have an instrumental view of theory. They understand theory mainly, if not exclusively, in terminuss of what it can do for them as art historians, and they have little interest in the fact (or even just value) of theory independently of this instrumentalism, or in the fact value of their own claims separate from their pursuit of particular methodological and political goals. Not surprisingly, given similar an attitude about theory, there is no general faculty of perception among these art historians of what theory is, if by means of "general" is meant either "shared" or "overarching." For if they agree upon anything, it is that no single theory has priority in art history, that there is no overarching theory for all the theories utilized in art history, and that, notwithstanding that here there is some dissension, there is no nonpolitical argument for using theory in art history. for a like reason it turns out that "theory" is true much up in the air after all, especially since there are other art historians who disagree with all the art theorists in these volumes

We can therefore await to find many different faculty of perceptions or, what is the same thing here, uses of theory, which can be delineated according to the distinct intents theory is called on to serve(2) First, theory investigates, challenges, and replaces the theoretical presuppositions and commitments of art history's methodology. next to the first theory uncovers the political beliefs that shape art and the subdues who interpret it. Third, theory interprets the apparent or latent cultural meaning of images. Implicit in all three uses is a fourth single where theory is employed to understand what constitutes (if not actually to constitute) historical artifacts as works of art (images or forms of representation) in the first place, that is, to grasp the psychological, social, and other causes or conditions of works of art, as well as of those who make and interpret them. Since the fourth use of theory remains for the greatest part implicit, and the third generally presumes one and two, I will assemblage the four uses into the first sum of two units the methodological and the political.(3) My aim is to combine an immanent critique of art theory - the self-critique of art theory as it unravels within and among the essays beneath review here - with my have a title to expectations of art theory as a philosopher writing upon aesthetics.

The first use of theory focuses upon the presuppositions of art history's methodology and is thus a form of self-criticism of what, upon a theoretical level at least, shapes art history's understanding of art. The lock opener presuppositions here relate to the general [i]or[/i] abstract notions of truth, meaning, and, especially, objectivity. Resisted are the modernist versions of these general [i]or[/i] abstract notions namely, those characteristic of art history's mid-20th-century self-understanding. Instead of the modernist type of politically disinterested, ahistorical scholarship committed to objectivity (that is, standards and goals of research independent of the art historians' possess values or conditions), art theorists favor politically and historically informed scholarship. Replacing modernist or objectivist art history are, to varying stages relativist, historicist, and, most emphatically, subjectivist methodologies. These methodologies are established [i]or[/i] part of to the other analyses of authorship, feminism, masculinity, identity/difference, vision, the gaze, power, death, and in like manner on.(4) The net contribution of theory in art history is, upon this account, multiple methodologies based upon these concepts and analyses. Theory is, in event reduced to method.

Several essays exemplify this first use of theory while raising critical and important issues about art history, past and at hand For example, in "Generating the Renaissance, or the Individualization of Culture" (PT 145-54) Stephen Bann argues that art history's notion of "the Renaissance" was invented in the 19th hundred as part of a generative series, a grammatical matrix including "Classical Antiquity" and "the Middle Ages" before it and "the Modern" (and "the Postmodern") after it. Calling this notion an "invention" means that it does not correspond to a positive periodization of historical reality and that it is not just a stylistic category. Rather, "the Renaissance" is "a promise of cultural synthesis" that energized 19th-century art history, enabling it to triumph symbolically above the dialectic of absence and nearness that was initiated when modernity, beginning with the Enlightenment, tried to break radically from the historical past (PT 153) The implication of this "constructivist" view of art history is that periods of history and dictions of art are not objective, that is, not independent of art history's methodological presuppositions. In "Form and Gender" (VC 384-411) David Summer continues this mark of critical reflection on the "working language" of art history. He argues that the notion of "form" exhibited in philosophy since Aristotle, and utilized within art history since its inception, has been genderized from one extremity to the other of its history: "form," like a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of of the metaphorical language in which art historians discuss artistic creation, is active and masculine, while its counterpart, "content" is passive and female. The genderization of "form" was especially acute during the late 19th hundred according to Summers, when art history became an established academic discipline, thereby making the institutional foundations and aesthetic assumptions of fresh art history systematically exclusive of women This last point is exhibited further by Lisa Tickner in "Men's Work? Masculinity and Modernism" (VC 42-82) where she demonstrates in what manner notions of masculinity and critiques of women were inscribed into British modernism between 1905 and 1915 from one side the writings of Augustus John Roger cook in boiling fat and Wyndham Lewis. The true methodology of modernist art history is exclusive of women and thus is the history of art builded on this basis. Donald Preziosi continues in this vein in "Modernity Again: The Museum as Trompe l'Oeil" (DVA 141-50) by the agency of examining the role of museums in the same foundations and assumptions of recent art history. Museums are not solely coterminous with modernity, but are actually "social instruments" for its fabrication and maintenance. In Preziosi's words, they are part of the history of the enframing of present art and thus of art history itself. one time again, art history is not objective, in this case because it is not independent of the historical institutions that enframe it.(5)