M - Baxandall-The Language of Art History PDF
M - Baxandall-The Language of Art History PDF
M - Baxandall-The Language of Art History PDF
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I. Dialogue Declined
WEIRD THING about the last ten yearshas been quite how many
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454
NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
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THE LANGUAGE
OF ART HISTORY
455
own nerve in verbalizingat other people about objects they can already see. I do worryabout that.
And thisis reallythe main reason formynot being able to enterthe
current dialogue: the problems that are apparently tormentingmy
colleagues do not seem to be the problems I meet. The issues I most
worryabout in art history-a term I use interchangeablywith art
criticism-fallintotwo main groups. One group is connected withthe
prettygratuitousact of matchinglanguage withthe visual interestof
works of art; that is our staple. The other group is connected with
how one can and cannot state relationshipsbetween the characterof
worksof art and theirhistoricalcircumstances,but I shall hardlyget
around to these here. In fact,the remarksin the issue of New Literary
Historydevoted to "Literaryand Art History"thatchimed mostclosely
with my interestscame not from the art historiansbut fromJohn
Passmore's Commentary.5One of the thingshe said was: "it is very
difficultto say a great deal about a painting,except by talkingabout
its relationshipsto somethingelse, whetherto other paintings,other
arts,contemporarysocial movements,contemporarybeliefs,or contemporaryideas," and what followsstartsfroman attemptto gloss the
firstpart of this fromthe practicallevel.
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456
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HISTORY
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THE LANGUAGE
OF ART HISTORY
457
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458
NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
causal or inferential,and (III) subject or ego words, and mightvisualize them in a field like this:
Similia
(I)
The maker
(II)
= [The object]
The beholder
(III)
Matterof representation
(I. bis)
But of course they are all projections of the subject, the speaking
beholder,as we all know perfectlywell. Equally theyare nearlyall in a
weak sense metaphorical,though some of the metaphors are more
educated than others.
There is much thatcould be said in a softeningway about this,if I
did not want to keep the types broad. Clearly a historyof use will
loosen the relationof a word to itsoriginal basis: "monumental,"say,
is a moribund metaphor that has leftmonumentssome way behind,
and it would be foolish to make a thing of "interesting"being an
ego-word. Clearly,too, many words partake of more than one type:
"dry," for instance,can be used in comparative, I. bis, causal (secco
rather thanfrescohandling), and subjectiveways, sometimesequivocally,and is a trickyword all round. It is also clear that roughlythe
same general area can often be pointed to with differenttypes of
words: say, (I) stormy,(I. bis) excited,(II) excited,(III) exciting.(The
between I. bisand
example, by the way,alertsus to the verbal affinity
II, which has much to do withour vulnerabilityto the "physiognomic
fallacy"8or Winckelmannsyndrome.)Above all, thereis the pointthat
in any piece of actual art criticismall thisis going on on several tiers.
My examples were mainly single words, but sentences are framed
withinone type or another, and paragraphs and books are weighted
overall towardsone or another: I am happy to classifywithmyclasses
at any of these levels. All the examples in the last paragraph were
taken from Heinrich Wolfflin'saccount in Classic Art of Raphael's
Camera della Segnatura. If anyone looks at those pages he willfind,I
think,that theircharacter is determinedby an overall dominance of
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THE LANGUAGE
OF ART HISTORY
459
types I. bis and II. Withinthis general characterall the kinds of language I have mentioned, including what I have rather simplycalled
"direct" language ("round," "large in proportion," "surrounded,"
"profile"),are in play. It is the patternof thishierarchythatgives the
individualcritica physiognomy.It is a traitof Wolfflin's,forinstance,
that withina sentence of Type III, reportingan impression,there is
often a Type II word as core: he tends to have an impression of a
cause, honest man. I am not sensitive, I should say here, to the
suggestionthat the differencesin words are purely formaland that
somewhere between sense and referencetheir origins are sloughed
off,words becoming denatured from their class once they are presented withincontinuousdiscourse. When reading art criticism,I do
not findthisto be so. On the contrary,I am pleasurablyconscious of
the constantlyveeringorientationsin the good critic'sdance towardsa
determinatedemonstrativeact. But what does strikeme is
sufficiently
that his need to stringhis words into discourse raises a problem of
another kind, which I have not space to discuss but wish at least to
state.
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460
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THE LANGUAGE
OF ART HISTORY
461
V. InferentialCriticism
I thinkI have been makingthreekindsof suggestion:first,thatthe
art-criticallexicon is stronglyostensive; second, that art-criticallanguage is largely and variouslyoblique, and at more than one level;
third,that the linear formof our discourse is curiouslyat odds with
the formof itsobject,whetherthisis considered to be the workof art
itselfor our experience of it. These seem to me basic facts of artcriticallife,and one would like to come to some sort of constructive
termswith them. Four hundred years of terriblygood and verydiverse European art criticismcertainlysuggest that there are ways of
doing so. It seems characteristicof the best art criticsthat they have
developed theirown waysof meetingthe basic absurdityof verbalizing about pictures: they have embraced its ostensive and oblique
characterpositively,as it were, as well as bouncing theirdiscourse out
of the pseudodescriptiveregisterthatcarriesthe worstlinear threat.I
repeat that they have done this in many differentways; about all
Vasari and Baudelaire have in common is conspicuous success. This
really seems somethingto insiston in the present climate of discussion: the linguisticfacts of our life may be general and pressing,
preliminaryconditionsone may well wantto take account of in working out a way of doing whateverit is one wantsto do, but theydo not
direct us to one kind of art history.
For instance, I am anxious not to suggest that there is a simple
affinitybetween the orientationof a critic'sovert interestand the
orientationof a mood of language-between, say,those of us who like
occupyingourselves withthe circumstancesin whichworksof art are
made, on the one hand, and inferentiallanguage on the other. What
worriesme about much criticismthat offersitselfas social-historical
analysisof art, including several of the people praised by Kurt Forster,is preciselyan un-self-awareType III qualityat the lowestverbal
level marshaled at a higherlevel in large a priori Type II patternssoftimpressionssloshingabout in hard causal schedules. For contrast
one can read the early books of Adrian Stokes9for local inferential
muscle, however subject-assertivethe total manner and effect.But,
for reasons that are only partlyverbal, it is particularlythe role of
inferentiallanguage I am curious about, and if I had not already used
up most of the five thousand words I was asked to write,it is this I
would now be going on to discuss,the strengthsI thinkitconfersand
the problems I am sure it sets. I have enough words leftto assertone
of the strengths,as a sort of summarythrowingdown of a gage.
Words inferentialas to cause are the main vehicleof demonstrative
precisionin artcriticism.They are activein two distinctsenses. Where
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462
NEW LITERARY
HISTORY
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THE LANGUAGE
OF ART HISTORY
463
VI. Issues
I wanted to get thisfarbecause it may suggestmore clearlywhythe
dialogue declined at the startis one I cannot engage with,a matterof
embarrassment obviously. I have been suggesting that making
inferences-as well as making comparisons and talking about
oneself-is an inherentpart of art-criticaldemonstration,and in the
last paragraph I pointed to one of the reasons why I consider that
language inferentialabout cause is very importantto art criticism.
Now this means, for one thing,that I cannot naturallyaddress the
dialogue's typicalissue of Historyand Criticism.If one values what I
have been calling inferentialcriticism,critical "tact" and historical
"grasp" appear as verymuch the same thing. Inferringcauses I take
to entailbeing historical:equally one cannot conceive of eitherhistory
or inferencebeing accurate withoutcriticalacuteness. Clearly history
and criticismare differentinflectionsof attention-inquiryas against
judgment, then as against now, how as againstwhat,and so on-but I
have no purpose in drawing a line between them, and without a
purpose it is hard to know where the line is to be drawn. I accept that
others may have such a purpose.
For another thing,it means that I am insensitiveto the admonishmentsof the humane-value and unshrunken-Selfpeople. Inferential
criticismentails the imaginativereconstructionof causes, particularly
voluntary causes or intentions within situations. It is repetitively
pointed out and is clearly true that we cannot fullyreconstructand
interiorizethe habitsof thoughtand language of a past culture: there
is no possibilityof recreatingthe culturalcomponent in the medium
artist'sintentionor beholder's perception
of, say, a sixteenth-century
because we cannot make ourselvesintosixteenth-century
men, even if
we wanted to, not least because we cannot shed our own cultural
habitsand values. This seems so obvious, it is hard to understandwhy
it is stillstated so oftenand withsuch an air of discovery.But to see it
as an argument against exerting
oneselftowardsreconstructingan old
artist's intention and its medium1"-"the foredoomed effort of
positiviststo interpret past art 'in its own terms"' (Ackerman), I
suppose-seems odd. One mightas well dissuade a man fromtraining
to run by pointingout thathe willnever run his distancein no timeat
all. Just as we all ambulate, we all infercauses and intentions:it is a
disposition much too deep and diffused in us to be excised, as our
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464
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465
NOTES
3 (Spring
of Values?" NewLiterary
1 "CriticalHistoryof Art,or Transfiguration
History,
1972), 459-70.
2 "Toward a New Social Theory of Art," New LiteraryHistory,4 (Winter 1973),
315-30.
3 "Art Historyand Criticism:The Past as Present,"New LiteraryHistory,5 (Spring
1974), 435-45.
4 Daedalus, 98 (Summer 1969), 824-36.
5 "Historyof Art and Historyof Literature:A Commentary,"New Literary
History,3
(Spring 1972), 575-87.
6 "Square" has a rather splendid history,in fact; its use in Greek and Latin art
criticismhas been investigatedin an almost overingenious but exhilaratingpaper by
Silvio Ferri,"Nuovi contributiesegeticial 'Canone' della sculturagreca," Rivistadel R.
e Storiadell'Arte,7 (1940), 117-39.
Istituto
d'Archaeologia
7 For didonand itscontext,Robert FarrisThompson, "Yoruba ArtisticCriticism,"in
The TraditionalArtistin AfricanSocieties,ed. Warren L. d'Azevedo (Bloomington, Ind.,
1973), esp. pp. 37-42.
on a HobbyHorse
8 For which,E. H. Gombrich,"Art and Scholarship,"in Meditations
(London, 1963), p. 108, coining the term; and also "On PhysiognomicPerception,"
ibid.,p. 51.
9 ParticularlyThe QuattroCento(London, 1932) and StonesofRimini(London, 1934).
The remarkablecomparisonbetweencarvingand modeling"conception"in the latteris
ofAdrianStokes,ed.
included in the Pelican edition of TheImagein Form:SelectedWritings
Richard Wollheim(London, 1972), pp. 147-83. The kind of quality I have in mind is,
froman account of Donatello's Dead ChristwithAngelsin the Victoria& AlbertMuseum
(Wollheim,p. 168): "To Donatello, changes of surfacemeantlittlemore than lightand
of plasticorganization.The bottom of the angels'
shade, chiaroscuro, the instruments
robes is gouged and undercutso as to providea contrastto the open planes of Christ's
nude torso.The layersof the stone are treatedwholesale. Though some of the cuttingis
manner of approach.In brief
beautifulin itself,the reliefbetraysa wilful,preconceived,
of adjoining surfaces,
the compositionis not so muchfoundeduponthe interrelationship
as upon the broader principlesof chiaroscuro" (my italics).
10 There are translatedexcerpts-all I know of the author-in Osvald Siren, The
Chineseon theArtofPainting(Peking, 1936), pp. 224-33, and Lin Yutang, The Chinese
TheoryofArt(London, 1967), pp. 169-219.
11 An analogous stance is better and more fullydescribed, as "actor-oriented,"by
CliffordGeertz,The Interpretation
of Cultures(New York, 1973), pp. 13-16.
12 Two of whose articlesare brilliantlysustained examples of inferentialcriticism:
"Maniera and Movement: The Figura Serpentinata,"The Art Quarterly,35 (1972),
269-301; and "Figurecomefratelli: A Transformationof Symmetryin Renaissance
n.s., 1, No. 1 (1977), 59-88.
Painting,"The ArtQuarterly,
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