Anne DAlleva Arts Contexts PDF

Chapter 3 the Enlightenment to the present-in this way.
This perspective is
Art's contexts inherently interdisciplinary in nature, situated at the crossroads of

history and philosophy, and ranging widely across numerous
fields in the humanities and social sciences.
The history of ideas emerged as an approach to his tory in the
nineteenth centuryj in the twentieth century, the English philoso-
pher Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) has been among its most famous
practitioners, publishing aseries of important essays on ideas
such as liberty, Romanticism, historicism, and the Enlightenment.
He begins his semi-autobiographical essay "The Pursuit of the
Ideal" with this observation: "There are, in my view, two factors
For the past thirtyyears or so, "art in context" has been a catch- that, above all others, have shaped human history in the
twentieth century. One is the development of the natural
phrase of art history. In introductory surveys, new art-his tory
seien ces and technology ... The other, without doubt,
students Iearn to interpret art in terms of the culture of its consists in the great ideological storms that have altered the
times: art is widely seen as affecting and being affected by lives ofvirtuallyall mankind: the Russian Revolution
religion, poIitics, social structures and hierarchies, cultural and its aftermath-totalitarian tyrannies of both
practices and traditions, intellectual currents, etc. But for more right and left and the explosions of nationalism,
advanced students and scholars, simply thinking about "art in racism and, in places, religious bigotry.... "1
The his tory ofideas may focus on philo-
context" is often too vague, for there are many differentways to
sophical concepts, scholarly debates,
approach contextual issues. This chapter presents several of
political movements, or even popular
the most widely practiced methods of engaging in contextual ideas. Note, tao, that this approach
analysis: the history of ideasi Marxism and materialism; doesn't limit itself to the ideas that are still
feminismsi gaY/lesbian studies and queer theoryi cultural considered viable today-you could trace the history
studies and postcolonial theory. These perspectives are not of the idea that the world is Bat without ever sub-
mutually exdusive: they often intersect, and are combined scribing to it. Similarly, many of Sigmund Freud's
ideas about the human psyche, discussed in Chapter
with other approach es such as semiotics and deconstruction.
4, are no longer current, and yet they are worthy of
Bach ofthese perspectives gives you some precise language for study not only in the context of their times but also
asking questions about race, dass, nationality, gender, and because of the enormous inBuence Freud exerted on
sexualorientation. later thinkers.
The history of ideas

3.1 Charioteer ofDelphi, circa 478-474 BCE. Bronze.
Broadly viewed, the his tory of ideas considers how the culturaI Museum ofAntiquities, Delphi, Greece.
meanings generated bya group or society persist over time, con-
The Charioteer ori,ginally stood in a bronze chariot with
tinuing or changing in their relevance and interpretation. Just as four horses. The entire fi,gure is carefully rendered, down
we can look at chronology, the nation state, a war, or a particular to the ueins in the feet, thou,gh on/y half of it would haue
person as an organizing principle for historical interpretation, so been uisible to the uiewer. Pollitt relates this kind of
we can also look at an idea-say, reason in Western thought from careful depiction and realism to Greek ideals of order
and emphasis on the indiuidual human experience.
46/ CHAPTER 3 ART'S CONTEXTS

I:
Any number of art historians have engaged wirh the history of might think, can be much more than a particular theory 01' practice
ideas: it has obvious relations to the iconographic approach es dis- of communist government. In fact Critical Marxism (sometimes
cussed in Chapter 2, as weIl as to the contextual approaches dis- called Western Marxism, because it evolved primarily in Europe
cussed in this chapter. One well-known example is Jerome Pollitt's and North America) encourages the production ofnon-dogmatic,
Art and Experience in Classical Greece (1972), which is still widely used open scholarship, and this is the tradition ofMarxist thought that
3
as a university text. PoIlitt relates Greek art to philosophy and cul- has been most productive for art his tory.
tural values, arguing, for example, that sculptures such as the In this section, I'll introduce Marx's basic ideas, then briefly
Charioteer of Delphi, in their style and iconography, embody discuss Marxist ideas about ideology and cultural hegemony that
Greek ideals of restraint and responsibility (Figure 3.1): "Not only are particularly useful for thinking about art. I'U also touch on
does it celebrate, like the Pythian ades, a victory won at the festival Marxist and materialist theories of art history, and finish by devel-
games at Delphi, but the thos which it conveys is a manifestation of oping materialist, 01' Marxist, lines of questioning in relation to
Pindaric aret . .. the 'innate excellence' of noble natures which two examples.
gives them proficiency and pride in their human endeavors but
The critique of capitalism and
humility befare the godS."2 More recently, Linda Henderson's
historical materialism
Duchamp in Context (1998) examines how the scientific develop-
ments ofthe early twentieth century, such as wave theory and the Writing in the wake ofEurope's Industrial Revolution, Marx was
fourth dimension, affected Duchamp's work. critical of capitalist society. In his greatest work, Das Kapital (publi-
cation begun in 1867), Marx argued that the fundamental condi-
Marxist and materialist perspectives on art tion of capitalist society is the exploitation ofthe worker's labor by
Marxism is a whale warld view. the capitalist. The worker does not receive full value for his labor;
instead, tl1e true value ofthe worker's labor is siphoned off, as sur-
Gearai Plekhanov
plus value, into the capitalist's profits because the free, unregu-
The term "Marxism" can mean many different things. Ofcourse, it lated labor market does not oblige the capitalist to pay the worker
derives from the name of Karl Marx (18I8-1883), economic full value for his labor. 4
theorist, philosopher, and revolutionary activist. In the discussion As Marx and Engels saw it, this exploitation of workers led to
of politics, Marxism has come to indicate sodalist thearies and dass struggle. In the Communist Manlfesto of 1848, they dedared
systems of government based on the ideas of Marx, his that "the his tory ofa11 hitherto existing society is the his tory of dass
collaborator Friedrich Engels (1820-r895), and their various struggles."5 Under capitalism, the two major classes are the
successors. But Marx and his successors addressed his tory and bourgeoisie (01' capitalist dass) and the proletariat (01' working
culture as weIl as economics, and their theories and methods have dass). The capitalists own the means of production (factories,
provided the framework far a strong tradition of scholarship in art mines, financial institutions, etc.), while the proletariat own only
history as weil as in other academic disciplines. their ability to work and so have no option but to work for the
Because Marxism indudes wide-ranging theories of his tory capitalists. In fact, Marx argued that each dass has a consdous-
and culture, it is amistake, as a scholar, to identifjr Marxist thought ness, a way ofseeing the world determined by its economic position.
(and politics) too dosely with the former Soviet Union. In the early To explain their vision of sodal structure, Marx and Engels used
and mid-nineties, several undergraduates told me that they the metaphor ofbase and superstructure: the economy is the base,
thought Marxist cultural analysis was irrelevant 01' wrong since the and it determines the superstructure, the forms of the state and
U.S. had "won" the Cold War, as ifthe disintegration ofthe Soviet sodety. 6 You can think of sodety as a building: the economic base
Union had somehow discredited Marxist cultural and historicaI is the concrete foundation, the state and sodety are the house that
analysis. l'm using the Plekhanov quote at the start of this section rises on that base. It's important to remember that the base is not
as a way to suggest that Marxism, contrary to what some students just the economy narrowly construed, but a11 relations of
48/ CHAPTER 3 ART'S CONTEXTS 49/ CHAPTER 3 ART'S CONTEXTS

production, induding dass relations. Later scholars have pointed (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys
out that the influence doesn 't just go one way, either, from base to because of its position and function in the world of production. "7
superstructure. The dominant dass asserts its cultural hegemony by persuading
subordinate classes to accept its moral, political, and cultural
Ideology emd cultural hegemony values, convincing them that these values are right, true, or
Ideology is an especially important concept in thinking about the beneficial to them even though, ultimately, these values benefit
two-way interrelationship between base and superstructure. In its only the dominant classes. The dominant classes use the arts,
most basic sense, the term ideology indicates any coherent and common sense, culture, custom, taste, etc. to maintain their hold
systematic body of ideas. We may speak of the ideology of an indi- on power. If spontaneous consent fails, then the dominant dasses
vidual, a group (such as a political party or a church), or a culture. always have at the ready "the apparatus of state coercive power
In Marxist theory, ideology is part of the superstructure of society. which 'legally' enforces discipline on those groups who do not
From a Marxist perspective, art is an "ideological form" that domi- 'consent' either actively or passively."8 Gramsci noted that the
nant dass es may use to perpetuate dass relations that benefit working dass can achieve its own cultural hegemony, but to do that
them-or that revolutionaries may use to undermine the power of it must build up a network of alliances with other disempowered
the dominant dass. An impressive portrait of a factory owner, a groups, because it doesn't have the resources to achieve cultural
grand presidential palace, or a cartoon showing triumphant hegemony on its own.
worker-revolutionaries are all ideological artworks in this sense. Writing somewhatlater, in the 1960s, the French Marxist theorist
The issue ofideology came to the fore in Marxist theory during Louis Althusser (1918-1990) pushed these arguments further,
the 1920S and 1930s, at a point when the workers' movements in asserting that ideology was as important as the economy in
Europe and North America had made many gains but had failed to determining social forms. Like many Marxist theorists beforehim,
overthrow capitalism and establish socialist societies. Marxist AIthusser believed that capitalist society perpetuated itselfby two
theorists had to ask why capitalism was able to survive ifit was so means: direct oppression, e.g. using soldiers to put down a
exploitative. Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), an Italian scholar, workers' strike, and ideology, e.g. persuading people that the
journalist, theorist, and activist, provided one compelling set of system is just and beneficial. To explain how this works he
answers to this question. During the years he spent in prison far developed a distinction between what he called the Repressive
opposing MlIssolini's fascist government, Gramsci developed a State Apparatus (government, the military, the police, the courts,
theory of cllltural hegemony-that is, influence or authority prisons) and the Ideological State Apparatus (education, religion,
gained via cultural practices rather than by law or force-to explain the family, political parties, the media, and culture).9
how the bourgeoisie continued to dominate society. His Prison
Marxism and art
Notebooks and otherwritings have continued to inspire cultural ana-
lysts, induding many art historians and literary theorists. Although Marx and Engels never undertook a systematic study of
Gramsci arglIed that dominant groups in society maintain their the visual arts or literature, in various writings they put forth a
control by securing the "spontaneous consent" of sub ordinate n umber of ideas about the arts that have been taken up and devel-
groups, who willingly participate in their own oppression. To be oped by later theorists and scholars. In The German Ideology (18 45-
sure, worlcers are sometimes forced or persuaded against their will 184 6), Marx and Engels asserted that art is not something pro-
or better judgement to participate in exploitative capitalist systems, duced by great genius es in ways almost beyond understanding, but
but often a political and ideological consensus is negotiated is simply another form of economic production. This was a revolu-
between dominant and subordinate groups: "'spontaneous' tionary argument, because eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
consent [isJ given by the great masses of the population to the philosophers of art-including Kant and Hegel-had made
general direction imposed on sociallife by the dominant funda- strong distinctions between art and labor. Marx and Engels also
mental group; this consent is 'historically' caused by the prestige believed in the egalitarian idea that every human being has some
50 I CHAPTER 3 ART'S CONTEXTS 51 I CHAPTER 3 ART'S CONTEXTS

artistic ability. Artistic specialization, in this viewpoint, results
capitalist society produces cheap, standardized art that deadens
from the (capitalist) division oflabor more than anything else, for
1I people's minds and makes them focus on fulfilling false needs,
theyasserted that "in a communist society there are no painters but
such as the des ire for consumer goods, rather than their true needs
only people who engage in painting among other activities."l0
for freedom, social equality, creative outlets, and the opportunity to
Marx hirns elf realized that the relationship between art and society
fulfill their human potential. Adorno felt this most fuHy during the
is a complex one. For example, like many nineteenth-century
Second World War, which he spent in unhappy exile in Los
observers, he believed in the superiority of Greek art, yet he also
Angeles: "What has become alien to men is the human component
saw many failings, from a socialist perspective, in Greek society.ll
of culture, its dosest part, which upholds them against the world.
A number oflater Marxist thinkers took up the issue of artistic
They make common cause with the world against themselves, and
production more systematically. The Hungarian scholar Georg
the most alienated condition of all, the omnipresence of co m-
Luk,lcS (1885-1971) was a revolutionary as well as a philosopher
modities, their own conversion into appendages ofmachinery, is
and literary critic, and he dashed frequently with the Comintern
h for them amirage of doseness."14 Although Adorno wrote d great
I (the international governing body of the Communist movement)
I because ofhis unorthodox views. In History and Class Consciousness
deal about film, radio, and other media, television may be the
perfect illustration ofhis argument. Rather than making their own
(19 2 3), Luldcs developed Marx's idea of commodity fetishism,
entertainment and expressing themselves creatively, the TV audi-
which states that things can be understood in capitalist society
ence sits passively in front of the tube for hours a day, numbed bya
only in terms of their exchange value in money, commodities, or
barrage of awful pro grams and commercials for things they don't
symbolic capital (e.g. prestige). In discussing the commodity, he
need and can't afford. Adorno hirns elf championed difficult avant-
notes, "Its basis is that a relation between people takes on the char-
garde art and music, emphasizing its potential for radical
I:L acter ofa thing [reification, from res, the Latin word for thing] and
transformation. 15
I
thus acquires a 'phantom objectivity', an autonomy that seems so
A number ofMarxist theorists have argued persuasively that art
strictly rational and aII-embracing as to conceal every trace of its
cannot be separated from its environment, especially when it
fundamental nature: the relation between people."12 In the
comes to issues of technology or sodal dass. The critic and theo-
1 absence oftrue socialism, according to Lukacs, art is the only way
rist Walter Benjamin (r892-1940), in his famous essay "The Work
1 to counter these processes ofcommodification and reification, for
ofArt in the Age ofMechanical Reproduction" (1936), provided an
art mediates between the individual and totality because it inher-
insightful analysis of photography and film as art forms, tracing
ently relates to both: a portrait may depict a particular person and
tlleir effect on perception, and, therefore, sodal relations. Ben-
also at the same time say something about the human condition.
jamin argued that artworks once had an aura derived from the
Like the commodity, art reifies social relationships, but it does so
presence ofthe original, but the potential for mass reproduction in
in a way that enriches rather than estranges US. 13 Luldcs believed
photography and film eliminates that aura. Removed from ritual,
I I'
11
that nineteenth-century realist novels, such as those by Honore de
Balzac, epitomized this because of the way they united the explo-
art be comes politics, but of a particular kind: "The film makes the
cult value recede inte the background not only by putting the pub-
': ration ofa perfectly observed exterior world and an inner truth.
I, Hc in the position of the critic, but also by the fact tllat at the movies
I'
i; Lukacs strongly influenced the members of the Frankfurt
this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but
School, a group of Marxist scholars based at the University of
an absent-minded one."16 Writing as Fascism was on the rise in
[I Frankfurt's Institute for Social Research (established in 19 2 3) who
Europe, Benjamin warned that Fascism would play on this sense of
,1 focused on popular art and the "culture industry." Among them,
I alienation in its drive to subjugate people, so that the working dass
Theodor Adorno (r903-r969) theorized the ways in which art can
would "experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of
be used to pacity and co-opt the working dasses and to spread the
11
the first order. "17
dominant ideology. In The Culture Industry: En1ightenment as Mass
The ideological implications of such arguments were further
Deception (r944), written Witll Max Horkheimer, he argued that
developed by later theorists. In The Society of the Spectacle (1967),
53 I C HAPTER 3 ART'S CONTEXTS
activist and artist Guy Debord (I93I-I994) dedared that in con- ofgenius, but an outgrowth ofcomplex interactions between artists
temparary capitalist sodety "The entire life of societies in which and patrons in the context ofa particular cultural environment.
modern conditions of production prevail announces itself as an An equally remarkable wor/e is Svetlana Alpers's Rembrandt's
immense accumulation ofspectades. "18 According to Debord, the Enterprise: The Studio and the Market (1988), in which she disregards
dominant dasses control spectade, even as a11 other expression Rembrandt's style, iconography, and the (often troubled) attrib-
and forms of representation are banned: in this context spectade ution ofhis works, and instead focuses on the organization ofhis
is inseparable from the State, and itworks to reproduce sodal divi- studio as a business for the production of paintings and the
sions and dass formations. Like Luldcs, he questions the extentto strategies he used to market those paintings. Rembrandt was
which art is complicit with capitalist power structures or can work unique not only for his artistic skill but also because he used his
to undermine them. Dehord was part of the Situationist Interna- paintings as a way ta pay his debts: the. paintings functioned
tional, a network ofavant-garde artists that taok shape in 1957 and essentially like currency. Alpers points out that this practice was
sought to break down the barriers between art and life, engaging very much in keeping with the entrepreneurial spirit of
in aesthetic actions thatwould predpitate revolution.19 sodety at the time, even ifit ran counter to the established system
Materialist and Marxist art history of artist-patron relationships. Although Alpers is one of the most
widely respected and influential art historians of her generation,
Over the past thirty years or so, materialist art history has focused her book initially shocked many readers, who expected Rembrandt
not on iconography or stylistic dassification, but rather on art's to be treated as an artistic genius not as a marketing genius.
modes ofproduction-that is, it focuses on the labor that produces Among the "new" art historians, and in current art history,
art and the organization ofthat labor. Art, in this view, is the prod- scholars have paid increasing attention to the relationship between
uct of complex sodal, political and economic relationships, not art and ideology. One ofthe most influential writers in this vein has
something labeled "artistic genius." In the mid-twentieth century, a been T. J. Clark, who has written several books about art, culture,
movement called "the sodal his tory of art" emerged, focusing on and politics in nineteenth-century France. His Image of the People:
the role of art in society rather than on iconography or stylistic Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution (1973) convincinglyargues
analysis. Perhaps the most famous work to emerge from this strand that the lack ofvisual darity in wor/es such as Burial at Ornans (1848)
ofart history is Arnold Hauser's four-volume The Soda I History ofArt, represents Courbet's rejection of the political order and his
first published in 195I, a survey of art from the "Stone Age" to the involvementwith socialist politics. 21 To support his interpretation,
"film Age." In some ways, with its sweeping generalizations and Clark provides both a subtle visual reading of the works and
broad scope, it is atypical of this school ofart his tory, whose practi- extensive analysis oftexts written by the artist and critics. Similarly,
tioners focused on very spedfic and detailed analyses ofartworks in art historian Michael Camille emphasizes that images are not only
terms of economy, dass, culture, etc. Nonetheless, Hauser's work ideological in a secondary sense, as a reflection of spoken or writ-
was an inspiration for later materialist art historians. ten texts; for Camille, images are directly ideological in themselves
A dassic work in this vein is Michael Baxandall's Painting and and actively make meaning, for ideology is "a set of imaginary
Experience in Fjfteenth-Century Italy (I988), which, rather than celeb- representations [whether textual, visual, etc.] masking real mat-
rating the paintings in question as great achievements of the erial conditions."22 In The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-making in
Renaissance, sees them as "fossils ofeconomic life. "20 Among other Medieval Art (I989), he explores the ways in which Church
issues, Baxandall examines the monetary worth of paintings- autllorities tried to suppress the practice of idolatry while simul-
expressed, for example, in contractual agreements between patron taneously promoting their own approved visual images.
and artist that dicta ted the use of precious materials such as gold Art historians also study art's institutions, examining the
leaf or lapis lazuli. He also explores the ways in which artists drew ideologies that shape the practices of museums, galleries,
on mathematical systems, such as gauging, also used by mer- academies, and other organizations. Art historians such as Allan
chants. In this wark, art becomes not the mysterious manifestation Wallach and Carol Duncan have analyzed museums as places

where social hierarchies are played out and reinforced. For
Duncan, the museum becomes a ritual space: "it is the visitors who
enact the ritual. The museum's sequenced spaces and arrange-
ments ofobjects, its lighting and architectural details provide both
the stage set and the script."23 Annie E. Coombes has examined
the history of British museums as places where intertwining
ideologies of race, colonialism, and nationalism were articulated
for the general public. 24
Two recent surveys you may encounter in your art-his tory
studies have made materialist and Marxist art his tory available to a
broader audience. Stephen E Eisenman and Thomas Crow have
edited a survey, Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History (2002), which
focuses on the relations hip between art and ideology. Rather than
using artistic style as the organizing framework of the book, they 3. Jacques-l ouis David, The Consecration ofthe Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of
2
discuss dass, gen der, race, and the relationship between popular EmpressJosephine (December 2, ,804), 1806-1807· Canvas. Musee du louvre, Paris.
and elite culture in the visual arts. Similarly, Richard Brettell's
Modem Art, 1851-1929: Capitalism and Representation (2000) explores I> Whatwere Napoleon's motivations in choosing David as court
the worles of modern artists such as Gauguin and Picasso in painter? (David had been a supporter ofthe Revolution, and he
relation to colonialism, nationalism, and economics. was perhaps the most celebrated artist in France at the time; he
was famous for developing a severe neo-classical style that
Practidng Marxist art history seemed to express revolutionaryvalues.)
Jacques-Louis David's painting The Consecration of the Emperor .. What ideologies-on the part of the painter, patron, and
Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress ]osephine (December 2, 1804) intended audience-shaped the creation and reception of this
provides an opportunity to ask a range ofquestions about ideology, image? IfNapoleon demanded images of grandeur, how does
and its economic and social conditions of production (Figure 3.2). this painting fit that need?
David had been appointed official painter to Napoleon and was .. Why did David choose to depict this particular moment?
assigned to produce aseries of four large paintings documenting (Napoleon had pre-empted the Pope by taking the crown from
his coronation (onlytwo were ever executed). his hands and crowning himself, and then subsequently
crowning Josephine, leaving Pius VII to deliver blessings from
I> Who was the patron? What was his/her social and economic the sidelines. The Pope had thought Napoleon would pledge
status?
his allegiance to the Holy Roman Empire.)
I> What was the social status of this artist-and that of the artist
I> What qualities in Napoleon does this moment emphasize?
in society at this time? How are these emphasized formally in the image? (Napoleon is
I> What is the significance of the scale of the work? (Think about at the center of an awesome spectacle-notice how marginal-
the tradition ofhistory painting in this regard.) ized dle Pope is.)
I> How did David receive the assignment from Napoleon? Does Where was the painting displayed? Who saw it? Was it repro-
the contract for the work survive? Ifso, what does it specif}7? Do duced as an engraving or otherwise made widely available to
other records oftheir interactions survive?
the public?
.. What was David's role as official painter to the emperor? What
Notice that in a materialist or Marxist line of questioning, formal
kind of image of the emperor did he promote? How did this
issues don't disappear, but the emphasis is on understanding how
work to reinforce Napoleon's power?

formal aspects of the work shaped and were shaped by ideology BarrioslChavez Ravine. It depicts two events from the 1950s: the
and social and economic power. In studying this painting, which building of a freeway through poor, Latino neighborhoods, a
so compellingly represents the dominant ideology ofNapoleon's process that destroyed the neighborhoods but enabled white sub-
regime, you could usefully read any number of Marxist theorists: urban motorists to commute by car to their jobs in the city. Chavez
Debord's ideas about spectacle or Gramsci's theory of sponta- Ravine is the neighborhood in which the Dodgers' Stadium was
neous consent could help deepen your understanding of the wark. built despite the protests of local residents. Although developers
An interpretation combining Marxist and feminist perspectives and city officials often proclaim that such projects benefit local
might address the role of the Empress Josephine in this image. areas, the residents ofChavez Ravine were forced to evacuate their
Why did David choose to focus not on Napoleon's crowning but houses and never received adequate compensation for the destruc-
on Josephine's? This single moment emphasizes the ways in tion oftheir hornes and neighborhood.
wh ich Josephine--as wife, queen, and citizen-is both glorified by What is the dominant ideology that Baca is challenging here?
and subject to Napoleon. Does her image stand here for France How does her subject matter work to critique that ideology?
itself, glorified by and subject to Napoleon? In this particular frame from the mural, how are people of
Ofcourse, Marxist or materialist analysis is also suited to works color being oppressed? How does the mural emphasize this
that challenge the dominant ideology. A good example is Judith visually? What is the dominant ideology about projects such as
Baca's The Great Wall ofLos Ange/es (1976-1983), a public mural that thruways and baseball stadiums? How are the neighborhood
stretches for half a miIe across one of Los Angeles's Latino people represented here as protesting this ideology?
neighborhoods (Figure 3.3). It presents a his tory ofpeople ofcolor How does mural format, which is large-scale and public, help
in California from prehistory to the present. Baca created this Baca convey her message? (Think about the different effect this
mural so that people in the neighborhood would have access to imagery would have if it were displayed in a museum, a
their his tory, which is often excluded from official accounts and restticted space that not everyone knows about or feels corn-
textbooks. The part ofthe muraI shown here is caIled Division ofthe fortable entering.)
Why present history in pictures? Why is this an effective form of
retelling history in this neighborhood? (Think about issues of
literacy, multilingualism, authorship, access to books, etc.)
Baca developed an innovative working method for this project, col-

laborating on the mural with dozens of young people from the
neighborhood. She wanted it to be a neighborhood piece, some-
thing everyone could take pride in, even as it provided work and
valuable working experience in a neighborhood troubled by high
unemployment rates among teenagers. A materialist art historian
might ask these kinds ofquestions about the mural:
How does Baca's working method challenge prevailing ideolo-
gies about artists (such as the idea of the solitary genius creat-
ingartforart's sake)?
How does her working method enhance the impact of her
imagery?
What are the economic effects of her working method on the
3.3 Judith Baca, The Great Wall ofLos Angeles: Division ofthe
surrounding community?
BarrioslChavez Ravine, 1976-1983. Los Angeles.

What is the ideological impact ofher working method? Do her A Vindication ofthe Ri,ghts ofWoman (1792), challenged the idea that
helpers think differently about such issues as their social status women, as a group, were in anyway inferior to men. 25 Ifwomen
(or race or gender) after participating in the creation of this were less capable than men, Wollstonecraft dedared, it was only
mural? because they were poody educated and had limited opportunities,
Baca is working in the great tradition ofthe Mexican muralists- not because of any inherent or natural difference in ability. As the
artists such as Diego Rivera (r886-1957) andJose Clemente Orozco women's movement developed in the nineteenth century, it focused
(r883-1949), who saw mural art as a way to challenge society and primarily on the issue of suffrage, the right to vote, for women (in
forge a new dass consciousness among workers and farmers. In . the United States, many suffragists had also worked in the
framing a Marxist/materialist analysis of her work, you may want movement to abolish slavery). Women won the right to vote in
to look at some of the studies of muralists that focus on these most European countries and the United States in the early twen-
kinds of ideological issues, such as Anthony Lee's Paintin,g on the tieth century, and, in response to that victory, the Depression, and
Lift: Die,go Rivera, Radieal Polities, and San Francisco's Publie Murals Second World War, there was a luH in feminist politics and schohlr-
(1999). You could also use a theorist such as Adorno to frame your ship. One notable exception was Virginia WooIrs A Room ofOne's
analysis, since Baca's working method-getting the neighbor- Own, published in 1929, in which she discusses the challenges
hood involved and giving young people cultural and economic facing women writers.
alternatives-resonates with his critique ofcapitalist society. In the 1950s, books such as Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex
(r953) and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (19 63) began to
Feminisms spark debate about women's issues-"the problem that has no
name," at least among middle-dass women. 26 Partly in response
What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our
,grandmothers' time? In our ,great-,grandmothers' day? It is a to the liberation movements in African and Asian colonies, and the
question with an answer crue! enough to stop the blood. American Civil Rights movement ofthe early 1960s, the women's
movement reawakened. Sometimes called the Second Wave of the
Alice Walker, "In Search ofOur Mothers' Gardens"
feminist movement, this period saw the growth of vibrantly femi-
Feminist art his tory is one of the most exciting and innovative nist scholarly and artistic traditions as weIl as political activism.
modes of inquiry in art his tory today, and yet it can often be Young feminists today, who have grown up with feminism as part
confusing to students. Does it only mean studying women artists? oftheir world, sometimes identifY themselves as the Third Wave.
Is it also the study ofwomen as subject matter in art? Ale all studies
The beginnings offerninist art history
of women artists feminist by definition? To practice feminist art
his tory, is it necessary to be a politically active feminist? A feminist art his tory is one tllat focuses on women as artists,
As you get to know more about feminist art history, you'lliearn patrons, viewers, and/or subjects. A feminist study must explicitly
how multiple and varied it iso Iffeminists today say there is no such address the issue of female gender-that is, the idea of femininity
thing as a single, unified feminism, but a collection of "femin- and/or the experience ofbeing a woman-in one or more ofthese
isms," so too can we say that there is not a single feminist art arenas. So, for example, a study ofa painting by a woman artist isn't
history but "feminist art histories." a feminist art history ifit doesn't take into account the ways in which
the identity ofthe artist as a waman affects her imagery or her career,
Abriefhistory ofthe wornen's rnovernent or the ways in which her representations of women are affected by
When asked when the women's movement started, a lot of my her gender or by dominant (or subversive) gender ideologies.
students will answer the 1960s or 1970S. Actually, the modern In many ways, the beginnings of feminist art history in the
women's movement dates back to the late eighteenth century, when United States are marked by a very influentiaI article published by
Enlightenment philosophers argued for the equality of all human Linda Nochlin in 197I, titled "Why Have There Been No Great
beings. One ofthe key texts ftom this time, MaryWollstonecraft's Women Artists?" Nochlin essentially gave two answers to her
60 I CHAPTER 3 ART'S CONTEXTS 61 I CHAPTER 3 ART'S CONTEXTS

provocative question. In the first, she points to the kinds of dis- Current issues in feminist art history
crimination that have historically meant that warnen have had a Ifthe first feminist art historians were concerned with the recuper-
very difficult time training as artists. Nochlin says that the surprise ation ofwomen artists and with same fundamental revisions to art
is not that there haven't been great warnen artists, but that there history's paradigms, feminist art historians today are expanding
have been any warnen artists at all, given the obstacles they have the goals of art his tory in new ways. In The Subjects of Art History
had to confront. In Europe, for example, warnen weren't allowed (1998), art historian Patricia Mathews outlined three representative
to study from the nude model-a process that was a fundamental practices of recent feminist art history:
part of artistic training from the sixteenth through the nineteenth .
centuries. 27 1 recuperating the experience ofwornen and wornen al'tists;
Nochlin's second answer challenges the set of ::Issumptions 2 critiquing and deconstructing authority, institutions, and ideo-
underlying the very question "Why have there been no great Iogies and/or exarnining resistances to thern;
warnen artists?" Nachlin suggests that maybe art historians 3 rethinking the cuIturaI and psychoIogical spaces traditionally
haven't been able to find great warnen artists because the wayart assigned to warnen and consequently re-envisioning the sub-
historians go about defining and looking for greatness excIudes ject seIf, particuIarly frorn psychoanaIytic perspectives.
warnen artists. She reminds us that "genius" is a historically and
culturally determined concept, and that art is not "a free, auto- Mattbews notes that these three areas are in continual flux and
nomous activity of a super-endowed individual," but "a process continual interaction with each other. 30
mediated and determined by specific and definable social institu- Feminists have challenged art history's long-standing focus on
tions. "28 Men aren't naturally better at art than warnen; they have painting, sculpture, architecture, and works on paper produced by.
just had more opportunity to fulfill the culturally determined artists trained in the European tradition who were, almost alwayc;,
requirements for artistic genius. In the end, she argues, the point male. The American novelist Alice Walker (b. 1944), in her farnaus
of feminist art history is not simply to add in warnen artists-as if essay "In Search of Gur Mothers' Gardens," asserted that dis-
to say, "Look, we've forgotten all about Artemisia Gentileschi, but covering the history ofblackwornen's art requires looking atforms
she's a great artist too"-but to challenge the paradigms, the ways we don't usually consider as art- such as qnilts, church singing,
of thinking, that are at the heart of the discipline. and gardens-because black women historically were denied
While Linda Nachlin and others were fomenting an art-history access to education and training as artists. Describing a quilt made
revolution in North America, similar events were taking place in by an "anonymaus" African-American woman in Alabarna, Walker
Britain and Europe. British scholar Griselda Pollack was, and con- writes poignantly of "an artist who left her mark in the only
tinues to be, a leading feminist art historian, addressing ideologies materials she could afford, and in the only medium her position in
of gender in the representation ofwomen and in women's work society allowed her to use. "31 In a similar vein, art historians such
and lives as artists. She and art historian Rozsika Parker published as Patricia Mainardi, Rozsika Parker, and Griselda Pollack have
Old Mistresses: Wornen, Art, and Ideology in I981. 29 The book itselfrep- confronted the gendered nature of the division of art and craft (ar
resents a different way of doing art his tory, for the authors high art and low art), the assumption that what warnen rnake is
acknowledge the contribution to their work of a feminist art his- "craft" and what men make is "art. "32 A nnmber of studies in both
tory collective in which they participated. The title itself is ironie: art his tory and anthropology have discussed the artistic practice of
"old mistresses" doesn't have quite the ring of"old masters," and warnen in such media as textiles and ceramics, which were not
the authors explore same ofthe reasons why. They draw especially formerly considered worthy of serious attention.
on theories ofideology developed in Marxism and Cultural Studies The American art historians Norma Broude and Mary Garrard
to examine the attitudes toward warnen artists in art his tory, and have contributed a great deal to the development of feminist art
consider how warnen artists such as Mary Cassatt negotiated their history through their own research as weIl as through editing three
own status as warnen and how they represented femininity. volurnes of essays in feminist art his tory. In the introduction to the

first of these volumes, published in I982, they emphasize feminist within mainstream art his tory and in the feminist movement,
art history's examination of the ideologies that shape the produc- examining the ways in which race and/or sexual orientation affect
tion of art and of art his tory, working to exdude women.33 A artistic production and reception (see also "Sexualities, LGBTI
decade later, in I992, the introduction to the second collection Studies and Queer Theory" and "Cultural studies and postcolonial
notes the expansion offeminist art history through its engagement theory" in this chapter). The cultural critic bell hooks, for example,
with critical theory, and addresses newly defined areas of interest has written extensivelyon intertwining issues of race, gender, and
such as the body, the gaze, and the social construction of femi- representation. Her analysis ranges from film to painting to
ninity.34 The third collection focuses more specifically on feminist photography, demonstrating the common cultural ground of a
artists ofthe I970s, and provides a rich documentary history as weIl wide variety of visual images. The artist and scholar Freida High
as art criticism and history that takes the politics of this art fully Tesfagiorgis has pointed to the "semi-invisible" status of African-
into account. 35 Garrard's own book on Artemisia Gentileschi was Arnerican warnen artists, marginalized sirnultaneously by ferninist
alandmark study in feminist art his tory; through in-depth archival art historians, who focus on the work ofEuro-American warnen,
work and sensitive re-readings of the paintings themselves, she and by African-Americanist scholars, who focus on the wark of
recuperated the work of this seventeenth-century female artist, African-American men. She calls for a black feminist art his tory
who had been quite weIl known in her day but who was consigned and art criticism that would not only work to uncover the lives and
to oblivion by later scholarship.36 Ifsome ofGarrard's biographi- work ofAfrican-American warnen artists, butwould also challenge
cal and psychoanalytic readings have been challenged, even the the paradigms that allow them to remain invisible. 40
possibility of staging such a debate around multiple perspectives Parallel to this interrogation of the subject is the interrogation
on a woman artist signals the vitality of the field. 37 of the female body as the object for the male gaze and as a vehide
Feminist art historians are also exploring how multiple and inter- for expressing and reinforcing patriarchal values, such as the asso-
twining identities-race, dass, family, age, sexual orientation, ciation ofwomen with nature rather than the "higher" sphere of
etc.-help to shape both women's artistic production and the culture (see Chapter 4 for a discussion ofthe gaze).41 In her study
representation of warnen. In this regard, the engagement with of early 1970S body art, art historian Amelia Jones reminds us that
theories of psychoanalysis (as represented, especially, in the work body art has a particular power to engage the viewer-and that
oOulia Kristeva, Luce lrigaray, and Helene Cixous), with decon- feminist body art, like the work of Hannah Wilke, is potentially
struction, and with post-structuralism has been especially deeply political in the ways that it challenges the construction of
productive for feminist art historians, enabling them to develop women's subjectivities. 42 Johanna Frueh turns to the culture at
theories ofartistic practice and discuss the artist without resorting large to study the aesthetics and erotics of oIder women's bodies,
to traditional artistic models of genius (see also Chapters 4 and 5). stemming from her own experience as a midlife body-builder and
Rather than assuming a stable identity for artists, an identity professor. She notes that "beauty is not natural to anyone, for peo-
embedded in the work of art that can be revealed through art pIe create or negate their beauty" by various means, and asks why
historical analysis, feminist art historians envision a more frag- the culture at large so consistently denies beauty to older
mented and multiple subject, one situated within and shaped by women. 43 The Black Female Body: A Photographic History (2002) by
not only his tory and culture but also by the psyche and individual Debarah Willis and Carla Williams examines the ways in which
experience. A number offeminists work to investigate the "subject photography extended the Westernfascination with black
effect" in this way, recognizing that the subject isn't natural or women's bodies, as representations ofthe exotic, the primitive, ar
whole but is produced through discourse, always gendered and the maternal, and in the context of scientific experimentation and
shaped by power relations in society.38 Pollock's recent analysis of the development of race tl1eory. They also examine the ways in
the work ofartists as diverse as Artemesia Gentileschi and Lubaina which black warnen, induding performers such as Josephine
Himid is a good example.39
Baker and artists such as Renee Cox, have redaimed photography
Warnen of color and lesbians have made their voices heard and the representation oftheir bodies. 44
64{ CHAPTER 3 ART'S CONTEXTS

65 {CHAPTER 3 ART'S CONTEXTS
Essentialism and feminist art history Unlike most other women, Artemisia Gentileschi had access to
Is "woman" a universal category? Does it mean the same thing to extensive training through her father, who was hirnself a
be a woman in medieval England as among the pre-Columbian professional artist. She became a famous painter in Rome and
Florence, and was particularly known for the depiction of powerful
Olmec people of Mexico, or in China today? Is there a universal
biblical heroines. As a young woman, Gentileschi was raped by
female aesthetic? Can you always recognize the art of women as
another artist, and some feminist scholars, induding Mary
distinct from the art of men? Does the art of women share certain
characteristics acroSS time and space? Garrard, have speculated about a connection between her choice of
Feminists and feminist art historians struggle with such subject matter and her life experiences. Others, such as Griselda
Pollock, have pointed to a larger cultural taste for images of
questions, which revolve around the issue ofessentialism. Feminist
philosoph er Diana Fuss defines essentialism as "a beliefin the real sexually charged violence. The painting here depicts the Old
Testament story ofJudith, a heroine who saved the Jewish people
true essence of things, thc invariable and fixed properties which
from destruction by decapitating the Assyrian general HoloferQes.
define the 'whatness' ofa given entity. "45 Essentialist arguments are
Here are some ofthe questions you might ask about this work
not intrinsically good or bad, but they can be used to support a
variety ofpositions. Some feminists have asserted the universality of from a feminist perspective:
the female condition, an essentiaIism that forges a sense of p What was Artemisia Gentileschi's training as an artist? How
connection across time and space. Such essentiaIist connections was it different from the training of male artists?
can be, in the moment, creatively productive, politically useful, or .. Was the development of her career different from that of her
culturally fulfilling (see "The Problems and Promises of Identity male peers? Did her studio function differently from theirs?
PoIitics" below). Other feminists emphasize that a category or .. Was she an exception, or were there other women artists like
identity such as "woman" is determined by cultural discourse, not
her working at the time?
bya "natural" or "essential" existence, some going so far as to assert
the impossibility ofcross-cultural understanding.
As a scholar, you need to retain a sense ofhistorical and cultural 3.4 Artemisia Gentileschi,Judith
specificity in relation to the works of art you are studying: you and her Maidseruant SlayinB
wouldn't assurne, for example, that an upper dass nineteenth- Holofernes, circa 1625. Oil on
canvas. Uffizi, Florence.
century Parisian woman who bought a print by Mary Cassatt
necessarily shared experiences and beliefs with a fifteenth-century
Italian woman who sat for a wedding portrait, much less with a
Mende woman who commissions a mask in Sierra Leone today.
Keep in mind that women artists may share as much or more with
male artists of their own culture than with women artists of other
cultures and times. Atthe same time, be aware ofaspects ofwomen's
experience that are continuous-similarities that are there not
because of some "essential" or innate characteristic, but because of
the persistence ofsexistinstitutions, beliefs, and practices.
Practicing feminist art history

1'11 take a celebrated painting by the ItaIian artist Artemisia
Gentileschi (r593-circa r653) to demonstrate feminist lines of
questioning (Figure 3.4). (I make no apologies for using this pic-
ture again, since it validates my points here as weIl as in Look!)
66 J CHAPTE R 3 ART'S CONTEXTS 67 J CHAPTER 3 ART'S CONTEXTS

How da es this painting relate to her other subjects? Did she
usually paint female subjects? 3.5 Mask, Mende people, Sierra Leone.
Earlytwentieth century. British
Is her subject matter different because she's a woman? Because Museum (1956.Af27·18).
she was raped? Da her male contemporaries also depict this
subject? Is her approach to the subject different from that ofher
male peers or from her female peers? Are there subjects she, as
a woman, was not able to paint? be known. Working from a feminist perspec-
Does the choice or treatment of subject matter relate to her life, tive, you might ask the following questions
and her experiences as a woman? about this mask:
Who is her intended audience here? Is she painting with male What is the relationship between the female
or female viewers in mind? patron and the male artist? To what extent
How does the portrayal of a woman here reflect or shape social does she determine the final appearance
values with regard to warnen? ofthework?
Who bought her paintings? Who were her patrons? Did she Which women can be patrons? How do
have warnen patrons, and, if so, did she have special relation- they paylcompensate the artist? To
ships with them? (Here feminist and materialist cancerns what extent da they have creative input
intersect.) into the making of the mask?
How did male artists and critics respond to her wark? And '" Da men also serve as patrons for simi-
female artists and critics? lar masks? How is their relationship to
the artist similar to or different from
In crafting a feminist analysis ofthis image, you might want to look that offemale patrons?
at the feminist writings about it and extend, critique, or respond to
.. Does this mask depict an ideal of feminine
their perspectives. For example, Griselda Pollock's Ditferencing the beauty? What are the elements of that ideal? How da
Canon (1999) re-evaluated the scholarly literature on Gentileschi, women and men respond to this image ofideal beauty?
and her arguments could be a starting point for your own analysis.
'" Which women wear the masks? How does a woman train to be
1'11 shift my focus here to an African mask to examine issues of a dancer? Is the patron who commissioned the mask also the
women's patronage and performance in addition to the depiction
performer?
of a woman. The nowo mask shown in Figure 3.5 was used by the
What role does the masked spirit play during initiation?
members of a women's society called Sande among the Mende
people ofSierra Leone. Although male artists actually carve these How da the young female initiates res pond to the mask and the
masks, women commission and perform with them. The masks spirit it represents?
depict a beautiful female water spirit who visits the village during Da male villagers and elders res pond differently than female vil-
the initiation ofyoungwomen inta the Sande society. lagers and elders to the appearance ofthe mask in the village?
Same ofthe questions you might ask in a cross-cuItural femi-
nist analysis might weIl be different from those that you would ask Here again you may want to turn to particular theorists to help you
about a European painting. The cllltural situation itself is different frame your analysis. Feminist art historians and anthropologists
and may prompt new questions, and the information YOll have ta Sylvia Arden Boone and Ruth Phillips have both written ab out this
46
work with in a cross-cllitural analysis mayaiso be different. For masking tradition based on their own extensive field work.
example, the element of artist's biography that informs the study Comparing and contrasting the feminist perspectives presented in
of Artemisia Gentileschi's work may be missing in the study of an their work-published nearly ten years apart-might prove to be
African mask, because the identity of the artist and patron may not interesting. For additional help in framing your argument, you

could also look at feminist theories of performance or writings by
feminist art historians about women's artistic patronage. Even if
these writings don't focus on the Mende or other West African
what's normal .......or normative?
cultures, the cross-culturaI comparisons may prove iIIuminating. gender theorists, and queer more common, but not more normal. Society
use the term "normative" to dictates that certain ways ofliving are
sexualities, lGBTI Studies. and Queer Theory and critique oppressive gender normal, and then coerces or persuades
standards and categories. Normative means individuals to conform to these standards
Between the time ofSappho and the binh ofNatalie Cljjford notwhat is "normal" but what is considered and perpetuate them. But when you look at
Barney lies a "lesbian silence" oftwentyJour cenruries. "normal." One of my queer students once the range ofhuman behavior, you soon
Benha Harris, Our Right to Love (197 8) noted that just because heterosexuality is realize that there's no such thing as
more common in our culture, that doesn't "normal," however much societywould like
So how do "Gender Studies" differ horn feminism? What's make it normal, just as brown eyes may be us to thinl< that there iso
"queer" about Queer Theory? How do Gay and Lesbian Studies
mesh with Queer Theory? Or with Gender Studies, for that matter?
Why is that field called Gay and Lesbian Studies instead ofLGBTI
(lesbian/gay/ bisexual/ transgenderlintersex) Studies?
lGBTI Studies
All of these scholarly arenas share common ground, but there
are distinctions among them, both in terms of their academic The history of LGBTI Studies is parallel to and intertwined with
history and in terms oftheir areas ofinquiry. Whereas feminism is politicaI feminisms and feminist scholarship. Initially, like femin-
particularly concerned with the sodaI construction of women's ism, the ambition of Lesbian and Gay Studies when it first
identity, Gender Studies is concerned with the sodal construction developed was to document spedfic gay and lesbian identities and '
of all gen der identities and experiences-whether man, woman, cultural practices. In art history, this meant researching artists who
transgendered, gender-blended, queer, or something else alto- were gay and lesbian, and exploring homoerotic themes and
gether. Gay and Lesbian Studies developed in the I970S as a subjects in works of art. Like feminist scholarship, LGBTI Studies
response both to feminism in the academy and to the lesbian and retains strong connections with LGBTI political activism-
gay liberation movement (itself sparked by the I9 69 Stonewall especially around civil rights and the AIDS epidemie. Again, just as
Rebellion, when a multicultural crowd of drag queens, trans- feminist studies are largely produced by self-identified feminists
sexuaIs, gay men, and working-cIass Iesbians fought back against (largely, though not excIusively, women), LGBTI Studies are largely
a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in lower Manhattan). Gay and produced by scholars who self-identifY in these ways.
Lesbian Studies provides a forum for recuperating the forgotten or
Queer Theory
concealed histories of gay and lesbian people, cultures, and
institutions. Although you'll still see this term, it is being sup- Queer Theory is certainly related to LGBTI Studies, but takes a
planted by the terms Sexuality Studies or LGBTI Studies, which are somewhat different approach. You probably know that the word
more incIusive. Queer Theory has a political as weIl as a scholarly queer means "weird" and has been used as derogatory slang far
tradition. It emerged from and in reaction to the Gay and Lesbian lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender people; it's a word that some
Studies movement and the AIDS epidemie, calIing for a radical LGBTI people have reclaimed, using it proudly instead of"gay" to
reconfiguration of scholarship and politics and an examination of subvert its stigma. Queer theorist and literary critic Eve Kosofsky
alJ forms ofgender oppression. Sedgwick defines queerness as: "the open mesh of possibilities,
In this section, 1'11 provide an introduction to LGBTI Studies gaps, overlaps, dissonances, and resonances, lapses and excesses
and Queer Theory, discuss gender performativity_a key concept of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone's gender, of
in Queer Theory-and explore the practice ofart history in relation anyone's sexuality aren't made (or can't be made) to signifY
to LGBTI Studies and Queer Theory. monolithically."47 For Classics scholar and queer theorist David
Halperin, "queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the
70 I CHAPTER 3 ART'S CONTEXTS
71 f CHAPTER 3 ART'S CONTEXTS

normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in partieular to
develops via actions such as wearing certain clothes (skirts
whieh it neeessarily rifers. It is an identity without an essence. "48
dresses forwomen, ties and jackets for men), engaging in cer-
The practice ofQueer Theory is not so much about identifjring
rituals (such as marriage), taking certain jobs (women don't
and bringing to light particular LGBTI subjects and histories, as
work in construction), and employing certain manner-
LGBTI Studies does. Rather, it focuses on tracing the power
isms (girls are quiet, boys are rowdy); there is no natural, true, or
dynamics of what lesbian feminist poet Adrienne Rich (b. 19 2 9)
innate essence to gender--or any other identity, for that matter.
caUs "compulsory heterosexuality," the way in which hetero-
For Butler, identity is "performatively constituted by the very
sexuaIity is placed at the center of society and other sexualities are
49 'expressions' that are said to be its results. "53
marginalized. Queer theorists argue that homophobia is not just
According to Butler, this performance functions according to
a byproduct ofindividual ignorance and prejudice, but an essential
two basic mechanisms: citation and iteration; she notes "femininity
aspect of social organization and the distribution of power.
is thus not tl1e product of a choice, but tl1e forcible citation of a
Moreover, gender identity and sexual orientation aren't natural,
norm."54 (And I would point out here tl1at tl1e same can be said for
inevitable, or inherent, but created by society-after all, the terms
masculinity: men may end up witl1 much more social and economic
homosexual and heterosexual, wh ich you may think ofas scientific
power than women da, but the process of masculine gendering can
and descriptive, were only coined in the late nineteenth century. Of
be just as constraining.) Citation is copying others, a performance.
course, "queer" is itself a historically specific term, like "homo-
Butler points out tl1at change happens-and tl1at there's poten-
sexual" or "straight" or "man" or "woman." Queer Theory isn't
tial for resistance-because it's impossible to copy or to repeat
any more inevitable or natural than anything else, but it is strategic-
tl1ings exactly.55 Think about playing tl1e game "telephone" or
ally useful: it makes sense to its practitioners as a way ofanalyzing
"Chinese whispers" and how much tl1e message changes by tl1e
the world. And yet as productive as Queer Theory has been, Teresa
time it goes around tl1e circle, sometimes by accident and some-
de Lauretis, the scholar often credited with introducing the phrase,
times because a player deliberately intro duces a change. From a
Iater abandoned it, arguing that it had been co-opted by the very
mainstream forces itwas coined to resist. 50 performative gender perspective, not only da artists themselves
sometimes perform or undermine mainstream (normative) gen-
Michel Foucault, whose work is discussed at length in Chapter 5,
der identities and sexualities (malelfemale, straight) in their own
was enormously influential in the development of both LGBTI
lives, but they also sometimes create images that can perpetuate or
Studies and Queer Theory. His multi-volume History of Sexuality
challenge mainstream gender identities and sexualities.
(1978, 1984) argued that "homosexuality" should be seen as a histor-
ically specific product of a particular society. In the West, Foueault lGBTl/Queer art history
argued, the homosexual person was ealled into being by the legal,
The art historian Jonathan Weinberg has noted tl1at among tl1e
medieal, and eultural discourses that created-and regulated-the
humanities, art history has been relatively late to address tl1e inter-
category "homosexual" in the mid-nineteenth eentury: "the sodo-
relationship of art and sexual orientation: "From its beginnings in
mite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a
the writings of Johann Winckelmann, art history has been a
species. "51 Although Foucault's work has been criticized for its lack
closeted profession in which tl1e erotic is hidden or displaced."56
of historically-specifie analysis and its faHure to recognize human
Altl10ugh tl1ere has been an increasing nu mb er ofessays on lesbian
agency, it did in manyways set an agenda for the study ofsexuality as
and gayartists and images, tl1ere are still few full-Iengtl1 studies of
a cultural construct rather than as a biological given.
tl1ese subjects, and work on transgender, intersex, gender-blending,
Gender performativity, a key queer idea bisexuality, pansexuality and other gender identities and sexualities
has yet to emerge fuUy. The critic Laura Cottingham has pointed out
Judith Butler's work on gender performativity has been central to
the near invisibility oflesbian artists and themes in art history: the
tl1e development of queer theory.52 She argued that gender is per-
challenge may be to face the double whammy ofhomophobia and
formative-that is, a sense of gender identity for an individual or
sexism. 57 Confronting such gaps, same scholars acknowledge tl1at
73/ CHAPTER 3 ARPSCONTEXTS
"Queering" works ofart (that is, destabilizing our confidence in the 3.6 Charles Demuth, Two
relations hip ofrepresentation to identity, authorship, and behavior) Sailors Urinating. 1930.
is important, but they also emphasize that this approach should not Watercolor and pencil on
completely supplant the process of recovering LGBTI icono- paper.
graphies and historical moments.

In the end, many art historians combine LGBTI and Queer The-
ory approaches-mining archives and museums for information
about LGBTI images, artists, communities, and institutions, while
employing Queer theoretical frameworks. Alandmark in the field
is a coIler.tion of essays edited by Whitney Davis, Gay and Lesbian
Srudies in Art History (1994), first published as a special issue ofThe
Journal ofHomosexuality. The essays raise a number of critical ques-
tions, and provide methodological models as they engage with
specific images, from Boucher's paintings of women in bed to-
gether to Safer Sex posters. Also an important study is Jonathan
Weinberg's SpeakingforVice: Homosexuality in theArt ofCharles Demuth,
Marsden Hartley, and the First American Avant-Garde (1993), which
explores how Demuth and Hartley reconciled the tensions bet-
ween the creation oftheir self-consciously "American" art and the
tions from the perspectives of LGBTI Studies and Queer Theory
representation oftheir own marginalized sexuality. Weinberg also
(Figure 3. 6). It's often very difficult to ana!yze the role that the
reflects on tlle ethics of research, the process of" outing" artists
artist's own sexual orientation and identity play in the production
who felt compelled to conceal their identities and desires in their
of works ofart, especially when an artist has left few statements or
lifetimes.
The study of sexuality crosses boundaries in multiple ways, images that give us insight into his or her own sense of self. An
reminding us that "queer" and "straight" are not necessarily oppo- artist's identity-including but not limited to sexual orientation-
site terms, especially in relation to other cultures and periods in also has to be seen in the context of the larger society.
which such categorizations and identities do not exist. One good How does tl1e artist visually construct homoerotic content?
example ofthis is an edited collection of essays entitled Sexuality in (Think about the focus on genitals, facial expressions, ges-
Ancient Art (1996). Studying sexuality, art historian Natalie Kampen tures, and the viewer's implied position in the scene.)
reminds readers in the introduction, is not the same as studying
What were the possible sexual identities at this time? Was the
the erotic (that which attempts to arouse the viewer). The study of
artist expressing or forging a new kind of identity through this
sexuality encompasses the representation of the [clothed and
image? Or conforming to an available identity through this
nude] body, the ways in which sexual identity and sexual conduct
imagery?
define social categories and individuals, and the way that imagery
allows human beings to find and measure themselves as sexua1. 58 How does tl1is scene represent the idea and experience of
homoerotic des ire in the 1930S? Why sailors, for example?
Practidng Queer/lGBTI art history (There was enormous oppression of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and
In the first half of the twentieth century, the American artist transgender people at this time. Same-sex sexual acts were
Charles Demuth (r883-r935) produced aseries ofwatercolors that outlawed in most states-as they still were in some states unti!
represent men's homoerotic desire. This example, Two Sailors a 2003 Supreme Court ruling banned such discrimination-
Urinating, provides an opportunity to consider a number of ques- and meetings had to be clandestine. Such sexualities could be

practiced most freeIy in socially marginal places such as
waterfront bars or theatres.) Cultural Studies is wide-ranging-its practitioners may discuss
novels, workers' diaries, concepts of race or gender, soap operas,
Who was the viewer for these works? Did the works present an or objects of daily life, from hand-embroidered tabledoths to Ikea
image of homoeroticism that was meant to attract? Repulse?
furniture. In doing this work, Cultural Studies is strongly interdis-
(Demuth, for example, intended the works for himself and a
ciplinary: it derives its methods and issues from anthropology, his-
very small circle of ttusted friends who knew and shared his
tory, economics, sociology, literary criticism, and art his tory. Art
sexual orientation. You could also work, however, on images
historians have been particularly involved in the branch ofCultural
that were negative or ambiguous in their representation of
such sexualities-the sensationalist covers of I950S dime- Studies known as Visual Culture Studies.
novels with lesbian themes are one example). Cultural Studies emerged in Europe and the US after the Sec-
ond World War, and in many ways it was strongly influenced by
Does the artist atltlress homoerotic subjects in other media and
Marxist cultural analysis; in fact, the English scholar Raymond
kinds of images (oil painting or drawing, for example)? Why
Williams (1921-1988), quoted above, could just as easily ha.ve
did Demuth choose to wark in watercolor and a relatively small
format in depicting these subjects? appeared above in the Marxism section. Cultural Studies is particu-
larly concerned with ideology and power. It takes as a primary con-
How does this body of imagery relate to the other imagery
cern subjectivity-that is, how human subjects are formed by the
Demuth produced (for example, abstract works, stilllives, pre-
cisionist images offactories and silos)? social and cultural forces around them, and how they experience
their lives in culture and society. It has a particular interest in both
You might also look at the scholarship on Demuth: which
"ordinary" people and in communities marginalized by race, dass,
scholars discuss the homoerotic watercolors? (Jonathan Wein-
gender, sexual orientation, etc. For example, Stuart Hall, one ofthe
berg's "Speaking for Vice" is an obvious starting point.) Are
founding figures in the field, argues that people are simultaneous
there scholarly works that seem to suppress these watercolors,
makers and consumers of culture, participating in that culture
and, if so, why? (For example, arecent visit to the Charles
according to their place in economic and political structures. He
Demuth Museum website revealed no mention ofhis sexuality
or the homoerotic content in his work. I can't help but think argues that people, via processes of encoding and decoding, shape
that if he had been a heterosexual married man, his personal culture, and that institutions such as the church, the state, etc.
life would have been mentioned.) encode certain ideas in mass media, which audiences then decode
(this is an alternative perspective to Adorno's). But Hall holds that
Cultural Studies and postcolonial theory we are sophisticated consumers of mass media: we can respond to
Culture is ordinary. these representations with skepticism and make oppositional
readings. Depending on their cultural backgrounds, individual
Raymond Williams, "Movingftom High Culture to
experiences, etc., some people may accept most ofthe "text" ofthe
Ordinary Cu/ture" (1958)
media message, while others reject it almost entirely.59
Culture is everything. Cu/ture is the way we dress, the way we Postcolonial theory has been important to the development of
carry Dur heads, the way we walk, the way we tie our ties-it Cultural Studies, so I've put the two together here, though there's
is not only thefact ofwriting books or bui/ding hauses. nothing necessary or inevitable about this placement. Colonialism
Aime Cesaire, "Cu/ture and Colonizatian" (1956) has been a powerful cultural force across the globe, and has
manifested itselfin several farms. The term postcolonial refers not
Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary academic movement that only to the shaping of new identities, and political and cultural
takes culture out of the realm of the elite and examines its inter- practices in former colonies, but also to a body of theory that sup-
connections throughout society. From a Cultural Studies perspec- ports the study of the distinctive cultural, social, and political
tive, all people engage in culture, in the making ofsymbols and the dynamics ofboth colonial and postcolonial societies. I do also want
practices of representation (verbal, visual, gestural, musical, etc.). to note here that the term postcolonial has its critics. Some argue

that the "post" in postcolonial fails to recognize the exploitation large numbers (such as Australia and the United States) and also
still present in neo-colonial relationships: despite political indep- colonies that served primarily as sources of raw materials and as
endence, former colonies are often economically dependent on market outlets (like many African colonies). Moreover, there is
former colonizers, and oppressive relations of power may develop also variation, among both the colonists and the colonized, based
64
within a former colony itselE Moreover, studying cultures, regions, on race, dass, education, religion, gender, and other factors. An
or nations through categories such as pre-colonial/colonial/ army officer, a merchant, and a low-Ievel plantation manager
postcolonial prioritizes the colonizer's perspective and can be, would potentially have very different colonial experiences, as would,
itself, a form of neo-colonialism. 60 among the colonized, a local aristocrat and a plantation worker.
Of course, engaging in Cultural Studies requires a worldng The Palestinian cultural critic Edward Said's Orientalism (197 8)
definition of the term "culture." For Raymond Williams, culture is was a groundbreaking work in postcolonial theory. In it, Said
an organic "way oflife." Culture can also be social process, com- (r935-2003) employed Foucault's ideas about discourse and
munication, interaction between people, the common frames of power to assert that the West, via Orientalism, represented the
reference for interpreting experience. Culture is group identity. Cul- (induding the Middle East, China, Japan, and India) as exotic,
65
ture is also a site ofstruggle for dominance by competing groups. mysterious, distant, unlmowable, as a way of controlling it.
According to Said, there never was an "Orient," except as an inven-
Race al'ld postcoionial theory tion that Westerners used to subjugate the region.
In discussing race, Stuart Hall argues that there are two kinds of Critiques ofSaid's work (induding those ofBernard Lewis and
identity: identity in being (which offers a sense of unity and com- Aijaz Ahmad) have argued that Said's divide between East and
monality) and identity as becoming (or a process ofidentification, West is too simplistic, tl1at colonial experience was more compli- ,
which shows the discontinuity in our identity formation). Identity is cated and multifaceted, with more players and participants, than
important, but it is a process of "imaginative rediscovery": he this binary division allows. 66 Moreover, scholars have applied
argues against the idea ofidentity as true or essential, emphasizing Said's framework to a variety of colonial situations and relation-
instead the ways in which cultural identities are subject to the con- ships, some of which it doesn't fit very well. Nonetheless, Said
tinuous "play" ofhistory, culture, and power. 61 For Hall, identities raised a set of theoretical issues-especially about representation
of race or gender are not an unchanging essence, but a positioninll, and discourse-that has been widely influentiaL
unstable points ofsuture within the discourses ofhistory and cul- In The Location of Culture (1994), Homi Bhabha, a leading
ture (see also the discussions of essentialism and Queer Theory scholar in postcolonial studies, explores mimicry and hybridity as
above).62 ways of negotiating the power relationships between colonizer
Race is a key issue not only in studying contemporary cultures, and colonized. In mimicry, the colonizers compel the colonized
but also in studying the his tory of colonization, especially through to imitate them-to use their language, customs, religion,
postcolonial theory. According to one influential definition, the schooling, government, etc. 67 Bhabha considers what this means
term "postcolonial" signifies "all the culture affected by the impe- not only to the colonized, but also to the colonizer. How does it
rial process from the moment ofcolonization to the present day ... distort culture and experience to be imitated? What are the power
there is a continuity of preoccupations throughout the historical dynamics ofthe relations hip? How is resistance possible? Bhabha
process initiated by European imperial aggression."63 Colonial also investigates hybridity-what happens when cultures corne
relationships are inherently unequal: social, political, and eco- into contact with each other, especially in colonial situations. He
nomic power are held by the colonizer, who exploits the colonized argues against binary oppositions (such as First World/Third
people and territory. Even so, it's important to remember that World, black/white, rnen/ warnen) and fixed borders. Instead, he
there's no one, single type of colonial experience. Scholars dis tin- explores what happens at the interstices, at the places where peo-
guish between different kinds of colonial relationships. For examples, cultures, and institutions overlap, where identities are per-
pIe, there are settler societies, to which Europeans emigrated in forrned and contes ted.

Drawing on the writings of the Caribbean politicaI theorist and these theoretical debates as weH as to the knowledge of African-
activist Franz Fanon (1925-1961), Stuart Hall points out thatwithin American and Diaspora artists. African-Ameriean Studies, much
colonial contexts a process of "self-othering" takes place. This is like Women's Studies or LGBTI Studies, both develops theories of
distinct from Said's OrientaIism, where the colonized were con- race and power and also mines the archives to recuperate forgotten
structed as different by the colonizer within the categories ofWest- histories. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a key figure in the development of
ern knowledge. Hall argues that the colonizer had "the power to African-American Studies, has stressed the need to define a canon-
make us see and experience ourselves as 'Other. "'68 That is, in a colo- ical tradition in African-American literature. 74 Whether or not a
niaI regime, the colonized people begin to see themselves as infe- canon is necessary (canons work both to inelude and exelude), art
rior, strange, uncivilized, etc.-they internalize the negative view of historians have worked at recuperating the history of Afriean-
the colonizer. Hall writes eloquently ofthe ways in which this American artists, from highly trained and painters to
expropriation of cultural identity undermines people, and he quiltmakers and potters. David Driskell was one ofthe founders of
emphasizes the need to resist it. He quotes Fanon, who wrote that this movement, while Sharon Patton's recent survey provides an
this process produces "individuals without an anchor, without exceHentintroduction to the material and the issues.7 5
horizon, colourless, stateless, rootless-a race ofangels. "69 This is
a process that has implications not only for formerly colonized Subaltern Studies
nations such as Jamaica, Ghana, or Papua New Guinea but also for 1'11 discuss briefly here the work of the Subaltern Studies Group,
people ofcolor in places such as New York and London. aIthough it could as easily have been ineluded in the Marxism sec-
The broadening scope of art history in recent years has meant tion above. Subaltern Studies is the discipline of a loose collective
that art historians have addressed the impact of race on visual rep- of scholars who study colonial and postcolonial his tory, largely in
resentation in a variety of cultural contexts, including coloniaIism. South Asia. The term "subaltern" (whieh literally means "subordi-
One area ofinterest is the representation of colonized people and nate") comes from the work ofAntonio Gramsci: he used it to indi-
people of color, especially in painting and photography: a good cate the ways in which proletarian voiees are deIiberately silenced
example is Colonialist Photography: Imagining Race and Place (2002), by dominant, bourgeois capitalist narratives. Subaltern Studies
which includes essays on subjects as diverse as Algerian postcards, emphasizes that powerful institutions and individuals (the govern-
French films of the Second World War, and Hawaiian advertising ment, the Church, business leaders) control the ability and oppor-
images. 70 Australian art historian Bernard Smith (b. I9 16) has tunity to tell history and to represent what's going on in society,
written pioneering studies ofthe European depietion ofthe Pacific even as they suppress the voices of protesters, the paar, revolution-
and Australia, and the kinds of values expressed in those images, aries, warnen, the siek or disabled. 76
which addressed difference, the exotic, the taming of the wilder- Subaltern Studies seeks to recuperate those silenced voiees,
ness etc. 71 Among art historians, practices of hybridity-the fus- especially those of peasants, merchants, smalliand-holders, and
ing ofcultures and traditions-have also been an important focus. others who either do not have power or else have limited kinds of
Recent studies of colonial architecture address not only off1cial power, within colonial and postcolonial regimes. Subaltern Stud-
architecture (court houses, governors' mansions) but also the ies does this by innovative historieal methods: scholars read the
hauses, churches, and market buildings of colonized peoples sources produced by the dominant culture "from within but
grappIingwith newly introduced forms,72 New understandings of against the grain" so that subaltern voices emerge, and evidence of
modernity and modernism have also emerged: scholars have agency and resistance can be uncovered. 77 For example, one of the
pointed out that there isn't just one Modernism, located in Europe primary resources is court records, for trial testimony sometimes
and the United States, but multiple Modernisms that developed in reveals subaltern voices representing themselves and their view-
Africa, Latin Ameriea, and elsewhere.73
points. As Gayatri Spivak notes, these voiees are a necessary and
In the United States, African-Ameriean Studies (sometimes pervasive part of such records, even though the records deliber-
also caUed Black Studies) has made important contributions to ately try to suppress them. 78

Art history, Cultural Studies, and Visual Culture Practidng art history informed by
cultural Studies/postcolonialism
Art historians, as weIl as anthropologists, film theorists, sociolo-
To explore how this line of questioning might evolve, 1'11 take as an
gists, and others, have created Visual Culture Studies as a distinctive
example a set of photographs from a geography book published in
arena within Cultural Studies. 79 What's the difference between art
19 0 9. These pages from The Harmsworth History ofthe World (London
history and visual culture? One answer is that, in certain respects,
19 0 9) are captioned "Racial Contrasts under the British Flag" and
visual culture invites the study ofa broader array of objects than art
"Dusky Beauty and Ugliness Under the British Flag" (Figure 3·7)·
historians typically engage with. 80 So, taking a visual culture
This isn't the kind of celebrated masterpiece you may be used to
approach, an art historian may focus not on "high" art produced by
trained artists, but on middle-range housing, family snapshots, tex- analyzing in art history, but from a Cultural Studieslvisual culture
wh ether or not a work can be thought of as a "master-
tiles, advertising images, postcards, etc. Another helpful way of
framing the distinction (as weIl as the potential overlap) between piece" is irrelevant: what's important is what that work teHs us
the two disciplines is to say thatvisual culture focuses not on objects about the culture in which it was produced.
but subjects-that is, the ways in which works of art (broadly Who is the intended audience? (In this case, an educated, mid-
defined) catch up their creators and viewers in interconnecting dIe-dass general readership of both sexes; the assumption is
webs ofcultural meanings and relations ofpower. 81 that they are British and white.) Why would such a collection of
While some art historians find Visual Culture Studies liberat- pietures be made available to this audience?
ing, others argue that this focus on subjects fails to engage with What does it mean for the reader to be confronted by the array
the materiality ofart objects, or else they object that it promotes the of nine photographs on a two-page spread? What kinds of
model of textual analysis in ways that don't address the specific
visual characteristics of works of art. 82 Still others point out that
the kinds of questions asked in Visual Culture Studies already have
their roots in the art history of an earlier generation: scholars such
as Alois Riegl ranged widely in the questions they asked and the
kinds of objects they addressed. 83 It's important to note here that
art historians sometimes use the term "visual culture" in a very
specific way to discuss theories and the technology of vision in
different cultures and periods. Such scholars as Jonathan Crary
and Barbara Maria Stafford have discussed, in the context ofpartic-
ular time periods, theories ofvision, image-making devices, and
visual skills. 84
Browsing through some of the many readers in Visual Culture
Studies will give you a sense ofthis emerging interdisciplinary field.
One example ofvisual culture studies-produced at the crossroads
ofart history, visual cultural, and Queer theory-is Erica Rand's Bar-
bie's Queer Accessories (1995). Trained as an art historian, Rand brings
all her critical skills to bear on Barbie, controversial and beloved
doll. Any good feminist could point out the cultural messages
encoded in Barbie that work to reinforce a very narrow vision of 5S.W
womanhood. But Rand goes beyond this, examining how con- 3.7 Pages from The Harmsworth History ofthe World (London 1909) captioned "Racial
sumers ofall ages have rewritten the Barbie script to challenge dis- Contrasts underthe British Flag" and "DuskyBeautyand Ugliness underthe
criminatory cultural messages about bodies, gender, and sexuality. British Flag" (Coombes, Reinuenting Africa, p. 20 4, fig. 100).

messages are encoded in the ways that the photographs are its significance to the Zuni people, to museum practices, and
arranged and juxtaposed? You could combine a Cultural Studies the culture at large,8s Cultural studies, postcolo nial theory, the
perspective with semiotics here to analyze these images further. of ideas, and Marxist/materialist perspectives are particu-
P> Howwould this collection ofimages help to shape the typical .larly useful in this analysis. I won't reproduce a photograph of an
reader's sense ofselfand others? Think, for example, about the ahayu:da here because, until very recently, the Zuni people did not
location of the reader in terms of racial hierarchies displayed want these figures exhibited or published (some pictures have
here and the imperial hierarchies displayed. Think, too, about recently been allowed to circulate, enabling museums and private
the person from Nubia or Sudan reading this magazine-how collectors to identifY such wodes in ilieir possession).
might Stuart HaII's ideas about internalized self-othering be
P> What is the legal basis for repatriation? In legal terms the War
relevant here? (To develop a line of questioning about the
Gods are considereJ "inalienable property"-that is, property
rece.ption ofthe image further, scc Chapter 4). that cannot be sold or given away (alienated) by an individual or
P> How are cultural ideas about race, class, and gender played out community. Thus, in legal terms, any War Gods removed from '
here? What does it mean, for example, to label the image of a the Pueblo have been stolen. Severallaws, including the I99°
French-Canadian man a "gentleman" and the Central African Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, have
man a "dandy"? What is the effect of labeling the English addressed this issue and established guidelines for the process
woman and the Egyptian woman "beauties" whiIe the other
of repatriatio n .
women (Zulu, Sudanese, Ceylonese) are not? If the Egyptian P> What is the moral basis for repatriation, as it relates to the
woman is the only "beauty" among the women of color, then history of relations between Zuni people and the dominant
are the others, by implication, representative of "ugliness"?
What kinds of racial hierarchy do all these words establish? culture?
P> What are the major concepts structuring this discourse--for
P> In Reinventing Aftica: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagi- example, the idea ofinalienable property, or the Zuni idea that
nation in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (1997), art historian artwor!es are, in so me sense, living beings and members ofthe
Annie E. Coombes examines this image in relation to the community? What are the places of commonality or difference
colonial and missionary ideologies that informed museum dis- in these ideas between the Zuni and the dominant culture?
plays ofAfrican art at this time. You might also think about this
P> What is the process of repatriation? What are the power rela-
collection of images in relation to other ways of representing
tions at work in this process? Do tl1e Zuni have the community
African and Middle Eastern peoples-perhaps in novels or
and financial reSOllrces to press their claims? Do museums
erotic photographs.
resist these claims?
Of course, contemporary art history studies not only objects in P> How does ideology work to shape the process of repatriation?
themselves, but practices related to tlle visual arts: the history and Think, for example, about the Western notion ofthe museum
philosophy of collections and exhibitions, for example, or the as an institution that permanently holds its collections, or the
practice of art criticism in a particular culture. Such studies focus history of museums in relationship to colonialism. How do
these histories and ideologies shape the museum staff's reac-
on the practice itself, with artwor/es themselves appearing only as a
tion to this process-and that ofthe public at large?
secondary object ofanalysis, ifat all.
Although such a case study could appear in any chapter of this P> What has repatriation meant to the Zuni people? Has the return
ofthe War Gods fostered astronger sense of cultural identity or
book, let me take as an example here the repatriation ofWar God
renewal? Are there conflicting ideas about repatriation within
figures, ahayu:da, to the Zuni people ofNew Mexico. (Repatriation
in this context is the return of an artwor/e to its rightful owner or the community?
owners bya museum or other culturaI institution.) My focus here is P> Has the repatriation ofZuni War Gods changed how the muse-
not on the contextual or formal analysis of the figures themselves ums involved perceive their function? Has it changed collecting
but on the practice ofrepatriation, how and why it has unfolded, practices?

Does repatriation reftect or create a new respect for Native to start
Americans before the law and in the culture at large?
History ofideas
Berlin, Isaiah. The powerofldeas, ed. Henry Hardy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Condusion Press, 2002.
This chapter has introduced a number of ways to address Marxism
contextual questions in art his tory. These contextual ques- AI pers, Svetlana. Rembrandt's Enterprise: The Studio and the Market. Chicago: University of
tions have compelled art history to reach out to anthropol- Chicago Press, 1988.
Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays, trans!. Ben Brewster. New York:
ogy, political theory, sociology, and other disciplines. At the Monthly Review Press, 1972 .
same time, questions of context, with their political impli- Benjamin, Walter.llluminations, ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: schocken Rooks, 1985.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans!. Geoffrey Nowell Smith and
cations, also break down the barrier between aeademia and
Quintin Hoare. New York: International Publishers Co., 1971.
the world at large, especially in relation to aspects ofidentity Marx, Kar!. Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan. Oxford and New York: Oxford
such as gender, sexual orientation, race, and dass. University Press, 1977·
More than any other duster of theories, the history of Feminisms
ideas, Marxism and materialism, feminisms, LGBTI Stud- Cixous, Helene. HeleneCixous Reader, ed. Susan Seilers. NewYork: Routledge, 1994·
hooks, bell. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South End Press, 1989.
ies/Queer theory, cultural studies, and postcolonial theory Jones, Amelia. The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. New York: Routledge, 200 3.
work to open up the art-historieal canon, the list of accepted Nochlin, Linda. Women,Art, and Power and Other Essays. New York: Harper and Row, 1 g88.
"great" works of art and artists that are the primary focus of Pollock, Griselda. Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writings of Art's Histories.
NewYorkand London: Routledge, 1999·
art-historical study. These perspectives demand thatwe look
at advertising, industrial ceramics, women's embroidery, LeiBT! Studies arid QueerTheory
Bright, Deborah, ed. The PassionateCamera: Photography and BodiesofDesire. NewYork
snapshots, missionary churches alongside Michelangelo
and London: Routledge, 1998.
and Monet. In her feminist and deconstructive critique ofthe Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1999·
canon, Griselda Pollock has pointed out that the canon is a Davis, Whitney, ed. Gay and lesbian Studies in Art History. New York: Hawthorne Press, 1994·
Foucault, Michel. The History ofSexuality, UOll: An Introduction. VOI2: The Uses of Pleasure.
"discursive strategy for the production and reproduction of Vo13: The Care of the Self. New York: Vintage Books, 1990 .
sexual difference and its complex configurations with gender Hammond, Harmony.lesbian Art in America: AContemporary History. NewYork: Rizzoli,
and related modes of power. "86 From the perspectives pre- 2000.
Lauretis, Teresa deo "Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities." differences: AJournal of
sen ted in this chapter, we could argue that the art-historical Feminist Cultural Studies 3/ 2 (199 1).
canon also works to produce and reproduce differences in
Cultural studies arid postcolorlial theory
dass, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. Whether it continues to Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The post-colonial Studies Reader. New
do so is up to the practitioners ofart his tory today. York and London: Routledge, 1995·
Hall, Stuart, ed. Culture, Media, language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79.
London: Hutehinson, 1980 .
Hall, Stuart and Jessica Evans, eds., Visual Cu ltu re: The Reader. London: Sage, 1999·
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. NewYork: Random House, 1979·
Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1780-1950. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963·


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Chapter 3 the Enlightenment to the present-in this way.

Art's contexts inherently interdisciplinary in nature, situated at the crossroads of

The history of ideas

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Baca developed an innovative working method for this project, col-

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Practicing feminist art history

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graphies and historical moments.

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