Kara Walker

Visual Studies: Re-thinking Art History within an Expanded Field

Keith Moxey’s opening statement characterizes history and aesthetics as the “Scylla and Charybdis” of the historiography of art history. They were 2 sea monsters that threatened Ulysses and his sailors on opposite sides of a narrow sea channel. One would swallow the sea in a treacherous whirlpool, the other had 6 mouths with which to grab and devour whatever came within its reach. Escaping from one meant an encounter with the other. Ulysses was literally between a rock and a hard place. So in art history the pendulum has swung between the extremes of embracing aesthetics at the expense of context and vice versa. We’ve covered this terrain over the course of the semester as it has been reiterated throughout the history of art history whether we label the proponents Aristotle and Plato, Hegel and Kant, Panofsky and Wolfflin, Baxandall and Greenberg, T.J. Clark and Michael Fried.

I agree with Michael Ann Holly who calls herself a historiographer and phenomenologist. She believes that it is in the confrontation between the two that something novel arises. Rethinking the relationship between aesthetics and history, their place in art history and what art history means in our current world has resulted in an expanded field, here labeled visual studies, that encompasses and tames them both.
Within this expanded field the traditional Western grand narrative of art history can no longer assume its superior position. Just as Freud and the patriarchal world he represents was encompassed by Cixous’ “bisexuality” that made it an equal to the female principle, the Western art historical canon becomes just another aesthetic community among many with its own terms of value that are intrinsic to itself but cannot be applied universally to all other aesthetic communities. I agree with Moxey that modernism set up artificial boundaries to keep its own idea of art pure. Now those boundaries have fallen and we see the power relations that guaranteed the dominance of a Western grand narrative. With this knowledge we are freed to redefine basic terms such as aesthetics and history. Holly gives the historian agency (she calls it responsibility) to define and redefine what have been identified as core concepts.

I don’t agree with Holly that research has to strip the object/artwork of its awe. I am not a part of the community of writers within contemporary visual studies to whom she refers. I can only speak from my own experience. In my four short years of researching and writing about the works of Willie Cole I’ve found each new bit of research has only increased my appreciation of his work. Every time I see Household Find hanging on the wall, I am still struck by its sheer physicality. Only now I have more than my initial visceral reaction to rely on. I can describe its formal properties, the context within which it was made, the historical, political, social and economic implications of its creation and am open to the meaning it might have for its viewers whether they ascribe to the traditional Western art historical canon or are part of another geographically and culturally distinct aesthetic community. Each layer of complexity adds immeasureably to the richness of the whole.

Art History & Visual Studies

Before starting this course, I questioned what visual studies had to do with actually interpreting and analyzing an actual art object. But now, as dicussed by MAH, I realize that art history must contain an analysis of aesthetic in relation to historical inquiries into art lead to different interpretations. These interpretations, through time, lead to rejuventation and new knowledge associated with the history of art. However, it seems important to note, according to MC, that these new choices of how to talk about art history and visual studies is the result of an institutional conditioning and education that art historians, critics, and curators have received.

Although critical theories provide new meaning or knowledge to art from different time periods, I think the conclusion by MAH hits the nail on the head. What causes us to write about art? Why do we want to become historians? Why does this matter? For me, it is an aesthetic response that initially gets me excited to know more about an artist, group of artists, etc. Although aesthetics and the associated pleasure and satisfaction received is universal, it is a driving force that triggers an initial response which then leads to a critical response through the incorporation of critical and cultural theories. We cannot escape the universality of Kant because I believe his writings from the Critique and the Power of Judgment contain the origins from which we choose to enter the industry known as art history.

However, as discussed by KM, the field of visual studies allows us to pull back the layers of art in order clearly see the discriminations we make based on aesthetics and look at art as just visual artifacts. As students and historians, I believe that art cannot provide a conclusive definition based solely on aesthetic autonomy but that historians bring to light the claims of these autonomies. In a postmodern world, it may appear that we are lost but it seems the discourse created through postmodernism makes us aware of the knowledge that has been in the shadows for a long time.

In bringing to light the claims of these aesthetic autonomies, it is vital that historians are aware of the historicities of the past in order to make the connection to the present (mentioned by MC). However, the western knowledge that has been associated with Modernism is in confilict with the analysis and interpretation of non-western art. Postcolonialism and globalization are important theories in order to make educated and valuable analyses of non-western art. This brings to light the conversation we had last week at Stanford as to how historians are cornered into being specialists in genres that related to our own social conditions.

I think I have a lot more to learn about theory and I am definitely learning in my research paper how difficult it is to understand one Foucault theory. I did not choose to be an art historian because I love Foucault, Freud, Marx, or the other nutjobs who decided to write these complicated books. It really boils down to aesthetics for me..If the work does not move me visually, I have a hard time making a connection with it. But hopefully, through many sleepless nights in the future, critical theory will help to broaden my appreciation of art without my subjective hegemony of aesthetics.

A Rant on Aesthetics and History

The concept of changing art history to visual studies or visual culture is a necessary one. In today’s world I would hope that we have become aware enough to realize that there is no one concept of what art is and as a result it is necessary to study any images or objects that might be considered to be within the realm of art (even those objects whose maker does not see as being art). After all, any object has the capacity to inflict an idea or to be a result of a concept or idea relevant to a time and place. This is why I agree that the study of history cannot always be extricated from the study of an object. In fact, I don’t think it ever can – even formalism has a history. Although, Holly ends with the question about the problem of losing the wonder an object can invoke when one writes about it, and this seems a valid reason not to discuss the history of an object. This “conversation” reminded me of when a friend asked me what I could be writing so much about as an art history student. She asked, “I mean, what can you possibly have to say about art besides whether you like it or not?” This question is hilarious to me, but at the same time relates to what Holly is saying when she writes, “I sense that some of contemporary visual studies so willingly seems...to have sacrificed a sense of awe at the power of an overwhelming visual experience...in favor of the ‘political’ connections that lie beneath the surface of this or that representation.” I agree that something is lost in the act of searching for the stuff that lies beneath the aesthetic. Yet, this is one of the things that I love about art history (or visual culture): it isn’t aesthetic history. It is art history, and art history has almost always taken other things into consideration besides the art object itself...things that are dependent on their time of production as well as their time of study. At the very end Holly asks, “Does the act of writing in either art history or visual studies yearn towards a recreation of visual ‘aesthetic’ experience, even if there is little or none there to be found? Is the desire to write about a subject the first ‘aesthetic’ choice? Or does it, rather, lie in our histories?” I think it is both. But, I do think that sometimes too much desire is placed on the histories rather than on the aesthetics (I hope I am understanding her correctly here). But, what can really be done about that? The historian is doomed to think about the history no matter what – they desire to think about the history in terms of phenomenology, sociology, or whatever.

I am also drawn to Moxey’s question: “’What is to be done?’ Are there any principles according to which history is to be told, or should we recognize once and for all that history must depend on the nature of the interpreting subject? If this is indeed the case, then what is to identify history as a genre that would distinguish it from, say, fiction?” This reminded me of an essay by Hayden White called “The Fictions of Factual Representation.” He argues that discoursed of historians and “imaginative” writers overlap so that the reader cannot tell the two apart without knowing their context and the KINDS of truth they deal with. I think that this idea that there are different types of truth is along the lines of what Moxey is asking. If we were to recognize fully that history depends on the interpreting subject where does that leave us? Even if we relied on a very basic retelling of factual events – the events that are chosen become the ones that have relevance and the ones that aren’t chosen get left in the dust. So, what do we have to rely on? Would that leave us to base our truths on only what we perceive to be morality based on religion? That can be dangerous as well. Every object or historical account has to be open to be looked at and interpreted in any way that the viewer/ reader should decide. Having no ideology becomes our ideology. Yet, I don’t think this is happening. We obviously have our (individual) ideologies and our methods of interpretation based on histories and moralities. And these are all valid and we can understand where one another is “coming from.” This is where I think I agree with Moxey. He says, “The value of these [artistic] developments...lies not in replacing one type of history with another, but to complicate and relativize what we once regarded as ‘the’ story.”

Yes on Aesthetics

This article was helpful to read because it gave me a better understanding on “dialogue,” and the skill of “inviting” certain critics, philosophers, theorists, etc. in to our papers for support. So, I felt that this reading was especially informative, as well as purposeful and practical.

I really thought that this dialogue tied in great with our conversations at the Cantor last week in the African Art gallery. How do you understand artifacts that are characteristic and representative of certain cultures when they are displayed in a typical art museum? Moxey addresses the monotonous of “cultural” art or artifact exhibitions at the Louvre and its attempt to display “art” from different countries and cultures. Artifacts, like we saw at the Cantor, are displayed behind glass, denying objects of their original, purposeful and specific values. Moxey writes that the art in the Louvre “were reduced to sameness by means of an exhibition policy that implied that they were somehow equivalent to each other.” (86) He does however note that the Louvre was and still is primarily dedicated to western European art, and their attempts to include more “global” art pieces and artifacts may be a new direction for not only the Louvre, but for many major art museums. With globalization, I find it particularly interesting that major museums such as the Louvre, are finding what seems to be a constant pressure to equally represent and display art from different cultures, countries, and genres. However, because older, more famous museums may be better known for displaying specific kinds of art, from say western Europe like the Louvre, they are suddenly faced with the challenge to “globalize.” This challenge causes haste, monotony, and incomplete representations of attempts to display cultural and global art that many museums are criticized for.

I was also really intrigued by the question, “What does aesthetics still mean for art history today?” I think aesthetics are still important for art history because they provide a basis in which to begin looking at art. Aesthetics can help to provide an artist’s intentions or response to an issue, or can serve as examples and models of how to execute techniques. From aesthetics, from the examination of the formal qualities and characteristics of a piece of art, narratives can form and from theses narratives theories can be applied. (This is one of the aspects I am hoping to touch upon in my paper- first, the act of looking at art, the formulation of a narrative in the mind, and then the mind’s ability to connect what it sees with the narrative derived from the work of art, and then ultimately, a piece of art’s ability to convey certain ideologies.) I do not think that art history or visual studies can transcend into a totally new discipline without recognition and taking into consideration, not just aesthetics, but the “old” art history all together. Art history is a discipline that stems from the past and that should not be forgotten. Cheetham says, “We must instill the sense that the past was different, but that our access to it, our writing of it, posits a connection to the present.” (83) It is the changes and interpretations from past ways of looking at art that has allowed present art historians to formulate theories and posit new ways of conceiving art today. So, yes on aesthetics.

Visual Studies vs Art History

Art is has entered the post-epistemology stage. Transversing from the so labeled name of Art History and moving to a future of Visual Studies. Pondering questions such as: how might visual studies rethink what we thought we already knew? The keywords to note, and one we just discussed; globalization, visual studies, practices of teaching and research, historiography, cosmopolitanism, aesthetic communities. MC, says that, yes art history is broad, but still limited, and definable. The visual arts/visual culture challenges the traditional modes of assessing the aesthetics. The comment he made about the nature of the 'decision' and how one comes to one's research, made me think about the validity of some of these authors we've been reading. I think it's our programmed Art Historical voice in all of us. Though we should have an open approach to such ideas, abstract writing, calls for abstract thinking/assessing.

MAH, arises the question, do we take the art out of history, or the history out of the art? Why, remove anything, can't they be happily married? I mean, if art could be/is sometimes, called timeless, should we not just appreciate it for the pure aesthetics, and does knowing the 'history' of a work completely change our perspective on the art? From a more contemporary standpoint, we think of some of the famous artists who we have became so enamored with their life profile; they should be in PEOPLE magazine. That could be an example of 'taking the art out of history.'

This one little liners get me, such as 'history must depend on the nature of the interpreting subject.' This makes me think that if art were timeless, every person would view a piece of art in a completely different time, in the context of their contemporary times. Ok, yes this seems obvious, but I want to know what happens when you x-out the interpreting, another impossible notion, is it the same as the saying goes, "If a tree falls in the forest, an no one's around, does it make a sound?" Well, is art, Art if there are no interpreters?

The 'value of value.' Who places the high status on something to enforce the idea of value? Responsible, are they not the historians we have came to praise for their defining of aesthetic value. When MAH, digressed about the past interfering with the present, this makes me think of how we are constantly comparing to what is the art of the moment to the art that has been done. This may be the reason we feel the need to change the title 'Art History' to 'Visual Arts', one is a field of study, the other an intellectual attitude. Saying that we need to move on, forward, and not just dwell in the past, with this past artist, and their artworks. I think we're trying to re-glamoritize art history, be a little avant-garde, it's good.

Discourse in Art History

In a postmodern world, the knowledge of the museum, the academia, and other institutions are considered one branch of knowledge and language. There is no longer a narration that provides any answers or truisms in the art world because we live in a world with too many choices. In the readings this week, I had was more reserved and critical in the authors' knowledge of the museum and art because I realized the text did not encompass a totalitarian viewpoint. This positive truism I was seeking when I originally started my studies in art history is not dead but has never existed from the days of Vasari all the way to the present day.

With the readings of postmodernism in mind, The Postcolonial Constellation article written by Okwui Enzewor seeks to degrade the renewed vision of the Tate Museum in London. Through all of his finger-pointing and critiquing of the Tate continuing to exhibit in a modernist fashion, Enzewor has forgotten where he is received his training within the arts. Being born in Nigeria does not mean that Enzewor's knowledge is composed of eastern or indigeneous thoughts from his native African homeland. In reality, Enzewor has received a Western education that had defined Modernism during the beginning of the Enlightenment. For Enzewor to berate and attack the Tate Museum is to discount his own education. If it was not for the Western thinking and training in which Enzewor was so privileged to receive, he would never have had the ability to write this article, teach at the University of Pittsburgh, and, presently, be the president of the San Francisco Art Institute. Although we need to look at and analyze art outside the scope of art history and into the realm of cultural, political, religious, and social contexts, it is hypocritical for Enzewor to relegate the exhibitioning of art inside the context of the history of art.

On the other hand, I did enjoy Eilean Hopper-Greenhill's article on What is a Museum? as it discusses the knowledge of the museum within the context of art history. Although museum's have contributed to the commodification of the art object, it has created one form of knowledge that has contributed to the public's education of art. The fact that museums are now being critically looked at and studied is now helping to bring to light the fact that the museum is not the absolute ruler in the judgment of art and its histories, but that it is one source of knowledge within the discourses of a postmodern world. However, the general public has been limited by their art historical knowledge because of the hegemony of the museum as the supreme authority figure. The museum, as the Panopticon, has controlled the surveillance and identities of artists within the different movements of art. But as Foucault points out, there is discourse outside of the museum, such as political and cultural contexts, that remove any chance of their being a universal truth being offerned by the museum. We are made aware that knowledge is composed of factors outside the history of art as defined by the museum, curators, and catalogs that attempt to authenticate their knowledge as being on top of the institutional hierarchy. Therefore, we need to continue an institutional critique of the museum until it accepts historical, social, and cultural contexts with an equal status to aesthetics in order to increase knowledge. However, in postmodernism, there is no way to provide the positive truism that aesthetics and connoiseurship seeks to comfortably provide.

Globalization- A New Challenge for Museums

Enwezor writes, “Here, what marks the critical division between culture and art is that for centuries art as such has waged a fierce battle of independence from all cultural, social economic, and political influences.” Battle waged or not, I do not think there is any denying the relationship between art and culture, not even with the apparent tolls of globalization. Art is still produced by someone, or now, something, but there still remains an inspiration or purpose at the root of production. Enwezor then states that contemporary artists today are driven by the “new forms of governmentality and institutions, new domains of living and belonging as people and citizens, cultures and communities, defined by the post-colonial matrix that shapes the ethics of subjectivity and creativity today.” He contrasts this modern notion with that of “classical European thought . . . informed by its own internal cohesion, without an outside.” I would argue that classical Europe was just as driven by “new” forms of government and institutions as is true with today’s contemporary society. Enwezor uses the word “thought,” “classical European thought”- “thought” implies an active process, a reaction to something in which to first have thought about, meaning that there had to be something to react to. I think that classical Europe, although not faced with the exact governments and institutions as we are occasionally burdened with today, had their own burdens in the form of government, which in many cases was the church. The church took the form of both institution and government.

I also have to wonder what the difference is between globalization and imperialism that Enwezor refers to. He writes about globalization after imperialism, and then uses the term “post-imperialism” to define his “postcolonial constellation.” What’s exactly is globalization but another form of imperialism? Another way for powers to influence and push ideas? This may be a bit of a generalization, I realize, but what is the museum but another way in which to attempt to convey ideology and construct history- possibly another form of globalization? With that said, I think that what Enwezor is so enraged about in his article is the Tate Modern’s attempt to categorize and globalize its exhibition of African Art. How do you exhibit something that was not made for the purpose of being art, but made for a specific reason, for a specific task, by a specific culture? Are these objects then considered art? Should they be displayed in an art museum known for modern and contemporary exhibitions? The exhibition is then forced to include text about how the objects were used and what their intended purpose was, turning the museum and the exhibition into the curator’s and/or the museum’s own view or take on the history of a certain culture. It is an attempt in which to globalize and categorize, in this case African objects within the context of a museum, displaying them as art, and constructing a history for an entire "Africa" based on only the objects part of the exhibition. The objects that are purposely left out are just as important, and tell just as much about Britain's own views about colonial history. Obviously, Enwezor feels that the Tate Modern failed miserably and has not moved passed colonialism at all. Once again, it seems as though the history of African cultures are falsely reconstructed and dominated by a powerful institution, the museum. I believe that museums and curators today face a huge challenge during a time with it seems like artists and the world for that matter are fighting against and resisting globalization and the old way of categorization and classification.

Postcolonialism and the Museum

Enwezor begins with a call for a new and critical look at artistic production and how it relates to the postcolonial global culture that we live in today. But, he also thinks that a look at the artwork itself can give a clearer picture of what our postcolonial world really looks like today than can simply looking at what he calls the “postcolonial constellation.” He says that his article is a response to previous assertions that he made about the content of art being based “around the norms of...postcolonial...forms.” These forms are named as hybridization, creolization, etc., with a cosmopolitan flavor. He also asserts that in order to discuss this art, a discourse has to base itself on modernity and imperialism as well as the postcolonial discourse. He ends the first section by introducing a discussion about the proper role of the curator in our current postcolonial imperialist, modernist based cultural world.
In the next section he begins by talking about the kinds of criticisms on curatorial work today. One is speculative and general and sees contemporary art as a novelty. The second is institutional and is either academic or museological. He says art is scientific and autonomous – not cultural. One of his examples is the appropriation of African sculptures by European artists and a failure to properly and fully address this appropriation. Enwezor contends that the analysis has been largely formal (or scientific).
At this point Enwezor brings in the discourse of Peter Burger who says, “Conceiving of art’s apartness from society as its ‘nature’ means involuntarily adopting the l’art por l’art concept of art and simultaneously making it impossible to explain this apartness as a product of a historical and social development.” I love this “catch 22” aspect that he gives to the formalist approach. Enwezor says this has led to opposing traditions that can be described as the same type of criticism that he calls institutional. Institutional criticism is a domain fought over by traditionalist and progressive groups, who Enwezor says, reject any social function of art. Enwezor gives two examples of this phenomenon; one of which scrutinizes the situation at the Tate Modern. Here the curators had decided to initiate a more dialectical approach to explain the heritage of European modernism, which ends up being troubling rather than “progressive.” Enwezor can only surmise that this failure is due to the Tate’s logical position as the heir to European primitivist discourse.
Enwezor then discusses the ever-multiplying problems of and with museum curatorial work in the postcolonial climate. He then posits that the curatorial response has been to assimilate five historical effects, which are impermanent and contingent. They are the “enlargement” of exhibitions, decolonization and cultural identity, heterogeneity, mediatization of culture, and globalization of economic production and culture.
With all of these in mind, how does the curatorial process work intellectually? The curator has to think within and outside of the canon. Enwezor suggests that it is impossible for the curator to NOT ally himself or herself with the institutionally ordered experience of art. This is true, although in an ideal world people would use their abilities to think and allow for their own discourse of thought with that which the museum sets forth. Enwezor says, “Another way of approaching the discourse on curatorial practice is to understand the work of the curator as a mode of practice that leads to particular ways of aligning thought and vision through the separation and juxtaposition of a number of models within the domains of artistic production and public reception.” Is this not what the artist does? Artists work in a way that lead to particular ways of aligning thought and vision. Often the work of artists is meant to make us think or to portray a particular point of view. Why is it that the curator or the museum must always have this aura of authority? Why can’t they be seen as an extension of the artist in that their work is there to make us think and talk – not to produce yet another master narrative, but rather “continuous redefinitions” to discuss, reject, act upon, accept, etc.?

Vogel’s article was an interesting account of an exhibition that she put together in an attempt to be as idealistic as possible in the representation of African art within the museum setting. I found her methods interesting, but disagreed with many of the things that she said. For example, “If the audience knows one thing about African art, it knows these objects were never meant to be seen in museum buildings.” That may be true, deep down. But, I think that a majority of the public doesn’t even consider the possible uses of the objects it sees in the museum setting. Most people are trained to look at an object and decide whether they like it or not. Not enough people are educated enough about art to truly be discerning about the social history of any object without some explanation.
I enjoyed Bann’s article and particularly that he addressed the fact that the discourse within a mode of display is largely dependent on the system of knowledge within the period in which the display is made. This related very well to Enwezor’s article and his discussion of the modes of display (and discourse within that display) in the postcolonial period. Bann also asks what it means “to see a culture and to understand it by looking at objects.” I think this is an extraordinarily pertinent question, yet almost impossible to answer. All it really means is that we can never get a full view unless we actually live in the moment of those objects – and even then, the experience is entirely subjective.
Eilean Hopper’s article was very clear and practical and offered some valuable insight into the history of museums and the manner in which they have related to systems of knowledge over the years. But, she also talks about how we look at things by trying to show how they are similar rather than different. She offers a doorway to explore how museums might follow a path that differentiates their goals and methods of conceptualizing themselves that can be quite different from how it has been done in the past.