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Deconstruction and the Visual Arts: Art, Media, and Architecture. - book reviews
Art Bulletin, The, Dec, 1995 by Michael Kelly
If it were true, as Mieke Bal critically reports and Jonathan Culler recounts, that some people assume there is "a general sense of what 'theory' is" such that "readers do not feel the need to ask what is meant by 'theory,'" then none of these four books would have any urgency, and one of them (PT) could only state the obvious (PT 33, 13).(1) For why ask about the point of theory if everybody knows what theory is, as part of knowing what theory is entails knowing its purpose? This entailment is not necessary but is warranted in this case, since all forty-plus authors who edited, introduced, wrote, or contributed to these four books have an instrumental view of theory. They understand theory mainly, if not exclusively, in terms of what it can do for them as art historians, and they have little interest in the truth (or even just value) of theory independently of this instrumentalism, or in the truth value of their own claims separate from their pursuit of particular methodological and political goals. Not surprisingly, given such an attitude about theory, there is no general sense among these art historians of what theory is, if by "general" is meant either "shared" or "overarching." For if they agree on anything, it is that no single theory has priority in art history, that there is no overarching theory for all the theories utilized in art history, and that, though here there is some dissension, there is no nonpolitical argument for using theory in art history. So it turns out that "theory" is very much up in the air after all, especially since there are other art historians who disagree with all the art theorists in these volumes.
We can therefore expect to find many different senses or, what is the same thing here, uses of theory, which can be delineated according to the distinct purposes theory is called on to serve.(2) First, theory investigates, challenges, and replaces the theoretical presuppositions and commitments of art history's methodology. Second, theory uncovers the political beliefs that shape art and the subjects who interpret it. Third, theory interprets the apparent or latent cultural meaning of images. Implicit in all three uses is a fourth one, where theory is employed to understand what constitutes (if not actually to constitute) historical artifacts as works of art (images or forms of representation) in the first place, that is, to grasp the psychological, social, and other causes or conditions of works of art, as well as of those who make and interpret them. Since the fourth use of theory remains mostly implicit, and the third generally presupposes one and two, I will group the four uses into the first two, the methodological and the political.(3) My aim is to combine an immanent critique of art theory - the self-critique of art theory as it develops within and among the essays under review here - with my own expectations of art theory as a philosopher writing on aesthetics.
The first use of theory focuses on the presuppositions of art history's methodology and is thus a form of self-criticism of what, on a theoretical level at least, shapes art history's understanding of art. The key presuppositions here relate to the concepts of truth, meaning, and, especially, objectivity. Resisted are the modernist versions of these concepts, namely, those characteristic of art history's mid-20th-century self-understanding. Instead of the modernist model of politically disinterested, ahistorical scholarship committed to objectivity (that is, standards and goals of research independent of the art historians' own values or conditions), art theorists favor politically and historically informed scholarship. Replacing modernist or objectivist art history are, to varying degrees, relativist, historicist, and, most emphatically, subjectivist methodologies. These methodologies are established through analyses of authorship, feminism, masculinity, identity/difference, vision, the gaze, power, death, and so on.(4) The net contribution of theory in art history is, on this account, multiple methodologies based on these concepts and analyses. Theory is, in effect, reduced to method.
Several essays exemplify this first use of theory while raising critical and important issues about art history, past and present. For example, in "Generating the Renaissance, or the Individualization of Culture" (PT 145-54), Stephen Bann argues that art history's notion of "the Renaissance" was invented in the 19th century as part of a generative series, a grammatical matrix including "Classical Antiquity" and "the Middle Ages" before it and "the Modern" (and "the Postmodern") after it. Calling this notion an "invention" means that it does not correspond to a positive periodization of historical reality and that it is not just a stylistic category. Rather, "the Renaissance" is "a promise of cultural synthesis" that energized 19th-century art history, enabling it to triumph symbolically over the dialectic of absence and presence that was initiated when modernity, beginning with the Enlightenment, tried to break radically from the historical past (PT 153). The implication of this "constructivist" view of art history is that periods of history and styles of art are not objective, that is, not independent of art history's methodological presuppositions. In "Form and Gender" (VC 384-411), David Summers continues this type of critical reflection on the "working language" of art history. He argues that the notion of "form" developed in philosophy since Aristotle, and utilized within art history since its inception, has been genderized throughout its history: "form," like much of the metaphorical language in which art historians discuss artistic creation, is active and masculine, while its counterpart, "content," is passive and female. The genderization of "form" was especially acute during the late 19th century, according to Summers, when art history became an established academic discipline, thereby making the institutional foundations and aesthetic assumptions of modern art history systematically exclusive of women. This last point is developed further by Lisa Tickner in "Men's Work? Masculinity and Modernism" (VC 42-82), where she demonstrates how notions of masculinity and critiques of women were inscribed into British modernism between 1905 and 1915 through the writings of Augustus John, Roger Fry, and Wyndham Lewis. The very methodology of modernist art history is exclusive of women, and so is the history of art constructed on this basis. Donald Preziosi continues in this vein in "Modernity Again: The Museum as Trompe l'Oeil" (DVA 141-50) by examining the role of museums in the same foundations and assumptions of modern art history. Museums are not merely coterminous with modernity, but are actually "social instruments" for its fabrication and maintenance. In Preziosi's words, they are part of the history of the enframing of modern art and thus of art history itself. Once again, art history is not objective, in this case because it is not independent of the historical institutions that enframe it.(5)
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