Professional Documents
Culture Documents
t •
5
LAURENCE KING
ries f
rt istor
Published in 2005 by Laurence King PUblishing Ltd
361-373 City Road
London EC1 v 1LR
United Kingdom
ISBN 978-1-85669-417-9
Printed in China
IV I CONTENTS
Vi CONTENTS
Structuralism and post-structuralism 131 Introduction
Culture as structure I Binary oppositions I Intertextuality and
the death ofthe author I Post-structuralism I Foucault's history:
How to use this book
knowledge is power I Structuralism, post-structuralism, and art
history I Practicing structuralist and post-structuralist art history
Deconstruction 143 I want to sU~19est a different metaphor for theoretical work:
Art history and deconstruction I Practicing deconstructive art the metaphor ofstruggIe, ofwrestling with the angeIs. The
history onl!:l theor!:l worth having is that which !:I0u have to fight
Postrnodernism as condition and practice 149 off, notthat wh ich !:I0U speak with profoundjlueney.
D~nin.lJ modernism(s) l Adding the "post" to modernism I
Challenging master narratives I Fragmentation, pastiche, and the Stuart Hall, Cultural Studies and
simulacrum I Modernism, postmodernism, and art history I Its Theoretical Legacies (1992)
Practicing postmodernist art history
Conclusion 157
A place to start 158 This book gives you a starting point, no more and no less, in
approaching theories of art historical practice. It is neither encyclo-
Chapter6 Writingwiththeory 159 pedic nor exhaustive-I don't know how it could be and not lose
The kind ofpaperyou're probablywriting now 159 its usefulness as a reference, the kind of dog-eared book that you
Learning how to write with theory 163 keep in a pile next to the computer.
The place of theory in research 165 This book provides signposts, a set of possible orientations
Which comesjirst? I How do you know which theory (or theories) toward the field ofart history, by presenting some of the theoretical
to use? perspectives most widely used in the discipline today. I have done
Writing the paper 169 my best not to over-synthesize, but to present individual
Crafting a theoretically driven argument I Integrating theory I arguments, controversies, and divergent perspectives whenever
Supporting your pointslproviding evidence possible. Art-historical theory is a forum of intense, often
Creativity, imagination, and truth 172 passionate debate. These ideas it embraces aren't ever a "done
deal," but are always under development and constantly changing.
For that matter, art history itself, as an academic discipline, isn't a
Notes 173 "done deal": it has changed enormously since I was an
Acknowledgments undergraduate-twenty years ago as I write this-and it will
182
change just as much over the next twenty years.
Index 183 So who, do I imagine, is going to be looking for the signposts I
photo credits 186 present here? My imagined readers are undergraduate students of
art his tory. They are people seriously interested in the practice of
art his tory, even if they are new to it and even if they are not intend-
ing to make professional careers as art historians. They are people
who are interested in the world of ideas, who engage in intellec-
tual, political, and artistic pursuits outside their coursework. They
are people who are not content simply to memorize slides-in
fact, I sometimes hope that they are people who actively resist
:), 2/INTRODUCTlON: HOWTO USE THIS BOOI< 3/INTRODUCTlON: HOWTO USE THIS BOOI<
study guides recommend a process called SQ3R (Survey, Ques- (hapter 1
tions, Read, Recite, Review).2 The reader first surveys, or skims,
the reading to get an idea of the nature of the argument, paying
Thinking about theory
special attention to the introduction, conclusion, illustrations or
diagrams, headings and subheadings. Then the reader develops a The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
set of questions about it. Headings and subheadings will often
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (1984)
provide clues: a subheading such as "Freud and Ancient Egypt"
might become "Why and how was Freud interested in Ancient And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that ofthe little
Egypt?" Next comes reading the piece, either taking notes or anno- piece ofmadeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray ... my aunt
tating the text itself (underlining or highlighting alone is a Lionie used to give me, dipping itfirst in her own cup oftea or tisane.
relatively passive and ineffective reading method). Jot down Marcel Proust, Swann's Way (1913)
answers to your questions, add new questions as important points
emerge, and be sure you understand new terms. In the recall stage,
summarize what you've read, check whether your initial questions
have been answered, and pay special attention to ideas that still Before exploring different strands of critical theory, like Marx-
don't seem clear. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the ism, feminism, or psychoanalysis, we first have to define what
argument and relate it to other works you've read. As an art histo- theory is-and answer the crucial question, why is theory impor-
rian, focus on how the reading expands your engagement with tant? Engaging with theory is hard work, and you may start to
artistic practices. A day or two later, review what you've learned to
wonder why you're bothering, when struggling through yet
help consolidate it as part ofyour base ofknowledge.
another article about cultural hegemony or the sign. You'll find
Readers who have used my previous book, Look! The Fundamen-
tais oIArt History (2003), will find both similarities and differences the answer here, I hope.
here. I've tried to keep the text simple and accessible-although,
given the complexity of the ideas discussed here, the language is
necessarily more technical. Concrete examples and practical advice What makes theory ..theory"?
about developing arguments and writing papers stand here along- Undergraduate students have often asked me this question. Why
side the discussion of more abstract ideas. I've tried my best to be are Marx's writings considered theory? When people talk about
even-handed in discussing various theories of art-historical prac- literary theory, or critical theory, is that what we're using in art
tice, but I hope that my own viewpoints and experiences as an art history? Why is one art historian's wode considered theory and
historian aren't entirely lost. another's not?
In the end, this book is an introduction to the scholarly Like "art" or "culture," theory is one ofthose words that we use
struggles-the rewarding, frustrating struggles-to which Stuart all the time but which is actually hard to define when we stop to
Hall so gracefully refers above. After reading it you won't be ready think ab out it. Theory can be defined in faidy narrow terms or more
to bill yourself as an expert on psychoanalysis or semiotics. CIs that broadly, and both perspectives are useful..
arelief or a disappointrnent?) You'Il have to read much more To start with a relatively narrow definition, 1'll turn to Merriam-
widely to gain that kind of status, but you'll be ready to make a Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, which includes under the term
start. Good luckwith your work. "theory" r11e following:
3: the general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science,
or an art <music theory>
4a: a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the
basis of action <her method is based on the theory that all
loose powerful memories. Similarly, it's hard to saywhat is going to >r. ,~.
I".'"
. -. ',~: .. r .J..~•• ~~
:.'-:. ,: .;-
free your ideas and give you new perspectives on your wor!e-a ,
quite still and erect, saying nothing, and only occasionally moving
1.2 Mark Tansey, Derrida Querying De Man, 1990 .
Oil on canvas. Collection ofMike and Penny
her arms to change her pose as the tape accumulated around her
Winton. body. When the tape was at an end, she began to unwrap herself
with slow, ritualized movements, finally kicking the tape to one side
Tansey, the son of art historians, makes paintings
about the making, and studying, of paintings. In and walking away.
this image, two great theorists of deconstruction, A number of Auckland's Pacific Islander artists and writers,
Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, struggle on cliffs inc1uding the novelist Albert Wendt, argue against the term
made of words. They reprise Sidney Paget's famous
hybridity to describe their work and their realities. lfthe work seems
illustration of the fatal encounter between Sherlock
Holmes and his nemesis Moriarty in Arthur Conan hybrid or contradictory or part this and part that, this is only because
Doyle's 1893 story "The Final Problem." the viewer looking at it stands outside the artist's reality-most
frequently in the position of the colonizerP So on one level the
gesture ofwrapping in Kihara's performance referenced the use-of
binding to render people and objects tapu (sacred) in Samoan
culture. This act c1aimed Kihara's person as something sacred or set
apart, in distinct opposition to the kind of violence directed at
transgendered people in Western cultures. At the same time, being
wrapped in a sex videotape also referenced the ways that trans-
You may be interested in portraiture, for example, and that may lead
gendered people are defined-and dehumanized-by the kind of
you to psychoanalytic and reception theory. As you become familiar
stereotypes found in pornography and other mainstream cultural
with different theoretical perspectives, you'll also be able to see
representations. Through the ge sture of unwrapping, Kihara
which ones will help you in answering certain kinds of questions
reclaimed the right to determine her own representation while
and analyzing particular wor!es of art, artistic practices, or institu-
simultaneously returning her body to a noa or non-sacred state. The
tions. Ultimately, this kind of inquiry leads to a rather open set of
staging of the performance (at an adult store, in a sexy outfit) refer-
questions around the relationship between art, ideas, and society
enced the urban Pacific drag-queen
(Figure 1.2). Are artwor!es or practices necessariIy vehic1es for ideas
scene, and there was something,
in society? Can art and ideas exist in separate realms? Can they exist
to~, of the geisha in Kihara's self-
outside society? What do ideas-in this case, critical theory-teII us
conscious and highly-stylized per-
about the arts? What do the arts tell us about critical theory?
formance of gender: Kihara is also
I want to emphasize the idea that theoretical analysis is not a
Japanese, and sometimes goes by
one-way street: theory is not something simply to be applied to
the name of Dusky Geisha. But
wor!es of art. Rather theory, visual arts, culture, and poIitics are all
standing there on Karangahape
caught up in a web of relations. Sometimes it is art that helps me
Street watching the performance, I
think through theory rather than the other way around. For
didn't feel that Kihara was only
example, a performance by the artist Shigeyuki Kihara (Figure I. 3),
"part" any ofthese things: each was
who identifies herselfas afa'afqfine (in her Samoan heritage, a man
a whole aspect ofher whole self as
who dresses and lives like, and considers himself, a woman) made
presented in the performance.
me reconsider how I think about multiple cultural practices, gender
identities, and the idea ofhybridity-a widely used concept in post-
colonial discourse (see Chapter 3). In the performance, a collab- 1.3 "lala Siva," performance
orator broke open the casing ofa sex video and then slowly walked piece col/aboration between
around Kihara, wrapping her in the shiny videotape. Kihara stood Shigeyuki Kihara and Filipe
Tohi, Auckland, 2003.
1
~ ...........~\.
18 J CHAPTER 2 THE ANALYSIS OF FORM, SYMBOL, AND SIGN
19 J CHAPTER 2 THE ANALYSIS OF FORM, SYMBOL, AND SIGN
renounced ilIusionism and no longer sought to replicate three-
dimensional space. Each art form had to develop, and be critiqued, topknot and elongated earlobes represents the Buddha. Sometimes
according to criteria developed in response to its particular inter- iconographers focus on a particular element within an image, such
nal forms. In "Modernist Painting" (19 61 ), Greenberg developed as a human figure who is part of a larger crowd scene, or a flower
these ideas further, contending that the subject ofart was art itself, motif used to decorate a capital; at other times, they focus on the
the forms and processes of art-making: modern art focused on image as a whole, such as the Last Supper. The process of identifi-
"the effects exdusive to itself" and "exhibit[ed] not only that cation may not be all that simple: it often requires extensive
which was unique and irreducible in art in general, but also that knowledge ofa culture and its processes ofimage-making.
which was unique and irreducible in each particular art. "7 Abstract Although the terms "iconography" and "iconology" are often
Expressionist painting, with its focus on abstraction, the picture used interchangeably, they actually refer to two distinct pro ces ses
plane, and the brush stroke, was ideally suited to this perspective, ofinterpretation. Iconology, in a way, picks up where iconography
although Greenberg took pains to emphasize that modernism was leaves off. It takes the identifications achieved through icono-
not a radical break from the past but part ofthe continuous sweep graphic analysis and attempts to explain how and why s~ch
of the his tory ofart. 8 imagery was chosen in terms of the broader cultural background
Early in her career, the American art theorist and critic Rosalind of the image. The idea is to explain why we can see these images as
Krauss was an associate ofGreenberg's, but she broke with hirn in "symptomatic" or characteristic of a particular culture. So, for
the early 1970S to deveIop her own very distinctive vision of mod- example, once you've determined that astatue represents St.
ernism. Her work often stresses formalist concerns, though Catherine, then you may want to ask why St. Catherine was
through post-structuralist semiotic and psychoanalytic perspec- depicted in this particular place and time by this particular artist.
tives (see "Semiotics" later in this chapter, and Chapter 4). Her Unlike some of the theoretical approaches discussed in this
essay "In the Name ofPicasso", first delivered as a lecture in 19 book, which developed in other disciplines and have been adapted
80 by art historians, iconography and iconology were developed first
at the Museum ofModern Art, is a prime example. In it, she argues
against using biographicalor contextual information to interpret by art historians specifically far the analysis of art. In asense,
Picasso's Cubist wor!es, especially the collages, precisely because iconography, as the identification ofimages, has a long history: the
the wor!es themseIves reject the task of representing the world (or Roman scholar Pliny (AD 23-79), for example, in his Natural
mimesis). According to Krauss, Picasso's collages engage in Histol'!:J, took care to discuss the subject matter of the images he
"material philosophy," that is, through their form and materials was discussing. Iconography became more systematized in the
they assert that representation is fundamentally about the absence sixteenth century, when iconographic handbooks that explained
of actual presence. 9 Krauss criticizes the practice of interpreting different themes and allegorical personifications were published
artwor!es primarily in terms ofartists' biographies, a phenomenon for the use of artists and connoisseurs. Somewhat later, the Italian
that she witheringly labels "Autobiographical Picasso."l0 She fur- art connoisseur and intellectual Giovanni Pietro Bellori (1615-
ther challenges the way that art history ignores "all that is 1696), in his Lives ofthe Modern Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1672),
transpersonal in his tory-s tyle, social and economic context, combined elements of his predessor Giorgio Vasari's influential
archive, structure" and as an alternative emphasizes the potential biographical approach with iconographic analysis, as he tried to
ofsemiotics as a concept ofrepresentation. l1 explaill the literary sources of images. In the eighteenth century,
the German scholar Johann Joachim Winckelmann (r7q-q68)
lconography and iconology laid the foundation for the modern, systematic approach to
Iconography means, literaIly, "the study of images." At its simplest iconography in his studies of subject matter in anciellt art. 12
level, the practice of iconography means identitying motifs and
Panofsky's icol1ography arid icol1ology
images in Wor!es of art: a woman with a wheel in her hand repre-
sents St. Catherine, a figure sitting cross-Iegged with hair in a Working in England, the Austrian art historian Aby Warburg
(1866-1929) and his students developed modern iconographic
\ Sign /.
\ /
Object
~j
mentallyon the work oftwo theoretieians, the Swiss linguist Ferdi- 2.4 Diagram ofPeircean sign
nand de Saus sure (1857-I9I3) and the American philosopher
CharIes Sanders Peiree (I839-1914). Aeeording to Saussure, the Peirce developed a very elaborate taxonomy of signs (over
sign is eomposed oftwo parts (Figure 2.3):
59,000 types!), butwhat's most helpful to arthistorians is his iden-
signifier the form that the sign takes tification ofthree basic kinds ofsigns:
signified the eoneept it represents
Symbol the signifier is purely arbitrary or eonventionalj it
The relationship between the signifier and the signified is the does not resemble the signified. Examples: alpha-
proeess of signifieation, represented by the arrows. So, to go back betiealletters, numbers, trafiic signs.
to the example of a tree, that thing you're looking at out the win- kan the signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating
dow would be the signified, and the word "tree" spelled out on the the signified, or being similar to it in some of its
page would be the signifier.24
qualities. Examples: a portrait, a model airplane.
CharIes Sanders Peiree explained the strueture of signs some-
Index the signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected
what differently. He argued that the sign is made up ofthree parts:
in some way (physically or causally) to the signified
Representamen the form that the sign takes (not neeessarily in a way that can be observed or inferred. Examples:
material) medieal symptoms (an index ofdisease), smoke (an
Interpretant the sense made ofthe sign index offire), footprints (an index of a passing per-
Objeet the thing to whieh the sign refers son), photographs and films (the direct resultofthe
imprint oflight on a sensitized surface).
Within Peirce's model ofthe sign, a trafik light, when considered
as a sign for the eoneept of stopping your ear, would eonsist of: Signs don't usually belong exclusively to one category: there is a
a red light at an interseetion (the representamen)j vehicles halting great deal of overlap, and signs often partake of characteristies of
(the objeet)j and the idea that a red light indieates that vehicles more than one oftllese types. For example, a photographie portrait
must stop (the interpretant). Peiree understood that the proeess of is both an index and an ieon, beeause it is a direet traee of the physi-
interpreting signs tends to generate even more signs: the way the eal presenee of the person (via light) and beeause it resembles that
driver formulates the idea that ears should stop is a sign as well as person. For your purposes, labeling an image as a partieular type
an interpretant. Peiree's strueture is often represented as a triangle ofsign isn't as important as the kinds ofquestions you ean generate
in which the dotted line between the sign vehicle and the referenee by thinking about these different processes of signifieation, these
indicates that there's no automatie or natural connection between different relationships between signifier and signified, and the
the two-the conneetion must be construeted (Figure 2.4).25 relationship between them (interpretant) generated byan observer.
conclusion Semiotics
Barthes, Roland. Elements ofSemiology, transl. Annette lavers and Colin Smith .london:
Perhaps of any chapter in this book, this one has presented Jonathan Cape, and New York: Hili and Wang, 1g68.
the most divergent group of theories, from formalism to Eco, Umberto. Semiot;cs and the Philosophy ofLanguage.london: Macmillan, and
iconography to semiotics, each of which has its passionate Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984·
Kristeva, Julia. Desire in language: ASemioticApproach to Literature and Art, ed. leon S.
practitioners. In the end, each of these approaches to art is Roudiez, transl. Roudiez, Thomas Gora, and Alke ]ardine. New York: Columbia
concerned with interpretation, which can be defined as the University Press, 1gBo.
Peirce, CharIes Sanders. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings (1867-1893), ed.
deIiberate, thoughtful explanation of something, or the Christian Kloesel, Nathan Houser, et al. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.
search for meaning. Where and how that meaning is to be
Word and image
found is hotly contested-whether, as formalists claim, it Bai, Mieke. Reading "Rembrandt"; Beyond the Word-Image opposition. Cambridge:
lies only within the work, or, as iconographers and semioti- Cambridge University Press, 1991).
cians would assert, within the work as it exists as part of, and MitcheII, W.]. T.lconology; Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1986.
44/ CHAPTER 2 THEANALYSISOF FORM,SYMBOL,ANDSIGN 45/ CHAPTER 2 TH E ANALYSIS OF FORM, SYM BOL, AN D SIGN
Chapter 3 the Enlightenment to the present-in this way. This perspective is
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
11 be used to pacity and co-opt the working dasses and to spread the
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),
52/ CHAPTER 3 ART'S CONTEXTS
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 Du~h
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
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).
Basic Freud
How the vi ewer experiences art is an im portant subject in art his tory. Freud galvanized late Victorian society when he argued that
There is a great, and ancient, tradition of writing, called ekphrasis, in repressed des ire was at the raot of human civilization. His work
revolutionized the way people thought about desire (sexual and
which people describe works ofart (among other things) and record
otherwise), about the workings of the mind, ab out basic human
their impressions ofthem. But art historians today also investigate interactions and the human sense of self. Although subsequent
the psychological/psychical and physicaI aspects of the experience theorists have challenged virtually every aspect of his work, it
oflooking at art. This chapter will review the basic elements of such remains a touchstone of psychoanalytic theory. PU summarize
approaches, starting with psychoanalytic theory and proceeding to Freud's basic ideas here before delving into the critique.
various theories of reception and the gaze. Because of the complex Freud's theory rests on the observation that humans have to
interrelations of these theoretical approaches, and the need to pres- work to survive, which means that, unfortunately, we can't just
hang araund and have fun all daYi instead, we have to repress so me
ent a lot ofbackground material that isn't directly used in the prac-
of our tendencies to pleasure and gratification. Freud saw this
tice of art history today, 1'11 save the examples of art-historical process of repression as the key to the human psyche. As literary
analysis far the end of the chapter, rather than interspersing them critic Terry Eagleton has pointed out, if Marx looked at con-
with each section. sequences of labor in terms of social relations, politics, and the
economy, Freud looked at its implications for the psyche. 1 It's not
Art history and psychoanalysis surprising that both the materialist conception of history and
psychoanalysis emerged amid the rapid industrialization and
Happy people haue no stories. urbanization of nineteenth-century Europe, with its new forms of
Louise Bourgeois work that oppressed body and spirit.
Narrowly speaking, psychoanalysis is a method of analyzing psy- For the individual, managing repressed desires is a difflcult
chic (psychologieal) phenomena and treating emotional disorders; business, and Freud named that place in ourselves where we store
broadly speaking, it is a philosophy ofhuman consciousness, both Dur unfillfilled desires the unconscious, because we are unaware of
individual and socia!. Its modern founder is Sigmund Freud (185 - them. One way we try to manage our unfulfilled desires is through
6 sublimation, directing them toward a more socially valued objec-
1939), an Austrian doctor who developed a therapeutic method for
tive. Like so many other psychoanalytic ideas, this one has entered
analyzing the unconscious through the interpretation of dreams,
verbal slips, jokes, etc. and through the use of free association. popular culture-for example, we talk about exercise as an outlet
for sexual frustration. Freud pointed out that sometimes the reality
88/ CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOlOGY AND PERCEPTION IN ART
89/ CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOlOGY AND PERCEPTION IN ART
principle (the necessity of work) represses the pleasure principle (the
desire to have fun) so much that it makes us siek. This is neurosis. in acceptable ways eventually builds memories and skills
Unfortunately, human beings aren't born equipped with the (projection, rationalization, and dis placement) , and the ego
psychie mechanisms for repressing our unfulfilled desires. We gradually becomes aware ofitself as an entity. With the formation
have to learn how to do it in childhood, and Freud was intensely ofthe ego, the individual becomes a self, instead of an amalgam-
interested in the sequence of childhood development. In particu- ation of urges and needs. While the ego may temporarily repress
lar, he focused on the harnessing ofthe libido, the individual's psy- dIe id in fear of punishment, eventually these external sources of
chie (not merely sexual) energy. As the child's libido develops, it is punishment are internalized. The superego uses guilt and self:
centered first on the child's body. The baby will nurse, and in the reproach to enforce these rules and repress the id. The superego is
process learn that this biologieal process is also pleasurable-this subdivisible into two parts: conscience and ego ideal. Conscience
i8 the first dawning of sexuality. After weaning, the child passes to teIls what is right and wrong, and forces the ego to inhibit the id in
the anal stage. The anus becomes an erotogenie zone, and the pursuit of mo rally acceptable, not pleasurable or even realistic,
child takes a sadistic pleasure in defecation; at the same time, the goals. The ego ideal aims the individual's path oflife toward tJ'le
child is anarchie and aggressive. ideal, perfect goals instilled by society. (This dynamic has implic-
ations for the understanding of the workings of ideology,
As the erotogenic zone shifts from the anus to the genitals,
children pass into the phallic stage. Freud deIiberately called this discussed in Chapter 3.) In this way, the psyche attempts to make
the phallic stage, rather than genital stage, because girls had to be up for the loss ofthe perfect life experienced as a baby.
content with the clitoris, which he saw as inferior to the penis. At The idea that the self is split into warring parts has been
this point, the Oedipus complex in boys and the Electra complex in absorbed into pop culture, and so may not seem strange to you,
girls involves the child's unconscious desire to possess the oppo- but in Freud's time it was revolutionary. Early twentieth-century
site-sexed parent and to eliminate the same-sexed one. The boy Europe had inherited the humanist idea of the unified self, whieh
feels aggression and envy toward his father, yet also fears the retali- is whole and exercises free will and self-determination. Freud
ation of this powerful riyal: the boy has noticed that women have undercut aU this, although he did hold out the pramise that the
no penises, and he fears that his father will remove his penis, too. ego, the sense of self, can be strengthened enough to manage
He only resolves the conBict by reaJizing that he can possess his repressed desires and achieve a sense of unity.
mother vicariously by identitying with the father, thereby assum- Unfortunately, repressed desires aren't just stored in the
ing his appropriate sexual role in life. Similarly, the Electra com- unconscious like unwanted files in an office warehouse; instead,
plex has its roots in the little girl's discovery that she, like her like nuclear waste, they always seem to have a way ofleaking out.
mother and other women, lacks the penis that her father and other According to Freud, there are a number of relatively harmless ways
men possess. Her love for her father then becomes both erotic and in which repressed desires assert themselves. Freud saw dreams as
envious, as she yearns for a penis ofher own. She comes to blame the expression of repressed desires that play out in symbolic terms
her mother for her perceived castration, and is struck by penis because they are too disturbing to express direcdy and think about
envy, the counterpart to the boy's castration anxiety. consciously. The unconscious also manifests itself through para-
As the child grows, the pressure ofdealing with conflicting and praxis: unexplainable failures of memory, mistakes, misreadings,
repressed desires splits the mind into three aspects: id, e8 0 , and mislayings (you can never seem to find your keys on weekday
sup ere8°' The id is the part of the self devoted to the pleasure- mornings), and the odd misspeakings we call "Freudian slips."
principle, the part that can't suppress or defer pleasure, but instead Freud argued that these aren't random occurrences, but can be
always demands immediate gratification. The ego has a bettel' traced to unconscious wishes and intentions. Similarly, jokes
grasp on the reality principle: it understands that sometimes it's aren 't just fun ny in the Freudian world: they express unconscious
preferable, even safer, to delay gratification. Because of this, the libidinal, aggressive, or anxious impulses. However, if the
ego often has to repress the id. The ego's efforts to satisty these repressed desires are very strang, the ego will have to work extra
hard to reroute them, and this internal conflict results in neurosis,
90 I CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGY AND PERCEPTiON IN ART
91 I CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGY AND PERCEPTION IN ART
paranoia, or schizophrenia (it's important to remember here that
Freud was working before any real understanding of the impact of Moses's triumph over his passionate anger for the sake ofa
genetics, biochemistry, and enviranmental factors on such condi- cause. 4
In Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory ofhis Childhood (1910), Freud
tions). Freud developed psychoanalysis, "the talking eure," as a
way to heal psychic conflicts. developed the pathographical approach, applying the rnethods of
clinical psychoanalysis to the artist's life and work, trying to
For Freud, human society operated like the individual psy-
. "the artist's homosexuality, the slowness with which he
che, but on a grand scale. Culture pravides a way to express and
manage desires in conflict with one another and with society, and. worked, even his use of certain forms and motifs. 5 Freud focused
is at the same time the praduct ofimpulses denied a more directly on Leonardo's early childhood, which he spentwith his unmarried
sexual or aggressive satisfaction. Because sociallife originates in mother, only moving to his father's house later. One ofLeonardo's
tlH:~se irresolvable confiicts, civilization is always vulnerable to rad- childhood memo ries concerned a vulture that came to hirn in his
cradIe, opened his mouth with its tail, and repeatedIy struck his
ical disruptions. Fram the First World War until his death in I939,
lips with it. (Strangely, it turns out that "vulture" was a mistransla-
as the Second World War began, Freud witnessed increasinglyvio-
tion of the Italian: the bird was actuaUy a kite, a raptor that doesn't
lent social crises, which he interpreted as irrational "symptoms" of
have nearly the same degree of cuIturai resonance.) Freud argued
these primal conflicts. In Civili:wtion and its Discontents (r93 0 ), he
that this was actuallya fantasy, transposed to childhood, that con-
explored the consequences of repressing impulses in order to live
in society. He argued pessimistically that civilization must curtail cealed Leonardo's memo ries of nursing at his mother's breast and
also expressed his unconscious desire for fellatio. The replace-
the death instinct, but, if people are denied the satisfactions of
aggression, they turn against themselves. 2 ment of his mother by the vulture indicates that the child was
aware of his father's absence and found hirns elf alone with his
Freud on art intensely affectionate mother. Freud draws a range ofirnplications
Only in art does it still happen that a man who is
consumed by desires peiforms something resembling the
accomplishment ofthose desires and that what he does in
play produces emotional qfects-thanks to artistic
illusion-just as though it were something real.
Jungian archetypes
Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo (19 12 - 1 3)3 One ofFreud's sometime collaborators, the that people who experience mental
Swiss psychoanalyst earl Jung (1875-1961), disturbances or iIInesses are haunted by
argued that the unconscious was not them. Psychoanalysis, for Jung, is an
Freud hirns elf was extremely interested in art. He frequently ilIus-
individual but collective and shared byall exploration ofthe archetypes, so that we
trated his writings with examples drawn from art and literature- humanity. The collective unconscious is a can heal by understanding how they shape
and of course such names as the Oedipus complex derive from kind ofknowledge we are all born with, our emotional and spirituallives.
Greek rnythology. In fact, he kept a copy ofIngres's Oedipus and the though we are never conscious ofit.ln Man
Sphinx in his office and avidly collected art and antiquities. and His Symbols (1964) and other writings, In the mid-twentieth century, Jung's ideas
Despite this intense interest, onIy two ofFreud's publications Jung discussed the archetypes, key symbols were widely discussed among people
directly analyze the visual arts. In an essay on Michelangelo's Moses or images, which, he argued, appear in the interested in psychoanalytic interpretations
(19 I 4), he discusses the similarities in the ways that art history and arts, histories, philosophies, myths, and of art. Today, art historians are more
psychoanalysis both focus on the significant, but overlooked, dreams of all cultures. 6 Archetypes include interested in culturally specific inter-
the shadow, the animus and anima, the pretations ofimages, ratherthan cross-
detail, and he interprets the Moses via a dose examination of the
mother, the divine couple, the trickster, cultural comparisons and analogies that
figure's posture and gestures. Freud argued that Michelangelo the child, and the maiden, among others. may work to erase cultural difference and
depicted Moses just at the moment when he stops hirns elf from Because archetypes are not under conscious historical specificity.
breaking the tablets. Thus Michelangelo represented an inhibited control, we mayfear them, and Jung argued
96/ CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGY AND PERCEPTION IN ART 4 PSYCHOLOGY AND PERCEPTION IN ART
worid. The baby starts to become aware that it is separate from the erns the whole structure-its shape and how all the elements in
mother, and that there exist things that are not part of it; thus the the system can move and form relationships. This center is also
idea of "other" is created. (Note, however, that as yet the binary called the Phallus, to emphasize the patriarchal nature ofthe Sym-
opposition of "selflother" doesn't exist, because the baby still bolic order. No one is or has the Phallus, just as no one actually
doesn't have a coherent sense of"self".) That awareness ofsepara- rules language. The Phallus governs the whole structure, it's what
tion, or the fact ofotherness, creates anxiety and lass. At this point, everyone wants ta be (ar have) , but no element ofthe system can
the baby shifts from having needs to having demands, which can't ever take the place of the center: the desire ta be the center, ta rule
be satisfied with objects. the system, is never satisfied. The individual's position in the Sym-
At same point in this period, the baby will see itselfin a mirror. bolic is fixed by the Phallus. Unlike the unconscious, thechains of
It will look at its reflection, then look har.k at areal person-its signifiers in the Symbolic don't circulate and slide endlessly
mother, or someone else-then look again at the mirrar image. because the Phallus, as center, limits the play of elements, and
The baby sees an image in the mirror; it thinks, "that's me there." gives stability to the whole structure. The Phallus staps play, SQ
Of course, it's not the baby; it's onlyan image of the baby. But the that signifiers can have same stable meaning in the conscious
mother, or same other adult, then reinforces the misrecognition: world, even if that stable meaning is an illusion.
when the mother says, "Look, that's you!" she affirms the baby's
identification with its image. The baby begins to have a (mistaken, lacan on art
but useful) sense ofitselfas a whole person. Lacan addressed art and literature in his "Seminars" on numerous
The baby's experience of misrecognizing itself in its mirrar occasions. He was interested in Melanie Klein's interpretation ofart
image creates the ego, the conscious sense of selE Ta Lacan, ego is as reparation (see boxed text on p. 96), although he insisted at the
always on same level a fantasy, an identification with an external same time on the historical specificity of art, what he called "social
image. This is why Lacan calls the phase of demand, and the mir- recognition." That is, art isn't only private fantasy: it belangs also ta
rar stage, the realm ofthe Imaginary. The mirror image (the whole the public arena ofhistory and culture. In The Ethics ofPsychoanalysis
person the baby mistakes for itself) is known as an "ideal ego," a (1959-60), Lacan writes that "no correct evaluation of sublimation
perfect self who has no insufficiency. This "ideal ego" becomes in art is possible if we overlook the fact that all artistic praduction,
internalized; we build our sense of"self" by (mis)identif'}ring with including especially that of the fine arts, is historically situated. You
this ideal ego. The fiction of the stable, whole, unified self that the don't paintin Picasso's time as you painted in VeIazquez's. "18
baby sees in the mirrar compensates for having lost the original In The Four Fundamental Concepts ofPsychoanalysis (1964), Lacan
oneness with the mother's body that the baby enjoyed in the Real. asserts that, in addressing art, psychoanalysis must go beyand
On ce the baby has formulated same idea ofOtherness, and ofa Freud's pathobiographical concerns. 19 Art, for Lacan, is about lack:
selfidentified with its own "other," its own mirror image, then it "A work of art always involves encircling the Thing." That ward
begins to enter the Symbolic, which is the realm ofculture and Ian- encircling is important: art, for Lacan, isn't straightforward, it
guage. The Symbolic order is the structure of language itself; doesn't simply represent the presence or absence of the object of
human beings have to enter it in order to become speaking sub- desire (the Thing). Instead, paradoxically, art represents the Thing's
jects, and to designate themselves by the "1" that was discovered in presence as its absence, and helps society bear this void. Psycho-
the Imaginary. Ta enter the Symbolic as speaking subjects, analysis enables us ta address not only the artist's own psyche, but
humans must obey the laws and rules oflanguage. Lacan calls the also the larger social dimensions ofsublimation thraugh art.
rules oflanguage the Law-of-the-Father in order to link the entry
into the Symbolic to Freud's nation of the Oedipus, Electra, and lacan's critics
castration complexes, with their pivotal figure ofthe angry father. Among Lacan's fiercest cnucs and defenders are feminist
The Law-of-the-Father (ar Name-of-the-Father) is anather psychoanalysts, who have found his re-reading of Freud both
term for the Other, for the center ofthe system, the thing that gov- enormously liberating and deeply prablematic. Lacan's elimination
98/ CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGY ANO PERCEPTION IN ART 99/ CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGY AND PERCEPTION IN ART
ofmuch ofFreud's biological essentialism is a huge plus. But fem- Freud, female genitalia are "nothing" since he sees girls as cas-
inists, following in part the example ofMelanie Klein, have argued trated boys, essentially). ForIrigaray, female desire is like a lost civ-
for the centrality of the maternal fimction and its importance in the ilization whose language hasn't been deciphered. Because
development of subjectivity and access to culture and language. It; Western philosophy, since the Andent Greeks, has emphasized
as Freud and Lacan suggest, our primalY motivation for entering the the visible and concrete over the absent or invisible, feminine
sodal realm is fear of the futher, then more of us should be desire is erased or subsumed into male desire. Irigaray argues that
psychotic. The missing piece in their theories, according to feminist we must find specifically female imaginary and syrnbolic realms,
critics, is motherhood. In Tales of Love (I987), for example, the challenging the necessity ofthe monolithic law ofthe father. She
French psychoanalyst and linguist Julia Kristeva (b. I94I) argues takes a radical step in this direction in arguing that female sexual
that maternal regulation is the law before Paternal Law, before pleasure (jollissanrp.) is of a completely different order from male
Freud's Oepidal complex or Lacan's mirror stage. 20 sexual pleasure. In a celebrated passage, she explores the unique-
In "Motherhood According to Bellini" (1980) and elsewhere, ness of women's sexuality, for woman touches herself all the
Kristeva suggests that the maternal fimction cannot be reduced to time-via the "two lips" of the vagina-whereas a man needs
"natural" ideas about the mother, the feminine, or womanhood. something external (the hand, vagina, language) to touch the
By identifYing the mother's relationship to the infant as a function, penis to produce pleasure.
Kristeva separates the fimction ofmeeting the child's needs from Just as Irigaray explored the notion of a unique feminine
both love and desire. Kristeva's analysis suggests that to some sexuality, French novelist, playwright, and feminist theorist Helene
extent anyone can fulfill the maternal function, men or women. As Cixous proposes the idea of a unique female way ofwriting, ecriture
a woman and as a mother, a woman both loves and desires and as feminine, as a way ofbreaking free from patriarchy.23 Ecriturefeminine
such she is primarilya sodal and speaking being. As a woman and is an "Other" mode of discourse-it subverts the phallocentric
a mother, she is always sexed. But, insofar as she fulfills the mater- symbolic order even as it is repressed by it. Ecriture feminine gives
nal function, she is not sexed. 21 voice to that which is silenced or marginalized in the masculine
In fact, Kristeva uses the maternal body, with its two-in-one symbolic order. Critics have sometimes interpreted this as an ess-
structure, or "other" within, as a model for all subjective relations, entialist idea (see Chapter 3), but Cixous emphasizes that neither
displadng Freud and Lacan's idea of the autonomous, unified woman nor language is natural-they are both socially constructed.
(masculine) subject. Kristeva argues that, like the maternal body, Along with other feminists, American literary theorist Jane
each one of us is what she calls a subject-in-process. As subjects- Gallop (b. 1952) has challenged Lacan's insistence on the split,
in-process we are always negotiating the "other" within, that the divided subject. 24 The antagonistic model, Gallop suggests,
which is repressed. Like the maternal body, we are never com- emerges from a certain male-centered ideology in which both
pletely the subjects ofour own experience. But even if the mother is Freud and Lacan are immersed. She points to feminist and post-
not the subject or agent of her pregnancy and birth, she never colonial theorists who have critiqued the processes of Othering
ceases to be primarily a speaking subject. that are foundational to what Europeans call "Western culture":
This Freudian and Lacanian unitary subject even reveals itselfin the Selt; in this scenario, is always white and male, the Other
the way psychoanalysis approaches the issue of sexuality, based on always female or dark-sldnned. She characterizes this Othering,
the norm ofthe single unitary member: the penis. The French fem- this split in Western culture, as a heavily policed border aimed at
inist philosopher Luce Irigaray (b. 1932), for example, has noted the domination and exploitation ofwomen (and people of color, I
that there is no one single female sex organ that corresponds to the would add; see Chapter 3). Gallop asks whether the relations hip
penis.22 According to Irigaray, both Freud and Lacan do not have to the unconscious has to be adversarial, constandy undermining
an adequate way oftalking aboutwomen's sexuality and women's the ego. She draws on Freud's PsychopatholoBY of Everyday Lrre
bodies because they are wrapped up in this idea of the penis and (I9 01 ) and other writings that present the unconscious as a won-
25
can define women's sexuality only in terms of male bodies (for derful ally and a tremendous resource.
100 I CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGY AND PERCEPTION IN ART 101 I CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGY AND PERCEPTION IN ART
Within psychoanalysis, the clinical and therapeutic value of 4. 1 Bodo figure, Fon people,
Benin. Ben Heller
Lacan's work has been widely debated. There have been a number Collection, NewYork.
of critics, too, of Lacan's linguistics, particularly his dependence
on Saussure's work, which has been widely critiqued by Noam
Chomsky and others as adequate only to the individual ward and
unable to address grammar or context. 26 Shilling fram a Saus-
surean to a Peircean framework, for me at least, addresses a num-
ber ofthese objections (see Chapter 2).
102 J CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGY AND PERCEPTION IN ART 103 J CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGY AND PERCEPTION IN ART
viewers. This takes place not so much through the viewer's
represented her. This bocio was meant to control and direct her
identification with their imagery ("Gosh, I have dreams about
affections, so that the father could then go about his daily life with-
human-headed birds tao!") but by the way in which the work
out worrying about the social consequences of her rejection. Blier
positions the spectator and by formal qualities such as rhythm,
points out that in a situation like this, a kind oftransference takes
place. lust as an analysand transfers problems onto the analyst variation, and repetition.
As her key point of reference in charting visual relations,
during psychotherapy, the father transferred his problem onto the
Krauss uses two diagrams derived from psychoanalysis: the Klein
bocio, thereby experiencing relief.
group and Lacan's L-Schema (Figures 4. 2 and +3)· The Klein
In this analysis, Blier takes figures that were once called
group diagram describes the opposition between figure and
"fetishes" and regarded as signs of the superstitious "primitive"
ground, and thc implied opposition between their opposites, not-
mind, and shows how they "make sense" aestheti~ally, culturally,
figure and not-ground. Lacan's L-Schema uses a similar structure
and intellectually in a local context. She thereby enables the outside
to graph the subjectas an effectofthe unconscious: here the paired
viewer to make sense of them as weIl. Thinldng innovatively via
oppositions occur between an imagined self and a misrecognized
psychoanalytic theory, Blier comes to a very local understanding of
object, and between the unconscious Other and the resulting Self.
sculpture and the meaning (and power) of a work of art. She also
Krauss uses these charts to analyze modern artists' inventive work-
places the therapeutic dynamic invested in bocio in the larger cul-
ing processes, such as Max Ernst's collage technique and
tural and historical context ofFon culture. For her, bocio testifY to
Duchamp's readymades. For example, Krauss shows that Ernst
the disturbing effects ofwar, poverty, the slave trade, and the plan-
created his collages not only by clipping images from magazines,
tation labor system supported by the Dahomean monarchy. Trans-
catalogues, scientific manuals, etc., and adding elements to them,
ferring strang and potentially disabling emotions to these
sculptures enables Fon people to manage their emotions and sur-
vive in a difficult and hostile world.
Working in a very different vein, Rosalind Krauss's The Optical
ground .. figure
Unconscious (1994) employs psychoanalytic theory as a way of reld of synchrony 7: serial repetition
4. 2 Klein Group diagram
rethinking the history ofmodern art. 31 Borrowing a phrase from "uisual os such"
the German philosopher Walter Benjamin (I 892 - 1 940 ), Krauss
examines the "optical unconscious" of modern art, focusing on
the way in which a number of different modern artists, incIuding
Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock, and Eva Hesse,
construed their work "as a projection of the way that human vision notgro und missed encounter automaton
(figures of absence)
can be thought to be less than a master of all it surveys, in conflict (part objects)
"belang ta me"
as it is with what is internal to the organism that hauses it." Krauss
argues that the formalist his tory of modern art, as practiced by
element Greenberg or Michael Fried, has focused on formal and
"~:.:::"""""""""".""" .. ".. """."
optical works ofart at the expense ofart genera ted from the uncon- (Es)S
a' other
seiaus. She labels this art "modernism's repressed other." 4.3 Lacan L-schema diagram
"'" •. .0<::-
.
In this argument, the artist is not a master in control of the "'" <.~~
process of creating and viewing, so much as a force who releases .<::-,..~
unconscious drives and desires through represented (painted, 'f""'~ q?
('o~J'c.'
sculpted) seeing. The works that construct "the optical uncons- '0
~J'
cious" all have in common an exploration of seeing itself. At the AOther
(ego) a missed encounter
same time, these works all prompt unconscious projections from
110/ CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGYAND PERCEPTION IN ART 111 / CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGY AND PERCEPTION IN ART
The psychologist and art theorist RudolfArnheim (b. 1904) has
Reception theory 11: reader response theory
covered similar terrain in the psychology ofvisual perception from and the aesthetics ofreception
a somewhat different perspective. Arnheim challenges the idea The too is a tissue 01 quotations drawnftom the innumerable centres 01
that vision is a mechanical and primarily physiological function, culture ... The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make
up a writing are inscribed without any oithem being lost; a too's unity
and argues vehemently against the idea that vision and thought are
lies not in its origin but in its destination. Yet this destination cannot
two separate processes. Arnheim had studied Gestalt psychology any langer be personal: the reader is without history, biography,
in Bedin with major figures in the field; the ward Gestalt in German psychology; ... the reader} is simply that someone who holds tagether in
means simply "shape" or "form," and Gestalt psychology focuses a singlefie!d al! the traces by which the written tOO is constituted.
on experiments in sensory perception. Ta support his arguments Roland Barthes, The Pleasure ofthe Text (1973)
about the nature of visual thinldng, Arnheim engaged in
According to reader-response theory, meaning happens through
penetrating and wide-ranging studies of the basic perceptual
reading-it doesn't exist as a pre-given element ofthe text. Read:
structures of works of art. His first major work, Art and Visual
ing isn't for the lazy: the reader has to malee connections, fil! in
Perception (1954), traces how vision becomes the apprehension of
gaps, draw inferences, and make hypotheses as she proceeds
significant structural patterns, with chapters focusing on such
through the text. Without the active participation of the reader,
visual characteristics as balance, shape, form, space, light, color,
there wouldn't be any text. The Polish literary theorist Roman
and movement. Interestingly, he completely revised that book for
Ingarden (1893-1970) said that the text is no thing more than a
republication in 1974, having changed a number of his
series of schemata-predictable or usual patterns-wh ich the
conclusions. In his 1969 book Visual Thinking, Arnheim expanded 44
reader then interprets and shapes into meaningful language.
his challenge to the idea that verbally articulated thought precedes
The reader brings "pre-understandings," a set of contexts and
perception. He argued tllat artistic expression is a form ofreason-
beliefs and expectations, to the worle The idea is that there are
"A person who paints, writes, composes, dances, I feIt compelled
three interconnected worlds: the world ofthe author, the world of
to say, thinks Witll his sens es. " In works such as The Power 01 the
Center (1982) and The Dynamics 01 Architectural Form (977) he has the text, and the world ofthe reader.
explored particular spatial and pictorial patterns, such as the grid, the world 01.. • the world 01
and argues that form and content are inextricably intertwined. 42 the author the text
~
Norman Bryson and others have critiqued the psychology ofart
for focusing exclusively on the artist's "arc ofinner vision or per- the world 01 /
ception" running from the hand to the retina. This model excludes the reader
the arc that extends from the artist to viewer, across the contextual
When she picks up a book, the reader encounters not the world
(and conceptual) spaces in which the artist, the work ofart, and the
ofthe author, but the world ofthe text. The world ofthe autllor
vi ewer are all situated. In Visual Theory (199I), Bryson argues that
(her tastes, interests, experiences, goals) has certainly helped to
the psychology of art leads to "a vision of art in isolation from the
shape the world of the text, but it's not as if the two are identical
rest of society's concerns, since essentially the artist is alone
(not even in autobiography, where the author will include or
watching the wodd as an ocular spectacle but never reacting to the
exclude all sorts of events and emotions for various reasons). And,
world's meanings, basking in and recording his perceptions but
of course, as the autllor has worked on the book, the world ofthe
apparently doing so in same extra territorial zone, off the social
text has shaped the world of the author. Furthermore, the reader
map."43 It's an issue that Gombrich and Arnheim both aclmowl-
brings her own world to the process of reading that book, and, in
edged at various points in their writing, and art-history students
turn, her world may be affected by the experience ofhaving read it.
today, whiIe employing Arnheim's and Gombrich's wode to
The German literary critic Wolfgang Iser (b. 19 26 ), in The Art oI
achieve fresh perspectives on perception and the viewing process,
Reading (197 8), discusses further the idea of the schemata, the
also address socia! and historica! issues at the same time.
114/ CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGY AND PERCEPTION IN ART 115/ CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGY AND PERCEPTION IN ART
spectator, as part ofthe viewing experience, must mentally com- 4. 6 Edouard Manet,
Olympia, ,863. Oi!
plete the invisible reverse side of a painted figure, or trace the on canvas. Musee
course ofa staircase past its curve. Following Iser, Kemp notes that d'Orsay, Paris.
sometimes these blanks, these missing elements, are as important
as what is actual1y there-they are often used deliberately to
emphasize schemata and are meant to trigger particular responses
in the viewer.
Over thirty feet taU, Maman (Figure 4.8) depicts a pregnant spider
that is overwhelming, even menacing, and yet, at the same time,
somehow fragile. The titIe of the work and the fact that the spider
is pregnant raise the issue of maternity. Louise Bourgeois notes on
one of her drawings that she associates spiders with her mother,
"Because my best friend was my mother and she was also intelli-
gent, patient, clean and useful, reasonable, subtIe and as indispen-
sable as a spider. She was able to look after herself. "
118/ CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGY AND PERCEPTION IN ART 119/ CHAPTER 4 PSYCHOLOGY AN D PERCEPTION IN ART
mind, and society. If psychoanalysis destabilizes our
Shirin Neshat is a photographer and video artist born in Iran but
ofself, challengingwhatwe thinkwe know aboutour-
educated in the USo Herwork focuses on Muslim women and chal-
it also destabilizes our sense of our own discipline,
lenges sexist and racist stereotypes about Muslim women gener-
ated both within and outside Islam. Fervor (Figure 4-9) is a poetic we think we can know about the artist's intentions or
exploration of romantic love between a Muslim man and woman. the viewer's experience. The next chapter, in taking up issues
It raises a provocative set of questions about gen der, culture, and of epistemo10 gy, will further destabilize your sense of self (as
thegaze.
arthistorian, thatis).
~ The eye ofthe camera here is Neshat's eye: how does the shoot-
ing of the film reftect her sense ofherselfas living between two
worIds, as an Iranian-born artist living and working in New
Aptace to start
York? How does her gaze work to undercut a patriarchal, West- r>sychoanalysis
ern gaze? Freud, Sigmund. Ciuilization and its Discontents, trans!. Jean Riviere. New York: J. Cape &'
~ This video challenges the viewer, resisting easyassumptions H.Smith,1930.
Gallop, Jane. Reading lacan.lthaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.
about Self and Other (who is Self here? Who is Other?). How lacan, Jacques. "The Ethics ofPsychoanalysis." The Seminar series, Bool< VII, ed.
does your position as a viewer, your own understandings of Jacques-Alain Miller. NewYork: Norton, 1992 .
culture, religion and gender, shape your experience of the _ , "The Four Fundamental Concepts ofPsychoanalysis." The Seminar series, Book
work? XI, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. New York: Norton, 1977·
Marks, Elaine, and Isabelle de courtivron, eds. New Freneh Feminisms:AnAnthology.
~ In this film, the female protagonist wears a black chador, with
only her face exposed, and for most ofthe video, a large black Amherst: University ofMassachusetts Press, 1980.
screen physically separates her from the male protagonist. psychoanalysis and art
Neshat asserts that the piece is about the elash between sexual Freud, Sigmund. Writings on Art and literature. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1997·
desire and socia! control. How can theories of desire, sexuality, _ . "leonardo da Vinci and a Memory ofHis Childhood." Standard Edition ofthe
Collected psyehological Wori<s ofSigmund Freud, vol XI, trans!. James Strachey. london:
and the gaze help the viewer "unpack" this work? How does the
video challenge the viewer to realize the cultural specificity of Hogarth Press, 1957-
Iversen, Margaret, ed. Psyehoanalysis in Art History, a special issue of Art History 17:3
such theories?
(September 1994)·
~ What does it mean when the female protagonist ofNeshat's Kris, Ernst. Psyehoanalytic Explorations in Art. New York: International Universities Press,
film turns to face the camera? What are the irnplications for the
Spitz,195
2.
gendering of the gaze? What is the significance of this gaze for Ellen Handler. Art and Psyehe:A study in Psyehoanalysis and Aestheties. New Haven:
Neshat's representation not of "wornen" but of Muslim Yale University Press, 1g89·
wornen?
Reception theory
~ Postcolonia! and Subaltern Studies theory mayaiso help you Arnheim, Rudolf. Art and Visual Pereeption. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1954·
here. How does Neshat's film work to represent the cornplex Barthes, Roland. The pleasure of the Text, trans!. Richard Miller. New York: Farrar, Straus
voices and experiences ofMuslirn women? How do stereotypes &Giroux, 1975·
Gombrich, E.H.Art and Illusion: AStudy in the Psyehology of Pietorial Representation.
around gender, race, and religion often work to silence Muslim
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961 .
wornen? _ . The Image and the Eye. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982 .
8
Wollheim, Richard. Painting as an Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 19 7'
Freedberg, David. The Power oflmages: Studies in the History and Theory ofResponse.
Condusion Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1991.
Psychoanalysis and reception theory provide chal1enging and
provocative perspectives on the visual arts. These theories
open up art history to fundamental questions about the seIf,
124/ CHAPTER 5 TAKING ASTANCETOWARD I<NOWLEDGE '25/ CHAPTER 5 TAKING A STANCE TOWARD KNOWLEDGE
sign, in which the interpretant, yet another sign, is generated in local artisans generally) were valued less than those produced by
response to the sign. highly trained artists. So, the media hierarchies of the art world,
The hermeneutic cirele means that all understanding begins combined with the racism of society at large, meant that these
somewhere in the middle of things, with some sort of pre-under- works were largely ignored and unappreciated, except by the peo-
standing already in place. For Gadamer, interpretation is about pIe who made them and the family members who inherited them.
achieving "an" understanding ofthe work, not "the" understand- With time, not only have quilts come to be seen as an art form, but
ing. All truths are relative, depending on time and place and inter- society at large has begun to challenge the race and dass preju-
preter. When you take your first art his tory elass, it's notas ifyou've dices that rendered these works invisible. 14 There is no such thing
never seen a work of art before. You may have visited museums as an unchanging, eternally correct interpretation.
many timp.s, Clr have aposter of a favorite artwork in your room, At thp. same time, ofall the interpretations available at any given
and you probably have a working definition of the concept of art time, some will be more persuasive than others and better able to
that seems right to you. You may even already have some exposure account for the available evidence. In practical experience, tQe
to art history itself from all those museum visits-or maybe even process of interpretation may seem to stop, just as se miosis may
because you're a devoted Sister Wendy fan. When you first step seem to stop, when the interpreter reaches an understanding that
into that art-history lecture hall, the subject may seem absolutely makes sense at that moment, but the hermeneuticist takes a larger
new, butyou're actually starting somewhere in the middle. perspective and knows that the hermeneutic cirele goes on. Hei-
In terms of the practice of art his tory, this is something we see degger asserted, "What is decisive is not to get out of the cirde but
very elearly in the his tory of reception. Take, as an example, quilts to co me into itin the rightway."15
made by African Americans during the era of slavery and recon-
struction (Figure 5.1). When theywere made in the nineteenth and Hermeneutics and art history
early twentieth centuries, these quilts were seen as craft. Media In general, you could say that contemporary art history has a
hierarchies meant that quilts, as textiles, were less valued than the hermeneutic orientation, in that art historians are self-conscious
arts ofpainting or sculpture, and works by African Americans (and about the process ofinterpretation. They work from an awareness
of the historieal context not just of the work of art, but also of the
act of interpretation itself. Although art historians are still deeply
interested in the artist's intentions, this interest is accompanied,
5. 1 Marie Hensley, Quilt, circa 1900-10.
Philadelphia Museum ofArt.
and shaped, bya greater skepticism about our ability to know the
intentions of the artist fully, or to interpret them in any way other
Historica/ly, quilts made by African
than through our own culturallens. In fact, there are numerous
Americans for their own (amilies
and communities often featured links between Gestalt psychology, hermeneutics, and reception
asymmetrical patterns and distinctiue theory. The development of reception theory, particularly the idea
color combinations. Scholars haue that the viewer "completes" the work of art, owes a great deal to
compared this style to the improuis-
hermeneutics, especially to Gadamer's work (see above, p. 124).
ational and rhythmic aesthetics ofjazz,
and haue noted its connections to the Art historians who engage deeply with hermeneutic theory shift
textiles ofWest ond Central Africa. attention away from iconography to the experience of the wark of
art itself. Art historians such as the Swiss scholar Oskar
Bätschmann (b. 1943) take the aesthetic experience as a starting
point for interpretation, and examine the interrelationship
between aesthetic experience, theory, art his tory, and the practical
work ofan artist. 16 The art historian Gottfried Boehm is also inter-
ested in hermeneutic perspectives and the history of ideas: he
126/ CHAPTER 5 TAKING A STANCE TOWARD KNOWLEDGE 127/ CHAPTER 5 TAKING A STANCE TOWARD KNOWLEDGE
1'11 take a difficult, and potentia11y emotional, example to dis-
coined the phrase "iconic turn" to describe the proliferation of
cuss how the context of the present shapes our interpretation of
visual images in the twentieth century and their increasing central-
the past, and to explore questions that might reveal how objects
ity in cultural practice. Boehm's contributions to hermeneutics
from the past actively shape the present. I would strongly suspect
and art history include the edited collection Was ist ein Bild? ("What
thatthere are few readers ofthis bookwho canlook atan image of
is a Picture?", 1994).17
the New York World Trade Center (Figure 5. 2 ) without thinking
Some ofMieke Bal's recentwriting also suggests a hermeneutic
about the tragic events ofSeptember II, 200I. So there's no way of
approach to art his tory, especially at the points where the herme-
interpreting the architecture of the World Trade Center, really,
neutic circle and semiotics cross. In Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary
without taking that "present" into account. It's a situation that
Art, Preposterous History (1999), BaI provocatively argues that the work
foregrounds, in a very visible way, our inability to be objective
ofart actively pro duces the vi ewer' s subjectivity. She asserts that the
about the past: there's no way ofbeing some kind of disembodied
work ofart "thinks" culture: Iike many other art historians, she sees
neutral eye at this point in history when viewing a photograph of
art as actively shaping its social and historical context, rather than
the World Trade Center before its destruction. Similarly, the Libes-
merely reflecting it. However, whereas traditional art history sees
kind model for rebuilding the complex (Figure 5·3) makes refer-
the artwork's cultural context as fixed historically at its point of
ence to the original Center's architecture, and to the events of
creation, Bal's art objects produce interpretations ofthe culture they
occupy, including the present, where they may exist as museum September II, and so must strongly influence our view both of
objects or reproductions. To make her point, BaI focuses on images those destroyed buildings and ofthe tragedy itself.
in which contemporary artists, such as Andres Serrano and Carrie
Mae Weems, use visual techniques that are akin to Caravaggio's.
These artworks suggesta kind of"preposterous his tory" composed
of scraps and fragments of other discourses, in which the image 5. 2 Minoru Yamasaki,
that comes later in some ways gives rise to the earlier. 18 World Trade Center,
1966-77' NewYork.
Practidng hermeneutic an history
In practicing hermeneutic art history, you would focus on your
process of interpretation. Start from the idea that his tory is not
recovered information:
~ What questions am I asking? Why am lasking them?
~ How do these questions relate to contemporary art-historical
practice? Or to other sources ofideas and inspirations?
~ In what ways do my questions stern from my previous und er-
standings ofthis wode or its context? In what ways are these
questions very much of my moment? How do my questions, or
my process ofinterpretation, differ from others at other points
in time?
~ In what specific ways are these questions genera ted by my
engagementwith the wode ofart itself?
5.3 Studio Daniel Libeskind,
.. How can Ireframe my understanding so as to be able to see this Model for the new World
wode ofart or issue as part ofother wholes, or as a whole rather Trade Center, 2002.
thanapart?
134/ CHAPTER 5 TAKING A STANCE TOWARD KNOWLEDGE 135/ CHAPTER 5 TAKING A STANCE TOWARD I<NOWLEDGE
According to Barthes, the author doesn't endow the text with speeding. These different ways of speaking use different vocabu-
organic unity. Instead, the work ofart or literature is an artifact that laries, sentence structures, accents, even tones ofvoice.
brings together any number of codes available in the artist's or Bakhtin points out that monologic language is centripetal: the
author's culture. As articulated by Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and speaker of monologic language is trying to push all the varied ele-
others, the concept of intertextuality reminds us that each text ments and forms of language into one single form or utterance,
exists in relation to other texts, to other cultural expressions-texts coming from one central point. Monologic language requires one
owe more to other texts than to their own makers. For Kristeva, the standard language, an "official" language that everyone would be
text is really an intersection of texts in which we read yet another forced to speak (the ongoing debate over the validity ofEbonics, or
text; the act of reading is in this sense also an act ofcreation. 33 Black English, is a good example). Heteroglossic language, on the
Post-structuralism other hand, tends to be centrifugal, moving language toward multi-
plicity by induding a wide variety ofdifferent ways of speaking, dif-
Post-structuralism refers to the theoretical movement that grew out ferent rhetorical strategies and vocabularies. Both heteroglossia
ofstructuralist theories. Art historian Jonathan Harris notes that we and monologia, Bakhtin says, are always at work in any utteranceY
can take this "post" in two senses-as "over/finishedl after," or as This concept is critical for helping us to recognize, value, and
"in light oflin relation tO/meaningful in terms of."34 The trend interpret the different ways of speaking in relation to and via the
toward post-structuralism occurred because of same problems visual arts-whether that's studying horne-made quilts as weIl as
with structuralist thought. Structuralism was, according to same the Sistine Chapel ceiling, or researching the experience ofworking-
critiques, ahistorical: if structures are always already there, what da dass families at museums as weil as the work of Clement Green-
we make ofdass struggle or feminist struggle in the context of this berg or other celebrated art critics.
theoretical framework? How da we account for social and cultural Post-structuralists further argue that structures aren't same
change? In addition, structuralism often assurnes the presence of kind of universal, timeless truth just waiting to be uncovered.
an ideal readerlviewer and doesn't take the experience of actual Ratller, structures are fictions that we create in order to be able to
readers or viewers into account. Many of the same theorists worked interpret the world around uso Kristeva argued that a text-ar, we
in structuralist and post-structuralist modes, and, despite a tremen- could say, a cultural practice-is not a "structure" but a process of
dous diversity of perspectives, post-structuralists share fimdamen- "structuration."38 Similarly, Jacques Derrida, an important post-
tal assumptions aboutlanguage, meaning, and subjectivity. structuralist theorist who will be discussed in detail below, argues
The Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtin (r89S-197S) pointed to that, in texts, structures are really dependent on the conventions of
same of these problems early on, arguing against a static and ahis- writers. For post-structuralism, meaning is a lot less stable than
torical model of structures. Bakhtin's life as a scholar was marked structuralism would suggest. Post-structuralism emphasizes the
by political upheaval, and he addressed the socia! and cultural constant slippage in the play of signs, in the relations between sig-
issues raised by the Russian Revolution and Stalinism. For nifier and signified.
Bakhtin, Ianguage was always ideological-itwas always rooted in Post-structuralism has important implications for the practice
struggle and the social conditions of speaking. 35 Bakhtin says that ofhistory-and art history. Post-structuralist historians argue that
theories of language have always postulated an isolated, single history isn't just waiting out there to be found in documents and
speaker, whose utterances create unique meaning. He calls this images. When we write history, the context that is important is not
monologic language, because it seems to come from a single, uni- only the past but also the present, which conditions what we find
fied source, and contrasts it with "heteroglossia," the multiple and how we interpret it Ca nation that hermeneutics also recog-
forms of speech that people use in the course oftheir daily lives. 36 nizes). Art historian Norman Bryson has pointed out that the evi-
So, for example, you may have very differentways ofspeakingwith dence for historical interpretation is vast-potentially limitless. 39
the random people that you encounter daily-from the waiter who Stop to think about this, and you'll realize that the shape of the
takes your breakfast order to the police officer who stops you for final interpretation can't really come from this enormaus mass of
144/ CHAPTER 5 TAKING A STANCE TOWARD I<NOWLEDGE 145/ CHAPTER 5 TAKING A STANCE TOWARD KNOWLEDGE
hasn't stopped any number of scholars from trying it. In this sec-
What is restituted in a painting anyway? Does mimesis-the repre-
tion, pU try to be mindful ofDerrida's objections while developing
sentation of the shoes in this case-restore the shoes to us? If a
lines ofquestioning informed by the processes ofdeconstruction.
painting renders something, in the sense of representation, does it
Edmonia Lewis (circa r84os-circa r890) was an extraordinary
then also render it to its owner (the viewer, painter, or subject)? In
person, a woman of African-American and Native-American
this way, the problem of mimesis paralleIs the problem of ethics.
descent who had a passion for art, and particularly sculpture. In
Derrida goes on to question why Heidegger and Schapiro both
spite of the many obstacIes she faced, she was able to train profes-
ass urne that the painting represents a pair of shoes, rather than
sionallyas a sculptor. For many years she kept a studio in Rome,
simply two shoes. To respect the work ofart is to avoid jumping to
often selling her work to wealthy Americans traveling abroad.
conclusions, but as soon as we assert that this painting represents
a pair of shoes (a right and a left shoe that go together), Derrirla ... What are the binary oppositions at work in this sculplure (Fig-
decIares, we have already started to arraign the artworl<. ure 5. 6) (malelfernale, black/white, enslaved/free)? lfthe sculp-
And yet this kind of"arraigning" ofthe artwork, which Derrida ture represents freedom, for example, how does slavery also '
finds so problematic, is fundamental to art-historical practice. exist here as a trace?
From Vasari to Panofsky, art historians have focused on explana- ... How does this sculpture navigate the binary terms
tion-the idea that the work of art is logical and comprehensible, man/woman? Which term is prioritized? Which is subordi-
that it is mimetic and represents reaIity. In the spirit ofdeconstruc- nate? How is this established visually? How does this hierarchi-
tion, some art historians have deconstructed the binary opposi- cal pairing exist in relation to other hierarchical pairs
tions of the discipline itself by emphasizing art's resistance to supposedly challenged by the sculpture (white/black, freel
interpretation, a resistance that art his tory would be all too happy enslaved)? Does the prioritizing of male over female under-
to push to the margins (after all, if art really can't be explained, mine other readings of the sculpture? How stable are these
then there wouldn't be any need for art historians). oppositions?
Art historian Stephen Melville has grappled with the implica-
tions of deconstruction for the study of visual objects, noting that
"The question ofthe object in and for deconstruction ... is a ques- 5. 6 Edmonia Lewis, Forever Free,
1867. Marble. Howard
tion not about what the object is, but about how or, even more sim-
University Art Gallery,
ply, that it iS."67 Melville is concerned that once deconstruction Washington, D.C.
recognizes itself in the object, it must be careful not simply to
replace itwith a discursive representation that reduces the object to
a "mere" theoretical construct. That is, the threat that the object is
but a construct oftheory surfaces once theory attains self-recogni-
tion in the object. If objects are objects, it is because they resist
(object to) theory on some level. At the same time, however, the
"interdisciplinary framing of the object" is not an im position on
the object but "a not wholly proper effect of the object itself." The
object's effects stern not from its essence, but from its relations
with the subject ofart history: the object prefigures its own histori-
ographical and theoretical accounts.
152/ CHAPTER 5 TAI<ING A STANCE TOWARD KNOWLEDGE 153/ CHAPTER 5 TAKING A STANCE TOWARD KNOWLEDGE
Late capitalism is also marked bya focus on the recycling ofold Paris, and Berlin. It proceeds according to a model of rationality
images and commodities, and postmodern art and theory chal- and progress-all of art's history is a march toward the (inevitable)
lenge the very idea of originality, the very nations of progress and present. The rest ofthe world is largely ignored, and the focus is on
of the continual remaking of civilization. In this spirit, artist Cindy male artists who are trained to produce high art: painting, sculp-
Sherman (b. 1954) posed herselfin photographs modeled deliber- ture, and architecture.
ately on film-stills, and her contemporary Sherrie Levine (b. 1947) Postmodernist art historians have worked to replace this single
simply rephotographed photographs by other artists. Jameson master narrative with the practice of multiple histories of art. In
cites the artist Andy Warhol's work as a prime example of a world particular, in telling the histories of modern art, the emphasis is on
transformed into images ofitself. modernisms rather than the singular modernism, as art histarians
Posullodemislll I:; Cüllceflled wilh llIe illvesLigaLion of image:; work tu illcorporate both regional and multi-nationa 1perspectives,
in a number of realms, and in Simulacra and Simulations (1981) the as weIl as issues ofrace, class, gender, and sexuality. There is new
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929) explores the simu- attention to the distinctive modernisms of Asia, Africa, the Pacifi<:;,
lacrum, the copy without an original. 72 Baudrillard points out that and Latin America, as weil as a fuller range ofvisual arts, including
in the mass media there is no signified attached to the signifier: "high" and "low" art. Good examples are Okwui Enwesor's exhi-
there is no reality, no thing that the signifier reproduces or repre- bition catalogue, In/Sight (1996), which focuses on photography in
sents. In this way, the simulacrum-the image-becomes the real- twentieth-century Africa, and Enwesor and Olu Oguibe's edited
ity. Postmodern cultural critics have made a minor industry of volume Reading the Contemporary: Aftican Artftom Theory to Marketplace
analyzing such celebrities as Madonna, who are all image: between (2000).73 Art historians also critically interrogate the foundational
the PR machine, the make-up artist and image consultants, the beliefs and practices of modernism-as in Rosalind Krauss's essay
studio remixes, the video manipulation, etc., who's actually there "The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A postmodernist Repetition"
when it comes to Madonna? The emergence of the simulacrum (19 81), in which she examines the beliefs about originality and
threatens the very foundations of Western thought, which since masculine individualism that underlie the idea of the avant-
the time ofPlato has made a distinction between the original and garde. 74
the copy, the latter being inferior or ofless value. For art historians, postmodernism has prompted a re-
What's more, Baudrillard argues that there's no way of getting evaluation ofthe history ofthe discipline and our relations hip to the
away from simulacra, because of mass media. Simulacra are every- art and art his tory of the past. A provocative analysis of this turn in
where, and they determine our reality, how we live and behave. They art history was presented by German art histarian Hans Belting
provide us with codes or models that tell us what to da, and we're (b. 1935) in The End ofthe History ofArt? (1983).75 Belting argues that
passive before this onslaught. Baudrillard says thatwhen the image art history had experienced a split in the nineteenth century, when
is more "real" than any other "reality," where there is only surface modernist artists turned away from the past. As a result, he says,
but no depth, only signifiers with no signifieds, only imitations we've developed two differentways oftelling the histories ofart, one
with no originals, we are in the realm ofhyperreality. One ofthe best for the pre-modern period and anather for the modern period.
examples of such a hyperreality is Disneyland, which is a minutely Belting contends that art historians must bring these two
created "reality" ofthings that don't exist in the "real world." approaches tagether, rejecting the idea of"art far art's sake" in favar
of an awareness that art shapes and is shaped by cultural practices.
Modemism, postmodernism, arid art history In this way art historians will deconstruct the old binary oppositions
Among its various other meanings, the term modernist can be between art and life, image and reality. Belting goes on to suggest
used to describe a particular way of telling the history ofart-espe- that art historians must also take an interest in contemporary art,
cially modern art. Modernist art his tory is based on the kind of which, unlike modernist art, is grounded in intense historical and
totalizing narrative that postmodernism critiques. In this view, art cultural awareness and no langer pretends to a totalizing narrative.
history focuses on Europe, especially urban centers such as Rome, We may not share Belting's faith in contemporary art, but his point
154 ( CHAPTER 5 TAKING ASTANCETOWARD KNOWLEDGE 155 ( CHAPTER 5 TAI<ING A STANCE TOWARD I<NOWLEDGE
is worth considering. At the same time as Belting's work was ~ There's a tension here between the idea of the nuc1ear family
published in English, American art historian Donald Preziosi on vacation and astronauts at work. Is this a futurist astronaut
(b. I94 I ), in Rrthinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science (I9 89), family, like the Jetsons? Can astronaut families go on vacation?
argued that the crisis art history experienced in the I970S and I9 80s In what kind of future world? Have the astronauts "gone
was nothing new. The questions raised by post-structuralism, native" by wearing African textiles, like a vacationing family?
postmodernism, and by critical theory generally, could be traced to Does this question assurne they're not African? Can this family
the very foundations ofart history as an academic discipline. 76 be African? Some would argue that the nuc1ear family is an arti-
fact of Western industrial capitalism, as opposed to the
Practidng postmodern ist art history extended family, which is found in much of rural Africa and
Yinka Shonibare was horn in London, ofNigerian descent As an which we think of as "authentically" African.
artist, he challenges easy binaries of geography, race, and artistic " Do Baudrillard's ideas help you interpret this piece? To what
practice, exploring the power dynamics of colonialism. In this extent are the figures here simulacra? Do they "represent" a
installation, Shonibare depicts a nuclear family of astronauts signified?
dressed in printed textiles. We often think ofsuch textiles as quin- ~ Questions of pastiche arise in this wark as well-what are the
tessentially African, but these were actually designed and produced multiple and seemingly disparate sources that Shonibare
in the N etherlands and Asia. Practicing a postmodernist art history draws on?
in relation to this piece might mean critiquing master narratives, " How might you interpret this image in relation to the intersee-
and being sensitive to ideas of pastiche and the simulacrum at tions ofpostmodern and postcolonial theory?
workhere.
~ Vacation CFigure 5.9) raises the idea of the future and Africa's condusion
place in the future. Where is the future located? And who is 1s postmodernism over? Are post-structuralism and decon-
there? It's jarring to see "African" textiles in this context instead struction just passing intellectual fads? 1s hermeneutics
of some kind ofhigh-tech NASA fabrics. What does this tell us largely irrelevant now? How you answer such questions
ab out the contradiction between the idea ofAfrica and the idea
ofthe future, atleast forWesterners? Does Africa belong to the
depends on what you think the nature and significance of
past and not the future? Are there any ways of bringing these theory iso If you think it' s just a way of describing a particular
two terms, Africa and füture, together? style of analysis (or a window or chair, for that matter), then,
yes, while remnants of postmodernism or post-structuralism
may linger, as intellectual movements they may easily become
5·9 Yinka Shonibare, Vacation, passe. However, if you think of structuralism and post-
2000. Mixed media
instaliation.Stephen structuralism, postmodernism, hermeneutics, or decon-
Friedman Gallery, London. struction as discourses that raise important questions about
how we live and think, then they continue to be of vital
interest.
164/ CHAPTER 6 WRITING WITH THEORY 165/ CHAPTER 6 WRITING WITH THEORY
Your research on the topic will prompt you to turn to a particular 6.2 Lee Bul, Cyborg, 1999. Aluminum wire,
theoretical constructj reading in that theory will yield questions stainless steel, polyethylene resin,
that send you back to your subject; and so on. polyurethane sheet. Kukje Gallery,
Seou I, Korea.
In the end, you may not end up using a lot ofwhat you read. For
example, ifyou're pursuing a psychoanalytic framework, you may
read very widely about "the mirror stage," but in the end refer only
to Jacques Lacan's original essay on the subject ("The Mirror Stage
as Formative ofthe Function ofthe I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic
Theory," I949) and an article about the mirror stage and film
theory by Kaja Silverman (The Acoustic Mirrar, I988). Other readings
you did on the idea of the mirror stage by David Carrier and
others-although interesting, valuable, helpful in expanding your
mind-may not in the end help you develop your particular
argument. You shouldn't feel that this is was ted time; not only is it
inevitable to discard some material in the development of your
ideas, butwhatyou've read may prove to be helpful in the future, in
some other research project.
How do you know which theory (or theories) to use? Warnen (I99 1 ) to analyze contemporary Korean artist Lee. BuPs
Cyborg figures (Figure 6.2):
Although some topics will lend themselves more easily to one
mode oftheoreticaI inquiry than to another, there's no one right or Lee Bul's cyborg figures highlight various feminist debates
wrong theory or line of questioning to take with a particular sub- over the implications technology has for women and their
ject. There is, however, a sense of "fit" between a subject and the socio-political placementwithin society and its various institu-
theoretical framework you use to address it; the "fit" isn't sitting tions (specifically, the new, technologically induced ones, such
out there, waiting to be discovered-it comes from you, in how as the internet, virtual reality, and biomedical engineering).
Donna Haraway's landmark essay "A Cyborg Manifesto" (199 1)
you think and write and work with the visual arts. Be aware that if
has been crucial to outlining the doctrine/dogma ofcyborg the-
the process of researching and writing seems difficult, and you feel
ory from a socialist-feminist stand point ... I would like to dis-
like you're constandy hitting dead ends in your analysis, then the
cuss the positive aspects of Haraway's work for feminist
fit may not be right. This is a good time to take the problem to your
epistemology-how the female cyborg can be used as a
instructor and work through your ideas.
[means] for understanding the myths that surround gender,
Sometimes there's a good fit between your subject and your specifically the idea that gender is a unified holistic identity-
theoretical framework because d1e artists themselves were inter- while also engaging with her work critically to point out how
ested in that theory. This is often especially true of modern and her vision fails to recognize some of the realistic operational
contemporalY art, where artists may be actively engaged with many tactics oftechnology. Haraway's utopian vision, although pre-
kinds of theories. For example, many Surrealist artists in the 1920S cise in rendering the contradictory postmodern condition of
and 1930S were deeply interested in Marxism and psychoanalysis, women, fails to recognize [that] and indicate how-when rhe
and these theoretical frameworks often provide a productive existent mechanisms [power dynamics] [and gen der stereo-
approach to the analysis of their work. There's a similar kind of fit types] still underlie the technological apparatuses constituting
in the following introductory paragraph from a student research the cyborg woman-we can move beyond the gendered stereo-
paper, which uses Donna Haraway's famous essay "A Cyborg Man- types still pervading representations of women. Lee Bul's
ifesto" published in Sirnians, Cybargs and Warnen: The Reinventian af cyborg women address just this problem, in exploring how
166/ CHAPTER 6 WRITING WITH THEORY 167/ CHAPTER 6 WRITING WITH THEORY
technology and science are invested with the same patriarchal shape your study? How do gender, class issues, or the legacy of
ideologies of sexism, racism, and ageism that saturate the colonialism shape access to education and information in relation
larger culture. to your topic?
This student focuses on the direct relations hip between the writingthe paper
sculptures and feminist cyborg theory, both of which address the Writing theoretically informed art history is challenging-it will
problem ofsexism in technology and science through the figure of stretch you intellectually and creatively. Be sure to get the help you
the cyborg. She takes care to interpret Lee Bul's figures and Donna need during the writing process. Ask your instructor for advice
Haraway's essay together and in relation to each other, giving us about your research topic and discuss with her the theoretical per-
insight into both. Notice that it isn't just a ql1fstion of applying spectives that interf'st YOll. She can probably provide background
Haraway's essay to the interpretation ofthe figures, as ifthe theory information, references, and insights to help you in your work. I
provided a program for interpretation that was al ready whole and know students hesitate to visit professors during office hours-I ,
complete in itself. Rather, the interpretation and questioning go did too as an undergraduate. But as a professor myself, I can say
both ways: Haraway's essay helps this student interpret Lee Bul's that talking with students about their research is one ofthe most
figures, and vice versa. important and enjoyable things that I do. I will also note here that
That kind of direct connection isn't always present, though, although I am a very strong supporter ofwriting centers, they may
and isn't necessary. For the most part, male Surrealist artists orthe not be able to help you with this kind of theoretical, discipline-
19 2 0S and 1930S couldn't accurately be described as feminists, and
specific writing project unless theyare staffed by professionals as
yet feminist analyses of their work-which includes many images weil as peer editors. As a more long-term strategy, take advanced
ofwomen's bodies-are often very insightfuI. This issue can be writing courses, especially courses in expository writing or
especially difficult when dealing with non-Western or ancient art, advanced writing of research papers. One of the real regrets I have
where the theoretical framework you're using may feel very foreign about my own undergraduate education is that I didn't take writing
to the material in some sense, or distant from it, in that the art was courses beyond the required first-year course.
generated in a very different cultural context. But remember that Writing is a process ofthinking, and your argument will proba-
any theoretical framewark is imported, in some sense, because the bly be rather different at the end of the first draft than it was when
way you use it is particular to you and your way of thinking. lust you started. Even though outlining is an important part of organiz-
because a theoretical frameworkwasn't available at the time an art- ing your thoughts and developing your argument, don't lock your-
work was created or an art practice was current, doesn't mean that self into an outline as an inflexible program. Also, free yourself
it isn't an effective mode ofanalysis. Michelangelo, after all, wasn't from the expectation that you'll be gene rating brilliant, high-level
familiar with Panofsky's iconographic method, yet that's still a theory from the beginning: the first draft of any particular project
productive way to approach his work. You can remember that peo- will most likely be very rough, with all sorts of incomplete argu-
pIe in Michelangelo's time performed similar kinds of analysis, ments and gaps in your supporting materials, and the first theoret-
and every culture has traditions for analyzing and interpreting ical papers you write will probably be very rough. Remember that
visual works. You're looking for insight within the context of art even widely admired art historians with many years of experience
his tory, within a specific disciplinary frame; you're not making the may still struggle with theoretical ideas.
only or final statement about the warth ofan object, artist, or artis- Crafting a theoretically driven argument
tic practice.
Working with theory does, at the same time, require an aware- Your research is done and you're outlining and preparing the first
ness ofyour own position in relation to the material you're study- draft of your paper: this is a critical point at which to remember to
ing. Why are you interested in the material? What do you hope to integrate theory fully into the argument; theory shouldn't be sepa-
accomplish in studying it? What are the relations of power that rate or introduced later, but should shape the analysis you present
168/ CHAPTER 6 WRITING WITH THEORY 169/ CHAPTER 6 WRITING WITH THEORY
The student is juxtaposing Foueault and Haraway in an inter-
at every step. Ifyou find that you're writing some formal analysis esting way, and Cyborg Bille is the nexus ofher argument, but she
followed bya generalized contextual analysis and then introducing doesn't give us the visual analysis of Cyborg Bille to support and
a theory, you need to go back and rethink your outline. develop these ideas. She has to show us how it represents Fou-
Integrating theory cault's notion ofthe body as a "site of power" in relation to Cyborg
image and theory: it's not enough just to say that it does.
I'lI briefly discuss here some ofthe common pitfalls that students Ineorporating the visual and contextual analysis of Cyborg Bille
encounter when crafting theoretically driven arguments. would, I think, also require her to pursue her provocative ideas
Descriptive writing Tust as you don't want to write descriptive art his- about "simulated models and eroticized categories" ingreater
tory--art history that' s not fundamentalIy interpretive-neither do
you want descriptive theory. You're not iust summarizing a theoret- detail amI specificity.
icaI argument, you're engaging with it-using it, extending it, supporting your points/providing evidente
challenging it. One of the worst things you can do is to just plunk a This raises the issue of the importance of providing supporting
mass of undigested theory-writing at the beginning of the paper evidence to prove your point. Don't just list supporting materials,
(maybe in an effort to look intellectually sophisticated or more on as if their relevance is seIf-evident; instead, explain how the evi-
top ofyour subject than you actuallyare) and then leave it there, dence supports your point of view. In the following excerpt from a
completeIy unconnected to anything eIse you're writing about sub- paper, a student juxtaposes an installation work by Pepon Osorio,
sequently. Also, beware of long quotes from theoretical sourees, En La Barberta No Se 110m (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop) with
because writing these often indicates that you haven't fuHy Gilles Deleuze's ideas about empiricism, memory, and differenee,
digested the perspectives they represent. as a way of coming to new understandings of both artist and
Losing the foeus on art Your argument has a problem when there are
pages and pages oftheoretical writing in whieh the artworks drop philosopher (Figure 6.3):
out completeIy. At that point, ask yourseIfwhether you're writing
about the theory or about your proposed subject. Maybe in the end
what you want to write is a paper about Antonio Gramsci's theory \ 6.3 Pepon Osorio, En La Barberia No
ofhegemony, but ifyou've set out to write about David's portraits Se lIora (No Crying Allowed in the
ofNapoleon then you have to figure out some way to bring these Barbershop), 1994. Real Art Ways,
two subjects together. Often, the works of art become the key to Hartford, er.
Creativity, imagination, and truth "'Form', Nineteenth-Ceiltury Metaphysics, and Roger Fry, Vision and Design (Oxford: Oxford
the Problem ofArt Historical Description," Critical University Press, 1981): 167. Fry's friend and
These qualities belong to scholarly writing, to theory, and to art Inquiry 15 (Winter 1989): 372-93- associate Clive Bell (1881-1964) popularized the
his tory as much as they do to fiction or poetry. And they apply 2 Immanuel Kant, "Oft he Faculties ofthe Mind that idea ofsignificantform in his bookArt (1914),
equally to researching, crafting an argument, and writing. All writ- Constitute Genius," Critique ofJudgement (1790) on which argued that form, independent ofcontent,
Eserver.org Accessible Writing (Iowa State University, was the most important element in a work of art.
ing, whether it engages historical facts or not, is about telling the
accessed November 2003), http://eserver.org/ 6 Henri Focillon, TheArt ofthe West, vol. 2: Gothic,
truth, or bearing witness in some sense, and all writing emerges philosophy/kant/critique-of-judgement.txt. ed.jean Bony (London: Phaidon, 1963): 3.
from the writer's unique way ofseeing the world. It requires imagi- Heinrich Wölfflin, Principles ofArt History: The 7 Clement Greenberg, "Modernist Painting" in john
nation, as weIl as courage, to write something better than the safe, Problem ofthe Deuelopment ofStyle in Later Art (1915), O'Brian, ed. Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays
quoted in Donald Preziosi, ed., The Art ofArt and Criticism, vol. 3 (Chicago: UniversityofChicago
dutiful scribing students usually produce in search of a good History: ACritical Anthology (Oxford: Oxford Press, 1986-1993):86.
grade. University Press, 1998): 118. See also Marshall 8 Art historian and critic Michael Fried also wrote
Brown, "The Classic Is the Baroque: On the important formalist criticism in the 19605 which
Principle ofWölfflin'sArt History" Criticallnquiry 9 departed from and extended Greenberg's work in
(December 1982). interesting ways. The extensive introduction to his
4 Laurie Schneider Adams, The Methodologies ofArt: anthology ofcriticism provides an
176/ NOTES
1771 NOTES
Chapter4 psychology and perception in art 39 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety oflnßuence: ATheory of Roman Ingarden's Ontology and Aesthetics (Ottawa:
Poetry (Oxford and New York: Oxford University UniversityofOttawa Press, 1997).
Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (london: 21 Kristeva, "Motherhood Accordingto Bellini," in Press, 1973). Wolfgang Iser, The Act ofReading: ATheory of
45
Verso, 1991). Desire in language, trans!. by leon Roudiez (New Aesthetic Response (Baltimore:John Hopkins
40 Bryson, Tradition and Desire: From Dauid to Delacroix
2 Sigmund Freud, Ciuilization and its Discontents, York: Columbia University Press, 1980). (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University University Press/london and Henley: Routledge
trans!. Jean Riviere (New York: J. Cape &H. Smith, 22 For a full analysis oflrigaray's views, see Margaret Press,Ig84)' and Kegan Paul, 1978).
1930). Whitford, ed., The Irigaray Reader (Cambridge: Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic ofReeeption,
41 See E.H. Gombrich,Art and JIIusion:A Study in the 46
3 Freud, Totem andTaboo (london: Routledge, 2001). Blacl<Well,1991). Psychology ofPictorial Representation (Princeton: trans!.limothy Bahti (Minneapolis: Universityof
4 Freud, "Der Moses des Michelangelo"./mago, 3/ 1 23 Helene Cixous, "laugh ofthe Medusa," in The Princeton University Press, 1961) and The Image Minneapolis Press, 1982).
(Feb.1914): 15-36. RhetoricalTradition, ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce and the Eye (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise
47
Freud, "leonardo da Vinci and a MemoryofHis Herzberg (Boston: Bedford Books, 1990). See also . lost (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
42 RudolfArnheim, Art and Visual Pereeption (Berkeley:
Childhood." Standard Edition oftheColiected Cixous' Coming to Writing, and Dlher Essays, ed. University ofCalifornia Press, 1954); Visual Thinldng 1998)·
Psychological Works ofSigmund Freud, vol XI, trans!. Deborahjansen (Cambridge, MA, Harvard Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans!.
(Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1969); 48
James Strachey (london: Hogarth Press, 1957). UniversityPress, 1991). The Dynamics ofArchitectural Form (Berkeley: Richard Miller (NewYork: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
6 CG. Jung et a!., Man and His Symbols (Garden City:
24 Jane Gallop, Reading lacan (Ithaca: Cornell UniversityofCalifornia Press, 1977); The Powerof 1975)·
Doubleday, 1964). University Press, 1985). the Center (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, Wolfgang Kemp, "The Work ofArt and itS
49
7 Eagleton, The Ideology ofthe Aesthetie (Oxford: 25 Freud, The Psychopathology ofEueryday life, ed. 1982). Beholder: The Methodology ofthe Aesthetics of
Oxford University Press, 1990). Adam phillips (NewYork: Penguin, 2003). Reception," in The Subjects ofArt History: Historieal
8 For an overview ofthe work ofHorney and 43 Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith
26 Noam Chomsky, Current Issues in linguistic Theory Moxey, eds. VisualTheory: Painting and Interpretation Subjects in Contemporary Perspectiue, ed. M.A.
Deutsch, see JanetSayers's bookMothers ofPsyeho- (The Hague: Mouton, 1964); a useful introduction (NewYork: HarperCollins, 1991). Cheetham, M.A. Holly, and KMoxey (Cambridge:
analysis: Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney,Anna Freud, to Chomsky is John lyons's Noam Chomsky 44 Ingarden's views are surveyed in JeffMitsherling's Cambridge University Press, 1998): 180-96.
Melanie Klein (NewYork: W.W. Nor10n, 1992). (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978).
9 Ibid. 27 Richard Woll heim, Painting as an Art (Princeton:
10 Nancy Chodorow, Feminism and Psyehoanalytie
Princeton University Press, 1987). Chapter 5 Taking a stance toward knowledge
Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). 28 The Selected Melanie Klein, ed. Juliet Mitchell
11 Simone de Beauvoir, The Seeond Sex, trans. H. M. Wilhelm Dilthey, "The Development of generally and African~American quiltsspecifically.
(Toronto: Penguin Books Canada, 1986). Hermeneutics," Dilthey: Selected Writings, trans!. Important early challenges to these media
Parshley (NewYork: Bantarn Press, 1952). 29 The Critical Writings ofAdrian Stokes, ed.l. Gowing, 3 H.P. Rickman (Cambridge: Cambridge University hierarchies came from the novelist and essayist
12 Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (Garden City:
vols (london: Thames and Hudson, 1978); and Press, 1979). Alice Walker in her essay "In Search ofOur
Doubleday, 1970). Adrian Stokes, The Inuitation in Art, with apreface 2 For an assessment ofHeidegger's work and its Mothers' Gardens" In Seareh ofOur Mothers'
13 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the by Richard Wollheim (london: TavistocJ< relationship to Nazism, see CharIes Bambach, Gardens: Womanist Prose (New York: Harcourt Brace
Subuersion ofldentity (NewYork& London: Publications, 1965). Heidegger's Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and and Company, 1984): 231-43, and from art
Routledge, 1990). 30 Suzanne Preston Blier, African Vodun: Art, the Greel<s (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003). historian Patricia Mainardi, "Quilts: The Great
'4 Meyer Schapiro, "leonardo and Freud: An Art Psychology, and Power (Chicago: University of Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans!. John American Art" in Feminism and Art History:
Historical Study." Journal ofthe History of Ideas, 17 Chicago Press, 1995). Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Questioning the litany, ed. Norma Broude and Mary
(1956): 303-39. 31 Rosalind Krauss, The Optical Unconseious (Boston: Blackwell, 1962): 32. D. Garrard (NewYork: Harper& Row, 1982):
IS Melanie Klein, "Infantile Anxiety Situations MIT Press, 1997).
4 Martin Heidegger, Poetry, language, Thought, 331-46.
Reflected in the Work ofArt and in the Creative 32 Mieke Bai, looking In: The Art ofViewing (London: trans!. A. Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 15 Heidegger, op. eil. in 3above: 153.
Impulse." International Journal ofPsychoanalysis, 10: Taylor &Francis, 1999): 239-58. 1971): 207-08. 16 Oskar Bätschmann, "A Guide to Interpretation:
43 6-43- 33 lacan, op. eil. under 19 above. Art Historical Hermeneutics" in Compe/ling
16 D. W. Winnicott, "The Use ofan Object," Inter- Martin Heidegger, "Traditionallanguage and
34 laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Technologicallanguage," trans!. Wanda Torres Visuality: TheWork ofArt In and Out ofHistory,
national Journal ofPsyehoanalysis, 49 (1969): 591-99. Cinema." Screen, 16/3 (1975): 6-18. Grego'Y,JournalofPhilosophical Research 23 (1998): wed. Claire Farago and RobertZwijnenberg
17 For an overview ofjakobson's work and a selection 35 bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female 129-45. (Minneapolis, UniversityofMinnesota Press,
ofhis writings, see linda Waugh and Monique Spectators," Blaek Looks: Race and Representation 6 Heidegger, Poetry, language, Thought: 44. 2003): 179-210; Einführung in die kunstgeschichtliche
Monville-Burston, eds, On Language: Roman (Boston: South End Press, 1992); Reel to Real: Race, 7 Ibid·:43· Hermeneutik: die Auslegung uon Bildern (Darmstadt:
Jakobsan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Sex, and Class at the Mouies (New York: Routledge, 8 Ibid.: 68-70. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984).
Press, 1990). 1996)· Hugh J. Silverman, ed., Gadamerand Hermeneuties 17 Gottfried Boehm, Was ist ein Bild? (Munieh:
18 Jacques lacan, "The Ethics ofPsychoanalysis." The 36 Alois Riegl, The Group Portraiture ofHolland, trans!. (New York: Routledge, 1991): 1. Wilhelm Fink, 1994).
Seminar series, Book VII, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller E. M. Kain (NewYork: Getty Publications, 1999). 10 Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans!. 18 Mieke Bai, Quoting Carauaggio: Contemporary Art,
(New York: Norton, 1992). 37 Ernst Kris, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art (New Joel Weinsheimer and Donald Marshall (New York: Preposterous History (Chicago: University of
19 lacan, "The Four Fundamental Concepts of York: International Universities Press, 195 2). Crossroad, 1989): 477. Chicago Press, 1999): 100 n. 1.
Psychoanalysis." The Seminar series, Book XI, ed. 38 Freud, "Jokes and Their Relation to the 11 Ibid.: 302-07. '9 Claude levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans I.
jacques-Alain Miller. NewYork: Norton, 1977. Unconscious." Standard Edition of the Collected 12 Ibid.: 265-71. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf
20 Julia Kristeva, Tales oflaue, trans!.leon Roudiez Psychologieal Worl<s ofSigmund Freud, vol VIII, trans!. 13 Heidegger, op. eil. in 3above: 98. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972): 203-04.
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1987). james Strachey (london: Hogarth Press, 1957). 14 Today there is a large literature on American quilts 20 Ibid.: 211. The work ofthe Russian Formalist critic
178/ NOTES
179/ NOTES
and Power" in Beyond Reeognition: Representation, Chakravorty Spivak (Baitimore: Johns Hopkins
Vladimir Propp (1895-1970) on Russian folktales 3S Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogicallmagination, ed.
strongly influenced levi-Strauss's views; see Michael Holquist (Austin: University ofTexas Power, and Culture (Berkeley: University of UniversityPress, 1976): 158.
Vladimir Propp, The Morphology of the Folktale, Press, 1981):270-71. California Press, 1994): 88-113' 62 Ibid·:53·
63 Ibid.:65·
trans!. laurence Scott (Austin: University ofTexas 36 Ibid. 55 Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping
Press, 1968). 37 Ibid. ofKnowledge (london: Routledge, 1992), and Tony 64 Kamuf, op. eil. in 59 above: 5·
21 Saussure, op. eil. in eh. 2 note 24 above: 127. Bennett, The Birth ofthe Museum: History, Theory, 65 Meyer Schapiro, "The Still life as Personal Object:
38 Julia I<risteva, "The System and the Speaking ANote on Heidegger and Van Gogh" in his Seleeted
22 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans!. Annette Subject," The Kristeva Reader, ed. Tori I Moi (New Politics (london: Routledge, 1995) both engage
Foucau/t's work in framingtheir arguments. Papers: Theory and Philosophy ofArt (New York:
lavers (NewYork: Hili andWang, 1984): 129, 131. York: Columbia University Press, 1986): 24-33-
George Braziller, 1994)·
23 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger:AnAnalysisofthe 39 Norman Bryson, "Art in Context," The Point of s6 Nieholas Mirzoeff, Bodyscape: Art, Modernity, and the 66 Martin Heidegger, "The Origin ofthe Work ofArt"
Coneepts ofPollution and Taboo (New York: Theory: Praetiees ofCultural Analysis, Mieke Bai and Ideal Figure (landon: Routledge, 1995): 3·
(1935) in his Basic Writings (New York and london:
Routledge, 2002): 44-45. Inge E. Boer, eds. (NewYork: Continuum, 1994): 57 See Georges Didi-Huberman, Invention ofHysteria: Routledge, 1993):
24 Claude levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago: 66-74· Charcot and the Photographie leonography ofthe
UniversityofChicago Press, 1966). 40 Michel Foucault, "Nietzsehe Genealogy, History" Salphriere, transi. Alisa Hartz (Cambridge: MIT 6i Stephen Melville's views on deconstruction can be
found in "Philosophy Beside Itself: On
2S ~'lIssure, op. eil. in eh. 2 note 24 above: 11 S, in The Foucault Keader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New Press, 2003)·
Deconstruction and Modernism," Theory and
120-22. York: Pantheon Books, 1984): 76-1 00. 58 Although Derrida is the scholar popularly History ofliterature, 27 (1986) and in "The'
26 Claude levi-Strauss, Totemism, trans!. Rodney 41 Michel Foucault, TheArchaeology ofKnowledge (New associated with the development of
deconstruction, Iwant to note here that a number Temptation ofNew Perspectives," The Art ofArt
Needham (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963). York: Pantheon, 1982): 21ff.
ofimportant thinkers have contributed to its History: ACritieal Antho/ogy, ed. Donald Preziosi
27 Roman Jakobson first developed this distinction in 42 Michel Foucault, The History ofSexuality, Volume 1: (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
relation to phonology: "The general meaning of a An Introduetion, trans!. Robert Hurley (New York: development. For example, the literary critie Paul
mar/<ed category states the presence ofa certain Vintage Books, 1990): 102. de Man (1919-1983), whoemigratedfrom 68 Hai Foster, ed. TheAnti-Aesthetie: Essays on
Belgium to the United States after the Second Postmodern Culture (Seattle: Bay Press, 1983).
(whether positive or negative) property A; the 43 Foucau It, The Archaeology ofKnowledge, 31 ff.
general meaning ofthe corresponding unmarked 44 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of World War, played a crucial role in introducing 69 Andreas Huyssen, "Mapping the Postmodern,"
category states nothing aboutthe presence ofA, the Prison (NewYorl<: Vintage, 1995): 24-27. Derrida's work to the United States. His collection New German Critique, 33 (1984): 5-5 2.
and is used chiefly, but not exclusively, to indieate 45 Ibid.: 3-31. ofessays, Allegories ofReading (1979), focuses on 70 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Culturallogic
theways in whieh texts inadvertently reveal their oflate Capitalism {Durham, Duke University Press,
the absence ofA." Selected Writings 11: Word and 46 Foucault, op. eil. in 42 above.
language. (The Hague: Mouton, 1971): 136. own reflexivity, an awareness ofthemselves as 1991).
47 Ibid.: 103.
28 Daniel Chandler, Semioties: The Basies (london: 48 Ibid.: 140. For an introduction to sexuality studies rhetorical systems, and thereby undermine their 71 Fran~ois lyotard, The Postmodern Condition:A Report
own claims to authority.like Derrida, de Man is on Knowledge (1979), trans!. byGeoffBennington
Routledge, 2001): 112. and an assessment ofFoucault's contributions to
interested in those moments of aporia, or and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of
29 Roland Barthes, Image-Musie-Text (london: the field, see Joseph Bristow, Sexuality {london:
contradiction, within the text. Gayatri Chakravorty Minnesota Press, 1984).
Fontana/Collins, 1977): 143. Routledge, 1997).
Spivak has made important contributions to 72 Jean Baudrillard, Simulaera and Simulations (1981 ),
30 Ibid.:147· 49 Hubert Damisch,A Theory ofiC/oud/: Toward a trans!. Sheila Faria Glaser (Michigan: University of
31 Nanette Salomon, "The Art Historical Canon: Sins History ofPainting, trans!. Janet lIoyd (PaloAlto: deconstruction not onlythrough her translation of
ofOmission" in Donald Preziosi, ed., The Art ofArt Stanford University Press, 2002). Derrida's work, but alsothrough the ways in Michigan Press, 1994)·
History: ACriticallntroduetion (Oxford: Oxford 50 See Heinrich Wölffiin, Prineiples ofArt History: The which she connects deconstruction with feminism, 73 Enwesor, Okwui, et a!.ln/Sight, exh. cat. (New
post-colonialism, and Marxism. For a broader York: HarryN.Abrams, 1996); Enwesor, Okwui,
University Press, 1998): 345. Feminist art Problem ofthe Development ofStyle in later Art, trans!.
overview of deconstruction, see Martin McQuillan, and Olu Oguibe. Reading the Contemporary:Afriean
historians such as Salomon, Griselda Pollock, and M.D. Hottinger (NewYork: Dover, 1950), and
ed., Deconstruction:A Reader (New Vork: Routledge, Art from Theory to Marketplaee (Boston: MIT Press,
linda Nochlin have incisivelycritiqued art Donald Preziosi, The Art ofArt History:A Critieal
history's focus on the individual genius and the Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998): 2001). For an accessible assessment ofDerrida's 2000).
artist's intentions (see Chapter 3); Michael 109-26. work, see Julian Wolfreys, Deeonstruetion: Derrida 74 Rosalind Krauss, "The Originality ofthe Avant-
iSt. Martin's Press, 1998). For Spivak, see The Garde: APostmodern Repetition," Oetober, 18
Baxandall, on the other hand, argues that the 51 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Re~ections on
physical art object compels art historians to see it Photography (New York: Noonday Press, 1982): Spival< Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakrauorty (1981): 47--66.
8
as the result of purposeful activity, and to attempt 5-6. Spivak, ed. Donna landry and Gerald Maclean 75 Hans Belting, The End ofthe History ofArt? (19 3),
trans!. by Christopher S. Wood (Chicago and
to come to grips with the ideas ofits maker-see 52 Keith P.E Moxey, The Praetiee ofTheory: (london: Routledge, 1995)·
london: UniversityofChicago Press, 1987).
Patterns oflntention: On the Historicallnvestigation of Poststructuralism, Cultural Polities, and Art History 59 Peggy Kamuf, ADerrido Reader: Between the Blinds
Pietures (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1991): 4· 76 Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditations
on a(oy Science (New Haven: Yale University Press,
32 op. cil. in 29 above: 148. 53 Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, loyola, trans/. 60 Ibid.
Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: ASemiotie Approach Richard Miller (Berkeley: UniversityofCalifornia 61 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammato/ogy, trans!. Gayatri 1989).
33
to literature and Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1g89).
Press, 1980): 69. Kristeva suggests that a S4 Perhaps his most famous writings about art are
horizontal axis connects the author and reader of a the analysis oflas Meninas that opens The Order of
text while a vertical axis connects the text to other Things and his essay on Magritte, This is Not aPipe
texts. (Berkeley: UniversityofCalifornia Press, 1989). On
34 Jonathan Harris, The New Art History: ACritical Foucault, post-structuralism, and art history, see
Introduetion (london: Routledge, 2001): 277. Craig Owens, "Representation, Appropriation,
1831 INDEX
1821 ACI<NOWLEDGMENTS
Neshat, Shirin 120; Femor 119,120 psychoanalysis/psychoanalytic
Fanon, Franz 80 Greenberg, Clement 19-20, 1°4, 137 illusionism 20, 111 lewis, Bernard 79
nihilism 123 theory 5, 6, 14, 18, 20, 88-9,
femininity 62,64,73 Greer, Germaine 94 indexes 30, 31 lewis, Edmonia 147; Foreuer Free
Nochlin, linda 61-2 166; and art 109, 110, 120, 121;
feminisms/feminist theory 5,6,28, Ingarden, Roman 113 147,147-8 and art history 102-6, 116-20,
58,60-1,87; and art history Habermas, jurgen 151 Ingres, jean-Auguste-Dominique lGBTI Studies 7°-1,72,73-6,87 "normal" J"normative" 71
libeskind, Daniel: model for new 164; and feminism 64, 94-5,
61-70; and Freud 94-5, 100-1; Hall, Stuart 1,77,78,80,84 110; Oedipus and the Sphinx 92 99-101; see also Freud; jung;
and lacan 99-100, 101; and haloes 24 intertextuality 35,37,41-2,136, World Trade Center 129, 129-3° object relations theory 96
Oedipus complex 90, 92, 94. 10O lacan
technology 167-8 Halperin, David 71-2 162-3 lorde, Audre 5, 9
Oguibe,Olu 155 psychologyofart 109-12
films 53, 107-8, 166 Haraway, Donna: "A Cyborg Irigaray, luce 64,100-1 lukacs, Georg 52
Oppenheim, Dennis 32 Pucelle, jean: The Hours ofjeanne
Fish,StanleY l1 4 Manifesto" 166-9,17°-1 Iser, Wolfgang 113-14, 116 lyotard,jean-Fran~oisI52
"optical unconscious" 104-5, 118 d'Eureux 39-43, 41
focalizers 115, 116 Harmsworth History ofthe World, The
Focillon, Henri 19 83,83-4 jakobson, Roman 32, 33, 38, 97, Mainardi, Patrieia 63 Orientalism 79, 80
Orozco, jose Clemente 60 QueerTheory6, 70, 71- 2, 74, 87
formalism 11,17-20,23,44,45,104 Harris, Bertha 70 13 2 Man, Paul de 14
Osorio, Pepon: En la Barberfa No Se quilts, African-American 6~, 126,
"forms of address" 115, 116 Harris, jonathan 136 jameson, Frederic 151,152,153-4 Manet, Edouard 14q; Ol~mpia
116-18,117,149 Uora 171, 171-2 126-7, 165
Foster, HallSl Ilartley, Marsden 74 Jargon 8
Foucault, Michel 7, 8, 9,72, Haskell, Franeis 109 jauss, Hans Robert 114 Marin, louis 37-8, 39, 42
Panofsky, Erwin 22, 23, 24, 25, race 64-5, 83-6;.see also culture(s)
138-40,141,170-1 Hauser, Arnold 54 johnson, Philip 151 Martin, Henry Byam: Tahitian
124,162 raeism 9, 10, 127; and postcolonial
fragmentation 153 Hawai'ian people 23, 80 jones, Amelia 65 Wom an 7,7
parapraxes 102, 103 theory 78-81
Frankfurt School6, 52 Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet jongh, Eddyde 25 Marx, Kar148, 49-50, 51- 2,89
Marxism/Marxist theory 5, 6, 19, Parker, Rozsika 62, 63 Rand, Erica 82
Freud, Sigmund 34, 47, 88-92,102, letter 8 jung, Carl93
Parthenon/Parthenon marbles Raphaelll 0, 118
106,109,121,141; on art 92-4; Heidegger, Martin 123-4, 125, 48-9,87,152,164,166; and art
130,148, 148-9 reader-response theory 113-16
critics 94-5,100-1; and lacan 127,143,145,146 Kafka, Franz 8 51-4,56-60; and ideology 50-1
masks, African 66, 68-70, 69 Partisan Reuiew 19 "reading" works of art 39
96,97,98,99, 100 Henderson, linda 48 Kampen, Natalie 74
pastiche 153, 157 Rear Window 108
Fried, Michael 104 Hensley, Marie: Quilt 126, 126-7 Kandinsky, Wassily 149 materialist art history 54-6, 57-60
pathographical method 95 reception theories 14, 22, 33,88,
Friedan, Betty 61 hermeneutics 122-5, 137, 158; and Kant, Immanuel18, 51 Mathews, Patricia 63
Patton, Sharon 81 116-20, 127; psychology of art
Frueh, johanna 65 art history 127-31; Kemp, Wolfgang 115-16 Melville, Stephen 146
Peirce, CharlesSanders 30- 1,31, 109-12; reader-response
Fry, Rogen8-19 "hermeneutic eirele" 125-7 Kihara, Shigeyuki: performance Mende masks 66, 68-70, 69
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 36 33,102, 125-6 113-16
Fuss, Diana 66 Hesse, Eva 104 piece 14-15, 15
penis envy 90, 94-5 Rembrandt van Rijn 55
heteroglossia 136-7,142 Klein, Melanie 96, 99, 100,102, metaphors97, 102, 124, 134
phallocentricity 99, 101 Renaissance art 18, 24, 25, 54-5,
Gadamer, Hans-Georg 124-5, 126, Himid, lubaina 64 105, 1°5 methodology 13
Phillips, Ruth 69 135,14°,160
127 history (Foucault) 138-9 Krauss, Rosalind 20, 32, 102, metonymY97
photography 31,53,65,80,118, repatriation (artworl<s) 84- 6
galleries, art 55,141 "history ofideas" 46-8 1°4-5,118,151,155 Michelangelo Buonarroti 168;
Moses 92-3; Prophet Zechariah 140,141-3,154 Rich, Adrienne 72
Gallop, jane 101 "Holmes, Sherlock" 14,34 Krautheimer, Richard 24
Picasso, Pa bio 20, 56 Riegl, Alois 18, 82,109
Garrard, Mary 63-4,67 homosexuality 72,93,95, 108; see Kris, Ernst 109-10 160,160-3
Plekhanov, Georgi 48 Ringgold, Faith 165
Gates, Henry louis, jr. 81 lGTBI Studies; Queer Theory Kristeva, julia 35, 37, 64, 100, 136, Millet, Kate 94
Pliny: Natural History 21 Rivera, Diego 60
Gauguin, Paul56 hool<s, be/l9, 28, 29, 65, 108 137 mimesis 140, 146
Gay and lesbian Studies see lGBTI Horace43 Kruger, Barbara: Your Gaze Hits the "mirrorstage" gB, 100, 106,117, Pollitt,jeromQ7,48
Pollock, Griselda 62, 63, 64, 67, 68, Said, Edward 79, 80
Studies Horkheimer, Max 52-3 Side of My Face 1°7,1°7 166
86 Saussure, Ferdinand de 30, 30, 32 ,
gaze, the 64,65,88, 106-8, Horney, Karen 94 Mirzoeff, Nicholas14 1
Pollock, jackson 1°4 33,36,97,102,13 1,13 2,134,
116-17,120,13 1 Hours ofJeanne d'Eureux, The lacan, jacques 96-9, 11 0, 115, MitcheII, W.j.T. 43-4
gender identity 7°,72-3,78 modernismJmodernist art 19-20 , positivism 10 135
(Puce/le) 39-43, 41 121,144,166; on art 99; critics
postcolonialism/postcolonial Saxl, Fritz 24
Gender Studies 70, 71 humanism 91, 135, 152 99-102; on the gaze 106-7; 104,149-5°,153,154-5
theory 77-8, 81,87,120; and Schapiro, Meyer 36-7, 40, 95,145,
Gentileschi, Artemisia 62,64; Huyssen, Andreas 151-2,153 l-Schema diagram 105, 105 monologia 136-7, 142
Montaigne, Michel de 122 race78- 81 146,162
Judith and her Maidseruant Slaying hybridity 14, 15, 79, 80 language 9, 97, 98, 123-4, 135;
postmodernism 35, 149, 150-2, schemata 111 , 113, 116
Holofernes 66-8, 67 hyperreality 154 heteroglossic and monologic More/li, Giovanni 34
Morimura, Yasumasa: Futago 157,158; and art history 155-7 science 10, 12, 48
Gestalt psychology 1°9, 112, 127 136-7,142; and semiotics 37,
post-structuralism 25, 35, 13 6- 8, Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky 71
Ginzburg, Carlo 34 iconographyJiconology 6, 17, 39; and structuralism 131,132 116-18,117
153, 157, 158; and art history "Self" and "Otherness" 80, 84,
Gogh, Vincent van: Shoes 145-6 20-1,24-5,39,44,45,160-2; lauretis, Teresa de 72 Moxey, Keith 141
140-3; and feminisms 64 97-8,101,120,144
Gombrich, Ernst 24, 39, 109, and hermeneutics 127; lee, Anthony 60 Mukarovsky,jan 36
poussin, Nicolas: The Arcadian semiotic drift 34
110-11,111,112 Panofsky's 21-3, 162; practice leonardo da Vinci 43. 93-4, 95; Mulvey, Laura 107-8
Shepherds 37-8, 38, 42 semiotics 6, 8,17,20,22,25,
Gothic style 19, 55 of 25-8,43; and semiotics 29 Mona lisa 94, 95 mural art 58, 58-60
museums 55-6, 115, 137, 141;and power7,77,81, 139, 141 28-32,44,45,97; and art
Gould, Stephenj.lo id, the 90, 91 lesbian art 64-5; see lGBTI Studies
repatriation of artworks 84-6, Preziosi. Donald 156 history 36-43; signs and codes
Gramsci, Antonio 50-1,58,81 identitY78 levi-Strauss, Claude 97, 13 2 , 133,
148-g Proust, Marcel: Swann'sWay 5, 6, 32- 6
Greel< art/sculpture 47, 48,52, 101, ideologies 50-1, 55-6, n; of 134
13 Serrano, Andres 128
140,148,148-9 gen der 62, 64 levine, Sherrie 154 mythsl06. 132,133
photo credits
Collections are given in the captions alongside the illustrations. Sources for illustrations not supplied by museums or
collections, additional information, and copyright credits are given below. Numbers are figure numbers.
1.2 photo courtesy ofShigeyuld Kihara. 1.3 Courtesy of Vork. 4.9 Photo by larry Barns. Courtesy Barbara
the Gagosian Gallery, New Vork. 2.1 Photo © Michael Gladstone. 5.1 Gift of the Friends of the Philadelphia
D. Gunther/www.artandarchaeology.com2.3 Redrawn Museum ofArt and partial gift of the lindsey Family.
by Advanced Illustration ltd. 2.4 Redrawn by Advanced 5.2 photo taken in '99'. Photo AI(G-Images. 5.3 Photo
Illustration LId. 2.5 Photo © Photo josse, Paris. © jod< Pottle for Studio Daniellibeskind. 5.7 Photo
3.1 Photo Hirmer Fotoarchiv. 3-2 Photo © Photo josse, The British Museum. 5.8 Photo AKG-Images. 5.9 Courtesy
Paris. 3.4 © Studio Quattrone, Florence. 3.6 Reproduced Stephen Friedmann Gallery, london, and the Israel
in W. Davis (ed.), Gay and lesbian Studies in Art History, Museum, jerusalem. Gift of the New Vort< Contemporary
NewVorl<, Hawthorne Press, 19% P.237. 4.1 Photo Art Acquisition Committee of American Friends ofthe
Werner Forman Archive. 4.4 Courtesy Mary Boone Israel Museum. 6.1 Photo AKG-Images. 6.2 Photo Rhee
Gallery, New Vork. 4.6 Photo © Photo josse, Paris. jae-yong. Courtesy the artist and Kukje Gallery, Seoul.
4.7 Courtesy ofthe artist and luhringAugustine, New 6.3 Photo john Groo/Real Art Ways.
186/INDEX