Art Bulletin Vol 77 No 3_Motivating History_Moxey

8/22/2019 Art Bulletin Vol 77 No 3_Motivating History_Moxey

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Motivating H i s t o r yKeithMoxey

Under historicism,which entailed the historical study ofancient and modern art as a new paradigm of historicalexperience, art history handed over lock, stock, andbarrel ts legitimacyasa mediumforaesthetic,philosophi-cal or hermeneutic reflection.-Hans RobertJauss'Fortunatelywe are presentlyratherfarremoved from theperiod of naive scientificity during which subjectivitywasconsidered to be the domain of illusion and objectiveknowledge to be the sole expression of truth. We knownowthat our subjectivitys not an illusionto be overcome,but that it is another partof reality,no less importantthananyother part.-Josue Harari and DavidBell2

The other day I went searchingfor a book in AveryLibrary,the art libraryof ColumbiaUniversity.This time, instead oflooking at the shelves as mere supportsfor the volumes thatcontained the information I sought, I became aware thatwhat I waslooking at was the architecture(orarchaeology)ofa particularfield of scholarly activity, namely the study ofNorthern Renaissance art. I was struck, in other words, bythe physicalpresence of an aspect of our discipline'sculturalimaginary.The organizationof the volumes arrangedon the shelves,Irealized, was at least as important as the information con-tained in the weighty tomes they supported. Rather than thedisturbing chaos that characterized the arrangement ofbooks in Borges'stale "The Libraryof Babel,"these books inAverywere organized according to an established pattern.Butjust what was the systembehind their organization?Wasit any more comprehensible than that which inspired Borg-es'sequallyfamousaccount of an ancient Chinese encyclope-dia cited by Michel Foucault?3How had "Northern Renais-sance art"come into being? How did this particularcategoryor concept become a topic worthyof scholarly nterest?Whoor what had determined that there should be more books oncertain artistsrather than on others? What likes and dislikesdo these choices betray?Whatvalues went into forming theconfiguration of books assembled there, and more impor-tant,what is it that continues to keep them in place?The answer,of course, is the canon-that most naturalizedof all art-historicalassumptions. Certain artists and certainworks of art that have received the sanction of traditionareunquestioningly regarded as appropriate material for art-historical study. Course syllabi are still arranged aroundartistswho are deemed majorfigures, and the vast majorityof publications is dedicated to a consideration of a selectnumber of well-known works. Questions regarding the pur-pose and function of privilegingcertain artists and works inthis way are rarelyraised. Others concerning the esteem inwhich the canon is held are not regarded as belonging to arthistorybut rather to aesthetics,a branch of philosophy, or to

the criticism of contemporary art. For the most part, arthistory'sdisciplinarywork is carried on as if there were noneed to articulate the social function it is supposed to serve.The discipline's promotion and support of the canon are alltoo often still taken for granted. It is as if a consensus hadbeen arrived at sometime in the past so that there is nofurther need for discussion. The library shelves are thephysicalmanifestationsof thisconsensus, the embodiment ofan established culturalpractice.In asking for a discussion of the purpose of art history'sdedication to the canon, I hope not to be misunderstood.This is not a callfora valuation of works of art,not acall foramore explicit ranking of canonicalworks,not a request thatstudents be indoctrinated as to which artist is "better" thananother. The problem, it seems to me, is that somehow thenotion of "quality,"that most subjective of judgments, isthought to be self-evident and unquestionable.While someof us may dwell affectionately and pleasurably on certainpredictable canonical artists and describe their works inglowing terms, there is usually no attempt to argue, andperhaps even think about, why one artist should be consid-ered more worthy of study than another or why certainmoments and places in the history of artistic productionshould be privileged above others. As it stands now, thehistory of art could be described as an unacknowledgedpaean of praise addressed to the canon, and the intensityofthis devotion can, perhaps, be measured by the sobrietyofour professorialdemeanor as we accomplishthis task.The convictionunderlyingthese attitudes,whichcontinueto be widespread,if not even prevalentin art history today, isthe commitment to tradition.The canon of artists and worksdiscussed in art-historycourses are those which were oncefound meritorious by previous generations of scholars re-sponding to historical situationsverydifferentfromthose wecurrentlyoccupy. Like Mount Everest,the works,the artists,and even the methodologies for interpreting them aresimply there, and like mountain climbers, it is our mandateas art historians to climb their peaks and sing theirpraisestofuture generations. In doing so, we are often unwittinglyengaged in theunthinkingreproductionof culture:reproduc-ing knowledge, but not necessarily producing it. As a conse-quence, the discipline as a whole becomes a powerfulconservativeforce in a rapidly changing society.The way to start speculating about how we came to thisdisciplinarymoment might be to engage in a culturalhistoryof the discipline, an examination of the classed, gendered,and ethnic values that have marked its development. Such atask, however,is impossiblein the spaceavailable o me here.What follows is rathera discrete and limited examination ofwhat could be called the founding moment of the canon ofNorthern Renaissance art, the historical point where a


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discursive practice first formed around works of art pro-duced in Northern Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies. In other words, this is not a historiographicaccount of the origins and development of the appreciationof Northern Renaissance art so much as an analysisof thepolitical, religious, and personal sentiments that promptedthat appreciation to take place. The analysisis meant to berepresentative-the Northern Renaissance is used here as atest case. A similarstudy might also be undertaken for whatare considered the canonical artists and worksof other timesand places.The ideas that led to the historical study of the NorthernRenaissance at the end of the eighteenth century will becontrasted with those that informthe wayin whichthe periodwas studied at the middle of the twentieth century, specifi-callyin the work of ErwinPanofsky.The point of the contrastis to analyze the role of the practice of history in these twovery different historiographicmoments. How had the func-tion of historychanged in the period that separates the lateeighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries? Is there anythingwe can learn from the different ways in which history wasapproached, something that might enable us to rethink thefunction of historyin our own time?Until the end of the eighteenth century, the discipline ofart history, founded by Vasari, remained focused on thehumanist traditions of the Italian Renaissance as they werecodified in the art academies of the seventeenth century.Notonly were the styles and artistic techniques of the greatmasters of the Florentine and Venetian schools regarded asthe models to which all artists should aspire, but theacademies also established a hierarchyof genres, accordingto whichhistorypainting-meaning the painting of religiousand secularsubjectmatterdepicting lofty themes taken fromChristianbelief and Greco-Romanmythology and history--wasranked at the top, and mere exercises in mimesis, such aslandscape and still life, were located at the bottom. Owingtothe dominance of the humanist tradition among the edu-cated elite, there was little significantdifference among theartisticaspirations of the schools of artisticproduction thatarose in the regions that were later to become the nation-states of Europe. It was only in the eighteenth century thatthe dominance of the academy was first challenged byWinckelmann,who proposed that the true source of beautywas to be found in the art of ancient Greece. Later, in thecontext of the nationalismengendered by the Europeanwarsthat followed the French Revolution,arguments began to befielded regarding the aesthetic interest of works of artproduced at times and places other than ancient Greece andRenaissanceItaly.The first mention of Northern Renaissance painting as a

location for the discussionof artisticissues that had hithertobeen associated only with Italy and Greece is found in thecurious and delightful writings of the short-lived youngauthor, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder.4 In his fictionalnarrative Confessions rom the Heart of an Art-Loving Friar of1797, Wackenrodermade a compelling case for the relativityof artistic appeal. In doing so, he boldly challenged theaccepted canon of his day, according to which Italian art ofthe Renaissance and the Greek art of antiquity were re-garded as possessing greatermerit than art produced at anyother place and time:

Stupid people cannot comprehend that there are antipo-des on our globe and that they are themselves antipodes.They alwaysconceive of the placewhere they are standingas the gravitational center of the universe,-and theirminds lack the wings to fly around the entire earth andsurveywith one glance the integrated totality.And, similarly, they regard their own emotion as thecenter of everything beautiful in art and they deliver thefinal judgment concerning everything as if from thetribunal,without considering that no one has appointedthemjudges and that those who are condemned by themcouldjust as well set themselvesup to the same end.Whydo you not condemn the AmericanIndian, that hespeaksIndian and not our language?-And yet you want to condemn the Middle Ages, that itdid not build such temples as did Greece?5

Wackenroder'sappreciation for the art of the NorthernRenaissanceis paraded in a chapter dedicated to the praiseof the work of Albrecht Diirer. His melodramatic accountmakes clear the nationalistic and religiousvalues that under-lie his concern to insert this artist into the canon. Diirer ispresented asjust as good an artistas those who constitutethecanon because of the qualityof his inner spirit,an inner spiritthat embodies the essence of the German nation:

When Albrechtwaswielding the paintbrush,the Germanwas at that time stilla unique and an excellent characteroffirm constancy in the arena of our continent; and thisserious, upright and powerful nature of the German isimprinted in his pictures accuratelyand clearly,not onlyin the facial structureand the whole external appearancebut also in the inner spirit. This firmly determinedGerman character and German art as well have disap-peared in our times. .. . and the student of art is taughthow he should imitate the expressiveness of Raphael andthe colors of the Venetian School and the realism of theDutch and the enchanting highlights of Correggio, allsimultaneously, and should in this way arrive at the

Michael Holly was kind enough to make drafts of this paper part of hersummertime reading. I am also grateful to Janet Wolff for reading thepenultimateversion.1. Hans RobertJauss, "Historyof Artand PragmaticHistory," n Towardsan Aestheticof Reception,rans.TimothyBahti,intro. Paul de Man, Minneapo-lis, 1982, 51.2.Josue Harari and David Bell, introduction to Michel Serres, Hermes:Literature, Science, Philosophy,ed. J. Harari and D. Bell, Baltimore, 1992, xII.3. M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences,NewYork, 1973, xv: "animalsare divided into: a) belonging to the Emperor,

b) embalmed, c) tame, d) suckingpigs, e) sirens,f) fabulous,g) straydogs, h)included in the present classification, ) frenzied,j) innumerable, k) drawnwith a veryfine camelhairbrush,1)etcetera,m) havingjust broken the waterpitcher, n) that from a longwayoff look likeflies."4. Fora fuller sketch of the appreciation of earlyNetherlandish art in the18th and 19th centuries, see F. Haskell, Rediscoveries in Art: Some Aspects ofTaste, Fashion, and Collectingin England and France, Ithaca, N.Y., 1976; and S.Sulzberger, La Rihabilitation desprimitifs lamands, 1802-1867, Brussels, 1961.5. W. H. Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder's Confessions andFantasies,rans. M. H. Schubert,UniversityPark, Pa., 1970, 109-10.


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perfection which surpasses all.-O, wretched sophistry!O, blind belief of this age that one could combine everytype of beauty and every excellence of all the greatpainters of the earth and, through the scrutinizingof alland the begging of their numerous great gifts, could unitethe spiritof all in oneself and transcendthem all!6The encomium ends with a description of a dream inwhich the friarfallsasleep in an artgalleryand has a vision inwhich the artists come alive before their paintings anddiscusstheir merits.Among those that appear in thiswayarethe shades of Raphael and Dfirer whom the friar observesholding hands as they gaze in "friendly tranquillity"andmutual admiration at the achievements of one another'slabors. By pairing Raphael and Duirer n this way, Wacken-roder explicitly claims a new status for German painting ofthe Renaissance.Wackenroder'sargumentconcerning the relativityof artis-tic competence seems to depend upon the principle ofhistoricismwhich had been introduced into the philosophyof history by Johann Gottfried von Herder a few yearsearlier.7Herder had argued that there could be no objectiv-

ity in the writingof historybecause the historian washimselfpart of the historical process. In this view, there are notranshistoricalabsolutes, for all judgments are contingentupon the time and place in which they are produced.Wackenroder's artisticrelativism,his capacity to claim thatDirer was the equal of Raphael, finds its basis in Herder'semphasis on the singularityof the historical moment. ForWackenroder,the unique qualityof a historicalperiod, thatwhich makes it unlike anything that preceded or followedit,can be put in the serviceof a national cause. The nationalismof the late eighteenth century, a moment when Germanysought to free itself from the political and cultural domina-tion of France, found in history a means by which its casemight be articulatedand advanced.With its emphasis on the spiritualityof art and its capacityto embody and transmitreligiousemotion, together with theconviction that these characteristicswere to be found in theart of places and times that had not yet been hallowed bytradition, Wackenroder's book exemplified the romanticattitude toward the question of artistic quality. Much thesame tone is found in the influential criticism of the writerFriedrichSchlegel, who, during a stayin Paris between 1802and 1804, was deeply affected by his experience of theMus&e Napolkon. It was in the Louvre that Napoleon'sartisticplunder, taken from all over Europe, was placed onview as an unprecedented display of his imperial power.8Although Schlegel shared the admiration for Italian arttypicalof the taste of the day, he preferredthe early painters

of the fourteenth century because to his eyes their workexuded a greater spirituality.It was his admiration for thereligious feeling of old-master painting that allowed him toextend his appreciation to what he called "old German"painting of the Renaissance, by which he meant not onlyGerman but also Netherlandish painting of this period.9Schlegel's advocacyof the virtues of "old German"paintingsoon drew the attention of the wealthy sons of a Germanbusinessman, Sulpiz and Melchior Boisser&e,who went toParis to visit him.'0 After staying at his house as payingguests, they traveledwith Schlegel through northern Franceand the southern Netherlands, visiting Gothic cathedralsbefore returning to their native Cologne. In the accountSchlegelwrote of thisjourney, he identified the Gothic as theGerman style of the MiddleAges, extolling its beauties as amanifestationof the age of faith.

Schlegel'sviews were symptomaticof a significant changeof taste, one that insured that his reevaluationof German artof the Renaissancewould be underwrittenby capital so as tobe realized in the formationof collections and museums. Ontheir return to Cologne, the Boisseree brothersbegan avidlycollecting German and Netherlandish art. Their passionwasaided by political circumstances,for the Napoleonic dispos-session of the properties of the Catholic Church, enforcedthroughout occupied Germanyas well as France,meant thatmedieval and Renaissancealtarpiecesthat had been part ofthe neglected fabric of church interiorssuddenlyentered themarketplace in large numbers. The Boisser~es soon as-sembled the largest and most importantcollection of paint-ings of this period, including some of what are today themost admired works of Stefan Lochner, Rogier van derWeyden, and Hans Memling. After having been madeavailableto the Prussiancrown,which was in the process ofestablishing what would eventually become the nationalmuseum in Berlin, this collection was eventually bought bythe king of Bavaria n 1827, thus finding an alternativerouteto the fulfillmentof Schlegel's call for a national museum of"oldGerman"painting."Both Wackenroder and Schlegel had used history as ameans of realizing their critical appreciation of an art thatwasemotionallyladen withreligiousvalues and that could beclaimed as a glorious manifestation of the Germannationalspirit. In doing so, they laid the foundation for the studyofwhat came to be called Northern Renaissance art. In whatfollows, I want to analyze the culmination of the discursivepractice they inaugurated. I want to compare, that is, thevalues that inform their writing with those of the recentart-historical past. What distinguishes their approach tohistoryfrom the one that still characterizesour own times?

6. Ibid., 115.7. See G. Iggers, TheGermanConceptionf History:TheNationalTraditionofHistoricalThoughtromHerder o thePresent,Middletown,Conn., 1968, 34-38.The concept of historicism s subjectto a varietyof different definitions.See,e.g., M. Mandelbaum,History,Man,andReason:A Studyn NineteenthCenturyThought,Baltimore, 1971. For an interestingattempt to dissolve the distinc-tion between historicismand history by arguing that all histories share thekind of system-building qualityusuallyattributedto historicisthistories onthe basis that they are all structuredaccordingto rhetorical tropes, see H.White, "Historicism,History, and the Figurative Imagination,"HistoryandTheory, iv, 1975, Beiheft 14, 48-67.

8. See H. Eichner,FriedrichSchlegel,NewYork, 1970, 98.9. For Schlegel's views on art, see F. Schlegel, Kritische riedrichSchlegelAusgabe,35 vols., ed. E. Behler withJ. J. Austett and H. Eichner, Munich,1958-81, Iv,Ansichten ndIdeenvon derchristlichen unst,1959.10. For a history of the Boisseree brothers and their collection, see E.Firmenich-Richartz,Die BriiderBoisseree:Sulpizund MelchiorBoisserde lsKunstsammler.inBeitrag ur GeschichteerRomantik,ena, 1916.11. Sulzberger asin n. 4), 57.


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What kinds of stories do we tell today and what motivatesthem?The other and contrasting end of this analysis of thecharacter of the discourse on Northern Renaissance art is

located in what is usuallyregarded as its apogee, namely thework of Erwin Panofsky. Panofsky, a German art historianwho was deprived of his teaching position by the NationalSocialistsin 1933, settled permanently in the United Statesin the followingyear. He is the author of two books that havedecisively shaped the study of Northern Renaissance art inour time. These are TheLifeandArtofAlbrechtD~irer f 1943and EarlyNetherlandishPainting,which appeared in 1953.12Rather than using history in the service of religious, emo-tional, and explicitlynationalisticgoals, Panofskyappears tohave no other ambition than to provide the reader with awealth of information about the subjectsunder discussion.Both his texts are detailed and learned accounts of theavailable historicalevidence, which is pursued with a relent-less "objectivity,"with a positivistic desire to evaluate andsupersede the nature and quality of the information pro-vided by earlier historians. The introductions to both vol-umes, however, "betrayrather than parade," their ideologi-cal agenda.'In the introduction to the Dfirerbook, Panofskydeclaresthat the German contribution to art history has yet to beacknowledged. He proposes that the artistic accomplish-ments of Dfirer,whom he defines as a representativeof theGerman national spirit,make himworthyof comparisonwiththe great artists of the ItalianRenaissance.While there is aninteresting continuity to be traced between the nationalismof Wackenroder and Schlegel and that of Panofsky, thehistoriographic differences in the way they advance theirclaims are more significantthan their similarities.The period of 150 years or so that separates the texts ofthese authors could be said to have witnessed the triumphofhistory. The historicistprinciple enunciated by Herder hadbeen developed in the course of the nineteenth centuryintosomething resemblinga science. The recognition that time isa decisive factor affecting our understanding of the worldtransformed the shape of knowledge. In addition, the influ-ence of the achievementsof the physicalsciences during thesame period pushed historical studies into an ever-increas-ing empiricism.The transformation n the functionof historybetween these two historical moments seems to dependabove all else on the elimination of the subjectivityof thehistorian. Whereas Wackenroder and Schlegel fully articu-lated the fact that their interest in history depended upontheir religious and nationalistbeliefs, in Panofsky'scase thehistorian'sagenda is far less explicit.

The nationalismof the introduction to the Dfirerbook, forexample, appears paradoxicalin light of theway n whichtheGerman government had deprived him of his teachingposition. What was at stake in inserting Dfirer into theRenaissance canon populated by Italian artists was muchmore complicated than an assertion of pride in nationalidentity. As I have argued elsewhere, Panofsky'sview ofDfirer as torn between the principles of reason and unrea-son, for which he used the emblem of Dfirer's engravingMelencolia , has more to do with the political situation ofGermanyin his own time, with a defense of humanismin thecontext of National Socialism,than it does with the culturalconditions of sixteenth-century Nuremberg.14The point Iwish to make is that Panofsky'sengagement with politicswasnot permitted to register as part of the conscious objectivesof his historicalbiography of Dfirer.Political and emotionalbeliefswererepressed in favor of "disinterestedness."The same "objectivist"attitude is found in the introduc-tion to EarlyNetherlandishPainting. Here, Panofsky arguesthat Netherlandish naturalism, the characteristicquality ofthis school of painting, is actuallyindebted to the inventionof one-point perspective, an artistic achievement of Italianart of the same period. The canonical status of Netherland-ish art is thus underwrittenby its incorporationof one of thepictorialdevices that serve to distinguish Italian art. Insteadof appealing to the notion of artistic relativity on whichWackenroder and Schlegel had based their claim for theinterest of "old German" painting, Panofsky attempts toinclude Netherlandish art under the umbrella of the tradi-tional taste for the Italian Renaissance. If Italian painting ispart of the canon because of its development of mimetictechniques, such as perspective, that enabled it to achievemore convincing kinds of illusionism, thereby heighteningthe naturalism or which it had been valued,then Netherland-ish painting gains status by sharing these characteristics.This is, in other words, a kind of canonization by associa-tion.15Similarly, Panofsky'sanalysisof the complex symbol-ismof Netherlandishpainting,which is discussedatlength inthe text, could be said to represent an attempt to find anequivalent for the complicated religious and secularallego-ries that are a feature of Italian art of thisperiod. Once again,the artistic merit attached to early Netherlandish art wouldresult not from its pictorialautonomy,not from the principleof artistic relativity,but from its similarityto the southerntradition.What led to the suppression of the authorial agenda thatseems to distinguish Panofsky'sreatmentof NorthernRenais-sance art from that of Wackenroderand Schlegel? Why s theauthorial voice so much more removed and abstract?What

12. E. Panofsky, The Life and Art ofAlbrecht Durer, 2 vols., Princeton, N.J.,1943; and idem, Early Netherlandish Painting, 2 vols., Cambridge, Mass.,1953.13. E. Panofsky, "The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline" (1940), inMeaning and the VisualArts, Garden City, N.Y., 1955, 1-25. The phrase (14)occurs as part of the definition of what Panofsky calls the "iconological"method of interpretation whose purpose is to uncover the cultural attitudesencoded in the "content" of the work of art.14. See "Panofsky's Melancolia," in K. Moxey, The Practice of Theory:

Poststructuralism,Cultural Politics, and Art History, Ithaca, N.Y./London, 1994,65-78.15. I have analyzed the introduction to Early Netherlandish Painting in"Perspective, Panofsky, and the Philosophy of History," New LiteraryHistory,forthcoming. Panofsky's text also contains expressions of nationalist views.Some of them were noted by Katherine Crawford Luber in "Nationalism and

Panofsky: Albrecht Diirer, Italy, and Early Netherlandish Painting," a talkdelivered at the College Art Association meeting in New York, 1994.


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led to the substitutionof a colorless objectivity or a passion-ately argued subjectivity?A full answer to these questionswould necessitate a history of the idea of history in thenineteenth and twentiethcenturiesand would have much todo with the institutionalization of the discipline and theprofessionalization of its practitioners. It is immediatelyapparent, however, that history served a very differentfunction for Wackenroder and Schlegel than it did forPanofsky.Whereas in the earlier case historywas part of alargerculturalrhetoric, in its later incarnation it seems to bepursued as if it could be an end in itself.Panofsky'sreticence about the larger cultural function ofhistory,hisreluctanceto articulate the concerns thatanimatehis scholarlywork, as well as his conception of history as apositivistic discipline, finds its theoretical justification in"The Historyof Art as a Humanistic Discipline"of 1955. Inthis reflective essay, Panofsky suggests that the historian isinvolvedin twoverydifferenttypes of activity.In respondingto the work of art (whichis defined as a "man-madeobjectdemanding to be experienced aesthetically"),the art histo-rian must both "re-create" he work by attempting to intuitthe artistic "intentions" that went into its creation and thensubmit it to archaeological investigation. The relation be-tween "aestheticre-creation" and "archaeological nvestiga-tion"is called an "organic"one:

It is not true that the art historian first constitutes hisobject by means of re-creative synthesis and then beginshis archaeologicalinvestigation-as though firstbuying aticket and then boarding a train. In reality the twoprocesses do not succeed each other, they interpenetrate;not only does the re-creativesynthesisserveas a basis forthe archaeologicalinvestigation,the archaeologicalinves-tigation in turn serves as a basis for the re-creativeprocess;both mutually qualifyand rectifyone another.16

The aesthetic re-creationof the work is deemed to depend"notonly on the naturalsensitivityand visual trainingof thespectator, but also on his culturalequipment."17The differ-ence between a naive beholder and an art historian is the factthat the latter is aware of his culturalpredispositions;that is,he is aware of the contemporary perspective he brings to thework of interpretation as a consequence of belonging to aculture different from the one under investigation,while thenaive beholder is not. The point of the historian's awarenessof his own culturalvalues is not to acknowledgethem as partof the historical narrativethatwill result as a consequence ofhis engagement with the past, not to understand thatwhatever he comes up withwill inevitablybe filteredthroughthe peculiar configurationof his own subjectivity,but rather

to suppress or eliminate all aspects of his approach to thestudy of the past that might result from his participationinthe historicalhorizon to which he belongs. It is by means ofhis knowledge of the past that the historian is to control, ifnot to extirpate altogether, the affective and valuationalbaggage he brought to the enterprise in the firstplace. Thegoal is to be as "objective"as possible.He tries, therefore, to make adjustments by learning asmuch as he possibly can about the circumstances underwhich the objectsof his studies were created. Not onlywillhe collect and verify all the available information as tomedium, condition, age, authorship,destination, etc., buthe will also compare the work with others of its class, andwill examine such writings as reflect the aesthetic stan-dards of its country and age, in order to achieve a more

"objective" appraisal of its quality. .. . But when he doesall this, his aesthetic perception as such will changeaccordingly, and will more and more adapt itself to theoriginal "intention" of the works. Thus what the arthistorian,as opposed to the "naive"art lover, does, is notto erect a rationalsuperstructureon an irrationalfounda-tion, but to develop his re-creativeexperiences so as toconform with the results of his archaeological research,while continuallychecking the results of his archaeologi-cal researchagainstthe evidence of his re-creativeexperi-ences.18Becauseof the theoretical eliminationof the subjectivityofthe historian,the approach to interpretationoutlined abovehas no way of dealing with issues of artistic merit. Thismethod could, for example, be applied to the interpretationof anywork of art regardlessof its "quality."What is missingis some way of articulating why certain works matter to theinterpreter and others do not. The result is an art historyabsorbedby a positivisticobsessionwith information.Panofsky was, of course, fully aware that the disciplinecould not exist without a means of privileging some worksabove others. His solution was to claim that "greatness"ofworks of art was self-evident and artistic achievementwoulddisclose itself to the historian in the course of his investiga-tion:But when a "masterpiece"is compared and connectedwith as many "lessimportant"worksof art as turn out, inthe course of the investigation, to be comparable andconnectable with it, the originality of the invention, thesuperiorityof its composition and technique, and what-ever other features make it "great," will automaticallybecome evident-not in spite but because of the fact that

16. Panofsky (as in n. 13), 16.17. Ibid.18. Ibid., 17-18.19. Ibid., 18, n. 13.20. See E. Panofsky, "Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to theStudy of Renaissance Art" (1939), in Meaning in the VisualArts, Garden City,N.Y., 1955, 26-54. For comment and criticism of this method of interpreta-tion, see E. Kaemmerling, Ikonographie und Ikonologie: Theorien, Entwicklung,Probleme,Cologne, 1979; J. Bonnet, ed., Erwin Panofsky:Cahierspour un temps,Paris, 1983; M. Podro, The CriticalHistorians ofArt, New Haven, 1982; M. A.Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History, Ithaca, N.Y., 1984; eadem,

Iconografia e Iconologia, Milan, 1992; K. Moxey, "Panofsky's Concept of'Iconology' and the Problem of Interpretation in the History of Art," NewLiterary History, xvII, 1985-86, 265-74; S. Ferretti, Cassirer, Panofsky, andWarburg: Symbol, Art, and History, trans. R. Pierce, New Haven, 1989; G.Didi-Huberman, Devant l'image, Paris, 1990; and B. Cassidy, ed., Iconographyat the Crossroads,Princeton, N.J., 1993.21. B. Herrnstein Smith, "The Exile of Evaluation," in Contingencies ofValue: Alternative Perspectives or Critical Theory, Cambridge, Mass., 1988, 18.It is significant that the book Smith identifies as the most extreme version ofthe antievaluationist stance, Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, was, like


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the whole group of materials has been subjected to oneand the same method of analysisand interpretation.19Panofsky'sbanishment of subjectivity n favor of positivis-tic objectivity-the sacrificeof culturaljudgment in favor of are-creation of the artistic "intentions" of the past, "inten-tions" which were to be validated by "archaeological nvesti-

gation"-proved deeply influential. So far, contemporaryart historyhas concerned itself only with the evaluation andcriticism of his methodological concepts of "iconography"and "iconology," which for so long dominated scholarlyactivity n our discipline.20The other side of the coin, the factthat this subtle and effectivemethod of historicalinterpreta-tion succeeded because it obliteratedquestionsrelated to thesubjectivityof the historian, has yet to be recognized andexplored.Panofsky'sbias against the insertionof the concerns of thepresent into narrativesabout the past appears to be part of ahistorical tendency that has also affected literarystudies inthe twentiethcentury.BarbaraHerrnsteinSmith has pointedout that literarycriticshave also been more concerned withthe development of theories of interpretation than witharticulating the rationale that occasions their deployment.She argues that:

while professors of literature have sought to claim fortheir activities the rigor, objectivity,cognitive substantial-ity,and progressassociatedwith science and the empiricaldisciplines, they have also attempted to remain faithful tothe essentiallyconservativeand didactic missionof human-istic studies:to honor and preservethe culture's tradition-ally esteemed objects-in this case, its canonized texts--and to illuminate and transmit the traditional culturalvalues presumablyembodied in them.21

Panofsky'srelegation of the question of artisticexcellenceto the realm of the self-evident effectivelywove it into thefabric of tradition. One can only tell what is self-evident byconsulting whatother human beings have considered artisti-callyexceptional in the past. By reading the pastwe can inferwhat is appropriate to the present, thus avoiding the neces-sity of projecting contemporaryjudgment into the process.The price of interpretive objectivity is the abdication ofresponsibility for finding in history a means of articulatingthe cultural dilemmas of the present. The principle ofself-evidence is a profoundly conservativeone, dedicated tothe support of the statusquo and ideallysuited to the task ofproviding arthistorywith "scientific" espectability.Panofsky's equation of canonical value with traditionalvalue was espoused and supported by Ernst Gombrich,

arguably the other most influential art historian of thiscentury. It is because art historians are the custodiansof thecanon, Gombrich argues, that they can be distinguishedfrom social scientists,who approach works of art as part ofthe materialof culture. In a lecture entitled "ArtHistoryandthe Social Sciences"of 1973, Gombrichtook it upon himselfto defend art history's preoccupation with a canon of worksthat had been recognized as "great" against those whoadvocated the study of works of art as cultural artifacts. Heargued that whereas the study of historical circumstancewould significantlyaffect our appreciation of the art of thepast, it was no substitute for the connoisseur's capacity todiscern"quality."ForGombrich,the canon

offers points of reference, standards of excellence whichwe cannot level down without losing direction. Whichparticular peaks, or which individual achievements weselect for this role maybe a matterof choice, but we couldnot make such a choice if there reallywere no peaks butonly shifting dunes.... the values of the canon are toodeeply embedded in the totality of our civilization forthem to be discussed in isolation .... Our attitude to thepeaks of art can be conveyed through the waywe speakabout them, perhaps through ourveryreluctanceto spoilthe experience with too much talk. What we call civiliza-tion may be interpreted as a web of value judgementswhich are implicitratherthan explicit.22

What was it that led art historians such as Panofsky andGombrichto dismiss any discussion of the culturalqualitiesof exceptional works of art on the basis that they wereself-evident?What supported their belief that artistic meritwasuniversallydiscernible?The unstated assumptionunder-lying their position regardingwhat constitutes the canonicalstatus of a work of art would appear to be a universalisttheory of aesthetics.According to the theory of aesthetics formulated by Im-manuel Kantin the late eighteenth century,certainworks ofart had the capacity to provoke a universal recognition oftheir extraordinary quality.23The existence of the beautifulwas thus something located in the humanresponse to objectsrather than in the objectsthemselves.By makingthe capacityto recognize artisticquality part of the definition of "humannature,"Kant's heoryoffered a basis for the identification ofcanonical status with thejudgment of tradition. Both Panof-skyand Gombrichbelong to the humanist tradition of whichKant's theory is a part. That is, they share the faith that"human nature" affords human beings an adequate episte-mological foundation on which to understand both the world

Early Netherlandish Painting, published in the 1950s. Smith's book is one ofseveral publications dealing with the question of the canon in literary studies(it is telling that there should be no art-historical equivalent). For others, seeR. van Hallberg, ed., "Canons," a special issue of Critical Inquiry, x, no. 1,1983, which included contributions by B. Herrnstein Smith et al.; F.Kermode, Forms ofAttention, Chicago, 1985; J. Tompkins, Sensational Designs:The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860, New York, 1985; R.Scholes, "Aiming a Canon at the Curriculum," Salmagundi, LXXII, 1986,101-17, with responses by E. D. Hirsch et al.; C. Altieri, Canons andConsequences:Reflectionson the Ethical Forceof Imaginative Ideals, Evanston, Ill.,1990; J. Goran, TheMaking of the Modern Canon: Genesis and Crisisof a LiteraryIdea, Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1991; P. Lauter, Canons in Contexts,New York,

1991; H. L. Gates, Jr., Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars, New York,1992; and J. Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary CanonFormation, Chicago, 1993.22. E. Gombrich, Art History and the Social Sciences: The Romanes Lecturefor1973, Oxford, 1975, 54. Silence was also suggested by Frye as the means bywhich a critic might validate the equation of the canon with tradition; seeSmith (as in n. 21), 24. For a recent defense of the humanist strategy ofsilencing discussion of the quality of literary texts (or works of art) in favor ofaccepting the verdict of tradition, see Peter Brooks, "Aesthetics and Ideol-ogy: What Happened to Poetics?" CriticalInquiry, xx, 1994, 509-23.23. I. Kant, CritiqueofAestheticJudgement, trans. J. Meredith, Oxford, 1952.


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and "man's"place within it. It is for this reason that it ispossible for them to assert that the artisticqualityof certaincultural artifacts s "self-evident."The humanist conception of human subjectivityas some-thing stable, continuous, autonomous, and not liable tomodulationaccordingto circumstancesof time and place hasundergone devastating criticism in our own time. Psycho-analysis,for example, has tended to emphasize the contin-gency of the subject.AccordingtoJacques Lacan,the subjectis split on the acquisition of language into that whichrepresentsthe desires and drives of a preconsciouscondition(the unconscious) and that which represents the codes andconventions that govern social life (the symbolic).24On thisaccount, subjectivity is shifting and unstable, constantlyunder revision as the relation between the unconscious andthe social is renegotiated in the light of the ever-changingcircumstancesof everyday ife. This viewof the subjectclearlymilitatesagainst the concept of "humannature,"against theassumption that all human beings could ever react in thesamewaytowardanything,let alone works of art.Ifwe acceptthe notion that human subjectivity s a construction whoseshape varies according to the culturalforces that determineits identity, then it follows that human response to culturalartifactswillvaryaccording to the race, gender, class, sexualorientation, and nationality of the individual. One of themost powerful critiquesof Kant's aesthetic theory has beenmounted by the Marxist sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, whoused the concept of class to show that the location ofindividuals in the social hierarchyis crucial in determiningtheirresponse to works of art.25Anthropologists, such as Johannes Fabian, and literarycritics,such as EdwardSaid, have also drawn attention to theideological agenda underlying humanist epistemologies.They suggest that the conception of the human subject assomething stableand unchanging, something self-consciousand capable of knowing both the world and itself, is adimension of Eurocentrism that characterized Europeancultureduring the colonial period of the late eighteenth andnineteenth centuries.26The age of empire saw a fusion of thedesire for knowledge with the worldwide expansion ofEuropean power. The search for knowledge was backed byepistemological assumptions that precluded cultural differ-ences, so that in the Europeanencounter with other peoplesit was always Europe that was used as the canon bywhich tojudge the rest. The result was a subordination of othercultures to a European conception of "civilization"and areduction of different ways of understanding the world towhat is known as "science."

These critics suggest that the ways in which individuals,classes, and cultures invest objects with social value are sodifferent that such processes cannot be considered to belongto the same category-that is, they cannot usefully begrouped under the rubricof the aesthetic. If this is the case,then the concept of aesthetics, one that is intimatelyassoci-ated with the humanist notion of an unchanging "humannature," is emptied of its content.27What becomes moreimportant than trying to reduce the rich variety of humanresponse to a single kind of experience is to articulate thegrounds on which these differentresponses attain the statusof discursivepractices.Panofsky'sattempt to naturalize the concept of artisticquality and Gombrich's claim that quality is one of theimplicitvaluejudgments that make up our civilization werenever completely convincing. Not only is the validityof suchpositions questionable in the light of contemporarytheory,but theywere also challenged withinthe historical horizoninwhich they were enunciated. Among the most important(and curiously neglected) attempts to insiston the role of thepresent in the task of accounting for the past is LeoSteinberg'sremarkablyprescient essay "Objectivityand theShrinking Self' of 1969. By insisting that subjectivitymat-tered, Steinberg rebelled against the antiseptic objectivity,the positivistic empiricism, of the art history of his day.According to him, it is the way in which the art historian'sculturaloutlook is modeled by the culturalcircumstancesofhis own time that determines the importance he ultimatelyascribes to the work of art under consideration. Manneristart, for example, which had long been despised because ofthe way in which it had been assessed by the Italian artacademies of the seventeenth century, was rediscovered bytwentieth-century Expressionist artists and critics on thebasis of their own artisticpreferences. In Steinberg'sview,there is no evading personal involvement. All historicalinterpretation is necessarily colored by the beliefs of theinterpreter:

It is naive to imagine thatyou avoid the risk of projectionmerely by not interpreting. In desisting from interpreta-tion, you do not cease to project.Youmerely projectmoreunwittingly.There is apparently no escape from oneselfand little safety in closing art history off against thecontemporary imagination.28It was not until the advent of feminism, however, that the

equation of the art-historicalcanon with tradition received alasting challenge. More than any other historian or critic, it

24. J. Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I" and"The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason since Freud," inEcrits:A Selection, trans. A. Sheridan New York, 1977, 1-7, 146-78.25. P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste,London, 1986.26. J. Fabian, Time and the Other: How AnthropologyMakes its Object, NewYork, 1983; E. Said, Orientalism, New York, 1979; and idem, Culture andImperialism, New York, 1993.27. See Tony Bennett, "Really Useless Knowledge: A Political Critique ofAesthetics," Literature and History, xIII, 1987, 38-57.

28. L. Steinberg, "Objectivity and the Shrinking Self," Daedalus, xcviII,Summer 1969, 824-36, esp. 836. Svetlana Alpers also drew attention to theimportance of the present in the interpretation of the past in "Is ArtHistory?" Daedalus, cvi 1977, 1-13. Describing the work of T. J. Clark, M.Fried, L. Steinberg, and M. Baxandall, she claimed that they emphasized theway in which the artistic merit discovered in works of art by critics in the pastneeds to be evaluated in the context of the present. In doing so, these authorsimplied that the canon inherited from tradition was not absolute and that itwas subject to revision at the hands of succeeding generations. Indeed, in aremarkable passage Alpers (6) suggested that knowledge was not to be foundbut rather it had to be made: "art historians all too often see themselves as


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was Linda Nochlin in her famous piece "WhyHave ThereBeen No Great Women Artists?"of 1971 who placed theissue of artistic merit squarely in the foreground of thediscipline's attention.29 She showedjust how unsatisfactorythe concept of tradition was to a definition of the canonicalstatus of a work of art,by underscoring the extent to which aputative masterpiece serves to articulate and support ahierarchybetween the sexes. There was nothing inherentlynatural about the selection of great artists and works onwhich art history depended because that choice was theproduct of social attitudes thatwere historicallydetermined.The equation of artistic merit with tradition honored thecultural achievements of men because social forces pre-vented women from participating fully in the processes ofartisticproduction. By means of a strikingcase study of thehistoryof the exclusion of women from drawingor paintingfrom the nude in the art academies that dominated artisticeducation until the end of the nineteenth century, Nochlinsuggested that it was social institutions rather than aninherent lack in the female personality that was responsiblefor the underrepresentation of this gender among the"great"artists of the past:

Hopefully, by stressingthe institutional-i.e., the public--rather than the individual,or private, pre-conditions forachievement or the lack of it in the arts,we have provideda paradigmforthe investigationof other areasin the field.By examining in some detail a single instance of depriva-tion or disadvantage-the unavailabilityof nude modelsto women art students-we have suggested that it wasindeed institutionally ade impossiblefor women to achieveartisticexcellence, or success,on the same footing as men,no matterwhat the potency of their so-called talent, orgenius.30

Ratherthan attempt to insertwomen into a canon thathadbeen constructed on the basis of their exclusion, subsequentfeminist critics demanded its complete destruction. Writingin the context of poststructuralism,Griselda Pollock usedsemiotics and the work of Foucault to argue that art historywas a discursivepractice,a form of making meaning that wasimbued with the attitudes of those, namely men, who as thedominant gender had inaugurated and supported it as acultural institution. Her conclusion was that feminist scholar-ship no longer had a place within art history as it hadtraditionallybeen defined. Instead of addressingthe canoni-cal works around which disciplinary activity had revolved,

she advocated what she called "feminist interventions in thehistoriesof art."31Makinguse of the work ofJacques Derrida,Adrian Rifkinhas drawn out the consequences of poststructuralisttheoryfor the art-historical canon, in particular the necessity ofrecognizing that the work of the historian-the historicaltext-is inevitablycolored by the writer'sposition in historyand culture. If arthistoryisregarded as a discursivepractice,a sociallysanctioned form of makingculturalmeaning, thenit is susceptible to the type of textual analysis known asdeconstruction.32 Derrida has shown that language is in-volved in a game of absent presence, that it serves to conferontological status on what is otherwiseonly an unstable andshifting system of signs which draw their meaning not fromtheircapacityto refer to objectsin the world,but ratherfromthe cultural attitudes with which they are invested by theirusers. In such circumstances, the notion of "art"is trans-formed from being a series of culturalobjects distinguishedby their capacity to provoke a universal response to their

artisticmerit, to a series of cultural objects that have beenarbitrarilyawarded a privileged status by authors whoseinterests have been served by doing so.33 The culturalcategory "art"and the discursive practice "arthistory"aresocial constructs rather than eternal constants in the historyof civilization.Whatconclusions can we drawconcerning the function ofauthorialsubjectivityn the writingof historyand the natureand status of the art-historical canon? First, and moststartling, is the realization that the type of appreciationexpressed for Northern Renaissance art by Wackenroderand Schlegel is more relevant to our contemporary notionsof historical interpretation than is the work of Panofsky.Once the concept of traditionhas been shown to be histori-cally compromised, laden with the cultural attitudes of aparticularhistorical moment, as feminist critics have done,and once every attempt to make textual meaning has beenshown to be less about the world and more about theprojection of authorial bias and prejudice as well as insightand understanding, then it seems clear that art historiansmust addressthe question of why they believe the workstheydiscuss are worth talking about. Once there is no longeranything self-evident about the status of the works that arethe focus of art-historicalattention, it is necessary to arguefor the choice of certain works rather than others. Thesubjectiveattitudes and culturalaspirationsof the art histo-rian become just as important an aspect of the narrativeasthe works that are its object.This is much the same as sayingthat there is no canon beyond that which we ourselves

being in pursuit of knowledge without recognizing how they themselves arethe makers of that knowledge."Curiously enough, the social history of art inspired by the Marxist criticism ofT. J. Clark has by and large taken the existence of a traditional canon forgranted. Clark has never conceived of the canon as a body of works imbuedwith historically contingent social meaning. While his interpretations ofcanonical works are clearly politically motivated, he rarely calls attention tohis own intellectual beliefs and social engagement in the process of hisencounter with the past. See, e.g., T. J. Clark, Image of the People: GustaveCourbet and the 1848 Revolution, Princeton, N.J., 1973; and idem, ThePaintingofModern Life:Paris in the Art ofManet and His Followers, Princeton, N.J., 1984.For criticism of Clark's failure to address the question of the canon, see A.Rifkin, "Marx's Clarkism," Art History,vIII, 1985, 488-95.

29. L. Nochlin, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" Artnews,LXIX, JAN. 1971, 23-39, 67-69.30. Ibid., 69.31. G. Pollock, "Feminist Interventions in the Histories of Art: An Introduc-tion," in Vision and Diference: Femininity, Feminism, and the Histories of Art,London, 1988, 1-17.32. A. Rifkin, "Art's Histories," in The New Art History, ed. A. L. Rees and F.Borzello, London, 1986, 157-63. See also G. Mermoz, "Rhetoric andEpisteme: Writing about 'Art' in the Wake of Post-Structuralism," Art History,xII, 1989, 497-509.

33. For a discussion of the way in which works of art are "framed," see J.Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. G. Bennington and I. McLeod, Chicago,1987.


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construct.Instead of historyused to buttressthe existence ofa traditional canon, instead of the historical imaginationmade to serve the status quo-that is, the tastes of thosewhose culture we have inherited-a motivatedhistorycan beused to destabilize and call into question the assumptionsand prejudices of that culture by insisting on their contin-gency and relativity.What are the pedagogical implications of these conclu-sions? What would happen, in other words, to the educa-tional function of arthistory,if these reflections wereput intopractice? In its present configuration as a discipline orga-nized around the study of a canon of artists and worksguaranteed by tradition, art history must be considered anagent in what Pierre Bourdieu has called the process of"culturalreproduction."The canonical content of our syllabiserves as a means of transmitting"culturalcapital"from onegeneration of the elite to another.34By transmittingknowl-edge about a set of works whose merit can neither bequestioned nor discussed, art history plays an importantconservativerole in contemporaryculture.How can these conditions be transformed? The elimina-tion of a canon seems to be a utopian dream.To suggest thatart history could continue as a social institution withoutmaking choices between what artists and works should betaught and what should not presupposes that the disciplinecould operate without a cultural agenda. Such deliberatenaivete would simply reproduce the circumstances thatpromoted an unquestioning attitude toward the traditionalcanon in the first place. If we assume in the wake ofpoststructuralism hat there are no disinterested narratives,that all art-historical accounts are informed by one bias oranother, then it seems wiser to acknowledge that there willalwaysbe some works that are considered to be of greaterartistic merit than others and that the standardsinvolved inmaking suchjudgments differaccordingto the attitudesandinterestsof differenthistoricalgroupsand individuals.Ratherthan assuming that the discipline might ever agree on whatconstitutes "quality," let us suppose our students wereintroduced to concepts of artistic merit that responded todifferentpoliticaland culturalbeliefs. In suchcircumstances,they might encounter a Marxistcanon, a feminist canon, agay and lesbian canon, a postcolonial canon, and so forth.This would make it clear that whatever the discipline'scanonical paradigm happened to be, there was little agree-ment as to its constitution and shape and that it was alwayscapable of reconfiguration. Far from assuming that thisplethora of ideals of social value could coexist in egalitarianconviviality,we can expect a contest of voices to arise inwhich a struggle for dominance would result in the hierar-chization of contestatory discourses. The value of the exis-tence of such alternatives,as well as of their debate with oneanother, is that none could henceforth be regarded as a

"master narrative."Decisions to subscribe to one or anotherof their socialagendaswould be made with a fullrecognitionof the politicaland culturalimplicationsof that choice. Noneof the alternativeswould be able to mask the contingency ofits assumptionsbehind the naturalizingmask of tradition.Some version of this scenariois alreadyplayingitself out inour discipline. Traditionallysanctioned narrativeson whichcanonical statusdepended are being called into question bynarratives hat no longer sharetheirassumptions.Individualartists and works of art-even entire periods-are beingreevaluated in such a way that their continued representa-tion in the canon has been placed in doubt,just as canonicalstatus is nowbeing sought for artists,works,and periods thathave hitherto been unrecognized. Indeed, as David Carrierhas suggested, arthistorywouldappear to be experiencing a"paradigm shift." Using Thomas Kuhn's notion of the"paradigm" o refer to forms of art-historicalinterpretationthat are regarded as acceptable by the dominant institutionsin the profession at any particular point in time, Carriersuggests that our discipline's notion of "truth" is beingtransformed and that we are witnessing the development ofnew paradigms of what are to count as acceptable forms ofinterpretation.35Kuhn's sociology of knowledge not onlyaffords us insight into contemporarycircumstancesbut alsosuggests a wayof explaining the fact that, despite the appealof some of art history's eading practitionersto an unchang-ing and constant notion of tradition, one which wouldstabilize and perpetuate a fixed concept of quality,the canonhas alwaysbeen malleable,seeminglyengaged in a processofconstant change.This essay, however, is not a descriptive account of thetransformationscurrently being experienced by art history.Far from an empirical report, it is an appeal for a broaderrecognition of the role played by subjectivity n the articula-tion of historical interpretations.Rather than legitimating apreestablished canon of artists and works following theprinciple of "objectivity,"historiansmight pursue their ownagendas and articulate theirown motives forengaging in theprocess of finding cultural meaning in the art of the past.Instead of regarding the subject of art history as fixed andunchanging, scholars have an opportunity to define whatthat subject might be. In doing so, they can display ratherthan conceal the cultural issues that preoccupy them. Thesubjectof art historythus becomes manifestlyan allegoryofthe historical circumstances that have both shaped andempowered the subjectivityof the author.This emphasis on the agency of the historian, his or hercapacityto subject the values of the past to intense scrutinyand rigorous criticism, as well as to articulate the culturalaspirationsof his or her own times, should not be misunder-stood. This is not a call for some simpleminded correspon-dence between interpretationand interpreter,not a sugges-

34. P. Bourdieu and J. C. Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society,andCulture, trans. R. Nice, London, 1990. For an indictment of the way in whichart history serves the process of "cultural reproduction," see Carol Duncan,"Teaching the Rich," in The Aestheticsof Power: Essays in Critical Art History,New York, 1993, 135-42.35. D. Carrier, "Erwin Panofksy, Leo Steinberg, David Carrier: TheProblem of Objectivity in Art Historical Interpretation," Journal of Aesthetics

and Art Criticism, XLVII,no. 4, 1989, 333-47. For Kuhn's theory of "para-digms," see T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Chicago,1970.36. L. Althusser, "Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses," inLenin and Philosophyand Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster, New York, 1971,126-86.


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tion that one should reflect the other. The allegories ofsubjectivitywe call historymust inevitablybe opaque. Wecannever be fullyconscious of the motives that impel (compel?)us to give one shape to an interpretation rather thananother. The unconscious must, by definition, remain be-yond our capacityto understand. Not only is the historian'ssubjectivitypartlydetermined byunconscious forces,but it isalso governedby the ideological traditions thatare character-istic of its situation in history. Following LouisAlthusser,wemight define ideology as the social unconscious.36 Thehistorian belongs sometimes knowinglyand sometimes un-knowinglyto a varietyof different waysof conceiving of therelations between human beings as members of a particularculture, as well as the way in which that culture relates toother cultures and to the world, and these structures ofunderstanding define his or her subjectivity n relation to allother times and places.It is only, however,because the cultural codes and conven-tions that serve to define individualsubjectivityalso enable it

to participate in social life, it is only because the subject isboth constituted by and constitutingof the circumstancesinwhich he or she exists, that the active role of history in thecreation and transformation of culture can be understood.The call for a motivatedhistorythusdoes not assume that thehistorian's motives are transparentlyaccessible, but rather,within the context of psychologicaland ideological determi-nation, it insists on the author'spowers of agency to articu-late and promote political agendas that are relevant to thecultural circumstances n which he or she is located.

KeithMoxey, uthorof Peasants, Warriors,and Wives(Chicago,1989) and The Practice of Theory (Ithaca,N.Y., 1994), isco-editorwith MichaelAnn Hollyand NormanBrysonof VisualTheory (NewYork, 991) and Visual Culture(Hanover,N.H.,1994). [Department f Art History,BarnardCollege/ColumbiaUniversity,NewYork,N.Y.10027].

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