on judging art without absolutes

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On Judging Art without AbsolutesAuthor(s): James S. AckermanReviewed work(s):Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Spring, 1979), pp. 441-469Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1342995 .

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2/30

On

Judging

Art

without

Absolutes

James

S.

Ackerman

1

Like most other art

historians,

I

choose

to

lecture

on Rembrandt and

Picasso in an introductory course because I think they are good artists

and

I

enjoy looking

at their

paintings.

This makes me

a

quite

different

kind of creature

from

a

political,

social,

or economic

historian,

who

does

exercise

preferences

in

the choice of

theme and method

but is not ex-

pected

to enter

into a

personal,

certainly

not an

emotional,

interaction

with the events or documents

he encounters.

I

shall not discuss

the

question

of whether historians

actually

live

up

to

these

expectations;

the

fact that at

my university

and

many

others

they

regard

themselves as

social

scientists indicates

anyway

that

they aspire

to a

certain

repression

of sentiment, taste, and ideals in the practice of their metier.

That art historians

have felt

it

necessary

to

emulate this effort to

repress

personal input

can

be

explained

by

our need to

gain

credibility

in

that

aspect

of our

work that is

indistinguishable

in

method from other

historical

research:

the

reconstruction,

through

documents and

artifacts,

of

past

events, conditions,

and

attitudes. Most

of us

simply ignore

the

ambivalence

of our

position;

I

cannot recall

having

heard

or read dis-

cussions

of

it,

but

it

is bound

to

creep

out

from under the

rug.

If

a

student asks

me

why

I

think

Rembrandt and Picasso

are

good

artists-

which most students are too well trained to do-and if I answer that

The

present

version of this

essay

owes much to

the criticisms of

Nancy

McCauley,

Mark

Roskill,

Irving Singer,

and Natasha

Staller,

and to the students

and

colleagues

with

whom

I

discussed

these issues

at

Harvard, Princeton,

and

The National

Humanities

In-

stitute

in

New Haven.

0093-1896/79/0503-0002$02.56

441


3/30

442

James

S. Ackerman On

Judging

Art

without

Absolutes

judgments

of value

are not

discussed

by

historians,

I

am within

my

rights,

like a

witness

at a

congressional

hearing

claiming

the

protection

of the Fifth Amendment. But I ought to be found in contempt of the

classroom.

And if I

try

to

answer

seriously,

I

ought

not

begin by

saying

that

I

chose

Rembrandt

because

he

has been

acknowledged by

genera-

tions to have been a

great

artist

but

rather

because

I

find

more to

think,

feel,

and

speak

about

in

his

works than

in

those

of,

for

example,

Nicolaes

Maes,

and because

I

believe that

the

student stands to

gain

more

by

looking

at them.

I

want the

student to have the most

rewarding experi-

ences

and,

as a

result,

perhaps

to learn to make

value discriminations

of

his own-even

ones different

from

mine

and

from

the

so-called

con-

sensus of history-and ultimately to explain the grounds on which he

makes

them. This

means

having

to

know and

to

explain

what

I

think is

rewarding.

Judgments

of the

relative merits of works of

art do not

actually

occupy

much of

our conscious

time as

professionals

in

spite

of the

fact

that we

make them

constantly,

as when

we visit a museum

or

gallery,

linger longer

over one

piece

than over

another,

and

pass

others

by

without

stopping.

We make these

judgments

as

easily

and

as un-

consciously

as

we

classify passersby

or

people

around

us

in

a

bus,

that

is,

according to their class, their accent, their dress, and so forth, which

indicates that

they

are

primarily

the

result

of cultural

conditioning.

My

split-second

decision to

linger

or to

pass

by

a

particular

work cannot

be

based

on

any

serious consideration

of the

object's

claim

to

attention;

it is

a

conditioned

response

to a

class of

objects.

And

I

believe that

part

of the

reason

we have

difficulty

in

explaining

the

grounds

on which

we make

the

Rembrandt-type

value

judgment

is

that we do not

really

make

it

for

ourselves but

merely

appropriate

the

judgment

and

find

that

it

works

well

enough

for

our

purposes.

Yet we cannot ask

others to trust us as

professionals if our reactions to art are merely conventional-Pavlovian

conditioned

spasms

rather

than the result of

personal experience

and

knowledge.

That is

no

more defensible than

holding

conventional

at-

titudes toward

social

class,

religion,

or race.

These

shortcomings

are less evident

in

museum

curators,

when

they

function as

purchasers

of

objects,

and

in

serious critics

of

contemporary

art,

both of

whom

have

to

put

their

opinions,

and

consequently

their

James S. Ackerman, professor of fine arts at Harvard University, is

the author

of,

among

other

works,

The

Architecture

of

Michelangelo,

Art

and

Archaeology,

The Cortile del

Belvedere,

and

Palladio.

He

is

currently

writing

on Renaissance

art, science,

and naturalism

and

making

a

film on

Andrea Palladio

and

his

influence

in

America.

Transactions

in Ar-

chitectural

Design,

his

previous

contribution

to

Critical

Inquiry,

ap-

peared

in

the

Winter 1974

issue.


4/30

Critical

Inquiry

Spring

1979 443

reputations,

on the line.

Granted,

most

curators and

critics take

refuge

in

conventional evaluations

too,

but,

unlike

academic

art

historians,

they

are liable in that event to be criticized for lack of imagination or inde-

pendence. Perhaps

every

academic art historian should be

impelled

to

state his

opinions

on works

of

contemporary

art so as to learn what

it

means to make

and

defend

his

judgments overtly

and

to

take

risks.

I

do not mean to

imply

that the

primary

role of

criticism

is

to label

works

of art as

good,

bad,

and

middling

and to defend the

decision;

that

is

the

function of art

journalism

in

its role as a stimulant to

the market.

Criticism's

function is

rather

to

discuss works of art

in

an

illuminating

way;

evaluation enters

primarily

in

selecting

those works and

situations

that are worth interpreting and that stimulate worthwhile responses in

the

critic.

In

this

respect,

criticism and

history

should be alike:

in

both,

value

judgments

are not the end

products

but

rather the

generators

of

interpretation.

We

start with a

response

and then

try

to articulate it.

But the rules of academic

propriety

force

us to

deny

that we start

with a

response.

We

are

expected

to

aspire

to scientific

objectivity,

even

at the cost of

misleading

ourselves

and,

worse

still,

our

students,

as

to the

criteria

operating

at

the

very

foundations

of our work.

Though

the

dilemma is not

peculiar

to art

history

(it

bedevils other

humanities,

nota-

bly musicology, as well), it must sound to academic literary critics like the

replay

of

a situation confronted

half

a

century

ago.

The histories of the

nonverbal arts are

younger

disciplines:

they

are

maturing

later.

My

point

is

not that we must now start

to make

judgments

of

value a

part

of historical method

but

that

they

have

always

been

there and

sim-

ply

need to be

acknowledged

and dealt

with

in

a

responsible

way.

The

fear that sound

scholarship may

be threatened

by

personal

bias,

political

opportunism,

and other interests

ought

to

have been

stimulated

by

our

traditional

pseudoscientific posture

rather than

by

a

humanism that

can

acknowledge the role of values. Let me explain why.

Our

incapacity

to be aware of our own

value

system

is easiest to

explain.

The

prevailing discipline

of art

history,

like that of the

other

humanities,

is

positivist.

A true

positivist

erroneously

believes that an

observer can describe

phenomena

as

they actually

are without

injecting

so-called

subjective

values;

in

practice

we make less

categorical

claims

and

simply try

to

avoid

personal

biases,

or at

least the

appearance

of

them,

by

adhering

to

agreed

on

rules of

procedure,

such

as

the

citation

of

other

opinions,

the

scrupulous reading

of

measurements, documents,

and so forth.1 This positivist attitude took hold of the field at its incep-

1.

I

am

using

positivism

not

in

the technical

philosophical

sense of

the

body

of

principles espoused by Auguste

Comte

and his

followers

but

in

the

more

general

sense of

an

investigative

attitude based on the belief

that there are

concrete

and

objective

facts that

it is

the

responsibility

of the scholar

to discover and reveal

with

as little

subjectivity

as

possible.

While

positivist

method does build effective defenses

against

the

application

of

personal

biases

or

independent imagination,

it is

quite

defenseless

against

the

application


5/30

444

James

S.

Ackerman On

Judging

Art without

Absolutes

tion

in

Germany

and was reinforced

in

the late

nineteenth

century

when

the natural

sciences

began

to

displace

the

classics

at the core

of

higher

education. In an era enchanted by science, the so-called humanists

wanted

the

security

of a

laboratorylike

method.

Positivism

produced

an

admirably

efficient

research

machinery capable

of

emitting

increasing

numbers

of well-documented accounts

of

every

aspect

of

the

history

of

art

susceptible

to

positivist

investigation.

But that's

just

the

problem:

the

method

operates only

in

a

limited

area;

it

is at its best when

dealing

with

demonstrable

fact,

with the

most

easily

measurable

phenomena.

It is

no

coincidence

that the modern

writings

on

geometrical

theories

of

Renais-

sance

perspective

would

fill

a small

library,

while

there are

not half a

dozen studies of Renaissance color, and that most studies of nineteenth-

century

painting

concentrate

on what the critics said about the

painting.

Positivist method was

incapable

of

addressing

the values

that

make

actual

works of

art

interesting

to

us.

And

how have those values been

addressed?

Surreptitiously,

because

they

are not

susceptible

to con-

trolled measurement.

Instead,

they require philosophical assumptions

which,

as

positivists,

we have been unable to make

overtly.

Values,

for-

mulated

in

the

idealist

philosophies

of the

Renaissance,

simply crept

in

from

the

past. Being

unconsciously

assimilated,

they

remained un-

challenged except by Marxist criticism, which Americans have rejected

with

unscholarly

horror. Since idealism is

quite

incompatible

with

positivism

(in

fact,

they

are

nearly

opposites),

it had to be internalized

in

order to make

the

absurd

combination

possible.

The

idealist

position

is

that art

presents

a

superior,

more

perfect

world than

the one

we

inhabit;

the

artist is like a

god

inspired

by

a vision

of a

higher

order

which

he

attempts

to

make concrete

in

his work: hence

the

invention,

some time

in

the

sixteenth

century,

of the

concept

of

creativity.

The

Creator

in

heaven

is the

model of the

artist who

creates

on earth. Leone Battista Alberti, who was the founder of modern idealist

criticism,

proposed

two criteria of

value for

judging

works of

art:

first,

the artist has to

be a

good

and learned

person,

and

second,

his work

has

to

be

based

on mathematical

principles

of

harmony.2

Later

the

Neo-

platonists

gave

Alberti's

suggestions

a sounder

philosophical

base,

and

art was

firmly

established

in

a realm of its

own,

divorced

from

ordinary

experience

and accessible

through

a network

of

vague

and sometimes

lofty

abstractions.

It

is not

our

pseudoscientific

method with its

reputed

of even flagrant biases if they are generally shared within the profession. A serious study of

Salon

painting

or of

Beaux-Arts

architecture

was

not

possible

in

the last

generation,

to

say

nothing

of the

vast areas

of

popular,

vernacular,

and folk art that were excluded from

consideration

by

historians.

2.

See De Pictura

(1435),

ed.

Cecil

Grayson

(London

and New

York,

1972),

bk.

3,

pp.

94-98,

paragraphs

52-56.

For

discussion of the

Renaissance

origins

of the

theory

of creativ-

ity,

see

Martin

Kemp,

From

'Mimesis'

to'Fantasia':

The

Quattrocento

Vocabulary

of Crea-

tion,

Inspiration

and

Genius

in

the

Visual

Arts, Viator

8

(1977):

347-98.


6/30

Critical

Inquiry Spring

1979

445

objectivity

that

justifies speaking

of

a

good proportion,

a sensitive

line,

a

receding

space,

or forms

in

tension but the idealist

tradition,

which

posits a mysterious link between the formal aspects of works of art and

our

private feelings

or,

more

precisely,

the

private feelings

of those

educated

and

interested

enough

to have

acquired

the mental set

and

vocabulary

required

to read

Vasari,

Reynolds,

W6olfflin,

Clement

Greenberg,

or

Artforum.

I

cannot conceive

of

anyone

talking

about

works of art

the

way

we

do

who

had not

been

indoctrinated

in

idealism.

Idealist

precepts

do

not

simply

provide

us

with a

way

of

seeing

and

talking

about

art,

they

favor a

particular

kind of

art

in

which abstract

formal elements come to the fore. The evolution of modern

art toward

nonobjective abstractions represents the apotheosis of Renaissance

idealism.

The

oddest

thing

about our

situation is that we are not

philosophical

idealists

in

any

other

aspect

of our

lives;

in

fact,

we

tend

to be

opposed

to that

position

and

to

philosophy

in

general.

Americans are a

pragmatic

lot,

and

we

do not concern ourselves

with

the Nature of the

State

or the

Spirit

of the

Age;

we

prefer

concrete

images, except

when

making politi-

cal

speeches

or

talking

about

art.

Obviously

we

adhere

to

critical idealism

only

because

we

don't

realize

what

we are

doing.

The combination of positivism and idealism did not, however, pro-

vide the

necessary

framework for

dealing

with

the

relationship

of

a

work

of

art to the art that

preceded

and

followed it.

This

had

to

come from a

third

source,

which

ultimately

exercised its own

influence on

judgments

of value.

Before

the

second

quarter

of the

nineteenth

century,

critics and

artists

judged

the

art

of their own

time

in

relation to the work

of

particu-

lar individuals or

styles

of the

past.

Renaissance art

was measured

against

the remains of

antiquity;

later,

the

art

of

Raphael

and

Michelangelo

was

used as a paradigm. The great critical controversy of eighteenth-century

France was

waged

between

the

Rubenists and the

Poussinists,

and ulti-

mately

this

was thrown into

obscurity

by

another return to the

models of

Greece and Rome. It was

assumed

in

these cases that the

paragon

in

the

past

could not be

quite

equaled

and that

success consisted

in

coming

as

near to it as

possible.

So

it

continued

until,

some time

in

the

second

quarter

of

the

nineteenth

century,

the

concept

of the

avant-garde

adapted

from St.

Simon and

other

radical

political

theorists

began

to offer

a different sort

of artistic aim.3 By its very nature, an avant-garde work could not be

judged

in

terms of

a

fixed

model

in

the

past

because its

purpose

was to

3. Donald

Egbert

has

discussed the

origins

of

avant-garde

theory

in

The

Idea

of

the

'Avant

Garde'

in Art and

Politics,

American

Historical

Review

73,

no.

2

(1967):

339-66

and

in

chap.

3

of

Social

Radicalism

and

the

Arts

(New

York,

1970).

See also

Renato

Poggioli,

Teoria

dell'

arte

d'avanguardia (Bologna,

1962);

in

English,

The

Theory

of

the Avant-

Garde,

trans.

Gerald

Fitzgerald

(Cambridge,

Mass.,

1968).


7/30

446

James

S. Ackerman

On

Judging

Art

without

Absolutes

forge

ahead. This

being

so,

what was to be used as a

standard

by

which

to

judge?

Since

critics

could

not

claim to

be

prophets,

and

therefore could

not presume to predict toward what the avant-garde was forging, it was

impossible

to

judge

advanced art

in

terms of its success or failure

in

approaching

some

goal.

This

generated

the first modern crisis of values:

if

there was no

paragon

in

the

past

and

no

definable

goal

in

the

future,

criticism

courted the

danger

that the

only

measure of the worth of a new

work would be its

newness,

which

meant that

there

would

be no

way

of

distinguishing meaningful

innovation from faddism. Current art

jour-

nals show

that

the

danger

has remained for over a

century

and a

quarter.

But

the

more astute

critics found a

way

out

of this

box with the

concept

which today we call modernism. In place of a fixed paradigm in the

past,

modernism

posits

a

momentum

generated by

a

sequence

of

avant-

garde

works,

a

momentum that

propels

art

along

a definable

trajectory.

This made the

history

of art rather like a

relay

race

in

which each

runner

hands the baton on to his

successor,

who is

praised

if

he

continues to

run

along

the

defined

path

but damned

if

he

stops,

veers

sharply

from

it,

or

turns around.

It

is not

by

chance

that the

avant-garde

concept

was for-

mulated at the same time as Darwin's

theory

of evolution

(the

mid-

nineteenth

century

was, however,

too fascinated

by

the idea of

progress

to grasp the theory as a whole; man's descent from the apes was mistaken

as a

proof

that innovative

change

is

biologically

desirable).4

In

this new critical

climate

the value of a work of art was

measured

against

the critic's or

the

historian's

perception

of the

direction

that the

preceding sequence

had taken. This is what made

it

possible

in

our time

for

Clement

Greenberg

to defend his

perception

of

the

superiority

of

abstract

expressionist

art and the

corollary

inferiority

of

pop

or

minimal

art

on the

grounds

that the

former

was the true heir

of

cubism,

and

cubism

was the direct

descendant of the work

of

Manet and

Cezanne.5

The concept of modernism was equally applicable to the art of the more

distant

past-in

this

case

the

term historicism is more suitable-and

imposed

its

particular

value structure on

the

whole of art

history.

It

cannot be coincidence

that the

professional

academic

art historian

ap-

peared roughly

in

the same

generation

as

the

avant-garde

and Dar-

winism;

it

was a

generation

in

which movement if

not

progress crept

into

value

judgments

in

all

kinds of

human

affairs.

Art

history

in

the

preced-

ing

age

of fixed

paradigms

was couched

in

the form of the lives

of artists

and

was

not

much

concerned

with the

processes

of

change

in

style.

The

4.

See

E.

H.

Gombrich,

The

Ideas

of

Progress

and Their

Impact

on Art

(New

York,

1971).

In

my

Art and

Evolution

(The

Nature and Art

of

Motion,

ed.

Gyorgy

Kepes

[New

York,

1965],

pp.

32-40),

I

have discussed

the

ways

in which a

proper understanding

of evolu-

tionary

theory

can

be

helpful

for historical constructs

in

art

history.

5.

Though

I

believe

that

Clement

Greenberg

has been the most

perceptive

critic

of

his

generation,

his

justification

of

a

particular avant-garde

movement

in

terms

of

its

tradition

led to

a

conservatism

comparable

to

that of Vasari.


8/30

Critical

Inquiry Spring

1979

447

consciousness

of cultural

evolution made

it

possible

to build

style

and

style sequences

into

a framework

for a

proper

history

of

art.

This change might not have happened as rapidly or as effectively as

it did

without the

help

of

Hegel,

another

great

apostle

of

movement in

time.

Hegel,

far more than

Darwin,

was to become the

guiding

beacon

for the creation of the

modern

image

of the

history

of art because his

transcendental vision made

it

possible

to

fuse

the

idealist

traditions of art

criticism that had been

preserved

in

academic

thought

since the

Renais-

sance

with

the new

progressivism

of the era of the

Industrial

Revolution.

Hegel's

Geist was a sort of immanent force

that

presided

over a

time or a

people

and

guided

their

artistic efforts

in

the direction

of a consumma-

tion which, while not exactly predestined, was a natural unfolding of

potentials.

But

Hegel

was much more of a

progressivist

than

Darwin;

he

saw

each successive era of

history

as

reaching

a

more

exalted

plane

than

the one before.6

Hegel

helped

art historians to formulate such

concepts

as

High

Gothic or

High

Renaissance

and

to see

them,

in

effect,

as re-

alizations

of

the cumulative efforts of

preceding generations

(for

exam-

ple,

in

W61olfflin's

lassic

Art and its

offspring).

The

nineteenth

century

came to be

represented

in

terms

of chains

of

innovations

that

ultimately

led to cubism

in

painting

and to the international

style

in

architecture.

This sort of historicism has been strong enough to elevate that over-

grown

greenhouse,

the

Crystal

Palace

in

London,

to the status

of an

architectural

masterpiece

because

it

anticipated

modern

transparency by

employing

metal frame

construction without

load-bearing

walls. The

Crystal

Palace is a

notable

example

of how

a historicist

method

becomes

the

generator

of

value

judgments.

The lesson of

its

apotheosis

should

help

us to

erase the

myth

of historical

objectivity.

In

the

historicist view of art

there is one

overarching

value:

the

capacity

of

a work to conform to-or

preferably

to

further-the

evolu-

tion of the mainstream of art. Our books and articles are obsessively

preoccupied

with

the

influence of one work of

art

upon

another

because

history

has become

not

simply

a

way

of

interpreting change

and

tradi-

tion,

which

is a

legitimate

function

of the

discipline,

but

a

way

of

surrep-

titiously

setting

value

standards.

Good

art

has been that which

fits the

patterns

made

by

historians. Historicism

has

impelled

us into a

fixation

on

process, especially

in

the form of

style

development,

that distorts our

perception

of the

significance

of

particular

works of

art,

especially

those

that fall

outside our

ordained

patterns.

6.

Students

of

art could

not,

of

course,

accept

the

proposition

that art

reached

a

higher

level

at

each

successive era

of

history-that

proposition

was

based rather on an

emphasis

on

philosophy,

science,

technology,

and

the social

sciences.

Art

historians in-

fluenced

by

Hegel

restricted their

historicism

to

dialectic situations

involving

the

succession

from

an

earlier to

a

later

manifestation

of

a

style,

as

in

Reigl's

haptic-optic

dialectic,

or

W1lfflin's

polarities

in

Renaissance und Barock

and

Kunstgeschichtliche

Grundbegriffe.

The

problem

is

discussed

by

Gombrich,

In

Search

of

Cultural

History

(Oxford,

1969).


9/30

448

James

S. Ackerman On

Judging

Art without

Absolutes

Summary

The three components of our traditional critical-historical system

have

been

(1)

positivist

method,

an

antiphilosophical

effort to assume a

scientific

stance that

favors measurement over critical

judgment;

(2)

idealism

which,

because

it

posits

aesthetic

absolutes not verifiable

in

ex-

perience,

isolates

for

interpretation

abstract

formal elements and casts

artists

in

the

image

of

the Lord of

Creation,

and

(3)

historicism

which,

observing

history by

hindsight,

identifies movements

or

styles

directed

toward culminations

that

provide

a

standard of evaluation.7 Most con-

temporary

historians and

critics,

especially

in

England

and

America,

have not admitted to

being

idealists or historicists but have defined their

approach

as

being something

like

what

I have

called

positivist,

claiming

to

judge

works of art

on their own

terms,

to

adopt

for each work the

value structure

that

presumably

brought

it

into

being.

That effort was

destined

to fail:

we are

no

more

adequately

able to understand

the

intention

of artists

of

every

time and

culture

than we are able to

abandon

our own biases

and

ideology.

The

practice

of

this kind of

objectivity

ed

in

fact

to

the unconscious

application

of

idealist

and/or

historicist

princi-

ples.

2

My

perception

of

the situation

I

have outlined was

greatly

sharpened

by

German and

Italian

neo-Marxist

critiques

of idealist and

positivist

critical

method,

and when

I

first sketched this

paper

several

years ago,

I

proposed

a

system conforming

to

my

political,

social,

and

ethical

convictions

in

which

the work of art

was to be evaluated

in

terms

of its social function, broadly considered.8 But I have been unable to

believe

categorically

that one value

criterion could

be

applied

universally

without

excessively restricting receptivity

to the

variety

of

experiences

available

in

art. Fixed

positions

toward

art

are

more

congenial

to

systems

of aesthetics

than to

practical

criticism,

and

they

have

been

played

down

even

by

most

modern

philosophers

of the visual arts.

Besides,

anyone

who has

sympathetically

tried to understand

the art

of

the last

fifteen

years

must be

aware

that all values that

may

have

seemed

permanent

in

earlier times are

subject

to

challenge.

In the absence of absolutes, then, I see for myself only one alterna-

7.

A

statistical

survey

of German

and

English-language

publications

of the last

half

century

would

surely

show

that

art

historians

have chosen

those

subjects

that are easiest to

document

concretely,

that

permit

interpretation

in

formal

terms,

and that are

held to be

progressive

and

in

the mainstream of

a

style.

8.

See

my

Judgments

of

Value,

Studies

in

Art

History

Presented

at the Middle

Atlantic

Symposium

n the

History

of

Art,

1971-73

(College

Park, Md.,

1973).


10/30

Critical

Inquiry

Spring

1979

449

tive to

positivistic

relativism:

approach

the work of art

with

as

open

and

receptive

an attitude as

possible,

attempt

to

explain

my

responses

in

terms of my cumulated experience without reference to abstract princi-

ples,

and

articulate

as

clearly

as

possible

the

presuppositions

and criteria

that

I

bring

to the discussion. This articulation

will

set forth-in terms

not of a

system

of

aesthetics

but of a more

general

statement of values-

as much of

my

philosophy

and

goals

as

may

be relevant

to the

discussion.

I

shall not

presume

to be

objective except

in the

sense of

respecting-to

the

extent

that

I

am able-the reader's

right

to know

where

I

stand

and

how

this affects

what

I

say.

The

rules

of

evidence are

that the reader

must be able

to

verify

what

I

say

with

his

own

eyes,

by

experiences

he

has

had that are like mine, or by his understanding of what brings me to

make the statement

in

question.

In

this

way,

I

hope

to be

able

to

explain

why

I

make a

particular judgment

about

any

human artifact

without

having

to

state

explicitly

or

implicitly

at the start what makes a work of

art or

what makes a

good

work of

art.

I

shall

illustrate the

approach

in

the

following pages

by

discussing

a

few works of

Western art

of

the

kind

found

in

handbooks.

This

restric-

tion to the

high

art

of

our own

culture,

itself a

vestige

of

idealist

practice,

will

simplify

my

effort to show

what

it is

to

speak

about

pictures

without the usual assumption of the reader's acquiescence in accepting

certain absolutes. Idealist attitudes and

vocabulary,

however,

are so

deeply ingrained

in

my

consciousness that

this

attempt

to

refer re-

sponses only

to actual

experiences

is still

in

an

experimental

stage.

I

start

with

the

classic

example

of

classical

art,

Raphael's

School

of

Athens

(fig.

1),

located

in

the

papal

chambers of the

Vatican,

started

in

or

after 1508. Though the term abstract s most often used only to classify

art

characterized

by

formal abstraction-a

legacy

of idealist criticism-I

see this work as

conceptually highly

abstract.

In

it,

two

philosophers

of

different

generations,

Plato and

Aristotle,

appear

side-by-side,

each

sur-

rounded

by

his followers-not

pupils

as

in

a school but savants who lived

over the

span

of

many

centuries

in

many parts

of the

Western and

Mideastern world. The

painting represents something

that

couldn't have

occurred,

in

a

place

that never existed. The artist

could not even have

found identities for

all

the

figures

he

painted

without the

help

of

excep-

tionally learned scholars. Although the work was executed at the time

when

Leonardo

da

Vinci

called

on

painters

to imitate nature so

far as

your

art

permits, '9

ts claim to attention is not that it

makes an

impossible

event look

real

but that

it

offers

a visual

analogue

of

the rational order

9. Leonardo da

Vinci, Treatise

on

Painting,

ed. A.

Philip

McMahon

(Princeton,

N.J.,

1956),

paragraph

765.

The word imitate

in

the Renaissance does

not

mean

strictly

to

copy;

it

implies

a license to

improve

on the

imperfect

sense

data of the

everyday

world.


11/30

oo,. .. .

u ??I

S

.

.o-..

nn

i

.,

.

..

m•~

i

m~

??.

.

. .

..

. ...

.

.

? •

? i .. . ... ...:•. ?•: '?; ?

?

.

.?.....

t

S';

,••'--

f•i'

•

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0

o

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I.


12/30

Critical

Inquiry

Spring

1979

451

which

all these

philosophers

and scientists

had

helped

to establish as

the

ideal

of

Raphael's

intellectual

contemporaries.

The

grandeur

of

human

proportions, the gestures, and the classical perfection of physique that

give

the

figures

superhuman

stature

helped

make this

work a

totem of

humanist

culture and education.

The

architecture and the

perspective

are used not to

suggest

an

actual

environment

but to

give

structure

to the

concept

and to

draw

attention to the

two

principal philosophers

and to about ten

others

in-

tended to be

recognized

by

literate

viewers.

The

importance

of

the

sev-

eral

participants

is

underscored also

by

their

positions

in

the

design

of

the

picture

and

by

their

didactic

or

meditative

gestures;

the

hierarchical

scheme is crowned by Apollo and Minerva who preside over the

Platonists and Aristotelians

respectively

from

niches

overhead.

What

validates the

picture

for

observers

today

is that

we

are,

however

tenu-

ously,

inheritors of the

culture that

put

this

company

of

philosophers

together

in

this

way,

even

if

we have never

heard of

Ptolemy

or

Zoroas-

ter.

That

culture is mirrored

not

only

in

the

way

the

subject

was

conceived

but also

in

the

work's formal structure:

the

symmetry,

the

proportions

of

figures

and

architecture,

the centralized

perspective,

the color

values

and

balances,

and the

relationship

of the fictive

space

to

the frame

and

the surface. The picture matches in it principles the intellectual ideals of

rationality,

order,

perspective

in

a

judgmental

sense,

and traditions fos-

tered

in

the

universities

of

the

West.

I

doubt that it

would

or

should

mean much to

anyone

who

is alien to

those

principles;'10

ts

values are not

universal but

quite

specific,

reflecting

those

of a

small

minority

of

privileged

persons

in one

part

of this world.

The

values of a

print by

Rembrandt

have

something

in

common with

those of

Raphael's

fresco,

but

they

are less

metaphorical

and

prob-

ably

easier for most

people

to

grasp.

Like

many

other

works of the

artist,

the depiction of Abraham and Isaac interprets the action in a

historical-mythical

event

by

conveying

not

only

its

physical

nature but

its

profound

emotional

implications.

The

exceptional

power

of

this

etching

can best be

explained by

comparing

it

to

a

drawing

of the

same

subject

by

the

artist's teacher

Lastman

(figs.

2

and

3).

I

call

Rembrandt's

interpreta-

tion

exceptional

for two

reasons: the

first,

and

more

demonstrable,

is

based on an

evaluation

of the

effectiveness with which

each artist con-

10. This

statement

conflicts

with

the idealist

position

that

the

values

of

art are univer-

sal,

which

implies

that

any

work

of

art

can

speak

to

any

viewer

if

the

viewer is

sufficiently

sensitive and well informed. I maintain that a viewer from a tribal culture would be

unlikely

to find

Raphael's

fresco

rewarding,

even

if

he

were

fully

informed about its

significance

for us.

Conversely,

I

believe that

our

capacity

to

experience fully

tribal art

is

restricted

by

our

being

alien

to

the culture.

Both he and

we

can,

however,

transpose

some

of the criteria we

use for

judging

works from

our own

culture

onto works of

the alien

culture and

gain

satisfaction from

them. On the

question

of

universals,

see the

recently

translated

essay

of

1939

by Jan

Mukaiovsky,

Can

There

Be

a

Universal

Aesthetic Value in

Art?

Structure,

Sign

and

Function

(New

Haven, Conn.,

1978),

pp.

57-69.


13/30

452

James

S.

Ackerman On

Judging

Art

without

Absolutes

veys

his

concept

of the

theme,

and the second on an evaluation of the

comparative

worthiness of the

two

concepts.

Judging

the first of these-

effectiveness-is the historian's usual way of being objective. In this

case,

though

the theme comes

from

the

same

passage

in the

Bible,

the

concepts

are

quite

different.

Lastman

presents

an

operatic, physically

expressive group

in

simple

forms,

while Rembrandt offers clues for

psychological

penetration through

containment and

angularity

of

movement,

facial

expression,

and also

by

using light

and dark and di-

?'

>

.•1,

..

:

~~~~

~i

•

.x.?

.

i.~,?

?.

,

•.

,•.

iTY

1

•

' •

I•

;:

'-'•- -•-•:..

.

..

?

•':.,,..

i

,

.

.

.

i

-

:;

FIG.

2.-Rembrandt van

Rijn,

Abrahamand

Isaac,

etching.

Photo

courtesy

of

the

Fogg

Art

Museum,

Harvard

University,

Cambridge,

Mass.


14/30

Critical

Inquiry

Spring

1979 453

agonal

lines to

create a

portentous atmosphere

through

abstract devices.

In

terms

of effectiveness

alone,

Rembrandt does

a better

job

than

Lastman at visually reinforcing his ideas and feelings; even if we pre-

ferred

the

operatic

to the

psychological interpretation,

we should have

to

confess

that

Lastman's

vision of the son

saved

from death is rendered

in

a

way

that leaves us unsure of what

feelings

the

son's

motions are

sup-

posed

to

express.

But

beyond

the consideration

of

effectiveness,

we find

Rembrandt's

interpretation

of the

theme more

compelling.

No matter

how

impressively

and

with

what sureness of hand Lastman had stated

his

0u~

1~~ ~(8-e

FIG.

3.-Pieter

Lastman,

Abraham and

Isaac,

drawing.

Photo

courtesy

of

Fondation

Custodia

(Lugt

Collection),

Paris.


15/30

454

James

S. Ackerman

On

Judging

Art withoutAbsolutes

concept

of the

event,

we

would be

likely

to rate the Rembrandt

higher

because we

prefer

his

insightful

and

sympathetic

presentation

of the

event and because he has fused profound content with penetrating

form.

The

case of

Rembrandt,

however,

is rather rare

in

the

history

of art

since the

presentation

of dramatic human events

was a concern of

paint-

ers for

only

two

centuries--centuries,

incidentally,

in

which

theatrical

drama was at

its

height-and

in

only

a fraction of

that time did artists

seek to

portray

the inner

psychological

states of the

protagonists.

Rem-

brandt himself

painted pictures

of

flayed

oxen

hanging

in the

butcher

shop

which

are

admired not because

they engender

feelings

of

sympathy

for the slaughtered animals but for values of a more sensuous sort in-

volving

the

interplay

between the

viscosity

of the

thickly applied

oil

paint

and the moist textures and

vivid,

morbid colors

of the raw meat.

So,

not

only

does Rembrandt

in

his

etching

evoke

through

formal devices

an

intensification of our

feelings

of

sympathy

with

other human

beings

that

is

of

an

entirely

different nature from the cool

and intellectual construct

of

Raphael

(which

is rather like an

essay

on moral

philosophy

or

rhetoric),

but Rembrandt

himself,

in

painting

raw

meat because he was

interested

in

its

textures, colors,

and

viscosity,

can

shift into a

quite

different sphere of value.

For

variety's

sake,

I

turn, however,

not to another Rembrandt work

but to a

picture by

a

contemporary, Velazquez.

The

portrait

of Infanta

Margarita

as a

child

(fig.

4)

is rare

among Velazquez's

court

images

because he

usually

focuses on the

personality

of the

sitter and

plays

down the

setting.

Here

the

clothing

and the

furnishings

interest

him,

and

us,

more than the

child,

whose

personality

must,

in

any

case,

have

been unformed. But the fact that the

message

is

conveyed by depicting

inanimate

objects

of little

significance

does not make the

picture

in-

significant: something of great value is transmitted through their shape,

pattern,

and

relationships

of

color

(unfortunately

not

preserved

in

pho-

tographs),

and

through

the

way

the strokes transmit

the

painter's

sensi-

bility.

In

saying

this,

I

admit

that

I

am not

departing

at

all

from con-

ventional

statements

by

art

historians,

but

I

am

trying

to

justify

what

I

say

in a

different and more communicable

way.

Our contact

with this

painting

is

made,

as

with the Rembrandt

etching,

through

associations

with

experiences

we have

had

in

real

life-with nature and

with culture

(the

latter

chiefly through

other

images)

and

not,

as idealist

criticism

would have it, through some affinity that human minds-and particu-

larly

cultivated minds-have

with

abstract formal

entities. The effort

to

explain

how

particular

combinations of

shapes

and

colors,

such as those

of the

dress

or

table

cover in this

picture,

can be affective

beyond

their

specific representational

function is the

most

challenging

task of a

nonidealist criticism.

Theoretically

an

experience-based

criticism should

be

able

to turn

to

perception psychology

for

support.

But,

while

experi-


16/30

Critical

Inquiry Spring

1979

455

mental evidence

associating

forms

and

hues

with

given

emotional

re-

sponses may

adequately explain

how

certain

subjects

react to

simple

stimuli, it has not discovered why, nor even whether, its restricted results

are valid for

subjects

outside the

Western

European

cultural tradition.

The

contribution of this sort of

psychology

to criticism

can be

only

pe-

ripheral

so

long

as

experimenters

are unable to

distinguish

responses

that are innate

(which

would

provide

criticism with secure

reference

points)

from those

that are

unconsciously

assimilated or learned.

Algit-a

FIG.

4.-Diego

Velazquez, Infanta

Margarita.

Photo

courtesy

of

Kunsthistoriches

Museum,

Vienna.


17/30

456

James

S. Ackerman On

Judging

Art

withoutAbsolutes

In

the works of

Raphael,

Rembrandt,

and

Velizquez

that

I

have

discussed,

there are also

values

that

have

nothing

to do with what the

works communicate. One of these is excellence of craft: we respond to a

superbly

skilled

performance

in

and

of

itself. Another is

splendor

of

materials: we

are attracted to rich

oil

glazes

in

some

works,

for

example,

and

in

other

works

to

gold,

marble,

gems,

and so on. Medieval

writings

on

art

praise

craft and materials almost

to

the exclusion of other

values.

Let us return to the

question

of the criteria

by

which one work of art

is

selected

for

inclusion

among

the

masterpieces

rather

than

another

by

comparing

two

mid-nineteenth-century

pictures

of

bourgeois

ladies and

gentlemen relaxing

in

the

country

(figs.

5

and

6).

One,

by

Manet,

ap-

pears in all the textbooks, and the other, by Ford Madox Brown, is

relatively

obscure and

rarely praised,

though

viewers of that time

would

certainly

have reversed

that

judgment.

Modern

art

historians do not

defend their

choice of Manet

over

Brown,

they

simply

confine them-

selves to

explaining

with

greater

or lesser

insight why

the

former is

worthy

of

notice. But that

operation

can be

performed

on both

works,

and

if

one

starts without a

preformed

bias

in

favor of

one,

the

examina-

tion will not

inevitably

lead

to the

accepted

conclusion,

or

perhaps

to

any

conclusion at all.

Manet is not in fact much interested in painting people outdoors;

his

field and forest

are

dully

and

indecisively

painted

in

numerous

areas,

and

his

figures

do not

seem

to

have left the

studio or even to have

been

in

the

studio at the same

time.

Brown,

however,

paints

the

panorama

and

the

play

of the sun on it in

quite

an

effective

way, surely

and

con-

sistently,

though

without much

organization

as he is

transfixed

by

the

more

unstructured vision of

photography.

Manet's

figures,

on the other

hand,

are

singly

more

powerful

and

leave an

indelible

impression:

I

remember them

vividly

without

having

the

image

before me. Forceful-

ness and economy of expression are values Manet appears to be seeking;

to those

ends

he

reduces

chiaroscuro

modeling

to a minimum and flat-

tens

objects by giving

them

strong

near-black

outlines

that

isolate them

from

their

setting.

Though

the still

life of the

clothes

and

lunch

may

have been

stuck

in to

fill

an

empty

space,

it is a

paradigm

of

Manet's

inventive

straightforwardness

in

its

strength

of

stroke and color.

(An

idealist

critic

might

also commend

economy,

but as an

absolute

value;

my

point

is

that

economy

of

form

has value

in

this

picture

not

for

itself alone

but

because

it

effectively

reinforces

a worthwhile

purpose,

which

I

shall

attempt to characterize in a moment.) Brown, by contrast, is more inter-

ested

in

detailed

description

than

in

economy,

but

the

details

get

the

best

of

him;

the

figures,

and

particularly

the

dog,

become

so

fussy

and un-

clear that

they

are

overwhelmed

by

the

landscape.

11.

How can

I

have

rejected economy

as a

universal value and have

implicitly

accepted

clarity

in

the

foregoing paragraph?

Because

good

art can

be

found across the

entire

range

from the

economical

to the

complex

and

extravagant

but cannot

be unclear

in


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20/30

Critical

Inquiry

Spring

1979

459

The

two

pictures

could

be

compared

in

greater

detail,

but

I

have

already

made the

point

that

the

comparisons

lead to a draw with

respect

to evaluation. The modern choice of Manet over Brown has not been

made on the basis of

analytic

expertise

but

for

reasons

the historian

cannot confess because

he

is unconscious

of

them. Brown's

picture

is

rejected

out

of hand

largely

because

of the classical distaste for mimesis.

Renaissance

theorists ranked the accurate

reproduction

of nature

in

the

lowest

category

of

painting,

and modern

critics

frequently

have

tried to

overlook

even the existence

of

subject

matter. The elitism of the idealist

tradition is nowhere

more

blatantly

expressed

than in the scorn shown

for

the

philistine

who

is

naive

enough

to

enjoy storytelling

or

minute

description in pictures. But, while idealist principles are subliminally at

work

in

the

condemnation

of

Brown,

it

is historicism that

sustains the

vogue

of

Manet's

picture:

the

Dejeuner

is

called a

masterpiece

because it

broke with traditional form

in

the

rendering

of the

figure

and with

traditional

subject

matter

in

presenting

a Renaissance

pastoral

group

in

modern dress and

undress,

and because it and other works

by

Manet

had a

great

influence on the

subsequent

evolution

of

painting.

These

reasons

for

either

praising

or

condemning

the two

paintings

are

faulty

because

they

are

not

related to the works

themselves but

to

external absolutes.

What

I

think

gives

Manet a

slight edge

over Brown is that

like

Raphael

he restructures a

traditional theme

according

to a

modern

vi-

sion and

requires

the

viewer to look at his

heritage

in

a

new

way.

It is not

however the break with the

past

that

has value for me

but the dialectic

with

it,

unresolved

though

it

is.

Furthermore,

the new

way

Manet

pre-

sents his

figures,

unmodeled

by light

and

harshly

outlined

in

black,

forces them

on

the viewer with a

primitive power.

The

picture

is

in-

trinsically expressive

and need not be validated

by

its

seminal historical

role.

Nevertheless,

the

Deijeuner

has been overestimated

by

the

subcon-

scious

processes

of evaluation. It is far

less

interesting

to me than

a

later

work

of

the

artist,

Bar aux

Folies-Bergere

fig.

7).

Manet's

pictures

reflect

the

urgent

desire,

supported

and

propagandized

by

Baudelaire,

to find a

way

of

presenting

modern life.

His

early

attempts,

like the

Dejeuner,

represented

a

demanding

effort

to

do

this

in

the context of a tradition of

the sense of

being

incapable

of

conveying

its

import.

I

do not state this as

an aesthetic

absolute but simply as a commonplace of human communication: we can

interpret

only

messages

that are

capable

of

being

received. The others

are,

in the

language

of informa-

tion

theory,

noise.

(I

intend

capable

of

being

received

to

apply

to extreme

avant-garde

work that looks like

noise

to

almost

everyone;

if such work is

ultimately

understood after

no matter how

long

a

time,

it is not

unclear.)

The issue has been discussed

by

Leonard

Meyer

in

Some Remarks

on

Value and

Greatness

in

Music,

Journal

of

Aestheticsand Art

Criticism 17

(June

1959):

486-500;

rpt.

in

Aesthetics

Today,

ed.

Morris

Philipson

(New

York,

1961),

pp.

168-87.


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22/30

Critical

Inquiry

Spring

1979

461

heroic classical

painting

and

contributed to

making

not

a

picture

of

ladies

and

gentlemen

on a

picnic

but a

presentation

of one

aspect

of the

struggle of Manet's generation with the onus of the Western European

tradition.

It

is

this

forceful

evocation

of

a

significant

cultural crisis

that

ultimately justifies

our

preferring

Manet's

picture

to

Ford

Madox

Brown's,

even if one feels

as

I do that the exalted content is

inadequately

supported

by

the

form.

I

much

prefer

the

Bar,

though

it

was a less

influential or

historically significant

work. First of

all,

the

artist's ambiva-

lences about

tradition

have been

resolved

by

the time of this

painting,

and

he

was no

longer

compelled

to

address historical

problems.

Second,

everything

in

the

picture

is

interesting-not

just

the

protagonists

and an

isolated patch of still life-and thus the figures are seen in the same sort

of

way

as

the

objects.

This

really

is a

picture

of modern

life

and

not

a

picture

about the

problem

of

painting

modern life.

But

in

speaking

about

the

painting

I want

to

avoid at all

costs

the

fault of

some

Marxist criticism of

exaggerating

the

importance

of narra-

tive

over form and

thereby maintaining

the same artificial

split

of the

work as

has

been

practiced

in

idealist criticism.

The

point

of this

picture

is not that it

tells

you

about a bar and

a barmaid

and

how it

was

at the

Folies-Bergtere

(simplistic

social

criticism),

any

more than the

point

is that

the motif provides a vehicle for working out the equilibrium of advanc-

ing

and

receding

colors of

high intensity

without

destroying

the

integrity

of the

picture plane

(formalist

criticism).

The

point

is

rather

that the

picture

distills

an

exhilarating experience

that

can be shared

with the

artist,

in

which the

objects

in

a theatre

bar,

bottles,

glasses,

gas

lights,

anonymous

barmaid,

and reflections

in

a

mirror

lose their mundane

character

and are transformed

by

a

perceptive

human intellect into a

magical

image.

The

picture

does not

simply represent

a

bar;

it

presents

the

end

product

of

a

transformation;

we

value it

because

it

is

like

experi-

ences we ourselves have had of suddenly seeing the ordinary world

changed

and

exalted,

but the

picture

is different

from and

superior

to

our

experiences

because the artist is better

than

we are at

visual

magic

and

finally

because while such

experiences

last

probably only

an

instant,

he

has

fixed

it

permanently

so

that it

can be dwelt

upon,

even

by

those

who never had

the

experience

themselves.12 And once

having

witnessed

12.

Irving Singer pointed

out to

me

that

my

discussion

of such works

of

art

as

a

transformation of the

perceived

world

is

close

to

John Dewey's

in

his definition

of the

aesthetic

object :

art is not

nature,

but is nature transformed

by

entering

into new re-

lationships

where it evokes a new emotional

response

(Artas

Experience

[New York, 1934],

p.

79).

The statements

of

Dewey's expression theory

most relevant to this

issue

appear

in

chap.

4

( The

Act of

Expression ),

chap.

5

( The

Expressive

Object ),

and

chap.

12

( The

Challenge

to

Philosophy ).

My attempt

to

replace

a

value

system

based on

absolute criteria

with

an

experientially

based

one

is

related to

Dewey's

aesthetics and critical

theory, though

he

did

not succeed

in

explaining

how the criteria

of

organization

and

of

integration

that

are focal in his

evalua-

tion of

works of art differ

from idealist universals.

Perhaps

knowledge

of the art of the last


23/30

462

James

S. Ackerman

On

Judging

Art

without

Absolutes

this

transformation,

we are

prepared

to

be exhilarated

like this

more often and more

intensely.

Knowing

the

picture

can

actually

make

the real environment more worthwhile. The value of Manet's image,

then,

lies

in the

isolation of an

experience

of the

environment-an ex-

perience

most viewers share

with

the artist-and its intensification.

The

concept

of

transformation is more

vividly

illustrated

by

one

of

Rembrandt's

paintings

of a

flayed

ox,

referred to

earlier,

because

there

an artist has

made

a

repulsive-or

at least an unattractive

and

insignificant-object

into

an

intriguing

work

of art

by bringing

to

it

his

own

delight

in

the

textural, tactile,

and

coloristic

richness

of

the

per-

ceived world and distilled it with incredible

skill

in

the

handling

of

pig-

ment.

The

fact that the

picture

is

not a

report

on an

experience

but a

transformation of it makes it

possible

even

for

social criticism

of art to

move

easily

from

representational

to

nonobjective

art. Most abstract

paintings

differ from

representational

ones

by

referring

to life

experi-

ences

in

a

less

specific way.

While

Manet's Bar transforms

the

particular

experience

of artificial

light,

color,

and

people

at

night

in

a

city,

a

gouache

from

Matisse's

Jazz

series

(fig.

8)

transforms

a

class of

experi-

ences,

also

urban,

inspired

by

but

certainly

not tied to

the

depiction

of

jazz music. The colors and shapes of this picture evoke a kind of frenetic

and

angular gaiety;

I'd

say

it

represents

those

generalized experiences

as

much as Manet

represents

the

more

particular.

In

each instance so

far,

I

have linked the evaluation of

pictures

to

identifiable,

describable,

but

quite

diverse

experiences

in

life and cul-

ture. How can

we validate the

apparently

nonreferential

abstract

picture-for example,

one

by

Morris

Louis

of about

1960

(fig.

9)?

There

is

actually

no

gulf

to be

bridged

between

Matisse and Louis.

Though

the

theme

has become less

specific,

the basic

concept

of Louis' work is tradi-

tional. It is almost as symmetrical and centralized as Raphael's fresco.

The

power

of the

picture plane

holds the motif

parallel

to

it,

and

the

frame

strictly

controls its

shape

and

placement.

An

illusory

space

is

created

not

by perspective

but

by

overlapping

forms. There is

a

struc-

ture with a firm

base

from which the

motif branches

upward

with a

concentration

at the

center

comparable

to

the heart

of

Raphael's

compo-

sition.

A

newly produced

material

(acrylic-based

pigment)

and a tech-

nique

developed

by

the

artist

through experiment

with the material

(application by

sponges

to a

horizontally

mounted

unprimed

canvas)

forty years

would have induced

him to

dispense

with these

vestiges

of classical

principles-his

aesthetics are otherwise flexible

enough

to

stand without them-and

would

also have induced

him

to deal more

specifically

with art

that

is

based

primarily

on the

experience

of

preceding

art

(e.g., my fig.

9)

rather

than

on

other

aspects

of the environ-

ment.

In

contrast to

Dewey,

I

believe that

ultimately

a choice has

to

be made

among

the

differential values revealed

by

his

open-minded

critical

approach.


24/30

Critical

Inquiry

Spring

1979

463

FIG.

8.-Henri

Matisse,

The

Lagoon

(from

Jazz

series),

stencil,

1947.

Collection,

The

Museum of

Modern

Art,

New

York,

gift

of the artist.

produces a marvelous and unprecedented experience. The colors are

like those we have seen before but richer

and

more

vibrant,

colors

which

soak into the canvas so

that

they

settle

in

behindthe actual surface instead

of

sitting

on

top

of

it

as

they

do

in

earlier

painting.

No

doubt

it

helps

in

responding

to the

picture

to

know how different the effects are

from

color effects

in

Matisse's work

or,

I

should

say,

how

they

are different.

But the

capacity

to make

such discriminations

is

not reserved to the small

company

of Matisse

lovers;

everyone

in

our

society

is a

color consumer

and has therefore some criteria

by

which to

evaluate

the

experience

of

Louis' work.

The content of this

picture

is all

in

the

structure, color,

and form.

While

the wide

transparent

stripes

are

quite

different

from the

postur-

ing philosophers

of

Raphael,

they

do have

a distinct

physiognomic

character.

They

are

delicate, rich,

quiet,

suggestive

of

an inward con-

templative

mood

that must be related to

the turn toward oriental

methods of meditation

during

the

sixties.

I

don't know

if

others

would

use the same

words,

but I doubt whether

the

words

that others would

choose

would be

quite

out of

harmony

with

mine.

I

value the

experience

partly because it is related to a long tradition that

I

feel

in

touch

with and

partly

because

it

does

something

for and

to me that

nothing

else does.

In

the same

way

as Manet's

Dejeuner,

Louis'

painting

has a

contingent

and

also a

unique

value.

The

gulf

I referred to earlier

opens up

after

Louis,

in the

last fifteen

years;

while Louis could be discussed

in

terms

of

the

idealist

principles

of

the Renaissance rooted

in

responses

to the individual

manipulation

of


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Critical Inquiry

Spring

1979 465

pure

form and

color

in

an aesthetic

object

set

apart

for

exhibition,

much

recent work eliminates one or another element

in

that

configuration:

the

individuality,

the form and

color,

the role of the

object,

and even of the

observer.

In

Mel Bochner's exhibition of

1967

called Measurement

Series:

Group

B

(fig.

10),

the

object

is

replaced

by

measuring strips painted

on

the wall. There is no difference between

the

real

space

of

the

gallery

and

the conceived

space

of

the work. There is no

color,

light,

texture,

or

evidence

of the artist's

hand--no

evidence of

individuality.

But

the fact

that this was

produced

in

and on a

gallery suggests

that it

is,

or is

about,

the exhibition of

a work of art.

Moreover,

like much

avant-garde

for-

malist

painting

of the

preceding

years,

it

is concerned

with the re-

lationship

of the

image

to the

surface,

the

edges

and the

rectangular

format of the

support--problems

being

discussed

at that time

in

connec-

tion

with

the

pictures

of

Noland,

Stella,

and

Olitsky.

It

is no

on judging art without absolutes

Documents