At The Beginning

“Beginning the History of Art” by Whitney Davis aims to unpack the notion of origins in the realm of art history. According to Davis, the need for an origin to which the historicity of art begins is attributed to the fact that “it establishes that art making is inherently a matter of replication, of on-going accruing, or compound repetition and variation” (33). Davis goes on to assert that the origin is more or less a placeholder by which other works are to be aligned with and exists to give art historians the power of comparison. Where art is seen as a process of replication, there exists a disconnect between the notion of a piece being both the origin and also a moment within a trajectory of replicatory processes. There also exists an impossible link where groups of artwork can be assumed as self-contained as single units where the links between all art work remains disparate and scattered.
This imposition of origin and an assumed relativity leads to instances of perhaps irresponsible conclusions, which Davis demonstrates through the cataloging system of Stevenson Smith’s History of Egyptian Sculpture and Painting in the Old Kingdom. Differentiating between art historical aesthetics that strive to treat artwork as self sufficient wholes and art historical archaeology that identifies the errors and discontinuities within supposed art historicity, Davis goes on to highlight instances of whole projections on sites that are in fact unlinked and thoroughly intentional.
Where the beginning of art and the beginning of the history of art are in question, Davis’s exploration and criticism of intentional project is significant to the notion of what should be considered the beginning of art itself. Perhaps the origin is not stagnant but dynamic, constantly changing. Yet, for the sake of art historicity, there remains the need for a Figure 1 for comparison even if that parallelism may not truly exist as perceived by our modern ideals. Thus, the origins of art history and its subsequent replications and submissions cannot be judged on a linear path, rather a multivariable network seems more appropriate, even if the tendency is to frame certain moments in a struggle to construct a trajectory of art through the ages.