Whitney Davis states in “Beginning the History of Art” that art historians have “a strong professional disposition to distrust the questions of origins.” (32) At first I questioned the importance, if any, of the historical origins of these paintings, or of artworks in general. Truthfully, I did not even truly understand what historical origins of paintings referred to; is it the historical context in which the artist created the pieces, the artistic motivation, or is it something else? If historical origins were indeed the historical backgrounds from which the artists pulled creative ideas, or experienced artistic motivations, then I can see why the historical origins would be a crucial element of studying any art work. If we understand the historical origins of the artworks, then we can virtually place ourselves in next to the artist, glimpse at his environment, have a sneak peek at his mind churning with creativity, and hopefully have more information to analyze the artwork to find significance behind it. For some reason that puzzles me, experts in the field are apparently reluctant to confront the issues surrounding historical origins, one of the reasons being “there simply will never be enough archaeological evidence about origins.” (32) The other reason from the standpoint of “new” art history was somewhat complex for me to understand, and seemed like some philosophical garble. The best interpretation I could muster was that in constructing the notion of historical origins, we must employ languages and tools that already have a history and an origin of their own, which means that we would be circling a path fruitlessly. This “excuse,” assuming that my interpretation is at least somewhat correct, seems more acceptable than the conservative reasoning is to me which essentially outright refuses to have anything to do with studying the origins; at least those of the “new” history of art seem to have put some sort of thought and rationale into their “no.”
Davis brings up an interesting point on page 35 of whether or not certain “prehistoric” artworks can be a beginning if artworks are merely “replication and summation” of other things. I think that the beginning is not necessarily defined by “who did what from where first?” but rather the act of taking an idea from anywhere ordinary and making it one’s own with her creative forces. That, I believe, is the beginning of an artwork. Hence finding inspiration from a preexisting object or maybe even other artworks (no plagiarism, though!) and starting from there, I think, can be called a beginning.
After introducing the idea of historical origins, Davis starts talking about the origin of History of Art. The idea of history of history of some subject is perplexing, like looking into a mirror and seeing myself looking into a mirror. Davis introduces a paradox of “how the ‘beginning’ of the history of art will be told by locating its narratibility not in its own historical beginnings but in its historical beginning for us as art historians.” (32) I think this goes with my interpretation of the reason “new” history of art refuses to deal with historical origins of art, because I think the paradox Davis presents is basically the purely objective history of the history of art versus the history of the art historians, either as individuals or as an entity. I did not really explicitly see the resolution of this paradox in the article.
Overall, the structure of the arguments was difficult to grasp and the prose was hard to dissect. I found this reading a little too dry, especially compared to the first reading. It did, however, provoke an interesting idea of “history of history of art” which seemed silly at first but least it succeeded in forcing me to think.
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