Maarten Doorman

artinprogress2.def 20-10-2003 11:58 Pagina 1 Maarten Doorman Art is supposed to be of our time or rather to be part of Art in Progress the future. This perspective has reigned the arts and art criticism for more than a century. The author of this challenging and erudite essay shows how the idea of progress in the arts came up A Philosophical Response to the End of the Avant-Garde and he describes the enormous retorical impact of progressive concepts. After the end of the avant-garde the idea of progress in the arts collapsed and soon philosophers like Arthur Danto Doorman Maarten proclaimed the end of art. Doorman investigates the crippling effects of postmodernism on the arts and proposes a new form of progress to understand contemporary art. Its history can still be seen as a process of accumulation: works of art comment on each other, enriching each other’s meanings. These complex interrelationships lead to progress in both the sensibility of the observer and the significance of the works of art. Art in Progress Maarten Doorman is an In the nineteenth century, the history of painting associate professor of was regarded as the paradigm of a progressive under- philosophy at the taking, and evidence that historical progress is a University of Maastricht possible ideal everywhere else. In post-modernist and a professor of literary times, however, progress seems to have all but lost criticism at the University meaning against prevailing philosophies of the end of Amsterdam. The Dutch of art. But the end of art does not entail that there has edition of this title was not been genuine progress in the philosophy of art. shortlisted for the Maarten Doorman’s challenging and valuable study prestigious literary prize, contributes to that progress, whether or not progress the Golden Owl. in art itself remains, as he argues, a tenable idea. Arthur C. Danto ISBN 90 5356 585 X WWW. AUP. NL A U P A U P art in progres 17-10-2003 16:55 Pagina 1 Art in Progress art in progres 17-10-2003 16:55 Pagina 2 art in progres 17-10-2003 16:55 Pagina 3 Art in Progress A Philosophical Response to the End of the Avant-Garde by Maarten Doorman translated from the Dutch by Sherry Marx Amsterdam University Press art in progres 17-10-2003 16:55 Pagina 4 Front cover illustration: Richard Paul Lohse, Four Systematic Groups of Paint with a Reduced Centre, 1968, oil on canvas, 96 x 96 cm, Gemeentemuseum The Hague, c/o Beeldrecht Amsterdam, 2003 Cover design: Sabine Mannel, nap design, Amsterdam Lay-out: prografici, Goes isbn 90 5356 585 x nur 651 / 654 © Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2003 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmit- ted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. art in progres 17-10-2003 16:55 Pagina 5 Contents Foreword / 7 Introduction / 9 The second Labor of Hercules / 9 After history / 11 Whence, how, whither? / 13 1 Perspectives on Progress: A History / 15 The Great Exhibition / 15 The meaning of the history of ideas / 18 Koselleck: the history of ideas of progress / 21 Ideas of progress and related categories of change / 26 2 From the Ancients and the Moderns: A Door to the Future / 29 The Querelle between the Ancients and the Moderns / 30 A new look at an old question / 34 Perfection and perfectibility / 39 3 From Romanticism to the Avant-Garde / 45 The nineteenth century: Comte and Spencer / 47 Nineteenth-century cultural science: from cave paintings to Rembrandt / 51 Modernism and the avant-garde / 54 4 On Making Revolution / 61 ‘The little Modernsky’ / 61 The present as the past of the future / 63 The structure of artistic revolutions / 65 The progress argument / 70 The periodizing museum / 75 Progress as aporia / 77 5 Innovation in Painting and Architecture: De Stijl / 81 Abstraction and the beauty of a grain silo / 81 5 art in progres 17-10-2003 16:55 Pagina 6 The new style and the spirit of the time / 88 Innovation in architecture / 91 Innovation in painting / 94 Consistent development / 103 The artistic revolution of De Stijl / 106 De Stijl and posterity / 110 6 The End of Art / 115 The cakewalk in the present / 115 The avant-garde as apotheosis: the end of art / 116 Forward again: the end of Arthur Danto / 122 Farewell to progress? / 126 7 A New Approach to an Old Concept / 131 Ever richer / 131 Art as cognition / 135 Progress as regulative principle / 143 Notes / 147 Bibliography / 165 Index of Names / 177 6 contents art in progres 17-10-2003 16:55 Pagina 7 Foreword In the damning criticism that Kant once wrote of the Swedish spiritist Emanuel Schwedenborg, he apologizes for depriving his reader of a few moments ‘he might otherwise have spent reading substantial texts on this material but probably with equally limited results.’ Yet Kant believed he still accommodated his reader ‘by leaving out many wild fantasies,’ for which he expected as much gratitude ‘as a patient might ever owe his doctors because they made him eat only the bark of the quinine tree, whereas they might have made him eat the whole tree.’ This, I believe, is the best attitude a philosopher can adopt whenever he or she ventures into the realm of the arts. In the present book, I avoid wherever possible the numerous wild speculations often found in aesthetics, albeit for the purpose of making space for my own, a space I no doubt have granted too sparingly to others. First published in Dutch in 1994, this book has evoked many critical responses, some of which I have incorporated here. Its original thrust, and, I hope, relevance, however, remain unchanged. Regrettably, I have had to make one major concession to the translation. The original version included two empirical case studies: the first on ideas of progress in the De Stijl movement in art and architecture, the second on the so-called ‘Fifties’ Movement’ (Bewe- ging van Vijftig), which brought about a revolution in postwar Dutch poetry. I have had to drop the latter as it would have required too much explaining and because any attempt to conduct a thorough discussion based on translations of poetry is a risky undertaking. As a result, there is relatively heavy emphasis on the visual arts. On the one hand, this is not problematic because the discussion concerning the pre- sumed end of the arts in the final chapter of this book is conducted most explicitly precisely with reference to this area. On the other hand, I have no desire to limit myself to the visual arts, given that the apparent crisis in the contemporary arts has much broader significance and that the historical debates preceding it touch on all the arts. This book would not have appeared in its present form without the rigor- ous and constructive criticism of Gerard de Vries and Maarten van Nierop. I am more indebted to them than Kant’s hypothetical patient would probably have been to his doctors. I am also grateful to numerous colleagues and crit- ics for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this book, and even 7 art in progres 17-10-2003 16:55 Pagina 8 more to my dedicated and ingenious translator, Sherry Marx. I wish to thank both the NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) for its gen- erous grant, and the Prince Bernhard Cultural Foundation for its much- appreciated gift, without which this translation would not have been possible. Last but not least, this book would not have existed in any form at all without the enduring patience of my wife, Sigrid Sijthoff. It is to her I dedicate it. Amsterdam, October 2003 Maarten Doorman 8 foreword art in progres 17-10-2003 16:55 Pagina 9 Introduction The second Labor of Hercules Ludwig Wittgenstein’s foreword to his Philosophical Investigations begins with a motto borrowed from the nineteenth-century Austrian playwright and satirist Nestroy: ‘One characteristic of progress is that it appears to be much bigger than it really is.’ This is an unusual choice of motto, because nowhere in his Philosophical Investigations does he mention historical development or processes, let alone progress. Moreover, nowhere does he say anything of significance at all about such a concept.1 No less intriguing is the way the concept of progress continues to resur- face during the twentieth century. Progress, it was repeated, was a dated concept based on a metaphysical idea of history long since dismissed. The prevailing opinion was that it was a nineteenth-century idea that had been subject to criticism even in its own day, before being given the definitive death sen- tence with the outbreak of the First World War, when the optimistic West was forced once and for all to take off its blinkers.2 Progress, it was reiterated, especially during the last two decades of the twentieth century, was the fossil fuel that for centuries had fed the grand narratives of history and the what- proved-to-be disastrous ideologies. But that fuel supply had now finally been exhausted, or, as Dutch writer Gerard Reve once put it: ‘Progress doesn’t exist, and it’s a good thing, too, because things are already bad enough as they are.’3 It is striking that the philosophers of the previous century were continually preoccupied with repudiating a belief or idea that, according to the communis opinio of their discipline, had been outdated for many years.

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