A Companion to Art Theory Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies Advisory editor: David Theo Goldberg, University of California, Irvine This series aims to provide theoretically ambitious but accessible volumes devoted to the major fields and subfields within cultural studies, whether as single disciplines (film studies) inspired and reconfigured by interventionist cultural studies approaches, or from broad interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary per- spectives (gender studies, race and ethnic studies, postcolonial studies). Each volume sets out to ground and orientate the student through a broad range of specially commissioned articles, and also to provide the more experienced scholar and teacher with a convenient and comprehensive overview of the latest trends and critical directions. An overarching Companion to Cultural Studies maps the territory as a whole. 1. A Companion to Film Theory Edited by Toby Miller and Robert Stam 2. A Companion to Postcolonial Studies Edited by Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray 3. A Companion to Cultural Studies Edited by Toby Miller 4. A Companion to Race and Ethnic Studies Edited by David Theo Goldberg and John Solomos 5. A Companion to Art Theory Edited by Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde A Companion to Art Theory Edited by Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde Copyright © 2002 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, a Blackwell Publishing company Editorial matter, selection and arrangement copyright © Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde 2002 Editorial Offices: 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK Tel: +44 (0)1865 791100 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5018, USA Tel: +1 781 388 8250 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2002 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for. ISBN 0-631-20762-7 (hbk) A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 11 on 13 pt Ehrhardt by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed and bound in Great Britain by T. J. International, Padstow, Cornwall For further information on Blackwell Publishers, visit our website: www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk Contents Plates ix Notes on Contributors x Preface xvi Part I: Tradition and the Academy 1 Introduction: Alberti and the Formation of Modern Art Theory 3 Carolyn Wilde 1 The Classical Concept of Mimesis 19 Göran Sörbom 2 Medieval Art Theory 29 Hugh Bredin 3 Neoplatonist Aesthetics 40 Suzanne Stern-Gillet 4 Renaissance Art Theories 49 François Quiviger 5 Touch, Tactility, and the Reception of Sculpture in Early Modern Italy 61 Geraldine A. Johnson 6 The Spiritual Exercises of Leonardo da Vinci 75 Robert Williams 7 Academic Theory 1550–1800 88 Paul Duro v Contents 8 Rhetorical Categories in the Academy 104 Caroline van Eck 9 The Picturesque and its Development 116 Andrew Ballantyne Part II: Around Modernism 125 10 The Aesthetics of Kant and Hegel 127 Jason Gaiger 11 E. H. Gombrich and the Tradition of Hegel 139 David Summers 12 German Romanticism and French Aesthetic Theory 150 Wendy S. Mercer 13 Expression: Natural, Personal, Pictorial 159 Richard Shiff 14 Reading Artists’ Words 173 Richard Hobbs 15 Nietzsche and the Artist 183 Michael White 16 Wittgenstein, Description, and Adrian Stokes (on Cézanne) 196 Paul Smith 17 Modernism and the Idea of the Avant-Garde 215 Paul Wood 18 On the Intention of Modern(ist) Art 229 Fred Orton 19 Anti-Art and the Concept of Art 244 Paul N. Humble 20 Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades and Anti-Aesthetic Reflex 253 David Hopkins Part III: Critical Theory and Postmodernism 265 21 Marxism and Critical Art History 267 David Craven 22 Walter Benjamin and Art Theory 286 Howard Caygill vi Contents 23 Bakhtin and the Visual Arts 292 Deborah J. Haynes 24 Peirce’s Visuality and the Semiotics of Art 303 Michael Leja 25 Conceptual Art 317 Charles Harrison 26 Barthes on Art 327 Margaret Iversen 27 Foucault and Art 337 Roy Boyne 28 Derrida and the Parergon 349 Robin Marriner 29 What Consciousness Forgets: Lyotard’s Concept of the Sublime 360 Renée van de Vall 30 Deleuze on Francis Bacon 370 Ian Heywood 31 Feminisms and Art Theory 380 Marsha Meskimmon 32 Psycho-Phallus (Qu’est-ce que c’est?) 397 Mignon Nixon Part IV: Interpretation and the Institution of Art 409 33 The Rules of Representation 411 John Willats 34 Gombrich and Psychology 426 Richard Woodfield 35 Hermeneutics and Art Theory 436 Nicholas Davey 36 Reciprocity and Reception Theory 448 Michael Ann Holly 37 The Paradox of Creative Interpretation in Art 458 Carl Hausman 38 Interdisciplinarity and Visual Culture 467 Charlotte Klonk vii Contents 39 Against Curatorial Imperialism: Merleau-Ponty and the Historicity of Art 477 Paul Crowther 40 The Institutional Theory of Art: Theory and Antitheory 487 Garry L. Hagberg Index 505 viii Plates 5.1 Giusepe de Ribera, The Sense of Touch, c. 1611–16 65 5.2 Titian, Portrait of Jacopo Strada, 1567–8 67 13.1 Camille Corot, La Ville et le lac de Côme (Lake Como and the Town), 1834 167 13.2 Vincent van Gogh, Landscape with Figures, 1889 169 18.1 Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954–5 231 18.2 Jasper Johns, Flag (detail), 1954–5 232 20.1 Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917 254 24.1Charles Peirce, drawing 308 24.2Charles Peirce, drawing 309 32.1 Robert Mapplethorpe, photograph of Louise Bourgeois 398 32.2 Louise Bourgeois, Fillette, 1968 399 33.1 Gebrand van den Eeckhout, Abraham and Three Angels, 1656 413 33.2 Unknown icon painter, Holy Trinity, Novgorod, mid-sixteenth century 414 ix Contributors Andrew Ballantyne studied architecture, and has taught at the universities of Sheffield and Bath. He is now Professor of Architecture at the University of Newcastle. He is the author of Architecture, Landscape and Liberty (1997) and What is Architecture? (2001) and contributes to the Times Literary Supplement. Roy Boyne is Professor of Sociology at the University of Durham and Vice- Provost of the University of Durham Stockton Campus. His last book, Subject, Society and Culture (2000), contains chapters on Barnett Newman, Francis Bacon and Georg Baselitz. Hugh Bredin is Senior Lecturer in Scholastic Philosophy at the Queen’s Uni- versity of Belfast. He is co-author of Philosophies of Art and Beauty (2000). Howard Caygill is Professor of Cultural Theory at Goldsmiths College, Uni- versity of London and the author of Art of Judgement, A Kant Dictionary, Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience and Levinas and the Political. David Craven is Professor of Art History at the University of New Mexico, where he is a member of the Interdisciplinary Board at the Latin American and Iberian Institute. He has written six books – including The New Concept of Art and Popular Culture in Nicaragua (1989), Diego Rivera as Epic Modernist (1997) and Abstract Expressionisn as Cultural Critique (1999) – along with catalogue essays for the Tate Gallery (1992), the Studio Museum in Harlem (1998) and the Muuseo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (1999). Paul Crowther is currently Professor of Art and Philosophy at the International University Bremen and is the author of several books on aesthetics including The Kantian Sublime (1989), Critical Aesthetics and Postmodernism (1993) and The Transhistorical Image: Philosophising Art and its History (2002). x Contributors Nicholas Davey was educated at the Universities of York, Sussex and Tüebin- gen. He has lectured at the City University London, the University of Man- chester, the University of Wales Cardiff Institute and is currently Reader in Philosophy at the University of Dundee. His principal teaching and research interests are in aesthetics and hermeneutics. He has published widely in the field of Continental Philosophy, aesthetics and hermeneutic theory. Paul Duro is Professor of Art History/Visual and Cultural Studies at the Uni- versity of Rochester (NY), where he is Chair of the Department of Art and Art History. He is the author of The Academy and the Limits of Painting in Seven- teenth-Century France (1997), editor of The Rhetoric of the Frame: Essays on the Boundaries of the Artwork (1996) and co-author (with Michael Greenhalgh) of Essential Art History (1992). Caroline van Eck is a Senior Research Fellow at the Vrije Universiteit in Ams- terdam, where she directs a research programme on the role of rhetoric in the visual arts and architecture funded by the Dutch Foundation for Scientific Research (NWO). She has published widely on architectural theory of the nineteenth century and the Renaissance. Publications include Organicism in Nineteenth-Century Architecture (1994), The Concept of Style in Philosophy and the Arts (1995), British Architectural Theory 1540–1750 (2002) and articles for Renaissance Studies and The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Jason Gaiger is a Lecturer in the Department of Art History at the Open Uni- versity. He is co-editor of Art in Theory: 1648–1815 (2000) and Art in Theory: 1815–1900 (1998). He is particularly interested in the relation between art and philosophy, and has published numerous papers on art and aesthetics. Garry L. Hagberg is Professor of Philosophy at Bard College, where he is also Director of the Program in Philosophy and the Arts and Chair of the Division of Social Studies. His books include Art as Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning, and Aesthetic Theory (1995) and Meaning and Interpretation: Wittgenstein, Henry James, and Literary Knowledge (1994) and he has contributed to numerous jour- nals and collections. He recently edited a special issue of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism on Improvisation in the Arts. Charles Harrison is associated with Art & Language as editor and writer.