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The Problem of Classicism: Ideology and Power

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The Problem of Classicism: Ideology and Power Editor's Sta tement: The Problem of Classicism: Ideology and Power By David Freedberg or all the justifiable attacks on the most superior degree in the canon or nature. By concentrating on particular F use of stylistic labels like "manner- hierarchy. The problem of assessing the examples, Natalie Boymel Kampen and ist" and "baroque," art historians, like connections between formal qualitites Martin Powers demonstrate the ideolog- architects, continue to use the term called "classical" and the authoritative ical dimension and the political uses of "classicism" abundantly. But they have or normative aspect of what we call what is taken to be classic or classical or ceased to try to define it quite as desper- "classic" will emerge with some acute- both. Powers makes an eloquent case for ately as they once did. This set of ness in the essays presented here.2 There the social and political purposes of clas- essays-and the symposium on which it are, of course, some art historians who sical revivals in China, while Kampen is basedl-did not set out to define it persist in seeking the classical, or even in develops a view that makes the ideologi- either. They were not planned as an attempting to define it, and who do so cal point most trenchantly of all: the effort of revival (although in architec- unreflectively and unaware of the ideo- view that classical modes are used to tural circles the subject may have logical burdens both of the descriptive reinforce masculinist norms of morality seemed to be fashionable or prescient). attempt and of the very forms they wish and to persuade the Other, notably the Rather, they were conceived as an to describe. The symposium now pre- female Other, to become like Self. Hay, attempt to assess what the residual sented in the pages of this issue of Art in demonstrating the difficulty of assess- interest and the ideological implications Journal was conceived in the hope that ing the problem of classicism in non- of the term might be-however ex- such pitfalls might be avoided, and that Western traditions, concludes that "the hausted it may have seemed. ideology might be more plain than dialectic of order and nature is quintes- The issue, of course, also involves the obscure. sentially Western and lies at the root of related notions of "classic" and "classi- For all this, there seems to have been many of our greatest achievements"; but cal" ("classicizing" seems less problem- some recognition of the advantages of a William Childs's analysis of the sculp- atic). As soon as one tries to define the less radical and more complaisant posi- ture of what is unanimously regarded as relations-r the distinctions-between tion. Say one simply admitted the the quintessentially classic period in them, the ground turns out to be even hypostatized status of classicism, on the Western art subverts even this seem- swampier than expected. Every field has grounds that it served useful terminolog- ingly unexceptionable view. He asserts a host of writers who have sought to find ical and classificatory possibilities. Such that what we now conventionally the classical, or to define it; but their a position-in other words, the heuristic assume to be the characteristic features interests have rarely been interrogated. one-would justify a rather coarser use of classical sculpture can by no means be There are even classic texts-the funda- of the term than one might otherwise be taken for granted, and should be criti- mental ones-which are generally ac- inclined to allow. Of all the papers cally reconsidered; in short, instead of knowledged to have refined the term printed here, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn's the qualities of idealism and abstraction "classicism" most effectively or to have most strongly exemplifies the benefits of generally associated with it, Childs provided the most definitive and thor- this stance, although most of the others insists on its descriptiveness and its emi- oughgoing evaluations of classic periods, share it to a somewhat lesser degree. nent realism. classic ages, and classic styles. John Hay remains the skeptic in the We seem, once more, to be on the No one, any longer, can doubt the group, at any rate with regard to his brink of reopening the box of definitions; laxity of the conventional and tradi- insistence on the fundamental cosmolog- but at the same time Childs's revelation tional usage of terms like "classic," ical differences between Western values of the straitjacket of the traditional view "classical," and "classicism." Everyone based on morphologies of order and Chi- of fifth-century Phidian art poses the acknowledges some sort of link between nese ones based on change and becom- ideological question yet again. By the the two forms of usage-that is, ing. Henri Zerner insists most strongly time the reader has done with this set of between the qualitative use and the hier- on the ideological basis of classicism and essays he or she may feel that at least archical use, where "classic" is used as proposes the extent to which the power one question has been settled: and that is somehow equivalent to the highest or attributed to it is and has to be rooted in that any transhistorical view (and by Spring 1988 7 implication any transcultural view) is objects; or are we talking about prospectus required, with respect to neither possible nor decently libertarian. relational matters, about the rela- ideological load and to the relations We may smile in approval, for example, tions of objects to past ideals, and between contexts of production and when Zerner reflects on the apparent to forms perceived through the reception. The matter became clear- bizarreness of the coupling of archaism veils of nostalgia? Or do we speak est-as it does in these essays-when with classicism and then goes on to show of the very opposite-in other classicism is most closely related to the that when archaism or primitivism is, in words, of the ways in which forms classic, to rules and to models: rules that some sense, "dominant," such a cou- are defined for ideological motives are governed, as the proponents of clas- pling is altogether p~ssible.~It produces by those who behold and use sicism allege, by reason; and models that forms that are considered both classical them? By those who use them for are-by definition and deservedly-to and authoritative, "classic," in other immediate political aims, or who be followed. But it may be that the words. Indeed, both Hay and Powers place them in self-justifying his- combined force of the papers-with the illustrate quite precisely the ways in torical relations? exception of Childs's-has the effect of which the archaic serves the classical. somewhat exaggerating the degree to The same, of course, may go for any Still further questions arise when the problem is seen in terms of which such terms are ideologically bur- other quality held to be classical or to be stylistic issues. One might, for dened; the question of degree is precisely an ingredient of the classic, classicai, or what the symposium left open. Indeed, it classicizing object. example, identify any number of artists or works, over wide chrono- was not even raised; whereas the ques- logical spans, in which we sense tion of the relations between canonicity ut perhaps the pendulum has swung the arresting effects of what we and classicism received constant atten- B too far in favor of ideology. At the term hieratic, stylized, formal, tion, and may be said to have been time the symposium was devised, it severe, or austere qualities; of treated with conviction. seemed that there was another area to firmly grouped and clearly dis- Little attempt, therefore, was made to explore--or at least to broach-with posed arrangements of figures; of arrive more closely at a means of speak- ing about the relationship between par- regard to the problem of classicism: that the bleak and underexpressive of psychology, and cognitive psychology gaze; of frontality, profilarity and ticular styles (however named; but in in particular. To do so need not imply- isocephaly-for example. But do this case under the rubric Westerners as critics of such explorations usually call "classical") and particular kinds of we need such terms at all, and are response. There was no effort to plot the insist-the independence of cognition; they significantly comprehensive? my aim was to bring to the fore an issue Are these appropriate categories, interlocking data that mark the dialectic that art historians in their recent, most that arises, but is also implicit, between and how are they to be grouped in specific works and beholder; and then to contextual modes seem to have forgot- terms of both style and effect? probe beneath that surface-plotting to ten-perhaps willingly and deliberately. Finally one might ask what ideo- In any event this particular possibility logical burdens they carry, and achieve a theoretical basis for a neuro- physiology of visual and psychological remained entirely unexamined. I still what the consequences are for the believe it deserves more. responses to particular forms-and to relationship between the contexts the kinds of forms that seem to be more This is how the final prospectus for of production and reception. the 1986 Symposium ran: closely related to each other than to The intention is to address prob- other kinds (as we assume, for example, The history of art in its traditional lems like these over as wide a in the case of classicism). With the mode has been much concerned range as possible. At this sympo- neurophysiological reduction at stake with the varieties of classicism.
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