Architectural History and the History of Art: A Suspended Dialogue Author(s): Alina A. Payne Source: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 58, No. 3, Architectural History 1999/2000 (Sep., 1999), pp. 292-299 Published by: Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/991521 Accessed: 15/10/2009 16:43
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=sah.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Society of Architectural Historians is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.
http://www.jstor.org Architectural History and the History of Art A Suspended Dialogue
ALINA A. PAYNE University of Toronto
It is a sad but inescapabletruth that for some time now ods, vividly displayedby the numerous societies gathering academic disciplines have been drifting apart, carried ancient (American Institute of Archaeology), medieval along by the energy of their increased specialization. (InternationalCongress of Medieval Studies),Renaissance The recent rise in the numberof conferences,publications, (RenaissanceSociety of America,Sixteenth Century Stud- and exhibitions that attempt to bridge the gaps and that ies), architecture(Society of ArchitecturalHistorians), and proclaima new awarenessof the merits of crossdisciplinar- other specialistscholars, is a naturalresponse to a complex ity is only the paradoxicalconfirmation of a status quo and condition. However,if the presenceof specializedscholarly the discomfortit has engendered.In this scenarioarchitec- sites is a positive and inevitablefeature of a developed dis- ture's slow but sure distancing from the center of art his- course, the absence of dialogue among them is not. To be tory as a discipline is a fact so well known that it requires sure, isolation is problematic in all cases, but that this little restating.One need only think of the session slates for absence of dialogue should be particularlytrue of architec- the College Art Association,the InternationalConference tural and art history-especially the closer we get to the for Art History, or the RenaissanceSociety of America,or modern period-calls for an assessmentbecause it reflects of theme-based conferences like "The Renaissancein the on the state of the discipline as a whole and raises some 20th Century"(I Tatti, 1999),where architectureis virtually importantquestions. Is this split a recent phenomenon, or (and often entirely) absent. Nor is architecturepresent at was it built into the very foundationof the discipline?Are the sites where the rethinking of the discipline of art his- its causes methodological, or is it due to the different tory is in progress.Publications such as the volumes edited naturesof the objectsstudied, whose researchdemands spe- by Norman Bryson,Michael Holly, and Keith Moxey (aris- cialized techniques and expertise? What are the conse- ing from Getty SummerInstitutes in Art History andVisual quences of this split for architectureand the academy?And Studies at the University of Rochester) or by Donald finally,is it endemic, or can (and should) it be checked? Preziosi (TheArt ofArt History:A CriticalAnthology, 1998), Of course, the gradualwithdrawal of architecturefrom to name only two examples,amply attest to this fact.1 the heart of academicart history should not be readin neg- No one can dispute the fact that some specializationis ative terms only, for if there have been losses, there have inevitableand indeed desirableand that, as result of the dis- also been gains.Thus, in the centrifugalmovement that has cipline'sgrowth over the past century,neither publications swept the humanities in the past two or three decades, nor conferencescan encompassthe whole field any longer. architecturalhistory has found a second home in the schools Indeed, the division of the field by.media or historicalperi- of architectureand in the discoursesthey foster.2Unlike art history,whose relationshipwith the practiceof contempo- raryart has remaineddistant, architectural history has been able to operatein two arenasand so to addressa wider audi- ence in a varietyof contexts and ways.3 In itself, this developmentneed not havebrought about the simultaneousdistancing of architecturalhistory from the historyof art.Yet both the way a disciplineis taughtand its location in the university affect its discourse; more importantly,they also constitute important public state- ments about its aims and thus shape its reception by the academy.In this case, the fact that since the 1970s archi- tecture schools have embracedhistory once more in their curricula,after a hiatusof severaldecades, has paradoxically contributed to the fragmentation of the discipline. For example,such an associationwith the professionalschools suggeststhat specializedexpertise is requiredto engage the study of architectureand raises psychologicalbarriers that often discouragestudents and scholars from entering the field. The appropriationof history by a profession-driven discoursehas also addedfuel to the perennialdebate on the relationshipand location of historyvis-a-vis theory and crit- icism, traditionallythe domainof architectssince Vitruvius at the very least. The presence of an alternativevantage point from which to examine architecture'spast has cer- enrichedthe discourse,but it has also causeda divide tainly Figure 1 GiorgioVasari, Cosimo I and His Artists, 1559. Sala di within the field. It is true that in a world that has lost its Cosimo I, PalazzoVecchio, Florence. Courtesy of the Sopraintendenza faithin the Archimedean of the the vantagepoint historian, per i Beni Artisticie Storici, Ministeroper i Beni Culturaliet Ambien- separationof history from theory and criticism and their tali, Florence locationin differentuniversity departments and publication venues is ever more difficult to defend. Yet, old sins have Oppositions(in the 1970s and early 1980s) or Assemblageand long shadows,and the limitationsplaced upon the objectsof ANY (in the 1980s and 1990s), as well as architecture- arthistory at the height of its positivisticself-definition still oriented presses such as MIT or Princeton Architectural cause drawnlines within the field.4 Press and architecturemuseums such as the CanadianCen- However, one of the most serious consequencesof the tre for Architectureor the Deutsches Architekturmuseum reinsertionof history in architectureschools has been the in Frankfurt,tend to focus predominantlyon modern and reconfigurationof the modern field. Most often, the his- contemporarymaterial, both in their collections and in the tory and theory of modernity (variously defined as the exhibitions they initiate. While this has substantially period from c. 1750 or c. 1900 to the present)are claimed increasedthe visibilityof architecture,it has also createda away from art history departmentsand are thus separated dominant site for modernist architecturalscholarship and from the study of architecture of earlier periods. Split has developeda readershipand a discoursethat is increas- between two homes, the discourseof architecturethus loses ingly isolated from academicart history. its unity, and the internallogic of a self-referentialart that However,the "continentaldrift" of disciplineshas also requires both a synchronic and a diachronic study is had a deeper and more longstandingcause at its origin. A obscuredfrom view. This temporalsplit also effectivelysev- traditionalsister art to paintingand sculpture,architecture ers architecturefrom the researchand teachingof the mod- was officially associated with them from the time of the ern period in the field of art history,yet in the last decades founding of the Accademia del disegno (1563) and was this has been the real growth industryfor the academy,and therefore also a component of art history as presented by the separationhas been a loss for both.5 Giorgio Vasari in his inaugural Le vite de' piu eccellenti Publicationvenues have come to mirrorand therefore architetti,pittori, et scultori italiani of 1550 (Figure 1). How- reinforcethis split. Importantarchitecture journals such as ever,with each generationthe definitionof architecturehas
ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND THE HISTORY OF ART 293 but the path to the developmentof such a discoursedid not lead to art history.8Studies of typologies, the columnar orders, mass culture, tectonics, materials,the vernacular, urban issues, and professional tools and processes took precedence over the issues of style and iconography that loomed large in art-historicalstudies and thus signaled a divergenceof interests.9 It cannot be denied that the modern redefinition of architectureand history'slocation within it has broadened our spectrumof concerns and even contributedto the dis- cipline'shealth and growth by expandingits field of action. However, the realignment of architecturalhistory within the academyhas also resulted in a real breach in the dis- course-not an outwardbreach, but a fissure,more serious because not immediately apparent. Split between fields, architecturalhistory appears to be a conflictedacademic ter- rain and thus it mystifies students and scholars alike. In a world of diminishingresources such a perceptionhas also had less intellectuallybased (but more dangerous)reper- cussions.At a moment when art history departmentshave embracednon-Western cultures, contemporary art, and his- toriography,new positions in these fields are not created but are reassignedaway from the traditionalcore. In such a zero-sum game architecturalhistory has often been the loser. With twentieth-centuryand contemporaryarchitec- ture firmly located in the professional schools, one or at most two architecturalhistorians are deemed sufficientfor 2 Jacket cover, Giedion, Bauen in Frankreich,bauen Figure Sigfried most art history programsto add what remainsessentially in Eisen, bauen in Eisenbeton (Leipzig,1928). Courtesy ArchivS. a lateralperspective on a predominantlypainting- (and less Giedion, Institutfur Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur,ETH- sculpture-)oriented curriculum. Honggenberg, Zurich But culturalpressures, university administration trends with their economic and political origins or publication also changed and consequentlyalso its location within the policies, are ultimatelyonly the superficialsigns of a deeper academy.In a move that acceleratedin the nineteenth cen- rupture.What is more alarmingis the absenceof architec- tury,architecture gradually embraced the world of science ture from the core of art-historicalinquiry, or, better put, and technology, so that by the 1930s, to the image of the the absence of conversation and a shared problematic engineeras culturehero, modernistcritics and theoreticians between the two fields.10This has not alwaysbeen the case. like Sigfried Giedion held up a refashionedarchitect who At the turn of the century,when the historicalstudy of art had left the world of the Beaux-Artsbehind and inhabited became establishedas an academicdiscipline, architecture that of the social sciences, environmentaland urban plan- made a substantialcontribution to the ways art historians ning, and industry (Figure 2).6 Inevitablythis shift in the set out to interrogatethe past. Indeed, architectureplayed definitionof architecturealso affectedhistory writing, even a prominentrole in the imbricationof Stilgeschichte(history when the scholarsthemselves were not campaigningfor a of style), Geistesgeschichte(intellectual history), and Kul- cause and even when the object of their study was not turgeschichte(cultural history) that shapedart-historical dis- modernity.It affectedthe questionsasked, the projectscho- course in the first decadesof this century.Thus Alois Riegl sen, the vocabularyused.7 Although in the 1960s architects took architectureas his departurepoint in establishingthe initiateda radicalrevision of earliermodernist agendas, the concept of Kunstwollenthat revolutionizedthe disciplineof growing autonomy of architecturaldiscourse was further art history (1901);11and Dagobert Frey in his Gotikund reinforced. To check a functionalism run riot meant Renaissanceals Grundlagender modernenWeltanschauung redeeminghistory (as memory)for the practicingarchitect; (1929) and, even more famously,Arnold Spengler in his
294 JSAH / 58:3, SEPTEMBER, 1999 Untergangdes Abendlandes (1918) used conceptions of space as a fixed coordinatein its historicalunfolding.19 Although as a historical ordering device.12Similarly, it was to archi- Mannerism was ultimately found to be unhelpful for the tecturethat Heinrich Wolfflin turnedin the 1880s when he study of architectureand was in effect discardedas a central translatedtheories from aestheticsand psychology into his concern, architecturehad played its part in establishingan own seminal empathyconcept.13 From BernardBerenson's importantcategory for art-historicalresearch.20 The defin- "tactileforms" (1896) to Wilhelm Worringer's"abstraction itions of Baroque,Neoclassicism, and Rococo were reached and empathy" (1908), the notion swept the visual arts, by way of a similarcooperative effort between architectural affecting both historicalscholarship, connoisseurship, and and art history-the proliferationin the 1960s of books on the course of art makingitself.14 these period stylesmarks its apogee-before each field went There was also a more sachlich(objective) trend to the on to refine its respectiveapplications.2' inauguralscholarship of the discipline.Works by Heinrich Finally, the vocabularyof art history itself, its lexical von Geymiiller or Hans Willich and Paul Zucker on the field, is partlyindebted to architecture.The prominenceof Renaissance,for example, or the pioneering architectural the monumentas object of studyand the ensuingcategories archaeologyof medievalhistorians fall more readilyinto the for its analysisstem from a tight imbricationof discourses categoryof Baugeschichte(building history).'5 This direction that goes back to Johann Joachim Winckelmann and the was more akinto that of classicalarchaeology, itself notori- classicaltradition that he inherited. Since bodily qualities ously difficult to locate in the academy. Yet, though were understoodto constitute a bond across the arts, cate- Baugeschichtesurvived and blossomedin architecturalschol- gories developed initially for the analysisof sculpturetrav- arshipand added to the perception of architectureitself as eled easily to architecture.22The impulse to privilege the a technically intensive discipline, it also was the fountain- monument and its featurescould find no better home, and head of much art-historicalmethodology. In the years that it is here that much of the criticalvocabulary to describeit saw the fledglingdiscipline of arthistory attempting to posi- was developed,sharpened, and refined.Reabsorbed into the tion itself within the academyas Kunstwissenschaft(science of largerdiscourse of the visualarts, it furnishedthe field with art), the technical rigor of architecturalscholarship, well a critical/analyticallanguage that bespoke a shared prob- establishedsince the mid eighteenth century,was particu- lematic and invited exchangesamong fields. larly appealing.l6 Art historians Adolf Goldschmidt and Architecture'searly use of photographyoffered a visual Wilhelm Voge, who trainedErwin Panofsky,Rudolf Witt- counterpart to this verbal orientation toward the monu- kower, and others of their generation, started their own ment. Architecturalphotography itself was an offshoot of a research careers with the study of medieval architecture. preservationcampaign, particularly that of the Monuments The Baugeschichtetradition of careful firsthand study of historiqueswith its focus on the medieval French heritage. monuments was translatedby them into an art-historical However, photographssuch those by EdouardBaldus that methodology that paid close attention to documents and recorded, aestheticized, isolated, and monumentalized primary sources and shaped the field for generations to buildings institutionalized a genre of representation that come.17 survived in the ubiquitous art history slides and thus Architecturealso playedan importantrole in the fine- affectedthe very tools with which the field was studied and tuning of historical/stylisticperiodization that preoccupied the lens through which the art objects were seen.23 scholarsfrom the 1920s onward.The amorphous"classical However,if in the first half of the centuryarchitecture period"that stretchedfrom the dawn of the Renaissanceto and art history were at work on a common project, their the eighteenthcentury and beyondwas graduallybroken up paths soon diverged. Over the subsequent decades other into periodsdistinguishable by their apparentstylistic unity. issues took over the attention of the art history academy: In order to confirmtheir validity,it was imperativeto show among them iconographyand style held pride of place, and the Hegelian Zeitgeist (or, alternatively,Riegl's Kunstwollen) from the later 1960s on social history and linguistictheory at work and thus to find similar characteristicsand trends have also much affected its course. In the last two decades acrossthe arts.A case in point is the invention of Manner- iconography has been recast into image theory and ism as an intermediaryphase between the Renaissanceand visual/verbalissues,24 and the cultural"other" (as definedin the Baroque. Proposed for the mimetic arts by Walter gender and colonialismstudies)25 along with historiography Friedlanderand Max Dvorak (1922), Mannerismwas also have joined a renewed panopticum of art-historicalcon- shown to have affected architectureby Pevsner (1925) and cerns.26Yet not all these trends find easy or relevantappli- Wittkower(1930s).18 Thus established,its applicationcould cation to architecture,the exceptionsbeing social, gender, then be expandedto include all aspectsof cultureand serve and colonialismissues. In fact, even when concerns such as
ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND THE HISTORY OF ART 295 these are shared,art-historical research rarely intersects with fruitfulfor architecturalhistory in giving a new orientation architecturalscholarship.27 Elsewhere, the continued rele- and impetus to building-typestudies.32 Yet they have done vance of once shared methodologies has been diverse. little to reconnect it to an art history more concernedwith Despite a steadystream of patronagestudies, the social his- the representationof society and culture than with the active tory of art has lost the leadershiprole it once held in art his- agentsof societal change. tory.28In architecture,however, social history and Marxism Of course, these are only a few instancesof a disjunc- in particularhave not only furnishedpowerful models for its tion within the discipline undertaken primarily from a historicaldiscourse ever since the 1960s, but they continue North Americanperspective; the list cannot even begin to to do so.29As an eminently public art form, more directly be exhaustive.But they describe a patternwhere opportu- affectingsocial and political behaviorthan the other visual nity and loss standside by side. On the one hand, arthistory arts,architecture remains an idealsubject for the application has developeddiscourses and tools-particularly relatingto of Marxistand social-historymethodologies. representation,image construction,and visual narrative- The embraceof wider culturalissues within art history that architectural history has been less attentive to but has also led to a sustainedeffort to reconfigureits discourse which may serve it well; on the other hand, both fields have (andthe departmentswhere it is taught)into visualand cul- tended to ignore the exchanges among the arts, the sites turalstudies. Architecture does not fit easilyin this expanded that facilitated such exchanges, and their consequences. field.The paintedor printedimage can be readilyconsumed Ultimately, the slowly widening chasm between architec- as one among many exempla of material culture, unlike tural and art history does not seem to arise either from any buildings,which are complex,three-dimensional objects that particulartechnical expertise that they require or from a often take generations to build. Such a process unfolding diversely defined historian'scraft (where we find evidence over the longueduree causes authorshipand period style to and how we marshalour arguments).The real divide lies in recede and consequentlymakes architecturefar less useful the nature of the objects we study,for they guide what we as a snapshotof culturaltrends and mindscapes. choose to raise to the status of problem and where we find If image productionand receptionstudies have claimed our conceptualmodels. the lion's share of attention in art history of late, recent It also lies in our differentrelationship to the present. work in cultural history on the history of practices-col- "Ifhistorical narratives are inevitablyfreighted with the ide- lecting, reading,writing, gifting, scientific inquiry-are now ological assumptionsof the period in which they are com- slowly finding their way into the discipline. Yet, here too, posed, what is the cultural function of history?" This architectureand art history are moving on parallelbut sep- question, raisedat the 1999 Getty SummerInstitute in Art arate courses. For example, the relationship between sci- History and Visual Studies at the University of Rochester, ence and the arts is dealt with in separatevolumes in two expressesart history'sconundrum at the turn of the millen- recent collections of essays,Picturing Science, Producing Art nium. For architecturalhistory-that is, for a field that con- (1998) and Architectureand Science(1999), although they tinues to be relevant for the practice of architecture-this share both an editor and similarthemes.30 question may have an answer: history interacts with the Yet, despite moving on a differentcourse from art his- present and its discourses actively,through dialogue, in a tory,architecture has not been isolatedfrom the shifts shap- Habermasiansense.33 The history of architecturalhistory ing contemporary discourse in the academy. In an shows that the disciplinehas alwaysbeen closely tied to the intellectual environment where sociology and cultural performanceof architecture: its migration in and out of anthropology have led the way, architecture has figured architectureschools and art history departmentshas always prominently.However, because of its relevanceas a form of coincided with upheavalswithin the profession itself. It is cultural"deep structure," it has developedstronger ties with not a coincidence that architecturalhistory entered art his- the social sciences.After all, Michel Foucault'sseminal first tory departmentsin Americain the 1940sjust as it was elim- essaystook architectureas their departurepoint: the clinic, inated from its traditional home in the schools of the asylum,the prisonmay have been institutionsaccording architecture;it is also no coincidence that the Society of to his definition, but what made them apparentand mate- ArchitecturalHistorians separateditself from the College rially present were the buildings in which they were Art Association in the early 1970s, at the very same time housed.31In these narrativesarchitecture becomes the ulti- when history was reclaimedby the schools of architecture, mate document:not only does it represent,but it contains, when journalslike Casabellaand Oppositionsreasserted the codifies, and shapes behavior and therefore cultural and importanceof historyand claimedan autonomousdiscourse social practices. These new perspectives have been very for architecture,and when the star of architecturalhistory
296 JSAH / 58:3, SEPTEMBER, 1999 within art history began to fade. Indeed, it is this funda- 8. Seminal for the development of this discourse (especiallyof historical mentally self-referentialnature of architecturethat causes typology)was Colin Rowe and in the 1960s and 1970s the School of Archi- tecture in Saverio Aldo Carlo the constant reinvention of history in the present and Venice, particularly Muratori, Rossi, Aymonino, and Massimo Scolari. See Colin Rowe, "The Mathematicsof inevitably and productivelyoffers new insights and ques- the IdealVilla," in TheMathematics of theIdeal Villa and OtherEssays (Cam- tions not for criticsand theoreticiansbut for historians only bridge,Mass., 1976), 1-28 (firstpublished in ArchitecturalReview, 1947). A as well. That history mattersto practicein the present pro- later statement of the importance of history for practice was made by pels us all forward,below the surfaceof discourse,regard- Demetri Porphyrios in his introduction to a volume of AD exclusively less of whether we work on the Renaissance,antiquity, or devotedto the topic:"This experience led me to a growingrealisation of the need to raise the level of consciousnessof the foundations the modern period. Perhaps sharing this insight into the epistemological of the variousarchitectural histories; in a like bur- of our own field with art could be the especially period ours, workings history dened as it is with ephemeral,ad hoc and surreptitious'theory-hunting'. beginningof a reneweddialogue at a moment when the dis- Bearingthis in mind, it becomes clearthat the studyof the methodologyof cipline standspoised to turn a new page at the beginning of architecturalhistory is as important for the non-theoretically oriented a new millennium. designer as it is for the student of architecturehimself." Demetri Por- phyrios, "Introduction,"On the Methodologyof ArchitecturalHistory. Archi- tecturalDesign 51 (1981): 2. 9. For example,see the proliferationof mass-culture-orientedstudies that Notes spanthe spectrumfrom RobertVenturi's polemical Learningfrom Las Vegas 1. Donald Preziosi, ed., TheArt ofArt History:A CriticalAnthology (Oxford (Cambridge,Mass., 1972) to Richard Longstreth'sinvestigation of new and New York,1998); Norman Bryson,Michael Holly, and Keith Moxey, "building types" such as the highway or the commercial strip: Richard eds., VisualTheory (New York, 1991). In this respect,Michael Baxandall's Longstreth, City Centerto RegionalMall: Architecture,the Automobile,and Patternsof Intention(1987), which includes a chapteron architecture,is a Retailingin LosAngeles 1920-1950 (Cambridge,Mass., 1997). The proto- noteworthyexception. typicalstudy for the genre remainsNikolaus Pevsner,A Historyof Building 2. For an accountof the phenomenonof history'sreinsertion into the archi- Types(London, 1976). For a comprehensiveand still valid review of trends tectural school curriculum,see Gwendolyn Wright, "History for Archi- in architecturalhistory scholarship,see Trachtenberg,208-241. tects,"in G. Wright andJ. Parks,The History of Historyin AmericanSchools 10. Symptomaticof this situationis the fact that Trachtenberg(as he him- of Architecture(New York, 1990); for a history of architecturalhistory in self notes) was invitedto reviewall architecturalscholarship for the Art Bul- America,see Elisabeth BlairMacDougall, ed., TheArchitectural Historian letin State of Researchseries because the art historianswho reviewedthe in America,Studies in the History of Art, no. 35 (Washington,D. C., 1990). literature on the individual historical periods had left architecture out 3. The separationof studio from art history studieswithin most university entirely:Trachtenberg, 208. Another symptom of the absenceof commu- curriculatestifies to this chasm, as does the absenceof a dialogue between nication between fields is evidentin the referenceapparatus used by schol- criticismand history even when performedby the same scholar.There are ars: the works cited in architecturaland art history publications rarely exceptions,of course,for example,Craig Owens, BeyondRecognition: Repre- intersect even on the occasionswhen they are publishedin the same jour- sentation,Power and Culture(Berkeley, 1992), in which categories of cur- nal. rency in recent art-historicalstudies are appliedto contemporaryart. 11. "... abernicht alle Gattungensind diese Gesetze [desKunstwollens] mit 4. In 1988 Trachtenbergnoted that this antagonismimpoverishes the field gleich unmittelbarerDeutlichkeit zu erkennen.Am ehesten ist dies in der and concludedhis reviewof architecturalscholarship with a quotationfrom Architekturder Fall und des weiteren Kunstgewerbe,namentlich soweit JamesAckerman: "willingly or not, we [architecturalhistorians] are all in the dasselbenicht figiirlicheMotive verarbeitet:Architektur und Kunstgewerbe same boat with the critics and not mere practitionersof a mythicalKunst- offenbarendie leitendedGesetze des Kunstwollensoftmals in nahezumath- wissenschaft."Marvin Trachtenberg, "Some Observations on Recent Archi- ematischerReinheit" [... but these laws [of Kunstwollen]cannot be identi- tecturalHistory," Art Bulletin70 (1988): 208-241. fied with equal clarityin all artisticmedia. It is most readilyapprehensible 5. There are importantexceptions to this pattern,as evidentin the work of in architectureand the decorativearts, that is, to the extent that the latter Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Hal Foster or in exhibitions like do not develop figure-basedmotifs: frequentlyarchitecture and the deco- Metropolis(Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1992).However, such examples rativearts display the leading laws of Kunstwollenwith a near mathematical are few and twentieth-centuryscholarship remains fragmented. See, for purity.-author's translation]. As a result, Riegl starts his Spatromische example, leading journals like Octoberor the interdisciplinaryCritical Kunstindustriewith a chapteron architecture.See Alois Riegl, Spatromische Inquiry,where the issuesof modernand contemporaryarchitecture are gen- Kunstindustrie(Darmstadt, 1976; 1st. ed., 1901), 19. erally missing; similarly,the important Getty Texts & Documents series 12. Much was owed to neo-Kantian trends in contemporaryphilosophy. locatesGerman architectural theory in the intellectualculture of the period See especiallythe impact of Cassireron art-historicalinquiry: Ernst Cas- though not in that of the other visualarts. sirer, Das Erkenntnisproblemin der Philosophieund Wissenschaftder neueren 6. SigfriedGiedion, Space,Time andArchitecture (Cambridge, Mass., 1941); Zeit, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1906-1908). Schopenhauer'sDie Weltals Wille und idem, MechanizationTakes Command (New York,1948). The most powerful Vorstellung(especially his concept ofAnschaulichkeit,offorma substantialis as statementof this idea is to be found in Le Corbusier,Towards a New Archi- ultimateknowledge, Erkentniss) also markedart-historical discourse. tecture(1st ed., 1923). 13. HeinrichWolfflin, "Prologomenazu einer Psychologieder Architektur 7. For a case study of this phenomenon as it concerns Renaissancehistory (1886)," in KleineSchriften, ed. J. Gantner (Basel, 1946), 13-47. Some of writingand for bibliographyon the subject,see AlinaPayne, "RudolfWitt- the sources Wolfflin cites are Friedrich Th. Vischer,Asthetik oder Wis- kower and ArchitecturalPrinciples in the Age of Modernism,"JSAH 53 senschaftdes Schonen(Reutlingen/Leipzig, 1856-1858); Hermann Lotze, (September1994): 322-342. Geschichteder Asthetik in Deutschland(Munich, 1868); idem, Mikrokosmos.
ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND THE HISTORY OF ART 297 IdeenzurNaturgeschichte und Geschichte derMenschheit (Leipzig, 1856-1865); Photographersin Second Empire France,"in The Photographsof Edouard Robert Vischer, Uberdas optischeFormgefiihl (Leipzig, 1872); and Johann Baldus,exhibition catalogue (New York,1994), 99-119. Volkelt, Der Symbolbegriffin derneueren Asthetik (Jena, 1876). 24. Seminalin the area of image theory have been Norman Bryson, Vision 14. August Schmarsow,Unser Verhiltnis zu denbildenden Kiinsten (Leipzig, andPainting. The Logic of theGaze (New Haven andLondon, 1983);Jonathan 1903); Wilhelm Worringer,Abstraktion und Einfiihlung.Ein Beitragzur Crary,Techniques of the Observer:On Visionand Modernityin the Nineteenth Stilpsychologie(Munich, 1908); BernardBerenson, The FlorentinePainters Century(Cambridge, Mass., 1990); Hans Belting, Bild und Kult (Munich, (1896);David Morgan, "The Idea of Abstractionin GermanTheories of the 1990), translatedas Likenessand Presence: A Historyof theImage before the Era Ornamentfrom Kant to Kandinsky,"Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism of Art (Chicago, 1994); Louis Marin, Despouvoirs de l'image:Gloses (Paris, 50 (Summer1992): 231-242; Payne, "RudolfWittkower." 1993);David Freedberg,The Power ofImages (Chicago, 1989);Victor Stoi- 15. Hans Willich and Paul Zucker,Baukunst der Renaissance in Italien(Wild- chita, L'instaurationdu tableau(Paris, 1993). For studieson the imbrication park-Potsdam,vol. 1, 1914; vol. 2, 1929); Carl von Stegmann and Hein- betweenvisual and verbal practices, see especiallyMichael Baxandall, Giotto rich von Geymiiller, Die Architekturder Renaissancein Toscana,11 vols. andthe Orators: Humanist Observers ofPainting in Italyand the Discovery of Pic- (Munich, 1885-1908). torialComposition (Oxford, 1971); ClarkHulse, TheRule of Art, Literature, 16. The rigor of early archaeologicalstudies of ancient Greece (e.g., John andPainting in theRenaissance (Chicago, 1990); WJ.T. Mitchell,Picture The- Stuartand Nicholas Revett, TheAntiquities ofAthens, 1763, or the subse- ory.Essays in Verbaland VisualRepresentation (Chicago, 1996). Scholarly jour- quentAntiquities ofIonia published by the Society of the Dilettanti starting nalslike Wordand Image and Representations created in this sameperiod testify in 1797) was picked up into similararchaeological enterprises focused on to a high-densitypoint of interestin these issues for the field as a whole. A Roman and later also on medievalmonuments. relatedbody of scholarshipaddressed issues of visualnarrative. Trendsetting 17. On Goldschmidt'scontribution to the discipline, see Marie Roosen- textsin this areahave been: Mieke Bal,Narratology (Toronto, 1985; first pub- Runge-Mollwo,Adolph Goldschmidt 1863-1944 Lebenserrinerungen(Berlin, lished 1980); SvetlanaAlpers, TheArt of Describing(Chicago, 1983); and 1989);on the impactof medievalscholarship at the turnof the centuryon the Mieke Bal, ReadingRembrandt (New York,1991). disciplineof arthistory, see CatherineBrush, The Shaping ofArt History. Wil- 25. Scholarshipin this areawas deeply indebted to the work of Julia Kris- helmVoge, Adolph Goldschmidt, and the Study ofMedievalArt (New York,1996). teva, Homi Bhaba,and EdwardSaid. The careerof ArthurKingsley Porter, whose firstworks were on medieval 26. Seminalfor scholarshipin this areawas HaydenWhite, Metahistory(Bal- architecture(1909 and 1915),is an eloquentexample of the paththat led from timore and London, 1973). For studies on art history,see especiallyHans architectureto the studyof the othervisual arts (sculpture in his case). Belting, The End of the Historyof Art? (Chicago and London, 1987), and 18. Max Dvorak("Uber Greco und den Manierismus,"Jahrbuchfiir Kunst- MichaelAnn Holly, Panofikyand the Foundation ofArt History(Ithaca, 1984), geschichteI [1921/22]) and Walter Friedlander("Mannerism and Antiman- and idem, Past Looking:Historical Imagination and the Rhetoricof the Image nerismin ItalianPainting," RepertoriumfiirKunstwissenschaft 47 [1925]); for (Ithaca,1996). the place of architecturein this cross-culturalphenomenon, see, for exam- 27. See, for example, the exclusive focus on architecturein volumes like ple, Nikolaus Pevsner, "Gegenreformationund Mannierismus,"Reperto- Beatriz Colomina, ed., Sexualityand Space(Princeton, NJ., 1992); Diana riumfir Kunstwissenschaft46 (1925): 259-285; Rudolf Wittkower, "Zur Agrestet al., eds., TheSex ofArchitecture(New York,1996); Mark Crinson, PeterskuppelMichelangelos" (1933) and "Michelangelo'sBiblioteca Lau- EmpireBuilding. Orientalism and Victorian Architecture (London, 1996);Jean- renziana"(1934); the most comprehensiveformulation of the phenomenon Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb, Casablanca.Mythes etfigures d'une aven- as it affectedarchitecture is ManfredoTafuri, L'architettura del Manierismo tureurbaine (Paris, 1998). nel CinquecentoEuropeo (Rome, 1966). 28. For seminal studies in this area, see especiallyLinda Nochlin, Realism 19. For example, Gustav-ReneHocke, Die Weltals Labyrinth(Hamburg, (Harmondsworth,1971), and T.J. Clark, TheAbsolute Bourgois: Artists and 1957); Arnold Hauser, Der Manierismus.Die Kriseder Renaissanceund der Politicsin France,1848-1851 (London, 1980).For a statementon the eclipse Ursprungder modernen Kunst (Munich, 1964). of social history from current art-historicalconcerns, see Marc Gotlieb, 20. WolfgangLotz, "ManneristArchitecture," in TheRenaissance and Man- "WhateverHappened to the Social History of Art?"Abstracts. College Art nerism,Studies in WesternArt (Princeton, 1963), vol. 2, 239-246; Ludwig Association(New York,forthcoming). H. Heydenreichand WolfgangLotz, Architecturein Italy1400-1600 (Har- 29. For the impactof social history on architecturalstudies, see, for exam- mondsworth,1974). ple, the Penguin 1960s series The Architect and Society edited by John 21. See, for example,the Penguin series Style and Civilization,edited by Fleming and Hugh Honour of which James Ackerman,Palladio (Har- John Fleming and Hugh Honour, in which appearedHugh Honour, Neo- mondsworth,1968), is an outstandingexample. For seminalcontributions classicism(Harmondsworth, 1968), and John Shearman,Mannerism (Har- to a Marxistdiscourse in architecture,see especiallyManfredo Tafuri, The- mondsworth, 1967). Such cross-culturaldefinitions are still noticeable in oriesand History ofArchitecture (New York,1980), and idem,Architecture and the field whenever a period previouslyconceived as one unit becomes too Utopia:Design and CapitalistDevelopment (Cambridge, Mass., 1976); for complex to be defined by one overarchingdefinition. Thus, at the other Marxism'scontinued relevance for the field, see most recently Eve Blau, end of the historicalspectrum, the term "postmodernism"was originally TheArchitecture of Red Vienna,1919-1934 (Cambridge,Mass., 1999). The coined and definedby CharlesJencks to serve architecturalcriticism; sim- popularityofTheodor Adornoand the FrankfurtSchool with architectural ilarly"deconstruction" (though not a stylisticperiod) embeds a referenceto theorists and historiansis another manifestationof the recognition of the building(and dismantling)in all the contextswhere it is to be found. politicalrole of architecture. 22. On the and of origins importance the concept of monumentfor art his- 30. CarolineA. Jones and Peter Galison, eds., PicturingScience, Producing tory and for architecturalcriticism, see AnthonyVidler, "The Art of His- Art (London, 1998);Peter Galison and EmilyThompson, eds.,Architecture Monumental tory: Aesthetics from Winckelmann to Quatremere de and Science(Cambridge, Mass., 1999). For an examplein the reception of Quincy,"Oppositions 25 (1982): 53-67. culturestudies, see Jill Kraye,ed., The CambridgeCompanion to Humanism 23. See especially RichardPare, Photographyand Architecture1839-1939 (London, 1996), which containsno essayon architecture, and " (Montreal,1982), BarryBergdoll, 'A Matterof Time': Architectsand 31. Michel Foucault,The Birth of the Clinic:An Archaeologyof MedicalPer-
298 JSAH / 58:3, SEPTEMBER, 1999 ception(New York, 1973; first published 1963), Madnessand Civilization participantin his critiqueof Foucault'semphasis on the observer.Habermas (New York,1965; first published 1961), and Disciplineand Punish: The Birth attacksFoucault's focus on the reflexiveattitude of the subjectand argues of thePrison (New York,1973; first published 1963). insteadthat a performativesituation exists, an interactionakin to speech of 32. See, for example,Chandra Mukerji, TerritorialAmbitions and the Gardens "reciprocallyinterlocked perspectives among speakers"and a "reflection of Versailles(London, 1997); Sharon Marcus,Apartment Stories. City and undertakenfrom the perspectiveof the participant."This position should Homein Nineteenth-CenturyParis and London (Berkeley, 1999). not be confusedwith the long traditionof militancyin architecture'shis- 33. See Jiirgen Habermas, The PhilosophicalDiscourse of Modernity(Cam- torical discourse,of which Giedion and others have been outspokenapol- bridge,Mass., 1987), 296-298. I am referringto Habermas'stheory of the ogists. See, for example,Giedion, Space,Time and Architecture, 5-7.
ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND THE HISTORY OF ART 299