NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES • VOLUME 3 NUMBER 2 • APRIL 1982 Humanities Art, the essential historian BY JOHN CANADAY I would like to know, sometime, why some people are spontaneously attracted to art—the visual arts especially— while others who have been conditioned by apparently the same circumstances are left either cold or puzzled by some­ thing that has interested me as far back as 1 can remember, fascinated me since adolescence, and enriched my adult life beyond measure—with no explanation that I can reach as to why it happened. In our close-knit family of eight, books were plentiful (my father's shelf included Dante, Samuel Johnson, and George Meredith) and our Kimball upright piano was subjected to constant abuse. But until 1 began bringing pictures into the house there were almost none, except for family photo­ graphs, on the walls. The only ones I can remember were a chromo of a German mountain scene with peasants (which 1 recognize in retrospect as having been in the manner of Ferdinand Waldmixller), a reproduction of an early Taos painting showing an Indian dipping water from a stream, and a tinted mezzotint of Gainsborough's Duchess of Devonshire, none of which explains why as a teen-ager I developed a passion for Holbein drawings without ever having been inside an art museum or having seen, so far as I can remember, any art books. I have no idea why, how, or exactly when this first love was generated, but I do know that art from that time until now has been an increasingly potent form of communication with the past and an enlarge­ ment of the world around me. During the fifty years that have elapsed since I first collided with art history under Professor Edmund Cassius Taylor at Yale, I have come to understand that the history of art is the essential history of the world, and that therein, more than on an aesthetic basis, lies the immortality of a great work of art while minor ones die and drop away all around it. Within the last few years I discover that my ideas as to the importance of painting as one of the humanities have carried with them consequent dissatisfactions as to how art history and criticism (including much of my own) are usually approached today. I know that art as the essential historian of its contemporary world through the ages, has been rather consistently a liar, distorting by idealization what it has not falsified by omission. But these are white lies, as I hope to get around to explaining in a moment. If you want history in terms of the sequence of events that make up the armature upon which history books are organized—the charting of wars, treaties, revolutions and politics, the rise and fall of dynasties and social institutions— then art, in spite of a few excep­ Photographie Giraudon In Peter Paul Rubens' Henry IV Receiving the Portrait of Maria de'Medici, fupiter tions, seldom offers anything but a mixture of semi-truths, total absurdities, and ]uno look on affectionately while Minerva, goddess of wisdom, advises the French king to tactful evasions and partisan exaggerations. As an extreme example including contract the proposed marriage with the Italian princess, and playful cupids make away with his all of these, take Rubens' glorification of the marriage of Maria de'Medici and helmet and shield. The baroque ideals of grandeur are pushed to their limits—or further— in Henry IV, a marriage made neither in heaven nor, as Rubens would have it at this episode from a series of paintings celebrating a crassly political union. the behest of his unpleasant patroness, on Olympus. Or take the Napoleonic painters, a group that happens to give me special pleasure. When it comes to tactful evasions and partisan exaggerations, no artists, ever, have bested these Frenchmen. In their passionately distorted accounts, Bonaparte's peculiarities are ignored, and his defeat and exile become glorious as the prerequisite martyrdom to sanctification. By the of view reduces the French adulation of Napoleon to something like blind evidence of contemporary painters, here was a noble spirit brought low not by hysteria. There is no way to calculate the degree to which Napoleonic painting any imperfections of its own but by tragic circumstances manipulated by the accounts for the survival of the Napoleonic legend, but it is difficult to look at forces of evil. Subliminal Biblical references barely stop short of the these pictures without recognizing them as inexhaustible sources for the Crucifixion. legend's perpetuation. They carry still the fervent, almost religious conviction And yet there can be truth to history, truth of a special importance, in with which they were conceived. distortions of this kind. Rubens' Marriage of Maria de'Medici and Henry IV — the The Napoleonic episode is only a small bit in the vast matrix of the history whole series of gigantic paintings—has always struck me as being inflated to of the world, but its reflection in art exemplifies in its own way what I mean by the point of parodying the ideal of baroque grandeur whose formulas it the "essential history" that art can reveal. This is the history of the ideal goals exemplifies, but the Napoleonic artists vivify as no straightforward, factually that civilizations have set for themselves, whether or not those goals were accurate historian could do, one aspect of a story that from any objective point achieved, whether or not the means toward achievement were admirable, and w hether or not the goals themselves were valid by we) have become so preoccupied with aesthetic our standards. Gothic France was hardly the spir­ analyses in debate with one another that art as a itual realm that is materialized in the Gothic social manifestation, unless it is that semi-art form cathedral; Chartres, the apotheosis of medieval called "protest art," is isolated from the deepest In this issue.... intellectualism and spirituality, is a historical lie, if forces that inspire it. you wish, in that it says nothing of medieval pov­ In the second paragraph of these comments I erty, cruelty, intolerance and corruption. But it is a mentioned art as "a potent form of communication 1 Art, the Essential Historian white lie at worst; if it is a part-truth, historically, with the past" in a personal context. There is inex­ by John Canaday the part it deals with testifies to our potential for haustible pleasure in communication with artists the sublime. who may have worked a hundred years ago (Degas, 3 A Conversation with William J. Bennett by Ruth Dean Down the historical chart from Egypt until for instance) or five hundred (Mantegna is always today, the arts distill for us comparable essences of approachable in spite of his stern manner) or thou­ 5 El Greco of Toledo civilizations. This is a truism, of course, but art sands. This is a pleasure I have tried in my profes­ 7 The Exhibition as Text historians seem to avoid it more and more, for fear sional life to relay to pupils and readers, but I am by Neil Harris of expounding the obvious or confusing moral with not at all sure as to how successfully this can be aesthetic values—perhaps from fear of falling into done except in cases where a latent capacity, like a 9 Continuing the Renaissance at I Tatti errors like the neo-classic vision of ancient Greece neglected natural talent, can be aroused. Right 11 State of the States: Studying Art as a world of perfect order and harmony (the Par­ now, with fingers crossed, I would place my bets on for Humanities' Sake thenon's white lie) and the romantic vision of the the exposition of "essential history" as the most Middle Ages where the cathedrals were built by rewarding interpretation to make art mean some­ 13 Grant Application Deadlines hordes of the devout dragging stones while chant­ thing to the largest number of people. 14 Emily Vermeule and the ing to the glory of God. As for art critics, they (or Greek Legacy to the West 16 The Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities Rediscovering Greek Games at Nemea 17 History's Unwritten Record 19 Dustjackets: MediaLog 21 The Art of the Fellowship Proposal 23 1982 NEH Fellowship Awards 26 Robert A. Rosenstone on REDS 28 About the authors... Editor's Notes Humanities Jean Antoine Gros's Napo­ A bimonthly review published by the leon Visiting the Pest- National Endowment for the Humanities house at Jaffa, painted in Chairm an: William J. Bennett 1804, commemorates an Editor: Judith Chayes Neiman incident when Napoleon, Managing Editor: Linda Blanken during his Near Eastern Editorial Board: James Blessing, Harold campaign of 1798-99, Cannon, Donald Gibson, Carole Huxley, visited a hospital in Jaffa Myron Marty, Judith Chayes Neiman, where members of his troops Stephen Rabin, Armen Tashdinian. were dying of the plague. Production Manager: Robert Stock Relocating the incident in a Librarian: Jeanette Coletti more romantic setting (a Designed by Maria joscphy Schoolman mosque), Gros shows the General touching plague The opinions and conclusions expressed in H u m a n i­ sores as if to cure them ties are those of the authors and do not necessarily miraculously, while the reflect Endowment policy. Material appearing in H u ­ afflicted men look on wor- m a n ities may be freely reproduced although the edi­ tor would appreciate notice and copies for the En­ shipfully. Inspirit, the dowment's reference. Use of funds for printing this painting is less closely publication has been approved by the Office of Man­ related to the factual inci­ agement and Budget.