Origins of the Art History Survey Text Author(s): Mitchell Schwarzer Source: Art Journal, Vol. 54, No. 3, Rethinking the Introductory Art History Survey (Autumn, 1995), pp. 24-29 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777579 . Accessed: 09/10/2014 16:09 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . 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]. College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Thu, 9 Oct 2014 16:09:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Origins of the Art HistorySurvey T xt Mitchell Schwarzer he universal and developmentalpresumptions of art The early survey texts represent the birth of a new history are nowhere better expressed than in the literarygenre of cardinal relevancefor the emergenceof the global surveytext. Morethan any othergenre within discipline of art history. Today, an examination of their the discipline, the survey text embodies the nineteenth- methods and assumptions tells us a great deal about the century vision of history to unify the art of the past into a standardsurvey texts of the twentiethcentury and helps us coherentand relevantstory for the present. In its grand tour rethink and reconsiderthe genre. 24 throughall five continents and over thousandsof years, the surveytext asks us to believe thatthe immeasurablediversity Pioneersof HistoricalContext of art can be broughttogether into a great chain of meaning. I begin with Winckelmann'sHistory of AncientArt (1764) The survey text is art history at its most grandiose, promis- because its contributionto the formationof visual connois- ing to reveal the complex truths of humanity through art. seurship in art history has been immense, its impact on the It is also art history at its most political, reducing cul- developmentof the survey text in Germanyequally momen- tural and individual differences to questionablehierarchies tous. Like GiorgioVasari, who narratedthe historyof art as a and generalities. developmentalmovement of style towardperfection (in his Some of the earliest attemptsto position art on a vast case, Michelangelo),Winckelmann conducted the historyof developmentalscale occurred in nineteenth-centuryGer- ancient art from the achievements of fifth-century B.C. many.They followed Johann Joachim Winckelmann's ground- Athens. To describe the penultimatemeaning of classical breakinghistory of the art of antiquityand GustavFriedrich Greece for eighteenth-century Europeans, he laid out a Waagen'sand CarlFriedrich Rumohr's contextual histories of three-stagedevelopmental pattern for all worldart: (1) neces- Renaissance artists. During the 1840s and 1850s, the first sity, (2) progress towardperfect beauty, and (3) decay into survey texts that can truly be called global were writtenby superfluity.3 FranzTheodor Kugler, Carl Schnaase, and AntonSpringer. In most other ways Winckelmanndiffers greatly from Alongsidephilosophers like GeorgWilhelm FriedrichHegel Vasari. Already in the prefaceto TheHistory ofAncient Art, and political historians like Leopold von Ranke, these art he was adamantthat his art historydepart from mere chroni- historiansdiscovered the meaning of their own time through cles of epochs or histories of individual artists. A decisive connectionswith the whole of human history. Their surveys contributionby Winckelmannto the art history survey text tell us about the constructionof historyaccording to ideas of was his attentionto the contextualfactors (i.e., climate) that progress and linearity, and the division of world culture underlay beauty in Greek art. Rarely mentioned are the throughrankings of artistic quality. names of individual artists. Nations are what matter.They The early surveytexts were part of a greaterstruggle to are the discrete examples of the universal potentialof art to create modernGerman identity. They were anythingbut an move within its three stages.4 isolated, academic endeavor.Quite unlike the commonplace Because the complete historical progressionof art oc- use of the art history survey text for universityeducation in curredwithin Greece, Winckelmanndid not write global art the twentiethcentury, the surveytexts were writtenin an era history. He believed that the history of art moved in great when there were no universityart historydepartments. They cycles, whose rotationfrom Egypt to Rome was fully repre- had were intended for the educated public--scholars, artists, sented in the art of antiquity. The Greeks, for instance, travelers-and especially cultural officials and art'sadmin- once had an Egyptian-like period, and by the time of the late istrators.It is likely that the survey texts were first used for Roman emperors, classical art had reached its last stage, universityteaching only a generationlater, after 1871. Not where the meritof sculpture consisted solely in elaboration. surprisingly, none of the texts I discuss were writtenwhile Mostconspicuously absent fromWinckelmann's text is any of their authorsheld university professorships.2 the art of Europe after the RomanEmpire.5 It was not until FALL 1995 This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Thu, 9 Oct 2014 16:09:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1822, with the appearance of Waagen's On Hubert and Johannvan Eyck, thatan attemptwas madeto understandthe art of early modern Europe from within its own medieval context.6Like Winckelmann,Waagen pointed out the major failure of the new art historyof the nineteenthcentury as that of not observing the connectionsbetween artistic worksand their completeera and place.' He recommendedthat in order to understandan artist, arthistorians should discuss political history,the constitution,the characterof a people, conditions of the and the nature of the church, customs, literature, e A land." They must also pay great attention to the artist's historical and psychologicalbackground: his place of birth, conditionsof growingup, and influences on his thought. To understandthe van Eyckbrothers, Waagen's text was divided into three parts: (1)a generalhistory of the Netherlands;(2) a FIG.1 AfterTitian, Virgin and Childwith Saints Ulfo and Brigida,wood engraving;from FranzKugler, Handbook of Painting:The Italian School history of painting from Carolingiantimes to the time of the (London:John Murray, 1887), frontispiece. van Eycks; and (3) a specific analysis of the brothersand their artworks.9 Waagen'sanalysis of great artistic achievements in light of the artworksof the past foreshadowsthe global art task of art history as that of educating and civilizing the 25 historysurvey text. Stronglyinfluenced by FriedrichSchlegel generalpublic. This goal was exemplifiedby their theoretical and the Romantics,Waagen conceived the GermanicMiddle contributionsto the first design for a public art museum in Ages as an underpinningfor the classical tendencies of the Europe,Karl FriedrichSchinkel's Altes Museum(1824-30) Early Renaissance.'0 The creationof oil paintingby Jan van in Berlin.16The museum took the form of an incipient art Eyckwas neitheran isolated occurrencenor an act of individ- historical survey text. The picture galleries, in particular, ual genius outside of historical inheritance.It was a creative signaled how the arrangement of artists within national synthesis of the Middle Ages and classical antiquity and schools can demonstratethe developmentof art over the represented to Waagen nothing less than the birth of the centuries. The art museum and the survey text convergeto modern European sensibility." Earlier, Schlegel had pro- the extent that both seek to constructmodern consciousness posed a union of ancientand modern.His theoryis contained fromspecific configurationsof historical change. in the Dialogue on Poetry (1799), where he wrote: "In the history of art one block of material is only explained and The GlobalSurvey Texts clarified in the light of another."l2All art, ancient and In 1842 Kuglerbegan his Handbookof Art History,with the medieval, is part of an endless chain, never completed claim that his was the very first comprehensivesurvey of and always striving forward. art.17In its temporaland geographicscope, at the veryleast, Rumohr's Italian Investigations (1827) shares in Kugler'sclaim is probablytrue.18 Beginning with a lengthy Waagen'sRomantic concern to explain the meaning of art discussion of the origins of art in raw,material needs, he told throughhistorical chains. Rumohrheld the principlegoal of the history of art as a great linear narrativeculminating in the art historian to be an objective analysis such that inter- the art historical debates of his own day. By virtue of its connectionsregarding the style and methodof a great artist division of the history of worldart into four great periods- were better understood. What matteredmost were the rea- (1) art in its earliest developmentalstages, (2) classical art, sons that artists achieved perfectvisual essence: that perfec- (3) romantic (i.e., medieval) art, and (4) modern art- tion emergingwhen an artist achieved a balance of percep- Kugler