MARXISM AND THE HISTORY OF ART From William Morris to the New Left Edited by Andrew Hemingway Pluto P Press LONDON • ANN ARBOR, MI Hemingway 00 Pre iii 30/5/06 10:55:11 First published 2006 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Andrew Hemingway 2006 The right of the individual contributors to be identifi ed as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7453 2330 8 hardback ISBN 0 7453 2329 4 paperback Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England Hemingway 00 Pre iv 30/5/06 10:55:11 Contents Illustrations vii Series Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Andrew Hemingway 1. William Morris: Decoration and Materialism 9 Caroline Arscott 2. Mikhail Lifshits: A Marxist Conservative 28 Stanley Mitchell 3. Frederick Antal 45 Paul Stirton 4. Art as Social Consciousness: Francis Klingender and British Art 67 David Bindman 5. Max Raphael: Aesthetics and Politics 89 Stanley Mitchell 6. Walter Benjamin’s Essay on Eduard Fuchs: An Art-Historical Perspective 106 Frederic J. Schwartz 7. Meyer Schapiro: Marxism, Science and Art 123 Andrew Hemingway 8. Henri Lefebvre and the Moment of the Aesthetic 143 Marc James Léger 9. Arnold Hauser, Adorno, Lukács and the Ideal Spectator 161 John Roberts 10. New Left Art History’s International 175 Andrew Hemingway 11. New Left Art History and Fascism in Germany 196 Jutta Held Hemingway 00 Pre v 30/5/06 10:55:11 vi MARXISM AND THE HISTORY OF ART 12. The Turn from Marx to Warburg in West German Art History, 1968–90 213 Otto Karl Werckmeister Notes on Contributors 221 Notes 223 Index 268 Hemingway 00 Pre vi 30/5/06 10:55:11 Illustrations 1. William Morris, Pimpernel, wallpaper, 1876. V & A Images/Victoria & Albert Museum. 16 2. ‘Carved Heads of Maori Chief’s Staves’, from Henry Balfour, The Evolution of Decorative Art, 1893, fi g. 23. Courtauld Institute of Art: Photographic and Imaging. 20 3. Illustration of tattooed heads, fi gs 31 and 32 from Alois Riegl, Stilfragen, 1893. Courtauld Institute of Art: Photographic and Imaging. 24 4. ‘Tawhiao, The Maori King’, from Illustrated London News, 14 June 1844, p. 576. Special Collections, Senate House Library, University of London. 26 5. Giotto, The Confi rmation of the Rule of the Franciscan Order, fresco, Bardi Chapel, S. Croce, Florence, c. 1320. Photo Alinari. 54 6. Nardo di Cione, The Damned (detail of Last Judgment), fresco, Strozzi Chapel, S. Maria Novella, Florence, 1354–57. Photo Alinari. 55 7. Andrea Orcagna, Strozzi Altarpiece, tempera on wood, Strozzi Chapel, S. Maria Novella, Florence, 1357. Photo Alinari. 56 8. Théodore Gericault, Entrance to the Adelphi Wharf, crayon lithograph, 1821. Private Collection, London. 60 9. Richard Newton, A Will O Th’ Wisp, coloured etching. Private collection. Photograph: Warren Carter. 76 10. C.J. Grant, Reviewing the Blue Devils, Alias the Raw Lobsters, Alias the Bludgeon Men, wood engraving, c. 1833. Private collection. Photograph: Warren Carter. 78 11. J.C. Bourne, ‘Working Shaft, Kilsby Tunnel, July 8th 1857’ and ‘Great Ventilating Shaft, Kilsby Tunnel’, lithograph. Photograph: Warren Carter. 84 12. James Sharples, The Forge, steel engraving, 1849–59. Private collection. Photograph: Warren Carter. 86 13. Pablo Picasso, Guernica, oil on canvas, 349 × 776 cm, 1937. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. Photograph: Archivo Fotográfi co Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. © Succession Picasso/DACS 2006. 100 vii Hemingway 00 Pre vii 30/5/06 10:55:11 viii MARXISM AND THE HISTORY OF ART 14. The Punishment of Dirkos by Zethos and Amphion (the Farnese Bull), fi g. 43 in Emanuel Loewy, The Rendering of Nature in Early Greek Art, 1907. Photograph: Warren Carter. 126 15. Apollo from Tenea, fi g. 27 in Emanuel Loewy, The Rendering of Nature in Early Greek Art, 1907. Photograph: Warren Carter. 127 16. Henri Matisse, Nasturtiums with the Painting ‘Dance’, oil on canvas, 191.8 × 115.3 cm, 1912. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Scofi eld Thayer, 1982 (1984.433.16). © Succession H. Matisse/DACS 2006. 135 Hemingway 00 Pre viii 30/5/06 10:55:12 Series Preface Esther Leslie and Mike Wayne There have been quite a number of books with the title ‘Marxism and …’, and many of these have investigated the crossing points of Marxism and cultural forms, from Fredric Jameson’s Marxism and Form to Terry Eagleton’s Marxism and Literary Criticism, Raymond Williams’ Marxism and Literature, John Frow’s Marxism and Literary History and Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg’s Marxism and The Interpretation of Culture. These titles are now all quite old. Many of them were published in the 1970s and 1980s, years when the embers of 1968 and its events continued to glow, if weakly. Through the 1990s Marxism got bashed; it was especially easily mocked once its ‘actually existing’ socialist version was toppled with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Postmodernism made Marxism a dirty word and class struggle a dirty thought and an even dirtier deed. But those days that consigned Marxism to history themselves seem historical now. Signs of a regeneration of Marx and Marxism crop up periodically – how could it be otherwise as analysts seek explanatory modes in a world that, through 15 years of perma-war and the New World Disorder, is deeply riven by strife and struggle? Anti-capitalism and anti-globalisation conceive the world as a totality that needs to be explained and criticised. Marxism, however critically its inheritance is viewed, cannot be overlooked by those who make efforts to provide an analysis and a consequent practice. Our series ‘Marxism and Culture’ optimistically faces a pessimistic world scenario, confi dent that the resources of Marxism have much yet to yield, and not least in the cultural fi eld. Our titles investigate Marxism as a method for understanding culture, a mode of probing and explaining. Equally our titles self-refl exively consider Marxism as a historical formation, with differing modulations and resonances across time, that is to say, as something itself to be probed and explained. The fi rst two books in the series address popular or mass culture. Mike Wayne’s Marxism and Media Studies outlines the resources of Marxist theory for understanding the contemporary mediascape, while also proposing how the academic discipline of Media Studies might be submitted to Marxist analysis. John Roberts’s Philosophizing the Everyday uncovers the revolutionary origins of the philosophical concept of the everyday, recapturing it from a synonymity with banality and ordinariness propounded by theorists in Cultural Studies. The present volume shifts the attention to ‘high culture’. Taking into its broad scope the insights of a number of key fi gures in Marxist ix Hemingway 00 Pre ix 30/5/06 10:55:12 x MARXISM AND THE HISTORY OF ART aesthetics, the volume draws a balance sheet. Marxism’s directedness towards transformation might make it sit uneasily in a discipline which has characteristically been about the analysis of objects that are property, objects that are in many ways related to conservation, tradition, preservation and value in its monetary guise. However, this volume reveals the pertinence of Marxist theory to manifold aspects of the art world: the materiality of art; the art market and the vagaries of value; the art object as locus of ideology; artists, art historians and art critics as classed beings; art and economy; art as commodity; the analogism of form and historical developments. The book’s fi nal chapters weight the analysis towards the moment just prior to ours, with the ascendance of the New Left in Visual Culture Studies. We hope that the research here stimulates further study of the contemporary relevance of Marxism in the fi eld of culture, addressing further themes such as the role of funding and the role of the gallery, questions of recuperation, the demands of technology. We await proposals on these and other themes! Hemingway 00 Pre x 30/5/06 10:55:12 Acknowledgments The project for this collection arose out of my experiences of teaching art- historical methodologies over the last 25 years and the frustration I have often felt that the interpretative and political tradition that is the foundation of my own thinking is so poorly represented in current literature about the discipline. The fact that so many friends have encouraged me to pursue it or offered to contribute confi rmed that a publication along these lines is needed. Two events in particular served as further encouragement, namely the session ‘Towards a History of Marxist Art History’ that I co-organised with Alan Wallach for the College Art Association annual conference in Philadelphia in 2002, and the international conference on ‘Marxism and the Visual Arts Now’, held at University College London later in the same year and organised by Matthew Beaumont, Esther Leslie, John Roberts and myself. Both of these were well attended and prompted vigorous debate. Some of the conversations they started have since been continued in the ‘Marxism and Interpretation of Culture’ seminars at the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research. I must also mention the important work that has been done by Paul Jaskot and Barbara McCloskey in initiating and running the Radical Art Caucus of the College Art Association.