Art History Read online

  If we move out of the European arena to countries such as Australia to which large numbers of Europeans migrated, resulting in the dislocation of native peoples, we see that indigenous art traditions have been used to assert the presence of native peoples and their prior claim to the land. The interaction between First Australians and European Australians includes art forms from bark art to photography, rock art to sculpture, all of which show the rich texture of Australian art traditions.

  Let’s now turn the question of cross-cultural influence on its head and think about the impact of migration and diaspora where non-Western traditions have been brought to Western societies. Here I am thinking about slavery and African-American art. African-American art has made an increasingly vital contribution to the art of the United States from the time of its origins in early 18th-century slave communities. It includes folk and decorative arts, such as ceramics, furniture, and quilts, alongside fine art – sculptures, paintings, and photography – produced by African-Americans, both enslaved and free, throughout the 19th century. African-American art shows that in its cultural diversity and synthesis of cultures it mirrors American society as a whole. We need to think about the influence of galleries and museums, and of the New Negro Movement of the 1920s, the Era of Civil Rights and Black Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s, and the emergence of new black artists and theorists in the latter part of the 20th century.

  We need to look closely at the canonical works of those who built the empire and see how colonial subjects have been treated, whether they be slaves, descendants of slaves, or those whose lands were taken. Like women, these groups had largely been dismissed in the writing of art history as having no influence on or importance in ‘mainstream’ European art. This endorsed the idea that high art was the presence of artists practising in the Western tradition with its accompanying notion of genius. As we have seen, this comprises an orthodoxy of material, subject matter, and approach – and of course it requires a white male artist. Non-Western art has largely been judged by a Western yardstick – it is ‘primitive’ but becomes Primitivism when adopted and adapted by Western artists.

  But in recent years there has been a shift in attitude and an awareness of the colonial frame placed on non-Western art. This is evident in the way non-Western art is now being written about as having its own history – although this history is written by Westerners. Africans and First Australians, for instance, see their modern art as having evolved out of their own traditions and being ‘given ‘ to them by Westerners. Indeed, is it not possible that Western art, whether modern or not, possesses its own ethnic peculiarities? This is the case not just in form but also in subject matter. Right at the beginning of this book we looked at Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration (Fig. 5) as an example of Christian art. This is a benign image, but many Christian images are of the violent deaths or martyrdoms of saints, or indeed Christ’s own crucifixion. To those who stand outside the Western Christian culture, these images can appear really quite shocking. Inevitably writing about art will always be influenced by the cultural circumstances of the historian, as well as the producer and viewer of the work. It is also important to think about the politics and aesthetics of the major museum exhibitions that gained acceptance for art that had been both ridiculed and marginalized – an issue I discuss in the next chapter.

  Chapter 3

  Presenting art history

  What do we expect when we enter an art gallery or museum? I think most of us are looking for history as well as art. It is quite usual to be confronted by a linear chronological sequence of artefacts, starting usually with Egyptian and/or Graeco-Roman times and working its way through to the present day. This varies, of course, on the specialization of the museum. But it is fair to say that chronology is one of the principal tools in organizing the display of works of art, and as we have already seen it is also one of the principal methods of writing art history.

  For most of us, our first encounter with art is in a gallery or museum. Quite often these are large institutions belonging to the nation or the city where they are located. Their presence adds a certain cachet of cultural respectability to their location. The National Gallery in London or the British Museum are publicly owned and funded institutions. Other well-known national galleries are the result of a donation by private owners, which has since been augmented with public money. For instance, the Tate Gallery began as the sugar magnate Sir Henry Tate’s personal art collection which he donated to the nation. Since then Tate, as it is now known, has grown into a series of galleries – two in London, Tate Britain and Tate Modern, and other venues in Liverpool and St Ives – all of which has been made possible by the use of public funds for the public good.

  National collections and the museums in which they are housed are important focal points in the urban landscape. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, The Prado in Madrid, or the Louvre in Paris hold some of the finest works of art in the world and all are impressive buildings. The displays in these European institutions centre on national schools of painting, but also reflect past trends in the history of collecting and so include works from antiquity, the Renaissance, and more latterly non-Western art from Asia, Africa, and Oceania.

  The holdings in galleries and museums in the United States show how important the history of collecting remains. As the USA is a relatively new country, the excellent material in many museums is as much the result of private donations as of art bought on the European market as part of an active acquisitions policy. Benefactors who have bequeathed their personal collections to the nation are often remembered through the naming of a wing or rooms in the institution in their honour. Some of the museums and galleries in the United States that might be seen as the ‘establishment’ are really quite new. The civilizing appeal of these institutions is apparent in the story behind the founding of the National Gallery in Washington. This opened in 1937, more than a century after Washington had been established as the capital of the United States. It was funded by a private individual, Andrew Mellon, who was Treasury Secretary under President Hoover. Mellon saw the absence of a national gallery as a cause for discomfiture – not least when being obliged to tell foreign dignitaries that no such thing existed. Whilst Andrew Mellon maintained an ‘arm’s length’ association with the institution he founded, some collectors make their private possessions available to the general public in galleries and museums that are the equal of many national collections.

  The John Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles houses an overwhelming collection of artworks as well as artists’ papers and drawings, and through the bequest of its billionaire founder enjoys a huge acquisitions budget that outstrips many national institutions. The Guggenheim is another private institution, which, like Tate, has expanded to include sites in New York in Museum Mile (Fifth Avenue) and SoHo, and in Venice, Bilbao, and Las Vegas.

  The Getty has two museums – a replica Roman villa based on one found at Herculaneum and a brand-new museum complex occupying the top of a hill in Brentwood, Los Angeles. Here, the sprawling range of buildings, designed by Richard Meier, all cased in striking white Travertine brought from southern Italy, rival the contents of the museum itself. Similarly, the first Guggenheim museum was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1960 – like Meier, one of the most famous architects of his generation. The unique white spiral shape of the museum made a distinct statement, sitting on one of the most expensive streets in Manhattan and only a few hundred yards from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since then Frank Gehry’s striking titanium-clad design for the Guggenheim in Bilbao has perhaps played as important a role in attracting visitors as the museum displays housed within. The point here is not to propose that the buildings are taking over from the collections, it is rather to show how much we invest in these institutions. And that the private and public art museum and gallery can play an equally important role in the display and consumption of art objects and in the cultural life of a society through its presence in the (usually) urban environment. The institut
ions also play an important role in the shaping of taste and the way in which art history is presented and understood by the public at large.

  A brief consideration of how collections were formed in Europe shows the ways in which art objects were historicized as a result of the activities of patrons and collectors. The beginnings of the idea of collecting objects goes back to Ancient Greece. The Mouseion, meaning ‘home of the Muses’, was a building that housed artefacts that honoured these nine goddesses who personified the arts and sciences, and the word museum comes from this religious practice.

  The Romans were keen collectors and formed large collections of objects as offerings in temples and sanctuaries that were seen by ordinary members of the public. At this time the idea of private collections also emerged; some of these, for example the display of art at the Emperor Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, just outside of Rome, were really quite splendid.

  The idea of amassing diverse collections of objects, some from past times, others from the present, came to the fore in the early modern period. In the 16th and 17th centuries the cabinet of curiosities – a small private collection of objects ranging from prints and drawings to scientific instruments – became the ‘must have’ item for those who could afford it. The collections of antiquities and great works of art owned by Italian Renaissance princes and popes were seen as signifiers of their status, wealth, and cultural worth. We have already seen how Pope Julius II founded the Vatican collection of ancient sculpture with the Apollo Belvedere (Fig. 7). Alongside this papal patronage was the impetus behind some of the best-known works of the 16th and 17th centuries – the Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo, the Vatican Stanze by Raphael (see Chapter 2), The Baldicchino in St Peter’s by Bernini, and the cathedral itself, which was the work of many famous architects including Michelangelo and Bernini (we must remember it was not at all unusual for artists to also practise architecture at this time). This huge collection of art from antiquity and the Renaissance was a major attraction for visitors to Rome interested in art history – and this is still the case.

  The idea of owning objects from the past became even more popular in the 18th century. This was partly due to the increase in travel in the period, especially the Grand Tour – an educational pursuit for young men, who travelled Europe to see the principal sites of cultural interest. Rome was a focal point of the tour, and English travellers would gather at the Caffe degli Inglesi to exchange news from home. Most of us like to buy souvenirs when we visit somewhere of interest; 18th-century tourists were no different in that they also wanted souvenirs, and they were able to bring back paintings, sculptures, drawings, and so on to form or embellish their own personal collections. The sculptures of ancient Rome were particularly popular, many items being pieced together from fragments of different sculptures – but the eager customers did not seem to notice or to mind about this. Artworks in English country houses are testimony to this passion for collecting, and references to these collections and knowledge of the art of ancient Greece and Rome became a part of what we might call 18th-century popular culture.

  Sir Joshua Reynold’s 1773 portrait of the Montgomery sisters, Three Ladies Adorning a Term of Hymen (Fig. 13), shows how these allusions to the classical past were used to embellish the status of those who commissioned works of art and those who were their subject. The portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy by Reynolds in 1774. Reynolds was one of the founders of the Academy in 1768 and he intended that it should be an engine for the display of art by artists. (The Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London remains a busy marketplace for contemporary artists to sell their work.) Reynolds’ picture is an unusual combination of a portrait and a history painting, and this is important for us as it shows how closely history – or at least the fascination with the classical past – formed part of the image of 18th-century elite society. A classical sculpture is represented in the figure in the middle of the picture space – this is Hymen, the god of wedlock, making reference to the art of ancient Rome and its mythological literature. The painting also makes reference to the classical subject of nature, being adorned by the three graces (the personification of female virtues: chastity, grace, and beauty).

  13. Sir Joshua Reynolds’ portrait of the Montgomery sisters, Three Ladies Adorning a Term of Hymen, was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Art in London in 1774.

  The Royal Academy was the main means through which artists could present their work to other artists and potential patrons, as well as where they learned their trade in the Academy school. The different subjects of painting were placed in a hierarchy and artists ranked according to their talent in relation to these. In this academic system, the best artists painted the most important kinds of pictures. History painting was seen as the pinnacle of artistic production and usually referred to ancient history or mythology (as we have seen in Reynolds’ portrait). In Protestant countries such as Britain, biblical subjects were not as common in art as they were elsewhere in Europe. But representations of biblical events were considered as equal to history painting in the academic hierarchy of subjects. History painting was more prestigious than portraiture, which was followed by genre (scenes from everyday life), and landscape. The idea of the Academy is important to art history as it was one of the first locations where art was presented to a select public. Vasari, who as we have already seen was very influential in the development of writing art history, founded the first academy of fine art in Florence in 1563 under the figureheads of the Grand Duke Cosimo de’ Medici and Michelangelo. Vasari intended his academy as a means both to augment the social status of the artist and to offer training. Other Italian cities soon followed his example, with the Accademia di S. Luca being founded in Rome in 1593 and the Bolognese Academy in 1598.

  In 1648 France founded its own academy, the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which soon became an engine of the publicity machine of the monarchy. Like the Royal Academy in London, it offered training and graded artists according to the form of art they practised. In recognition of the enduring importance of classical and Renaissance Italian art, a French academy in Rome was established in 1666, which facilitated the direct study of important works.

  The passion for collecting and travel, together with the academies of art that came into being across Europe in the ‘long’ 18th century (c.1680–1830), ensured the predominance of classical art. Sculptures were studied by art students as a way to learn how to equal the art of the ancients. Where originals were not available, or to increase students’ exposure to the great works of the ancients, copies or casts of sculpture from prominent collections like that of the Vatican were available in academy schools. We have already seen the effect of the ancient world on historians like Winckelmann, and here we see those ideas being translated into artistic practice. The importance difference is that Winckelmann studied ancient art through texts. Here it was being studied through direct experience of either the original or an accurate cast copy. This visual method of presenting art history, together with the displays of contemporary art in academies, had important implications for the development of museums and galleries.

  The increase in wealth and education across Europe had an effect on the number of people interested in art. This is seen in the growth of the art market – where artefacts from past and present were traded as items that reflected the owner’s status and wealth. Obviously, paintings and sculptures were the most prestigious items to purchase, and as we have seen there was a very brisk trade in antique sculpture (or sculptures made up of fragments of various works from classical times). For those who had less money, prints and drawings became very desirable possessions, and this trend was encouraged by the growth of art dealers who displayed copies such as these in their shop windows, as well as using newspaper advertisements and sales catalogues.

  The Royal Academy in London and its many European counterparts, notably the Salon in Paris, organized exhibitions of their members’ works, which were offered for sale – a practice
that continues to the present day. But more than this there was also an interest in art becoming more publicly accessible. Up until this time, cabinets of curiosities and private collections held in family homes or royal palaces were seen only by those who were invited to do so. By the 18th century, public exhibitions and museums were in great demand; the growth in the art market had changed the relationship between art and its public. The private, amateurish collectors with their cabinets of curiosities were overtaken by an increasingly professional art market that promoted the careers of artists through exhibitions and the growth of national institutions. Donations from monarchs, princes, and the elite helped build up these collections and ensure national prestige, but alongside this their private collections became available to an increasingly broad public. This too could be seen as a form of national patrimony and good government. In the latter half of the 18th century, private princely collections were opened to the public across Europe, in Paris, Rome, Florence, Dresden, and Stockholm. It is important to understand that these were not open-access museums like the ones we are used to today. But for the first time a wide selection of art was available to a much larger audience.

  One of the first public museums, as we understand the term, was the Louvre in Paris. It was founded in 1793 when the French Revolution was at its height. The opening of the royal collection of art treasures and the royal palace itself to the public was seen to represent the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity that underpinned the Revolution itself. But it was not long before the snobbery that can be associated with ‘high art’ began to manifest itself. Very few people from the poorer classes visited the Louvre, and their lack of knowledge about what they were looking at and inability to respond to visual works in an appropriate way was criticized by their middle-class ‘brothers’. The Louvre was a catalyst to the development of publicly accessible collections, and with it came a wish for a history or narrative of the art that was presented in these museums and galleries; moreover, national institutions were seen as a means of educating and improving the minds of the general public, so the history presented within them was an important way of doing this.