History of Art History

To Anthony Tapies

"So many things begin and perhaps end as a game, I suppose that it amused you to find the sketch beside yours, you attributed it to chance or a whim and only the second time did you realize that it was intentional and then you looked at it slowly, you even came back later at it again, taking the usual precautions: the street at its most solitary moment, no patrol wagon on neighbouring corners, approaching with indifference and never looking at the graffiti face-on but from the other sidewalk or diagonally, feigning interest in the shop window alongside, going away immediately.

Your own game had begun out of boredom, it wasn´t really a protest against the state of things in the city, the curfew, or the menacing prohibition against putting up posters and writing on the walls. It simply amused you to make sketches with coloured chalk (you didn't like the term graffiti, so art critic-like) and from time to time to come to look at them and even, with a little luck, to be a spectator to the arrival of the municipal truck and the useless insults of the workers as they erased the sketches."

Julio Cortázar, Graffiti (1980)

Translated by Gregory Rabassa

“History of Art History” is an attempt to look at the history of art through the history of the individual art piece that builds it up. An endeavour that might result in a dead end, an end filled with all the attempts ever conducted in the theory and history of art. Already in the introduction to his lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel stated, „[...], that even if fine art, in general, is a proper object of philosophical reflection, it is yet no appropriate topic for strictly scientific treatment.“[1]Despite that, discussions about art will continue and articles reflecting the world of art will continue to appear every day…

Stated in that way, this article increasingly began to remind us of the famous model of Arthur Danto. However, this is not the goal of the article.

The theory of art does not behave differently from the theory of truth in Logic, and this does not lead to the End of Logic itself. No, this is also not the point of the article. On the contrary, in the end, always someone will say that we are just talking about indefinable concepts and will keep moving forward.

And here the historian continues his experiments, although it is not clear to him how the mechanism of history works. "It's like walking on a path without a goal or reaching a goal without a path." (Supreme goal in itself.) No, the question is in regard to the historicity in the History of Art. Like this day today. Like this piece of work here. However, these threads make up a context, whose model of construction follows the genotype - an artwork, an author living in a given historical period and, on the other hand, the history itself. Quite a simple model indeed. If even so simply presented, the contradiction is visible. In the end, it will always turn out, and we will have to agree with it, that the work of art is historical, but above the temporally moment, beyond the given historical period, in which the author lives. Otherwise, we have to agree with the consequence that Venera Milovska should not be considered an art today in the current historical period, which is entirely different from the period in which she was created. This period is shaped by many different phenomena that contribute to the formation of the medium of a given cultural environment - various political and social phenomena, international relations, economic mechanisms and market structures. The various reformulations that Art theory has undergone over the past century, also do not change the place of Venera, protected in her fortress. Although this place was strongly shaken by Filippo Tomaso Marinetti in 1909, she still looks at us from the same place - physically and theoretically.

On the other side of this statement, that's right, there is always another side "(we have to make sure that this is the key idea of modern thought)"[2] is Picasso's Guernica, for example - speechless and terrifying. A shot that captures the horror of a historical event. This historical event turned from temporal to above-temporal. However, the category Art does not represent itself differently from the category Truth in Logic, as has already been said, but this is probably the other consequence of the "key idea of modern thought."

As for the third thread - history itself: "The idea of an art history disappears along with the internal logic, which is so often described, through the style of the era and its change: the more the inner unity of what is understood as an autonomous art history disintegrates, the more it merges into the overall environment of culture and society to which it can belong. The controversy over the method loses its force, and interpreters replace one irrefutable art history with many art histories.“[3]

Yet all stated until now, opens the question of this day – today and this artwork - here, a question that can easily be continued within a discussion or an article. Even more, another question can also be posed, the question of the work of art today in the period of world isolation, offering a historically new basic model of communication between author - audience. Will the temporal moment be made above temporal today? Will it lead to a change in the media of art, similar to the Great Depression, which offers you Painting with automotive varnishes? Questions are curious to all and perhaps more to artists than to historians. After all, these are questions in the field of the Future of Art, and history refers to the past.

The answer:

I am here                         ,                      and there is nothing to say                 .

LECTURE ON NOTHING [4]

[1] Knox, T.M. (1975). Aesthetics – Lectures on fine arts by G.W.F. Hegel, V.1, 5

[2] Detrás de todo eso (siempre es detrás, hay que convencerse de que es la idea clave del pensamiento moderno). (1985, p. 286). In Julio Cortazar, Rayuela. México, D.F.: Origen/Planeta. – translation to English - mine

[3] Belting, H., The end of the History of Art?; After the history of art, Genova, I., Angel Angelov, S., 2001, p.53. - translation from Bulgarian - mine

[4] John Cage, Lectures on nothing, 1959 г.

Author of the article: The Author
Translation to English of the article: Adreana Yaramova