Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 05:54:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ian Verstegen <iversteg-AT-astro.ocis.temple.edu>
Subject: BHA: Cultural Canon, Arnheim



Here we go again!

Ian Verstegen

**********************************************************
Temple University Rome          tel:  06-320-2808
Lungotevere Arnaldo da Brescia, 15      
00196 Rome, Italy               fax:  06-320-2583
iversteg-AT-unix.temple.edu	http://astro.temple.edu/~iversteg
**********************************************************

ARNHEIM'S CRITICAL REALISM AND THE IMPASSE OF THE CANON

The art historical canon is in flux (1).  From all angles attempts have
been made to destroy the distinction between high and low (folk, craft,
popular, decorative) art with a notion of 'visual culture.' (2)  Western
achievement is being accomodated with that of the non-West.  The art of
advanced societies (Europe, Japan, China) is being challenged by that of
'small-scale societies,' former primitives.  Women and gays are having
their say in populating the ranks of geniuses.  Just as vigorously,
however, the upholders of the canon have struck back, with a defense of
the old values.  Debates on the canon of art history have effectively
reached an impasse.

Different commentators on the canon have an idea of which individuals or
which works ought to be included but the criteria are not always clearly
defined.  The simplest solution has been to accomodate the existing canon
in its broad outlines with a new population (3).  However, this merely
enlarges the canon on the same foundations as it existed before, making
the new objects conform to an older definition.  One of the most
interesting conceptions is of the "canon as container," that is, the canon
as a sort of structuralist category that cannot exist without its
opposite, the noncanonical (4).

The main obstacle to the debate is not this definition of the canon but
the closing off of a space of discourse.  To be sure, both 'liberals' and
'conservatives' have not changed their tunes and will ably continue to
represent their sides.  But neither wants to hear what the other has to
say.  The stars in the debate, I hold, are too extreme, and no attention
has been given to a moderate voice.  This moderate voice, I contend,
belongs to Rudolf Arnheim whose views on canon formation ought to be
heard.

I shall not be concerned with those extreme political conservatives who
warn the destruction of the academy (or even civilization), or the
political liberals who would probably not be happy with any new societal
arrangements, but rather their more modest academic peers who hold to, on
the one hand, 'postmodern' views of art history and, on the other hand,
those 'positivists' who oppose them (5).  Attention ought to be given to a
moderate form of realism, a 'critical' realism, which I believe is
embodied in the thougth of Arnheim.  Arnheim has been a prolific writer
during the cultural wars of the 1980s and 1990s, so why does he need an
interpretor?  His output has been personally motivated and he has been
impatient with the seemingly adolescent squabbles of academia.

'Critical realism' is a philosophical movement that is receiving more and
more attention of late.  Loosely identified with the thought of the
philosopher Roy Bhaskar, it is a philosophy devoted both to the social and
the scientific (6).  It is post-positivist but regards the fundamental
error of relativism to be a neglect of structure (ontology).  It sees
social liberation as necessitating the invocation of scientifically
understood social life.  Arnheim has much to contribute to Critical
Realism because of his life-long attention to the cultural sphere, which
is only now receiving attention in critical realist circles.  We are
justified in calling Arnheim a critical realist.  Fortunately, a
contemporary of Arnheim was a critical realist before his time: Maurice
Mandelbaum (1908-1987) (7).  Mandelbaum was a contemporary of Arnheim and
like Arnheim, was decisively influenced by Wolfgang Khler.  Arnheim's
doctrines may be fleshed out with those of the professional philosopher
Mandelbaum, and end up in full conformity with the Bhaskarian position
(8).

POST-MODERNISM AND POSITIVISM

According to critical realism, logical positivist philosophy of science
created such an unimaginably unrealistic image of science that it insured
by its own one-sidedness the successes of the relativism of Thomas Kuhn
and others.  The logical positivists sought the subsumption of history
under individual laws and its methodology equated explanation with
prediction.  This overloaded the demands of scientific,
knowledge-gathering activity.  We might say also that in linguistic
philosophy the overoptimism of Whitehead and Russell led directly to the
rebellions of Wittgenstein whilst the arch-rationalism of the
structuralists paved the way for the deconstructionism of Derrida (9).

This one-sidedness is one of the primary weaknesses of contemporary art
history and criticism, because a skewed understanding of science or,
better, exactness, ensures that each party is aiming for the wrong
target.  The result is that 'postmodernists' are attacking a straw man
whilst 'positivists' clutch at it desperately.  If we glance back at the
problem of the canon, we can see the consequences of such an attitude
immediately; the positiivist,' misguided by a false notion of rationality,
will hold ever fast to it, whilst the 'postmodernist' will rebel in the
opposite direction.  One will accuse the other of imperious norms whilst
the other will feel the other has none.

Too often the sponsorship of a new canon is accomplished by demonstrating
the constructedness of others canons.  Certain feminists have not had this
problem, because they have affirmed (in a classic Marxist vein) the
objectivity of the patriarchical structures that excluded or subordinated
women artists in the west.  But feminism appropriated for postmodernism,
which is to say the appropriation of it for an anti-canon, leaves it
without much foundation for its own claims.  If 'visual culture' is
substituted for a strict canon of chosen objects, it is accompanied by a
shaking of the possibility of any canon.  This undermining of one's own
position via relativism has been called the self-excepting
fallacy. (10)  In recent history its worst charge has been, not in art
history, but more charged areas such as Holocause studies.  The Holocause
indeed happened, the postmodernist affirms, but my textual means employed
do not permit me to prove it! (11)

Here the postmodernist has confused a notion of 'wrong canon' with the
problem of 'objectivity,' as if the very prospect of value rode on its
fortunes alone. (12)  It is an instance of the confusion of the meaning of
exactness.  The same thing happens, I hold, with the positivist.  When the
objectivist like E. H. Gombrich defends the great names of Western art
history -- Raphael, Rubens, Rembrandt -- he too has his eye on a slew of
other issues, like historical objectivity, rationality and freedom.  But
what is at issue is a problem of axiological objectivity, not whether or
not the historical enterprise is possible, or humanity is rational or
free.  As I shall show, by cleaving these two problems apart, as the work
of Rudolf Arnheim (and Critical Realism) does, we shall be able to make a
more tractable approach to this problem.

CRITICAL REALISM

Any critical realist wishes to expose the structural conditions that
constrain and emancipate individuals.  These are real and are
knowable.  Because they are determined by transcendent structures with
determinate ontologies, they can be pointed at and talked about.  In
contemporary art criticism, we have one group concerned with emancipation
(postmodernists) and another concerned with demonstrable properties
(objectivists).  Each hinders the other's progress by failing to adopt the
whole picture.

Objectivists hold to a simple form of demonstrability called
methodological individualism and voluntarism (13).  There are (only) real
individuals who constitute the world (there is no 'society') and they are
not determined to act in time.  Just as Popper insists that choice is not
determined in order to preserve his libertarianism, retaining the
possibility of assessing moral responsibility, so too Gombrich carries
over the choice situation in order to preserve value judgments in art
history. (14)

The fault of this theory is that its very simplicity is a form of
ideology; the affirmation that 'society' does not exist and is not
constrained into historical inevitability is normative that society should
not exist, and should not be constrained.  Even though we recognize this
we should appreciate the objectivists for their openness.  On the other
hand post modernists have a fear of reification, of laying bounderies,
describing essences, and the result is that one is frozen into immobility
when it comes to what one cares most about -- social justice.

What is needed is a form of social realism (society exists) that,
nevertheless, does not go over into a social holism.  This has been
defended by Arnheim and contemporary critical realists and is given in the
doctrine of methodological institutionalism. (15)  It sees the consituents
of societies as different institutions, or 'societal facts' that govern
the position and status of different individuals. (16)  Whilst possessive
individualism is only a characteristic of highly differentiated western
cultures, institutions occur in all societies and determine the status of
individuals in different societies.  There is a continuity of different
kinds of differentiation.  This is quite a bit different from
methodological holism of the Functionalist or Marxist kind.  This is
sometimes opted for in favor of individualism, and the pendulum swing to
its choice lands one in a theory so deterministic and unwieldly that one
is immediately relieved of any explanatory pretensions.  But
methodological institutionalism is a viable option.

What is also needed is a theory of causal necessity that can give due to
the societal embeddedness of social life but also the play that is given
to individuals in their choices.  Causality does not consist of linear
chains but an infinity of contemporaneous forces acting moment by
moment. (17)  In many cases, we are 'determined' to act altruistically (we
see a baby falling and lunge to help it).  To extend the ethical analogy,
if we insist that causality is not linear but contemporaneous, determinism
is much less objectionable.  We can be determined in our choice, but the
fact that our moral faculty operates upon 'fitting' indicates that we are
more likely to take the correct, non-egocentric alternative.  Needless to
say, this is exactly the way in which Arnheim explains creativity.  It can
be deterministic and still praiseworthy or blameworthy. (18)

These foundational comments bring us back to the canon and the realist
imperative that we discover the canonicity (or lack of canonicity) of a
work in the world.  Bhaskar has written (inverting Kant) that, instead of
asking what must be true about categories of mind for synthetic a priori
judgments to be possible, we need to ask what must be true about the world
for science to be possible.  We have to deny a reified canon, either given
us by self-given natures or tradition (positivism) or by power relation
(post-modernism).  The canon only exists a posteriori; it is partial,
tentative and subject to interaction with actual works and the real
qualities of the works that we are predisposed to understand.

In all cases there is the determinate world, existing in the instransitive
dimension, and our various meaningful connections with it in the
transitive dimension.  Because different programs or 'paradigms' search
for different aspects of that intransitive world (and necessarily are
different in the transitive dimension) does not say anything about
relativism.  But for that matter we have to expect, contra positivism,
this variety in the transitive.  What is interesting is the way in which
our human practices (even in art making) make different use of the same
resources.  Some practices work better with some practices; some practices
work better with other practices. (19)

SAYING OBJECTIVELY THAT THE CANON IS RELATIVE

What we have been saying can be subsumed under the concept of relational
determinism.  Its power can be seen already in art history when we glance
at one aspect of the revision of the canon in feminism.  Some feminists
have gone about resurrecting different woman artists giving more depth to
the historical record.  But these endeavors should never forget Linda
Nochlins point that there were no 'great woman artists' because of the
very real societal structures in place at the time. (20)  Assuming that
some resurrected artists indeed were submerged by patriarchal attitudes
toward female achievement, simply changing the canon still upholds the
canon.  There is much to be learned from examining the structural
characteristics of society and their notions of agency along with culture,
and seeing the various compatibilities and incompatibilities.

In this case we have a real problem: how can we compare the achievement of
a Michelangelo against our own time?  If we were to wish for those times
again, we would have to accept a radical revision of society, the demotion
of the artist to a guilded laborer, and of course women would be severely
restricted in their potential for achievement in the artistic sphere (not
to mention the existence of widespread poverty and slavery). (21)  The
trade-offs of different periods, determining relationally their
possibilities and impossibilities, are precisely the ontologically real
givens that must accompany discussions of such problems as the canon.

Relational determinism is found in works of art themselves in their own
ontologies.  In the literature of gestalt psychology upon which Arnheim
relies, relational determinism is a way of refering to the radical
contextuality of all experience, where local stimuli change radically
according to the whole complex of experience in which they are
placed. (22)  Relational determinism is not relativism, nor is it naive
realism.  It is a relational or, if you will, 'critical' form of realism.

In Visual ThinkingArnheim included a diagram that is worth paying
attention to. (23)  It records a scale of abstraction and concreteness of
visual symbols.  Given a scale of abstractness, from low to high, there is
a corresponding quality that an image or an experience may have or, more
precisely, the quality of experience that an image may represent.  A
highly abstract image captures forces and ideas, whereas an image of low
abstractions may only represent particulars.

This conception is highly ontological, regarding any perceptual image (or
in the parlance of Roman Ingarden any set of projected objectivities) as
containing a precise or rigidly constrained level of reality.  A picture
of a Byzantine saint does not show that saint angry or bemused.  Its level
of reality is such that such particularistic interpretations are ruled
out. (24)  This has obvious implications for interpretation, but what is
more important is to recognize the way in which experiences are
relationally determined.  This relational determinism is loosely coupled
with the representation and practices of the culture from which it comes.

Its consequence comes to the somewhat crudely conservative notion that
experience and, more narrowly, art trades in some kinds of riches for
others.  And here lies the resolution to many issues dealing with canons,
the western canon of post-Renaissance art has gained riches in particulars
but has lost the riches of forces and ideas, and vice versa, different
forms of non-western, or 'low' art have traded in particulars for
genera. (25)  Each is valuable but what is significant for each is
'valuable for what?' (26)  The problem of value is meaningless unless we
specify the field within which the function of the work is to perform.

In spite of the great variety of art objects, we can say it all serves a
function; either to display its function (in the case of the most
utilitarian object) or else to envision a small version of reality (in the
case of the product of an individualized western artist). (27)  Much has
been said of the biases of contemporary westeners and the ways in which
they construct canons.  In a brilliant extension of Arnheim's ideas,
Robert Sowers discussed the ideas of modalities. (28)  He points to the
pervasive 'pictorialization' of the visual arts (roughly, painting,
sculpture, and architecture) in the twentieth century, where everything
approximates to a picture.  In Arnheim's ontology, a picture is a very
peculiar thing, because it assumes the notion of an enclosed world-view --
not a reproduction of a world, but the presumption that an attitude about
the world deserves to be set off in that way.  Taking for granted the
easil picture, we can see how strongly our notions of art will already be
skewed.

SAYING OBJECTIVELY THAT PERSPECTIVE IS RELATIVE

When we at last alight on the problem of the canon, we can see that
Arnheim wishes to revise it, but he also wants to do it on certain
terms.  He wants to give due to the various artistic manifestations of the
world but he will not go about accomplishing it by founding a canon on
anti-foundationalism.  The basis for the standard western canon has been
art, primarily painting, created by western artists on acknowledged
standards of visual naturalism.  Non-academic, non-western art is
different: it does not employ a standard of realism, it is not figurative,
etc.  This has been critiqued on the acknowledgment that the Greek and
then Cartesian ocularocentric philosophical traditions have been
dominating over the western tradition with negative results.  Each regards
the subject as a monocular self who passively regards the world without
interacting with it. (29)  Its seeming naturalness is a surrogate for the
transparent self-givenness of the world and its order.  But the
identification of scope and power in the notion of regime undercuts the
very critique.

Arnheims solution to the problem is instead to relocate the objective
basis of picture making.  Instead of relying on western standards of
verisimilitude, he focuses on more elementary examples of picturing, in
which a more immediate approach to the pictorial idea is approached.  This
has been discussed by Arnheim as the 'Egyptian method,' which he sums up
by saying that '[the artist] actually makes [the painting] be what it
suggests it is.' (30)  If in representing a chessboard the perceptual
concept of 'squareness' calls for a simple, undistorted flat square, then
this is how it is represented. (31)

In terms of a formal perspective system, this means that linear
perspective is not necessarily privileged.  Much closer to actual
picture-making is the negatively termed 'inverted perspective.'  Arnheim
points out that the term 'inverted perspective' is a misnomer because it
is the most natural and genetically privileged perspective system.  It is
central perceptive that is actually 'inverted.'

The main advantage of this kind of perspective lies, according to Arnheim,
in its ability to render size and volume unambiguously.  Size relations
considered purely from the point of view of the frontal plane of the
drawing or painting surface unambiguously represent hierarchies of
symbolic importance.  This is precisely the strategies we find in
self-taught art, folk art, Medieval European art, various arts of
small-scale soceities (Africa, Oceania, America), and even childrens
art.  We need not romantically conflate them all into a form of
primitivism if the standard itself is derived from the material condition
of the picture, that is, its real ontology. (32)

The upholder of the rational basis of perspective, especially Gombrich,
often confuses perspective with the issue of scientific or historical
objectivity.  To deny the special status of perspective we need not deny
the validity of geometry or of science, nor need we accept (with Nelson
Goodman) the alternative that all picture-making strategies are mere
conventions. (33)  Both scientific and historical objectivity are isolated
issues.  When Arnheim offers a different basis for perpsective, he still
assures historical objectivity; it is the objectivity of inverted
perspective.

This amounts to a reformulation of the notion of realism and again of
Arnheim's notion of the special status of linear perspective.  By placing
the burden of standard perspective on inverted perspective, and making
linear perspective a subset of it, he retains the objectivity of a norm,
but reorganizes the canon.  This is an alternative that frankly has not
been considered.

It is obvious that subtle distinctions must be held in mind when
considereing such issues.  Not the least of these relates to the the
changing sensitivities that go with pictorial form.  Critics of Arnheim
should realise that there is a considerable body of gestalt work on
perceptual modification. (34)  The gestaltists in fact considered the
temporal field (Spurenfeld) to be under the same lawful
relational-determinism as the spatial field; percepts can be lawfully
altered in time the same way that a perceptual illusion is merely caused
by the relational determination of the visual field.  Herman Witkin
emerged from the gestalt tradition and went on to inspire Michael
Baxandall's 'period eye.'

Arnheim has tried to describe the ways in which we see images differently
because of our learning, without going over into relativism.  Gombrich
balked at Arnheim's suggestion, put forward in 1954, that because of the
relativity of perception, 'probably only a further shift of the reality
level is needed to make the Picassos, the Bracques, or the Klees look
exactly like the things they represent.' (35)  Gombrich called Arnheim's
formulation a prime example of the old historicist doctrine that cannot
dispense with value judgments and is hopelessly relativistic. (36)  What
Arnheim was trying to say is that these artists might be relying on a
fundamentality of form that would be easily adapted to.  And just as we
have no problem with seeing haystacks in Impressionistic works, Arnheim
has been born out.

It is not sufficient to regard the pictorial works of the world as a
'museum without walls.'  Different modes of seeing can be different and
seem hopelessly relativistic when the supporting practices that
relationally determine them are ignored.  Thus Otto Pcht writes that
'If. . .there is no absolute norm of taste or beauty,' says Pcht, 'then
there can be no absolute norm of skill either.  Thus it would be equally
meaningless to ask whether the Master of the Lindisfarne Gospels could
have drawn and even could have wanted to draw a natural likeness, or
whether Pollaiuolo could have designed or invented one of the carpet pages
of the Book of Kells.  Either lacked the skill to do the others work.  The
faculties required in each case were mutually exclusive.' (37)  Arnheim
would heartily agree, not least about the coupling of practices with
representations.

ART AND THE SCARCITY OF GENIUS

I have argued that different kinds of works and different societal
arrangements (representations and practices) have a determinate ontology
that cannot be ignored in debates about the canon.  In fact, we need the
ontology to make sense of them.  This kind of relational determinism is
ever present, and extends for example into historical discourse.  David
Carrier states that the narratives of Otto Demus and E. H. Gombrich are in
conflict when they each look at Giotto in different ways, the first as a
continuer of a Byzantine tradition, and the latter as a radical forerunner
of a new sense of space. (38)  Reading this conflict into what Carrier
calls their 'narratives' foredooms any sense of complementarity.  But the
historical record itself displays different relational structures, or what
we may call 'facets' and 'scales.' (39)  When we understand that history
can be looked at from different aspects even without changing the facts
themselves, the look will change.  This is not relativism but as mundane
as the fact that a building will seem different if seen from the ground
floor or from the roof.

The previous two sections have been devoted to outlying different
ontological principles that underlie some aspects of canon
formation.  Even assuming that we can extricate certain logical principles
that involve the conceptualization of the canon, however, such a
discussion is relatively naive about actual art market practices
today.  That discussion takes for granted semi-stable artistic traditions
in relative isolation but says nothing about our contemporary
pluralism.  What I wish to address finally is the mobility of the canon
(moving from intrinsic to exchange value), as it seems to be driven to
expand under pressure of the 'scarcity of genius.'

Christ Steiner has provided a neat example in the creation of the
canonicity of the sling shot in the 1980s. (40)  After African Art
collecting had been driven largely by masks and figures, it slowly
expanded.  By the time Enzo Barzani began collecting small slingshots, and
was able to produce a large elengant coffee-table book featuring his
collection, the art world was ready to move these objects into
canonicity.  According to Steiner this is evidence that we simply form
canons under the power of the art market; inert object respond to the
conceptual schemes of the art world, driven by the art market.  A strict
conservative elitist might deny these objects to be art at all.  But there
is an alternative to either extreme position, an alternative that once
again retains certain conceptual elements separate.

The issue is again ontology.  For the positivist the 'work of art' has a
self-given status that is read off as one of its determinate
qualities.  The postmodernist instead sees the work as more or less inert
and requiring some conceptual scheme to make sense of it.  Both
approaches, it should be pointed out, are monistic and are therefore
strange bedfellows.  Neither can see beyond its own world, although in one
case it is a realist's world and in the other one that is
relativistic.  The solution is a pluralistic or intelligibilist ontology.

Let us take the case of the slingshots.  First of all we value them in a
special way.  They satisfy us as cases of non-western art that impress by
their difference.  All tourists hold on to the illusion that they are
aquiring an example of native art uncontaminated by the tides of western
taste.  However, in the case of the slingshot (and in all cases of tourist
art), there are certain things that this delivers which include
hand-workmanship, an attitude to object-making we might wish to call
'naive' except it is not so much naive as different (unlike ours) and
consistent (it bears traits of coherent practices).

I insist that Barzoni's slingshots would not be suitable for canonicity
were it not for these facts.  Although this is a case of tourist art, I
believe we can generalize it in general.  In other words, we will not find
art in an object that will not bear it.  This is quite satisfying for a
critical realist perspective which does not look at phenomena a prioribut
rather a posteriori; because something exists out there in the world does
not mean that it is represented in the mind, rather we discover those
qualities in the work after we look for them. (41)

As I qualified, I think the slingshots fulfill a special role as
non-western objects.  The value that we find in non-western art is
generally its authenticity; the slingshots certainly are.  But it served a
function as a canonizable item, because the market was ready for it.  In
the western art market we are constantly reevaluating new or forgotten art
forms; their market value increases and they become more valued objects to
collect and comprise collections (i.e., the canon).  It is useful to view
these resurrections with a healthy scepticism, however, if we regard the
ontology of scarcity we can see certain trends.

Objects are created in time and as time passes they become increasingly
distant from us, increasing the unlikelihood of their survival.  Part of a
very real component of value is replaceability and these distant objects
become harder and harder to replace.  This is not mystical in the
least.  We consider a fine (new) watch or automobile, in spite of their
craftsmanship, basically replaceable. (42)  When we can replace something
we do not value it as much.  Thus some things are valuable just because
they are old and scarce.  Renaissance paintings are a combination of
scarce and beautiful, which is why they occupy such a lofty position in
our canon.  Nineteenth century painting (also high in the canon) is also
extremely popular because as a bonus we are given more or less
circumscribed personalities (Monet, Renoir) in addition to
scarcity.  Fortunately for the Impressionists, their works are getting
older and older, and more and more inaccesible.

As objects become older and rarer (moving into the orbit of
'priceless') they naturally leave the market as viable puchases.  This
creates a desire for new collectible items.  From a great distance, age
and scarcity might be constant variables, but of course works and genres
are sold, hyped, and speculated upon (slingshots?) in the interests of
making money.  And this says nothing about the contemporary art market
where the symbolic value of art-as-fashion might be in play, which is the
extreme opposite of the spectrum from an ugly Minoan pot that is bought
simply because it is 3,500 years old.

CONCLUSION

The dilemma of the art historical canon is essentially one between
relativistic and objectivist alternatives.  One emphasizes the social and
the other the object itself.  Critical realism insists that our realism
should be directed not only to the objects around us, but the real social
situation underlying their use.  Arnheim demonstrates this by showing the
complementarity of work and function, representation and practice.

Thus, Arnheim's approach to art is a blending of objectivist and
relativist methodologies.  It gives room to the variability of perception,
but reminds us that perception is universal, and its principles are shared
by all.  It wants to give due to the time and place in which the artist
works, in particular through the materials that are used.  But even though
the work is determined, the validity of the work is open to question, and
may be judged.  It is revisionist, in the sense that it privileges
alternative modes of representation.  However, it does not simply deny
validity to any system, but calls the same system the privileged.

Only a critical realist methodology can bring the art historical canon out
of its impasse.  We must familiarize ourself with a realism that can
recognize the social but understands the risks of reifying knowledge into
ontology.  Arnheim's body of works is an ideal place to begin, and the
advantages to understanding his work in a more properly critical realist
vein, as well as to the art historica field, are immense.

NOTES

1	On the canon in art history, see Art Journal, special issue,
Rethinking the Introductory Art History Survey, vol. 54, 1995; and in
general, see Critical Inquiry, special issue, Canons, vol. 10,
1983; Charles Altieri, Canons and Consequences: Reflections on the Ethical
Force of Imaginative Ideals, (Evanston, Ill, 1990.

2	See 'Visual Culture Questionnaire,' October, vol. 77, 1996,
pp. 25-70.

3	See for example Sally Price's attempt to treat non-western artists
as individuals, on a western model.  The question remains, of course,
should this art adopt a western model and why?

4	Christ Steiner, 'Can the Canon Burst?' Art Bulletin, vol. 78,
1996, pp. 213-217.

5	By postmodernists I would think of various post-structuralist,
neo-pragmatists like (and I do not suggest these names without intense
self-reflection) Jean Beaudrillard, Stanley Fish, Lyotard, Richard
Rorty.  By objectivsts I mean E. H. Gombrich, M. H. Abrams and
E. D. Hirsch.

6	R. Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science, 2nd edition, London,
1997; R. Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism, 2nd edition, New York,
1989; A. Collier, Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar's
Philosophy, London, 1994.

7	By Mandelbaum, see The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge, Baltimore,
1977 and Purpose and Necessity in Social Theory, Baltimore, 1987.  For a
brilliant exposition of Mandelbaum's theories, which makes the successful
link between Mandelbaum and critical realism, see C. Lloyd, 'Realism and
Structurism in Historical Theory: A Discussion of the Thought of Maurice
Mandelbaum', History and Theory, vol. 28, 1989, pp. 296-325.

8	When I mentioned to Arnheim (November 1993) that I thought it was
possible to reconstruct his writings on art history with the work of
Mandelbaum, he said he was not surprised because what he had read of
Mandelbaum he found to be very congenial.  For a first, tentative attempt,
see I. Verstegen, 'Rudolf Arnheim', in Encyclopedia of Aesthetics,
ed. M. Kelly, New York, 1998, pp. 109-111.

9	Here Derridas name stands conveniently for a whole class of vulgar
deconstructionists.  Following Christopher Norris ideas, I am willing to
accept that Derrida does not actually belong with the postmodernists.

10	Mandelbaum, History, Man and Reason, Baltimore, 1977; A. Spitzer,
'Introduction: Historical Argument when the Chips are Down', Historical
Truth and Lies about the Past: Reflections on Dewey, Dreyfus, de Man, and
Reagan, Chapel Hill and London, 1996.

11	See Carlo Ginzburg, 'Just one Witness,' in S. Friedlander, ed.,
Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the 'Final Solution,'
Cambridge, Mass., 1992.

12	For an example of a hasty conclusion from a discussion of the
canon to the very possibility of value, see Keith Moxey, The Practice of
Theory: Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art History, Ithaca and
London, 1994, p. 39.

13	See the works of Karl Popper, Isaiah Berlin and Friedrich von
Hayek and the more recent work of neo-Austrian philosophers.

14	As Otto Pcht noted, 'the basic premise in this reasoning is
plainly that by analogy to moral decisions, artistic choices, have no
value unless they are free' ('Art Historians and Art Critics VI, Alois
Riegl', Burlington Magazine, vol. 105, 1963, pp. 188-93; reprinted in
Pcht, Methodisches zur kunsthistorischen Praxis, Mnchen, 1977.

15	Arnheim begins his recent essay, 'Art History and Psychology,' by
saying 'psychology claims to have a contribution to make to the
understanding of art and its history because anything referring to the
mind is in psychology's domain' (To the Rescue of Art, Berkeley and Los
Angeles, 1992, p. 115).  This would amount to a simplistic understanding
of 'subjectivism' according to which the individual is involved in art
history because the mind is involved in art history but see below.

16	In addition to Mandelbaum's well known defense of societal facts,
see Arnheim's essay, 'The Split and the Structure', Michigan Quarterly
Review, vol. 31, 1992, pp. 195-204, and also Solomon Asch, 'A Structural
Account of the Individual-Group Relation', Social Psychology, Englewood
Cliffs, 1952.

17	Pertinently Mandelbaum writes, '[Hume's] assumption that the
causal relation is a linear, sequential relation between two distinct
events is mistaken: an analysis of the cause of a particular event
involves tracing the various factors that are jointly responsible for the
occurrence being what it is, and not being different' (The Anatomy of
Historical Knowledge, p. 74).  Remarkably similar is Arnheim's independent
statement that, 'causal chains. . .lose their linear identity as soon as
they enter a gestalt context' and further that 'as far as the intellectual
constructs of linear causality are concerned, the gestalt is a limiting
case that can be approached, although never matched, by a judicious
tracing of the components and their interrelations in the gestalt process'
('Style as a Gestalt Problem', p. 269).

18	Pcht notes this same fact with reference to a Gestalt colleague of
Arnheim, Wolfgang Metzger, and his Schpferische Freiheit, Frankfurt am
Main, 1962.

19	Mandelbaum, Purpose and Necessity in Social Theory; M. Archer,
Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory, revised
edition, Cambridge, 1996.

20	L. Nochlin, 'Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?' Women,
Art, and Power and Other Essays, New York, 1988.

21	I am reminded of an observation of Rona Goffen from a seminar I
attended.  How, she asked, can we look at a Bellini Madonna and Child
knowing what we do about infant mortality and early childkeeping practices
at the time?

22	This concept is by no means out-dated.  For some recent
experimental support of the relational gestalt position, see W. Epstein,
'Percept-Percept Couplings', Perception, 1982, vol. 11, pp. 75-83.

23	Arnheim, Visual Thinking, p. 151.

24	Put another way, differnt kinds of art differ in the degree that
they are a 'self-image' and a likeness.  Arnheim, 'The Robin and the
Saint,' Toward a Psychology of Art, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966.

25	This is the basis of Arnheim's fundamentally positive view of
ornament in The Power of the Center, 2nd edition, Berkeley and Los
Angeles, 1988.  See Arnheim's review of Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A
Study of the Psychology of Decorative Art, The New Republic, 10 March
1979, pp. 36-38.

26	Arnheim, 'Objective Percepts, Objective Values.' in New Essays on
the Psychology of Art, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1986, pp. 297-326.

27	R. Arnheim, 'From Function to Expression,' Toward a Psychology of
Art, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966; 'The Way of the Crafts,' The Split
and the Structure, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996, pp. 33-41.

28	R. Sowers, Rethinking the Forms of Visual Expression, Berkeley and
Los Angeles, 1992.

29	N. Bryson, 'The Gaze in the Expanded Field,' in H. Foster (ed.),
Vision and Visuality, Seattle, 1988, pp. 87-108.

30	R. Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, Berkeley and Los Angeles,
1954, p. 112.

31	Rudolf Arnheim, 'Inverted Perspective and the Axiom of Realism,'
in New Essays on the Psychology of Art, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1986.

32	For an attempt at classifying various pictorial strategies (still,
however, from an objectivist viewpoint inherited from J. J. Gibson) see
Margaret Hagen, Varieties of Realism, Cambridge, 1986.

33	For example, Samual Edgerton, impatient with
perspective-relativists notes that 'eyeglasses. . .'

34	K. Koffka, The Principles of Gestalt Psychology, New York,
1935; I. Rock, The Nature of Perceptual Adaptation, New York,
1966; D. Usnadze, The Psychology of Set, New York, 1966; H. Wallach, On
Perception, New York, 1976.

35	Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, 93.

36	Gombrich, Art and Illusion, New York, 1960, p. 27.

37	Pcht, 'Alois Riegl,' 103.

38	D. Carrier, Artwriting, Amherst, 1987.

39	M. Mandelbaum, The Problem of Historical Knowledge, New York,
1938; The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge.

40	Christ Steiner, 'Can the Canon Burst?'

41	See M. Mandelbaum, "New Approaches Appear" (1938/1967), p. 299.

42	This is the root of the notion that works of art immediately
become valueable with th deaths of their authors: the production
instantaneously becomes finite and closed.




     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---