DOI Heft:
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DOI Artikel:Rampley, Matthew: Visual culture: an end to the history of art?
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52804#0066
such as the University of Leeds, Middlesex Polytech-
nic (now University), the polytechnic of Central Lon-
don (now Westminster University) or the Universi-
ties of Essex or Sussex, which had least in common
with the haute, bourgeois centres of traditional art his-
torical research. Leeds was admittedly the oldest in-
stitution, having been founded as a civic university
in 1904. However, the industrial context of the city
of Leeds ensured that the association between art his-
tory and polité bourgeois culture remained weak. In-
deed, Leeds explicitly dissociated itself from the ex-
isting dass structure of the discipline by establishing
a degree in the social history of art in thel970s. While
best known on account of the work of T. J. Clark,
Griselda Pollock and Fred Orton, there was a connec-
tion in Leeds with radical art history even earlier when
Arnold Hauser was employed by the university in the
1930s. This pattern recurred elsewhere. Although Fre-
derick Antal was briefly employed by Sir Anthony
Blunt in the Courtauld Institute in the 1940s, another
radical art historian of the same génération, Francis
Klingender, was eventually appointed to the depart-
ment of sociology in the University of Hüll, another
city with a nineteenth-century industrial héritage dis-
tant from the metropolitan middle classes.53
This institutional expansion in the 1960s had other
conséquences too. The loss of institutional hegemo-
ny of the Courtauld Institute was accompanied by
a shift in values and focus; the Renaissance, which
had long been the preserve of connoisseurs and cura-
tors, ceased to be the centre of art historical atten-
tion. This even occurred at the Courtauld. Most no-
table in this regard is the appointment of David
Soikin, a Canadian Marxist art historian who briefly
became the centre of controversy as curator of a highly
politicised exhibition of the Welsh landscape painter
Richard Wilson at the Täte in 1982, and who is now
firmly ensconced as a professer in the Institute.54
This story might suggest that art history in Brit-
ain had managed, by the 1970s, to throw off linger-
53 Klingender was author of KLINGENDER, Francis: Marxism
and Modem Art. London 1942, KLINGENDER, Francis: Art
and the Industrial Revolution. London 1947 and KLINGEN-
DER, Francis: Goya in the Démocratie Tradition. London 1948.
54 SOLKIN, David: Richard Wilson. The Landscape of Reaction.
London 1982.
ing associations with connoisseurship, private collect-
ing and the dass distinctions of cultivated bourgeois
taste, and had begun, instead, to address thèmes of
social and political relevance. However, Marxist crit-
ics of the 1960s and 1970s had objected to the un-
questioning subscription of art historical scholarship
to notions of aesthetic value, and by the mid-1990s
it was argued that the new radical art history had
merely added a more theoretically sophisticated spin
on the same theme. The connoisseurial gaze of the
bourgeois scholar reappeared merely in the guise of
a célébration of jouissance, semiotic play or carnal pleas-
ure. This became the object of sharp criticism in an
article by John Roberts and Dave Beech published in
1996 in New Left Review, which called for renewed
attention to the virtues of philistinism, and which then
prompted a sériés of responses, resulting in the so-
called ‘Philistine Controversy.’55
It was partly in opposition to the way that radical
art history, for all its methodological sophistication,
still unquestioningly held to ‘art’ as a value, that many
turned to visual studies as an alternative paradigm.
On the whole this shift was initiated in those institu-
tions that had the least investment in the cultural
capital of art history. Thus the former polytechnics,
such as the University of East London, the University
of Northumbria, the University of Kingston, and the
University of Brighton hâve pioneered programmes
in Visual Studies which are driven by the political
concerns of cultural studies - i.e. the réfraction of race,
gender and dass identities through cultural représen-
tations — coupled with a critical scepticism regarding
art as the privileged object of investigation.
At the same time that a sériés of new initiatives
hâve been set up, art history has been undergoing
a period of retrenchment. Already in the 1980s the
department of art history in the University of Stir-
ling — was closed down. A similar fate awaits art his-
tory in the universities of Aberdeen, Keele, de Mont-
fort, Liverpool John Moores and no doubt others will
55 ROBERTS, John - BEECH, Dave (ed.): The Philistine Contro-
versy. London 2002. The original essay, ‘Spectres of the Aesthe-
tic’ was published in New Left Review, No. 218 and was re-
published in the anthology pp. 13-47.
64
nic (now University), the polytechnic of Central Lon-
don (now Westminster University) or the Universi-
ties of Essex or Sussex, which had least in common
with the haute, bourgeois centres of traditional art his-
torical research. Leeds was admittedly the oldest in-
stitution, having been founded as a civic university
in 1904. However, the industrial context of the city
of Leeds ensured that the association between art his-
tory and polité bourgeois culture remained weak. In-
deed, Leeds explicitly dissociated itself from the ex-
isting dass structure of the discipline by establishing
a degree in the social history of art in thel970s. While
best known on account of the work of T. J. Clark,
Griselda Pollock and Fred Orton, there was a connec-
tion in Leeds with radical art history even earlier when
Arnold Hauser was employed by the university in the
1930s. This pattern recurred elsewhere. Although Fre-
derick Antal was briefly employed by Sir Anthony
Blunt in the Courtauld Institute in the 1940s, another
radical art historian of the same génération, Francis
Klingender, was eventually appointed to the depart-
ment of sociology in the University of Hüll, another
city with a nineteenth-century industrial héritage dis-
tant from the metropolitan middle classes.53
This institutional expansion in the 1960s had other
conséquences too. The loss of institutional hegemo-
ny of the Courtauld Institute was accompanied by
a shift in values and focus; the Renaissance, which
had long been the preserve of connoisseurs and cura-
tors, ceased to be the centre of art historical atten-
tion. This even occurred at the Courtauld. Most no-
table in this regard is the appointment of David
Soikin, a Canadian Marxist art historian who briefly
became the centre of controversy as curator of a highly
politicised exhibition of the Welsh landscape painter
Richard Wilson at the Täte in 1982, and who is now
firmly ensconced as a professer in the Institute.54
This story might suggest that art history in Brit-
ain had managed, by the 1970s, to throw off linger-
53 Klingender was author of KLINGENDER, Francis: Marxism
and Modem Art. London 1942, KLINGENDER, Francis: Art
and the Industrial Revolution. London 1947 and KLINGEN-
DER, Francis: Goya in the Démocratie Tradition. London 1948.
54 SOLKIN, David: Richard Wilson. The Landscape of Reaction.
London 1982.
ing associations with connoisseurship, private collect-
ing and the dass distinctions of cultivated bourgeois
taste, and had begun, instead, to address thèmes of
social and political relevance. However, Marxist crit-
ics of the 1960s and 1970s had objected to the un-
questioning subscription of art historical scholarship
to notions of aesthetic value, and by the mid-1990s
it was argued that the new radical art history had
merely added a more theoretically sophisticated spin
on the same theme. The connoisseurial gaze of the
bourgeois scholar reappeared merely in the guise of
a célébration of jouissance, semiotic play or carnal pleas-
ure. This became the object of sharp criticism in an
article by John Roberts and Dave Beech published in
1996 in New Left Review, which called for renewed
attention to the virtues of philistinism, and which then
prompted a sériés of responses, resulting in the so-
called ‘Philistine Controversy.’55
It was partly in opposition to the way that radical
art history, for all its methodological sophistication,
still unquestioningly held to ‘art’ as a value, that many
turned to visual studies as an alternative paradigm.
On the whole this shift was initiated in those institu-
tions that had the least investment in the cultural
capital of art history. Thus the former polytechnics,
such as the University of East London, the University
of Northumbria, the University of Kingston, and the
University of Brighton hâve pioneered programmes
in Visual Studies which are driven by the political
concerns of cultural studies - i.e. the réfraction of race,
gender and dass identities through cultural représen-
tations — coupled with a critical scepticism regarding
art as the privileged object of investigation.
At the same time that a sériés of new initiatives
hâve been set up, art history has been undergoing
a period of retrenchment. Already in the 1980s the
department of art history in the University of Stir-
ling — was closed down. A similar fate awaits art his-
tory in the universities of Aberdeen, Keele, de Mont-
fort, Liverpool John Moores and no doubt others will
55 ROBERTS, John - BEECH, Dave (ed.): The Philistine Contro-
versy. London 2002. The original essay, ‘Spectres of the Aesthe-
tic’ was published in New Left Review, No. 218 and was re-
published in the anthology pp. 13-47.
64