DOI Artikel:
Szczerski, Andrzej: Art history as art criticism?
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19069#0121
judgements it should judge and should try to establish a certain criteria ac-
cording to which judgement could be make.
At the CIHA Congress m Amsterdam in 1996 Anca Oroveanu summarised
the debates on these issues in a paper entitled "The history of art shaping
art?"6. She showed the two extreme examples of this phenomenon in the 20th
century - socialist realism and postmodernism. In the first case ideology used
art history as a tool to extract from the past the visual language most adeąuate
to transmit the new propaganda meanings in the old form. This abuse of the
discipline was generally realised through totalitarian methods. On the other
hand the post-modern arts fell under the tyranny of the history of art. Here
Oroveanu fmds the long-lasting influence both of the Greenbergian discourse
and the critical discourse of the avant-garde concepts and presuppositions.
These relations, as she says, "are not necessarily and invariably liberating, but
may be, under certain circumstances, limiting". And sińce art history is the
main carrier of the specialised memory in the field of art, its memory and its
structuring "may act not only as a means of organising what would possibly
remain, otherwise, a number of chaotic and disconnected objects and events,
but also as a modelling factor". Since art history structures the past "it also
suggests how futurę facts of the same kind might fit in, and locates (even
if implicitly) the contemporary artists into this scheme. In other words, art
history deals not only with the past, which is, if one may say so, its 'natural'
object, but also, explicitly or not, with the futurę".
If this is true, then the role of judgement is of fundamental value for the
whole development of art. If we understand judgement as evaluation, the most
difficult thing would then be to establish the system of values relevant for such
judgement. It would be too naive to think it is straightforwardly possible. The
artwork is a complex structure and reąuires a profound study, without any a
priori prejudices. And not everything could be expressed with the restricted
ability of the written or spoken language. But at least one may leara from art
history that there are some points of reference when judging the artwork that
should be taken into account and that it does not have to mean gomg back to a
transcendent and universal notion of ąuality. For instance the method of com-
parative research did not lose its significance. At the same time the historical
context is also a significant point of reference. We should also be aware of the
fact that mdividual artists reąuire individual approaches, even if in a larger
context. And fmally that aesthetics has for a long time ceased to be the only
6 A. Oroveanu, The History of Art Shaping Art?, in: Memory and Oblivion. Proceedings of
theXXIXth International Congress of the History ofArt, ed. W. Reinink, J. Stumpel, Dordrecht.
Boston and London 1999, p. 123-130. Ali the following ąuotations idem.
118
cording to which judgement could be make.
At the CIHA Congress m Amsterdam in 1996 Anca Oroveanu summarised
the debates on these issues in a paper entitled "The history of art shaping
art?"6. She showed the two extreme examples of this phenomenon in the 20th
century - socialist realism and postmodernism. In the first case ideology used
art history as a tool to extract from the past the visual language most adeąuate
to transmit the new propaganda meanings in the old form. This abuse of the
discipline was generally realised through totalitarian methods. On the other
hand the post-modern arts fell under the tyranny of the history of art. Here
Oroveanu fmds the long-lasting influence both of the Greenbergian discourse
and the critical discourse of the avant-garde concepts and presuppositions.
These relations, as she says, "are not necessarily and invariably liberating, but
may be, under certain circumstances, limiting". And sińce art history is the
main carrier of the specialised memory in the field of art, its memory and its
structuring "may act not only as a means of organising what would possibly
remain, otherwise, a number of chaotic and disconnected objects and events,
but also as a modelling factor". Since art history structures the past "it also
suggests how futurę facts of the same kind might fit in, and locates (even
if implicitly) the contemporary artists into this scheme. In other words, art
history deals not only with the past, which is, if one may say so, its 'natural'
object, but also, explicitly or not, with the futurę".
If this is true, then the role of judgement is of fundamental value for the
whole development of art. If we understand judgement as evaluation, the most
difficult thing would then be to establish the system of values relevant for such
judgement. It would be too naive to think it is straightforwardly possible. The
artwork is a complex structure and reąuires a profound study, without any a
priori prejudices. And not everything could be expressed with the restricted
ability of the written or spoken language. But at least one may leara from art
history that there are some points of reference when judging the artwork that
should be taken into account and that it does not have to mean gomg back to a
transcendent and universal notion of ąuality. For instance the method of com-
parative research did not lose its significance. At the same time the historical
context is also a significant point of reference. We should also be aware of the
fact that mdividual artists reąuire individual approaches, even if in a larger
context. And fmally that aesthetics has for a long time ceased to be the only
6 A. Oroveanu, The History of Art Shaping Art?, in: Memory and Oblivion. Proceedings of
theXXIXth International Congress of the History ofArt, ed. W. Reinink, J. Stumpel, Dordrecht.
Boston and London 1999, p. 123-130. Ali the following ąuotations idem.
118