Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Art history is Necessarily Multi-disciplinary


Constantin Brancusi, Bird in Space (1928)
Bronze, 137.2 x 21.6 x 16.5 cm.
Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.C.

When addressing any particular work or artist, the art historian must integrate all of the relevant disciplines on an ad hoc basis; that is, with different bodies of work, certain distinct problems arise for which solutions will have to be improvised.  But those problems will vary for artworks of different periods and cultures. Some statues, like those of the classical Greeks and Egyptians, demand an extensive knowledge of ancient mythology. Michelangelo’s David (1501-4) belongs within the historical context of Florence’s Republican defiance of domination by much larger political entities, despite its small size; parvum sed potens. But that context is rooted in the story of David and Goliath from the Jewish Bible. Rodin’s statues call up problems of originality and authorship, since there are editions of casts made after his death but authorized by the government,[1] but also raise feminist issues because of the crucial assistance of Camille Claudel and Rodin's mistreatment of his pupil, assistant, and lover. The seminal modern sculpture Bird in Space (1925) was the subject of “the most famous trial concerning the definition of a work of art [which] took place in 1927, in New York: Brancusi vs. United States.”[2] In that trial the question of the identity of a work of art was raised in a pointed way, involving both legal and philosophical questions that would have been impossible one hundred years earlier. But Brancusi’s sculpture also invokes the Magical Bird of old Romanian mythology. In each of these cases, the relevance of a variety of disciplines intertwine variously. So art history, because of its essentially historicist and holistic nature, is multi-disciplinary. And the principles for selecting and integrating those disciplines will vary according to the works addressed.


[1]. See Rosalind Krauss, “The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Postmodernist Repetition” in Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation Brian Wallis, ed. (Boston:  David R. Godine, 1984) pp. 13-27 and “The Originality of the Avant Garde” (1986) 
[2]. Margit Rowell Brancusi vs. United States: The Historic Trial 1928 (Paris: Adam Biro, 1999) p. 7

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