Sunday, August 17, 2014

Art History, Classification, Singularity



Diego Velázquez, Las Meniñas 1656
Oil on canvas, 10' 5" x 9' 1" (3.2 m x 2.76 m)

In art history, holism may involve the idea that the artist and his or her art are parts of the societies in which they live, which is a special case of the organic idea that changes in a part may spread systematically throughout a whole, just as changes in a whole can affect the parts.  This is not an explanation, but a model for interpreting facts and seeing the connections among many discreet historical phenomena.  There’s no point to criticizing holistic explanations, because there are none; there are only holistic models for coordinating facts and descriptions into classificatory or causal explanations.  When we address the changes in style that characterize the history of Western art, we have to use the larger social context that was the background of an artist’s life.  For example, as a court painter, Velázquez recorded the lives of Spanish royalty in the 1600’s, whereas Manet explored the anomic cultural conditions of Paris in the late 1800’s.  From that perspective, the artist’s work becomes a personal expression of his or her culture.  “Explanations of the perceptible features of a painting are at once both causal and interpretive, rendered chiefly case by singular case, but always with attention to prevailing personal and cultural practices.” (Joseph Margolis, “Works of Art as Physically Embodied and Culturally Emergent Entities in  British Journal of Aesthetics Vol. XIV, No. 3 (1974) p. 247)

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