CAMILLE, M, Rethinking The Canon

Rethinking the Canon
Author(s): Michael Camille, Zeynep elik, John Onians, Adrian Rifkin and Christopher B.
Steiner
Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Jun., 1996), pp. 198-217
Published by: College Art Association
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A RAN GE O F C RITI CAL PE RS PE CTIVES
Rethinking
the
Canon
Prophets, Canons, and

Promising Monsters
MachaelCamalle
I used to be almost embarrassed to admit to friends and
colleagues the place where I spent so many hours with things
medieval. It was constructed to be, and can still be be
construed as, celebrating those aspects of art history that I
had despised-triumphant nationalism, a purely stylistic
taxonomy of objects, and a rigidly chronological system of
their classification. The place was not even medieval, but a
modern museum, and to make matters worse, none of the
canonical works exhibited there was real. The pantheon of
simulacraI am talking about is the collection of plaster casts
at the Musee des Monuments franJcais.More recently I came
across some old photographs showing how the rnoulages
there were arranged before 1937, when the collection,
opened by Viollet le Duc in 1883, filled a wing of the old
Trocadero Palace. It was then called the Musee de Sculpture
Comparee. These photographs show how the canon of
French medieval sculpture was then displayed, not along
stylistic and chronological lines as it is today. As its title
suggests, the museum's purpose was to allow the visitor to
compare, as in a museum of natural history, one species of
carving to another-the ltomanesque to the Gothic leaf, for
example. One photograph shows the juxtaposition of the
statue of Isaiah from Souillac, which would today be considered key in any canon of medieval sculpture, hanging next to
a work which would not have so central a place today-part
of the damaged, late thirteenth-century sculpture added to
the south porch of Chartrescathedral and representing four
of the mechanical arts (Fig. 1). On my last visit these two casts
were still on show, one in the Romanesque Room and the
other farther along, in the EarlyGothic Room.
Now I am less inclined to downplay my desire to behold
plaster of Paris in Paris than I used to be. This is partly
because the history of how objects were collected and
reproduced-how canons were created-has become a major focus for art-historical research. This museum is now
itself a monument (along with another favorite, the two vast
Cast Courts at the Victoriaand Albert Museum in London) to
the nineteenth-century interest in mechanical copies made
for pedagogical purposes. l But on another level these ghosts
of stones have surely gained from the current fashion for
phantasmaticsimulation and our culture'spreference for the
ironic copy over the dead original. As a medievalist, however,
I tend to view these plaster casts more like contact relics,
made from molds taken, like Veronica'sveil, from the surface
of the divine prototype, thus giving them their own peculiar
kind of authenticity. Floating free of their architectural
anchors, they are often more visible and certainlybetter lit by

natural light than the fragments of real Romanesque and
Gothic stone sculpture that also drift unmoored, marginalized and spotlit, in the recently renovated sculpture galleries
of the Louvre. Nor have the sites and statues from which
molds were made and then these replicas cast fared much
better. The casts remain important records, especially where
pollution and destruction have, in the intervening years,
obliterated details on the originals that can still be discerned
in their delicately crafted imprints. In fact, when you travel
all the way to Souillac you will find the actual Isaiah relief, of
exactly the same dimensions as its twin-6 feet 63/4 inches
high-isolated, already moved from its original twelfthcentury locus. It is a fragment stuck on the right side of the
door on the dim interior west wall of the abbey church,
impossible to see properlywithout a flashlight, which anyway
flattens the stone surface, making the actual object far more
distorted and theatrical than the version in the museum.
The images in the Musee des Monuments franJcaishave
been arranged to tell a story. For those of us trying to teach
or learn about medieval art, even though we might see a
totally different story than the one narrated by their official
order and placement, these casts are powerful tools, precisely because they are not "fixed in stone." Their plaster
permeability presents a canon but also a means for disrupting canonicity, adding to it and filling it with unnatural
others. In this respect I would argue that a canon is not made
up of the actual objects but only of representations of those
objects. As FrankKermode has suggested in his discussion of
the origins of the term, the canon originally referred to the
sacred authority of eternally reinterpretable scripture.2Arthistorical canons, as constituted by a set of predetermined,
isolated images of "greatworks"reproduced in books or in a
series of more complex institutional replicas such as the
plaster casts at the Musee des Monuments franSais,are thus,
like writing, supplemental and secondary.Whether their bias
be nationalist, formalist,or iconographic, canons are created
not so much out of a series of worthy objects as out of the
possibilities of their reproduction. For example, the paintings that were most enjoyed in the eighteenth century were
those that could be most easily engraved and made available
to a new collecting audience, just as, in the nineteenth
century, the taste for Gothic ornament was directly stimulated by plaster reproductions. The advent of photography
meant that the ideal Museum Without Walls could expand
even further. In terms of the history of medieval sculpture, it
was exactly those fragmentary Brancusi-like bits of stone,
devoid of their original polychromy, which looked so good
when dramatically lit in black-and-white photographs, that
were "canonized." Henri Focillon helped place the Souillac
Isaiah in the canon through analyzing its drapery, just as
RETHINKING
THE CANON
1 99
Meyer Schapiro aided its ascent in his famous study of its

social context. Contemporary students might focus on the
figure's textuality (the scroll) or his sexuality (the way his
thighs are scooped out of the stone), seeing sculpture not as
sign but as body. The plaster Isaiah in Paris is, in this sense,
part of the history of the reception of a sculptural fragment
that remains in the abbey church at Souillac and constitutes
part of the process of its canonization.
Very consciously I have been discussing the canon not only
at one remove (in the plaster cast at the Musee des Monuments francaais)but also at two removes (as this copy appears
in an old photograph). This is because, like so many art
historians of my generation, I am anxious about my relationship with the object. I have to admit that, during the three or
four times I have seen it, the stone prophet at Souillac held
me enthralled, even in the half-dark. He seems to be
struggling to read and show something to his audience, to
communicate about his vision to me, as he lunges forward,
pointing insistently to the unfurling scroll that is his speech,
gesticulatingjust as animatedly as I sometimes do in front of
the slides that I project of him.
There exist many medieval things, not only sculptures, but
also all kinds of objects that can, like this prophet, withstand
the repeated peeling-off of their surfaces, the milking of
their visibilityby an almost parasitic technology of reproduction in two- and three-dimensional copies. Rather than
draining them, this constant replication serves only to make
them even more dynamically communicative and capable of
taking on new meaning and significance. Even though being
a medievalist puts me in a different relation to notions of
canonicity than, say, being a modernist, I agree with T. J.
Clark's observation in a recent discussion of Cezanne that
certain works of art show us what it is to "represent at a
certain historical moment they show us the powers and
limits of a practice of knowledge."3 I suppose that one day
the Isaiah might be removed from the canon as displayed in
the Paris cast museum. A new director might want to
highlight a different fragment of twelfth-century sculpture
from this region of the Dordogne, which produced many
hundreds of other examples. But this is unlikely, because the
piece has a place in the history, not just of sculpture, but of
the body and prophecy, despite, or perhaps because of, its
having lost its original place in the abbey church. Canonical
works are usually described as those that have been stripped
of their contingency, their particularplace in space and time,
and that now stand alone as "worksof art." It seems to me
that precisely the opposite is the case: the truly exceptional
work is one which registers, reacts to, and even redefines its
particular historical circumstances, as I think the Souillac
sculpture does and as Schapiro described it in his still
resonant essay of 1939.4 The prophet continues to communicate across the centuries in different ways to different
generations of beholders because of his presence in that
particularplace. A medieval art historian is far more likely to
want to construct a canon, not of objects, but of places, sites

of pilgrimage, and performance to which one returns again
and again.
Liminal works, that is, works which are both spatially
marginal and which cross or come between two distinct
periods, often fail to achieve canonical status. A piece of
medieval sculpture, which is molded in my own mental
museum of monuments but which is not cast at the Musee
des Monuments franSais,appears as part of the west portal of
Senlis Cathedral. It is a superbly ambiguous thing, less than a
foot long, part reptile, part bird, and all stone, that crouches
alongside its twin on the inner edge of the left socle,
alongside the Labors of the Months (Fig. 2). The reasons why
this thing at Senlis is not part of the canon of medieval
sculpture are not hard to fathom. Not only is its snout
weathered, but also, and more important, it is temporally as
well as spatially marginal, out of place, so to speak, in its
place. It is a vestige of the haunted tanglewood of "Ro-
1. This aspect of the history of taste as it has affected notions of canonicity

is discussed by Ivan Gaskell, "History of Images," in New Perspectiveson
HistoricalWriting,ed. Peter Burke, London, 1991, 178-82.
2. FrankKermode, FormsofAttention,Chicago, 1985, 76-79.
3. T. J. Clark, "Freud's Cezannne," Representations,no. 52, Fall 1995,

115-16.
4. Meyer Schapiro, "The Sculpturesof Souillac"( 1939), in Romanesque
Art,
SelectedPapers,l,NewYork, 1977, 102-30.
1 Castsof the ProphetIsaiahfrom Souillacand part of the

South Porchof ChartresCathedral.Paris,Museedes
MonumentsfranSais,before 1937 (photo:Archives
Photographiquesd'Artet d'Histoire)
200
ART BULLETIN
JUNE
1996 VOLUME
LXXVIII
NUMBER
of the
2Monsterat the edge of the inner face of the left socle
170
1
ca.
Cathedral,
Senlis
of
Portal
West
expected, the monster, being unstable, crosses boundand

between human and nonhuman, mingling the appropriaries
and the inappropriate, showingitself in constantly novel
ate
unexpected ways. Stripped of contingency, the canoniand
object is supposed to transcend space and time and stand
cal
lurking
autonomous.By contrast the monster is always
warning
guarding the threshold as at Senlis, or
somewhere,
evil eye. The canonical object is usually reduced to the
offthe
visual level and, in its superficialvisibility,has none of
purely
has
thesomatic richness that C. Nadia Seremetakis argues
inundating
"the
the
calls
she
what
beenlost in modernity
experienceof sensory flooding, shock and multiplicity."7
at one
Themonstrous, on the other hand, is all sensation,
It now
pointsoft and slimy, at another sharp and spiky.
monthe
between
relations
the
analyze
seemsimperative to
discrete
as
them
analyze
than
rather
thing
strousparts of a
at
andseparate entities. In this sense, the stone prophet
combihybrid
a
chimera,
magnificent
a
too becomes
Souillac
nationof different traditions of corporeality, Ottonian,
transByzantine,even classical, crisscrossed and constantly
.
8
ormlng
of
manesque"bestiality perching on one of the key examples
is
that
Senlis
from
sculpture
an"Early Gothic" portal. The
studies
most
in
reproduced
gets
partof the canon, and that
Virgin
ofmedieval sculpture, is the DeathandAssumptionof the
indisame
the
by
carved
perhaps
inthe tympanum above,
latter's
the
than
Rather
monster.
vidual who made the
controls
canonicalstatus, more pressing issues would be who
eventual
its
deterioration,
physical
rapid
accessto it and its
disappearance.
In planning a graduate course, "Monstrosityin Medieval
the
Art,"I have begun to create a canon of monsters in which
lists of
Senlisbeast has assumed an important place. Making
example
the slimy, feathery, and scaly, and comparing this
dragon
a
more
be
to
out
turns
it
that
find
I
withmany others,
goes
than a basilisk, as I first thought; its complex ancestry
Jacques
backhundreds of years and crosses three continents.
Derrida has recently described how "as soon as one perceives
which
a monster in a monster, one begins to domesticate it,"
and
sources
its
is exactly what I am doing in my search for
sculpture
meaning.5 Nineteenth-century canons of medieval
of
were constructed according to a Linnean taxonomy
the
on
more
nature. Modernist canons, though focused
Our
figurative, tended ironically toward disembodiment.
and
monsters
to
own age, I would suggest, looks more
technological
recent
hybrids as paradigms, precisely because
into
displacements and prosthetic possibilities have called
essay
her
In
are.
question the very notion of what bodies
Donna
"The Promises of Monsters," historian of science
cretransformations
Haraway examines how technological
and
human
of
plethora
a
ated "out of what is not quite
and
categories
our
altered
inhuman actors" have radically
to
seem
actually
would
monster
canons.6 Her concept of the
about
thinking
of
way
me to be a far more promising
of the
classifying medieval art than the traditional notion
is a
canon
the
Whereas
obvious.
canon. The advantages are
the
Torah,
the
or
Bible
the
like
text,
transcendent, uncreated
canon
the
Whereas
creation.
a
monster is a material creature,
is constructed out of the always already known, prejudged
lnto
s. zoc. (lng
vlslblllty.
art
The prophet shows us his scroll, teaching, as the
a
in
live
now
we
But
out.
things
historiandoes, by pointing
through
future
the
behold
people
visualculture in which
actual
clickingon icons rather than through pointing at
is
revolution
computer
the
of
myths
things.One of the major
images,
democratizing
by
canon
that it will collapse the
makingeverything that can be reduced to a screen available
a wider
to everyone. There is much talk about including
visual
new
providing
and
range of "others" in museums
marginalized
previously
and
venuesof display to minorities
to
artisticproducers. The new technology, however, seems
us
liberate
really
it
Will
be more Berenson than Baudrillard.
images
from the tyranny of the canon by providing multiple
things
worldwide,
objects
of hundreds of thousands of other
to
order
in
ourselves
which we can combine and redeploy
it
will
Or
past?
the
with
teach and explore, play and perform
by
owned
things
endlessly publicize only those canonical
these
powerful institutions? Copyright laws will insure that
to
inviolable
more
even
images will be sacrosanct anyway,
facsimiOnce
originals.
analysisand redeployment than their
les are available, of course, the things themselves disappear
see a
into the vaults.8 I suppose it is better that students
the
or
page,
screen verslon o a palntlng, a manuscrlpt
seem
now
that
Souillac Isaiah than the murky xeroxes
ubiquitous in undergraduate teaching. Yet I would disagree
new
with researchers in medieval art who have embraced the
historical
of
means
computer technology as an empowering
reality
vision, allowing them to take their classes on virtual
In
example.
for
trips inside and around Chartres Cathedral,
misplaced
Duc's
this they are not only following Viollet le
mapositivist logic, which saw the cathedrals as wonderful
the
of
experience
chines, but are also further reducing their
when
moment
past to a single, simulated register. At the very
to artbody and performance have become fundamental
focus
our
fixing
is
historical concerns, our visual technology
the
and
canon
The
firmly within the screen/picture frame.
but
eroded,
be
idea of a canonical object then will not
of mass
actually reinforced by market-driven technologies
.
RETHINKING
communication. Stephen Melville and Bill Readings have

recently suggested that "the art object no longer appears as
object but rather as a constellation of processes, offering and
offered to a series of reading heads."9 While this might be
true of contemporary visual products, it seems to me that we
cannot treat works from the past in this way, as things only to
be read in our heads. Our images are notjust about networks
but about textures. They are not read on screen but felt on
flesh, and pushed out of matter even to the level of pain.
In recent years the linguistic model, which for at least two
decades has been so influential in our field, has gradually
been replaced by one rooted less in language and more in
corporeality. Emphasis upon the body will surely have an
effect upon how canons are shaped in the future, and I
welcome the work of those art historianswho are returning to
the relationship between bodies and objects both canonical
and noncanonical. I did not say "return to the object" a
strange Proustian phrase one hears a lot nowadays in our
field, as if anyone could return, or was ever really there(at the
object, or in the object) in the first place. But the danger we
face as art historians is distance, losing the sensations that tie
us to the material world of objects, constructing canons that
would deny not only the nervous system, but also the decay of
all things.
I am afraid I have ended up sounding very medieval.
Ultimately medieval paintings and sculptures, like all objects
from the past, have to be understood as encrypted, as
intimately linked with death. I havejust finished a monstrous
but I hope not morbid book about a single Parisianillumina-
5. "Facedwith a monster, one may become awareof what the norm is and
when this norm has a history any appearance of monstrosityin this domain
allows an analysis of the history of the norms.... The monster is also that
which appears for the first time and, consequently, is not yet recognized. A
monster is a species for which we do not have a name, which does not mean
that the species is abnormal, namely the composition or hybridization of
alreadyknown species. Simply, it showsitself [elle se montre] that is what the
word monster means it shows itself in something that is not yet shown and
that therefore looks like a hallucination, it strikes the eye, it frightens
precisely because no anticipation had prepared one to identify this figure";
Jacques Derrida, Points. . . Interviews,1974-1994, Stanford, 1995, 386.
6. Donna Haraway,"The Promise of Monsters:A Regenerative Politics for
Inappropriate/d Others," CulturalStudies,ed. L. Grossberg, C. Nelson, and
P.A. Treichler, New York/London, 1992, 295-337.
THE CANON
201
tor, in an effort to remember an ordinary life and death in

images. I was very conscious of not wanting to place this man
called Pierre Remiet within a canon of great medieval French
illuminators.10I came to know him too well simply to put him
on that distant pedestal. It was because Remiet's repetitive
and sometimes rushed illuminations have not become part of
the "canon" of great works that I decided to write a whole
book about his extraordinary struggle to make rather ordinary images. Although his art brilliantly evokes the late
fourteenth-centuryfascination with rotting corpses, it exemplifies and embodies rather than breaking out of the mold to
become truly monstrous. Nonetheless, I think it is important
to study and value this less-exalted kind of image making, to
examine the whole range of more mundane visual performances that the dead have depicted for us. In Paris, when I
revisit the cast museum or open one of Remiet's manuscripts
at the Bibliotheque Nationale, it is not in order to worship at
the shrine of actual art or to read in the inscribed traces of
the historical past. It is to feel my flesh crawl and to be
haunted.
MichaelCamille,the authorof Image on the Edge: The

Margins of Medieval Art (1992) and The Master of Death:
The Lifeless Art of Pierre Remiet, Illuminator (1996), is at
presentworking
on monsters,
thebody,andsciencein medieval
art
[Department
ofArt,University
ofChicago,
5540 SouthGreenwood
Avenue,Chicago,
Ill. 606377.
7. C. Nadia Seremetakis, "Implications,"in TheSensesStill:Perceptionand

Memoryas MaterialCulturein Modernityed. C. Nadia Serematakis, Boulder,
Colo./San Francisco/Oxford, 1994, 123.
8. For the problem of access to rare materials, increasingly denied to
students of medieval manuscripts for example, see G. Thomas Tanselle,
"Books, Canons and the Nature of Dispute," CommonKnowledge,VI, 1992,
87-188; and Michael Camille, "The Tres Riches Heures: An Illuminated
Manuscript in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," CriticalInquiry,XVII,
1991, 72-108.
9. Stephen Melville and Bill Readings, eds., Visionand Textuality,Durham,
N.C. 1995, 16.
10. Michael Camille, Master of Death: The LifelessArt of Pierre Remiet,
IlluminatorLondon/New Haven, 1996.
202
ART BU LLETI N J U N E 1996 VO LU M E LXXVI 11 N U M B ER
Colonialism,Orientalism,
and the Canon
ZeynepSelik
The recent inquiry in art and architectural history that
centers on "rethinking the canon" is closely linked with the
current focus on socioculturalintersections of the "Western"
and "non-Western"worlds. This is clearly manifested, for
example, in the growing inclusion of non-Western art and
architecturein surveycourses.1Considering art and architecture within the broadened parameters of intricate power
relations has resulted in a reframing of the canon and new
readings of it. On the whole, this does not mean that the
traditional perspective has been replaced, but that additional ways of seeing and understanding works of art and
architecture have been introduced. Although at times the
repositioning seems to render the conventional interpretations obsolete, in its essence it only exposes meanings
hitherto excluded from the discourse. Perhaps this process
can best be explained by a technical term borrowed from
engineering and adapted by sociology as a research tool:
triangulation.Triangulation, used in land surveyingto determine a position, offers the possibility of multiple readings in
history. InJanet Abu-Lughod'swords, triangulation is based
on the understanding that "there is no archimedian point
outsidethe system from which to view historic reality."2
Undoubtedly, Edward Said's Orientalism(1979) marked a
turning point in the awareness we have of viewing cultural
products through a lens that highlights the underlining
politics of domination. Art and architectural history have
responded to Said's challenge, albeit on a more subdued
scale than some other academic fields. Not surprisingly,
much of this recent scholarshipfollows the model established
by Orientalismand engages in a series of analyses focusing on
works of art and architecturethat contribute to the construction of an "Orient."As Said himself stated, Orientalismwas a
study of the "West"alone. It was not intended as a crosscultural examination and did not claim to give voice to the
"other" side-an issue Said addressed in his later writings.3
Art historians have followed him and offered innovative and
critical readings of Orientalism, but always focusing on the
"West."4
To introduce new viewing positions on the map by listening to historically repressed voices complicates any neat
framing of the canon, engages it in an unfamiliar and
uncomfortable dialogue, and resituates it. Yet the fruits are
worth the effort. Here are two case studies: an 1830s urban
design intervention in a colonial setting, the city of Algiers;
and the thematic repertory of a turn-of-the-century"Orientalist" Ottoman artist, Osman Hamdi. Colonialism and
I would like to thank Diane Favro, Eve Sinaiko, and PerryWinston for their
comments and suggestions.
1. Surveytextbooks also reflect this trend. A remarkableexample is Spiro
Kostof,A Historwof Architect?ere,New York/Oxford, 198S, which goes beyond
mere "inclusion"and pulls the non-Western material into the heart of the
argument. Kostof pairs, for example, Cairowith Florence in the late Middle
Ages and Venice with Istanbulin the 16th century.
2. Janet Abu-Lughod, "On the Remaking of History:How to Reinvent the
Past," in Barbara Kruger and Phil Mariani, eds., Remsking Historw, Seattle,
Orientalism are newcomers to the discourse. While their

inclusion displays the broadening in the definition of the
canon, "rethinkingthe canon" is also about breaking through
conventional interpretations.
Algiers was the capital of France's most important and
most problematic territorial possession outre-mer. The colonial city par excellence, its "modernization"was particularly
charged with political overtones. The first episode of French
planning that followed the conquest of Algeria in 1830
germinated the conflicts that would surface sporadicallyuntil
the end of French rule in 1962. The French began their
urban renewal of the city by opening an immense area, a
Place Royale or Place d'Armes (later, Place du Gouvernement) in the heart of the city and easily accessible from the
harbor-in order to assemble the troops. The initial clearing
was random and resulted in an irregular plaza with haphazard boundaries, soon deemed unworthy of representing the
glory of France. A series of projects in the 1830s and 1840s
that attempted to regularize this space into a neat geometric
form, surrounded by buildings of uniform height with
classical details and arcades on the ground level, responded
to the call by the French administratorsfor an appropriate
monumentality. The resulting Place du Gouvernement, with
its grand image and efficiency, was accompanied by the
enlargement of three existing streets, all converging on the
new square:rue Bab el-Oued, rue Bab Azzoun, and rue de la
Marine, now lined with "French-style"buildings with uniform arcades (Fig. 1). These designs carried the premise that
the "styleof the conqueror"would carve the image of France
onto the Algerian scene, and, with its aesthetic and scalar
difference (which formed a dramatic contrast to the urban
and architectural forms of precolonial Algiers), establish a
visual order that symbolized colonial power relations.5
Historians have commonly presented the French interventions in al-Jaza'ir (as the city is called in Arabic) solely as
examples of military and practical planning that imprinted
the French victory onto the city's form and image.6 Criticsof
colonial urbanism, too, have emphasized the militaryprowess behind the interventions, while pointing, albeit very
briefly, to the "protests of indigenous populations,"7 or
blaming the schemes for their "expression of an imperialist
colonization, [withits] contempt and ignorance of the subservient culture."8 The few scholars who have discussed the
scale and content of the demolition undertaken in Algiers
during the early years of the occupation have approached
the topic again from the French side only, alluding to the
insensitivityof the colonizer to the culture of the colonized.9
The cumulative discourse has thus reduced Algerians to an
ultimate status of inertia, even when it took a critical look at
colonial policies.
Demolition was a particularlysensitive issue in the dense
989,112.
3. Among his numerous writings dealing with this issue, see, e.g., Edward
Said, "Intellectuals in the Post-Colonial World," Salmagandi,nos 70-71,
Spring-Summer 1986, 44-64; idem, "ThirdWorld Intellectuals and Metropolitan Culture," Raritan, IX, no. 3, 1990, 27-50; and idem, Calture and
Imperialism, New York, 1993.
4. For the first article to deal with the significance of Said's work in the
interpretation of l9th-century painting, see Linda Nochlin, "The Imaginary
Orient,"Art in America, LXXI, no. 5, 1983, 118-31, 187-91.
RETHINKING
THE CANON
203
importanceweretorndown.10In the colonyit wasacceptable

to practice what was not allowed at home. The abrupt
violence of the first interventionsmade the city and its
architecturecontestedterrainsin the confrontationbetween
the colonizer and the colonized, as revealed in the oral
literaturefrom the time of the conquest. Consider the
followingsongthatlamentedthe invasionandappropriation
of the city and highlightedthe violationof its most revered
icons:
1 Old Algiers,partialairview (fromChantiers,

March1935).
Above,the Casbah;bottom center, the Placedu
Gouvernement,with surroundingarea restructuredin the
1830s to 1850s
O regretsforAlgiers,for its houses

Andfor its so well-keptapartments!
O regretsfor the townof cleanliness
Whosemarbleand porphyrydazzledthe eyes!
The Christiansinhabitthem,theirstatehaschanged!
They have degraded everything,spoiled all, the impureones!
They have broken down the walls of the janissaries'
barracks,
They havetakenawaythe marble,the balustradesand
the benches;
Andthe irongrillswhichadornedthe windows
Havebeen tornawayto addinsultto ourmisfortunes.
.
Al-Qaisariya
hadbeen namedPlaza
And to think that holy books were sold and bound
there.
They have rummagedthrough the tombs of our fathers,
Andtheyhavescatteredtheirbones
To allowtheirwagonsto go overthem.
O believers,the worldhas seenwithits owneyes.
Theirhorsestied in ourmosques.1l
fabric of al-Jaza'ir, and its practice clearly distinguished

French planning in the colony from French planning at
home. In terms of regularization of the urban fabric and the
creation of monumental squares and streets, the operations
in Algiers do not appear at first sight different from the
practices in French towns since the seventeenth century. Yet,
from Henri IV's great squares in Paris to the Place de la
Concorde, and to Nancy's spectacular system of squares
(Place Royale, Place de la Carriere, and the Hemicycle),
demolition in French townswas minimal and the new designs
were applied to vacant sites. If the compulsory acquisition
law of the Napoleonic Code facilitated expropriation and
demolition, it was not applied on a large scale in France until
the rebuilding of Paris under Napoleon III and Baron
Haussmann. The construction of the rue de Rivoli itself
under Napoleon I had called for the demolition of some
structures, but no monuments, and certainly no religious or
sociocultural icons, were destroyed.
The situation was different in Algiers. French interventions were not only formally oppositional to the architecture
and urbanism in place, but they diced and sliced the city,
appropriating and demolishing indiscriminately.In addition
to a large number of commercial and residential structures,
public and religious buildings of varying sizes and degrees of
The demarcationof the Frenchfrom the Algerianin the

city played a centralrole in the creationof the notion of
espace contre, or "counter space," a term coined by the
AlgeriansociologistDjaffarLesbetto indicatethe antagonisticnatureof the twoareas.12The residentsof the Casbah,the
heightsof al-Jaza'irleft untouchedby the colonizers,spoke
back by turning in upon themselves,consolidatingtheir
unity, tighteningand redefiningtheir own mechanismsof
maintenanceand controloverthe publicand privatespaces
of theirneighborhoods.As interpretedby FrantzFanon,the
diametricallyopposed stances of the Casbahand French
Algiersabolishedany possibilityof overallharmony:"The
two zones are opposed, but not in the serviceof a higher
unity.Obedientto the rules of pure Aristotelianlogic, they
bothfollowthe principleof reciprocalexclusivity.No concili-
5. I analyze French interventions in the urban fabric of Algiers in detail in

my forthcoming book, UrbanFormsand ColonialConfrontations:
Algiersunder
FrenchRule (Universityof CaliforniaPress, Berkeley).
6. Among more recent literature, see, e.g., FranSois Beguin, Arabisances,
Paris, 1983, 103; and Xavier Malvert, "Alger: Mediterranee, soleil et
modernite," inArchitecturefranfaise
outre-mer,Liege, 1992, 3 1.
7. Rene Lespes, Alger,Paris, 1930, 201.
8. J.-J. Deluz, L'Urbanisme
et l'architecture
d'Alger,Algiers / Liege, 1988, 11.
9. See Lespes (as in n. 7), passim. An excellent reconstructionof the center
of Algiers prior to the French conquest has been done by Andre Raymond,
"Le Centre d'Alger en 1830," Revuede l'occidentmusulmanet de la Mediterranee, XXXI, no. 1, 1981, 73-81.
10. For example, the 18th-century mosque of al-Sayyida, qualified by
Raymond as "one of the most elegant religious monuments of Algiers,"was
demolished to make room for the Place du Gouvernement.
11. Quoted in A. A. Heggoy, The French Conquestof Algiers, 1830: An
AlgerianOralTradition,Athens, Ohio, 1986, 22-23.
12. DjaffarLesbet, La Casbahd'Alger,Algiers, [ca. 1985], 3948.
204
ART BULLETIN
JUNE
1996 VOLUME
LXXVIII
NUMBER
the
tion.
ca. 1906.
in Front of the Mosque, author)
Discussion
(photo:
Hamdi,
2 Osman
and Sculpture
Museumof Painting
Istanbul,
to the end of
opposition persisted symbol, but
This
is possible.''l3
ation
not only the
made the Casbah
and
rule
French
resistance.
of nineteenththe actual locus of
also
within the history
an example of
as
Whetherpresented
or, more critically,
of
planning
French
century
in the urban fabric
interventions
side.
practice,
from one
oppressive
conventionally only
on the scene,
have been viewed
actor
Algiers
as the main
colonizer
the
Yet the
highlighting
By
to reiterate his empowerment. each
helped
discourse
the
existed and confronted each
and the colonized
in which
colonizer
interactive web,
within a complex
some form of resisother
by
of power was counteracted
balance of the
exercise
shape and the
the
redefined
equation into the
tancethat
the latter part of the
Bringing
relationship.
of both the colonizer's
the frozen status
disrupts
powerlessness of the
discourse
and the disquietening
power
unilateral
Africa were often
colonized.
East and North
Near
the
of
Cities
by nineteenth-century
imaginary "Orient"
nevertheless, the
collapsedinto an
discourse;
artistic
and
was very differEuropean literary
setting of Istanbul
sociocultural
and
centurywas the time
political
nineteenth
The
Algiers.
Ottoman Empire.
ent from that of
reforms in the
westernizing
imposed by
intensive
of
however, were not
norms,
and
and implemented
European forms
they were initiated
external colonization; elite, with imported expertise from
ruling
from within by the
which ranged from

of new experiments,
site
producprime
the
was
to all aspects of cultural
reorganization
governmental
was born
a prominent artist,
(1842-1910),
Vezir
Hamdi
Grand
the
Osman
son of Ethem Hamdi, issues, Osman
The
scene.
this
into
committed to cultural
particularly
was
which included
who
a privileged education, to the atelier of
enjoyed
Hamdi
he was drawn
in Paris. There,
years
several
to that of Jean-Leon
and possibly also
Boulanger
the technical and
Gustave
work matured under
own
his
and
school. NevertheGerome,
of the French Orientalist acute and persisinfluence
thematic
Orient" provide
"scenes
hisfrom the
paintings. They
less,
mainstream Orientalist derives from the
of
critiques
tent
whose power
as his
a resistant voice,
represent
intellectual, as well
Ottoman
an
as
position
mental framework,
painter's
with the school's
acquaintance
Hamdi's men and
intimate
conventions. Osman
and
in the Orientalist
techniques,
in colorful garments
dressed
are thinking,
women
in "authentic" settings display none of
placed
and
fashion
beings who
and acting human
to them by Euroquestioning,
submissiveness attibuted
and
passivity
the
of Orientalist
painters.
pean
the major themes
the
Hamdi addressed
Osman
an insider within
critical stance as
his
from
encouraged
that
painters
as a religion
(Fig. 2).
He presented Islam
outside.
debate, even doubt
discussion,
and
curiosity,
intellectual
men of religion, reading an
his
painting,
after
posture as
painting
In
maintain their upright background of
books,
a
discussing
against
of their human dignity, details.14 Osman Hamexpression
articulatedarchitectural
to the myriad
meticulously
form a striking alternativebath by French
scenes
home
di's
of harem and
and titillating views
familiar
a couple in a tranquil
of his works depict
Several
served coffee
painters.
the seated man being structure is
environment,
family
domestic
the hierarchical
the woman.l5 While the house is not the omnipotent,
by
the man of
enjoyunquestioned,
of European representations,
tyrant
and
mercy
sensual
his
at
amoral,
of women
scores
over
the
his dominion
ing
is offered that redefines
dialogue
a
Instead,
pleasure.
of Orientalist paintings. acute when he
relationships
gender
becomes even more
Osman Hamdi's point
to Orientalism's
woman. His response
single
a
(ca. 1893;
on
Reading
focuses
odalisques is Girl
reclining
out on
stretched
innumerable
young woman
a
shows
and casual
3). The painting
Fig.
in a book. Her relaxed text, but
immersed
totally
sofa,
a
a religious
she is not reading
the
poseimplies that
composition has
The
literature.
of
perhapsa work
but the shelves behind
Orientalist details,
of
collage
familiar
statement that reading
books, making the
with
filled
are
her
The "girl" is hence
part of her life.
important
which had
an
occupies
and intellectual life,
mind
thinking
givenback her
painters.
salons and
been erased by Orientalist
of his work in Paris
exhibitions
the
Despite several
attempts to correct
Hamdi's
Osman
reat the world's fairs,
of Orientalistrepresentations
epistemologicalstatus Franceand were not incorporated

in
veryrecently.
mained overlooked
on Orientalismuntil
discourse
intoarthistory's
RETHINKING
THE CANON
205
3 Osman Hamdi, Girl

Reading, ca. 1893. Izmir,
private collection (from M.
Cezar, Sanatta BatzyaAfili}
ve OsmanHamdi, Istanbul,
1971)
Yet this episode of repressed historywas not an isolated case,

but part of a broader debate among Ottoman intellectuals at
the time. Ahmed Mithad, an Ottoman writer, described
sarcasticallythe formulaic odalisque of European fantasy in
his 1889Avrupa'daBir Cevelan(A tour in Europe):l6
[This] lovable person lies negligently on a sofa. One of her
slippers, embroidered with pearls, is on the floor, while
the other is on the tip of her toes. Since her garments are
intended to ornament rather than to conceal, her legs
dangling from the sofa are half-naked and her belly and
breasts are covered by fabrics as thin and transparent as a
dream.... In her mouth is the black end of the pipe of a
narghile, curving like a snake.... A black servant fans
her. l7
Like Osman Hamdi, Ahmed Mithad offered a corrective to
the falsification:
While the limitations of this type of response, with its drive

to substitute one received truth or representation for another, must be acknowledged, its entry into the repertory of
art history expands the worldliness of the canon. The voice of
certain alterities, kept silent by the valorized culture, begins
to enter the dialogue, thereby complicating the meanings
and contextual fabrics of the art objects and disrupting
inherited historiographic legacies. This, in turn, helps to
contest the familiarreductiveformulasthat explicate sociopolitical relationships and reestablish them in their social
density.19Furthermore, as GayatriSpivakobserves, when the
"hegemonic discourse" repositions itself so that it can "occupy the position of the other," it, too, becomes subject to a
major transformation,to its own decolonization.20
This is the Eastern woman that Europe depicted until

now.... It is assumed that this body is not the mistress of
her house, the wife of her husband, and the mother of her
children, but only a servant to the pleasures of the man
who owns the house. What a misconception!18
ZeynepCelikteachesarchitectural
historyat theNewJerseyInstitute
of Technology.She is the authorof The Remaking of Istanbul
(Washington, 1986; California, 1993) and Displaying the
Orient (California,1992) and the co-editorof Streets: Critical
Perspectives on Public Space (California,1994) [400 Riverside
Drive,New York,N.Y. 10025].
13. FrantzFanon,The Wretchedof the Earth, trans.ConstanceFarrington,

NewYork,1968,38-39.
14.Discussionin Frontof theMosque(Fig.2), e. g., depictsthree"teachers,"
one readingaloud (commentingon?) a book,whilethe otherslistenwith
greatattention,holdingonto theirownbooks.The Theologist(1901,private
collection,Istanbul)focuseson one man,readingin a mosque;on the floor
andon a shelfbehindhimareotherbooks.Foran astuteanalysisof Osman
Hamdi'spaintings,see IpekAksugurDuben,"OsmanHamdive Orientalism,"Tarihve Toplum,no. 41, May1987,283-90.
15. Forexample,TheCoffeeCorner(1879,privatecollection,Istanbul)and
AftertheIftar ( 1886, Turkiye Ias

BankaslGallery).
16. For the tendency to "correct"misrepresentations, see Zeynep (elik
and Leila Kinney, "Ethnography and Exhibitionism at the Expositions
Universelles,"Assemblage,
no. 13, Dec. 1990, 40-41.
17. Ahmed Mithad, Avrupa'daBir Cevelan, Istanbul, 1890, 164-65. My
translation.
18. Ibid.
19. EdwardSaid, TheWorld,theText,theCritic,Cambridge, Mass., 1983, 23.
20. GayatriChakravortySpivak, The Post-ColonialCritic,New York /London, 1989, 121.
206
ART BULLETIN
JUNE
1996 VOLUME
LXXVIII
NUMBER
ArtStudiesand the Need for

World
NaturalHistoryof Art
aNew
Onians
John
window of a
looks in through the glass observation
man
A
a puS of
blows
and
He is smoking a cigarette
dolphinarium.
female
young
a
sees
he
into the air. Through the glass
smoke
She
milk.
of
suck
a
take
swim oS to her mother and
dolphin
white
a
making
it,
returns to the window and releases
then
of emulation with
in the water.l Compare this story
cloud
and Protogenes
of the competition between Apelles
that
(31. 81-83).
History
by Pliny the Elder in Natural
preserved
him absent,
finding
goes to visit Protogenes and,
Apelles
on a panel.
painted
as a visiting card a very fine line
leaves
one even
by
it
comes home, sees it, and divides
Protogenes
again.
once
it
divides
Soon Apelles himself returns and
finer.
is
story
latter
The
this Protogenes admits himself beaten.
At
today.
practiced
is
it
of the canon of the history of art as
part
in a new natural
former might take a similar place
The
developed at the
of artistic activitysuch as that being
history
a new broad
of East Anglia as one element in
University
WorldArt Studies.
discipline,
the transformation of
The power that has brought about
that of a theory
existing art history department is neither
the
but
expediency,
from another area nor of political
imported
in
university
to the
of the objects in the collection given
that
an
in
Housed
1975by Sir Robert and Lady Sainsbury.
Foster,
single space designed by Sir Norman
extraordinary
all
from
and
of the globe
theseworks of art from all regions
apof traditional
periodshave compelled a reassessment
given less to help
was
collection
The
proachesto their study.
awareness, and its
withteaching than to stimulate sensual
of both staff and
impacton the central nervous systems
encourage a redefinition
studentsproved so profound as to
1992 it had changed its
ofthe department's activities. By
beyond the established
nameand begun a radical expansion
anthropology, archaeconcernsof its specialistsin art history,
frameworkoffers immeology,and cultural studies. The new
the established canon of
diateadvantages. It accommodates
and research in the field
approachesassociated with teaching
strengthens them
of art in Western universities and indeed
and competing strengths.
bythrowinginto relief their distinct
have led to their recent
It also favors the experiments which
in one area are applied
extension, as when methods familiar
of anthropology to
to topics popular in another, those
or of cultural studies to
Europe, of connoisseurship to Africa,
the greatest single
China or Latin America. But perhaps
Art Studies is that, since
advantage of the concept of World
can contribute to its
no one knows what it is, everyone
fundamental quesdefinition. The change of name raises
the study of art, requirtions about future developments in
and the formulation
ing the mapping of new areas of inquiry
of new ways of exploring them.
total potential field.
A necessary first step is a review of the
seriouslyinadequate
There is, for example, at present a
worldwide
production
matchbetweenthe patternof artistic
material
interesting
and the literature.Mostof the visually
and
recorded
poorly
is
culturegeneratedby Homo sapiens
about by local
discussed. Some art is known and talked
little
accesbecoming
without their knowledge ever
populations
the
establish
to
thus
to Western scholars. A first task is
sible
improve
to
and
and quantity of art in the world and
range
taking the
to knowledge of it. This process involves
access
involves
also
It
view of what is visually interesting.
broadest
different
on
the variation of concentration
acknowledging
cultures. It is as
of art through time and across
forms
disregard
to understand why many Europeans
important
disreChinese
many
that they consider decorative, why
arts
other
many
why
painting that is not by literati, and
gard
functional
not
disregard that which is old and so
peoples
the materials that
their social order, as it is to study
within
desirable for
neglect. In a related area, it is highly
they
teachers to
and North American scholars and
European
set
necessarily
that their academic interests do not
realize
the
of
There is much to learn from the activities
standards.
with the study
emerging departments concerned
numerous
America. Many of
art in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Latin
of
put the whole of art
divide the discipline in wayswhich
these
be seen as evenly
a new perspective. In India art may
into
China to
over the landmass which stretches from
distributed
recipient, and
with India as a central keystone,
Europe,
and Japan the
of many influences. In Southeast Asia
source
and "Western"
of art may be divided into "Eastern"
territory
and North
Just as the confidence of Europeans
categories.
their own
on
has led to an excessive concentration
Americans
Asian countries
so the absence of such pride in some
culture,
which provides a model
haspromoted an evenhandedness
non-Western institution
fora truly World Art view. Each
important to offer
something
have
concernedwith art may
Their diversity also
others,including those in the West.
institutions often present
remindsus that, although Western
in an international
themselvesas a solid group engaged
by local interests.
affected
strongly
discipline,they are in fact
long adopted a
have
States
United
Departments in the
but have become increasbroaderview than those in Europe,
in Europe often claim
Those
inglysubject to social pressures.
in reality reflect largely
to deal with art in general, yet may
the study of popular
nationalpriorities. In Eastern Europe
is now threatened
Communism,
art,which developed under
exposes the
rapidly
perspective
withextinction. A worldwide
within what we
underlying disunities and incompatibilities
art history.
consider the single discipline of Western
spectrum both of
full
the
The benefits of reappraising
approaches are nowhere
available material and of available
of European art. Instead
more dramatic than in the context
that it is predictunderstood
of seeming so familiarand well
as it is usually
boring,
even
able in its development and
unknown and
as
itself
reveals
it
presented in the literature,
a continent every bit as
puzzling. Europe becomes in effect
light to this situation the
"dark"as Africa. In order to bring
material culture has to
complete range of visuallyinteresting
to the present, from
be studied, from the Palaeolithic
crafts to palace decoraPortugal to the Ukraine, from folk
to consumer videos. Only
tion, and from artists'sketchbooks
art is recognized is it
when the multiformvarietyof European
unique properties of the
possible to analyze and explain the
running from ancient
currently canonical artistic tradition
RETHINKING
THE CANON
207
Greece, through Italy, to Northern Europe and North

America. Categories within it, such as the life-size bronze
statue, the stone building, and the painted portrait, which
are often thought of as somehow normal human expressions,
begin to stand out as remarkablenotjust in a global, but even
in a European context. The wealth of knowledge already
collected in relation to such objects can then be employed in
a deeper investigation. The practice adopted by some Europeans of representing the faces of individuals on boards and
canvases, using such media as egg or oil, and then fastening
them to the inner walls of houses is just as intriguing and
strange as the making and ritual destruction of a New Guinea
mask composed of grass, blood, and feathers. If we admit to
this, we can treat the painted portrait as the curious and
exceptional artifactthat it is. The nature of European culture
is thrown further into question when the masks with which
portraits are compared are those from villages not in the
Sepik headwaters, but in the Swiss Alps. If the supposed
canon of European art is richly documented but poorly
understood, the art that lies outside the canon is hardly even
known. Similar reassessments need to be made of the art of
the rest of the world, where equally successful yet narrow
approaches prevail. The assumptions of Egyptologists about
the art of the Nile Valley or of anthropologists about that of
Oceania are, like those of European art historians, the
product of the histories of particulardisciplines. The principal challenge is the need to create a new and larger
disciplinaryframe that reflects less the accidental constraints
of institutional formation and more the essential complexity
of art as a worldwidephenomenon. This will make it easier to
confront a number of new issues which, although they are
best addressed through the study of art, are of interest to all
who want to understand the human species.
One of these issues is the nature of the human relation to
the material itself. All art involves some modification of
material substances. The character of the material and the
nature of the modification varies with time and place, asjust
noted in the case of Europe, where, in the field of painting,
the binding elements may consist of egg or oil or synthetic
products, and pigments, too, may be animal, vegetable, or
mineral. The reasons why the combinations vary are far from
simple, including both cultural and natural factors. The
same is true of the instrument with which a medium may be
applied, as in the case of ink drawing and writing. While
Europeans have for the last two thousand years always
preferred a hard reed, quill, or metal pen, the Chinese have
typically used only soft brushes. Since similar oppositions
exist in tablewareand medical instruments, with the organic
Chinese chopstick contrastingwith the European metal knife
and the probing needle of the Beijing acupuncturistcontrasting with the more invasive scalpel of the Paris surgeon, it is
clear that the roots of the difference in drawing techniques
are to be found not in the history of art but in generically
different physical engagements with a similar range of
substances. These engagements might be analyzed by some-
one concerned with the study of medicine or of cookery.

This, though, is unlikely to happen. Art is the only field
where the study of the human preoccupation with moditring
physical substances is the core of a historical discipline. It is
thus above all through a study of art that a broader account
of our relation to the material might be constructed.
The same is true of the study of our use of the sense of
sight. There are no fields of human activity in which sight
does not play a role. However, in most it is treated as
marginal, whether it is so or not. This is at least partly
because of the preeminence accorded to language, something which happens, surprisingly,even in the context of the
visual arts. There is a convention that, whether we are
discussing the sculpture of the Parthenon or a Nigerian
masquerade, we are dealing with manifestations whose complexity is largely the result of the richness of their verbal
context. Only in the case of European art since the Renaissance has the role of the eye been taken seriously and even
then only in relation to particular theories of optics, to
particular psychologies of perception, and to particular
psychoanalytic ideas on the gaze. The period is short, the
geographical area concerned is narrow, and the theories
applied are limited. Many of the assumptions involved in
such studies are not relevant to the rest of European art, still
less to the art of the rest of the world. Since we now know that
mental formation plays a major role in the operation of
vision and that both what we see and the way we see it is
affected by our culturaland natural environment, we need to
write a history of art which is also a history of seeing. This
should exploit both the records of visuallybased thought and
action preserved in art objects and the data on visual
response preserved in what we know of their use and in oral
and literary testimonies relating to them. Such a history of
seeing would apply to all categories of art. It would also apply
to all other activities in which a visual engagement is central.
It would even provide a much-needed fresh approach to the
study of vision itself, allowing art historians to repay their
debts to psychologists of perception, neurologists, and others on whose experimental observations they depend.2 By
documenting the visual choices and responses of our predecessors, the history of art can tell us, as experiments with
modern men and women can never do, about the history of
visual experience. World Art Studies does not provide the
only setting for an analysis of the human engagement with
the material and with the visual, but it may provide the best.
It is also likely to be the best setting for an approach to an
understanding of the hand, the only organ which rivals the
mouth in its capacity for articulation and in its expressive
and communicative powers. As with the sense of sight, the
history of art preserves an extraordinary record of human
manual activity.From the first tools made by holding a stone
in one hand and striking it judiciously with a stone held in
the other, the history of making is the history of the hand.
The appearance of more refined and complex tools and the
first representations of animals and humans around 30,000
1. C. K. Taylor and G. S. Saayman, "ImitativeBehaviour by Indian Ocean

Bottle Nose Dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) in Captivity,"Behaviour, XLIV, 1973,
28S98.
2. This processis alreadyat workin R. L. Gregoryand E. H. Gombrich,

eds.,Illusion in Nature and Art, London,1973.
208
ART BULLETIN
JUNE
1996 VOLUME
LXXVIII
NUMBER
greater manual
are only possible because of a much
B.C.
13,000 B.C.,
By the Magdalenian period, around
control.
a regular
become
of the hand itself have
representations
hand is
the
on
of paintings on cave walls. From then
feature
reaching
tasks,
to accomplish more and more subtle
used
lacquerwork,Italian
pitches of manipulative skill in Han
new
etchdrawings, and Dutch seventeenth-century
Renaissance
master,
a
from
learned
the necessary movements being
ings,
perfected by practice.
froma dancing-teacher, and then
as
rules from
development of the hand follows different
The
experience,
individual
by
of the eye, the latter formed
that
workings of both
former by imitative exercise, but the
the
of art.
history
of rules are well revealed in the
sets
of eye and
operations
Oncewe are studying the separate
dealing
are
we
material,
the
and their interaction with
hand
the
behind
lies
everywhere
the essential circle which
with
reasons
the
of
some
asking
to
of art and we are close
making
of Homosapiens.
its very existence as a worldwide activity
for
way that it is
the
making,
art
cultural context of
The
reliby educational, social, political, economic,
influenced
is comparphilosophical, technical, and other factors,
gious,
and
physiology
human
in
basis
Its
well understood.
atively
environand the human relation to the natural
psychology
artisticactivityand
is not. The reasons for the origins of
ment
throughout a wide
reasons for its abiding importance
the
A history of
of times and places have still to be sought.
variety
a cultural
less
be
which explores such issues will inevitably
art
a natural history.
than
begin with the artlike
One such natural history could well
our human
of animals such as the dolphin. For
activities
long
activities
in such
ancestorsmust have been involved
art
of
origin
The
beforethey became socially controlled.
chance
the
in
lie
makingin humans must, as with dolphins,
which links eye and
resultsof the operation of the circuit
of matemodification
a
motorsystem through the brain in
spontanea
behind
Just such a circuit lies, for example,
rial.
which involves
ousbehavior noted in female chimpanzees,
fondling it as
then
and
gatheringmoss into babylikebundles
behavior is
chimpanzee
if it was a real child. Studying
sugfindings
scientific
particularlyappropriate since recent
comfrom
sprang
gestboth that humans and chimpanzees
years ago and that we
monancestors as recently as six million
which determines
code
the
stillshare 99 percent of our DNA,
studying chimof
our biological makeup.3 The importance
of a subgroup,
studies
by
out
panzees is particularlybrought
remarkable
these
that
shows
the bonobos. Recent work
capable of
physiologically
relatives,although not themselves
and can communicate,
speech, have the ability to follow it
require capacities
which
ideograms
using sign languages and
once thought
syntax
of
use
the
for symbolization and
observations suggest
exclusively human.4 These and other
speech depends, though
that most of the abilities on which
primates.5This has a
not speech itself, are present in other
that humans are
general importance, since it indicates
less decisively than was
separated from other animals much
Originsof Intelligence,Oxford,
3. R. Byrne, The ThinkingApe:Evolutiona7y
1995, 14-26.
Kanzi: TheApe at the Brink of the
4. S. Savage-Rumbaughand R. Lewin,
special
even ten years ago. It has an additional
thought
the
that
shows
it
for the history of art, since
significance
involve
autonomously
between eye, brain, and hand
linkages
once thought to be
of the complex neural connections
many
of language.
associated with the development
exclusively
is shared
intelligence
of what we think of as human
Much
must be
and
apes,
great
the
other primates, especially
with
set of
not with language but with the particular
associated
to their particuthrough which they accommodated
behaviors
are essenbodies
our
and
ecologicalniche. Our brains
lar
fifteen
least
at
for
who
animals
those of a family of
tially
This
biology.
unique
a
of
because
years have thrived
million
separable
polychrome binocular vision and soft-tipped
links
visually
much
storing
of
both
capable
through a brain
fingers
and individual
information about foods, predators
learned
the develfacilitating
of
and
enemies,
friends, and
relatives,
art
making,
of behaviors appropriate to each. Tool
opment
spin-offs
as
and speech are likely to have all begun
making,
Probwith the development of other behaviors.
associated
have
speech
and
only the propensities for tool making
ably
for
selected
such clear advantages as to be genetically
offered
art
for
that
like
Homo sapiens. That for art making
in
significantly
which
useis likely to be a marginal adaptation
environments and
behavior only in particularphysical
affects
pathological as
much
contexts. Even then it may be as
social
many forms of
the
adaptive. Within a natural history
socially
interestbehaviors
as
making and art use can be studied
art
underbe
to
need
which
in their own right, behaviors
ing
are
they
ever
before
in terms of their causes and effects
stood
moral,
political,
or
in terms of their social function
discussed
aesthetic values.
and
art may disturb some
The idea of such a natural history of
name nor the idea is
the
historians. It should not. Neither
art
known in Europe is
new.The very first history of art
of his NaturalHistory,a
presentedby Pliny the Elder as part
fact that many human
titlewhich for him brings out the
natural materials. His
of
activitiesrequire the processing
contains much informaaccountof painting and sculpture
sources, information
Greek
from
tionon the history of art
of any field of
history
the
to
relating
whichresembles that
rehearsed since.
Greekculture and which has been endlessly
concern. What interests
Thisis not, however, Pliny's main
of animal,
himis man's exploitation of such transformations earlier.
those discussed
vegetable,and mineral substances as
proposed here in its
that
anticipates
thus
HisNaturalHistory
with the material.
concentrationon the human engagement
the roles of the eye and
It may lack an acknowledgment of
hand is discussed by his
the hand, but the training of the
his Institutionsof Oratory
younger contemporary Quintilian in
the place of mental
( 1. 1.27) and the role of the eye, including
already discussed only a
formation in visual perception, is
in his Life of
hundred years later by Flavius Philostratus of present
shortcomings
Apollonius of Tyana (2.22). The
by the way in which they
histories of art are well illustrated
is associated with a
Empire
never hint that the high Roman
HumanMind,New York, 1994.

ed. S. T. Parkerand K
and Intelligencein Monkeysand Apes,
5. "Language"
1990.
Gibson, Cambridge,
RETHINKING
peak in the understanding of the mechanisms underlying

artistic activity. Better known are the later writings on the
same field by Leonardo and Ernst Gombrich. If World Art
Studies, besides its many other advantages, also provides the
context for writing a new natural history of art, it will only be
continuing what should be a canonical tradition. Where it will
be new will be in allowing a female dolphin to paint alongside
Apelles.
John Onians'spublicationsinclude Art and Thought in the

Hellenistic Age (1979) and Bearers of Meaning:The Classical
Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
(1988). He was alsofoundereditorof Art History (1978-88). At
presenthe is writingA Natural History of Art [Schoolof World
Art Studiesand Museology,Universityof East Anglia, Norwich
NR4 7TJ,England7.
THE CANON
209
Theory as a Place
Adrian RiJkin
Theoryand History
Someyearsago I wrotefor a collectionentitledTheNew Art
History(1986),editedby A1Rees and FrancesBorzello.lI'm
not sure quitewhatturnedout to be the criticalfate of this
attemptto establishsome parametersfor a supposeddisciplinein the making,whetherit is widelyreador hasvanished
from consideration.My own essay, "Art'sHistories,"although in some waystypicallyconcernedwith historiography, and close enough to some of the other contributions,
wasfairlypessimisticaboutthe subject.It proposedthat the
"newart history"representeda conceptualpolicingof the
potentiallyfruitful effects of interdisciplinarydisintegrations, as well as a neutralizinginto a newdisciplinarycanon
of the politics,feministor anticolonialistfor example,that
haddrivenand determinedits development.
The essay was useful in its applicationof a Derridean
notion of framingto the objectof art history'sinquiriesthat is, to "art,"as a problematicsignified.Yet it wasclearly
inadequatein its exemplificationof what its propositions
mightimplyforthe positiveconstructionof an alternativeart
history,endingup witha warningagainstuncriticalbeliefin
theory'scapacityeither to exhaust or to demystifyart's
meanings.If I returnto it here as my startingpoint, this is
because,in relocatingit and myselfwithinit, I wantto think
throughsomethingof the conditionsof theory'smaking.I
wouldratherdo this thanengagemyselfin a statementof its
magicalpowersand efficacities.
Since then I have avoided attempts to define or even
suggesta theoreticalconditionfor the historyof art, preferring to write in a mode which supposes the necessityof
complexreflectionandreflexivityin turninganyarchiveinto
narrative,where that archiveis both somethingthat comes
out of dustyboxesandis alsoa historyof all kindsof theories.
This I hold to be a reasonableoutcome of my essay, and
resolutelyold-fashionedas a wayof working.Afterall, it is a
procedure modeled on the expositionarytechniques of
chapter 14 of Marx's Capital or passages from Claude
Levi-Strauss
in Tristes tropiquesor Le Cru et le cuit, thatwriters
as disparateas JacquesDerridaand TzvetanTodorovhave
deridedfor theirtotalizingphilosophicalambitions.And,as
we shallsee, I wantthe playof discourseto open out so as to
revealtheory'slimitations,to precipitatea challengeto its
reasonthatwe mightthinkof as sublimein Kantianterms.
Butthiswayof writingalsocomesfromless thancanonical
literaryimageryand narrativeforms, such as the series of
sciencefictionsthatmakeup DorisLessing'sCanopus inArgos
or SamuelDelany'sTales of Neveryon. As faras conceptualizing historicaltime and representationis concerned,these
novelsofferas much materialfor considerationas Fernand
Braudel or Jean Baudrillardhave ever brought to the
marketplace.They also happen to be very good on gender
1. For materials relevant to this discussion, see the list of sources given at
the end.
210
ART BULLETIN
JUNE
1996 VOLUME
LXXVIII
NUMBER
of identities
sexuality,figuring the kind of complexity
and
in
improbable
and
desiresthat appears merely wooden
and
a
or
Edelman,
a Lee
academicrhetoric of aJudith Butler,
the
de Lauretis.
Teresa
as if they were
SoI declare my fondness for treating
Repretensions.
texts that have no such overt
theoretical
literatureI have been workingwith gay S/M romantic
cently
orJackie Collins at her
leatherequivalent of pulp erotica,
the
certain Freudoas the terrain of an offensive against
best
culture. What
models for the scrutiny of art and
Lacanian
where
in an imaginaryhuis closof gay pornography
happens
one
the
identified
phallus and the penis are successfully
the
the
for
regard
the other in ignorance of and without
with
claim
would
veto of those Lacanianregulations that
watchful
How does
even to try to identify them is pathological?
that
the representational
theory signification that depends on
the
in the light of my
modified
be
to
of the phallus come
power
into
And how can this knowledge be brought
experiment?
gayer
a
of
history of art when the theoretical parameters
the
femipost-Freudian
of
those
history are often already
art
ofJohn Preston or
Pornography,whether the novellas
nism?
to stand in for an
drawings of Tom of Finland, comes
the
to account
against which theory can be brought
"experience"
the grain"
against
"reading
a that the now customary
inway
thecanon seems all too rarelyto accomplish.
of
to this, which is
There is a more rarefied counterpart
as
to take bodies of much older theory
experimentally
Condilto modern culturalmaterials.For example,
adequate
by a
unauthorized
and
De l'art d'e'crire,unburdened
lac's
Ferdinand de
theory of language such as that of
subsequent
with the
or Derrida, may be brought into contiguity
Saussure
as
Lacan,
of
critique
a
as
pornography which is serving
same
estranges it from current
ameans of placing it in a way that
analysis through, for
routinesof linguistic and gender
Condillac's exposition
of
example,a metaphorical aligning
of an inverted
notion
the
ofthe trope "inversion" with
trope, which is
the
of
sexuality.The Condillacian spacing
not rhizomic),
resolutely
lateraland nonhierarchical (yet
"inversion"as
of
use
providesa critique both of the overeasy
marginality
imagining
of
ifit were subversion, and a means
in its
specific
historically
as
asa space within language/image
detailed
the
with
utterance.That is to say, I am concerned
that is as much gramstructuringof a poetics of difference
to, not readily
matical as figural and, while particular
was tentatively
This
equated with, a state of the world.
Kunst,"Bitte
zur
Texte
for
outlinedin a recent article of mine
anderen,"
und
Kant
nicht beruhren Tom mit Sebastiano,
for the
history
archival
whichdeals with the invention of an
del
Sebastiano
by
comparison of a flagellation (of Christ)
FollowFinland.
of
Tom
Piombo with another (of bikers) by
and politics of
ing through and interweavingthe genealogies
in a space
placed
is
the two images, the Christianflagellation
called
space
another
in
called "sade," and the gay one
reading
ethical
an
of
"kant," thus outlining the possibility
alike.
beyond iconography and subject theory
picky process of
rather
this
At the same time I don't see
from some of my other
redoing bits of gay theory as distinct
ideolorecent work on Revolutionaryand post-Revolutionary
been
have
I
where
France,
in
criticism
gies of drawingand art
of the
to map out the rhetorical preconditions
concerned
of
parameters
complex
of meaning against
production
conam
I
instances
conjuncture. In all of these
historical
of the
with different forms, orders, and circumstances
cerned
realizations
and
of tropes, and hence with concepts
duration
written. That
in historical narrativeas it is being
duration
of
of framing,
notion
say,
toI have stuck with the Derridean
is
rather
archive
the
of
amIworking with it as a condition
but
openinfinite
some
as the tautological legislation of
than
This is theory as pragmatics.
endedness.
this is not simply a
the whole I feel sure, and hope, that
On
all too obviously
it
flight into eclecticism. In part,
midlife
writing and the
of
a relation between a genre
reflects
that the
of its production. Which is to say
conditions
pedaof contemporary academic management,
demands
imposbut
all
it
and going to conferences may make
gogy,
that it is to
to give in to that oh-so-fulfillingjouissance
sible
before
day,
the
in the real, dusty archive during
luxuriate
Things
evening.
down to some Hegel or Zizek in the
settling
on the run, and
put together, often on demand, usually
get
the institution.
of
in response to some movement
always
quite such an
in
would there be a question of theory
Indeed,
rapidly from
fly
to
form as it is today were we not able
acute
ever
numbers,
large
location to another, and in quite
one
disciplinof
theaters
frequentlyelaboratingfor ourselves
more
conference like the
a
ago
years
thirty
difference? Even
ary
contre David,"
bicentennial "do"at the Louvre, "David
1789
materiality
very
have been unthinkable. And it is this
would
have supported the rise
ofourmass production that seems to
of generations and
theory's status in an intensified play
of
.
posltlons.
is, on the one hand,

The paradoxical effect of this situation
only possible starting
hypostasisof theory: it becomes the
the
for one's discipline as
pointfor work and common habitus
it. On the other
as a means of bringing strangers into
well
of philosophical
hand,theory is neglected as a practice
it for the purpose of
inquiry,for one is inclined to tailor
where more definitive
preliminaryor polemical markers,
put
are anywayout of the question or always
demonstrations
is
mode
the Derridean
offuntil tomorrow. In other words,
praga
and already
oddlywell adapted to real life, always
matic.
of writing I most like
For me, even more oddly, the ragbag
the least rational or
comesto be that which is theoretically
Citadel Culture,
the most essayistic. O. K. Werckmeister's
Luce Irigaray'sLe Sexe
RolandBarthes's La Chambreclaire,
Krauss of The Optical
quin'en est pas un, or the Rosalind
of Michael
in the first category; the best bits
unconsciQus
chapter on Chardin,
Baxandall'sPatternsof Intention the
critical feminist essayism
say-or the wonderfully achieved,
Yet if I were to opt for
of a Judith Williamsonin the second.
in its relation to the
an origin for modern cultural studies
"Lectureon Serpent
historyof art, it would be AbyWarburg's
no comfort at all to
Ritual,"which, by the same token, offers
renderings of his scholarthe pretensions of some latter-day
on the contrary,
ship. For neo-Warburgian iconography,
It rarelyseems to be
holds little or nothing to tempt me.
maimed
much more than a pale shade, a philosophically
for
texts
more
ever
parody of its original, accumulating
RETHINKING
images and images for texts in the hope of a new stage of

truth, and bent on a manipulative and factitious hermeneutic
within the regular canon of art-historicalteleologies.
I write this, however, as one who became an art historian
because of the miraculous texture of Edgar Wind'sdiscourse
in his very last series of seminars at Oxford. Something I
recall as an intellectual volupte',an incitement to pleasure in
imagination both inimical to the binary of empirical scholarship/theory and strangely close to a Baudelairean poetic of
the image. What Warburg's essay had made unnervingly
obvious was that theory may become the privileged site for
the exercise of historical and political imagination. The feat
of memory that is embodied in the "Lecture"is sustained not
by the desire to be right,but rather by that compulsive drive
to an identification with alterity that is the undoing of
Western knowledge, yet possible only because of its attainments. There is a sense in which the power of Warburg's
argument comes not from the sustaining of his scholarship
but from its suspension in aporia. It comes from a play
between knowledge and speculation that neither loses its
grounding in the scrupulous recording of material difference the ethnographic descriptions nor disguises the
specificity of outlook that is the effect of his formation, in a
maudlin and voluntaristicempathy with the Other.
In recent years I can think of two essays that might be
compared to this, both by Gayatry Spivak: "The Rani of
Sirmur" and "Imperialism and Sexual Difference." In both
of these essays, as with Warburg,the significance of the work
emerges at a point of radical interference between systems of
belief and constellations of difference where the status of the
text or image is undermined; where a Western canon
becomes conscious of the utter relativity of its values. If in
"The Rani of Sirmur"it is the historical episteme of the West
that is unsettled through revealing the very effacement of
that which it subjects, with "Imperialism and Sexual Difference" the Baudelairean model of modernity crumbles in the
unpicking of its overdeterminations. This is to argue that the
value of theory is here to renounce control over the refiguring of the canon, and to accomplish this through a politics
and an ethics of a radical displacement rather than to assert
the supremacy of theory-as-such. As both of these models,
Warburgand Spivak, pose a theoretical problem of knowing
rather than of naming, to adopt or deploy them is, then, to
pose the question of whether the historyof art, as such, needs
its own kind of theory; and if the venturing of it anywayrisks
its undoing as a discipline. The foundation of the Journal of
the Warburg[and Courtauld]Institute[s],in its early days, posed
precisely this theoretical question as an effect of its innovatory practices.
History and Theory

Round about 1967 I fell under the incongruous spells of Tel
Queland the pedagogy of Helen Rosenau. If the horizons of
the former have still to be systematically explored in the
anglophone history of art (unless it has been in the work of
Stephen Bann, whose essay in The New Art History [1986]
remains most sympathetic to my own), the latter was probably the closing of an epoch. Once, I recall, when Rosenau
was working through some architectural books Ledoux,
THE CANON
211
Lequeu, and others she remarked that the only thing in

architecture and urban form for which she could find no
Marxistexplanation was the metaphysicalstatus of the circle.
I attributed this aside to an irritated and partiallyunfulfilled
atheism. I paid little or no attention to what it meant for me
to carry this curious baggage of theories and emotions into
the pragmatics of professional life.
As things would have it, from 1970 theoretical perplexity
gave way to syllabus formation. The glorious particularityof
that moment in British education, the foundation of the
polytechnics, now defunct, was this: that a large cross-section
of classic, 1968ish academics were rapidly drawn into a new
situation in which the rules had to be made up as we went
along. Historical, sociological, and literary studies came into
an unprecedented, close contact with each other as well as
with the practices and histories of art. There followed,
unevenly and in different institutions, the high years of
semiotic film and cultural studies, of new, usually Gramscian
perspectives in Marxism and historical studies, of feminism
in all its guises from LauraMulveyto Sheila Rowbotham,and
art history in amongst them. It found a short-lived but
important forum in the "Artand Society"offshoot of History
Workshop,where I think that many of the new art historians
first met en masse outside art history. And where the scission
between empirical history and historical theory was staged as
a wider framing for the history of art.
Again, this held some odd implications for the development of cultural and art-historical theory that have been
largely overlooked. On the one hand, theory was instrumentalized in the construction of interdisciplinary teaching
programs, and on the other hand, and as a result, began to
be taught in a reified and formulaic mode through glosses
and readers on this or that element of formalism or deconstruction or whatever.
For me and for colleagues in historical studies, a concept
of intertextuality enabled the overlapping of art history and
history "proper" so that the former was rescued from its
illustrational status and the latter enlarged its field of
documentation and its modes of reading. If this meant that,
for us, art historybegan to disappear even as it was becoming
"new,"ironicallyit made it all too easy for me to overlook the
significance of such important publications as Tim Clark's
first two books. In adding them to our reading lists, relieved
to have sornethingsince Frederick Antal, Meyer Schapiro, or
Arnold Hauser with which to supplement Linda Nochlin, we
were fascinated by his use of archive in the dusty sense. But I
certainly missed out on the theoretical density with which he
transformed the object of study in art history, in terms both
of materials and of methods: another match or mismatch of
theory and pragmatics,but one that helped to produce a new
pedagogy which was to supply some of the first students for
the Leeds M.A. in the social history of art, and quite a
surprising number of a younger generation of art historians.
It is important to note, then, that this development of a
habitus for the emergence of a new art history and its
theorizing was deeply and thoroughly provincial. As I have
just suggested, the current significance of theory represents
the cosmopolitan stage of the self-conscious professionalism
of this "new."
212
ART BULLETIN
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1996 VOLUME
LXXVIII
NUMBER
The point at which this did become clear was later, when,
under the brutal transformations of education in the early
1980s, our finely tuned programs of study rapidly collapsed.
They were simply too expensive to be allowed to run. It was
now that, left to its own devices, cut off from a daily practice
of difference, myart history found the need for reflection on
itself, its origins, its processes, and its destiny. One site for
this, a channel for communication, was "theory,"now looking redemptive rather than the rationale for an educational
pragmatics.One space was the magazine called Block,a place
where sometimes quirky and unedited thinking could flourish without the responsibilityof legislation, though of course
that did happen. Another was Les Revoltes logiques, that
wonderful Parisian exit from Althusserian rigidity to a
ravishing vein of reflexivity, and Jacques Rancieres's radical
rereadings of Kant. My memorywas Tel Quel,Wind, Rosenau,
and the others revisited through over a decade of teaching
and the exponential growth of culturaltheory as an academic
.
specla
lsm.
Now, another ten years on, brooding on Rosenau's problematic circle, I feel that her dilemma really manifested a
desire to leave something in reserve, over the boundary of
explanation. I hope that my gay flagellation is just such an
enigma, drawnin its space called "kant"for which theory has
no adequate description. The circle was, in the end, a
Kantianimaginaryspace. And, in all probability,the centrality of the inexplicable and the mystery at the heart of the
high Warburgian tradition itself represented a desire to
confront knowledge with its limitations.
This is where I would like to let the matter of theory rest.
Theory understood as the key to nothing, as a utopian figure
for the possiblity of noninstrumental thought, as a means of
renouncing control, and escape from the ambitions of our
episteme as from our professional vanity; if eclectic, then it's
because of this condition as a refuge for experience, whether
unresolved or limpid in its certainty.
. TheImageofthePeople:GustaveCourbetand theSecondFrenchRepublic,
1848-1851. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973.
Collins,Jackie. HollywoodWives.New York, 1984.
Condillac,Abbe Etienne Bonnot de. "De l'art d'ecrire."Pt.3 of Coursd'e'tudes
du Princede Parme,1775.
pourl'instruction
Delany,Samuel R. TalesofNeveryon.New York:Bantam, 1979.
Paris:Minuit, 1969.
Derrida,Jacques. De la grammatologie.
. La Veriteenpeinture.Paris:Flammarion, 1978.
Essaysin GayLiteraryand CulturalTheory.New
Edelman,Lee. Homographesis:
York:Routledge, 1994.
Hauser,Arnold. TheSocialHistoryofArt.London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1951.
Irigaray,Luce. CeSexequin'enpas un. Paris:Seuil, 1978.
Kant,Immanuel. Analyticof the Beautiful,trans. W. Cerf. New York: BobbsMerrill, 1963.
Krauss, Rosalind. The Optical Unconscious.Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1993.
of Gender:Essayson Theory,Film,and Fiction.
de Lauretis,Teresa. Technologies
London: Macmillan, 1987.
Lessing, Doris. Re: ColonisedPlanet 5; Shikasta;Personal,Psychologicaland
HistoricalDocumentsRelatingto the VisitofJohor (GeorgeSherban);Emissary
(Grade9); 87th of the Periodof the LastDays. Canopus on Argos: Archives
series. New York:Grafton, 1981-.
Levi-Strauss,Claude. TristesTropiques.Paris:Plon, 1955.
. Le Cruet le cuit. Paris:Plon, 1964.
Marx,Karl.Capital,trans. B. Fowle. Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1976.
Nochlin, Linda. Realism.Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1971.
and OtherIndecentActs.New York:
Preston, John. My Lifeas a Pornographer
RichardKasak, 1993.
. Mr. Benson.New York:Badboy, 1992.
Ranciere,Jacques. LePhilosopheet sespaurres.Paris:Fayard, 1983.
Rifkin, A. "Art'sHistories." In The New Art History,ed. A. L. Rees and F.
Borzello, 157-63. London: Camden, 1986.
. "The Words of Art, the Artist'sStatus:Technique and Affectivityin
xrv,no. 2, 1991, 73-82.
France, 1789-98." OxfordArtJournal,
. "Bitte nicht beruhren Tom mit Sebastiano, Kant und anderen."
TextezurKunst,v,no. 17,Feb. 1995, 13747.
Paris and LondonCompared,
Rosenau, Helen. Social Purposein Architecture:
1 760-1800. London: Studio Vista, 1970.
Schapiro, Meyer. ModernArt: Nineteenthand TwentiethCenturies.Selected
Papers, ll. London: Chatto and Windus, 1978.
Spivak,GayatryChakravorty."The Rani of Sirmur."Historyand Theory,xxrv,
no. 3, 1985, 22540.
. "Imperialism and Sexual Difference." OxfordLiteraryReview,Vlll,
nos. 1-2, 1986,22540.
Warburg,Aby. "ALectureon Serpent Ritual."Journalofthe WarburgInstitute,
1,no.2, 1938, 277-92.
Werskmeister,O. K. CitadelCulture.Chicago:Chicago UniversityPress, l991.
Williamson, Judith. ConsumingPassions: The Dynamicsof Popular Culture.
London: Marion Boyars, 1986.
Wind, Edgar. PaganMysteriesin theRenaissance.London: Faber, 1958.
Sources
Journals
Books and Articles
TelQuel, 1967-1973
logiquesn1975-1985
LesRe'voltes
Blockn1980-1990
Antal, Frederick. FlorentinePainting and Its Social Background.London:

Routledge, 1949.
Bann, Stephen. "How RevolutionaryIs the New Art History?"In TheNewArt
History,ed. A. L. Rees and F. Borzello, 19-3 1. London: Camden, 1986.
Paris:Gallimard/
claire:Notesur la photographie.
Barthes, Roland. La Chambre
Seuil, 1980.
Baxandall, Michael. Patternsof Intention:On the HistoricalExplanationof
Pictures.New Haven:Yale UniversityPress, 1985.
Butler,Judith. BodiesThatMatter:On theDiscursiveLimitsof "Sex." New York:
Routledge, 1993.
Clark, T. J. TheAbsoluteBourgeois:Artistsand Politicsin France,1848-1851.
London: Thames and Hudson, 1973.
AdrianRiAin is professoroffine art at the Universityof Leedsand

the author of Street Noises, Parisian Pleasure, 1900-1940
(ManchesterUniversityPress,1993). He is currentlyengagedon a
volume of essays, Gay Poetics, and the completionof a book,
Staging the Artist: Ingres between Then and Now [Departmentof FineArt, Universityof Leeds,LeedsLS2 9JT,England].
RETHINKING
Can the CanonBurst?

B. Steiner
Christopher
Without the canon, we cease to think.-Harold Bloom
Men think in myths.-Claude Levi-Strauss2
In his classic study of the caste system in India, Louis
Dumont demonstrated in Homo Hierarchicusthat Indian
society was structured on a rigid notion of hierarchy according to which members of ranked castes lived in an ordered
system legitimated by powerfil subjugating myths of origin
and sacred notions of ritual purity. Attempts to overthrow
the caste system have consistently failed, giving way instead
to ever more segmented and subdivided gradations within
caste and subcaste units. This process of aggregation (not
exclusion) of new populations and social groups has insured
"a certain permanence of form by integration of the extraneous elements."3
The canon of art history, like the caste system in India, is a
rigid hierarchicalsystemwhich excludes "impure"categories
of art and reduces certain classes of objects to the status of
untouchable. Recent attempts to overthrow the seemingly
uncompromising stipulations of the canon have resulted
instead in "opening it up" and enabling certain hitherto
marginalized art forms to slip inside (as if unnoticed)nly
then to be ranked according to well-entrenched criteria.The
canon has not been overthrown;it has simply been expanded
and reconfigured.
THE CANON
213
population,Malthusianrepletion,is the authenticcontext

As a strategyof survival,the canon,
forcanonicalanxieties."5
like the castesystem,has crackedopen its doorsto allowin a
small number of new and late arrivals.But the balance
remainsdelicate.A closed canon, on the one hand, risks
dissolutionfrom its swellingrivals,which encircleand impingeupon it; an open canon,on the other,risksexpanding
too farandburstingfromsurfeit.
Drawingon a metaphorused by anthropologistShelly
Erringtonto describe the category "authenticart,"6one
mightsaythat the canonis a receptacle(suchas a bag) into
whichobjectsare stuffeduntil thereexistssuchtremendous
diversityand quantitythat the receptaclethreatensto dissolveor tear. No participantin the artworldwouldwantto
destroy the imaginarybag (since, after all, the canon is
meaningfil only if it can be juxtaposed to whateveris
noncanonical);yet because the canon takes on greater
significanceand valuethe morelimitedit is in scope,all the
participantsin the artworldwanttheirclassof objectsto be
the last one droppedinto the bag afterwhichit wouldbe
sealedshutforever.
Recentattemptsby feministart historiansand scholarsof
non-Westernand so-calledprimitivearts to "openup" the
canon have sought to do so by exposing the maledominated,Eurocentricpower relationsimplicitin canon
formation.7AsJohn Guillory,one of the leadingdebunkers
of the literarycanon,statesin his critiqueof the inequitiesof
.
canonlclty:
The delegitimationof the canon is premised upon a

structuralhomology between, on the one hand, the
distinctionof the canonicalfromthe non-canonical,and
on the other, the process of inclusionor exclusionby
whichsocialgroupsarerepresentedor not representedin
the exerciseof power.If the latterprocessis perceivedto
determinethe former,it followsthat a criticalpractice
redressingthe injusticeof socialexclusionmust "open"
the canonto whatis excluded,the non-canonical.8
Canon as Container
The canon of art history, like any system founded on
taxonomic hierarchy, is only meaningful, and indeed perhaps only powerful, insofar as it excludes a large body of
what are deemed noncanonical and, therefore, inferior
materials. Just as Mary Douglas demonstrated so convincingly in Purityand Danger that the category "sacred"could
not exist were it not for the presence of its base and profane
counterparts, so too the canonical could not survivewithout
its unorthodox antithesis-the noncanonical.4
Because the canon is awash in a swarming sea of rapidly
multiplying impurities, its greatest enemy is the encroachment of foreign elements which threaten its fragile and
embattled boundaries. As literary critic Harold Bloom put it
in his recent, controversial book The WesternCanon, "Over-
Suchattemptsto reconfigurethe canonin orderto include

previouslymarginalizedcategoriesof art seem, however,to
havelargelymissedthe point.9It is not, I wouldargue,what
is in or out of the canonthatoughtto be of concernto us, but
ratherthe social structureof the canon itself that must be
reconsidered.10Thosewhosquabbleat the gatedentranceto
this exclusive"club"fail, in my opinion, to ask the really
My thanks to Nancy Troy for providing the opportunity to indulge myself in

such a challenging and demanding topic. I am further indebted to my wife,
Rebecca, for her direction and patience in my canonical hours.
1. Harold Bloom, The WesternCanon:TheBooksand Schoolof theAges,New
York, 1994, 41.
2. Claude Levi-Strauss,TheRawand theCooked,New York, 1975, 12.
3. Louis Dumont, HomoHierarchicus:The CasteSystemand Its Implications,
Chicago, 1970, 193.
4. Mary Douglas, Purityand Danger:An Analysisof the Conceptsof Pollution
and Taboo,London, 1966.
5. Bloom (as in n. 1), 15.
6. Shelly Errington, "Artifactsinto Art,"unpublished manuscript,n.d., 1.
7. Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production:Essays on Art and
Literature,trans. RandalJohnson, NewYork, 1993, 272.
8. John Guillory, "Canonical and Non-Canonical: A Critique of the
Current Debate," ELH (Johns Hopkins University Press), LIV, no. 3, 1987,
483.
9. For examples of feminist arguments to open up the canon, see Linda

Nochlin, "WhyHave There Been No Great Women Artists?"in Women,Art,
and Powerand OtherEssays,New York, 1988; Griselda Pollock et al., "Firing
the Canon," WomenArtistsNews,Spring-Summer 1990, 2-6; and Karen-Edis
Barzman,"Beyondthe Canon: Feminists,Postmodernism,and the Historyof
Art,"Journal of Aestheticsand Art Criticism,Lll, no. 3, 1994, 327-39. For
examples of arguments to include non-Western arts in the canon, see
Douglas Newton, Masterpiecesof PrimitiveArt, New York, 1978; Arnold
Krupat, "Native American Literature and the Canon," CriticalInquiry,x,
1983,145-71; SusanVogel, AfricaExplores:TwentiethCenturyAfricanArt,New
York/Munich, 1991; and GaryVan Wyk,"Convulsionsin the Canon,"African
Arts,XXVII, no.4, 1994,54-67, 95-96.
10. See George E. Marcus,"ABroad(er)sideto the Canon: Being a Partial
Account of a Year of Travel among Textual Communities in the Realm of
Humanities Centers, and Including a Collection of ArtificialCuriosities,"in
Durham, N.C., 1992,
George E. Marcus,ed., RereadingCulturalAnthropology,
103-23.
214
ART BULLETIN
JUNE
1996 VOLUME
LXXVIII
NUMBER
ModernArt, NewYork
Arts"at the Museumof
Decorative
and
Textiles
of the exhibition"African
Shaker:InstallationviewArt)
1Canon
Modern
(photo:Museumof
1972
and
"African Furniture
and
Arts"
Textiles and Decorative Sieber, whose doctoral dissertawas constructed
canon
the
Objects,''ll Roy
why
and
Household
ofBlackAfrica
type
question of how
one
for
difficult
canonical oeuvre Sculpture the United
admittance
subsequent
piecemeal
and
tion
in
little to
theplace. Seeking
infirst
field of African art
art or another does
largely defined the
had
up" the canon
undervalued
"opened
hierarputatively
of
ofthe 1960s,l2
of inequity and
decade
the
structures
for
items (Fig.
States
the fundamental
challenge
adornment and household neglected
order. If anything, in
of
objects
canonical
the
in
include
to
are inherent
forms has been
which
chy
validate the canon
"Thestudy of these traditionalintroduction to one of the
function merely to
1).
practices
such
the
fact,
West," Sieber wrote in
focused
the
by
attention has been
system.
"where
catalogues,
exhibition
on the sculpture of Africa.''l3attention to hitherto
primarily
Canons
within
drew
hierarchical
Canons
routinized
Sieber's exhibitions
is a highly
Although
history
art
of
study and new potential
canon
relegated
art
Ifthe
have been
of African
arts
domains
non-Western
untapped
was still placed on
a
in which most
system
and display, emphasis
within the canon is itself
collecting
of
subfield
each
areas
arts. Excluded from
of
thelowest status,
to
certain categories
traditional or customary
arts,
embraces
so-called
which
the
system
examples of "tourist"
structured
In this regard, the canon
the canon were any
of
others.
studio
many
version
this
while rejecting
of the
forms of contemporary
objects
an excellent example
arts, and developing
begin
hybrid
subfields
of exclusion, we must
African art history provides
the
of
that typifies
understand this logic
ranking
To
and
canonical
arts.l4
define
factionalism
internal
criterion used to
or
noting that the key
by
collecton a standardof cultural
the discipline.
and
of
based
been
scholarship
always
art
has
art
African
African
is untainted by outside
concenBurgeoning interest in
that is, an object that
of the twentieth century
purity
years
ethnic
early
the
from
ingduring
masks and figural sculpture Neinfluence.
primarilyon wooden
trade or those representing
Africa.
trated
of sub-Saharan
of
made for the export
region
Works
defined
of
have been rejected out
other parts
avery narrowly
from
inspiration
arts
and
of
array
influence
acknowla huge
foreign
objects
glectedwere not only
art forms. In short, any
a whole range of aesthetic stools,
as impure or corrupt
coexist
also
hand
might
but
Africans
and
thecontinent,
region itself including
that "authentic"Africa
frowned
edgment
been
delimited
has
the
jewelry,
fromwithin
twentieth century
musical instruments,
withthe West in the
pottery, baskets, calabashes, exhibitions entitled "African
landmark
and textiles. In two
and artModern Art, New
at the Museum of
respectively,
held,
Museum of Art,
11. Exhibitions
1973; and at the Indianapolis
31,
1972-Jan.
11,
York, Oct.
State University of
Apr.9-May 25, 1980.
Sculpture," Ph.D diss., TishmanCollection,
Tribal
"African
ThePaul
12. Roy Sieber,
at the
Sculptureof BlackAfrica:
Iowa, 1957; and idem, Suzanne Preston Blier, "AfricanArt Studies
See
The Stateof the
Studies:
Art
Los Angeles, 1968.
African
Perspective,"in
Crossroads:An American
10.
D.C., 1990, 92.
Washington,
Arts, New York, 1972,
Discipline,
Textilesand Decorative
exhibition;
African
other
Sieber,
the
Roy
with
13.
is made in conjunction
York/Bloomington, Ind.,
A similar argument
HouseholdObjects,New
and
Furniture
see African
1980, 15.
of anthropological
open up the canon
Nelson H.
aesthetic forms, see
14. For arguments to
hybrid
and
arts
the Fourth
to tourist
from
scholarship
Expressions
historical
and TouristArts:Cultural
TheMessagesofTouristArt:An
H. Graburn, ed., Ethnic
BennettaJules-Rosette, New York, 1984; Ruth B.
World,Berkeley, 1976; Comparative
Perspective,
in
in Native American
AfricanSemioticSystem
Art? Significant Silences Colonialism:Imperial
Tourist
Not
After
ed.,
Phillips, "Why
in Gyan Prakash,
98-128; and
Museum Representation,"
Princeton, NJ., 1995,
Culture:Artand
Unpacking
eds.,
HistoriesandPostcolonialDisplacements,
Christopher B. Steiner,
Ruth B. Phillips and
forthcoming.
and PostcolonialWorlds,
Colonial
africaines/The Authenin
Commodity
l'authenticitedes sculptures
"De
19.
Kamer,
1974,
Henri
XII,
15.
Noire,
Artsd'Afrique
ticityof AfricanSculptures,"
RETHINKING
THE CANON
215
upon as a challenge to the canonicity of genuine African art.

Furthermore, canonical art in Africa is possible only when it
is made without regard for potential markets and, as one
critic put it, "withoutany thought of profit, in the same spirit
that an inhabitant of the Cyclades executed an idol in marble
5,000 years ago.''l5 In the field of African art (and to be sure
in many other fields of art as well), the canonicity of the
object can only be achieved by the death of the producer/
subject. For, death genuine or imagined limits the supply and competition within the canon and thus restricts
admittance.16
Canons and Catapults
In AfricanArt in TransitI attempted to demonstrate that the
expansion of the canon of African art history is closely linked
to economic forces of supply and demand, where new art
forms may be added to the repertoire of canonicity as old art
forms become increasingly scarce.l7 This process of canon
formation in the realms of African art scholarship and
collecting becomes evident when we look, for example, at the
"life history" of the wooden catapult, or slingshot, in the
transnationalAfrican art market.
Slingshots are used in rural areas by boys and young men
to hunt bats and small rodents, as well as to chase awaybirds
from fields under cultivation. Most working slingshots are
simple, nonfigural, and unadorned, though occasionally less
functional ones were made which were more embellished.
Sometime in the mid- 1980s, Giovanni Franco Scanzi, an
Italian entrepreneur based in Ivory Coast, began to collect
some of the fancier anthropomorphic and zoomorphic
slingshots from the African middlemen who sell art in the
marketplaces of Abidjan (Fig. 2). Commenting on Scanzi's
aesthetic sensibility and good taste, his friend and colleague
Jean Paul Delcourt noted in an interview that "Scanzi's
genius stems from the fact that he collected a utilitarian
object. He discovered the object's intrinsic beauty and thus
propelled it to the category of'noble art' a domain previously reserved mostly for masks and statues.''18
Scanzi's demand for carved wooden slingshots spawned a
small industry entirely devoted to producing figural slingshots for his consumption (Fig. 3). After a few years of
collecting, and after having acquired several thousand examples, Scanzi (with the assistance of Delcourt) published an
elegant coffee-table book entitled PotomoWaka("slingshot"
in the Baule language), which featured over one hundred
glossy color photographs of carved representational slingshots from his private collection. 19A market was born.
Demand from African art collectors and tourists who had
read PotomoWakafueled the market for slingshots, thereby
16. See Joseph Alsop, The RareArt Traditions:TheHistoryof Art Collecting
and Its LinkedPhenomena,Princeton, NJ., 1982, 21-22.
17. Christopher B. Steiner,AfricanArtin Transit,Cambridge, 1994.
18."Portrait d'un collectionneur: Giovanni Franco Scanzi," Le Guido
(Abidjan),Dec. 1987, 81. My translation from the French. It is interesting to
note that those who "open up" the canon of African art history to include
other types of objects often refer to the fact that prior to their farsighted
intervention the canon had been reserved solely for "masks and statues."
Clearly,by the mid-1980s this almost mythical canon of"masks and statues"
had alreadybeen expanded to include a whole range of other objects.
19. Jean Paul Delcourt and Giovanni Franco Scanzi, Potomo Waka, Milan,
1987.
2 CanonMaker:GiovanniFrancoScanzi
holdingone of the prizedslingshotsiom
hiscollection(photo:Le Guido,Abidjan)
enabling a hitherto unknown and, for that matter, largely
nonexistent art form slowly to edge its way into the canon
of Ivoirian (cum African) art history. Whether or not slingshots are truly "canonical"yet is difficult to answer, but the
process and mechanisms of canon formation are well under
way and clearly revealed.
Canon as Commodity
A number of years ago, Harvard urbanologist Edward C.
Banfield made the following observation about the relationship between commodity value and aesthetic appreciation:
It would not be unduly cynical to say that many of the
thousands who stood in line for a ten-second look at
Aristotle Contemplating the Bust o+Homer [Fig. 4], after the
Metropolitan Museum paid $6 million to acquire it, would
as willingly have stood in line to see the $6 million in
cash.20
His point is a deceptively simple one: what, if any, is the

relationship between the aesthetic value of a work of art and
20. EdwardC. Banfield, "Artversus Collectibles:Why Museum$Should Be
Filled with Fakes,"Harpers, Aug. 1982, 34. ActuallyAristotlewas sold to the
Metropolitan Museum at the Parke-Bernetauction of the Ericksoncollection
on Nov. 15, 1961, for the sum of $2,300,000 not $6,000,000. The sale price,
which exceeded the auction record of $875,000 set the same evening by
Fragonard'sLa Liseuseto the National Gallery of Art, was, at the time, the
highest amount paid at auction for a single work of art. Although Banfield's
figures are incorrect, his point regarding the reverence for monetary value
remains unaltered. For more information on the sale of the Erickson
collection, see Karl E. Meyer, The Art Museum:Power, Money,Ethics,New
York, 1979, 174.
216
ART BULLETIN
JUNE
1996 VOLUME
LXXVIII
NUMBER
exists as an island unto itself free from moral assumprealm

and monetary eonsumptions, but perhaps even more
tions
his statement is remarkable because of the
interestingly
casual and unconscious connection he drawsbetween
almost
and religion. Both marketplace value and relieconomics
as
giousvalue are given equal weight in his argument
and
potentialdetractors from pure aesthetic evaluation
word
response.Given the ecclesiastical etymology of the
this
on
it may be fruitful to follow through a bit
"canon,"
value.
between economic value and religious
connection
as Creed
Canon
used to
Ifone were to analyze the language that is often
people
which
words
the
describean aesthetic experience,
interchangeable
be
often
could
chooseto express themselves
those used to describe a religious or spiritual episode.
with
for example, to Clive Bell as he describes an aesthetic
Listen,
experiencein his well-knownbookArt:
3Canon Faker:Artistcarvinga figuralslingshotfor the

market(photo: ChristopherB. Steiner)
"collectible"
new
one ever
itseconomic value? Or, put slightly differently, can
into
taking
without
worth
hopeto assess an object's aesthetic
a
such
words,
other
in
there,
accountits economic worth? Is
pure
"a
ofJudgment
Critique
The
thing as what Kant called in
price,
aesthetic value"? Or is beauty simply a function of
beauty?
of
function
ratherthan price being a
of the
These questions are significant for any reassessment
canoniranking
about
decisions
the
canon of art history, for
where
cal art objects are often mediated by market forces,
Cynevaluation.21
aesthetic
reinforces
rising economic value
the
that
say
would
Veblen,
Thorstein
ics, of course, like
is
value
economic
and
value
aesthetic
correlation between
beautiful,"
things
find
"We
inextricable.
immediate and
of theLeisureClass,"somewhat in
Veblen wrote in TheTheory
But art dealers and philosocostly."22
are
proportion as they
in the same sentence)
discussed
often
not
phers (a pair
between aesthetic
relationship
the
that
assure us together
arbitrary.
entirely
is
value
value and economic
Aesthetician James O. Urmson, for example, has stated
object's
emphatically that the criterion we use to assess an
as
analysis,
aesthetic value can be treated, for the sake of
the
either
of
something entirely free from any consideration
signifiobject's price in the marketplace or its religious
writes:
Novitz
cance.23 Summarizing his perspective, David
economic,
"Forjust as there are distinctive and irreducible
and
moral, intellectual and religious values, so there are
values:
aesthetic
must be wholly discrete and irreducible
values,
values that cannot be explained in terms of any other
art."24
of
works
to
and in terms of which we properly respond
of its
because
only
Urmson's position is extraordinary not
aesthetic
the
that
wrongheaded anthropological assumption
To appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing

no
from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs,
the
from
us
transports
Art
familiaritywith its emotions.
world of man's activity to a world of aesthetic exaltation.
our
For a moment we are shut off from human interests;
lifted
are
we
arrested;
are
anticipations and memories
above the stream of life.25
Nowcompare Bell'swordswith those used by Emile Durkheim
the
in The ElementaryFormsof the Religious Life to recount
Australian
the
among
birth of the religious experience
Aborigines:
is
When they are once come together, a sort of electricity
them
transports
quickly
formed by their collecting which
so
to an extraordinary degree of exaltation.... They are
that
.
.
.
life
of
conditions
far removed from their ordinary
their
they must set themselves outside of and above
are
they
moment
determined
ordinary morals.... At a
from
different
entirely
world,
transported into a special
the one where they ordinarily live, and into an environment filled with exceptionally intense forces that take
hold of them and metamorphose them.26
The parallels between these two passages are sufficiently
even
striking to suggest that Bell (published in 1914) might
in
(published
Durkheim
of
have turned to a careful reading
what
of
nature
the
on
thinking
1912) in order to inform his
proper
constitutes a pure response to art and to develop a
ecstasy.
and
lexicon of aesthetic catharsis
Writing in the early modern period, Bell could announce
an age
in 1914 that "Art may satisfy the religious need of
of the
end
the
By
religion."27
dogmatic
grown too acute for
York
New
by
confirmed
was
position
his
twentieth century,
observed
he
when
example,
for
art dealer Andre Emmerich,
art has
recently that "in a post-religious age in the West,
a good
It's
had.
once
religion
aspects
the
assumed some of
it."28
to
children
your
thing to expose
tells
The elevation of (some) art to the category of religion
age
us far less about the decline of the Church in a skeptical
in
than it does about the construction of false consciousness
RETHINKING
4 Canon Gazers:CrowdsviewingRembrandt'sAristotle
at the
MetropolitanMuseumof Art, New York,followingits purchase
by the museumfor a record $2,300,000 in 1961 (photo:
UPI/ Bettmann)
the pseudo-sacral foundations of canonicity. One of the ways

the canon of art history removes itself from the objective
conditions of social life is by elevation above the "stream of
life" and, in this heightened state of suspended animation,
thereby achieving a certain detachment from historical
processes and the fields of social production. The canon
system draws from religious discourse an attitude of sacredness which realizes its own redemption through the abomination of the noncanonical or heretic and, to return for a
moment to India, the fetishism of sacred cows.
Canon as Fetish: Myth and Misrecognition
Canon formation is premised on the mistaken belief that
aesthetic judgments and distinctions of taste can be made
under objective conditions free from moral, political, economic, and social influences. Canonical art, like divinity
itself, is said to exist in a realm of its own where "the feelings
that it awakens are independent of time and place, because
its kingdom is not of this world."29Those who support the
canon, and all of its implications of culture- and genderbased discrimination, argue that its existence is predicated
on disinterested values that transcend the partisan concerns
of individuals or institutions.30 The canon exists, Harold
Bloom tells us, "in order to impose limits, to set a standard of
measurement that is anything
butpolitical or moral.''31
21. See Pierre Bourdieu, "Genese historique d'une esthetique pure," Les
Cahiersdu Muse'enationald'artmoderne,27, 1989, 95-106.
22. Thorstein Veblen, TheTheoryof theLeisureClass,Boston, 1973, 108.
23.J. O. Urmson, "What Makes a Situation Aesthetic?" in Francis J.
Coleman, ed., Contemporary
Studiesin Aesthetics,New York, 1968, 356-69.
Firstpublished in Proceedingsof theAristotelianSociety,supp. vol. XXXI, 1957.
24. David Novitz, "The Integrity of Aesthetics,"JournalofAestheticsandArt
Criticism,XLVIII, no. 1, 1990, 9.
25. Clive Bell,Art, London, 1914. Quoted in Novitz (as in n. 24), 1990, 15.
26. Emile Durkheim, The ElementaryForms of the Religious Life, trans.
Joseph WardSwain, New York, 1965, 249. Firstpublished in French in 1912.
THE CANON
217
Any assault on the canon must therefore begin by unmasking this fetishized image of cultural sanctity and the fictitious
creed of immaculate classification. The true power of the
canon stems not from its various hierarchicaldiscriminations
and orderings, but rather from its mythical status through
which it draws symbolic strength. What is subjectively constructed in the ideological world of culture is made to appear
in its canonical formations as a "natural"and objective entity
in which mythical structures lead collective practice to
unquestioning belief.
In his discussion of the myth system and its relationship to
the division of labor and power, Pierre Bourdieu concludes
in a famous passage from Outlineof a Theoryof Practicethat
"Everyestablished order tends to produce . . . the naturalization of its own arbitrariness."32In other words, Bourdieu
goes on to say, the world of cultural tradition (of which
canons are surely a part) is "experienced as a 'naturalworld'
and taken for granted."33
Those whose understanding or appreciation of art is
structured by canonic principles whether in academia, in
museums, or in popular representations of the art world
profoundly misrecognize the ontological basis of the canon's
existence. The canon is not, in Bourdieu's language, a
"structuredstructure"into which art and artists must simply
be made to fit; rather, it is a structuringstructurewhich is in a
continuous process of reproducing itself, mediating its identity through market forces, and negating the social conditions of its production by covering the tracks of its arbitrary
and subjective formations.
In the end, then, both those who support the canon and
those who seek to "open it up" should worry less about
whether or not the delicate membrane of the canon structure
will rupture from the inclusion of yet one more new artist or
unorthodox art form. They should concern themselves,
rather, with how much longer the misrecognition of the
canon system can persist before its bubble bursts, and in its
evanescence occasion the dissolution of a particularform of
art-historical mythmaking and the deliverance of this discipline from the enchantment of canonic thought.
ChristopherB. Steiner, currentlya Getty Scholar at the Getty

Centerfor the Historyof Art and the Humanities,is the authorof
African Art in Transit (1994) and is completinga book on
authenticityand visual redundancyin the representation
of nonEuropeansin Europeanillustratedaccountsof discovery[Scholars
and SeminarsProgram,The GettyCenter,401 WilshireBoulevard,Suite 700, SantaMonica,Calif:90401-14557.
27. Bell (as in n. 25), 184.

28. Andre Emmerich, "WeAll Inhabit a Time-Frame in Which Tastes Are
Shared,"ArtInternational, XII, 1 990, 33.
29. Bell (as in n. 25), 37.
30. See Peter Shaw, "The Assaulton the Canon,"Sewanee Review, LII, no. 2,
1994, 270.
31. Bloom (as in n. 13,35. Emphasis added.
32. Pierre Bourdieu, Outlineof a Theoryof Practice,trans. Richard Nice,
Cambridge, 1977, 164.
33. Ibid., 164.

CAMILLE, M, Rethinking The Canon

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Rethinking the Canon

A RAN GE O F C RITI CAL PE RS PE CTIVES

Prophets, Canons, and

anchors, they are often more visible and certainlybetter lit by

Meyer Schapiro aided its ascent in his famous study of its

want to construct a canon, not of objects, but of places, sites

1. This aspect of the history of taste as it has affected notions of canonicity

3. T. J. Clark, "Freud's Cezannne," Representations,no. 52, Fall 1995,

1 Castsof the ProphetIsaiahfrom Souillacand part of the

expected, the monster, being unstable, crosses boundand

communication. Stephen Melville and Bill Readings have

tor, in an effort to remember an ordinary life and death in

MichaelCamille,the authorof Image on the Edge: The

7. C. Nadia Seremetakis, "Implications,"in TheSensesStill:Perceptionand

ART BU LLETI N J U N E 1996 VO LU M E LXXVI 11 N U M B ER

Orientalism are newcomers to the discourse. While their

importanceweretorndown.10In the colonyit wasacceptable

1 Old Algiers,partialairview (fromChantiers,

O regretsforAlgiers,for its houses

fabric of al-Jaza'ir, and its practice clearly distinguished

The demarcationof the Frenchfrom the Algerianin the

5. I analyze French interventions in the urban fabric of Algiers in detail in

which ranged from

epistemologicalstatus Franceand were not incorporated

3 Osman Hamdi, Girl

Yet this episode of repressed historywas not an isolated case,

While the limitations of this type of response, with its drive

This is the Eastern woman that Europe depicted until

13. FrantzFanon,The Wretchedof the Earth, trans.ConstanceFarrington,

AftertheIftar ( 1886, Turkiye Ias

ArtStudiesand the Need for

Greece, through Italy, to Northern Europe and North

one concerned with the study of medicine or of cookery.

1. C. K. Taylor and G. S. Saayman, "ImitativeBehaviour by Indian Ocean

2. This processis alreadyat workin R. L. Gregoryand E. H. Gombrich,

HumanMind,New York, 1994.

peak in the understanding of the mechanisms underlying

John Onians'spublicationsinclude Art and Thought in the

is, on the one hand,

images and images for texts in the hope of a new stage of

History and Theory

Lequeu, and others she remarked that the only thing in

Books and Articles

Antal, Frederick. FlorentinePainting and Its Social Background.London:

AdrianRiAin is professoroffine art at the Universityof Leedsand

Can the CanonBurst?

population,Malthusianrepletion,is the authenticcontext

The delegitimationof the canon is premised upon a

Suchattemptsto reconfigurethe canonin orderto include

My thanks to Nancy Troy for providing the opportunity to indulge myself in

9. For examples of feminist arguments to open up the canon, see Linda

upon as a challenge to the canonicity of genuine African art.

His point is a deceptively simple one: what, if any, is the

exists as an island unto itself free from moral assumprealm

3Canon Faker:Artistcarvinga figuralslingshotfor the

To appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing

the pseudo-sacral foundations of canonicity. One of the ways

ChristopherB. Steiner, currentlya Getty Scholar at the Getty

27. Bell (as in n. 25), 184.

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