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This article was written for the volume "Frontiers of Knowledge in the Study of Man"
published by Harpers in the fall of 1956. The publisher has kindly permitted the reprint of the
essay. The volume contains seventeen contributions discussing the present status of the various
fields of learning within the Humanities. It is edited by Dr. Lynn White jr., President of Mills
College. There were certain editorial conditions to be met which explain the absence of foot-
notes and the very limited use of names of scholars in art history to whom otherwise I would
have liked to pay tribute. My task was to introduce the educated layman to our field without
frightening him by too many unfamiliar terms and names. I found this task a challenge.-A.N.
(Professor Neumeyer teaches the history of art at Mills College-Ed.)
VICTORYWITHOUTTRUMPET
An Essayon ArtHistoryin OurTime
Alfred Neumeyer
mural painting back to the 9th and 10th centuries.Muensterin the Grisons
of Switzerlandand other sites the West of Francehave yielded totally un-
expected murals, while Northern Greece and Yugoslavia have shown the
extension of the Byzantinestyle in magnificentmural cycles from the 12th
to the 15th century.Clearly then, we can make out in the Byzantinerealm
and within the confines of the former Roman empire an unbroken con-
tinuity of Christianart from the days of Constantine(320 A.D.) to those
of Giotto and Dante (1300 A.D.).
By contrastto the approachin the United States,mediaevalresearchin
the variousEuropeancountrieshas put its supremeeffort in isolating the na-
tional characteristicsof art in the soil of the Middle Ages. Together with a
continuousanalysis of individual monuments,the establishmentof typically
French, German or Italian artistic languages became a main endeavor of
continentalscholars.
After decades of researchon the great cathedralsculptureof the 12th
and 13th centuries,the emphasisseems now to swing to churcharchitecture,
to stainedglass and the decorativearts.Throughthis pre-occupationwith the
CAJ XVI 3 208
history and the aestheticsof glass and metal, a deeper insight into the spirit
of an era has been gained, in which artistic expression did not concentrate
so much on representationas on symbolizationand decoration.Accordingly
color, light, transparencyand opaquenesshave been discoveredas instruments
of meaningsand carriersof conceptsof beautywhich disappearedat the end
of the Middle Ages.
With the realizationthat the Renaissancewas the period of the great
artist-individuals,the Saintsof a beauty-worshippingage, modernscholarship,
equipped with a refinedscience of attributionand purifiedof Romanticexal-
tation, has given a new status to the art of the monograph.Comprehensive
presentationsof Duerer, Leonardoand Michelangelohave been undertaken,
with a tendencyto favor a criticalevaluationof the works over a traditional
biographicalapproach.For the Baroque age Caravaggio,a favorite of con-
temporaryscholarship,has receivednot less than four monographsin as many
years, while Rembrandt,at last, has been given his first scholarlybiography
in English. Thus the biographicalapproachwith which art historyfirst made
its appearancein Vasari's Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects
(1550) appearsas a naturalliteraryform for the interpretationof the age
of rising individualism.
Interest in the post-Renaissanceextension of Europe overseas is re-
flected in the emergence of a new field of scholarship: Latin American
studies, investigatingthe artisticheritageof the Iberian realms on American
soil, embodied in thousands of churches,statues and paintings which have
added a so far totally unconsideredprovince to the art-geographicalmap of
the world. Thus an unknown chapterof a Gothic style in the New World,
lingering on for over a centuryafter its disappearancein Europe, has come
to light. The wonderful Mestizo Baroqueof Mexico, the PortugueseRococo
wonders of church architecturein the Brazilian mining province of Minas
Gerais, have enriched our outlook on the creativeachievementsof the New
World. The woodcarvers'"retablo"style impressedits ornateand flat carving
mannerupon the churchfacades of Mexico and createdan intriguingdecora-
tive style of ornamentationin the remotechurchesof the LakeTiticacaregion
in Peru and Bolivia. One of the most fascinatingfolk arts of the world here
conquereda monumentalarchitectureimported from Spain. And, of course,
the chapteron modern architecturecan never be written again without con-
siderationof North America'scontributionin this field.
This brings us to the modernepoch. Slowly the sense of a historicalcon-
tinuum begins to include our own period and its antecedentsin the 19th
century.In architecturethe stylistic garmentsof the eclecticages such as the
Neo-Gothic, the Victorian and the Art Nouveau architectureare beginning
to be examined.As a result one can now detect beneaththe pseudo-historical
costumes of the 19th century a new interest in structureas a generator of
form: the open ground plan, the curtainwall, the asymmetricalbalance,the
209 Neumeyer: Victory without Trumpet
use of steel and glass anticipated 20th century architecturefirst in such
subarchitecturalareas as the cheap "balloon frame" house, the prefabricated
cottage,the cast-ironcommercialstructuresof Chicago,the CrystalPalace and
the Eiffel Tower.
In the field of 19th and 20th centurypainting and sculpture,"dose up"
biographicalsketches supported by the recordingeye of the camera,which
can juxtapose the actualityof the motif next to its pictorial interpretation,
have given us so intimatea contactwith some of the great artiststhat we seem
witnessesto their studioand al-frescoexperiences.
A high standardof workmanshiphas been set by the cataloguesin book
form which Alfred Barr has introducedat the Museum of Modern Art in
New York and which so far remain,unsurpassed.Some of the great artists
of our own era as well as some of the main currentsof contemporaryart
have been given such careful biographical,bibliographicaland interpretative
examinationas previously only "Old Masters"had deserved. However, the
interpretationof the last and of our own century owes much to the great
non-professionalessayists:Roger Fry and Sir HerbertRead in England,Karl
Scheffler and Julius Meier-Graefe in Germany, Paul Valery and Andr6
Malraux in France, Jose Ortega y Gasset in Spain. Here historical writing
becomesin itself an aestheticachievement.
And more: the historyof the 19th centuryis being rewrittenin the 20th
as an act of historicaljustice. Never before had there been such a discrepancy
between the "official"taste and the judgmentof posterity.Juries, acquisition
committees and critics crowned works which we today have banished to
basements,and rejectedtrue masterslike Courbet,Manet, CUzanne,Ganuguin
and Van Gogh who had to wait for their resurrectionin our own century.
While Titian, Michelangelo,Poussinor Rubenswere recognizedin their own
lifetimes as the leadersin their field, the FrenchRevolutionand the Industrial
Revolutionbroughtthe dissociationbetweenthe creatorand the patronwhich
resulted in the popular success of conservativeor sentimentalartists whom
an unsophisticated,new middle-classpublic could follow. In this sense art
historyhas not only reconstructedthe past but has createdthe artisticactuality
of the 19th centuryas it was unknownto its own contemporaries.
Modern art history'sscope extends from the investigationand material
analysis of facts to the lofty structures of systematic interpretationsof
the meaning of artisticcreation.It has opened a vista of a battlefieldof con-
quering and declining culturesexpressingtheir creedsand dreamsin carved
gods and painted idyls. What was cherishedor feared, hoped for or newly
discoveredtook form in a world of images. This world of images revealed
itself as governed by formal expressionswhich showed unity of style com-
bined with infinite variety of individual traits. In restless but not senseless
motion these styles seem to have an evolutionarylife of their own. Within
them art was revealed, as Heinrich Schnaasewrote a hundred years ago, as
CAJ XVI 3 210
"the surest awarenessof a people and the embodiedjudgment of the values
of things."
The history of art dissolves the static art work again into a state of be-
coming, and makes it a living part of today. This polarity of approachre-
flects the very nature of life itself, because, as Ortega y Gasset has said,
"life is continuation,is survival into the moment which will arrive after now.
Life, therefore,suffersunderan inevitableimperativeof realisation."--"InSearch
of Goethe FromWithin." Partisan Review, December,1949, p. 1164.
Cezanneliked to speak about "realization"as the very essence of his heroic
struggle with his subjects.This "inevitableimperativeof realization"is the
verystuffof arthistory.
In these terms we can perhaps understandbetter the meaning of the
restorationof our "Victorywithout Trumpet."Not satisfiedwith the chance-
given appearanceof a mutilatedstatue,historicalinvestigationhas suggested
the most probable solution and by it has transformeda seemingly definite
status of "being" into an open situation of "becoming."It has exposed the
sediments of past life to the growth processes of the present mind, to its
store of knowledge and its perceptivesensibility.Without the trumpetsound
of poetic inspirationit won a quiet victory. Thus as an interpreterof man's
creative self-realization,art history gradually realizes itself.