Journal ARS 36 (2003) 2

James ELKINS

Ako je možné písať o svetovom umení?
[How Is It Possible to Write about the World's Art?]

(Summary)

This essay is a chapter of the prepared book Failure in Twentieth-Century Painting in which the art production is described from marginal areas, and neglected regions outside of Western Europe and North America. Author introduced an analysis on the examples of the Bulgarian abstract painters - Detchko Uzunov and Stanislav Pamukshiev whose works are without any western influences. He is looking for possibilities to describe their work from the western point of view. Several solutions are introduced in eight answers.

The first answer "report on the Western historical genealogy" is discussing a method applied by Steven Mansbach's in the book Modern Art in Eastern Europe: From the Baltic to the Balkans, ca. 1890 - 1939 in which a lot of unfamiliar painters are assigned to a prominent western European antecedents. It's true that Mansbach rescues a number of other paintings and painters from eastern smaller countries. In fact it is infuriatingly difficult not to name Western styles that influence Eastern artists, and not to think continuously of Cézanne while studying Hungarian painter Perlrott Csaba. But comparisons like these are quicksand, and the book is built on them. In Mansbach's account, Perlrott Csaba's painting is little more than a close copy of Cézanne and Matisse, infused - somehow - with a "transformative" purpose related to Hungarian nationalism.

The second answer "follow the local historical tradition" is based on the analysis of the work of the Slovenian painter Metka Krasovec. Her paintings are closely linked with western surrealist painters like Chirico, Delvaux or Dalí. Slovenian art critics avoid the word surrealism in favor of general references to Slovenian "feeling"- what is in other contexts referred as umetnostni dialekt, "artistic dialect." The strength of the local historical tradition - or in this case, the near-absence of it - is that it remains faithful to the particular historical constellation, the feel and detail, of the local scene. It is certainly true that the successful reception of Krasovec's work in Ljubljana depends on not dwelling too much on names such as de Chirico, and also not saying too precisely what alternate influences might be. It is a common situation wherever the work itself is perceived to have a quality that might be damaged by too close an association with obvious forbears. A sympathetic description of Krasovec's work could be constructed by carefully assembling the descriptions and hints in the Slovenian newspaper criticism. A weakness of that method is that it would make the work appear disconnected from the West, and from a wider art history, in a way that could only seem unrealistic.

In the third answer "describe the work sympathetically" author tries to describe the works of the non-Western artists on its own terms. This approach is applied on the example of the Slovenian impressionist Ivan Grohar. By focusing on intrinsic properties of art, it replicates the concerns of art historians who have written about Western artists. If the artist in question is Mondrian or Lucian Freud, then it makes sense to pay attention to the pictures themselves, and let the predecessors' work fade into the background. It can be reflective, evocative, and well-informed, and it can propose links to all sorts of cultural events and ideas within the region or nation: but if it does not investigate the painting's link with the broader history of painting, such writing is not art history in a full sense. When the writing is thoroughly researched it can be significant as local history, and when it is less well researched it can work as an evocation of the art. Whatever it is, such writing is not clearly part of the larger collection of texts that are aware of one another and of the sequences of art and ideas that comprise modernism.

Fourth answer entitled "search for avant-gardes" tends to be adopted by writers and art historians in the countries in question, rather than by Western art historians who are interested in art beyond Western Europe and North America. When Western art historians have studied modern non-Western art, they have mainly searched for art that is as important or innovative as comparable work done in Western Europe or North America. This approach has often seemed promising when applied to non-Western art. Thus Steven Mansbach justifies his project of writing about modernism in Eastern Europe by pointing out the instances in which Eastern European painters contributed to the Western European avant-garde. Initially, he claims that Eastern European modernism was a co-equal partner with Western European modernism. It is significant that there is a parallel between the three Eastern European avant-gardes Mansbach names - dada, Russian constructivism, and Czech "cubo-expressionism". But this is a short list, and it is a bit strained even at three items. The third term is especially odd, because it seems apparent that an innovation (cubo-expressionism) which needs to be described in terms of two prior innovations (cubism and expressionism) may be hard to present as an avant-garde.

In his fifth answer named "write the histories of institutions" author gives a polemic revision of the John Clark's method presented in the book Modern Asian Art. The devaluation of non-Western avant-gardes is based from the Clark's point of view on the example of Japanese artists such as Yorozu and Kuroda who were not derivative because they were taken part in an international movement. The phenomenon of the avant-garde, together with its concept of originality, should be seen as a shared ideology in many cultures. Even the concept of originality might be relative, because it might be ideologically different from one place to another. Clark's Modern Asian Art is a work of Western art history, shot through with Western postcolonial theory, Western protocols for the writing and research of art history, Western interpretive methods, and a very Western concern with modernism. To imagine otherwise, as Clark does, is invigorating but unpersuasive.

The sixth answer "define the work per negationem" was inspired by Slovenian art historians Tomaz Brejc who wrote book about Slovenian modernism. He favors to specify the artist by saying what he is not. This definition per negationem has the virtue of being very faithful to whatever the painting at hand actually is. I was impressed by Brejc's application of this method, which seemed to me ideally sensitive to the often unnamable differences between marginal painters and their prototypes. Yet Elkins also wonders if the definition per negationem is not compelled to depend, at every point, on existing Western descriptions. Brejc's via negativa is promising, but author does not think it can be a model for the description of non-Western work.

The seventh answer "adjust the stress" pays attention differently by the metaphor of the family tree of modernism, where the sturdy trunk is Western European and North American modernism. The metaphor of rhizomes, made popular by Gilles Deleuze, proliferate in all directions, so that there is no preferred direction or central node. Deleuze's metaphor is not quite accurate because rhizomes are offshoots of root processes, so no matter how tangled they are, they are all linked to a large central plant. A better model might be mycelia, the vegetative bodies of fungi, because they are truly without a center: they branch and divide through the soil with no pattern whatsoever, and they can begin from spores that might be scattered anywhere. A mycelial model of modernism would let each local center be as important as every other center, and there would be no central body-the equivalent, in this model, of a mushroom or slime mold.

The mycelium model does away with the center in the name of equality, and posits a world filled with labyrinthine connections to equally weighted centers. It models the situation within some regions, but it is not an accurate model when it comes to the influence of the West. There are many more models, as many as there are ways of paying attention to different art practices. The rhizome and mycelial models capture two major alternatives. But it is utopian, to say that the problem of the overbearing influence of the West can be mitigated by paying more attention to the margins because that overwhelming influence was a historical fact over much of the twentieth century. Clark makes some sensitive observations on works of Japanese painter Fujita from the 1910s and 1920s made during his Paris living. It is seldom clear, in Fujita's works, where his alliances and affinities lie, and that makes his work a good subject for a study of identity and its relation to painted signs. Paying attention differently is rewarding and historically specific, but it necessarily defers the question of wider connections.

In the last answer called "just give up" author concludes with some kinds of art practice that just cannot be described art historically, because they can never stand up against other historical practices. In that case, the work should be appreciated differently - "on its own terms," and the whole project of historical writing should be set to one side. An interesting place to think about this is the Leopold Museum in Vienna, where are major painters, who are essential in any account of modernism, Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka, Corinth. There are presented also their followers, who figure in any account of Austrian modernism, Moser, Kolig, Hessing, Dobrowski, Blauensteiner or Sturm-Skrila. The pictures are modernist, but also in parts indifferent from modernism.

Of the end author of essay claims there is no simple solution to the problem of writing art historical accounts of the world's painting. If there was a single answer, it would mean that there are no significant differences between paintings made in different regions or countries, that they all are part of the massive project of Western modernism. Happily that is not true. But the lack of a single answer should also be regarded as a serious challenge.

From James Elkins' original English paper selected by Martin Vančo