Deconstruction and the Visual Arts: Art, Media, and Architecture. - book reviews

If it were true, as Mieke Bal critically reports and Jonathan Culler recounts, that some people assume there is "a general sense of what 'theory' is" such that "readers do not feel the need to ask what is meant by 'theory,'" then none of these four books would have any urgency, and one of them (PT) could only state the obvious (PT 33, 13).(1) For why ask about the point of theory if everybody knows what theory is, as part of knowing what theory is entails knowing its purpose? This entailment is not necessary but is warranted in this case, since all forty-plus authors who edited, introduced, wrote, or contributed to these four books have an instrumental view of theory. They understand theory mainly, if not exclusively, in terms of what it can do for them as art historians, and they have little interest in the truth (or even just value) of theory independently of this instrumentalism, or in the truth value of their own claims separate from their pursuit of particular methodological and political goals. Not surprisingly, given such an attitude about theory, there is no general sense among these art historians of what theory is, if by "general" is meant either "shared" or "overarching." For if they agree on anything, it is that no single theory has priority in art history, that there is no overarching theory for all the theories utilized in art history, and that, though here there is some dissension, there is no nonpolitical argument for using theory in art history. So it turns out that "theory" is very much up in the air after all, especially since there are other art historians who disagree with all the art theorists in these volumes.

We can therefore expect to find many different senses or, what is the same thing here, uses of theory, which can be delineated according to the distinct purposes theory is called on to serve.(2) First, theory investigates, challenges, and replaces the theoretical presuppositions and commitments of art history's methodology. Second, theory uncovers the political beliefs that shape art and the subjects who interpret it. Third, theory interprets the apparent or latent cultural meaning of images. Implicit in all three uses is a fourth one, where theory is employed to understand what constitutes (if not actually to constitute) historical artifacts as works of art (images or forms of representation) in the first place, that is, to grasp the psychological, social, and other causes or conditions of works of art, as well as of those who make and interpret them. Since the fourth use of theory remains mostly implicit, and the third generally presupposes one and two, I will group the four uses into the first two, the methodological and the political.(3) My aim is to combine an immanent critique of art theory - the self-critique of art theory as it develops within and among the essays under review here - with my own expectations of art theory as a philosopher writing on aesthetics.

The first use of theory focuses on the presuppositions of art history's methodology and is thus a form of self-criticism of what, on a theoretical level at least, shapes art history's understanding of art. The key presuppositions here relate to the concepts of truth, meaning, and, especially, objectivity. Resisted are the modernist versions of these concepts, namely, those characteristic of art history's mid-20th-century self-understanding. Instead of the modernist model of politically disinterested, ahistorical scholarship committed to objectivity (that is, standards and goals of research independent of the art historians' own values or conditions), art theorists favor politically and historically informed scholarship. Replacing modernist or objectivist art history are, to varying degrees, relativist, historicist, and, most emphatically, subjectivist methodologies. These methodologies are established through analyses of authorship, feminism, masculinity, identity/difference, vision, the gaze, power, death, and so on.(4) The net contribution of theory in art history is, on this account, multiple methodologies based on these concepts and analyses. Theory is, in effect, reduced to method.

Several essays exemplify this first use of theory while raising critical and important issues about art history, past and present. For example, in "Generating the Renaissance, or the Individualization of Culture" (PT 145-54), Stephen Bann argues that art history's notion of "the Renaissance" was invented in the 19th century as part of a generative series, a grammatical matrix including "Classical Antiquity" and "the Middle Ages" before it and "the Modern" (and "the Postmodern") after it. Calling this notion an "invention" means that it does not correspond to a positive periodization of historical reality and that it is not just a stylistic category. Rather, "the Renaissance" is "a promise of cultural synthesis" that energized 19th-century art history, enabling it to triumph symbolically over the dialectic of absence and presence that was initiated when modernity, beginning with the Enlightenment, tried to break radically from the historical past (PT 153). The implication of this "constructivist" view of art history is that periods of history and styles of art are not objective, that is, not independent of art history's methodological presuppositions. In "Form and Gender" (VC 384-411), David Summers continues this type of critical reflection on the "working language" of art history. He argues that the notion of "form" developed in philosophy since Aristotle, and utilized within art history since its inception, has been genderized throughout its history: "form," like much of the metaphorical language in which art historians discuss artistic creation, is active and masculine, while its counterpart, "content," is passive and female. The genderization of "form" was especially acute during the late 19th century, according to Summers, when art history became an established academic discipline, thereby making the institutional foundations and aesthetic assumptions of modern art history systematically exclusive of women. This last point is developed further by Lisa Tickner in "Men's Work? Masculinity and Modernism" (VC 42-82), where she demonstrates how notions of masculinity and critiques of women were inscribed into British modernism between 1905 and 1915 through the writings of Augustus John, Roger Fry, and Wyndham Lewis. The very methodology of modernist art history is exclusive of women, and so is the history of art constructed on this basis. Donald Preziosi continues in this vein in "Modernity Again: The Museum as Trompe l'Oeil" (DVA 141-50) by examining the role of museums in the same foundations and assumptions of modern art history. Museums are not merely coterminous with modernity, but are actually "social instruments" for its fabrication and maintenance. In Preziosi's words, they are part of the history of the enframing of modern art and thus of art history itself. Once again, art history is not objective, in this case because it is not independent of the historical institutions that enframe it.(5)

What is problematic about this first use of theory, despite (and possibly threatening) its insights, is the following. The alleged uncritical acceptance of the modernist ahistorical methodology seems to be replaced here by different historical methodologies, each reflecting the diverse theories that inspired them, but about which these art historians are as uncritical as they have accused their modernist counterparts of being. Arguments are seldom given for this plurality of methodologies, neither singularly nor as a whole, as if the art historians believe their validity is self-evident once the interests and values of their predecessor are exposed. Or perhaps it is that the art theorists' explicitly instrumentalist view of theory has been surreptitiously converted into an implicit pragmatist view of truth, whereby the truth of theory is principally a function of its contribution to the establishment of the new methodologies, that is, of the "new art history." In this context, "truthful" means "useful," and the question "useful for what?" is answered by saying that theory is useful for constituting the subjectivity of art historians. Whatever such constitution and subjectivity mean here, and I will return to this below, it is clear that questions about the truth of art theory lead immanently to questions about subjectivity, which is to say that the first use of theory leads to the second.

Yet what about the truth claims made from within any of these new methodologies? How are we to judge them? By how well they are formulated and defended? On what terms, empirically and/or theoretically? Does it matter whether the claims could have been made without the use of theory? How are these questions to be answered? Are they even the right ones to ask? Do they need to be framed differently? And, in general, would such truth claims be weakened by attempts to argue for them? I think not, especially since the "modernist-objectivist" art history that these theorists deconstruct and replace may itself be merely their own construct, much the way they claim "the Renaissance" is a construct.(6) If I were to push these queries about truth too far, however, I would - again - encounter the second use of theory in art history, namely, the political. This is itself further evidence, I suspect, of the implicit pragmatist theory of truth in much of contemporary art theory.

Insofar as truth is discussed in these books at all, it appears in the form of the correspondence theory of truth, which is criticized as the philosophical underpinning of the modernist, objectivist methodology. Do theorists believe that art historians used to hold this theory, or that they still do? Do they? In philosophy, by contrast, the correspondence theory of truth has been considered to be untenable for most of this century in the Anglo-American as well as Continental traditions. Why is this the main if not the only theory of truth discussed explicitly in art theory (and only negatively at that)? What about the hermeneutic or semantic conceptions of truth developed by Hans-Georg Gadamer and Donald Davidson, respectively? What is their relationship to art theory or history? And what about the pragmatic theory of truth introduced above? Is there no argument that this theory is better in some sense than the alternatives available to art history from philosophy if not from its own resources? Do art theorists uncritically infer from Jacques Derrida's apparent conclusion in The Truth in Painting - that there is no truth in art - that therefore there is no truth in art history either? Finally, there is a further option here, namely, that a theory of truth of any type is no longer relevant to art history, as some have argued in the case of political theory (e.g., John Rawls) or science (e.g., Nelson Goodman, who of course also writes about aesthetics). But even this deflationary view of truth calls for argumentation. So, no matter how much art theorists try to avoid argumentation regarding truth, it seems they cannot escape it. This would still be true, I think, if instead of truth we were to inquire, following Nietzsche, about the "value of the values" the art theorists treasure as both the presuppositions and objects of their new methodologies. A case has to be made for these values over others, that is, a case against the values of the modernist methodology and then a case for the values of the new methodologies.

The focus of the second major use of theory is on the political values encoded in art history's object - works of art or images - and the counterpart values of the subjects of art history - the art historians who interpret art. Art history is now understood as being shaped by the interaction between these sets of values. At the same time, clear priority is given to the subject's values, so much so that "politics" in the context of art theory has more to do with "subjectivity" than with politics as it is understood, say, within political theory. That is, the theoretical issue here is no longer art history's apolitical methodology, or even its replacement methodology, but the subjectivity of those who construct and are constructed by the art they interpret. In Bal's words, theory is "not the pinnacle of objectivity as much as a touchstone for subjectivity" (PT 9; cf. 47).

The political topics here are: race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference, nationality, class, etc. But the dominant political topic in these particular collections is the role of "masculinity" in the formation, in the past and present alike, of both art history and the subjectivity of art historians. In "The Case of the Missing Women" (PT 91-108), for example, Griselda Pollock criticizes the social and psychic ties binding power, knowledge, and phallic masculinity in 19th-century and contemporary art history. With the goal of changing this situation in art history, she argues that women's representations of women - for example, Mary Cassatt's portraits of relations between women - provide "a necessary archive" of women's desires that may break some of those masculine and exclusionary ties and reframe them with and for women. In "Observations on Style and History in French Painting of the Male Nude, 1785-1794" (VC 141-67), Thomas Crow deconstructs masculinity as well, but through an analysis of the shift in the depiction of men by male painters in late 19th-century French painting, particularly the work of Jacques-Louis David and Anne-Louis Girodet. This issue of masculinity, which for Crow is perhaps more a way of making a case for a method of "historical stylistics" than a feminist critique of art history, is picked up by Whitney Davis in "The Renunciation of Reaction in Girodet's Sleep of Endymion" (VC 168-201). He offers a different interpretation of the Girodet painting that was the focus of Crow's article. Instead of being understood in terms of its political coherence with Davidian classicism (The Oath of Horatii, The Death of Socrates, and Brutus), as Crow argued, the Endymion should be seen as "a considerable and overt reshuffling of the Davidian . . . gendering of reason, moral acuity, and public effectivity as masculine, and of passion, moral unconsciousness or obliviousness, and sexual passivity as feminine" (VC 183). In addition, Endymion is, according to Davis, "one of the most crucial replications in the emergence of the iconography characterized by a constant, intricate repetition, revision, and refusal of available stereotypes for representing the masculine, feminine, homoerotic, pederastic, and sodomitical dimensions or interests of the male body" (VC 185). So, in these essays in general, art is conceived to be constructed by artists who are, in turn, constructed by (and at the same time reflective of) cultural forces constituting their subjectivity.

So far the sense of the political in this second use of theory is largely confined to art history. Some of the art theorists represented here, however, seem unwilling to confine themselves to academic politics/ethics. For example, in "The Heuretics of Deconstruction," Gregory Ulmer claims, using deconstruction as his example, that the theory/politics link is mediated by heuretics, "the branch of logic which treats of the art of discovery or invention" (DVA 80). By intervening with critical effect in popular culture or in the institutions of art, a type of intervention achieved in literature by Kathy Acker and in the visual arts by Christian Boltanski, deconstructive theory becomes political (DVA 81, 89). Theory becomes ethical in a similar way by exploring "how singularity can be maintained by the intelligent disposition of irreducibly heterogeneous elements" (DVA 169). Such exploration aims to enhance ethical respect for singularity in the culture at large; or at least this seems to be part of the argument of Charles Altieri's compelling "Frank Stella and Jacques Derrida: Toward a Postmodern Ethics of Singularity" (DVA 168-87).

It is difficult, however, to assess the efficacy of the politics/ethics of theory once it has aspirations beyond the boundaries of the academy, whose political-ethical transformations are hard enough to measure. While art theory certainly has its effects in the public sphere, of which the university is itself a subsphere, it seems to me that it cannot specifically aim to do so; for academic politics/ethics is usually extended beyond its own subsphere only as a result of forces over which academics have little or no control. To accept as realized the art theorists' aspiration to achieve such extension would be to give too much weight to their intentions, which they, being critical of intentionality, could never expect us to do. As Bal emphasizes, the political meaning of theory is academic (PT 9; cf. 47).

Nevertheless, some of these art historians attempt from their side to break down the academic/popular culture divide, as Constance Penley, for example, tries to do in her "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture" (VC 302-24). But this is, I think, just one more attempt to overcome the divide which only reinstates it by bringing popular culture inside the walls of the academy, making it all too clear that both the divide and the desire to overcome it are constructs of art theory.(7) This also seems to be what happens in Richard Dienst's "Sending Postcards in TV Land" (DVA 296-307), as well as in Andrew Ross's "Ecology of Images" (VC 325-46). Once again, taking mass culture as the object of academic analysis, which is more typical of cultural studies than of art history, does not in itself break down the divide between the academy and mass society. Moreover, while deliberate obscurantism is certainly not a virtue, self-consciously writing in a way that is more accessible to nonacademics is not one either, since the notion of "accessibility" is yet another academic construct. But what I find most problematic here, regardless of the insights such politically inspired attempts to make art theory part of popular culture may have to offer, is the false assumption that theory is nonpolitical and popular culture is political, so that for a theorist to be political she must break out of the academy. Theory is political from the start or not at all, at least in the sense of the cultural politics of the public sphere (e.g., debates about the canon, affirmative action, feminism, etc.), though what "political" means varies historically, and the efficacy of theory's politics either within or outside the academy has to be critically assessed constantly. So, in a word, there is no divide to be overcome. Moreover, writers who assume the divide end up being nonpolitical since they define themselves as political against what they mistakenly believe is not political; then they leave one side of the false divide and never, and can never, arrive at the other side. They dwell in a middle ground that by their own account could only be considered nonpolitical.

Throughout this second use of theory, wherein talk of the political is mostly talk about the "constitution of subjectivity," it is not clear what this means or exactly what is at stake. It does not seem likely, for example, that any of these authors would accept Hubert Damisch's provocative claim that perspective as symbolic form constitutes the subject much the way language does:

. . . perspectiva artificialis provided the painter with a formal apparatus like that of the sentence, with which it shares many features. Starting with its organization of point of view, vanishing point, and distance point, and the other corollary points designating here, there, and over there . . . [perspective] assigns the subject a place within a previously established network that gives it meaning, while at the same time opening up the possibility of something like a statement in painting.(8)

Whatever the merits of this claim, for which Damisch offers a powerful philosophical and art-historical argument, the present authors would probably reject it, thinking that Damisch is positing an essentialist notion of the subject or making a universalist claim about the role of art. But Damisch is not necessarily violating the current art-theory taboos of essentialism and universalism; rather, he is concerned with a different issue, which Whitney Davis calls "subjecthood" as distinct from "subjectivity."(9) That is, the theorists argue that just as political values and theoretical presuppositions - concerning gender, truth, and the other issues discussed here - are said to construct or constitute the methodology of art history, they also construct or constitute the subjects of art history, the art historians themselves (in general or qua art historians?). The "subjects" here are simply flesh-and-blood art historians at a particular time and place in history interpreting images that are also historically situated; they are not the abstract "subject" analyzed by Damisch. But this distinction between subjecthood and subjectivity says only what subjectivity in art theory is not, not what it is. Davis speaks critically to this residual unclarity by pointing to a dilemma: talk of constituting subjectivity is either idealistic or circular; either we assume that the subject is an autonomous agent able to control the forces that will shape her, or else we allow the nonautonomous subject to identify (and, in effect, to constitute) her own constituting factors. Theorists thus have to make an impossible choice between self-constitution without constraints or constitution constrained by prior constitution. While Davis's earlier distinction is important and while he is right to emphasize that there are forces constituting subjects over which they have little or no control, I think he sets up a false dilemma. Constitution is mutual or reciprocal between the subject and object of art history and it thus appears to be - but is not - circular. With Davis's objections in the foreground, the imprecise talk of subjectivity by art theorists could be clarified by reflecting further on this reciprocity, as some of the theorists below have already begun to do. At the same time, however, I think it would be illuminating and beneficial for the art theorists urgently concerned about the constitution of subjectivity to engage Damisch's philosophical argument about this matter more seriously.

The methodological and political uses of theory are by no means kept separate by the art historians in these volumes, as we have already seen in some cases; in fact, in the majority of essays the uses are synthesized. Norman Bryson's "Gericault and 'Masculinity'" (VC 228-59) is one of the clearest examples of this synthesis and the dual focus of subjectivity it entails. Bryson discusses both the constitution of masculine subjectivity in his present as well as that of Gericault's present, though it is still not clear what "subjectivity" and "constitution" mean here. At the same time, his discussion of masculinity involves rethinking feminist art theory, particularly the notion of the "gaze" as it has been developed by Laura Mulvey and others, for that notion, concerned with male perception of women in art, calls for revision in order to be used to understand male perception of men in the same context. Kaja Silverman continues this revision more systematically in her "Fassbinder and Lacan: A Reconsideration of Gaze, Look, and Image" (VC 272-301). Attention to a politically charged issue opened up by theory has now developed to a point that it stimulates further reflection on that same theory. So it is not that these two uses of theory are casually brought together; they are deliberately synthesized to achieve common ends. Griselda Pollock contributes to these ends in "Feminism/Foucault - Surveillance/Sexuality" (VC 1-41), where she examines how women miners in England in the late 19th century were excluded from forms of representation even though they were very much a part of mining and even though that industry was represented. She writes a new chapter in the genealogy of the exclusion of women from representation that accompanies the gendering of art-historical terms, which in turn perpetuates the exclusion. At the same time, taking "representation" as a social relation and not just as an art term, Pollock links these exclusions to the larger "discursive field" within which women were excluded from cultural and political forms of everyday life through the use of disciplinary techniques of surveillance centered on sexuality.

If the above examples of interpretive practice are concrete cases of the synthesis of theory as methodological self-criticism and theory as politics, Keith Moxey offers a lucid theoretical analysis of the synthesis in the first half of The Practice of Theory. He argues that a critique of art history's modernist methodology necessarily leads to politics. For theory, understood in terms of its own historical circumstances, empowers art history "to denaturalize its theoretical assumptions" (POT xi), that is, to show that its apparently objective and natural assumptions are in fact subjective and historical. Such historicized theory and empowerment, in turn, open the door to a consideration of politics: "All cultural practice," including art history and theory, "is shaped by political considerations" (POT xii).(10) At the same time, Moxey appears willing to forsake the notion of truth in art history (POT 13), arguing in effect that, if the correspondence theory of truth is abandoned, there is no longer any epistemological rationale for deciding between competing historical interpretations of art.(11) The rationale is now strictly political: "historical writing must necessarily project the [political] values of the present" (POT xii).(12) In this light, art-historical narratives are now constructs "of our own values as these have been shaped by, and in reaction to, the social forces responsible for the construction of our subjectivity" (POT 18). This constructivist view of art history - wherein femininity, masculinity, subjectivity, art, and history itself are all constructs (of "social forces" as well as of the art historians) - deliberately has the effect of collapsing the traditional distinction between history and theory, as well as the two uses of theory. Just as politics replaces epistemology, and subjectivity replaces truth, so now theory seems to replace history. Such replacements have been made, or at least suggested, without enough thought being given to their ethical, political, and philosophical implications, only some of which may actually be acceptable to the very people who have proposed the replacements in the first place.(13)

Moxey argues more specifically for semiotic notions of representation, ideology, and authorship (POT 26), which are important to examine because they are invoked by many of the other authors here and so they are important in being representative of art theory at this stage.(14) According to the semiotic notion of representation, the (aesthetic) value of a work of art is the effect of the intersection between the values invested in the work when it was produced and those of the culture that is now interpreting it (POT chap. 1); the semiotic notion of ideology, an alternative to the Marxist notion, critically embraces the positive role of images in the creation and dissemination of social attitudes and beliefs (TP chap. 2); while the semiotic notion of authorship, in contrast to its humanist counterpart, emphasizes a Lacanian account of the linguistic mediation of reality and interpretation that shapes the subjectivity of the art historian.

Although Moxey articulates these three notions clearly, he does not offer much of an argument for them. He treats them as if the demand for argumentation were answered in advance by the shift from epistemology to politics. Instead of argument, we are met in The Practice of Theory by four extensive examples of theoretical-political art history (one of which appears separately in PT and another in VC). The first of these four examples concerns Erwin Panofsky's interpretation of Albrecht Durer, especially a 1514 engraving, Melancolia I.(15) Moxey argues that Panofsky's interpretation of this engraving as a spiritual self-portrait functions at the same time as, and is in fact motivated by a need to construct, his own self-portrait. Panofsky's predicament as a Jew in exile from Nazi Germany is said to inform his interpretation of all Durer's art through this one engraving. Although this may very well be a plausible reading of Panofsky's motivations, it raises the question whether his interpretation of Durer (that is, of the meaning of his work) is historically plausible, which in turn raises the question of the plausibility of Moxey's own interpretation. But these are the wrong questions to ask, Moxey might retort, insofar as they privilege epistemology over politics.

So, for another art theorist to question Panofsky's interpretation of Durer or Moxey's interpretation of Panofsky would likely be construed here as an interjection of his own political values disguised as epistemological concerns. What if this new theorist's political (or epistemological) values do not fuse with Durer's or Panofsky's or Moxey's? As far as I understand Moxey, he does not provide much guidance here, for in both interpretations he offers in this one chapter - Panofsky on Durer and Moxey on Panofsky - there is a fusion of values.(16) The first fusion is the thesis of Moxey's analysis, while the second results from the fact that his interpretation of Panofsky's interpretation of Durer is intended to illustrate Moxey's own understanding of how art-historical narratives are (and ought to be) constructed today.(17) While Moxey may not necessarily intend to suggest that fusion is the norm in art-historical narratives, he provokes this normative question yet offers no clear sense of what a norm might be or even whether we can expect one.(18) His answer, which receives at least tacit support from other contributors to these volumes, seems to be that we should give priority to our own values, which will either fuse or conflict with the values of the art we interpret (neutrality is excluded here due to the stress on politics). The problem, of course, is that they are more likely to conflict than fuse.

The relative absence of self-criticism in contemporary art theory, evident in its apparent unwillingness to justify itself on other than political grounds, is a serious problem according to art theory's own self-conception, for, as we have seen, self-criticism is precisely what theory demands of today's art history. Combining the two uses of theory, art historians argue for political reasons that they must renounce the modernist, ahistorical, unselfcritical conception of methodological objectivity in favor of their own subjectivity. In doing so, they seem to abandon self-criticism after it has been demanded of their modernist counterparts, as if the task of self-criticism were over once politics and subjectivity had replaced objectivity. Yet, how can art historians be aware of their own methodology, politics, and subjectivity if they are not self-critical? It seems to me that the success of art theory in contemporary art history hinges on its ability to sustain self-criticism. The art theorists themselves are the ones who have raised this demand for continued self-critique, but so far they have failed to meet it.

In "Witnessing an Annunciation" (PT 220-31), Michael Ann Holly addresses the problem of self-criticism, claiming that contemporary art theorists neglect "the actualizing legitimacy of their accounts [of both art history and of the history of art]" (PT 220). The first step in achieving such legitimacy is, according to Holly, to restore self-criticism, which in turn, perhaps ironically, requires that we shift the discussion here from the "self" or subject of art history (its methodology, politics, or subjectivity) to its object, to the "paintings themselves."(19) The purpose of the shift is "to see the ways in which they have legislated what we can say about them" (PT 220). Holly is not suggesting that we return to a notion of the object as given in an objectivist or positivist sense, for she has been a partner in the development of art theory that began as a critique of any such givens. Rather, her thesis is:

all histories that attempt to inscribe . . . images into meaningful discourses are themselves responsive not only to the ideological mandates of their time but also to some logic of figuration that the works of art predetermine. It is how these two sets of predispositions, originating from two opposite poles, collide and collide together on the screen that determines the efficacy of the historical narrative (PT 222).

In short, "writing mirrors picturing."(20) Holly realizes, of course, that there is a serious risk in making this shift, because if the object is not given, then it may be a mere construct of theory in just the way "context" is, on Bryson's account ("Art in Context," PT 66-78). Her solution is to analyze the "criss-crossings of subjectivity and objecthood" that she believes constitute historical narratives. She offers such an analysis in "Witnessing the Annunciation," and also in "Wolfflin and the Imagining of the Baroque" (VC 347-64), which is "an inquiry into the possibilities of rhetorical correspondences between the formal compositions of art works from a stylistic period and the compositional configurations of the 'classic' texts that have spoken so persuasively about them" (VC 350). Since "works of art shape the rhetorical strategies of their own historical accounts" (VC 352),(21) there are thus "objective" constraints on art-historical interpretations.

In "Color Has Not Yet Been Named: Objectivity in Deconstruction" (DVA 33-48), Stephen Melville introduces a new notion of "objectivity" that I believe complements Holly's turn to the object. He is concerned that once theory - in his case, deconstruction - recognizes itself in the object in a way analogous to what Holly suggests, it must be careful not to lose "touch" with that same object and end up replacing it with a "discursive representation" (DVA 39). That is, the threat that the object is a mere construct of theory resurfaces once theory attains self-recognition in the object. Yet Melville believes that a proper understanding of theory - of what it means for deconstruction to recognize itself in an object - will enable us to avoid this threat. Although there is no such thing as a deconstructive object, deconstruction, understood as an event or activity, not as a naming, is "objective" in the sense that it "aims at objects" (DVA 43). "The question of the object in and for deconstruction," however, "is a question not about what the object is, but about how or, even more simply, that it is" (DVA 40). While this last claim sounds like an ontological claim about the object, which would be a reversal to the object as given, Derrida's concern for the object is not ontological, as Melville rightly points out (DVA 40); the "object" here is, in fact, merely the resistance of works of art to theory. At the same time, however, the "interdisciplinary framing of the object" is not an imposition on the object but "a not wholly proper effect of the object itself' (DVA 46). What is crucial here, as I understand it, is the object's effects, which are due, not to its essence, but to its relations with the subject of art history. Herein lies the similarity or overlap between Melville's and Holly's strategies for reasserting the object into art theory. They agree that "art history and the history of art write from within one another" (DVA 43); art again prefigures its own historiographical and theoretical accounts.

The shift from the subject of art history to its object is not a shift away from theory, but it has important consequences for our understanding of theory in relationship to art, which in turn provides a strategic basis for respectfully (though unapologetically) addressing the resistance to theory, which has an equal if not greater voice in the profession today. First of all, the result of this shift to the object is that the question about theory we have been discussing now concerns art rather than art history. Is art theoretical? What could that mean, and how could such a claim be defended? To attempt an ahistorical defense - say, by appealing to the essence of art - would be to contradict the discovery that theory made possible, namely, that art history and art are, to some extent, historically and mutually constructed. But if a historical defense of that same claim were offered from the perspective of art history, it would appear that art is theoretical only because art history is theoretical. This appearance is precisely what makes some art historians resist art theory, for it seems to be projecting theory onto art for the sake of art history's methodological self-understanding. Can the claim that art is theoretical be defended without creating this appearance, since it is necessary here to mitigate this resistance, not to compound it? Since I agree with art historians and others who believe that essentialism is not an option in this historicist or at least pragmatist age, the only type of defense of the claim that art is theoretical is, as far as I know, historical. Art is theoretical today as it has been historically. But this is here a claim about art's history not art history, about the object not the discourse - about the immanent role of theory in art since at least Leonardo. Art's being theoretical need not depend on art history's being theoretical, so it need not depend on art history's methodological self-understanding.

In "Tables of Bower," Jennifer Bloomer, who is an architect and theorist, examines the role of theory on the concrete level of architectural practice. For her, theory is disseminated in architectural construction itself. She demonstrates this by critiquing the modernist "ornament/structure pair" as it is worked out within postmodern architectural practice. This is not deconstruction of but in architecture.(22) Bloomer's analysis is a poignant way to illustrate the importance of the "fit" between theory and its object, where "object" can be understood as the practice of producing a work of art as well as the product of that process. Her analysis suggests that the fit is quite tight, or one might say with Bal that "'to do theory' is a commerce with theoretical concepts and objects" (PT 46). I think this is an important step in the development of art theory, for it is crucial that theoretical concerns be understood as emanating from practice rather than as being imposed on it.(23) Such a perspective on the theory/practice relationship is an example, if not the result, of Holly's shift in focus from art history's methodology, politics, or subjectivity to its object; and it also embodies Moxey's idea of the "practice of theory."

Now, both the shift from the subject to the object and the claim that the object itself is theoretical speak, at least indirectly, to the resistance to theory in art history. The resistance takes many forms, from criticism of specific theories (e.g., for being obscurantist), to demands for the autonomy of art history from philosophy, to claims that theory interferes with the goal of objectivity, to the insistence that facts have priority over theory, and so on. But perhaps the most fundamental form of resistance, as I understand it, is the one made on behalf of the object of art history, namely, art. It is argued that art, regardless of the medium or period in question, cannot be fully grasped by theory (or discourse), as there is some dimension of art that is atheoretical (or nondiscursive). As true as this claim is, it does not warrant a full-fledged resistance to theory, any more than the recognition that art is under- or overdetermined by history means that art cannot be understood historically. Just as the discipline of art history depends on our not making an inference from the recognition of the limits of our understanding of art's historical conditions to the impossibility of any such understanding, so too art theory depends on a parallel inference not being made from the recognition of theory's limits to its irrelevance. Art theorists are already very much aware of their limits; such awareness is an effect of their self-critical approach in the first place. Therefore, so long as art theory does not rest on a claim that the object of art history - art - can be fully understood through theory, art theory cannot be resisted using only the counterclaim that art is not fully understood theoretically. Resistance will no doubt continue, but it will rather be to the particular ways art theory is practiced and, more concretely, to the interpretive and historical claims made about art by theorists. But then resistance becomes a part of the conflict of interpretations, something with which art history has always been confronted (if not that by which it has been constituted), or else a conflict between theory and empirical history, which has also shaped art history's entire genealogy. Conflict rather than fusion therefore seems to be the norm, as Pollock suggests (PT 290), which is why I objected earlier to the apparent priority given to fusion by Moxey and indirectly by others.

I would like to end by raising two important points provoked by the essays under review. The first is really a series of questions. Why is theory prominent in art history at this time? Is it a permanent feature of art history? Or one that emerges only at a moment when it is restructuring its methodology? Is this restructuring immanent to the discipline, in the sense that the development of art history requires these self-critical moments? Or is it rather the result of the fact that, since art history has always been influenced by theory/ philosophy, as the latter shifts, so does art history, albeit on its own time and for its own reasons. So, for example, the linguistic turn in philosophy has its counterpart in art history in the form of a semiotic turn; but then why did this turn not take place when Meyer Schapiro wrote about the semiotics of art? Or is theory an intrusion from some other discipline (e.g., literary theory) or the result of some nondiscursive cultural force? These questions are important, and they are raised by, though not in, the essays under review. I have not explicitly discussed them here, however, because they are historical rather than theoretical questions and require a separate and different analysis.

The second and final point is related to my own philosophical interests.(24) The editors of Visual Culture proclaim a "new aesthetics," one that no longer rests on a belief in timeless works of art but one that instead asserts that the value of art is culturally determined. A closer examination of the history of aesthetics from its origins in the 18th century to the present would reveal, I think, that there has been much more acceptance of art's historicity (at least as a problem) than some of these art historians acknowledge. I would even say that the history of aesthetics began with this problem of historicity, as well as with the problem of the object and objectivity of aesthetic judgment: What, if anything, is the basis for objective judgment or taste if art is historically contingent, beauty is no longer a property of an object, and taste is divergent within and among cultures? Such questions do not imply, as some people might think, that "disinterestedness" should again be a norm in aesthetics, for robust subjectivity has also always been at the center of aesthetics. Disinterestedness was in fact introduced in discussions of taste and aesthetic judgment after the turn from the object to the subject, so it assumes rather than negates subjectivity. The goal of that notion, and, as I understand it, of the current return to the object, is to provide some constraints on subjectivity so that there is some basis for agreement in art-historical interpretation and, so as not to overemphasize or idealize consensus, to explain why we disagree when we do. Finally, the shift from judgment to interpretation in contemporary art history does not resolve these questions or absolve us from having to answer them; on the contrary, they become all the more acute.

So examination of the history of aesthetics may very well prove to be a great asset to art theorists while they come to understand how art history that is constituted in theoretical as well as historical terms might better handle some of the philosophical issues it is already facing. In a sense, this point hardly needs to be made, since some of the traditions or thinkers within the history of aesthetics to which I would refer - Hume, hermeneutics, Nietzsche, etc. - are among the very ones that have inspired art history's present self-understanding. The anti-aesthetic rhetoric only obscures and may even undermine some of art history's theoretical resources and alternatives just when it needs them the most.(25) At the same time, what art history could also benefit from, it seems to me, is more reflection on its own theoretical resources, namely, those that lie in the history of theory in art and in art history. To conclude, while art history may not need more theory than it currently has, which will be a relief to those who worry unnecessarily about the spread of theory in the discipline, it certainly needs more time to develop all these resources. This time will allow art theory to continue with ever greater subtlety through the help of self-critique what these art theorists have boldly initiated.

1. Bal and Boer, The Point of Theory, henceforth PT; Brunette and Wills, Deconstruction and the Visual Arts, henceforth DVA; Bryson, Holly, and Moxey, Visual Culture, henceforth VC; Moxey, The Practice of Theory, henceforth POT.

2. The types of theory used in these essays include: semiotics, psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminist theory, queer theory, cultural theory, film theory; the names of theorists include: Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Lacan, Karl Marx. Individual authors here often combine various theories or theorists in innovative ways that may, however, potentially result in incompatible positions.

3. While focusing on deconstruction as his sole example of theory, Stephen Melville characterizes theory in related ways with respect to questions of methodology, object, and discourse ("Color Has Not Yet Been Named: Objectivity in Deconstruction," DVA 33-48, esp. 35-38).

4. Several essays in these collections focus on death in connection with the methodological limits of art history/theory: Elisabeth Bronfen, "Death: The Navel of the Image" (PT 79-90); Mieke Bal, "Dead Flesh, or the Smell of Painting" (VC 365-83), and "Light in Painting: Disseminating Art History (DVA 49-64, esp. 62-64).

5. The issue of enframing is also discussed by Jean-Claude Lebensztejn in "Starting from the Frame (Vignettes)" (DVA 118-40), where he offers a lucid account of experiments with frames in the history of art.

6. The objectivism that is criticized may in fact characterize only the self-understanding of modernist art historians rather than their actual methodology, which means that objectivist art history is a construct (of the postmodernist critique) of the modernist self-understanding. For evidence of this dialectic, cf. Moxey's discussion of Panofsky in POT.

7. I do not mean to discourage or belittle attempts to engage in politics through and about theory. I just do not see that the essays resulting from them are necessarily any more "political" than, say, Marie-Claire Ropars-Wuilleumier, "The Dissimulation of Painting" (DVA 65-79), which is an excellent essay on Derrida's Truth in Painting.

8. Hubert Damisch, The Origins of Perspective, trans. John Goodman, Cambridge, Mass., 1994, 446; cf. also xxi, 20, 53.

9. "The Subject in the Scene of Representation," in "A Range of Critical Perspectives: The Subject of Art History," Art Bulletin, LXXVI, no. 4, 1994, 570.

10. Or: "A plea for theory represents not only a call for methodological sophistication but also for political self-consciousness" (POT 290).

11. For example, Ernst van Alphen argues in "The Performativity of Histories" (PT 202-10) that history matters because of its performative effects, not its truth.

12. Van Alphen criticizes Moxey for not disclosing his own politics; see Van Alphen's "Strategies of Identification" (VC 261). But Moxey aims only to secure the positionality of politics in art history's methodology, not to discuss specific politics, his or anybody else's (POT 17).

13. There are enough disagreements about feminism and masculinity in this context alone to suggest that these implications demand critical attention.

14. In "Light in Painting: Disseminating Art History" (DVA 49-64), Mieke Bal discusses three related notions - intertextuality, polysemy, and meaning - that are also invoked, at least implicitly, by some of the other authors.

15. The other three examples Moxey offers are intended to illustrate further that "the signifying systems of the past can be interpreted only in the light of the signifying systems [and politics] of the present" (TOP 114).

16. The invocation of Gadamer, and in particular his notion of the "fusion of horizons," suggests that convergence may be the implied norm. See, for example, F. R. Ankersmit, "Kantian Narrativism and Beyond" (PT 155-60, 193-97); Michael Ann Holly, "Witnessing an Annunciation" (PT 220-31, esp. 228); and Moxey's discussion of "reception" in POT. But we can still ask for an argument for this view, especially as Gadamer's "fusion" provokes divergent interpretations, only some of which are compatible with the views these theorists otherwise defend. In general, the appeal to Gadamer to defend a notion of subjectivity in art history is prima facie problematic since, in an admittedly different context, he critiques the subjectivization of aesthetics beginning with Kant.

17. The relevance of the "ought" here is to point out that Moxey's account is normative, not just descriptive, and that this normativity needs to be discussed explicitly, I think, if his argument is to be persuasive.

18. At one point, Moxey actually criticizes the notion of fusion in reception aesthetics (TOP 39), but at other times he seems to rely on it, or perhaps on a notion of identity or identification. On the last issue, cf. van Alphen's "Strategies of Identification" (VC 260-71).

19. Cf. Bal's depiction of theory as a "way of interacting with objects" (PT 47).

20. Norman Bryson claims that "reading" or interpretation is "as fundamental an element" in a painting as the paint itself; Looking at the Overlooked, Cambridge, Mass., 1990, 10. I think there is a link between this claim and Holly's argument here that works of art, as historical artifacts, prefigure their own historiographical accounts (VC 350), but I will have to pursue this link elsewhere.

21. It is perhaps in this context that Brian McHale's call for "descriptive poetics," or what he calls mid-range theory, ought to be heeded ("Whatever Happened to Descriptive Poetics," PT 56-65).

22. By contrast, Mark Wigley, in "The Domestication of the House: Deconstruction after Architecture" (DVA 203-27), analyzes, among other things, the role of architecture in Derrida's writing before he explicitly began to discuss it.

23. It is worth noting here that the topic of the 1996 College Art Association annual meeting is precisely this problem of the object in contemporary art history.

24. Particularly in relation to my role as editor of The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (Garland, forthcoming).

25. Another example is D. N. Rodowick's "Impure Mimesis, or the Ends of the Aesthetic" (DVA 96-117), where he discusses the Derridian genealogical critique of the (Kantian) autonomy of aesthetics.

MICHAEL KELLY Department of Philosophy Columbia University New York, N.Y. 10027

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