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Classicism as Power Author(s): Henri Zerner Source: Art Journal, Vol. 47, No. 1, The Problem of Classicism: Ideology and Power (Spring,

1988), pp. 35-36Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/776903Accessed: 23-05-2015 11:33 UTC

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Classicism as Power

By Henri Zerner

There are many uses of the words "classical" and "classicism." Each

of us may approve or disapprove of one or the other. What interests me here is as much their diversity-one might even say their incompatibility-as what they have in common.

Art historians understandably wish to be precise in their vocabulary. The term "classical" primarily refers to Greco- Roman antiquity, and it is extended to periods that draw their inspiration from this ancient classical world, especially the Italian Renaissance or the seventeenth century in France.

There has been an effort to refine the use of the term by narrowing its applica- tion. It used to be that all the art of antiquity from Myron to the late Roman Empire was considered classical. As late as the middle of the last century, Dela- croix thought that the art of classical antiquity was a unity:

The antique is always even, serene, complete in its details and of an ensemble which is virtually beyond reproach. One would think that its works were done by a single artist: the nuances of style differ in the various periods, but do not take away from a single antique work that peculiar value which all of them owe to that unity of doctrine, to that tradition of strength with reserve and simplic- ity which the moderns never attained in the arts of design nor perhaps in any of the other arts.1

Today we view the art of Greece and Rome as totally disparate. Historians tend to restrict the classical to the late fifth and early fourth century in Greece and to Roman art of the Augustan peri- od. In Italy, it is only the High Renais- sance that now qualifies, whereas many works of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies are rejected as preclassical, Man- nerist, or "classicizing" rather than properly classical. S. J. Freedberg has gone as far as anyone else towards giv- ing substance and precision to the con- cept of classicism in the case of the Italian Renaissance.2 In the interest of precision, he has narrowed the applica-

tion to the point where there is little material that will fully qualify. Even among the works of Raphael-surely the prototypical classical artist-there are exclusions, like the Borghese Entombment, which appears proto- Mannerist, or even the Transfiguration, which is felt to go beyond the boundaries of the classical.

Despite these efforts, sometimes ex- cessive perhaps, at being precise, the word "classical" tends to escape our control. This is true even within a rather narrow definition, that is, one anchored in the Greek model. We think of Les- cot's facade of the Louvre as a model of French classicism. And indeed, its vocabulary is borrowed from the tradi- tion of Greco-Roman classicism as seen through the Italian Renaissance. Nev- ertheless, the use made of the classical repertory of forms at the Louvre is highly idiosyncratic. In particular, the density of ornament is so great that it no longer serves, as it does in Italian classi- cism, as a way of accenting the architec- tonic organization; the whole facade is, so to say, woven out of the ornamental motifs. In Italy, where the Farnese Pal- ace would be the norm, the Louvre would seem abnormal and therefore not classical. But in France, it was so exten- sively used as a model that it became the most exemplary and consequently "clas- sic" building of the century. We might say that in relation to precedents the Louvre is unclassical, but that later his- tory has made it classical.

The moment one attempts to general- ize the notion of classicism outside a specific historical situation, it becomes even more unmanageable. Attempts at defining such a transhistorical classi- cism are generally unsuccessful and sometimes bizarre, not to say perverse. I once read a list of the features of classi- cism that included "archaism." Now many of us would think of archaism as antithetical to classicism by definition, the archaic being precisely that which precedes a mature or classical phase. The question here is not one of right or wrong-whether archaism is indeed a feature of classicism-but what it is that makes such an unexpected statement

possible. I shall return to this question below.

In the meantime, however, let us turn to the language used to describe mu-

sic, because it helps us to understand the situation. Historians of music use the term "classical" in a reasonably precise manner to refer to the art of the late eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth even if they do not neces- sarily agree on the exact boundaries of the classical style. But most people mean something entirely different by classical music: they mean serious, high- class music if they like it or boring, pretentious music if they prefer rock. Whether it be Palestrina, Bach, Bee- thoven, or Stockhausen, classical music is what belongs to a specific tradition of music as "high art."

Although we do not use the same language in the visual arts, when we step outside the Greco-Roman lineage we tend to extend the term "classical" to the art that is at the top of a hierarchy, any hierarchy. And conversely, to call the art of ancient Greece and its after- maths "classical" is to say that this is the best, the highest art of all-some- thing that was in fact taken for granted over a long period of time.

E.H. Gombrich has criticized Wolfflin on the grounds that although he claimed to establish the Baroque on an equal footing with the classical art of the Renaissance, he really kept the clas- sical as a norm.3 Indeed W1olfflin described the classical in positive terms, whereas for the Baroque he used terms-like instability and absence of frame-that denote a want, and thereby may have betrayed a preference for the classical. This is all very well, but I am struck by the success of W1olfflin's attempt and its impact on later litera- ture. Today Bernini or Caravaggio are considered the equal of any artist. More than that, if we read S.J. Freedberg's account of Caravaggio's work, for instance, it is by no means presented as an anticlassical art. He is explicit about the Supper at Emmaus when he writes: "in the relation of each part to its includ- ing form there is a sense of lucid sequen-

Spring 1988 35

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tiality, and in the whole image a clarity, coherence, and stability of relationship that makes an order of an explicitly classical kind."4

The art of Caravaggio had been despised as crude unartistic realism. In the process of being made the equal of classicism, his baroque style has in fact become a type of classicism. In the end, Wolfflin's effort to revalue this kind of art was so totally successful that it defeated his own main purpose, which was to establish the Baroque and the Classical as polar opposites.

The classical is the ultimate attain- ment, the norm wherever a hierarchy is established or imposed. We may well scavenge through comic strips and decide which are the "great" ones. And when we say that Krazy Kat is a "clas- sic," we may say it tongue-in-cheek and think we are being ironic, but in fact we might as well be in earnest. Indeed, Krazy Kat is a classic. Of course, there is a difference between having estab- lished classics and a concept of classi- cism. But once the classics are estab- lished, the step to classicism is not a very large one. It should not be too difficult to identify a classical phase of the comic strip, and at that point classicism is in place. We are, for instance, ready enough to talk about Mayan art or As- syrian reliefs as classical-which would have greatly puzzled a nineteenth-cen- tury critic. And with these examples in mind, we begin to see how archaism can be thought of as a possible feature of classicism.

One comes to feel that anything can be called classical. The concept of

the classical implies the establishment of a norm, of a hierarchy; and what this takes is power. The connotation of class in the social sense in the word "classi-

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cal" goes a long way back and is as strong as the original one of the class- room-the classics being the great examples proposed to students. As a suprahistorical concept, then, there is no reason to believe that classicism has any meaning beyond this: the art of authori- ty, authoritative art. The power that gives a chosen kind of art this authority can be at its inception, as in the art of Julius II or Louis XIV, but it can also come later, and appropriate a body of art that already exists. Impressionist painting, for instance, whatever its origi- nal status may have been, has become a kind of Park Avenue classicism. And where Brancusi is revered by the domi- nant culture, Cycladic sculpture ap- pears as classical. The content, the forms involved, seems indefinitely ex- tendable. So that if a hieratic and archaic type of art is dominant, there is no reason why it should not be consid- ered classical in the wider sense of the word.

The fact remains that the art of Greece in the fifth century B.C. has been able, in its various aftermaths, to hold authority over long stretches of our cul- ture. If the classical is simply the art that has authority and power, it is strik- ing to what extent a particular type of art has been able to assume this role (Fig. 1). In modern times, in America especially, banks and government build- ings have displayed the columns, capi- tals, and pediments of the Greco-Roman tradition with extraordinary assertive- ness.

Why it is so remains an interesting question. Of course, one reason may be simply the lasting power of authority, and the association of this art with a glorious moment of Greek history. But this is not enough as an explanation because there have been times when the

authority of Greek classicism disap- peared. We need to understand how it could reassert itself. I believe it has to do with the development of a particular kind of naturalism in fifth-century Greece and that this kind of naturalism is able to make one believe that the authority of this art is grounded in nature. Then it should no longer surprise us that such an art would be resurrected under different circumstances. What should be better for a power in place than to make us believe that it is not simply there by an act of force, but that its authority is inscribed in nature her- self? This rhetoric of nature is obviously present in the sculpture and painting of the Greco-Roman tradition, and it was always understood in its architecture as well. It is worth pointing out that in our century the one kind of architecture that was, at least temporarily, able to dis- place the Greco-Roman model-the modernist architecture sometimes called the International Style-makes a comparable claim to being grounded in nature, not as the representation of nature but as the direct result of the nature of the materials and the function of the building. Similarly, insofar as the painting of Mondrian made claims to a new kind of classicism, it was on the ground that it represented the underly- ing principles of nature, if not its appearance.

I would say this: as a descriptive term for specific historical phenomena, classi- cism has become narrower and narrow- er, while as a theoretical tool it has indefinitely expanded. It would be my contention that, as a universal category rather than a specific historical occur- rence, classicism means nothing more than an assertion of authority, of power under whatever form. But the urge to naturalize power has favored certain forms of art, principally the kind of naturalism first developed in ancient Greece, and has time and again restored it to a position of authority.

Notes 1 The Journal of Eugene Delacroix, trans. Wal-

ter Pach, New York, 1961, p. 619.

2 S. J. Freedberg, High Renaissance Painting in Rome and Florence, Cambridge, Mass., 1961, passim.

3 E. H. Gombrich, "Norm and Form: The Stylis- tic Categories of Art History and Their Origins in Renaissance Ideals," in Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, London, 1966, pp. 93-94.

4 S. J. Freedberg, Circa 1600, Cambridge, Mass., 1983, p. 63.

Henri Zerner is Curator of Prints at the Fogg Art Museum. Fig. 1 Advertisement, Hart Schaffner &

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Article Contentsp.35p.36

Issue Table of ContentsArt Journal, Vol. 47, No. 1, Spring, 1988Front Matter [pp.1-62]Editor's StatementThe Problem of Classicism: Ideology and Power [pp.7-9]

The Classic as Realism in Greek Art [pp.10-14]The Muted Other [pp.15-19]The Dialectic of Classicism in Early Imperial China [pp.20-25]Some Questions concerning Classicism in Relation to Chinese Art [pp.26-34]Classicism as Power [pp.35-36]Framing Classical Space [pp.37-41]Museum NewsMayamania: "The Blood of Kings" in Retrospect [pp.42-46]"Rococo to Regency" and "La Grande Manire" [pp.46-49]

Book Reviewsuntitled [pp.49-51]untitled [pp.53-59]

Books and Catalogues Received [pp.61-63]Back Matter