Monday, September 24, 2007
Section 2 / Andrew Lam
‘FAULT LINES’ AND ‘HISTORICITY’
Over centuries, the western world witnessed a period of exponential growth in the discipline of art historical writing. Giogrio Vasari, Karel van Mander, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Jacob Burckhardt, Giovanni Morelli, Heinrich Wolffin, Paul Frankl, Roger Fry, Erwin Panofsky, Arnold Hauser, Susan Sontag, E. H. Gombrich, William Fagg, T. J. Clark, Michael Baldwin, Hans Belting… emerged one by one. Since 1980s, the paradigm of object-based research has been shifting to a more problem-based contextual study. Some historians announce that art history comes to an end. (1)
THE GEOLOGICAL TERM ‘FAULT LINES’ IS USED HERE TO DESCRIBE DISPLACEMENTS AND DISCONTINUITIES OF STRATA IN A PLATEAU/ BODY OF WRITING, WHICH CAN FUNCTION TO CONNECT HISTORY, ART, AND ART-HISTORICAL WRITING. (2)
Throughout the ages, ‘fault lines’ within the writings of art, art history and general history has naturally existed and it is doubtful whether there is any ‘perfect’ or ‘scientific’ model of art-historical writing. What i query here, however, is the way interpretation is made and the way art history is interpreted/ related to general history, or the way it contributed to ‘The Idea of History’, by using object of art to illustrate humanity history.
‘FAULT LINES’ APPEARS ON THE PROFESSION AND STRUCTURE OF ART HISTORY.
Can art historian restore the many missing social dimensions of art? Art historian is not a ‘social worker’, spending days and nights analyzing art’s social circumstances of production. Art historian is neither a professor of all things, nor a person well trained in the realm of cultural theory. Since 1980s, the pedagogy of cultural study has long replaced context-based art-historical writing, and the magnetic power of cultural criticism has been a shaping force and a key public voice of society. It seems that editors of cultural column have long put aside the authentic or traditional art-historical writing!
Historical study of Neolithic art is seemingly more ‘objective’, since research conducted is more factual and verifiable. Very often, contemporary historian founds facts in a ‘closed’ situation where he/ she might keep a distance from the artist(s) or reality. Since contemporary history is best- and- well known to the public, new interpretation or assumption about art is meant to be used and that would displace/ deflect the truth and reality. The more ‘interpretative’ and ‘framing’ in writing, the more ‘subjective’ in contemporary history...
‘FAULT LINES’ HAS NO VALUE?
Contemporary art in Hong Kong can signify and name a collective value (i.e. expression of an identity) and is a speaking subject, due to the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 and the West Kowloon Cultural District issue. Art history, however, is not a speaking subject and in a traditional sense, should not embody personal, political, or commercial value. Nowadays, art history is under threat; it is being assimilated by new historiography and cultural studies. Art history (a term already implies a broader meaning than the more object-based ‘history of art’) is now founded from the influences of feminism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, philosophy, post-Marxist criticism, post-structuralism and socio-political ideas. New ideas are borrowed from theatre, literature, linguistic, semiotics and the like. Art history is no longer an attribution study and is no longer about style (3), dating, authenticity, rarity, reconstruction, forgery discern, rediscovery of forgotten artists... It is no longer a focus on art’s very systems of representation and social contexts. In an era of intellectual expansion and aesthetic dwindling, traditional art history is imbue with hybrid and eccentric disciplines. IT SHOULD BE THE POWER OF ‘FAULT LINE’, WHICH CAN EXPLORE AND DISPLACE THE TRADITIONAL INTELLIGENCE/ LOGIC OF AESTHETIC, AESTHETIC TRAJECTORIES AND CULTURAL TRAJECTORIES BY PRESENTING/ REVEALING THE WHOLE STRATA AND CONCEPTION OF HISTORICAL FACT. That is a new ‘value’ that art history can ‘name’ and develop!
CONCEALED BY STREAMS AND FORESTS, ‘FAULT LINES’ IS HARDLY VISIBLE IN A LOCAL TERRAINE. IT IS MORE ‘VISIBLE’ FROM A SATELLITE.
Local ‘provocative’ and ‘forgotten’ artists such as Yan Lei (i.e. Artist of Documenta XII), Chan Kwok Yan (Times: First Person of Graffiti in Asia), Paul Chan, Tse Suk Nei, Pan Xing Lei, Cheong Chi Ping, Happening Group and even “The King of Kowloon” (Artist of the Venice Biennial 2003) are more internationally recognized rather than being accepted in a small, sectorized circle.
THE ‘FAULT LINES’ OR DOUCUMENTATION OF VERBAL/ NON-VISUAL EXPERIENCE, SIMILAR TO THE TANGENT EXISTING IN PARTIAL RELATION TO THE PLATEAU/ WHOLENESS OF HISTORY OR HUMANITY STUDY, HAS SAME SIGNIFICANCE TO PUBLISHED LITERATURE.
Since art history is no longer an attribution research, the most ‘reliable’ aspect of contemporary art history could be the verbal experience and the reality re-constructed/ collected during the course of an interview. It could be the true ‘Oral History’ which is definitely more objective than partial interpretation/ documentation in art-historical writing, and which obscures the boundary between the object-based art history and non-problem-based art criticism here. Interview and audio documentation conducted by ‘Fung Man Yee/ Boundary’, ‘Cultural Coolies/ The Hong Kong Art Center’ and ‘Claire Hsu/ Asia Art Archive’ is certainly worthwhile and we also need William Fulong’s Audio Arts or similar type of documentary magazine in Hong Kong for the collection and publication of verbal experience in the process of artistic production and reception.
THE POTENCY OF ‘FAULT LINES’ COULD BE POSITIVE.
Constructive institutional critique or minority voices are usually being missed or neglected in official historical writings or reports. Ever since The High Court declared that The Hong Kong Arts Development Council’s rejection of James Wong’s application for the curatorship of the Hong Kong exhibition in the 50th Venice Biennial (Visual Arts) was unlawful, amazingly there has been no writing report following up the case and problem displayed by the Council. Even more problematic is that the statutory Council did not report the case to the public. (4) If we look at changing power within art and art history as normal and positive, the process of historical authentication and documentation of contemporary art in Hong Kong should be revealed without impartiality. Interpretation-immersed contemporary art narration is partly a power-played fabrication and partly a re-invented connoisseurship.
‘FAULT LINES’ APPEARS ON HISTORICITY.
Hong Kong is not a historic city, but it is a big story-telling city. Art-historical writings tend to be grand-narrating or story-telling. Historicity (Historical authenticity) embodies ‘factificity’ (factual analysis/ support), ‘objectivity’ (objective attitude/ activity) and ‘scientificity’ (scientific identification/ verification). No monograph records history exactly the same way in all historical dimensions and reality. Only certain aspect of historical reality can be re-presented. The Sheldon Adelson’s 20-billion Venetian Macao (2007), which puts an effort to re-present/ fabricate a ‘complete’ or ‘99%’ Venice in a 21st Century Macao is at all impossible. Historicity makes sense only if the right attitude, language and pedagogy have been taken. Authentic writing of a ‘total’ art history of Hong Kong would not make sense until the material base (i.e. film, oral history and archival materials) of an authentic research is available for public verification. Generalization of fact turns history ‘abstracted’ and ‘suppressed’, but the material base for verification remains unchallenged.
MORE IMPORTANTLY, MODERN HISTORY TELLS THAT SUPPRESSION IN THE FORM OF ABSTRACTION ONLY BRINGS ABOUT ‘RESISTANCE’ OR ALTERNATIVE DISCOURSE. REPORTAGE ON RESISTANCE OR ‘FAULT LINES’ HELPS TO RE-CONSTRUCT THE ‘COMPLETENESS’ AND ‘FACTIFICITY’ OF HISTORY.
‘FAULTS LINES’ HELPS TO REVEAL AND ARGUE WHY ART HISTORICAL WRITING SHOULD BE FOUNDED ON A MORE SOLID BASE OF THEORETICAL AND FACTUAL EVIDENCE. IN THE PROCESS OF CITY-MAKING, IT IS IMPORTANT TO HAVE ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN (ARCHITECT) TO BUILD VISION ON VENICE, RATHER THAN A ‘VENETIAN’ BUILDING ON OLD KNOWLEDGE. HISTORY WRITING IS NOT A PURE SCIENCE, BUT IT MUST BE ‘OBJECTIVE’! (5)
FOOTNOTES:
1. Please refer to Hans Belting “The End of the History of Art (1984)”, in Eric Femie edit., Art Hstory and Its Methods. London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 1995, p. 291-295. The view is also mentioned in Chapter 17, Vernon Hyde Minor, Art History’s History. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc. 1994, p. 204, “Consequences for Art History”.
2. Gilane Tawadros’ s curatorial project “Fault Lines” for the Venice Biennial 2003 revealed African art’s emerging landscape after globalization. This essay can be viewed as an extension of Gilane’s creative approach with a new dimension looking at problems of art history.
3. Art history is no longer about style; but Henich Wollflin’s Principles of Art History should be conceived as ‘revolutionary’ as modern art’s total dissociation with religion in the early 20th century. He recognized and elevated the importance of ‘style’ in formal analysis over iconographical and contextual disciplines. ‘Fault Lines’ or oral history in art-historical writing could be deemed as important as past pedagogies of learning/ researching in an era of media and communicative culture.
4. For the historical details and verdict, please refer to the hyperlink of The High Court: Case No. HCAL 57/2003.
5. Please review the whole book of Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1989.
Over centuries, the western world witnessed a period of exponential growth in the discipline of art historical writing. Giogrio Vasari, Karel van Mander, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Jacob Burckhardt, Giovanni Morelli, Heinrich Wolffin, Paul Frankl, Roger Fry, Erwin Panofsky, Arnold Hauser, Susan Sontag, E. H. Gombrich, William Fagg, T. J. Clark, Michael Baldwin, Hans Belting… emerged one by one. Since 1980s, the paradigm of object-based research has been shifting to a more problem-based contextual study. Some historians announce that art history comes to an end. (1)
THE GEOLOGICAL TERM ‘FAULT LINES’ IS USED HERE TO DESCRIBE DISPLACEMENTS AND DISCONTINUITIES OF STRATA IN A PLATEAU/ BODY OF WRITING, WHICH CAN FUNCTION TO CONNECT HISTORY, ART, AND ART-HISTORICAL WRITING. (2)
Throughout the ages, ‘fault lines’ within the writings of art, art history and general history has naturally existed and it is doubtful whether there is any ‘perfect’ or ‘scientific’ model of art-historical writing. What i query here, however, is the way interpretation is made and the way art history is interpreted/ related to general history, or the way it contributed to ‘The Idea of History’, by using object of art to illustrate humanity history.
‘FAULT LINES’ APPEARS ON THE PROFESSION AND STRUCTURE OF ART HISTORY.
Can art historian restore the many missing social dimensions of art? Art historian is not a ‘social worker’, spending days and nights analyzing art’s social circumstances of production. Art historian is neither a professor of all things, nor a person well trained in the realm of cultural theory. Since 1980s, the pedagogy of cultural study has long replaced context-based art-historical writing, and the magnetic power of cultural criticism has been a shaping force and a key public voice of society. It seems that editors of cultural column have long put aside the authentic or traditional art-historical writing!
Historical study of Neolithic art is seemingly more ‘objective’, since research conducted is more factual and verifiable. Very often, contemporary historian founds facts in a ‘closed’ situation where he/ she might keep a distance from the artist(s) or reality. Since contemporary history is best- and- well known to the public, new interpretation or assumption about art is meant to be used and that would displace/ deflect the truth and reality. The more ‘interpretative’ and ‘framing’ in writing, the more ‘subjective’ in contemporary history...
‘FAULT LINES’ HAS NO VALUE?
Contemporary art in Hong Kong can signify and name a collective value (i.e. expression of an identity) and is a speaking subject, due to the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 and the West Kowloon Cultural District issue. Art history, however, is not a speaking subject and in a traditional sense, should not embody personal, political, or commercial value. Nowadays, art history is under threat; it is being assimilated by new historiography and cultural studies. Art history (a term already implies a broader meaning than the more object-based ‘history of art’) is now founded from the influences of feminism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, philosophy, post-Marxist criticism, post-structuralism and socio-political ideas. New ideas are borrowed from theatre, literature, linguistic, semiotics and the like. Art history is no longer an attribution study and is no longer about style (3), dating, authenticity, rarity, reconstruction, forgery discern, rediscovery of forgotten artists... It is no longer a focus on art’s very systems of representation and social contexts. In an era of intellectual expansion and aesthetic dwindling, traditional art history is imbue with hybrid and eccentric disciplines. IT SHOULD BE THE POWER OF ‘FAULT LINE’, WHICH CAN EXPLORE AND DISPLACE THE TRADITIONAL INTELLIGENCE/ LOGIC OF AESTHETIC, AESTHETIC TRAJECTORIES AND CULTURAL TRAJECTORIES BY PRESENTING/ REVEALING THE WHOLE STRATA AND CONCEPTION OF HISTORICAL FACT. That is a new ‘value’ that art history can ‘name’ and develop!
CONCEALED BY STREAMS AND FORESTS, ‘FAULT LINES’ IS HARDLY VISIBLE IN A LOCAL TERRAINE. IT IS MORE ‘VISIBLE’ FROM A SATELLITE.
Local ‘provocative’ and ‘forgotten’ artists such as Yan Lei (i.e. Artist of Documenta XII), Chan Kwok Yan (Times: First Person of Graffiti in Asia), Paul Chan, Tse Suk Nei, Pan Xing Lei, Cheong Chi Ping, Happening Group and even “The King of Kowloon” (Artist of the Venice Biennial 2003) are more internationally recognized rather than being accepted in a small, sectorized circle.
THE ‘FAULT LINES’ OR DOUCUMENTATION OF VERBAL/ NON-VISUAL EXPERIENCE, SIMILAR TO THE TANGENT EXISTING IN PARTIAL RELATION TO THE PLATEAU/ WHOLENESS OF HISTORY OR HUMANITY STUDY, HAS SAME SIGNIFICANCE TO PUBLISHED LITERATURE.
Since art history is no longer an attribution research, the most ‘reliable’ aspect of contemporary art history could be the verbal experience and the reality re-constructed/ collected during the course of an interview. It could be the true ‘Oral History’ which is definitely more objective than partial interpretation/ documentation in art-historical writing, and which obscures the boundary between the object-based art history and non-problem-based art criticism here. Interview and audio documentation conducted by ‘Fung Man Yee/ Boundary’, ‘Cultural Coolies/ The Hong Kong Art Center’ and ‘Claire Hsu/ Asia Art Archive’ is certainly worthwhile and we also need William Fulong’s Audio Arts or similar type of documentary magazine in Hong Kong for the collection and publication of verbal experience in the process of artistic production and reception.
THE POTENCY OF ‘FAULT LINES’ COULD BE POSITIVE.
Constructive institutional critique or minority voices are usually being missed or neglected in official historical writings or reports. Ever since The High Court declared that The Hong Kong Arts Development Council’s rejection of James Wong’s application for the curatorship of the Hong Kong exhibition in the 50th Venice Biennial (Visual Arts) was unlawful, amazingly there has been no writing report following up the case and problem displayed by the Council. Even more problematic is that the statutory Council did not report the case to the public. (4) If we look at changing power within art and art history as normal and positive, the process of historical authentication and documentation of contemporary art in Hong Kong should be revealed without impartiality. Interpretation-immersed contemporary art narration is partly a power-played fabrication and partly a re-invented connoisseurship.
‘FAULT LINES’ APPEARS ON HISTORICITY.
Hong Kong is not a historic city, but it is a big story-telling city. Art-historical writings tend to be grand-narrating or story-telling. Historicity (Historical authenticity) embodies ‘factificity’ (factual analysis/ support), ‘objectivity’ (objective attitude/ activity) and ‘scientificity’ (scientific identification/ verification). No monograph records history exactly the same way in all historical dimensions and reality. Only certain aspect of historical reality can be re-presented. The Sheldon Adelson’s 20-billion Venetian Macao (2007), which puts an effort to re-present/ fabricate a ‘complete’ or ‘99%’ Venice in a 21st Century Macao is at all impossible. Historicity makes sense only if the right attitude, language and pedagogy have been taken. Authentic writing of a ‘total’ art history of Hong Kong would not make sense until the material base (i.e. film, oral history and archival materials) of an authentic research is available for public verification. Generalization of fact turns history ‘abstracted’ and ‘suppressed’, but the material base for verification remains unchallenged.
MORE IMPORTANTLY, MODERN HISTORY TELLS THAT SUPPRESSION IN THE FORM OF ABSTRACTION ONLY BRINGS ABOUT ‘RESISTANCE’ OR ALTERNATIVE DISCOURSE. REPORTAGE ON RESISTANCE OR ‘FAULT LINES’ HELPS TO RE-CONSTRUCT THE ‘COMPLETENESS’ AND ‘FACTIFICITY’ OF HISTORY.
‘FAULTS LINES’ HELPS TO REVEAL AND ARGUE WHY ART HISTORICAL WRITING SHOULD BE FOUNDED ON A MORE SOLID BASE OF THEORETICAL AND FACTUAL EVIDENCE. IN THE PROCESS OF CITY-MAKING, IT IS IMPORTANT TO HAVE ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN (ARCHITECT) TO BUILD VISION ON VENICE, RATHER THAN A ‘VENETIAN’ BUILDING ON OLD KNOWLEDGE. HISTORY WRITING IS NOT A PURE SCIENCE, BUT IT MUST BE ‘OBJECTIVE’! (5)
FOOTNOTES:
1. Please refer to Hans Belting “The End of the History of Art (1984)”, in Eric Femie edit., Art Hstory and Its Methods. London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 1995, p. 291-295. The view is also mentioned in Chapter 17, Vernon Hyde Minor, Art History’s History. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc. 1994, p. 204, “Consequences for Art History”.
2. Gilane Tawadros’ s curatorial project “Fault Lines” for the Venice Biennial 2003 revealed African art’s emerging landscape after globalization. This essay can be viewed as an extension of Gilane’s creative approach with a new dimension looking at problems of art history.
3. Art history is no longer about style; but Henich Wollflin’s Principles of Art History should be conceived as ‘revolutionary’ as modern art’s total dissociation with religion in the early 20th century. He recognized and elevated the importance of ‘style’ in formal analysis over iconographical and contextual disciplines. ‘Fault Lines’ or oral history in art-historical writing could be deemed as important as past pedagogies of learning/ researching in an era of media and communicative culture.
4. For the historical details and verdict, please refer to the hyperlink of The High Court: Case No. HCAL 57/2003.
5. Please review the whole book of Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1989.
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