A World Art History and Its Objects

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A World Art History and Its Objects by David Carrier Review by: Ivan Gaskell The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Winter, 2010), pp. 65-68 Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25622125 . Accessed: 01/04/2014 03:13
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Book Reviews

65
the debates intellectual on rather esoteric; the professional philoso

it easier for him to present the argu might have made ment. The two analogies he presents I found unhelp to experience ful. First, the attempt to get someone a work of art as fitting seems to me to have nothing to ex in common with the attempt to get someone an aspect perience The latter ismerely of the duck-rabbit

He wisely attemptsto illuminatethenotion of right? objectivity, althoughfurther explorationof this point

pher will be unsatisfiedby the number of uncashed latter is an aside on originality (p. 108) and a few
pages more interesting than can be found in the current lit on the topic. Scruton also has some trouble into his dichotomy between shoehorning everything the intentional and the causal. Oddly, for me, this out most checks and promissory notes. Among the the explicit link between art and moral

ity(pp. 130-132), both ofwhich promise something

a case of pictorial representation. the notion of objectivity we require is not Second, that of agreement about colors (pp. 142-143); what we would say to someone who did not (say) perceive a fire engine ests us. The as red is clearly chapter, not the issue that inter is both a

figure (p. 139).

erature

came

obvious

in the chapter on Eros. It seems tome that one can have a fantasy interest for a par ticular embodied is difficult to account for person?it the success of the grandes horizontals ifnot. Nonethe less, we are not exactly overrun with decent, human istic essays on this difficult and important topic, and if no other be grateful

a consideration

to denigrate the subtlety of Scruton's wishing posi is a dichotomy tion, one can anticipate his view. There between interest in the embodied person (the Kan tian individual, who operates in the realm of moral

of "one of the most important ques art and the criticism of art in our tions confronting time: that of the difference, if there is one, between erotic art and pornography" (pp. 158-159). Without

testingground for the key themes of the book and

following

"Art and Eros,"

for that reason should

(and there are others) we to Scruton for having produced it.

Department of Philosophy The Open University
carrier, david. A World Art History and Its Objects. State University Press, 2008,170 pp., Pennsylvania 11 b&w illus., $55.00 cloth. Carrier writes a philosopher is that rare creature, art history. Most who have philosophers on art have been content to remain philoso and Arthur in this book.

DEREK MATRAVERS

to provoke desire). The former is the realm of art and the imagination, the latter the realm of pornog to the former and Boucher the raphy. Titian belongs latter (among strong echoes the odder ironies of the book are the here of the left-leaning and rather un The final chapter, inwhich is given full rein, concerns to beauty. attitudes It be

freedom) and thebody (a fantasyinterest, designed

David who written phers, Danto, Most

Scrutonian Scruton's modern

John Berger). conservatism

culture is in a headlong ways inwhich modern "flight from beauty." The first is in the rejection of beauty in large parts of contemporary artistic production, which Scruton traces to a failure of nerve in the face an attempt to remake the world as though love were not a part of it (p. 178). The sec ond is in the ascendance of kitsch?the result of peo of the transcendent: ple preferring the sensuous

gins by pointing in Greenbergian

(and modernist) out some of the more Modernism

flaws egregious on to two and moves

bent, such and scholar) Ernst Gombrich, both of whom Carrier cites, con their identities as art historians, sistently maintained as Michael Baxandall

art historians

them Richard Wollheim among whose work Carrier uses heavily of a philosophical (also a museum

as simply Scrutonian cultural pessimism (it is rather Leavisite in its denunciations of the modern world); some sentences hit their mark: however, undeniably "it is no accident that the arrival of kitsch on the stage horrors of trench warfare, of the holocaust and

believed in. It is temptingto dismiss this thingtruly

trappings

of belief

to the

as a discipline and a profession. In pursuing his am bition, Carrier has, in a sense, leapt over theWarburg Institute generations and represented by Gombrich to connect with an earlier time when schol Baxandall ars such as Erwin and Ernst Panofksy, Edgar Wind, could move Cassirer freely among wissenschaftlich But Carrier's State Univer publisher, Pennsylvania sity Press, firmly classifies his new book as philoso in both phy, not as art history. It does not even appear lists. Is this fair? Carrier is at his he greatest ease sense and is most au

with philosophy purposefullyavoiding identification

disciplines, includingphilosophy and historyof art.

of historycoincidedwith thehithertounimaginable
the

theprophecy thatkitsch Gulag?all of themfulfilling
is the transformation of the human proclaims, which into a doll, which we cover in one moment being kisses, book and in the next moment tear to shreds" and is in dan find with

thoritative when he turnsto decidedly philosophical
matters?although art and discussing out to define is in no at a loss when its histories. conditions In this book, he sets for a certain kind of art his

(p. 191).
The

aims at two constituencies neither. The common

ger of pleasing

reader will

methods.

art history?so world his tory that scarcely exists?a text is about conditions, and, in the end, premises, for the practice of a range of art-historical predictions To this extent his text is appropriately

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66 The Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism
philosophical, a great deal have and Carrier's further skills carry him analytical art historians who than many to the puzzles arising from ambitions has been enormously argues, European particularism to the view of Europe as As a corrective case, there is much inevitably privileged the Eurasian for regarding landmass plus the entire Mediterranean and east African littoral to be said

he

it clear that fair, for from the outset Carrier makes in which he iswriting no more than a prolegomenon seeks to describe the conditions in which the fu

The titleof thebook might lead some readers to be disappointed by itscontents;yet this would be un

explored address art worldwide.

damaging. a special,

as one cultural unit between about 500 functioning ec of peripheral and 1500, with only a few pockets centricity, such as much of Western (exclud Europe conquista, ing the Iberian peninsula or al-'Istirdad). before the so-called Asia Re In When Was the

some readers may be disappointed that by Further, "world art history" Carrier does not mean the world in its human entirety, but only parts of it: Europe, China, India, and the Islamic world alone. He is clear,

ture writingof a world art history might be feasible.

World (Da Capo, 2008), StewartGordon has argued
area Ibn Battuta that the widely shared cultural norms allowed the mid-fourteenth-century and his of this huge Moroccan and em like to find patronage

though, about his reasons for omitting great tracts of to It would be impractical, he contends, the globe. to each and every human extend the examination and society at present. While admiring his ambition, one can question his choices. respecting his prudence, of art are exercises Car Discussions of power. art history as part of the process rier sees world

Timbuktu toBeijing. Gordon holds ployment from
widely moted who that only the arrival of the Portuguese compromised shared conventions, which until then had pro a degree of social cohesion. The Portuguese,

he contends trade, and conquest, European of art history from [Giorgio] that "the expansion on Tuscan art to our multi Vasari's story focused travel, cultural As narrative seeks

probation. Placing the discipline in the context of

of globalization,

though more

in sorrow

than

in ap

from 1498 into the Indian Ocean journeyed onwards with consequences that were catastroph to the societies ically disruptive they encountered, were such as the giving and ignorant of conventions receiving of robes of honor. They compromised

a

but are while

guided by itsown precepts" (p. 120). This may be so,
the philosopher and the art historian com the extent of the definitional acknowledging at the from societies that the term presents) in the picture from the very be greatest disadvantage

is inseparable from that history. no part of new markets, leaving capitalism so Western art history now the world unexplored, looks to all cultures, interpreting exotic art in ways

its conventions through the exercise of controverting raw power. While his own European acknowledging Eurocentrism (as shared by identity and inevasible in North America and else the European diaspora where), Carrier implicitly subscribes to this Eurasian

systemof which theyknew nothing by ignoringor

worldview by givingprivilege to China, India, and
the Islamic world. Carrier's consideration, vision but is not the result is, in part, of any want of a consequence of his and art history. "The

pelled to acquiesce?Why not place art (to call itsuch
puzzles

to use Antonio the subaltern, exclude ginning? Why term to encompass Gramsci's groups including, but not confined to, indigenous peoples who are at a dis advantage Carrier sequences to those exercising is far from alone power? in describing the con

of both philosophy conception have different and the art historians philosophers "The philosophers seek a com he writes. goals," [prop pletely general definition, while the historians

want to explain the relationship erly, art historians] time lines" of successive works of art on the various art ask, "What is art?" whereas as "more characterizes Carrier is Chinese art? That art? What is, insofar is as

(p. 109). Philosophers historians pose what

of globalization Jack Goody anthropologist spect of the character

for historical makes

study. The a similar case in re his India, owing to the tech tyranny,

What questions": parochial is Islamic Indian art? What artists make

contends Press, 2006). He and the Islamic world?has insidious nological pacity Eurocentrism, rise of theWest to perceived

toryinThe TheftofHistory (CambridgeUniversity
that Asia?China, been traduced to which according was ordained by a lack of ca Eastern sloth and

of an entirely Eurocentric

to other art, notably art by responding self in an at least partially that of their predecessors and inno contained system of imitation, emulation, such system within vation, each any given society should one

amyth effectively exposed byEdward Said inOrien talism (Vintage, 1978). Goody unmasks threegreat
Needham, "thieves" Nor from

owing

of a timeline: be comprehensible by means for Chinese for European art, yet art, another for Islamic for Indian art, and yet another another art. These timelines are reductions of, or can be elab orated to produce, necessarily Western-style causal

scholars?Joseph twentieth-century Braudel?as and Fernand bert Elias,

narratives. On this account, need art history be anything more feared some thought his than what Arnold Toynbee thing after another"? tory to be, "just one damn is certainly Carrier's but, as far reductive, analysis

and capitalism, of science, civilization, Asia respec of Eurocentric their concealed application tively, by assumptions. As Carrier acknowledges, and Goody

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Book Reviews
as the Western If we

67
practice adhere of art history goes, to a recent, modern largely West than the painting by Poussin (an artist on whose work has written illuminatingly). The relative oversignificance that Carrier attaches canonical Western painters emerges fully in the thought exper that constitutes the finale of the book. Here notes that, thanks to a Chinese "we invention), of Nicolas of so-called

justifiable. ern notion Immanuel

Carrier

later seventeenth

of a hierarchy

Kant) at the top, it would tive art, with painting be diffi cult to refute the claim that until the recent past art on a series of such timelines practice (a proceeded each far larger number in isolation than Carrier or near claim of course), discusses, isolation from the other.

of media (in play since the coalesced century, subsequently by that places fine art before decora

to the works iment Carrier Yuchang

such as Poussin

(Carrier's account satisfactory

In this case, Carrier's ence in kind between happens

traditions, which occur throughout when previously parallel

is a differ that "[t]here occasional between exchanges history, and what time lines inter

paintings.

to such a hierarchy, and in consequence adduce nu merous the condition of isolation applied exceptions, to societies in contact with one tradition suspect. under blinders, begins another, to look pursuing

we do not subscribe sect" (p. 41) is plausible; but, if

What had puzzled the earlier European the relationship of these pictures to commentators, his scenes of pagan mythology and classical history, now becomes clear thanks to Yuchang's inspired of their affinity with Chinese recognition landscapes"

scholar, Ding a finally have Poussin's landscape

European

distinctly

the spread of blue-and-white from China to ceramics to Western and the at Persia, and eventually Europe, tendant search for the secret of porcelain, entail the intersection Carrier's of the art history timelines of all four of and the Is societies?Europe, a hugely lamic world?in China, India,

notion of artistic hi By relying on an outmoded to give enough weight to a erarchy, Carrier neglects broad range of visual cultural exchange. For instance,

Attractive

on until European discourse art is and non-European fully equi on discourse tably complemented by non-European not only non-European art but on European art, too. and as this notion cultural on a mutual may

of a world

(pp. 147-148). Carrier isperceptively making theseri ous point that we shallnot be able to speak properly
art history

it fails to take parities

as it is be, postulated that Carrier advocates, respect into account both the fatal power dis

other hominids

societies and social groups among artmaking societies and social groups) and (that is, all human the sheer longevity of human existence. Humans and have made aesthetically unimaginably charged arti long time. Consider, likely nonfunctional

facts for an almost hand

way. Carrier consequential contacts underestimates and responses consistently among these societies, I suspect largely because they occur in visual rather than textual terms: that is, mem bers of these societies may have known a wide range of each other's visual products, but not each other's writings about them. The worlds of artworks societies lows. He carpets were makes far more much and other intertwined artifacts in these al of

for example, the symmetrical, axes produced by Homo tus, and Homo

ago, discussed The mere thousand very "parochial" this context. The

erec ergaster, Homo up to 1.4 million years heidelbergensis Kohn and Steven Mithen. by Marek years of pan-Eurasian mutual

than Carrier in Europe

of the exoticism

from the Islamic world, and their in depiction European paintings, but does not fully take into ac count their actual use, and even their commission. In Bell gave the Girdlers' Company (one of which guilds and livery companies), a monumental he had been master, floral and armo rial carpet that he had commissioned from weavers in Lahore, then in the Mughal It remains in Empire. the possession of the company. Such an object was de conceived, inherently cross-cultural, Is signed, and used differently from contemporary lamic prayer carpets, but sharing in the conventions ofMughal floral carpets no less than in those ofWest ern armorial In the very European representations. same year, in Rome, Gian Maria a Roscioli acquired and remains 1634, Robert of London's

spite his sincere disclaimers regarding the limitations of his preliminary case studies, for such an art history must not only address all humans ever, but also take us beyond what we as human. comfortably recognize are trapped by reliance on the writ Philosophers ten word; so are most art historians. It is no coin cidence written that Carrier commentaries concentrates on visual on societies with art, whether by Gior or Tsung

of Carrier's terms) in of conceiving, let alone challenge a world art producing, history is on a far larger scale than Carrier perhaps dares to acknowledge, even de

cultural intelligibility between 500 and 1500 looks
(to use one

in sixteenth-century gio Vasari Tuscany, In doing so, Carrier ad Ping in fifth-century China. heres to a questionable view of "civilizations," seeing them in essentialist terms, as when he claims "Chi nese culture has a certain distinctive essence" (p. 37) Sickman and Alexander or, when quoting Laurence Soper, The Art and Architecture of China (Yale Uni

du Louvre, Infant Pyrrhus (Musee Paris). As an art is neither more nor less work, the Bell Carpet signif valuable icant, interesting, arresting, or aesthetically

new painting byNicolas Poussin, The Saving of the

of the peoples of the world" (p. 43). This would
come as news to many other peoples, the Pintupi

versity Press, 1971), he claims that "the Chinese pos sess the cultural history of any longest continuous

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68 The Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism
of the Northern or Territory the Hupa and Western of northern Indians Australia, California, of art, he sorts out various puzzles arising from an to create conditions ambition art in which a world

for instance,

Jr., Our Home art historians the case of

to pick two (almost) at random (see Byron Nelson
Forever: The Hupa of North such as Richard Farris in Thompson Mor Howard demonstrated

historymight be possible, includingdistinguishing
between relativism pounding necessarily and pluralism, for instance, pro art without the appreciation of "exotic" the worldview of its creators accepting

ernCalifornia [Howe Brothers, 1994]). As Western
the Yoruba in Nigeria,

Price

phy in that of theYolngu inAustralia, and Sally
for the Suriname Maroons have can have a complex aesthetics the things regarding often not for purely functional purposes, art. Rather and verbally: both visually to Western scholars alone, var than leave definitions ious subaltern visual groups have taken charge of their own mu

(amongmany others), peoples longwithoutwriting

art in relation to the worldview of its cre European to the project ators). This book is a necessary preface a world art his in mind: he, and many others, have tory, but, finally, we must realize who seek to combine philosophy found any thinker. As with

(though the same should hold fortheappreciation of

they make, articulated

might con obliged to work under difficultiesthat
claims

that he, like others art history, is

thatdeal with in institutions cultural interpretation
arts. Prominent Te Papa seums examples are the national Tongarewa, Wellington, with a prominent Maori and New York Columbia, City. A Aotearoa presence, Indian in tribal exam

wholly Carrier

a philosopher, tests his Carrier so he cannot be instances, against particular in that role; as an art historian, comfortable tests his claims against can he be comfortable is only a mild fundamental would-be universals, in that role. Yet such of the challenges art history,

so neither discomfort to cherished

(New Zealand), and the National Washington, Haida sual D.C.,

foretaste

Museum

of the American

assumptions?in

ple is theHaida Heritage Centre at Kaay Llnagaay,
Gwaii, British If we would make Canada. philosophical claims must not claims about vi

and worldview philosophy, Carrier would join David inevitably face.

those who generally?that in his great venture must

art, those only be generally true, true in all possible worlds, but also true in real in Arnhem such as those of the Yolngu societies, no less than in Haida and the Haida Gwaii, Land, Flo inMing China, Mughal India, and Renaissance rence. They must be true not only today, but also that as far as before and each yesterday yesterday,

IVAN GASKELL
Harvard Harvard Art Museum University peter. The Philosophy of Literature. and Department of History

lamarque,

Maiden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008, xi+ 329 pp., $84.95 cloth,$34.95 paper.

as taking many of the stepsCarrier eloquently and
we can take others yet more radi rightly proposes, in globalization, but can cal. We need not acquiesce centers tween no less than oppositions be and peripheries, cul civilizations and primitive sophisticated can question the ascription of superiority tures. We

1.4 million

years

ago. No wonder

we blench.

As well

Peter

resist itspower inequalities by rejectingnotions of

of the preoccupations exploration this book the field. What makes vision

knows a lot, and he has managed Lamarque into this excel to put a great deal of what he knows is a survey lent book. The Philosophy of Literature text, and it offers an engaging and strikingly original

of and prospects so successful is the

over agrarian peoples, agrarian over hunter over nomadic even settled peoples. gatherer peoples, to see can make attempts imaginative Europeans cultural disadvantage at an unfamiliar themselves to urban to indigenous dependence and his surviving of in situations for instance peoples, de Vaca Cabeza such as Alvar Nunez companions experienced between

of of literature Lamarque of the philosophy fers the reader. In Lamarque's hands, the philosophy than just the philosophy of literature is much more to say about poetry and of fiction; it has as much drama as it does

and unafraid criticism by literary alyticyet informed of Continental philosophy.Trie philosophy of litera
ture suddenly feels richer, more inclusive, take will naturally Readers adventurous. to be among the most and more issue with

the novel;

and

it is confidently

an

Mexico between 1528 and Florida and northwest 1536 (seeAndres Resendez, A Land So Strange:The ofCabeza de Vaca [BasicBooks, 2007]). Epic Journey
Such exercises are only Europeans, of the Islamic world habitants remind not salutary and might but also Chinese, Indians, and in that their ways of do and artwriting?are artmaking ing things?including not the only ways, nor invariably the best. and admirably David Carrier has characteristically set himself a heroic and

book

will also find thisor thatclaim,but they Lamarque's
and intel sophisticated to contemporary philosophical

ligent contributions aesthetics.

moon,

task, like Raven stealing the sun, stars, or Herakles fulfilling the tasks set As one of our most deft philosophers by Eurystheus.

ex titles are not what one would is that the chapter one to the is not a book that introduces pect. This of itsmost popular subject just by offering overviews is no chapter on the para and debates. There puzzles and intention, literature dox of fiction, interpretation and morality, or whatever other debates we tend

one noticeswhen opening thebook The first thing

to

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