Making Art History in Europe After 1945

Noemi de Haro García, Patricia Mayayo, Jesús Carrillo, Noemi de Haro García, Patricia Mayayo, Jesús Carrillo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351187572
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: European Art

This book analyses the intermeshing of state power and art history in Europe since 1945 and up to the present from a critical, de-centered perspective.

Devoting special attention to European peripheries and to under-researched transnational cultural political initiatives related to the arts implemented after the end of the Second World War, the contributors explore the ways in which this relationship crystallised in specific moments, places, discourses and practices. They make the historic hegemonic centres of the discipline converse with Europe's Southern and Eastern peripheries, from Portugal to Estonia to Greece.

By stressing the margins' point of view this volume rethinks the ideological grounds on which art history and the European Union have been constructed as well as the role played by art and culture in the very concept of 'Europe.'

1
The (Re)makings of Art History and Europe After 1945

Noemi de Haro García, Patricia Mayayo, and Jesús Carrillo

On the night of 11 August 1977 viewers in Spain could choose to watch the film A Touch of Larceny (Guy Hamilton, 1959) on the first channel of the Spanish public television, or the cultural programme Trazos (Strokes) on the second channel. Those (few) who had decided upon Trazos would find its two directors, Paloma Chamorro and Ramón Gómez Redondo, discussing the art courses held between 4 and 16 July at the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo in Santander.¹

If they were loyal viewers of Trazos they would remember that on 6 June, the 1977 edition of the courses had already been presented in Trazos: it had been celebrated as the inauguration of the event’s third epoch which its new director, the art history chair of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Antonio Bonet Correa, wanted to make different to the preceding ones. Above all he wanted it to be different to the second epoch because, even if Bonet did not explicitly say so, that was the one that had taken place during the dictatorship.² Instead of the former sponsorship by the Spanish national radio, from 1977 the courses would depend solely on the university even though this would mean its funds were far more modest. The way in which the issue was discussed in Trazos seemed to suggest that this was the price to pay for independence, as well as the guarantee that the courses’ invited participants would genuinely be interested in contributing to the discussions. Indeed, the serious engagement of its participants, as well as the moderation and restraint of the new epoch of the courses was stressed because all this contrasted with the invitations to the 100 to 200 artists and art critics “to summer in Santander” that had become the tradition for the courses up until then.³

The keywords that stand out in the interventions of Bonet, Simón Marchán, and Francisco Calvo Serraller (who were the three organisers of the courses present in the set of Trazos) are: methodological and scientific rigour, free discussion and debate, ideological pluralism, creativity, and participation. These notions acquire further resonance if we take into account that on 15 June 1977, i.e. the day before this programme was aired, Spaniards had voted in democratic general elections for the first time in 40 years. It is thus not by chance that, after having been to the courses, Chamorro and Gómez Redondo told their viewers that the 1977 edition showed “the democratisation of the courses” and that they thought (it was Paloma Chamorro who said this) that, in the future, this particular edition would become an important reference.⁴ In one of the interviews filmed on site and included in the programme, Simón Marchán stressed that there were opposing views and positions in the courses and that this was something they had looked for “after years of gag and censorship.” He said that there had to be “absolute freedom” so that each one could manifest his own opinions; people “should get used to coexisting with different ideological perspectives, that is logical for a democratic and pluralistic society such as ours.” Reinforcing this idea, the voiceover in the programme expressed that indeed, the democratisation of the courses was evident; in accordance with this, it would outline that dialogue and polemic had been constantly present in the courses.⁵ The courses were announced on other media as well, newspapers such as the newly born El País provided accounts of its contents and stressed that it had created a space for discussion and debate.

As Chamorro had predicted, the heated discussions at the 1977 courses in Santander are among the milestones that the history of art in Spain regularly includes in the accounts of the art of the period. Interestingly, in this part of the story, the main characters are not the artworks or the artists, but art historians and art critics (many of whom were also the authors of publications that first historicised this period and in so doing provided the blueprint for subsequent narrations) and their ideological clashes and disciplinary debates. The presence of this and a few other related episodes of confrontation in the narratives of the history of art seemed to demonstrate that coming to terms with the legacy of the dictatorial past and the democratisation in the field of the arts only required getting rid of the structures and practices that suffocated free debate. Despite the need to work to constantly improve it, everybody seemed to welcome the democratisation of the artistic field and tried to participate. This proved that, as Marchán had said in Trazos, Spanish society and by extension the arts field were already “democratic and pluralistic.”

Some of the aspects that had been stressed in Trazos during the discussions about the 1977 art courses in Santander, namely the importance of fostering pluralistic debate and dialogue and the relationship between such practices and democracy, were among the main characteristics of specific programmes that public television had started to broadcast in that transitional period such as A Fondo, La Clave, or, indeed, Trazos. The relevance of those programmes was later outlined by scholars who considered that they contributed to the rebirth of democracy in Spain.⁶ Others have stressed the actual importance of culture in carrying out and experiencing the transition when they said that it was indeed “lived as culture” by society.⁷ For example, in her studies of the cultural policies of the transition Giulia Quaggio has argued that the party that won the 1977 elections used culture as a governance medium so that the discourses of power were better assimilated and incorporated by individuals.⁸

The way in which the 1977 art courses of the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo were discussed on television and the relationship between this and art historiography in Spain is an example on the one hand of the political role played by the telling and the writing of the history of art in the creation of the democratic identity of the discipline in Spain—and on the other—of the strategic political role played by the cultural field during the Spanish transition.⁹ It is also an example of one of the many concrete and localised ways in which art history and politics were interwoven in Europe after 1945.

This book examines the intermeshing of state power and art history in European countries since the end of the Second World War and up to the present. The fourteen contributors to this volume explore the specific ways in which this relationship and the tensions stemming from it crystallised in specific moments, places, discourses, and practices: from exhibitions to institutions, from cultural policies to the making of proposals aimed at approaching otherwise the research objects, questions, and/or methodologies in the historical study of art.

The spectrum of publications that study the history of art historiography is vast. A number of perspectives, histories, institutions, methodological approaches, problems, concepts, limitations, and potentialities, are the subject of books and articles, specialised journals, and book series.¹⁰ The attention devoted to the critical study of the interrelationships between the writing of art history and state power in 20th-century Europe has tended to focus upon specific countries and totalitarian periods. For example, since the late 1970s art historians writing in German have worked in collectives on research projects and publications to investigate the relationship between art history—its discourses, practitioners, and institutions—and politics in Nazi Germany and the occupied territories.¹¹ Research into the history of Soviet art historiography has also been carried out by groups and projects which focus upon specific countries or topics. Some of the earliest publications that concentrate on this issue started to appear at the beginning of the 21st century. Since then publications have continued to be produced, including some recent books that inquire into the specific rules that applied within socialist art history and how they were interpreted across the Soviet bloc.¹²

It is noteworthy that the study of the relationship between the making of art history and power after 1945 seems to follow the Cold War division as it frequently focuses mainly or solely upon one of the two blocs. It is also striking that this relationship is rarely the object of collective critical analyses in what concerns the periods following totalitarian regimes.¹³ Yet, after the Second World War the arts played a relevant role in cultural diplomacy initiatives aimed at conveying ‘universal,’ ‘democratic’ values. It would also play a crucial part in shaping the complex combination of affinities, rivalries, antagonisms, hegemonies, and influences involved in the dynamics of the Cold War. Furthermore, it would help establish turning points that created a sense of a break with the past, as well as that of a new beginning. In this regard, the states’ reactions to the political upheavals of May 1968; the fall of the dictatorships in Portugal, Greece, and Spain in the 1970s; or the creation of national communities for the states created after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Yugoslav wars (1991–2001), are cases in point. The ways in which the European states dealt with the very intense revision of collective memory in Southern and Eastern Europe that followed and the challenges posed by the need to face the dynamics of globalisation also need to be considered. In summary, it is evident that art and art historical knowledge would continue playing a very relevant role in the (re)construction of Europe after 1945 and up to the present and this complex political period would, no doubt, benefit from a thorough critical analysis. While analysing its own political involvement with difficult pasts is doubtless hard for any discipline,¹⁴ studying its political role in ‘less-difficult’ (and less-distant) periods is perhaps no easy task either.

The international group of scholars who have contributed to this book discuss specific case studies with the aim of starting to draw the spectrum of the role played by art and art historical discourses in legitimising totalitarian regimes as well as their place within the new symbolic order created during and after the transitions to democracy. We are aware of the differences that exist between the concrete forms adopted by the relationship between art historiography and politics over such a long period of time and in very different political, cultural, and geographical contexts. Consequently, each of the chapters will address those differences and specificities while, considered as a whole, the collection of chapters will reveal the existence of points of intersection, common threads, and resonances as well as differences, divergences, and even conflicts. This will contribute to providing a richer and more complex picture of the ways in which art history was ‘made’ after 1945.

In her introduction to the book Making Art History, Elizabeth C. Mansfield reminds us that an institution is essentially a deliberate and recognisable set of organising principles that can manifest themselves in more or less tangible forms. She states that art history is a practice that is “not bound by any single institutional allegiance” and that it “is better understood as a medium for the circulation of ideas—and ideology—throughout contemporary Western culture.” She argues that because of this the institutions with (or against) which art history responds are, therefore, diverse.¹⁵ We could say that it is in this relationship when and where art history is actually and constantly in the making. The investigation of this process and its contingent results requires attending to both the ideas and ideologies that have circulated with the mediation of art history (while at the same time contributing to creating and disseminating an idea of art history itself) as well as to the tangible or intangible forms that have resulted from the relationship between art history and a number of very diverse institutions and institutional discourses: from exhibitions aimed at a wide lay audience, to specialised academic texts.

While opening the field to encompass both the former West and East as well as the diversity existing within each of them, which their names tend to cover, the contributions to this book demonstrate that the making of art history since 1945 has also involved coming to terms with notions lying at the core of the discipline. These include its relationship with nationalism, as well as with ideas that do not seem to easily fit into—or even clash with—the nationalist discourse such as cosmopolitanism or universalism.¹⁶ In close connection with the latter, the search for common principles in the objects studied by art history remains a major problem, for the category of ‘art’ itself has deeply Eurocentric connotations whilst also bearing the potential of being understood as a human universal.¹⁷ As will become clear in the analysis provided by several of the chapters included in this book, the ways in which this universal character was called upon and consciously or unconsciously interpreted, understood, and used, still remains complex and problematic.¹⁸

Several chapters in this book participate in the renewed interest of recent art historical scholarship in the study of the different forms adopted by the ‘medium’ of the exhibition. It is obvious that making art history through the spatial disposition of works involves some challenges that are different to those posed by doing so in a written form. Of course, this does not mean that engaging in one or the other medium automatically produces a more conventional or, conversely, a more innovative or even alternative art history. Furthermore, it does not mean that both media delimitate disconnected worlds either. For example, whereas the authors writing in the book The Two Art Histories: The Museum and the University acknowledged the differences between the art historical practices taking place in each of these institutions, many also stressed the interconnections existing between the two despite being shaped by different organising principles.¹⁹ The essential role of exhibitions in the (re)w...