[patient religionists, there's a methodological point --or points-- here
which, i believe, is/are actually relevant to your interests.  the Art History
subject matter is only intended to be paradigmatic.  search for the Mystical
Sense.  and prey unceasingly.]

[log in to unmask] wrote:

>For those of you who don't remember Art History 101, or never took such 
a class, these are the conventional divisions usually used by art historians.
Early Medieval --deposition of last Roman emperor to c. 1000
Romanesque --c. 1000-1137
Gothic --c. 1137-1400


Dear Pat,

well, it seems you have the advantage on me.  

i never took AH 101, though i did manage to make it into AH graduate school
with out it (what can i say, man? it was the sixties and all 
things were possible; and it was all very far out, as best i can remember).

and, it has never before, *ever*, occurred to me to read the 88 pages 
H.W. Janson (_History of Art: A Survey of the Major Visual Arts from the Dawn
of History to the Present Day_, pp. 195-283) devotes to "The Middle Ages"
(excluding the 9 page section on "Islamic Art"); though i did meet and hear a
lecture by the Great Man 35 years ago (something about "Riders in the Clouds"
in Renaissance paintings --i thought it was a pretty good talk).

much less to read, mark and inwardly digest the whole 10 pages he devotes to
[*All* of] Gothic Architecture in France, which happens to begin with 
this particular pedagogical jewel: "The origin of no previous style can 
be pinpointed as exactly as that of Gothic.  It was born between 1137 and 1144
in the rebuilding, by Abbot Suger, of the royal Abbey Church of St.-Denis just
outside the city of Paris."

and, sure enough, in the next few hundred words devoted to Early Gothic (which
term Janson doesn't use), we are led to believe that the "new" style sucked
itself out of its own fingers, with a little help from St. Suger: "The
Ile-de-France had failed to develop a Romanesque tradition of its own [SIC!!
--St. Germain-des-Près??], so that Suger --as he himself tells us-- had to
bring together artisans from many different regions for his projects."

Janson's textbook (first appeared in 1962 and still in use) is surely far and
away the most widely disseminated (albeit under duress) of all Art Hysterical
books ever, and its influence on molding the pliable young minds of --now--
three or four generations of hapless undergraduates cannot be exagerated.

a *very* sucessful book indeed.

but, alas, it's a *Crock*, and if you *literally* believe it (or any 
other sweeping generalisation to be found in *any* survey text, no matter what
the subject), you been Snookered, Big Time, and i got a nice bridge over the
Wabash River here in sunny Southern Indiana that you need to 
buy, toot sweet.

history moves on --even Art History-- and, having writ, rewrites itself anew.

>I now address those colleagues who are seething with postmodernist scorn

not me; shucks, i don't even *believe* in postmodrenism.

>these labels are idiotic or arbitrary
>In short, art historical style names are labels of convenience, not to 
be taken literally and not to be taken too seriously. 

then don't.

above all, don't let them lead you around by the nose, when you're trying to
understand the origins of something as complex as "Gothic" style.

>What do you intend to do with the replacement names after you've worked them
out? 

free myself from the tyrany of the construct which the terms imposes on 
my modes of thought.

for instance, Jim Mills' kindly note on the periodic nomenclature of Danish
wall painting, 

>Romanesque style, 1100-1250;  Transitional or Early Gothic, 1250-1350; High
Gothic, 1350-1400; Late Gothic, 1400-1525; Renaissance, 1525-1600

makes *no* sense *whatever* in the context of, say, architecture in the
Ile-de-France in the same period, even though *exactly* the same words 
are used in the latter field to characterize perceived stylistic changes.

but, that's not the point, obviously.

the point is that scholars who are expert in the field (like Jim) have looked
at the mass of monuments before them and tried to make chronological and
stylistic sense out of them, in the course of which they've seen fit to draw
some broad lines of division between what they perceive as fundamental
groupings.

and they've given names to the divisions they perceive, which names have only
a tangential relationship (if any) to similar names used in other areas of
expertise.

now, such periodisation/nomenclatura has some very obvious advantages, 
not the least of which is as a partial solution to the considerable
pedagogical problem of training newcommers to the field.

but those who are on the cutting edge of research in the field must be
eternally vigilant against being tyranized by their own construct, lest they
suffer the same fate as poor ole Baron von Frankenstein.

to take a rather elementary --albeit far-fetched-- example, for instance: say
the periodisation Jim has outlined for us has been around for time 
out of mind and is *universally* & accepted by all scholars working in 
the field (an unlikely possibility, to say the least). 

then a little cluster of churches in a remote region which had not been
thoroughly "excavated" previously is found to yield, under centuries of
whitewash and grime, low and behold, a little stash of paintings which seem
for all the world to diplay all of the accepted characteristics of the style
termed "Transitional or Early Gothic (1250-1350)."

but, this is clearly impossible, because unimpeachable surviving documentary
evidence in the form of an inscription (bare with me, for the sake of the
argument) informs us that the paintings in question were executed during the
time of the great Magnus Magnuson, who held the local episcopal see from 1150
to 1165.

now, what's a poor scholar to do?  

at one extreme he can try and kill the messenger --i.e., impeach the source:
attack the genuineness of the inscription (or of the paintings themselves, or
the existance of the Bishop, or yadda, yadda).

at the other, he can, by an act of supreme will power, summon up sufficient
elasticity of mind to thoroughly re-think all of the myrid assumptions --some
not at all obvious-- on which the old system of groupings was based, in days
of yore, one hundred years ago (when, among other things, the corpus of known
monuments was *much* smaller), and try and fashion a *new* construct, namely
one which takes into account the newly available data *and* allows for the
*vast* number of monuments 
which have been lost --many without even an echo.  

in that case, alors, the "Transitional/Early Gothic" phase may be seen to have
come to Denmark *much* earlier than the traditional 1250 date, the discrepancy
to be explained by the hapenstance of survival.

c?

>>> and how would you english "francigenum"?
>>in the French Style
>Pardon this interruption, but why French Style, rather than Frankish Style;
whats the difference bewteen Frankish and French as
historical/artisitic/cultural adjs.? Isn't French a post Medieval term?
>Noticed in the Dictionary that "francus" in Late Latin also was used to mean
"free"; could there be a double entendre in the name opus francigenum?

certainly could be, i suppose, if you can figure any way that that would make
sense in an architectural context (i can't).

being Latiniacially Challenged, i've always wondered about the form 
there, _francigenum_; what sort of permutation is that, exactly?

i assume that the (single?) text in which the term appears (cf. Franklk) was
13th c. and non-French.

>"in the French Style"
>> Pardon this interruption, but why French Style, rather than Frankish
Style;
>> whats the difference bewteen Frankish and French as
historical/artisitic/cultural adjs.? Isn't French a
>> post Medieval term?
>I don't think Suger thought of himself as Frankish.

off hand, i'm not sure why he would *not* so think.

the capetian kings --including his good buddy Fat Louis and son, Little Louis
(VI & VII for those who prefer modern usage), and all their predecessors and
sucessors -- consistantly styled themselves in their official charters as "Rex
Francorum", which, i submit, can only be englished as "King of the Franks,"
*not* "King of France."   

moreover, in his biography of Fat Louis, in addition to styling the King
thusly, i'm vertually certain that St. Suger refers, repeatedly, to "the
franks," among whom he presumably would count himself.

ditto the author of the "History of the Franks [_Historia Francorum_]
Overseas."

"France" as an entity did not exist, though there was the term _francia_ which
was bandied about by contemporaries.  with hesitation and the eternal hope for
correction, i *believe* that this term refered to, roughly, [modern] France
North of the Loire, and, especially, the "Ile-de-France", i.e., the smallish
"island" more or less under the 
direct control of the capetian monarchs, stretching, roughly, from 
Orleans (or even Bourges, in some interpretaitons) North to, say Laon.

seems to me that it is this latter, _francia_, term which is referenced 
in _opus francigenum_ --i.e., "this work/style [architecture] comes from the
region of _Francia_."   

>With regard to architectural style names, what name would be given to 
the architecture 479-1000 other than pre-Romanesque? 

such a term (pre-Romanesque) implies, not just chronological priority, 
but that, say, Charlemagne's palace chapel at Aachen was, somehow, striving to
be "Romanesque," rather than Justianianic, which is a *lot* closer to the
mark.

>Wasn't much built of wood and hence does not survive? If so, how could anyone
give a name to a style whose appearance is unknown?

the tree makes a sound when it falls, no matter whether the woodsman is there
to hear it or not.

analysing the *nature* of that sound, now that's a bit more difficult without
ears present.

>>opuses.

>opera

ohyeahrite.

and would that be Grand or Grand Ole?

opusae.

best to all from here,

christopher







____________________________________________________________________
Get free email and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1