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The Concept of Object in Contemporary Art
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Using this bit of dialogue from Oscar Wilde as introduction, we propose to demonstrate the pertinence of the hostess’ remark and to show that the “Fin de siècle” really did mark a certain “Fin du globe”, connoting as it does the decline of art, the end of an era and of the eras in which artistic experience, and even experience of the world, was realized in a specific style. It was indeed the end of what we will here call “globe style”.
For a long time the notion of style had a very general significance. The origin of the word can no doubt be traced back to the term stilus, designating the punch that monks used for writing, and also probably an Egyptian etymon signifying a pillar. Through metonymic extensions the name of the instrument (an instrument, nevertheless, used in a highly intellectual activity) and the name of the individual work (but a work of cultural and artistic nature) have been subject to generalization and ultimately designate the specific quality of a phenomenon. Obviously it was necessary that this phenomenon be confirmed and made official through imitation and tradition. As for generalization of the phenomenon of style, its scope has become almost unlimited, taking in all forms of creative activity whether artistic or not, and ultimately almost all beings as long as they have assumed a form hallowed by tradition.
Expanded version of a presentation to the Congrès de la Société Française de Littérature Générale et Comparée, Toulouse, 1987.
1 Cf. George Kubler, The Shape of Time, New Haven and London, 1962; see also the word "stylite".
2 Plato, Laws, 2/657-7 and 7/799 a-b. For the term style and canon in Egyptian art see Jan Assmann, "Viel Stil am Nil", in Gumbrecht/Pfeiffer (eds.), Stil, Frank furt, 1986, pp. 519-537.
3 Hegel, "Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik", in Werke, vol. 13, p. 385 ("Keine Manier zu haben war von jeher die einzig grosse Manier…").
4 Vasari is in fact the first to describe an artistic evolution in stylistic categories and to demonstrate a theoretical interest in the problem.
5 The following pages are greatly indebted to the concepts and analyses of Jür gen Habermas, particularly in his book, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne, Frankfurt, 1985.
6 Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung, Frankfurt, 1971.
7 Schiller, "Über die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen", in Werke, vol. 4, p. 194 ("mit dem vollkommensten aller Kunstwerke, mit dem Bau einer wahren politischen Freiheit zu beschäftigen).
8 Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, Munich, 1973 (1923), p. 82 ("Es gibt keine Mathematik, es gibt nur Mathematiken").
9 Kandinsky, Über das Geistige in der Kunst, Berne, 1952 (1912), p. 130 ("Als letzter abstracter Ausdruck bleibt in jeder Kunst die Zahl").
10 Allusion to the volume of poetry by Verhaeren, Les villes tentaculaires, 1895.
11 Walter Benjamin, "Paris, die Hauptstadt des XX. Jahrhunderts", and also "Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire", in W. Benjamin, Illuminationen, Frankfurt, 1980, pp. 170-230.
12 Leo Spitzer, Classical and Christian "Ideas" of World Harmony: Prolegome na to an Interpretation of the Word "Stimmung", (ed.) Anna Gabrielle Hatcher, Baltimore, 1986.
13 In my book Das Bild in der Lyrik des Jugendstils, Frankfurt, 1983, I attempt ed to explain and interpret this artistic picture more fully, and at the same time the picture of fin-de-siècle existence. See especially pp. 96-119.
14 Note that the principal texts in this discussion, today little known, will appear in a large anthology: Peter Por, Sandor Radnoti (eds.), Stilepoche: Theorie und Diskussion. Eine interdisziplinäre Anthologie von Winckelmann bis heute, Frank furt, Peter Lang Verlag, 1989.
15 Diderot, "Salon de 1767", in Oeuvres Complètes, Paris, 1876, tome XI, p. 103.
16 A recent very important article is the exception: Ursula Link-Heer, "Maniera Überlegungen zur Konkurrenz von Manier und Stil", in Gumbrecht/Pfeiffer, op. cit., pp. 93-114.
17 Erwin Panofsky, Idea, Hamburg, 1924.
18 Georg Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein, Berlin, 1923. Lukács presented his idea in the article "Klassenbewusstsein", published for the first time in 1920 and revised for the book.
19 See Will Grohmann, Klee, Zurich, 1952, p. 312. "Der ‘Engel im Werden' (1934) ist kein Engel, sondern eine Genesis, vielleicht auch, wie Klee vor dem Bild er klärte, der Ort der Entstehung". This definition is certainly just as true for the preced ing "Angels", especially in light of Klee's continuous meditations on the problem of perspective. Let us recall once again the special significance that these "Angels" had for Walter Benjamin throughout his life.
20 Kandinsky, Über das Geistige, p. 36 ("Geistige Wendung");1 p. 85 ("Gesetze der inneren Notwendigkeit"); p. 143 ("Epoche des grossen Geistigen").
21 Arnold Schönberg, Stil und Gedanke, Aufsätze zur Musik, Frankfurt, 1976, p. 33 ("Ich selbst betrachte die Totalität eines Stückes als den Gedanken: den Gedanken den sein Schöpfer darstellen wollte.") (1930).
22 See, ex negativo, Hermann Broch who introduced a general condemnation of the Art Nouveau period with an obviously irritated condemnation of its architec ture. "Hofmannsthal und seine Zeit", in Schriften zur Literatur I, Frankfurt, 1975, pp. 285-336. Similarly in his novel Die Schlafwandler, Frankfurt, 1978, where he goes even further and where he rejects, along with false architecture, false existence, experienced in style and as style (see pp. 418-475).
23 It is well known that Kandinsky and Klee developed a theory of elementary forms. The details of their theories are quite different, but the fundamental hypothesis is identical: the existence of forms and of elementary values.
24 Thomas Mann himself pointed out the musical inspiration of his novel: Ein führung in den Zauberberg. In Gesammelte Werke, Stuttgart, 1974; vol. XI, pp. 602-617.
25 It is quite characteristic that one of the latest attempts at a rehabilitation of the concept of style, proposed by George Kubler, proceeds by means of a radical reductionism. Kubler defines style on the basis of archaeological resources. In his conception style is a serial rule of spatial visualization; only one more step is need ed to define style as a pure serial instruction. See George Kubler, The Shape…, op. cit., and also, "Towards a Reductive Theory of Visual Style", in Berel Lang (ed.), The Concept of Style, Pennsylvania 1979, pp. 119-129.
26 The fact that Max Bill wrote the very favorable preface to the new edition of Kandinsky's works is certainly significant for the problem and basis common to the two solutions. See Kandinsky, Über das Geistige, pp. 5-16.
27 Jean-François Lyotard, La Condition postmoderne, Paris, 1979; Jean Baudril lard, Le Système des objets, Paris, 1968, p. 38.
28 André Breton, "Situation surréaliste de l'objet", lecture delivered 29 March 1935 in Prague; in "André Breton: Position politique du surréalisme", La Biblio thèque Volante No. 2, May 1971, pp. 24-25.
29 Aragon, "L'Art Nouveau d'où je suis", in Roger H. Guerrand, L ‘art nouveau en Europe, Paris, 1965, p. XIX.
30 Werner Hofmann has proven with extraordinary pertinence the usefulness and the correctness of this concept. See his many theoretical and historical works on the period, including the volume Gegenstimmer, Frankfurt, 1979, pp. 9-113, a sort of sovereign and already distant adieu to a scientific theme that had marked him for 25 years.
31 It is with this question that Lang concludes his own contribution, the last in the volume that he also edited. See Berel Lang, The Concept…, op. cit., p. 238.
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