Visual Time: The Image in History

by Keith Moxey

Visual Time offers a rare consideration of the idea of time in art history. Non-Western art histories currently have an unprecedented prominence in the discipline. To what extent are their artistic narratives commensurate with those told about Western art? Does time run at the same speed in all places? Keith Moxey argues that the discipline of art history has been too attached to interpreting works of art based on a teleological categorization—demonstrating how each work influences the next as part of a linear sequence—which he sees as tied to Western notions of modernity. In contrast, he emphasizes how the experience of viewing art creates its own aesthetic time, where the viewer is entranced by the work itself rather than what it represents about the historical moment when it was created. Moxey discusses the art, and writing about the art, of modern and contemporary artists, such as Gerard Sekoto, Thomas Demand, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Cindy Sherman, as well as the sixteenth-century figures Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald, and Hans Holbein. In the process, he addresses the phenomenological turn in the study of the image, its application to the understanding of particular artists, the ways verisimilitude eludes time in both the past and the present, and the role of time in nationalist accounts of the past.

Genres: Art, History

221 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Soledad P · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me demoré mucho en leer este libro, no porque sea malo o aburrido, sino porque plantea preguntas a las que el autor no les da respuesta y eso generó cierto sentimiento de insatisfacción o de algo inconcluso que me dejaba frustrada.

Pero lo terminé y puedo decirles que es un libro muy interesante para los historiadores, no sólo del arte, ya que pone en palestra varios problemas que suelen pasar desapercibidos. Como por ejemplo, la subordinación que tenemos con la línea temporal de la historia del arte europeo. Siempre nos regimos y comparamos con ellos (yo hablo como latinoamericana, pero puede aplicarse a cualquier "colonia") y buscamos las influencias de artistas o estilos europeos cuando hablamos de arte latinoamericano.

Por ejemplo, siempre se dice que como en América no hubo Edad Media y por eso nos faltó vivir una etapa, pero la Edad Media pensada como la de Europa, sin tener en cuenta que los pueblos precolombinos eran muy avanzados para su época y que "su" edad media fue simplemente diferente. O el por qué piezas tribales de África o de la misma América son tratadas como artesanías o un arte más bajo que el europeo. Así que se plantean esas heterocronías temporales. También la asincronía, donde una obra trasciende el tiempo y se transforma en algo nuevo según las interpretaciones de los historiadores, como es el caso de Durero y Grünewald, del que se habla en el libro (un caso muy interesante, por cierto, es el capítulo que más me gustó).

También trata el rol del historiador y su relación con el lenguaje, la interpretación, la objetividad y cómo se ven afectadas las obras que analizamos con ellas. Es la eterna discusión semiológica sobre el símbolo, signo y significante, pero llevada a nuestro campo. Cómo por ejemplo, la interpretación de una obra que hacemos hoy, ¿es válida siendo que la obra fue hecha en otro tiempo, donde regían otros sistemas sociales y el autor vivía otros problemas que ya no son actuales? Y así.

Como dije, este libro plantea todos esos problemas y nos explica diferentes puntos de vista de diversos historiadores, pero el autor no se pronuncia con ninguna respuesta propia.

De todos modos, me pareció super interesante y te deja pensando sobre los diversos criterios de la disciplina (que supongo es la gracia del libro).

[Abby · Rating 2 out of 5]

some really interesting concepts, but needlessly wordy. it reads as though the top priority is reminding readers that they probably aren’t smart enough to understand, anyway. good art writing shouldn’t alienate people.

[Andy]

first two chapters are interesting and though provoking reads. the rest is a sort of rote overview of art criticism of the last century or so. still interesting but a bit of a let down from the intro. worth keeping for the bibliography of art/historical criticism i guess

[javiersioux · Rating 5 out of 5]

Y ahora:
cómo hacer historia del arte
y qué historia
y qué arte.

[Talha C · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Images are endowed anew with iconic, even existential, power ... Their interest cannot be confined to the context of their original cultural situation or within specific historical horizons.” (2013: 78)

One of the remarkable discussions of temporal status of artwork in the book was how in various social settings they are endowed with “secondary agency.” In this view, artworks are temporal-social agents, they work in a trans-temporal plain. This conceptualization does not consider visual items as entities expecting to be perceived but as active monumental forces which surround social spaces calling for certain affects and forms of engagement.

perhaps Bosch’s paintings comes close musicality in the sense it resists momentary perception that comes with givenness of painting to the sight since as one explores the figures and details in his works they overflow the first look without us being able to fix our gaze to a single perspective. Thus appreciation of his work becomes a temporal practice extending over blurred and oversaturated meaning which does not have a closure. In this way one can anachronistically comprehend Bosch’s style as an ironical gesture towards all realisms. “For Barthes, the reality effect he discerns in nineteenth-century French literature is a device by which narrative action can be slowed (say, by meticulous description), so as to more effectively invest the fiction with the attributes of the real” (2013: 58) Here, it is almost as if realist novelists confuse realism with fixation and closure of meaning: by means of extended description one fixes juxtaposed elements to the supposedly one and real set of relationality. Yet Bosch’s compositions radically undermines conditions of possibility of such realizing technique questioning whether real has such presence which can eventually be fully assimilated into artwork. In this sense transcending realism of any meaning-system and making it provincial, Moxey underlines how images, especially by means of its physicality, possess “presence” and even “secondary agency” and that “visual objects are thus alive and capable of assuming an active role in the life of culture.” (2013: 78)