Partisan Canons

by Anna Brzyski (Editor)

Whether it is being studied or critiqued, the art canon is usually understood as an authoritative list of important works and artists. This collection breaks with the idea of a singular, transcendent canon. Through provocative case studies, it demonstrates that the content of any canon is both historically and culturally specific and dependent on who is responsible for the canon’s production and maintenance. The contributors explore how, where, why, and by whom canons are formed; how they function under particular circumstances; how they are maintained; and why they may undergo change. Focusing on various moments from the seventeenth century to the present, the contributors cover a broad geographic terrain, encompassing the United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Taiwan, and South Africa. Among the essays are examinations of the working and reworking of a canon by an influential nineteenth-century French critic, the limitations placed on what was acceptable as canonical in American textbooks produced during the Cold War, the failed attempt to define a canon of Rembrandt’s works, and the difficulties of constructing an artistic canon in parts of the globe marked by colonialism and the imposition of Eurocentric ideas of artistic value. The essays highlight the diverse factors that affect the production of art market forces, aesthetic and political positions, nationalism and ingrained ideas concerning the cultural superiority of particular groups, perceptions of gender and race, artists’ efforts to negotiate their status within particular professional environments, and the dynamics of art history as an academic discipline and discourse. This volume is a call to historicize canons, acknowledging both their partisanship and its implications for the writing of art history. Contributors . Jenny Anger, Marcia Brennan, Anna Brzyski, James Cutting, Paul Duro, James Elkins, Barbara Jaffee, Robert Jensen, Jane C. Ju, Monica Kjellman-Chapin, Julie L. McGee, Terry Smith, Linda Stone-Ferrier, Despina Stratigakos

376 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Stefan Szczelkun · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was excited to get hold of this book. After years of teaching postgrad 'visual culture' the questions of canon seemed never to be broached or discussed in detail. If we take culture to be the the continual public evaluation of our condition and if we take democracy seriously, then the study of canon is surely a damning critique of how elite culture works.
The canon in Art is formed by an unholy alliance of gallerists, art markets and art writers and eventually art historians. There is a tissue of justification that this is a rational process which filters out the greatest art for the benefit of the public. In fact this winnowing process is highly charged with the self-interests of the dominant class, The resulting great art is never going to lead us out of confines of the capitalist state and the multiple strands of oppression that props up the class society it relies on.
This books has much detail to feed this kind of radical analysis but veers away from such nihilist conclusions with a sort of mumbling into a sleeve that things are inevitably like that blah blah. Canon formation is a bun fight amongst bourgeois apologists for whose version of a dominant culture is most effacing of its function of hiding the mechanisms of oppression.
Worth reading if you keep this in mind!