‘The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline’ Erwin Panofsky (1955) How many people have background in art? How many consider themselves to have humanistic education? Reactions & responses to this text? Observation about how this is written? 1955 paper by one of the most influential art historians -- art theory; iconography Explores the boundaries of humanities and other disciplines Asks some difficult questions: Why is art history a humanities discipline? What is its method of exploration and what is scientific about it? How can something that is so subjective (based on interpretation and response to a work of art) have validity / claims to truth? How is art historian different from connoisseur, or naïve appreciator of art? How is it different from: philosophy & mathematics, and from the natural sciences? One of the conclusions is that it is an ‘impractical’ pursuit but why then is it necessary to have this discipline (access to ‘reality’, understanding the nature of humankind in history) Concludes with quote by Marsilio Ficino, a Renaissance Humanist: p. 25: metaphor of wisdom of old age and the power of knowledge of history)

History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline I. The history of the concept (‘Humanitas’ - Humanism - Humanities) II. The object of study & steps (humanities / natural sciences) III. The material of study (natural phenomena / works of art) IV. Methods of interpretation / explanation (humanities / natural sciences) V. Why humanities? Develops his argument in five theses (a common procedure in humanistic writing -- which makes it difficult to comprehend if one is approaching the text as hierarchical structure). Compare to social science article - list some of the features in how text is presented (Rowland, Budd exempliy social science writing) Numbered 1 - 5; footnoted (or endnoted) Arguments progress, read as process and cannot skip a passage because you immediately lose your place

History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (I) I. The history of the concept ‘Humanitas’ - Humanism - Humanities ‘humanitas’ has had two clearly distinguishable meanings: 1. Man and what is less than man (animality) 2. Man and what is more than man (divinity) ‘humanism’: ambivalence bw rationality / freedom and fallibility / frailty results in the humanistic postulate of reponsibility and tolerance as human values “The sense of humanity has not yet left me” (Kant) Opens text with an anecdote; Immanuel Kant at the moment of frailty but at the same time we have an awareness of his achievement as philosopher- sense of his knowledge Opening passage is a metaphor of ‘humanity’ because Kant himself embodies the contrasting meanings of what it is to be more than a man (intellect-wise), and also subject to the weakness of humanity, its susceptibility to death and decay Humanitas (Medieval notion of) Humanism born from this ambivalent concception: dignity of man based on the human values (rationality and freedom) and the acceptance of human limitations (fallibility and frailty) Human values of responsibility and tolerance underlie the humanistic approach; opponents of this approach are determinists (physical social predestination), authoritarians (believe in hierarchies and established systems), and insectolatrists (believe in all-importance of social group, class, nation or race) They consider humanists either ‘lost souls’ or ‘idealists’ / political libertinism, heretics or revolutionaries, useless individualists) Those denying human limitations (humanists): aestheticists, vitalists, intuitionists, and hero-worshippers; explain why are these two groups opposed

History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (II) II. The object of study and steps “Man’s signs and structures are records because, or rather in so far as, they express ideas separated from, yet realized by, the processes of signaling and building. These records have therefore the quality of emerging from the streams of time, and it is precisely in this respect that they are studied by the humanist. He is, fundamentally, an historian.” Importance of dating and locating; therefore, everything is relative to categories of time and space with implications for records that must be placed within the cosmos of culture Both sciences and humanities are spatio-temporal because they determine the nature of cosmos of culture and cosmos of nature: give examples (bottle flowing across the room is located in time, it passes distance) -- as opposed to a ‘philosophical bottle’ such as one finds in mathematics (topology)

History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (II) II. The object of study and steps humanities tradition, records of the past, historical facts (documents, structures) examination of records “the cosmos of culture” Importance of dating and locating; therefore, everything is relative to categories of time and space with implications for records that must be placed within the cosmos of culture Both sciences and humanities are spatio-temporal because they determine the nature of cosmos of culture and cosmos of nature: give examples (bottle flowing across the room is located in time, it passes distance) -- as opposed to a ‘philosophical bottle’ such as one finds in mathematics (topology)

History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (II) II. The object of study and steps sciences naturally found objects, phenomena, laws of nature “the cosmos of nature” Simple experiment: if we throw a bottle across the room, it is an event that is the object of study for the sciences

History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (II) II. The object of study and steps Relationship bw monuments, documents and a general historical concept in the humanities Relationship between phenomena, instruments and theory in the natural sciences The methods are different: documents are submitted to evaluation (whether they are forgeries);

History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (III) III. The material of study (What is a work of art?) Issue of artistic / authorial ‘intention’ and its rootedness in a particular historical period (objects are conditioned by the standards of their period and environment) Our interpretation of intentions are biased by our own attitude which is based on our own individual experiences and historical situation

History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (IV) IV. Methods of interpretation / explanation humanities / natural sciences Scientists deal with natural phenomena (explanation in terms of objective, repeatable examination of physical reality) Humanists deals with human actions and creations (explanation is intuitive aesthetic re-creation)

History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (IV) IV. Methods of interpretation / explanation humanities / natural sciences Humanist method to study the formal principles that control the rendering of the visible world (familiarizes himself with the social, religious and philosophical attitudes of other periods and countries, continually checking own experiences against archaeological research)

History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (IV) IV. Methods of interpretation Appreciationism (naïve observers) Connoisseurship (clinical examination in terms of provenance and authorship, evaluation in terms of quality and condition) Art history (observers using established terminology that expresses broader structures: stylistic distinctions, rhetoric of expression) Art theory (access to structures, formal elements of art)

History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (V) V. Why humanities? If humanities are not practical, because they concern themselves with the past, why should we engage in such impractical investigations, and why should we be interested in the past? Because: It is impossible to conceive of our world in terms of action alone: reality involves interpretation of reality the moment one thinks it; contemplation of reality not at the surface

History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (V) V. Why humanities? Reality is understood as inter-penetration of world in terms of thought and in terms of action. “When I said that the man who is run over by an automobile is run over by mathematics, physics and chemistry, I could just as well have said that he is run over by Euclid, Archimedes and Lavoisier” (Panofsky 1975, 23)