Stephen Bann

The clothing of Clio : a study of the representation of history in nineteenth-century Britain and France

List of illustrations Preface and acknowledgements Introduction 1. The historian as taxidermist: Ranke, Barante, Waterton 2. A cycle in historical discourse: Barante, Thierry, Michelet 3. Image and letter in the rediscovery of the past: Daguarre, Charles Alfred Stothard, Landseer, Delaroche 4. Poetics of the museum: Lenoir and Du Sommerard 5. The historical composition of place: Byron and Scott 6. Defences against irony: Barham, Ruskin, Fox Talbot 7. Anti-history and the ante-hero: Thackeray, Reade, Browning, James Postscript Notes Index.

The True Vine: On Visual Representation and Western Tradition

List of illustrations Preface and acknowledgements Introduction Part I. The Object: 1. Zeuxis and Parrhasius 2. Are they thinking of the grape? 3. Around the apples of Cezanne Part II. The Self: 1. The antique narcissus 2. Narcissus in painting 3. Art and metamorphosis Part III: The Story: 1. The Greek and the Chinese artists 2. Legends of the True Cross 3. Endings and beginnings Notes.

Ingres in Reproduction

One aspect of the historiography of nineteenth-century art has been the virtual exclusion from serious attention of the reproductive engravings that played such an important role in establishing the reputations of the painters of the period. Benjamins well-known essay on ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ has led to a disproportionate emphasis on the importance of lithography and photography as harbingers of a new age, and perhaps incidentally helped to exclude from consideration those photographers specializing in the reproduction of paintings, who could be considered to be in direct rivalry with the engravers. The significant investment which Ingres had in the reproduction of his works becomes much clearer when we look closely at his long and friendly relationship with the Italian engraver Luigi Calamatta. This article uses published and unpublished material relating to Calamatta and other engravers to clarify the point that Ingres was continually preoccupied with the need to have his work engraved, but unable to ensure the results that he desired – partly because each new print offered the possibility of amending a previous composition, and partly because he did not succeed in establishing a strong relationship with a dealer such as Goupil. Ingress relation to lithography is also considered, in relation to his own practice and that of the lithographer Sudre, who reproduced some of his works. Finally, the contribution of contemporary photographers to the reproduction of Ingress work is summarised, with special emphasis on his mixed experiences with the most acclaimed reproduction photographer of the day, the Englishman Robert Jefferson Bingham.

Historical Text and Historical Object: The Poetics of the Musee de Cluny

The story is told by the British art historian Lord Clark that, in the days when he used to stay at Berensons Florentine villa, I Tatti, he would try the experiment of moving a small Renaissance bronze a few inches from its original position each evening on retiring to bed. Each morning, as he came down to breakfast, he was able to note that it had been restored with great precision to its former location. This story illustrates, of course, more than a mere mania for domestic order. To Berenson, no doubt-if not to Lord Clark the bronze was not simply an object which could be moved here and there without detriment to its intrinsic aesthetic significance. It was a term in a system, whose exact relationship to other terms had to be maintained as, by imperceptible stages, Berensons home became the Berenson Museum. Yet when, with Berensons death, that process had become complete, we may well wonder how much of this original order was in fact preserved for posterity. Given that the original placing of each object within a defined series of contiguities was indeed the result of his intentions, we might ask if these intentions were likely to be communicated to the new stewards of his collection in the form of a precise system. If not, discounting the possibility of an intuitive rapport beyond the grave, we would be bound to envisage the inevitability of the museum collapsing into a form of anomie. Borrowing the terminology of linguistics, we would say that the systematic plane being barred by Berensons absence, the syntagmatic plane (the ordering of objects in real space) would inevitably lose its coherence. If the museum continued to communicate, it would at the same time be afflicted with a chronic aphasia. Connections and relationships which were once the visible demonstration of a total view of art and the world would have been reduced to mere contiguities and juxtapositions.

‘Two Kinds of Historicism: Resurrection and Restoration in French Historical Painting’

The historicist approach is rarely challenged by art historians, who draw a clear distinction between art history and the present-centred pursuit of art criticism. The notion of the ‘period eye’ offers a relevant methodology. Bearing this in mind, I examine the nineteenth-century phase in the development of history painting, when artists started to take trouble over the accuracy of historical detail, instead of repeating conventions for portraying classical and biblical subjects. This created an unprecedented situation at the Paris Salon, where such representations of history could be experienced as a collective ‘dream-work’, in Freud’s sense. In France, this new pictorial language dates back to the aftermath of the Revolution, and the activities of the ‘Lyon School’. Two artists, Richard and Revoil, were its leading proponents. However their initial closeness has obscured the differences in their approach to the past. Substituting for Freud’s ‘condensation’ and ‘displacement’ the concepts of ‘Resurrection’ and ‘Restoration’, I analyse the pictorial language of the two painters, taking two works as examples. The conclusion is that Revoil, also a collector, was a precursor of the historical museum, which convinces through accumulating objects. Richard, however, employs technical and rhetorical devices to evoke empathetic reactions, and anticipates the illusionism of cinema.

The Empire Unpossess'd: An Essay on Gibbon's Decline and Fall.

1. A name, a rank, a character, in the world 2. The plenitude of paternal power 3. The vacant space of the eternal city 4. A liberal education and understanding 5. Order and perspicuity 6. A fair and authentic history.

Reading back from Experimental Painting

ABSTRACT My book, Experimental Painting (1970), was the product of a decade of coming to terms with the history of modern art and with contemporary manifestations of the avantgarde. While at Cambridge from 1960 to 1967, I published art criticism, initially in locally published magazines, and then went on to review art exhibitions both nationally and internationally. This led to being co-editor of Form, which produced further opportunities. The term ‘experimental’ that I adopted in 1970 was intended to suggest the paradigm of scientific discovery which suited some, if not all, of the artists I studied. This article considers concepts directly imported from contemporary scientific enquiry that seemed relevant to me at the time, notably those from experimental psychology, psychoanalysis and structural linguistics. I relate them to the character of intellectual life at Cambridge in a period which saw much debate about the relationship between Sciences and Humanities as ‘Two Cultures’.

The sense of the past and the writing of history : Stephen Bann in conversation with Karen Lang

Karen Lang: I’d like to start in the 1960s, when you were writing about concrete art. You were also concerned with kinetic art, comparative criticism, history, and more besides. But in one of your first publications on concrete art you noted that all definitions are dangerous. I think that’s a fitting place to begin because from the outset you haven’t necessarily inhabited a discipline but a space between disciplines. I wonder if you would tell us about your intellectual formation?

Response: Reasons to Be Cheerful

A response to Michael Ann Hollys paper “The Melancholic Art,” which is published in this issue. Two recent concerts of work by Heinrich Biber and Romanus Weichlein help to qualify Hollys comments on melancholys role in the history of art. Melancholy is not an obvious feature of ones encounter with music of the past. To the extent that “melancholic knowledge” espouses the ideological loss of “aura,” it does so by restricting historiography to the metonymic, leaving room for neither metaphor nor synecdoche.

Photography by other means? The engravings of Ferdinand Gaillard

Ferdinand Gaillard (1834–1887) was acclaimed as the last major practitioner in France of the reproductive engraving. Although he used the traditional burin, his techniques presented a challenge to his contemporaries. His versions of paintings by Bellini, Ingres, and van Eyck were noted for their historicist flavor, appropriate to the taste of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, where they were published. His rendering of sculptures by Donatello and his late portraits after his own drawings invited direct comparison with photographic methods of reproduction men being developed. Yet this connection should be measured against a self-consciousness in his working procedures characteristic of modernism.