What Were Michael Baxandall Five Major Motives for Art Patronage

This entry continues a serial of posts on the art historian Michael Baxandall (1933-2008). The start post commented on his 1971 book, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Limerick, 1350-1450 . at present take on the mighty Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Caption of Pictures (1985), which is now inexplicably out of print. I go along to hope, as I've said before, that these commentaries will encourage students of film, art historians and anyone interested in the history of ideas to form a greater appreciation for Baxandallian idea and enquiry. Subsequent posts in the series can be found here, here, and here.

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InPatterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures ,published 18 years after his first extended written report, a pamphlet titledDue south German Sculpture, 1500-1800 (1967), Michael Baxandall asks mayhap the nearly daunting historical question in visual studies: "if we call back or speak of a picture as, amongst other things, the product of situated volition or intention, what is it that we are doing?" (p.v). Maybe the near sustained reflection on the problem of causality in art historical writing nonetheless written, Patterns of Intention is a trenchant methodological treatise, even though the reader should bear in mind that he never considered himself a theorist or "methodologist" and endeavors hither to address practical problems associated with the fine art historian's key preoccupation with why art looks the way it does at whatsoever given moment in history.

Patterns of Intention might be called Baxandall'southward manifesto, for its nominal aim is to sketch the terms of what he calls "inferential criticism" of fine art. Inferential criticism focuses on artifacts that are of "visual involvement"—a tack taken past art historians rather than general historians who study actions, not artifacts (or visual deposits of thought) (p.13). Only the operative discussion here is inferential. Baxandall draws a crucial distinction between art writing that tries to recount the stroke-past-stroke stages by which a painter creates a flick and art writing that uncovers the salient circumstances that shape the concrete intentions that produce artworks. Art criticism cannot simply relate the creation of a work: "Nosotros cannot reconstruct the serial action, the thinking and manipulation of pigments that concluded in Piero della Francesca'sBaptism of Christ, with sufficient precision to explain it as an activity" (p.xiii). He afterward adds: "[…] while we cannot narrate procedure, we can posit it" (p.63). The issues that arise for the inferential critic are precisely those that ascertain the process of making inferences.

In the introduction, "Language and Explanation" (pp. 1-11), Baxandall argues that even the most clinical description of a picture harbors "cause words" (like "assured handling" (p.6)) that link descriptions with an interest in the explanation of what one sees. When one says of Baptism of Christ that it has a "firm design," i is implicitly inferring a cause for the picture (i.e., this painting is the way that information technology is considering it was designed firmly). The thesis that Baxandall develops hither, that descriptions of pictures are once removed from the actual objects of description ("one does not describe pictures but our thoughts of having seen pictures"), develops an statement he presented in an earlier article, "The Language of Art History" (1979). Included in this linguistic "remove" or extrapolation are "why?" remarks, that is, descriptions that reveal an involvement in the origins and development of the work.

Baxandall's inferential criticism, and so, is a species of art commentary that is aware of the forms of attending and interest that are "baked into" our language. Moreover, this disquisitional impulse is driven by the notion that in the making of pictures, painters (Picasso in Chapter 2, Piero in Chapter 3, and, in the instance of Affiliate ane, bridge-architect Benjamin Baker) are problem-solvers. Let united states of america consider what Baxandall ways by this before enumerating the difficulties he sees in making this assumption.

By considering artists as problem-solvers, Baxandall follows in the footsteps of E.H. Gombrich and Heinrich Wölfflin. (Non all art historians have been in favor of this historiographic premise; Arnold Hauser critiques the problem-solution approach in The Philosophy of Art History (p.144).) Even though many artists, like Picasso, deny that they are higher up all posers and solvers of major compositional problems, Baxandall perceives many benefits in the problem-solution inference (fifty-fifty though, he readily admits, this often pits the "observer versus the actor"):

A "problem"—practical or geometrical or logical—is normally a situation in which two things hold: something is to be done, and there is no purely habitual or just reactive manner of doing it. There are also connotations of difficulty. But in that location is a deviation between the sense of problem in the actor and in the observer. The histrion thinks of "problem" when he is addressing a difficult chore and consciously knows he must piece of work out a way to do it. The observer thinks of "problem" when he is watching someone's purposeful behavior and wishes to sympathize: "problem-solving" is a construction he puts on other people's purposeful activity. (p. 69; meet also pp.14-fifteen)

This passage offers the gist of Baxandall'southward reasoning in this book. The critic or historian cannot actually know the content of the moment-by-moment thought procedure or the intricacies involved in the application of daubs of paint that upshot in a work. The critic must insert in her explanation of what she sees a mediating process stage: an activity of artistic problem-solving.

Only of what does this procedure consist? And what are the implications for how we empathize the moving picture-maker'south intentions? In Chapter 1, he sets forth a "low and simple theoretical opinion": the triangle of re-enactment (fig.1), which allows him to posit an intention in the work of art, or the creative person as an intentional agent—one whose volitions are captured in our descriptions (p.34). To "re-enact" the causes of a work of art, ane must first draw information technology–attach words to its features. One then "moves about" on the triangle, "a simplified reconstruction of the maker's reflection and rationality applying an individual pick from collective resources to a task" (p.34).

Fig. 1. Baxandall's triangle of reenactment.

He kickoff applies this arroyo to the building of the Queensfery Bridge (ca. 1890). In lodge to keep the various elements of the problem situation separate, he proposes the concepts of the "Charge" ("Bridge!") and the resultant "Brief," which in the case of Baker refers to the site- and circumstance-specific problems before the builder in the project. But, as Baxandall underscores, the approach developed in the report of the intentions backside this bridge may not apply to, say, a painting like Picasso'due south Portrait of Kahnweiler (1910) (fig. two).

Fig. 2. Portrait of Kahnweiler (Picasso, 1910).

From the problem of concretely reconstructing the intention of Baker, Baxandall transitions to the problem of examining Picasso's painting with the aforementioned tools. He records two difficulties in trying to use the triangle of re-enactment to Picasso: ane) the fact that the process that went into the creation of the portrait is not equally clearly defined in terms of its stages as that of the bridge, which had distinctive formulation and execution stages; and ii) the fact that while it is clear in the case of Bakery who set the Accuse and Brief (the company for which he was working), information technology is less clear who issued Picasso'south Charge and Cursory in the painting of the portrait (p.39).

Chapter 2 (pp.41-73) addresses these issues by attacking the hard historiographic question of "intention." Baxandall sees intention in very applied terms: "a general condition of rational man action which I posit in the course of arranging my circumstantial facts or moving about on the triangle of re-enactment" (p.41). Intentions practice not belong to the artist alone; they are not biographical-conceptual entities pulled from the artist's brain. They are social entities constructed—better nevertheless, inferred—from the historian's labor of moving about on the triangle, an amalgamation of factors that include the artist's will and agency (in terms of problem-stating and solving), the resultant work and the circumstances that impinge on both.

But of what use is the idea of a Charge when trying to explain the paintings of Picasso, or, for that matter, the films of a Godard? Baxandall acknowledges the difficulty in allotting visual artists a common charge. While bridge-builder must always "Span!", painters must always produce a motion picture of "intentional visual interest," a vague suggestion at best.

Appropriately, Baxandall concludes that the question of the visual artist's general Charge is of footling involvement (p.44). He instead concentrates on what he takes to be Picasso's Brief. When beginning to describe and infer causes for a Picasso painting, nosotros must consider (at a minimum) three elements to the trouble-complex (or Brief) he confronted: 1) the problem of representing of 3-D objects on a ii-D surface; ii) the problems of form and color; and 3) the problem of acknowledging in the character of his depiction the fact that the depiction is not the product of an instantaneous or momentary experience, but rather a record of sustained interaction over time with the objects/experiences painted.

Baxandall so asks, "who set Picasso'due south Brief?" The answer is Picasso himself. What makes a Picasso different from a Benjamin Bakery is that while both had a pick in their corresponding Briefs (both, for case, by their own volitions, were "historical" artists, concerned with the styles of the past), Picasso more freely selected the problems he wished to address. But this freedom was not absolute, equally Baxandall shows in Affiliate 2, section 4; Picasso was, after all, a social being in cultural circumstances. This chapter is an of import one, so let's consider it in greater detail.

In Chapter 2, department 4, Baxandall shows that in some contexts it is beneficial to consider an artist's civilisation through the terms of the fine art market. Only the inferential critic cannot assume that the artist's market is identical to the economist'southward marketplace. Like pre-capitalist societies, art markets operate equally barter systems. Crucially, withal, the barter the painter is involved with consists of mental appurtenances like artistic forms. This process of barter is dubbed troc, and in Chapter 2, department five, Baxandall switches to the nature of the institutions Picasso "traded" in: 1) mixed public exhibitions; 2) a arrangement of dealers (Picasso, similar a Chardin, made prepare-made and commissioned works), and 3) French cultural journalism. While this outline of Picasso'due south market might seem vague, Baxandall describes information technology in sufficient particular to prove how Picasso interacted with it (p.53): past selecting well amongst the forms this good for you marketplace provided as choices (naturally, Picasso added to this assortment of forms too); and past his refusal to participate in the black Salons (a fact that I will mention just in passing, here). In the end, artists' volitions begin to come into view when nosotros consider how they interacted with this market: "if being a member of a discussable class was one way of keeping a head in a higher place the water of the black Salons, beingness a clearly individual talent was one way of doing and so when swimming in the dealers' sector" (p.56).

In gild to render his observations about Picasso's relation to his marketplace more than precise, he considers the "influence" of Cézanne on Picasso—or rather, Picasso's reading and repurposing of various aspects of Cézanne's play with forms. Using an Italian billiard table image in Chapter ii, section 6, "Excursus Against Influence," he argues that claiming that Cézanne influenced Picasso inverts the relevant art historical relationship for the inferential critic. Picasso should instead exist seen as having "acted on" Cézanne, picking up some of his devices and repositioning him equally a fundamental effigy in art history. Picasso was not a passive receptacle of by traditions, simply has "a specifically discriminating view of the past in an active and reciprocal relation with a developing set of dispositions and skills" (p.62). As I have written elsewhere, this is a much more fruitful description of Picasso's (or whatsoever creative person'south) relations to the visual tradition in which he finds himself than conventional models of influence.

Chapter iii (pp. 74-104) takes upward an issue broached in Chapter 2—namely, the degree to which a painter (in this case, Chardin in his A Lady Taking Tea (1735)) picks up on the thoughts or philosophical ideas (or "cognitive style") of his or her time. Baxandall wants to avoid the hazy and easy human relationship of "analogousness." Challenge that a painting has "affinities" with major philosophical or scientific thought of a catamenia adds nothing to the process of explaining the fine-grained features of a motion-picture show. Baxandall'southward litmus exam is whether this or that idea "carry[s] on [the artist's] sense of relation to the object of representation" (p.75). He clarifies: "the science or philosophy invoked must be fabricated to entail fairly directly a particular affair well-nigh visual experience so about possible pictorial grapheme" (p.77). The "demands" he lays out for the consideration of social facts as causes of pictorial style are spelled out (p.77). A directly connection is institute in Chardin'south example, if only because some of the main specialists on optics in this era were besides painters (p.89) and had a straight connection to Chardin (p.92). Baxandall thus manages in this chapter to supplant a vague "affinity" with the idea of "an eighteenth century web of preoccupation" that implicated the problem solving of a specific painter (p.103).

The book'southward final chapter begins with two questions: one) how far nosotros can become in making inferences about the "intentional fabric" of artists who belong to other cultures or afar periods? And 2) what is the human relationship between our explanations and truth? To examine these problems of explanation, Baxandall goes to a piece of work remote to our culture—more remote than the works of Picasso and Chardin—Piero'due south Baptism of Christ (1425-1450).

Baxandall argues that Piero'southward Brief was substantially different from Picasso'south in the following manner (each of these elements relate to the different land of fine art making and the market in Piero's time):

• Piero painted pictures to order
• the terms of the painting would accept been recorded in a contract
• Piero painted according to certain generic conditions (in the case of Baptism, it must exist an altarpiece, it must draw this item biblical episode, and it must be painted by Piero's hand lonely—all of which would have been stipulated in the contract)

Baxandall's discussion of Piero'southward Brief (not to mention Picasso'south) raises a concern that any skeptical reader of Patterns of Intention must contend with: to what extent can these aspects of Piero's Brief exist taken every bit explanatory, peculiarly when attempting to infer causes for the specific work that went into Baptism? Are the terms Baxandall lists not too broad, and would they not also apply, in every respect, to Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ (1472-1475) (fig.iii)?

Fig. 3. Baptism of Christ (Verrocchio, 1472-1475).

Granted, ane variable in Piero'south Cursory separates information technology from that of a Verrocchio: it is well known that Verrocchio did not work alone; this painting was a collaborative effort, produced past his workshop. The blond affections on the far left and the landscape are attributed to a young Leonardo Da Vinci; and some critics attribute the 2nd angel to a immature Botticelli.

Despite these historical details, I think my business concern about the broadness of Baxandall'south listing all the same stands: in order to explain two dissimilar Baptism depictions past two painters working under the same weather (the aforementioned market, the aforementioned genre, a like contract), practise we not require more than than the broad Brief inferred here?

Broad Briefs appear to have less explanatory force if one is studying not a Picasso versus a Piero but two contemporaries. Consider this example from the last century, the classical Hollywood era (ca. 1917-1960). Would information technology be sufficient to say that studio demands for intelligible continuity storytelling, adherence to the censorship regulations of the Production Code (1930-1968), the strength of the star system, the genre conventions of the Western, and the fact that producers wanted John Ford'due south skills at the helm are sufficient to explain The Searchers (1956)? If nosotros allow for a commutation of Anthony Mann for Ford, could the exact aforementioned thing non be said of The Man from Laramie (1955)?

The concern here is that Baxandall's exercise in Patterns of Intention, particularly the idea that the inferential historian must posit a Brief to explicate a work, might lose its force when explaining 2 works from the same era—ii works that share the same general Brief. Possibly Baxandall would reply that this is not a problem, because then the explanation of the differences between two contemporary works would prevarication with more precise contextual considerations (who, for instance, were the patrons, and did they accept special demands?) and the specific problems artists set for themselves and the skills they used to solve them. This does show, however, that the broad Cursory 1 posits cannot in itself exist taken a comprehensive inventory of the terms of the problem situations artists find themselves in. If it did, then a Baptism by Piero and a Baptism past another gimmicky creative person would exist if non identical, certainly comparable and overlapping in pregnant ways that render nigh of the elements of the Cursory bland. We demand to go beyond the Brief, or refine it, to explain the works of two contemporaries working within the same full general conditions.

Setting this objection aside, Baxandall returns i of the pressing question of "culture"—what function can or should it play in the explanation of specific features of art works? Because Baxandall wishes to avoid the traps of what might be called "reflectionism" or mere "affinity," he wants to posit for culture a specific function in historical caption. He will not consider cultures as having a uniform impact on individuals that participate in them. What, for instance, does an occupation similar medicine have to exercise with art? Almost nothing at all, for medical science works to give parts of a populace skills that have very fiddling begetting on how works of art are made or visually perceived. He therefore wants to consider only those cultural factors that railroad train a guild in skills relevant to the feel of beholding a pic. In fifteen^th century Italy, a distinctive kind of commercial mathematics was taught in schools (p.107), and Piero was a painter whose life's piece of work creatively explored the connections between fine art and mathematics.

Once again, we are in a position hither to enhance an objection: does this not make Baxandall's Piero example a little convenient, or perhaps platonic? Would he all the same cite mathematical skills as an explanation of pictures in this era if in that location were no direct connection between the creative person in question and mathematics? After all, historians of visual fine art exercise non always have connections that are this clear to ground the inferential work they do. But peradventure this is precisely Baxandall's signal. Such skills should not be invoked unless the connections are relatively straight.

Just are inferential critics or historians bound to considering simply those cultural trends that impinge directly on visual experience? Baxandall tests his initial theory by taking into business relationship those skills that are less "visual" and more than "external" to art-making but that are nevertheless relevant to "reflection on pictures" (p.108). What this suggests is that the art historian must consider two sets of beholder skills (in inferring the causes of pictures): one) visual skills and 2) external "intellectual" skills. In the case of Piero, 2) refers to the different way people in the 15^th century explained pictures, i.east. in terms of "efficient and final causes." The point here is that in because the causes of Piero'southward Baptism one needs to consider the fact that a client in this era would have been viewed as more of an active agent in the picture'due south final look than the creative person. And the intellectual commitments of those non-artistic agents involved in the production of the motion-picture show are therefore supremely relevant.

How far, Baxandall then asks, can we go in positing an agile role for civilisation in historical explanations of the visual features of art works? As paradoxical as this question sounds, to what extent tin can cultural mechanisms not known nearly by the creative person factor into his or her intentions? What is refreshing nearly his analysis of the limits of studying some other culture (pp. 109-111) is that he denies that the observer (i.e., the inferential critic) or the participant (i.eastward., the creative person) has a privileged perspective. In other words, Baxandall posits a responsibility, here. The inferential critic (who, once once more, is interested in using precise descriptions of visual features of works to pose questions virtually causation) should reject two assumptions: 1) that the creative person's behavior nigh what his art achieves is sufficient to explain a work (and that culture therefore plays no part, for every bit the Piero example shows, even mathematics affects the blueprint of a piece of work); and 2) the belief, presumably held by some inferential critics, that culture e'er plays an active part (and that an creative person's volitions are therefore irrelevant to historical caption). Rather, Baxandall sees the knowledge of the observer and the participant every bit existing along a spectrum of advantages and disadvantages equally far as knowledge is concerned (which has implications for how the observer-critic explains a given art-historical phenomenon). In that location are, to put it differently, things that both the observer and the participant can and cannot encounter given their respective vantage points on the making of a specific fine art work. It stands to reason then that evidence about "culture" and individual will must be used in such a style to keep both in bank check; sometimes civilization volition play a relatively large role in historical explanation, and sometimes non. But the limits of civilization cannot be decided a priori—i.e., independently of a specific description of a work's visual features.

The validity of explanatory claims preoccupies Baxandall in Chapter 4, department five. More than precisely, he asks, how do we "assess the relation of inferred intention to the truth"? He reminds us that when studying the past a correspondence theory of truth will not do—we simply cannot leave and check our claims against reality, for that relality no longer exists. He also jettisons the notion that historical explanations should have a predictive chapters. Instead, he considers the tools of verification adult by the philosophy of historical explanation (p.119). Three criteria seem well-nigh pertinent to the work of inferential criticism: internal decorum, external decorum and parsimony (pp. 120-1).

The first criterion refers to the "unity nosotros posit in the object of study." Candidly, ane might wonder why this is at all necessary. Certainly, when nosotros are studying an individual work, say Albert Gleizes'southward The Schoolboy (1924), information technology makes piffling sense to merits (as one is describing it) that the artist erred in his judgment to place the boy's right thumb in the lower left corner of the composition, apart from the balance of the hand (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4. The Schoolboy (Gleizes, 1924).

It behooves one much more (equally an inferential critic) to posit a unity behind the piece of work, that is, to operate on the assumption that this determination coheres with other decisions that make up the work—to detect in these compositional solutions a unified set of concerns/intentions. Otherwise, the process of discovery would not find its stride.

But what about when one is analyzing the compositional strategies and patterns of intention over the course of a series of works? It might behoove 1 more than, with Gleizes's writings and other portraits in hand, to posit the presence of the thumb in the lower left as a less successful or less coherent solution, in which case I would be inferring from what I see in the objects of study a dissimilar set of circumstances. These circumstances (in this hypothetical example) pb one to believe that the best explanation of the works of this flow of Gleizes's career takes Schoolboy as a one in a cord of attempted solutions to the "thumb-placement" trouble. In this instance, seeing the work every bit lacking consummate coherence might facilitate a better caption than positing a unity in a single work which may not have it.

Baxandall anticipates this objection by showing that "unity" or "internal coherence" need non utilise to a single work alone (p.121). Past claiming a misstep on Gleizes'southward role as ane stage in a procedure toward solving the "pollex-placement" problem, I have posited what Baxandall calls an "intentional unity" (p.121) even if I fence that one work of Gleizes's cannot be said to be unified or successful in itself. The internal coherence rests in a consistent effort or attempt across a body of work.

All the same, our objection remains an of import one because it reminds us that Baxandall's efforts in this volume are largely devoted to the historical explanation of private pictures, and non the historical explanation of a series of pictures posited as belonging to an individual's long-term pattern of creative activity. But while we might take to change his reasoning slightly to explain a serial of pictures, his reasoning already provides clues as to the answers.

Every bit it pertains to the third criteria—that the inferential criticism will be more valid if it remains parsimonious and entertains only that explanatory thing that "contributes to experience of the picture equally an object of visual perception"—I think that Baxandall might (and should) run into some opposition. This notion of parsimony is restricted past Baxandall'south assumption that works of art are worthy of attention for the inferential critic only when they are perceptually—which is to say, visually—interesting. For all the ways this volume is methodologically self-aware, this premise is never exposed to scrutiny.

Information technology seems non-controversial to claim that works of art are of interest for a diversity of not-visual reasons (or for reasons that prioritize other experiences of art): works of art are frequently taken as direct inscriptions of discourses like myth, political credo, philosophy, religion, and and so forth and and so on. Different cultures and dissimilar communities within different cultures ofttimes accept works of fine art as mythological, philosophical or political experiences. And this is important because these non-visual assumptions about the significance—the pregnant—of art also impinge on the marketplace, on taste culture and, by extension, on the bug artists pose and the solutions they develop. Non-visual every bit much as visual interests shape artworks, particularly their narrative and thematic features.

Baxandall therefore fails to consider the implications of a bones fact of art history: divergent visual and non-visual interests in art often co-be within a culture, and at times they even come into conflict with one some other. And for many years there has been a tension within inferential criticism—within art history and those fields of intellectual pursuit and academic study that derive approaches from it—betwixt those who would fold visual interest into non-visual involvement in art (that is, into ideological or philosophical interests) and those like Baxandall who endeavor to show that in that location are legitimately visual cultures to which fine art responds and which fine art promotes—cultures that would be lost if art history were interpreted as an ideological or philosophical history.

To rephrase and slightly shift the emphasis of this betoken: Baxandall'due south failure to consider the possible varieties of visual and non-visual inferential criticism means that he selects one kind of valid parsimony in art criticism over others, when what is needed is a written report of the patterns of artistic intention that a spectrum of (perhaps conflicting) valid critical models can, or ought to, register.

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