Jumpsuits & Teleporters

What is Visual Studies in relation to art history and aesthetics?

Based on the readings, there is a resistance to introducing (or giving agency to) Visual Studies as the “new art history.” One of the main arguments is that Visual Studies is not historical, but anthropological. Since art history and aesthetics are pedigree, Visual Studies, as a hybrid offspring, is not. Aby Warburg’s methods are suddenly reconsidered for this emergent sub-genre or sub-discipline. This “new art history” trades formalisms, iconology/iconography, and social history for psychoanalysis, semiotics, identity, technology and globalism. Visual Studies is isolated or alienated from the “true” art history. Historians like Hal Foster and Rosalind Krauss oppose the transition because the shift is too general. Art historians ultimately fear a decline in literacy.

As Susan Buck-Morss says, “Visual culture, once a foreigner to the academy, has gotten its green card and is here to stay.” Most historians agree that a “critical analysis of the image as a social object” is necessary. This analysis should be both anthropological and sociological. This goes along with the question, Is the line between high art and mass culture still present? There is, of course, a paradox to Visual Studies: the viewing of art is defined solely by optical scope. If this is so, then it is believed that art plays only to the eye rather than to the mind and the senses. This is troubling because it excludes aesthetics and theory. Thomas Crow argues that Visual Studies is a modernist obsession with illusion. It can even be said that this spin-off is more of a scientific-based augmentation, which makes some art historians cringe—understandably so from their point of view.

This defensiveness and territorialness, according to W.J.T. Mitchell, is academically founded. It doesn’t welcome or encourage the emergent field of Visual Studies. He also states that the adopters of this new history haven’t come forth to defend appropriately as viable. Hence, Mitchell makes light of the fallacies against introducing Visual Studies and counters them with the example of his “showing seeing” exercise. “Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture” is reminiscent of C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” lamentation. Apparently, the divide within the humanities is gaping!

While Keith Moxey disagrees that (in an academic curriculum) Visual Studies is the obvious step towards the new global economy, he is inclined to recognize the emergent discipline because of its distinctiveness. He is interested in examining it for the production of art. To me, Visual Studies is like a Bauhaus. It is a sort of cosmology, an exploration of the origins of images in relation to art history and visual genres. (It’s called visual arts, isn’t it?) Rather than a post-structuralist or post-postmodern approach, it is a comprehensivist approach. Trading specialization for comprehension is necessary in this morphed society. But I am also left with questions about the usability of Visual Studies. I am fascinated by the Derridean idea that language is opaque; it doesn’t give access. How then would Visual Studies be used outside of academics? What does it mean to the curator? Does this mean that the museum is null and void? (A notion that is increasingly argued or believed.) It seems as though Visual Studies would require academic analysis in the form of an accompanied manual or user guide.

READINGS:

• “Nostalgia for the Real: The Troubled Relation of Art History to Visual Studies.” In Keith Moxey, The Practice of Persuasion: Paradox and Power in Art History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 103-123. • W. J. T. Mitchell, “Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture,” in Art History, Aesthetics, Visual Studies, ed. Michael Ann Holly and Keith Moxey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 231-50. • Visual Culture Questionnaire, October 77 (Summer 1996): 25-70.