Leo Steinberg

This article examines the conception of art history put forth by Chilean artist Juan Downey (1940-1993) in two of his videos from the Thinking Eye series: Information Withheld, 1983, and The Looking Glass, 1980. The focus of the analysis is on the visual strategies Downey used to implement the pictorial theories of art critic and historian Leo Steinberg in reference to Vélazquez's Las Meninas and Michelangelo's Tondo Doni. More generally, the article shows how video artists in the 1980s turned to both historiography and cybernetics in conceiving art for television.

Twenty-three years after his death, Clement Greenberg is still someone to be taken into account in the world of contemporary art criticism, especially when we speak of Modernism. One cannot minimize the importance of his theory, usually re-ferred to as formalist, or the influence it has had on the generations of artists from the 1930s to the present day. It is also a fact that, on one hand, there are multiple defend-ers and followers of his theory, but on the other hand, he also generates strong criti-cism and meets several attempts to challenge his aesthetic principles. The goal of this dissertation is to analyze the implications of Greenberg’s theory in the course of mod-ern art, basically in painting but also in sculpture, using a corpus of texts written by Greenberg since the end of the 1930s to the 1980s, explaining the dissensions between Greenberg and the other art critics. This will encompass the course of Modernist art from Impressionism to Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg, and then polemizing the commentary that major names in art criticism, such as Michael Fried, Leo Stein-berg, and Rosalind Krauss made to the work of Greenberg. Consequently, it is argued that the journey made across 80 years of painting and sculpture by Greenberg demon-strates how the vision of one man became as important and critical as that of the art-ists themselves.

Passados vinte e três anos da sua morte, Clement Greenberg continua a ser um nome a ter em conta na crítica de arte contemporânea, nomeadamente quando falamos de Modernismo. Não se pode escamotear a importância da sua teoria, geralmente apelidada de formalista, nem a influência que a mesma teve em gerações de artistas, desde os anos 30 do século XX até aos nossos dias. Também é um facto que, se por um lado, encontramos múltiplos defensores e até discípulos, por outro gerou fortes críticas e tentativas várias de desconstrução dos seus princípios artísticos. Partindo da leitura de um corpus de textos de Greenberg escritos desde o final da década de 30 até à década de 80 do século XX, procura-se, ao longo desta dissertação, analisar as implicações da teoria de Greenberg no percurso da arte moderna, essencialmente na pintura mas também na escultura, explicitando as dissensões entre Greenberg e outros críticos de arte. Mostrar-se-á, assim, o percurso da arte modernista desde o Impressionismo até Jasper Johns e Robert Rauschenberg, polemizando as referências que nomes maiores da crítica de arte, como sejam Michael Fried, Leo Steinberg e Rosalind Krauss, fazem à obra de Greenberg. No final, pretende-se que o percurso feito ao longo de cerca de 80 anos de pintura e escultura demonstre como a visão de um só homem se revelou tão importante e fundamental quanto a dos artistas.

Manet's Olympia is notoriously known for its controversial characteristics. In this paper the reactions of Manet's contemporaries are explored and also Olympia's current mission. Which raises awareness about Post-Colonial and Feminist concerns.

Building on Leo Steinberg's work showing the importance of Incarnation theology to Renaissance art, this paper argues that Crivelli's cucumber invention in the Marche of Italy was a response to patron requirements to emphasize Christ's historical presence in human form. The paper is not concerned with the gender and sexuality controversies generated by Steinberg's theories but is grounded in Crivelli's working environment in the Quattrocento Marche.

The water bus docks at the Rialto Bridge, unloads and loads, then sets off down the Grand Canal. A foreign man in his forties boards, tucks his ticket into his pocket, and takes a seat inside. He came to Venice to observe some Titian masterworks in their original site. Once on the boat, he looks out and absorbs the reflections of the palaces bordering the canal that waver with the flow of the water. He alights a few stops away and walks into the Church of San Rocco, where his eye is caught by the shape of the main altar: too similar to the one framing Titian's famous Pesaro Madonna (1519-26) in the nearby Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. He then searches his pocket, finds the waterbus ticket, pulls out his pen, and jots down a sketch of the altar (figs. 1a, 1b).

Nel titolo del suo fondamentale libro del 1983 Leo Steinberg faceva riferimento all"oblio in cui è caduta la sessualità di Cristo, ovvero la raffigurazione della cosiddetta "ostensio genitalium", a partire dall"inizio dell"età moderna, ovvero più precisamente dall"epoca della Controriforma. 1 Un caso interessane, in tal senso, è la pala d"altare con la Madonna e il Bambino tra i Santi Pietro e Paolo dipinta dal Cavalier d"Arpino intorno al 1608/9 oggi al Nelson Atkins Museum of Art di Kansas City, proveniente dalle stanze private del pontefice nei Palazzi Vaticani, dove è segnalata nel Settecento da Jean-Pierre Perrin-Chattard. 2 Nella tela, fin da subito probabilmente destinata a non essere esposta in pubblico, la Vergine copre invece di mostrare il sesso di Cristo, che si scorge appena sotto le sue dita. Lontanissimo è quindi il modello a cui, secondo Herwarth Röttgen, il Cavaliere guardò per la figura di Gesù Bambino, ovvero il Cristo di Michelangelo in Santa Maria sopra Minerva . Se all"inizio del Cinquecento Michelangelo era arrivato a mostrare a tutto il pubblico di Roma il sesso di un Cristo adulto, un secolo dopo il Cavalier d"Arpino copriva pudicamente quello del Bambino in una pala d"altare dipinta forse per il solo Paolo V Borghese.

Dominik Brabant
Rodin-Lektüren
Deutungen und Debatten von der Moderne zur Postmoderne
DOI: https://doi.org/10.16994/bah
English Summary
Interpreting Rodin
Debates and Discussions from Modernity to Postmodernity

With the works of Auguste Rodin, modernity finally reached the art of sculpture. One might think for example of the French sculptor’s innovative depiction of the human body as a living organism (The Age of Bronze) and of the playful proliferation of iconographic and literary
references (The Gates of Hell). But how, one could ask, did this art historical knowledge come into being? How did the work of the French sculptor become an iconic ›incarnation‹ of modernity itself?
While art historical research and exhibitions usually tend to use the notion of »modernity« as a conceptual framework which helps to describe the newness of Rodin’s works, this study in contrast turns to the historical emergence of this modernist discourse in some of its key
moments. Its main focus is on the highly divergent approaches to the sculptor and his work, as they appeared for example in the art criticism of the naturalist and symbolist schools, but also in vitalist philosophy, in sociology, in cultural criticism, in the rather conservative art
historical research of postwar Germany, in the American debate on modernism and in postmodernist interpretations. In the debates about Rodin, every new ›reading‹ of his works and of the artistic persona seems to take up earlier interpretations and reinterprets them. The
reader of this study is therefore invited to take part in the encounter of a dense network of ideas and concepts about modernity in search of itself.
The second chapter, entitled Einfühlung und Diagnose, is devoted to Rodin’s famous sculpture The Age of Bronze (1877) and to the notorious scandal that this work evoked at its first presentations in the Salons of Belgium and France. Rodin’s naturalistic exaggeration of
the traditional modes of representation of the human body has traditionally been interpreted by art historians as a proof of his outstanding craftsmanship. As can be read in many studies,
the artist had, with this work, achieved a new degree of sculptural immediacy in the empirical description of the human body. In contrast to that, the focus of this chapter will be more on the ways how contemporary art critics, in their early comments on this work, and later art historians have exerted the ambivalence of their own receptive attitude towards the work – and how this ambivalence has become an important catalyst for the discussions about Rodin’s modernity. As shall be demonstrated, these early critics verbalized an indecisive oscillation
between an enthusiasm for the aesthetic presence (which seemed to directly emanate from this sculpture) on the one hand and an accusation that this work might have been produced by the use of a mechanical reproduction of a living body on the other hand.

Life and death, presence and absence, an intuitive way of experiencing art and a diagnostic
gaze, an apologia for artistic originality and a looming reproach for mechanical reproduction: these seemingly opposing terms are intermingled in an indissoluble way since the early
debates about the sculptor – up to the highly polemical dispute between Rosalind Krauss and the Stanford art historian Albert Elsen in the 1980s which will be discussed in the last

chapter.

The third chapter addresses the recent research on Rodin. In addition, some theoretical and methodological reflections are presented. A central challenge of this study lies in the question of how the reception history of Rodin’s works can be described without falling back into antiquated notions of creative genius and artistic »intentionality« on the one side and radically constructivist methods on the other side. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, a theorist of science studies, has created the concept of »Experimentalsysteme« in order to be able to describe the
emergence of new knowledge in the process of knowledge-making. This notion can help us to come to terms with the fundamental contingency of the discourse on Rodin and the project of
modernity.

The fourth chapter with the title Figurenkunst und Künstlerfigur turns to the art-critical writings on the Gates of Hell (1880). In this chapter, famous art critics and writers such as Edmond de Goncourt, Gustave Geffroy, Anatole France and Arthur Symons are at the center
of interest. For the generation of the symbolist art critics, for example, the Gates of Hell  became an icon of their own melancholic art doctrine insofar as the art work seemed to stage a temporality of deferral and hesitation which could be understood as a counter-image to an
all-too-optimistic belief in historical progress. At the same time, Rodin’s apparent inability to bring this work to an end seemed to betray a very similar understanding of time.

Rilke’s and Simmel’s interpretations of Rodin’s work, which are at the core of the following chapter, are described as theoretically ambitious attempts of emulating the art-critical debate at the turn of the century by using innovative narrative strategies of coalescing biographical
patterns and reflections on art (Rilke) or by declaring Rodin’s work to be the ideal object for an analysis of modernity in the context of contemporary sociology (Simmel).

The sixth chapter, entitled Verlust und Wiederbelebung, turns to two interpretations by German-speaking authors in the years around 1950: the philosopher Günther Anders and the art historian Josef Schmoll. gen. Eisenwerth. Anders, who was also a student of Edmund
Husserl, described Rodin’s sculptural images of the human body as artistic expressions of an historical experience of loss and isolation, as objects which could stimulate a deepened reflection about modernity as crises. Josef Schmoll gen. Eisenwerth’s investigations of the
motif of the torso, which emerged in the 1950s, rather tried to describe the fragmented body as the »symbol« of an aesthetic experience of totality and holism. Obviously, the art historian’s strategy of emphatically denying the disturbing aesthetic effects of some of Rodin’s torsos can be – at least from today’s perspective – conceived as a way of dealing with the historical experience of the collapse of civilization.

The last chapter of the study is entitled Auf dem Weg in die Postmoderne. It focuses on the writings of Leo Steinberg and Rosalind Krauss since the 1960s. While Steinberg was mostly interested in the diverse ways of how Rodin constructed and deconstructed the meanings of his sculptures with the help of the art forms of the »montage« and the »assemblage«, thereby ostentatiously demonstrating the sculptural »semiosis«, Krauss emphatically turned to the problem of ›reading‹ Rodin’s images of the human body. For her, Rodin’s sculptures became
emblems of an ›opaque‹ subjectivity and therefore the first artistic realizations of a radically new paradigm of aesthetic reception: Instead of clinging to the traditional notions of psychological and hermeneutical depth in the beholding of sculptures, in her view Rodin’s
sculptures emphasize the material surface as the original site of the production of meaning.

Sono stati in molti dall'inizio del mio dottorato fino ad oggi a concorrere alla riuscita di questa ricerca. Prima fra tutti Sheila Schwartz che ha rappresentato per me un costante e imprescindibile punto di riferimento; voglio ringraziarla per la disponibilità e la pazienza con le quali si è fatta carico di ogni mia richiesta. Sono altrettanto grato ai tutor della mia tesi, Claudia Cieri Via e Marco Ruffini, per il continuo confronto e per aver seguito il mio percorso ben oltre la conclusione del dottorato. Sono inoltre riconoscente per le loro osservazioni e per gli stimoli critici a

The art historian Leo Steinberg regularly recommended imitating the poses of figures depicted in artworks, as a means of understanding the apparent motivations of the figures. Such an approach was conceptually related to the concept of Einfühlung, or empathy, which had been discussed in German aesthetic circles in the late 1800s. But in the early 1960s, when Steinberg first began to employ such an approach, it was also associated with the world of dance: a sphere with which Steinberg was also quite familiar. This essay thus considers Steinberg’s method of analysis in relation to the discursive traditions of art history and modern dance theory, detailing connections while also acknowledging distinctions in motivation.

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How many criteria? Confrontations with Leo Steinberg

Leo Steinberg cultivated a special attention to even the slightest visual and semantic peculiarities of the works of art he analyzed, as well as to the specificity of their historical and cultural conditions. Yet, he was likewise perceptively aware of the naïveté of the claim according to which the modern scholars should give up their own point of view, no less historically and culturally located.
Hence the tension running throughout many of Steinberg’s works, and the perceived need to keep together two potentially divergent requests that risk to become irreconcilable beyond a certain threshold. On the one hand, the legitimacy of seeing and judging artworks iuxta propria principia, on the other hand, the right and even the duty to see them with one’s own eyes and not with the eyes of someone else.
But, then, how can we make sure of the categorical relevance of the objects of our concern and the adequacy of our point of view, if, as Steinberg writes, “all given criteria of judgment are seasonal, […] other criteria are perpetually brought into play by new forms and fresh thought”? Is it possible to tackle such a dilemma – actually a crucial issue for any historical approach to art – without giving up at least some of Steinberg’s claims? I think it’s impossible.

What if the artist you would like to interview is dead? That is the problem for an art historian like Véronique Plesch, who reflects on the challenges of studying “dead artists,” dreaming of time travel, but who ultimately accepts the blessings of asking them questions. We come full circle with what we read in Kestenbaum’s opening essay, who similarly affirms the importance of asking questions as opposed to having ready-made answers. We must keep asking. You can find the article online here; https://maineartsjournal.com/veronique-plesch-of-dead-artists-and-time-travel/

In the present study, I will consider Leo Steinberg's interpretation of Picasso's work in its theoretical framework, and I will focus on a particular topic: Steinberg's account of "Picasso's Sleepwatchers." I will suggest that the Steinbergian argument on Picasso's depictorial modalities of sleep and the state of being awake advances the hypothesis of a new way of representing affectivity in images, by subsuming emotions into a "peinture conceptuelle." This operation corresponds to a shift from modernism to further characterizing the post-modernist image as a "flatbed picture plane." For such a passage, I will also provide an overall view of Cubism's main phenomenological lectures.

We are approaching the centenary of Leo Steinberg’s birth (1920-2011). Cosmopolitan art historian with a wide range of interests he is well known in Italy for The Sexualilty of Christ in Renaissance Art, which explored the oblivion of this iconography in the modern era (1983/1996; Italian ed. Milan, 1986). Steinberg’s work received renewed attention at the international congress “Leo Steinberg Now”, held in Rome in 2017. An eclectic scholar, heretical to some, he left a significant mark on the history of art due to the acumen of his thinking. Michelangelo’s Sculpture: Selected Essays,
published in 2018 (University of Chicago Press), is the first of five planned volumes of his writings and lectures. Steinberg was a relentless analyst of artwork, and in the pages of this splendidly illustrated book his eyes guide us to innovative interpretations of Michelangelo’s work. The return of Leo Steinberg’s eye, and mind, are now more necessary than ever.

Esta reflexão, pretende expor a interpretação das várias imagens visualizadas ao longo do primeiro semestre, fundamentadas na bibliografia indicada, para análise. Neste caso sobre o livro de Steinberg (1983), A Sexualidade de Cristo, na arte renascentista … e de Bynum (1991), Fragmentação e redenção ….
Uma imagem, pode ser alvo de várias interpretações, por várias pessoas, contudo para ter uma verdadeira interpretação da realidade expressa no que vemos, é necessário fazer uma análise e um estudo prévio do contexto em que se situa.
O tempo, o espaço e as circunstâncias são cruciais para uma boa interpretação das imagens e os pormenores por vezes são tão importantes como a totalidade da imagem no seu geral.
A importância de uma imagem, passa por olhar para a mesma, mas olhar com outros olhos, “A look is necessary to cross the span created by the perception, of difference, a perception which initially of course, also involves looking” (Lutz & Collins, 1993, pp188).
Vou abordar aqui as pinturas estudadas por vários autores com o tema de Maria e o menino, desde a época medieval á renascentista, assim vou contextualizar as pinturas no tempo e no espaço, rebuscando a mentalidade da época.
Estas imagens abordam com evidência órgãos genitais nas pinturas, assim como traços femininos, que algumas apresentam do Jesus Cristo, os autores acima referidos, tentam desmistificar o porquê, destas saliências.
Contextualizando as imagens num período histórico que vem desde o Sec. XV ao Sec. XVII, a minha questão passa por descobrir qual dos autores referidos, estará mais perto da verdade.
Se o tema seria um tabu da época, se as imagens foram criadas com o propósito religioso, sem qualquer ofensa á igreja. Se seriam formas e respectivas maneiras de abordar o sexo, de forma implícita. Ou ainda se nenhuma destas interpretações poderá ter alguma conexão sexual, ou com o género sendo uma mera coincidência.

Riflettere su L'oggetto nella pratica artistica è una buona occasione per tornare sulle ragioni più elementari del fare arte o di "occuparsi di arte": il grande sistema dell'arte (con cui si intendono solitamente le arti cosiddette visive), l'enorme e variegata industria globale che ruota intorno a questa strana attività vituperata e venerata, sembra alimentarsi da sé, e chi si ostina nel tentativo di andare a vedere ancora una volta -dopo secoli di riflessioni di ogni genere sull'Arte senza qualificazioni, sull'arte con le più diverse qualificazioni, sull'anti-arte e la non-arte -se vi sia e quale sia il "motore immobile" (in realtà molto mobile) di tutto questo turbinio, rischia di provocare sbadigli preventivi o sospetti di presunzione, tanto più se questo rischio lo corre in poche pagine. Ciononostante, credo sia un compito ineludibile per chiunque, a qualsiasi titolo, passi un po' del suo tempo a fare arte o a occuparsene.

Robert Magliola, _Sexual Rogations and Mystical Abrogations: Some Donnéés of Buddhist Tantra and the Catholic Renaissance_, in _The Comparative Perspective on Literature_, eds. C. Koelb and S. Noakes (Cornell UP, 1988), pp. 195-212. ///  APPENDIX: The imagery of female and male consorts characterizes not only the Tibetan tantric tradition (eighth century to the present) but the Catholic Renaissance (Europe circa A.D. 1200-1550), and it is only post-Renaissance 'puritanism', be it Catholic or Protestant, that chooses to deemphasize the fact. As orthodox movements, the tantras and Renaissance Catholicism both deconstruct the dominant philosophy or theology (respectively) which historically precedes them and which surrounds and then comes after them, even in post-religious societies, up to the present day. Whether the consorts be yogin and Prajnâ or God and Mary-as-spouse, they constitute their mystical liaison by way of a special sort of deconstructive work that Magliola calls "mutual abrogation." Mutual abrogation is neither destruction nor construction. The two consorts do not simply annul each other  (logocentric 'voidism') nor do they merge into one (logocentric 'plenum'). Neither a shared essence nor a synthesis are involved. Mutual abrogation is "deconstructive," that is, it constitutes the unity of the consorts by way of 'pure negative reference'. The consorts absolutely negate each other, but each remains intact, and their unity is not identity proper but rather--much as in Jacques Derrida's thought-- the 'sameness which is not identity'. Magliola's well-known and pioneering book _Derrida on the Mend_  (1984) was the first to intersect Derridean maneuvers and Buddhism, but it did so by a minute tracing of thought-motifs, including that of 'pure negative reference'. 'Pure negative reference' is a crucial phase of 'mutual abrogation', and in this present work, Magliola--instead of dealing in theory-- demonstrates the deconstructive maneuver of 'mutual abrogation' precisely by way of praxis. First Magliola examines Petrarch's "Vergin bella, che di sol vestita" / entitled "To the Virgin" in Macaulay's famous translation of 'canzone 366'. The technicalities of Marian theology are invoked in great detail to show, precisely, how mutual abrogation applies to Mary's concrete relationship to the Christ, her somatic relationship to the Holy Spirit, etc. Paintings by Jan van Hemessen and others are analyzed to demonstrate the mystical eroticism of the 'chin-chuck', and Petrarch's sonnet "Padre del ciel" is reinterpreted as a mystical liaison of Christ's  "Passio" and human "passio." The roles of androgynous depiction and of ithyphallic substitution are likewise treated in detail. Next, Magliola treats the roles of the consorts in Buddhist tantrism, finding many parallels to Renaissance Catholic usage. The mysteries of 'equality', 'sameness which is not identity', and mutual abrogation mark the Tibetan yab-yum icons. In Hindu tantra the female is active and the male is passive; in Buddhist tantra, the roles are ostensibly reversed but--as Agehananda Bharati well explains--the implied behavior of the female obverts the pertaining doctrine so the female is intensely active. In Hindu tantra sexual embrace references both the spiritual and the physical; in Buddhist tantra, sexual embrace ultimately references the spiritual (even in 'left-handed' rites). Magliola goes on to analyze the trope of 'the female dancing on the male', and then various androgynous formations. He ends with a study of 'the twilight language' (sandhâbhâsâ) of the dakinis, which deploys 'efferent' and 'afferent' terms, but in both cases, the signifiers ultimately designate a purely non-tangible experience--the cessation of desire.

In 1986 Leo Steinberg talked about the relationship between art and science in a special issue of Daedalus magazine (Art and Science: Do They Need To Be Yoked?). In that text he stated that there could be no direct relationship or dependence between the two disciplines, though in some phases of art history these seemed to be closer than it may seem today. This is because art and science have had in their history quite dynamic events, strictly related to the religious, social, political ideas. Yoking each other, in the words of the critic, would be like "to throw a bridge between two moving bodies."

However, in the critical parable of Steinberg, the bond with science has always been very present and has undergone much of his writings, albeit always in different and sometimes opposite terms. Already in his first major work (The Eye is a Part of the Mind, 1953), Steinberg considered modern science as an indispensable element of contemporary visual culture, so to say that American abstract expressionism - and abstractism in general - much had to do with the laboratory's methods of contemporary science, as suggesters of forms and motifs that allowed the symbolization of the physical and chemical forces and energies that move the world. Subsequently, in other contributions, the role of scientific and technological discoveries has prompted the critic to wonder how these can work as an impulse to interrogate about original aspects of the past and, ultimately, how contemporary culture as a whole influences not only about making art, but also about making history of art. What emerges as a common factor in these reflections is an approach that programmatically wants to increasingly mark the distance from aesthetic and formalist views in order to give more and more space to a wide range of "other criteria", suggested by the most disparate fronts with which to approach both art and art history.

Leo Steinberg (1920-2011) is known as one of the most revolutionary and thought-provoking art historians of the twentieth century. His studies in Italian Renaissance art contributed to expand the analysis of how images produce meanings beyond symbolism and iconography, thus representing an alternative to Panofskyan iconology. While his research on Leonardo, Michelangelo and Pontormo was published between late 1960s and early ’70s, Steinberg’s contemporary unpublished project on Titian has been relegated to the memory of his private notes (now Getty Research Institute). By bringing previously unstudied material to light, this paper seeks to ideally reconstruct the dialogue between Steinberg and Titian. It will highlight how Titian’s painting stimulated Steinberg’s methodological reflections on the dialectic between the artist’s creativity and the cultural and physical environment in which his works originated. Particular attention will be paid to Steinberg’s focus on how Titian’s paintings engage with the spectator in their original Venetian context.