Antiques: The History of an Idea (review)

I found Leon Rosenstein's Antiques: The History of an Idea a marvelous surprise, a connoisseur's introduction to a conceptual category, the antique, demonstrably inseparable from the life of the arts, critically important for the philosophy of art, as well as for intelligently informed appreciation, puzzlingly neglected (we learn, in hindsight, from Rosenstein's recovery of the idea—perhaps, more accurately, from its invention by Rosenstein himself), as subtle and as complex a notion as might be pertinently added at this late date: all brought together in a delightfully informal and meticulous conversation that appears almost incapable of exhausting its fresh examples and distinctions. Rosenstein's essay is a bellelettriste reflection well on its way to being a pocket encyclopedia, written with more than ordinary affection for the collector's passion and a generous impulse to bring attentive aficionados among the pertinent arts, no matter how expert or casual they may be, to a very thorough command of the idea of an antique, without actually mastering the practice of seasoned collectors and connoisseurs of antiques themselves.

Rosenstein is both a philosopher (obviously well informed in the philosophy of art) and an antiques dealer. Nelson Goodman is the only other philosopher of my acquaintance who was active in both areas of expertise. I am not acquainted with Rosenstein personally, but his sweep among the arts (in fact, in philosophy as well) is distinctly wider than Goodman's. More than that—although, of course, Goodman's theories have enjoyed a much larger inning in philosophical (and associated) circles—Rosenstein manages to enrich our grasp of a number of philosophical puzzles (self-identity and reidentification under change and changing history, most notably) by way of his command of the materials in the arts-and-antiques world and, in the reverse direction, in practical inquiries regarding the market fortunes of artworks and antiques by way of his philosophical skills, which Goodman was never drawn to.

Let me offer a small example of Rosenstein's skill in bringing seemingly disparate materials from the one discipline to the explication of the puzzles of the other. In chapter 3 (of the book's four chapters), "The Ten Criteria of Antiques" (which seems at first unpromising as the sprightly topic it proves to be), Rosenstein comes, sequentially, to item 8 in his tally, "authenticity," very possibly the most strategic of his criteria. He reintroduces the definition of an antique (provided in chapter 1):

An antique is a primarily handcrafted object of rarity and beauty that by means of its associated provenance and agedness as recognized by means of its style and material endurance, has the capacity to generate and preserve for us the image of a world now past.

(160)

Not only does Rosenstein provide an explicit definition and set of explicit criteria of what it is to be an antique, he also explains the nuanced sense in which each distinction must be grasped with care (together with a wealth of carefully selected illustrations that mark his mastery), as he establishes the bona fides of his formulation; he also explains very neatly the philosophical subtleties that distinguish definition and criteria and their joint use (in one or another determinate context), as distinctions arise, embedded in the explanation of what an antique is. This permits Rosenstein to engage very deftly in professional quarrels in the philosophy of art, which are tactfully relegated almost entirely to the Notes; so that the book itself never appears cluttered or merely argumentative. But it needs to be noted that a good many of the endnotes are really cameo essays of considerable value that depend on the intertwining of philosophical and art-historical details not usually brought together or brought together with Rosenstein's wide-ranging authority. (See, for instance, notes 9 and, taken jointly, 13 and 15, chapter 1, on "art," "style," and "beauty.") Many of the shorter notes are just as worthwhile (for instance, on the arts-and-antiques side, note 163, chapter 2, on "Michelangelo's...