What is Art History? by Mark Roskill (review)

78 Books the aura, attraction. interest, power, curiosity and provocation that prebureaucratic art possessed? WhatisArt History?Mark Roskill.Thames & Hudson, London. 1976. 192 pp., illus. f4.95. Reviewed by Cecil Could* The deveiopment of the historiography of art and the struggles for academic recognition of art history are not part of the scope of Roskill’s book. Nor does he bring out the changes of accenteven of fashion-in the approach to the subject by art historians of successivegenerations. Hisbook isa practical statement of the problems that face academic art historians and a demonstration of the courses open for their solution. This is explained with considerable lucidity and common sense. The accent is so much on the practical, as opposed to the high-flown,as to tempt one to characterize the book as dealing with the contents of art historians’ work-shops rather than of their studies. In his firstchapter, the Attribution of Pictures, the author does not quite bring out what has long seemed to me an altogether cardinal point. That is. the degree to which major artists have, in the course of time, obliterated most of their lesser contemporaries . 1have actually found people saying that if a picture is not by Raphael it must be by Titian. If not by A, then by B. ignoring the many painters X, whose names are now forgotten, but could, and should, be disinterred. Roskill takes the differencesof quality in works attributed to Piero della France- asillustration of the processof dilution of a master’s work through being executed by his pupils. But in the 16th and 17th centuries this principle is likely to have been systematized to a larger extent than before. Raphael seems to have had as much genius in getting other people to paint his pictures (at least at the end of his life, when he was overwhelmed with miscellaneouswork) as he had for other things that he did; and Veronesewas immenselyskilfulin making a picture look like ‘a Veronese’,even if most of it had been painted by his pupils. In the 17thcentury, Berniniwas able to forcethe French students in Rome to carve ‘a Bernini’-namely the equestrian statue of Louis XIV. The fact that on arrival in France it failed to please was due not somuch to what seemsto us inferior execution as to the fact that the Sun King was shown grinning-something that, it seems, he never did. Concerning fakes, and particularly the case of Hans van Meegeren and his ‘Vermeers’, Roskill makes some interesting points, but he does not refer to the late Max Friedlander’s observation on the subject that renders most others superfluous. This was that after a time fakes give themselves away. The characteristics of the period when they were made, which are unnoticeable at the time, gradually become more obtrusive and finally submerge those of the period the work was imitating. Thus, a Victorian mediaevalfake now looks more Victorian than mediaeval. And the Greta Garbo physiognomy of the van Meegeren‘Vermeers’,which was currency at the time, now looks hopelessly 1930s.Friedlander summed up by saying: ‘Forgeries must be served hot, as they come out of the oven.’ Lectures on Art. Alphonse Mucha. Academy Editions. London: St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1975. 80 pp.. illus. f6.95. Reviewed by John E .Bowlt** The mature years of Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) coincided with the rapid development of the art of the poster and, in a wider context, of new principles of design advocated in Paris, Berlin and Munich in the 1890sand 1900s.When one reads Mucha’s statements on art, one acquaints oneself with the theoretical platform of many artists of Europe and the U.S.A. at the end of the 19th century. Mucha’s lectures, sometimes brilliant, sometimes pathetic, provide a sharpened insight into such magic terms as Art nouveau and Jugendsfil,as well as into more specific issues, such as the aesthetic organization and function of the poster. Mucha’s Lecturesare complemented by a short, unsigned *National Gallery, London WC2N SDN, England. **Dept. of Slavic Languages, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, U.S.A. Foreword, a biographical chronology and reproductions of his diagrams, posters, panneaux and book...