‘The ‘Golden Age’ and the Secession: Approaches to Alterity in early 20th Century World...

SMC STUDIES IN ASIAN ART AND CULTURE

STUDIES IN ASIEN ART AND CULTURE I SAAC

VOLUME 1

SERIES EDITOR

JULIA A. B. HEGEWALD

JULIA A. B. HEGEWALD

IN THE SHADOW OF THE GOLDEN AGE

ART AND IDENTITY IN ASIA FROM

GANDHARA TO THE MODERN AGE

EBVERlAG

Chapter 13

The 'Golden Age' and the Secession: Approaches to Alterity in Early Twentieth-Century World Art1

Eva-Maria Troelenberg

CANONS, ARTSAND THE QUESTION OF ALTERITY It was the nineteenth century which developed a systematic historiographic

approach to the arts. Particularly in the world of German art scholarship, permeated by Hegelian thought, this meant the establishment of narratives, trajectories and canons-axes and spaces in which to place objects and cultures within the coordinate systems of a shared history of ideas. Because of this construct, it is especially illuminating to examine the position of foreign objects

in these systems as they were transformed into the modern notion of art. 2

Of course, it must be clear from the outset that the definitions of terms such as 'foreign' or 'alterity' are not without problems. It takes us into the vast field

of what is currently referred to as transcultural art history. It has contributed to

Several crucial points of this essay have derived from my research on the Munich exhibition of "Masterpieces of Muharomadan Art", which is the topic of my dissertation (Troelenberg 2011). This paper seeks to develop a deeper insight into certain aspects which could only be touched upon in the monograph. Important general acknowledgments are owed to my colleagues in the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin and to the fellows of the research program "Connecting Art Histories in the Museum", a cooperation between the State Museums in Berlin and the Kunsthistorisches Institut and the Max Planck Institute in Florence, where I was a postdoctoral fellow in 2010 and 2011. My first encounter with the book of Ernst Cohn-Wiener was in Avinoam Shalem's library; Viktoria Schmidt-Linsenhoff brought the book of Wilhelm Hausenstein to my attention. I also thank Claudia Reufer for her technical and editorial assistance, and Amanda Phillips for some extra language editing. 2 See also Finbarr Barry Flood, who has considered the problern of canonisation of Islamic arts in its relation to contemporary political discourses, particularly in the English-speaking world. He also coined the much-quoted 'art history interruptus', referring to the Iack of attention for anything created largely after 1800 when it comes to Islamic art (Flood 2007). A similar approach applies to the canonical position of Byzantine art, to which Flood also refers (Nelson 1996). Margaret S. Graves' brilliant article "Feeling uncomfortable in the nineteenth century" (2012) was published and came to my attention briefly after the finalisation of this paper, but since it addresses a number of related or complementary questions, it should be mentioned here as weiL

398 Eva-Maria Troelenberg

a significant opening of our perspectives in the last years, but at the same time

sometimes seems to raise more questions than it solves, particularly in the quest

for universally valid terminologies.3 Many of its discourses and arguments hark back to one of the key theses of postcolonial studies, Edward W. Said's seminal definition of Orientalism (Said 1978). Perhaps the most important and generally valid lesson that can be leamed from Said's argument is that the very notion of alterity itself is always a construction, depending on the beholder's perspective. Here is where the discourse becomes most interesting for the art historian and her or his subject, since it has become a standard approach of art history to take the beholder into account when talking about the aesthetic of an image or an object. Thus, the art historian's view is in general predestined to consider and analyse processes of perception, even if tacitly, not only across historical but also across geographical and/or cultural borders. At the same time, it must be clear that alterity is not a given precondition depending on fixed borders-but rather that the awareness of both borders and alterities are part of the very process of reception. Accordingly, their meanings and their qualities can shift with the premises of the art historical discourse.

This paper will consider some of the categories and criteria considering the art of the 'other' in the early twentieth century, mainly focusing on the branch of those arts subsumed as 'Islamic' and their reception through publications in the German-speaking art world.

MANUAL AND MASTERPIECE: MIGEON, SARRE AND THE 'SCIENTIFICATION' OF THE ARTS OF ISLAM To fully grasp the meaning of the developments which shall be considered here, it is necessary to give a short overview of the state of affairs in France after the turn of the twentieth century. Needless to say, as one of the big colonial powers, Germany's neighbour (and rival) had had a much more direct history of contact with the Islamic World, particularly in North Africa. While the immediate political and economic implications of French colonialism remain outside the focus of this paper, it is worth asking what this contact meant for the reception of the arts of Islam. Primarily, many objects were displaced from their original contexts and appropriated by the art market and museums. 4 The circulation of such goods stimulated new academic interest as well. One of the most important

3 See, for example, the various positions expressed in Elkins (2007); for a critical summary of major aspects of the discussion on 'alterity' or 'difference', particularly in relation to visual culture see Schmidt-Linsenhoff (2010: esp. 9-19). 4 On this vast and complex topic, see, for example, Erzini (2000) as weil as various

The 'Golden Age' and the Secession 399

protagonists in this context is certainly Gaston Migeon, 5 the custodian of medieval arts at the Louvre. He was also the curator of the "Exposition des Arts Musulmans" in Paris in 1903, one of the first comprehensive art exhibitions on this topic (Migeon 1903; Roxburgh 2000: 20-21; Vemoit 2000: 20; Makariou 2007: 56; Labrusse 2007b: 71). Four years later, he published the seminal Marmel des Arts Musulmans (Migeon & Saladin 1907) tagether with the architect Henri Saladin. This two-volume handbook, dedicated to both architecture and minor

arts was the first monograph of this kind. It was meant to embrace all important branches, regions and periods of Islamic arts. Particularly Migeon, in the preface to the second volume which deals with Les arts plastiques et industriels, takes a decidedly academic position: he underlines the fact that research on 'Archeologie Musulmane' (Migeon & Saladin 1907, Vol. II: VII) is still in its infancy, in a downright amateurish state. He uses the publication of the handbook as a platform from which to advocate the founding of academic chairs of Islamic archaeology-but, it is important to note, he sees them in philologist institutions such as the Ecole des Langues Orientales (Migeon & Saladin 1907, Vol. II: VII). Even though he promoted the importance of material culture and particularly the much-neglected 'minor arts', the discipline of choice for the intended chairs was not art history, but philology which had indeed the Iongest tradition of studying the relevant regions (Fremeaux 2007: 27). This scholarly attitude is also reflected in the outline of the book: it begins with a lengthy historical introduction focusing on 'Muslim Civilisations' (Civilisations Musulmanes). The chapters themselves are classified according to artistic techniques, stressing the material qualities of the objects-but within each chapter, Migeon uses the artefacts as sources with which to tell the story of a particular technique in a given historical context, frequently harking back to classical sources of Islamic historiography such as the travelogues of Ibn Batuta (Migeon & Saladin 1907, Vol. II: 315). Images and text are arranged according to this premise: the text is generously larded with a nurober of mainly small-format photographs (Plate 13.1) which serve as illustrations. This historiographic approach of the medievalist Migeon may explain why no attention is paid to contemporary topics-neither in the narrative nor in the objects pictured. According to Migeon, 'Les Civilisations Musulmanes' and their artistic achievements seem to fade away somewhere between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. What the

contributions in the catalogue Purs Decors (Labrusse 2007a), published on the occasion of the centenary of the publication of the Manuel d'art Musulman (Migeon 1907). 5 For a biography of Migeon, see Viltard (2007: 318); about Migeon and the 'Manuel', see also Makariou (2007: 57-58).


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Plate 13.1 Double page from Migeon and Saladin (1907).

'Manuel' establishes is, in the truest sense of the word, a historical canon.6 This

publication was certainly received as an important achievement among those interested in the arts of Islam:7 a primary tool to work with in the future-and an impetus to the ambition of other scholars.

Here is where we retum to Germany, where Friedrich Sarre was the ernerging mastermind in Islamic art studies. Trained as an art historian, 8 he started his travels to Asia Minor and Persia in the 1890s-with a clear agenda to document and later to publish the Islamic and pre-Islamic monuments of the region (Sarre

6 Campare Flood (2007); for a wider perspective on the notion of Islamic art as anti-modern in art historical writing, see Shalem (2011). 7 See the review of the art historian Josef Strzygowski, who criticises details and some aspects of the outline, but stresses that this is a work without precedent and therefore of extremely high value for future research (Strzygowski 1908: 825-827). 8 For his biography, see, for example, Schmidt (1935), Kühne! (1949) and Kröger (2008).


1901-191 0). He also assembled his own collection of Islamic artefacts, and from 1904 on he volunteered as the custodian of the newly erected Persian-Islamic department in the Kaiser Friedrich-Museum on Berlin's Museum Island.9 As a collector, museuro professional and scholar he was well connected with art markets, academic circles and museums throughout Europe. The activities in Paris did not escape his attention. He lent some of his possessions to Gaston Migeon's exhibition in 1903 and wrote a very complimentary review about the same event (Migeon 1903: pl. 84; Sarre 1903)10; he stresses the cutting-edge

character of French scholarship which he considered to be way ahead of that in Germany (Sarre 1907: 2531). The 'Manuel', though it in large part focused on objects from French collections, featured some illustrations of objects from Sarre's collection and from the Kaiser Friedrich-Museum (e.g. Migeon & Saladin 1907, Vol. II: 281).

Sarre hirnself was actively seeking to attain this level of scholarship. Starting in 1906, he planned to publish a series of volumes on "Products of Islamic Art" (Erzeugnisse islamischer Kunst) (Sarre 1906-1909). Departing from the objects in his own collection, which were by that time largely on display in the Kaiser Friedrich-Museum,11 he initially envisioned a sequence of books, each dedicated to a particular medium. The first volume was on metalwork, an important focus of his collection. In a letter to the Orientalist Carl Heinrich Becker, Sarre describes his intention: " [ . . . ] I will provide introductions for all sections, so that the whole thing will be a kind of handbook of Islamic art."12 After he had finished the first volume, he must have realised that his own collection would not suffice to forward so encompassing a project. As a result, he opted for a shift of concept, instead discussing one particular epoch in each volume, and including artefacts from other collections. The goal, however, remained clear: in the long run, he wanted to provide " [ . . . ] material which will be able to serve as a basis for a comprehensive art history of Islam" (Sarre 1906-1909, Vol. II: V). The most obvious and immediate problern with Sarre's undertaking was that it was extremely slow. The idea for a comprehensive handbook may have been germinating for some time, but for the published edition, Sarre was simply overtaken by Migeon's and Saladin's success. By the time their 'Manuel' appeared in 1907, he had only managed to publish his first volume of

9 On Sarre as a collector and his relationship with the Berlin Museum, see Kröger (2004: esp. 33-37). 10 Plate 84 in Migeon (1903) shows a textile fragment from Sarre's collection. 11 Today, this is the Bode Museum. 12 Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, VI. HA NL Becker, No. 4682, Letter from Sarre to Becker, 24. April 1906: "[ . . . ] ich gebe für alle Abteilungen Einleitungen, so dass das Ganze eine Art von Handbuch der islamischen Kunst sein wird."


the 'Erzeugnisse' on Islamic Metalwork; the second volume, Seldjuk Minor Arts, would not be underway before 1909. Sarre's methodological agenda, which was different from that of the 'Manuel' in some important aspects, should be taken into account when considering his accomplishments, however, and this is most clearly reflected in the outline and Iayout of the Erzeugnisse islamischer Kunst. The 'Manuel' is a small-format handbook in the truest sense of the word. In most cases, the objects appear as replaceable specimens of a type within the !arger narrative. The art historian Sarre, on the contrary, puts significant emphasis on the single, individual object-for him, an object may be representative of a particular artistic development, but, nonetheless every piece has its own quality and characteristic aesthetic which must be the pivotal starting point for any discussion or study. Accordingly, he attached great importance to the images. The need to show high-quality and large-scale figures was certainly one of the main reasons why the 'Erzeugnisse' were published in a rather large format, and may also help explain the slow journey from conception to publication. The books measure 29 by 22 centimetres and each provides enough space for generous plates, employing excellent photographs whose formal unity suggests that they were taken during a special campaign undertaken solely for this publication (Plate 13.2). The product of this methodological approach is highly attractive, but the publication process remained cumbersome and strictly speaking, the volumes overshoot the requirements of a handbook. Maybe this is why the third volume of the Erzeugnisse islamischer Kunst never saw the light of day.

Instead, during the autumn of 1909, Sarre began working on another project which offered even greater possibilities for a comprehensive categorical canonisation of Islamic arts: he became the main curator for the exhibition

"Masterpieces of Muharomadan Art", envisioned for 1910 in MunichP This show featured more than three-thousand six-hundred objects from over twohundred and fifty international collections and museums, representing all

important epochs and regions of Islamic art. In undertaking the organisation of this exhibition, Sarre's deliberate plan was to establish a canon of the arts of Islam which would place the objects and their study on equal footing with that of Western art. Implied in this goal was the assertion that Islamic objects should explicitly be subject to the criteria and epistemic tools of the art

13 For further reading on this show and its background in schalarship and cultural history, apart from and complementary to Troelenberg (2011) and Troelenberg (2012), see, Hagedom (2000: 123-124), Roxburgh (2000: 22-29) Vemoit (2000: 20), various contributions in Dercon, Krempel and Shalem (2010), as weil as in Lermer and Shalem (2010). A concise chapter on the Munich exhibition from the historian's point of view can be found in Marehand (2010: 410-413).

The 'Golden Age' and the Secession

Nr. H

Plate 13.2 Photographie plate from Sarre (1906-09).

403

Tafel VII


historical discipline. This claim was clearly reflected in the show's strategy of presentation. 1t followed a broadly expressed chronology and made allusions to particular contexts in cultural history, leading from Sasanian Persia to the Ottoman Empire of the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. Significantly, very few newer artworks were included-here as well we find a historical canon

which emphasises historicity. This emphasis and the selection of objects accorded well with the notion of the

'masterpiece' which featured so prominently in the show's title-"Masterpieces of Muharomadan Art"-and which was probably chosen intentionally by Friedrich Sarre. He wanted to efface the image of cheap and decorative bazaar commodities which was often recalled by the term 'Oriental' artefacts, as the exhibition guidebook explicitly stated:

Furthermore we have to consider that the large bazaars in the touristic centres of the Orient contain usually cheap wares, manufactured for abroad, modern but often labelled as antique. The original local art industry must not be judged according to the artistic standard of such products. Partly, it is also the fault of this bric-a-brac that many-and mainly those well-educated in matters of art-have lost their joy in oriental art in general and have discredited it

(Amtlicher Katalog, 1910: 49). 14

Again, we see the notion that a 'real' artwork has to be old, and it has to fulfil the aesthetic expectations of educated connoisseurs of Western art. Particularly the first factor reflects common early twentieth-century Orientalist notions about the deplorable state of the Middle East and its cultural decline. Considering the coloniaHst thinking which underpinned such stereotypes, the aim to preserve the old treasures of seemingly vanishing cultures through their 'artification' in Western museums, collections, exhibitions, and publications definitely had chauvinist if not racist undertones.

Apart from this, it is epistemically significant that the factor of age value was an overriding concern in conservative museological acquisition strategies. In 1906, one of Sarre's letters documents a controversy with Wilhelm von Bode

14 "Ferner ist zu berücksichtigen, daß die großen Bazare in den Fremdenstädten des Orients

durchschnittlich billige, für das Ausland gefertigte, moderne, aber oft als alt ausgegebene Waren enthalten, nach deren Kunstwert man die frühere einheimische Kunstindustrie nicht bemessen darf. Dieses Bric-a-brac ist teilweise auch schuld daran, vielen und in erster Linie den künstlerisch Gebildeten die Freude an der orientalischen Kunst überhaupt verdorben und diese in Misskredit gebracht zu haben", also quoted by Hagedom (2000: 124).


about the purchase of two particular pieces for the Persian-Islamic department

in the Kaiser Friedrich-Museum. This institution, with its main focus on Italian Renaissance masters, understood itself to be a haven of artistic 'masterpieces' (e.g. Fische! 1912), and its principles of canonisation were naturally applied to other branches of art, such as Islamic, situated under the same roof.15 While

Bode flatly rejected the pieces in question as "too late", Sarre opted for their acquisition " [ ... ] since it is unacceptable that only [the] Middle Ages should be bought".16 We do not know which pieces were the subject of this exchange, and perhaps the term 'Middle Ages' in this case should not be taken too literally, but rather as polemicising hyperbole. Certainly Bode never confined hirnself to "only [the] Middle Ages", neither as a collector of Western art nor in the Odental field, where he discovered many valuable carpets dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Enderlein 1995). Moreover, this remark does not make Sarre an advocate of contemporary or even modern Islamic art. Rather, this episode sheds light on the obviously contentious question of where to locate the 'golden age' of particular artistic achievements.

Here we come close to the definition of the 'masterpiece' and its canonising function as described by Hans Belting: during the age of musealisation-mainly the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries-art history was turned into a discipline with seemingly objective criteria which should be comprehensible through a canon of works-masterpieces-of museum quality (Belting 1998: esp. 54-55).

Furthermore, Francis Haskell describes the related, if not synonymaus idea of the 'Old Master Exhibition', which asserts the historical, non-contemporary dimension in its very name:

The Old Master exhibition is notable above all because it brings tagether in a clearly defined space works of art (often of the most varied kinds) that had originally been designed to be seen in wholly different locations

(Haskell 2000: 4).

This rather traditional, conservative and institutional notion of the 'masterpiece' was the model for Sarre's concept of "Masterpieces of Muhammadan Art" in Munich. He wanted to mold the pieces on display to fit the classical Western discourse on art and its quality. This implies a concentration on traditional values-in converse, it would not have served his cause to use discourses

15 For the formation and history of this department see various contributions in Kröger and Heiden (2004). 16 Archive of the Museum of Islamic Art Berlin, Ietter from Sarre to Theodor Wiegand, 24. March 1906 "[ ... ]denn es geht doch nicht an, nur Mittelalter zu kaufen".


about modern avant-gardist artistic currents because their practitioners equally occupied the position of outsiders: they were also fighting for their recognition as artists. Sarre's topic may have been innovative for the art historical canon,

but his strategy was to find a place within the establishment, not go against itY

Of course, remarkable lacunae may be found in this 'masterworks' concept when it is applied to Islamic art. Most obviously, Sarre's canon of masterpieces could not present many 'masters' in the sense of geniuses with well-known personal histories. A number of works in the Munich exhibition could be attributed to workshops or even to particular names, especially in the case of miniature painting; however, this fact was not very much highlighted. In several cases, Sarre chose to group all the works amassed by one collector tagether in the exhibition-rather than grouping tagether all the works of, for example, one painter. 18 This demonstrates that the pronouncements of connaisseurship were considered a more important criterion for 'mastership' than the identification of individual artists. 19 Even though the physical and aesthetic nature of the 'Muhammadan' exhibits was in many cases very different from the incunables of the Western art canon, the notion of the masterpiece and the medium of the art exhibition were thus applied to them.

This agenda was supported by a large-scale picture campaign which Sarre conducted tagether with the Munich publishing hause Bruckmann during the

exhibition. lt testifies to the fusion of modern, state-of-the-art techniques and aesthetics with established conservative premises: several hundred of the most important objects were photographed in a standardised procedure, resulting in mostly very sober black-and-white images, frontal or slightly angled views, against a neutral-usually white-background, sometimes showing two or more views of one object, sometimes putting two or more similar objects tagether

on one plate for comparison (Plate 13.3). These images, which in the first case were sold in the exhibition in large-scale copies,20 recall the layout of Sarre's Erzeugnisse islamischer Kunst.

And indeed, Sarre's old idea of a handbook or canonical compendium was obviously driving the picture campaign. Two years after the exhibition, he

17 For the distinction between a more conservative and an anti-canonical academia,

particularly regarding ethnography, see also Penny (2002: 36). 18 This can, for example, be observed in the case of some Persian drawings, several of which

were attributed to the painter Bihzad, but were nevertheless shown in different rooms. 19 This aspect betrays the relationship with primitivising strategies of reception which were

applied to African artefacts, as Schmidt-Linsenhoff has shown (2010: 297). 20 A printed index of these pictures was issued during the exhibition and apparently also

re-issued as a sales catalogue later: Meisterwerke Muhammedanischer Kunst auf der Ausstellung München 1910. Verzeichnis der Photographien in unveränderlichem Platindruck. Munich 1912.


Plate 13.3 Photographie plate from Sarre and Martin (1912).

published a selection of the Munich 'Masterpieces' (Meisterwerke) in a lavish three-volume folio edition. It was a condensed canon of two-hundred and fiftyseven plates, even more exclusive in its focus on history and quality than the exhibition had been, and all the while affirming the notion of the masterpiece, which, again, featured prominently in the title: Die Ausstellung von Meisterwerken muhammedanischer Kunst in München 1910 (Sarre & Martin 1912). The publication was arranged in chapters according to media, very much like Migeon's 'Manuel' or Sarre's own first draft of the 'Erzeugnisse'. It was a joint achievement of a number of scholars who had also been involved in the exhibition itself, but it was conceived of and coordinated by Sarre. He provided each author with an ideal template for the single catalogue entries21 and made sure that, again echoing the strategy of the 'Erzeugnisse', an introductory text would accompany each chapter, providing general comprehensive insights into the important

21 Archive of the Museum for Islamic Art Berlin, copy of a letter from Friedrich Sarre to Max van Berchem, 18. May 1911.


developments of lslamic arts. 22 Of course, the large format ( 40 by 50 centimetres), the high price, and the exclusive circulation of this publication23 again tumed it

into a cumbersome and elitist object, not quite meeting the standards of a true handbook. However, particularly the size and quality of the Chromolithographie prints-in both technical and visual terms-contributed to the enduring effect of the 'Munich Masterpieces'. Such images were capable of providing a large amount of information about every single piece and its aesthetic qualities while at the same time powerfully focusing attention on the same. It was a strategy

of presenting the artefacts as a sequence of masterpieces, 24 telling the story of Islamic art by using the object's very own aesthetic eloquence as captured by the photographic lense. Of chief importance was to present the artistic character

and the style of a given object which would, by the analysis of its main features and by comparisons and groupings with other pieces, indicate its own position within the history of art. Very evidently this also betrays the methodological approach of 'Stilgeschichte' the latest trend of art historical thinking of the time which focused on comparisons of style and aesthetic appearance-and obviously the method of choice when dealing with a branch of art whose written sources were often very difficult for W estem scholars to access.

This also ties in with the classical notion of the 'masterpiece' as established in European art: pieces of a particular, seemingly etemal and timeless quality which set standards; pieces which are unique and yet also illustrative of the production of their time. The prominence of the artwork's pure image within this formal

language is generally a symptom of what has been described as a first 'iconic turn': this meant an epistemic process of tuming away from historicism and its narrative structure and of overcoming the notion that language is the major or even exclusive medium of knowledge (Locher 2007: 56). It also coincides with another important trend of the academic zeitgeist of the early twentieth century, namely that of objectivity, which has been described so aptly by Lorraine Daston and Peter Gallison. Photography with its 'mechanical objectivity' was an important medium of this trend, providing seemingly independent images, and therefore neutral data of a given object. 25

22 This principle was only abandoned in the case of the chapter on arms and armour, written by Camillo List, which was published without an introduction. Whether this was a deliberate decision or an editorial oversight remains open to speculation. 23 It was available in two different bindings (leather or linen), but in both versions the three volumes and the slipcase weighed 30 kilograms; the cost was 375 Marks even for the more modest set (Bruckmann-Archiv, Verlagschronik 1912). In keeping with the exclusive audience at which it was targeted, its circulation was limited to four-hundred and thirty copies. 24 For some further Observations on this effect, see also Troelenberg (2010). 25 See Daston and Gallison (2007), and particularly the chapter on 'mechanical objectivity'


'OBJECTIVE' IMAGES, DIFFERENT ENDS Of course, it is a commonplace today that no photographic image is objective in itself,26 and even if it might be, it would nonetheless be open to different interpretations. Actually, the more neutral and seemingly contextless the image appears, the more easily it may be placed in diverse discourses, narratives and ideas. Herein lies the main reason why the Munich images of 'Muhammadan art' were so successful in the lang run. They made their way into a large number of diverse publications on Islamic art published during the first half of the twentieth century, and some even later.27 Sarre's ambition of creating an enduring canonical compendium of the arts of Islam had been realised.

One particularly striking example is the volume on the arts of Islam which appeared as part of the farnaus 'Propyläen Kunstgeschichte' series in 1925 (Glück & Diez 1925). The layout of the whole series, which was aimed at a wide educated audience, shows much resemblance to the formal structure of Sarre's 'Masterpieces' publication, even if each volume was condensed into a much more manageable-yet still attractive-format. The 'Islam' volume, edited by the art historians Heinrich Glück28 and Ernst Diez, distinguished three large topics: architecture, arts and crafts and, separately, the arts of the book. Ernst Diez had been one of Sarre's junior co-authors for the 1912 publication Die Ausstellzmg von Meisterwerken Muhammedanischer Kunst in München.29 No wonder, then, that he was responsible for the arts-and-crafts chapter in the Propyläen volume; and, indeed, he explicitly harked back to the achievements of the 1910 picture campaign and the 1912 catalogues: the lion's share of his images is taken from there (Plate 13.4), and he explicitly refers to the Munich exhibition as a source (Glück & Diez 1925: 526). In a short preface to his catalogue entries, he indicates that he deliberately adopts all the information on single objects from the 1912 volumes to "[ . . . ] make this hidden treasure of insight available to a larger circle of interested persons" (Glück & Diez 1925: 557).30 In the arrangement of topics as well, he closely follows the technical classifications as established in Munich.

(2007: esp. 135-145). For a critical assessment of the seemingly objective character of artefact photography in a colonial context, see also Schmidt-Linsenhoff (2010: 302, 307-308). 26 As Daston and Gallison show, some of these reservations were already well understood during the early years of photography (Daston & Gallison 2007: 141). 27 One late example has been reproduced in Theile (1956). 28 On Heinrich Glück, see Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815-1950, Vol. 2, Ug. 6, 1957: 12, online: http:/ /www.biographien.ac.at/oebl!oebl_G/Glueck_Heinrich_1889_1930.xml. 29 For a comprehensive biography of Diez, see Rührdanz (1999) and Kröger (s.v. Diez, Ernst, in: Encyclopaedia Iranica online, http:/ /www.iranica.com/articles/diez). 30 "Die Verfasser glaubten der Förderung des Verständnisses für die technischen Feinheiten der augewandten Kunst des Islam am besten zu dienen, indem sie den dort verborgenen Schatz von Aufschlüssen so einem weiteren Interessentenkreis zugänglich machten."


Plate 13.4 Photographie plate from Diez and Glück (1925).


Finally, his introductory remarks reveal that he is an adherent of the strictly art historical 'masterpiece' approach, eager to raise general awareness about the artistic qualities of Islamic material culture and Islamic style. BuHding rhetorical bridges for those accustomed to the history of Western aesthetics, he describes

Islamic art as a very specialised but somehow universal, and universally appealing, style.

This stylistic certainty and security which never lapses turned Islamic arts and crafts into the 'most brilliant one on earth', whose works are not subject to any fashions, but speak to all people of all times. [ . . . ] who could resist the beauty of a Persian carpet, a Persian fayence, an inlaid bronze or an ornamentless beaker of rock crystal [ . . . ] if he has only the slightest understanding of art?

(Diez 1925: 71).31

Hierarchically, he considers such works on the same level as masterpieces of Italian painting, attributing a downright classical character to them. To make their 'classicism' more explicit, he also stresses the achievements of early Islamic culture, its connection to antiquity and its achievements as a high civilisation:

Much was inherited and conquered, but there was also knowledge of how to use it. Because Islam was not only the heir of antique art, but also keeper and supplier of the antique sciences [ . . . ]

(Diez 1925: 71).32

Throughout his argument, Diez reveals hirnself to be a rather conservative follower of the practice of Islamic art history that stressed canon-building and assimilation with the Western model. It is hardly surprising, then, that his time frame also focused on what might be called traditional-the early Islamic and medieval periods. He does mention some newer and even contemporary currents, among them a guild of metalworkers who were still working in Isfahan at that

31 "Diese stilistische Beherrschtheit und Sicherheit, die jegliche Entgleisung ausschloss, machten das islamische zum ,glänzendsten Kunsthandwerk der Erde', dessen Werke keinerlei Modeströmungen unterworfen sind, sondern zu allen Menschen aller Zeiten sprechen können. [ ... ] wer könnte der Schönheit eines persischen Teppichs, einer persischen Fayence, einer tauschierten Bronze oder eines ornamentlosen, ganz auf Materialwirkung berechneten Bechers aus Bergkristall wiederstehen, sofern er überhaupt Kunstverständnis hat?" 32 "Man erbte und eroberte viel, wußte es aber auch zu nützen. Denn der Islam war nicht nur Erbe der antiken Kunst, sondern auch Bewahrer und Fortbildner der antiken Wissenschaften [ ... ]".


time; however, he immediately asserts their links to historical craft practice, writing that their techniques were "transplanted" from Dagestan "centuries ago" (Diez 1925: 73). In the end, the plates in this volume are another condensed canon of 'masterpieces' from the golden age of Islamic art.

The Islam volume of the Propyläen also shows how much the canonical status of non-European arts is generally open to negotiation or at least to biased interpretation depending on a particular zeitgeist or even on the position of a particular author within a zeitgeist. Having examined Ernst Diez' approach for the arts and crafts section, it is interesting to take a look at Heinrich Glück's general introduction to the volume; even though both scholars came from the same academic background, Glück's arguments are more shaped by ethnographical studies and their vocabularies, distinguishing an ahistorical unifying basis ernerging from the demotic nomad 'spirit' of the desert landscape on one side, and the ingredients of 'historical high cultures' on the other (Glück 1925: 10). According to Glück, the interplay between this "nomad spirit" and the "national spirit" (volkliche Eigenart) particularly of the Arabs and Turks (Glück 1925: 12) was what shaped the character of Islamic art. This line of reasoning shows how deeply these types of canonisation strategies for non-European art were rooted in German philosophy and its key terms; 'Volksgeist', as a derivative ofHegelian thinking, is clearly a subtext here,33 and, not surprisingly, its cataclysmic potential for racist interpretation is already discemible.

A look at the larger context of the Propyläen series reveals that by the 1920s,

if not earlier, similar processes of canonisation had begun for other branches of non-European art: the series starts with a volume, The Art of Indigenous Peoples and Prehistory (von Sydow 1923), the second volume is, The Art of the Ancient Orient (Schäfer & Andrae 1925), and the fourth, The Art of India, China, and Japan (Fischer 1928). Even a cursory glance at their abundant photographic

material is illuminating. Sarre's picture campaigns for his Erzeugnisse islamischer Kunst and for Munich were certainly a most innovative step araund 1910, in keeping with the latest methods in art history and technical achievements in photography and printing. Same ten to fifteen years later, exactly this mode

33 On the meaning of 'Volksgeist' for Carl Schnaase, see Schwarzer (1995: 27); see also Shalem (2011: 251) on this notion in the art history of Johannes Emmer. Most authors writing in English use this term deriving from the philosophy of German Romanticism as a loanword, it might be tentatively translated as "spirit of the people". It indicates that every people or nation is characterised by a particular collective soul or spirit.


of capturing and publishing was Standard: it had become the strategy for art historical canonisation. 34

A closer reading of these volumes is beyond the focus of this paper, but in general, the larger spectrum of non-European objects-which claimed more and more space on the radar of art history-remains an important backdrop for

further observations.

This general background becomes clearer yet when we look at another significant, yet academically less renowned, 35 example of the further career of Islamic art

in print media: the 1923 Das Kunstgewerbe des Ostens by Ernst Cohn-Wiener (Cohn-Wiener n.d. [1923]).36 Trained as an art historian with teachers such as Wölfflin, Friedländer and Justi in Berlin from 1902 on, Cohn-Wiener went to the Technical University of Karlsruhe in 1906 to work as an assistant to Mare Rosenberg, who, according to Cohn-Wiener, was "the well-known expert on history of Applied Arts". 37 Maybe it was this intensified contact with applied arts that motivated him to delve deeper into different fields of non-European art later. From the 1920s on, he started travelling in West Turkestan38 and kept in tauch with Friedrich Sarre and the Islamic Department in Berlin (Wendland 1999: 104).39 Das Kunstgewerbe des Ostens, written and published during these years, at first sight clearly testifies to the Berlin connection, in terms of both

material and method. The book's scope is sweeping, including the arts and crafts of Egypt, the Ancient Middle East, Antiquity and the Middle Ages (this chapter being tagged as "between East and West"), Islam, as well as China and Japan. The Islam chapter is one of the Ionger ones, and this was certainly because of the large number of available images, which to no small portion, again come

from Sarre's campaign in Munich (Plate 13.5). In the general introduction to the book, Cohn-Wiener also clearly adheres to the ideas of 'Stilgeschichte', stressing the aesthetic character of the object. He defines style as the 'taste',

34 For some parallel observations, see, for example, the publication series "Kulturen der Erde", issued by the Folkwang Museum in the years between 1922 and 1932 (zur Hinden 2005; Schmidt-Linsenhoff 2010). 35 To my knowledge, the book received one short, yet favourable review in the Hurlington Magazine, which, however, clearly categorises it as a "popular illustrated book" (F.D. 1923: 149). 36 For his biography, see Ettinghausen (1942) and Wendland (1999: 101-104). 37 The Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin holds part of Cohn-Wiener's bequest; among the papers is a typewritten 'Curriculum Vitae' in English, which he seems to have used when applying for faculty positions after his emigration to the United States in 1939.

38 He collected a picture archive on the architecture of this region, which is now held at the British Museum: http:/ /archnet.org/library /images/sites.jsp?select= collection&key= 264.

39 Cohn-Wiener also explicitly testifies to this in his 'Curriculum Vitae'.


P�rsitcht> FlaJche. R�mallc Rhari!es-Fayencc.

Pri•atbesitz P1ri•.

DR· ERNST COHN·WIENER

DAS KUNSTGEWERBE DES OSTENS

AEOVPTEN , VORDERASIEN ' ISLAM

CHI N A U N DJAPAN

O.E S CHICHTE ' STILE / TE CHNIK

BERLIN

VERLAG FÜR KUNSTWISSENSCHAFT

Plate 13.5 Frontispiece page from Cohn-Wiener (1923).

'collective feeling' or 'universal feeling for beauty' of a given culture, which may be strongly defined by religion (Cohn-Wiener 1923: 6).4° For the same reason, he also criticises the warn-out term 'applied arts' (Kunstgewerbe),-which he hirnself nevertheless uses in the title-because it reduces the object too much to its material and technical aspects and creates false hierarchies: "It is not important whether a painting is painted or woven, but that it is a painting." (Cohn-Wiener 1923: 5). 41 So far, his thinking is very much in line with Alois Riegl's concept of 'Kunstwollen'42 which had opened up many new horizons in

40 "Denn was wir 'Stil' nennen, ist ein Kollektivgefühl, eine Einheit des Schönheitsempfindens, die in allen Menschen einer Kultur lebt." On Cohn-Wiener's conception of the religious category, see Shalem (2011: 257-258). 41 "Wesentlich ist nicht, ob ein Gemälde gemalt oder gewirkt ist, sondern daß es ein Gemälde ist." 42 The term 'Kunstwollen' is very specifically rooted in early twentieth-century German art history and therefore hard to translate and define precisely-it is impossible to discuss the term and summarise the scholarly debate on it here. Scholars who succeeded Riegls generation, such as Ernst Gombrich, often left the term as a German borrowing, even in their English texts, also translations such as "will to art" or "artistic volition" are in use. In a more recent translation of Hans Sedlmayr 1929 essay "The Quintessence of Riegl's Thought", it is e.g. called "art drive" (Sedlmayr 2001). As a concept, it has been interpreted differently


art history during these years, and, accordingly, it is also in line with the idea of the "Masterpiece of Muhammadan Art" as promoted by the Munich canon of

carpets, vessels and woodcarvings. However, there is something more, so mething

rather radical in Cohn-Wiener's interpretation of 'Eastem Art'. His concept of taste or style shows signs of psychological categorisation, principally similar to Heinrich Glück's assumption of a particular 'primitive spirit'. But where Glück seems to find national, ethnic or even racial characteristics in art, Cohn-Wiener

opts for a more social and economic reading. This may have to do with the fact that Cohn-Wiener did not address his books to an exclusively academic or even an educated bourgeois audience. Perhaps because he worked also in adult

education, his approach was more didactic and probably also aimed at clerical lower middle- and working- dass readers. 43

In any case, this is precisely where Cohn-Wiener's interpretation diverges

most sharply from Sarre's conservative and elitist idea of the masterpiece: the larger picture of a culture, he claims, can only be understood if the so-called 'applied arts' are taken into account. The division between the masterpiece and the mass production demonstrates the "social differences between the classes"

(Cohn-Wiener 1923: 6-7), he writes, and the masterpiece is a deviation from the norm or even a parasitic phenomenon:

The difference of quality between mass production and masterpiece is

[ . . . ] not based on the cantrast between artist and tawdry producer, but between luxury and want. Even the highest achievement is not carried out by one individual, but by a stratum; it is as well an achievement of a particular niveau. It is thus generally wrang to judge the arts and crafts only according to the most luxurious, most lavish works [ . . . ]

(Cohn-Wiener 1923: 7). 44

Once this is made clear, the significance of applied art's aesthetics as an

embodiment of a 'general mental tone' (seelische Grundstimmung) or 'spiritual

by scholars throughout the twentieth century-in any case, it is closely connected to the approach of identifying and comparing artistic styles (Stilgeschichte). It implies that there is a certain 'drive' which incites the transformation of artistic forms and which goes beyond one particular artist's inspirationo 43 In his obituary for Cohn-Wiener, Richard Ettinghausen also hints to a leftist political motivation for his journeys to Turkestan in the 1920s (Ettinghausen 1942: 238)0 44 "Der Qualitätsunterschied von Dutzendware und Meisterwerk beruht 0 o o nicht auf dem Gegensatz von Künstler und Kitscher, sondern von Luxus und Mangel. Auch die Höchstleistung wird nicht von dem Geschmack eines einzelnen getragen, sondern von einer Schicht; auch sie ist Niveauleistungo Es ist also prinzipiell falsch, das Kunstgewerbe nur nach den luxuriösesten, Verziertesten Arbeiten zu beurteilen [ . . . ]"o


constitution' (geistige Konstitution) of a culture (Cohn-Wien er 1923: 1 00) becomes easy to see. His formalistic descriptions should be understood as descriptions of the very character of Islamic culture itself. In this respect, the relation between Cohn-Wiener's text and the images from the Munich "Masterpieces" picture campaign seems somewhat ambivalent; upon closer examination, indeed, the

Munich photographs mostly show luxury goods, but Sarre did not only choose the most splendid works in terms of material value or effort, but also those pieces that were considered most characteristic. However, to make his point about the aesthetics of Islamic art, even Cohn-Wiener is sometimes forced to hark back to camparisans with the canon of established Western masterpieces and talk about noble commissions (Plate 13.6):

Schah Abbas the Great, this enthusiastic patron of architecture and friend of the arts, obviously a cultivated human being in a very modern sense, ornaments his "Pavilion of 40 columns" in his favourite residence in Isfahan with a painting on tiles whose beauty lies only in its elegance. It is a society painting like one of Watteau [ . . . ]. But Watteau feels spatially what here is expressed by the smoothness of elegantly drawn lines

(Cohn-Wiener 1923: 149-150). 45

The idea of the 'golden age' as opposed to twentieth-century decay remains potent even here, but at least Cohn-Wiener opens an optimistic prospect which again seems to bear a political dimension. As a concluding remark on his Islam chapter, he points to the fact that:

Today the arts and crafts of the Islamic lands appear completely in a state of dissolution. Its carpet weavers work for European companies and its metalworkers deliver the warst, though often very aptly crafted, bazaar trash. But inherent in these works there is often a power of shape behind which one can feel large reservoirs of power. One has the feeling of Nations waiting for their renaissance

(Cohn-Wiener 1923: 178).46

45 "Schah Abbas d. Gr., dieser enthusiastische Bauherr und Kunstfreund, offenbar Kulturmensch in einem ganz modernen Sinne, schmückt seinen ,Pavillon der 40 Säulen' in seiner Lieblingsresidenz Isfahan mit einem Fliesengemälde, dessen Schönheit einzig auf der Eleganz beruht. Es ist ein Gesellschaftsbild wie eines von Watteau [ . . . ]. Aber Watteau empfindet räumlich, was hier Schmiegsamkeit elegant gezogener Linien ist." 46 "Heute erscheint das Kunstgewerbe der islamischen Länder wie in voller Auflösung. Seine Teppichwirker arbeiten für europäische Firmen und seine Metallarbeiter liefern letzten, trotzdem oft sehr geschickten Bazarschund. Doch wirkt in dieser Ware oft eine Formkraft,

The 'Golden Age' and the Secession

Ahb. I I $. fa)·encedekoration. Aus dem l 'a\'lllon der 40 Säulen in ls tahan. l.ondon, South 1\en sington·,\\ust·um.

Plate 13.6 Text illustration from Cohn-Wien er (1923).

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE 'MASTERPIECE' COIN

417

The idea of renaissance or renewal-whether linked to a social reformist agenda or to psychological concepts underpinning a general life philosophy-moves us an important step closer to more secessionist or avant-gardist ways of looking at the 'art of the other'. A striking example is Wilhelm Hausenstein's Book Barbaren und Klassiker (1923), 47 first published in 1922, and so successful that a second edition was issued almost immediately, in 1923. Hausenstein is one of the most interesting figures in German cultural history. 48 After his broad studies, which focused widely on subjects of art and history, as well as on philosophy and economy, he received his doctorate in 1905. As an active social democrat, he was unable to pursue an academic career and thus became a prolifte free-lance

hinter der man überall große Kraftreserven spürt. Man hat das Gefühl von Nationen, die auf ihre Erneuerung warten." 47 The title of the book can be roughly translated as "Barbarians and Classics" or also "Classicists", since it refers to particular shapes and styles and their perception. See also the paragraph on Barbaren Wid Klassiker within a !arger context of photographic appropriation of non-European art in Schmidt-Linsenhoff (2010: 309-310). 48 After 1949, he played a crucial role for the German reconciliation with France in terms of cultural politics. For his biography, see Feist (1999).


writer, publishing art historical, joumalistic and popular texts_ His approach to art and art history during the early decades of his career were outspokenly

sociological and reformist (Feist 1999: 156). The success of Barbaren und Klassiker was certainly ensured by its attractive

corpus of one-hundred and sixty-nine pictures. They assemble artworks from Oceania, Africa, America, Asia (including Islamic works), and Europe, this last section represented solely by one prehistoric and one Romanesque example.

As Viktoria Schmidt-Linsenhoff has observed, this sequence is supposed to draw a line from the 'barbaric' to the 'classic'. All artistic creation was placed

between these two categorical poles (Hausenstein 1923: 87). The reader-or rather beholder-was supposed to understand both the continuum and each

object's place within it primarily by means of the images, which are yet again in the now- familiar mode of objects against neutral backgrounds. The captions also leave ample room for interpretation; they contain only scant information, namely a very general provenance (such as 'Ecuador', 'India'), some very basic technical and/or iconographic indications and in most of the cases the name of the owner, usually one of the large German ethnographic museums. What

is most striking in this accompanying text is the complete absence of dating or precise chronological/historical classification. Nor does the text, which in the truest sense of the word is the second and the secondary part of the book, dwell on historical aspects in a conventional way. Written in an emphatic style reminiscent of expressionist manifestos, it describes a free-floating line of

ideas, musing about man and his relationship with art and nature. Hausenstein explicitly admits that this ahistorical position is not necessarily a given condition when looking at non-Westem art-it can also be due to the Western beholder's epistemic conditions:

It is the advantage of the exotic parabola that it is not as attached to

History as our European parabola, be it due to itself, be it due to our voluntarily or unintentionally limited insight

(Hausenstein 1923: 74).49

In a way, this is not unrelated to the idea of an essential demotic 'spirit' that Heinrich Glück had claimed for the nomads. Of course, it borrows primitivising cliches about ahistorical native peoples, attached to the romantic idea of the 'noble savage', who, particularly as long as he was unaffected by colonialism,

49 "Es ist der Vorzug der exotischen Parabel, dass sie, sei es an ihr selbst, sei es für unsre freiwillig oder unfreiwillig begrenzte Einsicht, dem Historischen nicht so verhaftet ist wie die europäische Parabel."


had immediate access to the brute and real forces of nature. 50 Hausenstein sees these forces most compellingly encapsulated in those artworks which achieve a

balanced tension between the 'barbaric' and the 'classic': Hausenstein's formal

definition of art is thus based on a synthesis between the two factors: "What follows is the realisation that art is merely savageness, elevated to the classic."

(Hausenstein 1923: 87-88).51 Moreover, he stresses the social and political dimension of this particularly powerful kind of art: "Art-that is what is before

art and after art, the social character and chance, which emerges electrically from art." (Hausenstein 1923: 89).52 Such an exploitation of non-European artefacts for a very modern cultural criticism was of course only possible in light of decontextualised, and thus artified, objects-this is where the 'masterpiece' mode of illustration maintains its agency despite its superficial unsuitability to

Hausenstein's argument and philosophy. Hausenstein's whole construct of ideas is of course very much related to

avant-gardist artistic receptions of non-European art at the time, 53 even if his position is somewhat less radically biased. He even criticises the Expressionists

as mere imitators who "turn the exotic into a trite fashion". Hausenstein hirnself

clearly recognises the inevitable character of alterity: "We will never be like and where those others are [ . . . ] " (Hausenstein 1923: 90). 54

So, to finally come back to our initial question: what is the position of

Islamic art in this cosmos, and how does its position relate to its art historical

canonisation, in comparison with what has been observed so far? First of all, we have to understand that what Hausenstein offers here is a radically alternative

canon that deliberately blocks out both Western art and art history, except for two European examples-a prehistoric female idol and a detail of the

5° Flood (2007: 36-38) also describes this kind of nostalgia for the pre-colonial period as a typical symptom of the historiography of non-European arts. For a concise assessment of important positions of cultural criticism in early twentieth century discourses about 'primitive' arts and its janus-faced character, see also Maupeu (2010). 51 "Es folgt die Erkenntnis, daß Kunst nur eine ins Klassische gehobene Wildheit sei." 52 "Kunst--das ist, was vor der Kunst ist und nach der Kunst, das Soziale daran, die gesellschaftliche Möglichkeit, die elektrisch aus der Kunst hervorspringt." Partha Mitter has pointed to the political notion of a "collective function of art" which was found in striking parallel cases: German expressionist writing-such as Hausenstein's art critique-and the avant-gardist movement in India, particularly Jamini Roy's anti-elitist concept of art (Mitter 2007: esp. 118-119). 53 On this vast field, which has attracted much critical attention since Robert Goldwater's seminal but controversial exhibition in 1938, see Goldwater (1938); a comprehensive tourde-force re-assessment, also taking into consideration the parallels between Primitivism and Medievalism can be found in Masheck (1982); see also Schmidt-Linsenhoff (2010: 299-304). 54 "Wenn jene aus dem Exotischen eine feile Mode machen, dann wollen wir einmal den Schild vor die Exotischen gehalten haben [ . . . ] So werden wir nie sein, wo jene anderen sind [ . . . ]" [sie] .


Romanesque portal of the Schottenkirche in Regensburg. Significantly, these are meant to illustrate the 'barbaric' character which once was part of Western art, but was overtaken by the course of history and the corollary refinement towards the 'classic'. All other illustrations show non-European artefacts. The position of Islamic art is crucial: only fourteen of one-hundred and sixty-nine examples are dedicated to this branch, which is located at the very end of the Asian section and followed only by the two European illustrations. Hausenstein's bibliography on the Islamic section reveals that he completely relied on the academically-oriented work of Sarre. The only three titles listed are the

first volume of Sarre's Erzeugnisse Islamischer Kunst, the 1912 publication on "Masterpieces of Muhammadan Art" and his book on drawings by the Persian miniature painter Riza Abbasi (Sarre 1906-1909; Sarre & Martin 1912; Sarre & Mittwoch 1914). Yet, Hausenstein's whole approach aimed to achieve a different result. Glenn Penny has pointed to the fact that those scholars and authors who were working with artefacts that could be classified as 'primitive' during these years were usually part of an intellectual secession whose aim was to contest the canon of an established elite culture.55 So, while Sarre's tactic was to find a position within the establishment, Hausenstein was to find a position entirely outside it. The two tactics led to two antithetical approaches: erasing alterity by finding common ground with well-known traditions and tropes, or emphasising

alterity by looking for the absolute other, and its revolutionary potential. Two of Hausenstein's Islamic plates show three-dimensional bronze sculptures, a camel labelled 'Persian' and a lion from 'Saracen Spain'. The captions are systematically in line with the rest of the picture plates, which almost exclusively show sculptural works with anthropomorphic and zoomorphic iconographies. For the remainder of the Islamic section, Hausenstein stuck to this iconographic choice, but, quite strikingly, chose to represent only miniature painting and drawing, ranging from illustrations labelled as Mongoi and Abbasid to Turkish, Persian and Indian examples (Plate 1 3.7). Interestingly, in his text chapter on the 'classic', Hausenstein refers specifically to the late examples of Indian painting and drawing to illustrate the loss of powerful tension between the pristine and the refined, the "eve of decadence", analogous to "late European atony"

(Hausenstein 1923: 81). 56 Accordingly, Hausenstein also detects a particularly

55 See also Masheck (1982: 107) on the collector Eduard Fuchs and his opposition to "the cult of established masterpieces and canonized art-geniuses". 56 "[ • • • ] und wenn man einer Zeichnung auch das Stadium des Entwurfs zugute hält, so ist doch der Vorabend der Dekadenz selbst unverkennbar. [ .. . ] Die von Langerweile bedrohte Empfindung, die in diesen Beispielen nur zu sehr das Analogon späteuropäischer Erschlaffung erblickt [ . . . ] ".

----------·-· ·-�--------


J S DI E:" ( R:\J I'l iT ). .'I I " S J / J f" � �S I H . / I I C : I J S l " S < ; ( SK I / / F . .\ l "S,C I J S J fl ).

Plate 13.7 Photographie plate from Hausenstein (1923).


close relationship between European high art and especially those phases of Islamic art that can be considered as the last 'golden ages' of miniature painting. In his argument, however, this parallel takes negative connotations: Islamic art seems to be too much a next-of-kin to European art to act as a model for a radically secessionist idea of art-it's the flip side of the masterpiece coin.57

Such different readings, highly dependent on the beholder's standpoint, reveal once more what always must be stressed when discussing objects and their transcultural reception: appropriation is more often than not based on expropriation; the aesthetic features of the objects may have primary and immediate agency, triggering western reactions-but the western reaction in turn eclipses or blocks out the genuine context. 58

A BLUEPRINT FüR MODERNISM? What we have observed so far can be described as a rather Janus-faced emancipation of Islamic art via the Western gaze. Yet, this peculiar and negotiable position of Islamic art as a bridge between the familiar and the

alien was already rooted in the early universal art history surveys, as Mitchell Schwarzer has observed in his consideration of the hierarchies found in earlier works by Kugler and Schnaase:

[ ... ] non-European art was almost completely excluded from the later and crucial stages of art historical development. Only Islam was granted

higher status, and only then because of its substantial inheritance from Rome and Byzantium

(Schwarzer 1 995: 28).59

We observed a process which used a very conservative, institutional and assimilative canonisation strategy that nonetheless led to an enormously influential set of free-floating, contextless images (and object-ideas). These fed back into some of the most progressive and secessionist discourses of the early

57 Masheck (1982: 103-104) also writes that Expressionist artists preferred mainly the ernder pattems of 'tribal' nomadic types of Griental carpets-this is particularly interesting as opposed to the refined Persian court carpets which were venerated as 'masterpieces' in the Munich exhibition. 58 This is very convincingly exemplified by the context of so-called negro art (Negerkunst) in Schmidt-Linsenhoff (2010: 293). 59 For the resilience of this notion in more recent handbooks, see also Shalem (2011: esp. 256).


twentieth century, which in turn were harbingers of the cultural and artistic

pluralisms of modernism.

This perspective suggests the necessity of a brief look at the structure of art

history as it is practiced today. However, my interest is less in the special position of lslamic art in contemporary textbooks and canons (Flood 2007; Shalem 2011) .

Instead, I would like to consider how the above-mentioned classifications of

Islamic art correspond to notions of modernity in art-and thus the modern self-image of art history-on a more general structural level.

Recently, the German art philosopher Christian Demand published an essay whose title might be translated as "Where does order in art come from ?" (Demand 2010) . Large parts of it are an attack on the conservatism of what was possibly the most successful art historical survey book of the twentieth century, Ernst

Gombrich's The Story of Art which was first published in 1950, but until today has been re-issued numerous times as a standard comprehensive handbook.60 Of course, Demand was not the first to express this kind of criticism. Indeed, Schwarzer had already stated that surveys written by American scholars-often of German origin-largely "echo the developmental lineage and elitist aesthetic

sensibilities of their nineteenth-century predecessors", even if considerably

less nationalist or hierarchically biased (Schwarzer 1995: 28) . Actually both Gombrich's work and Demand's response show how much the discourse on art remains a Eurocentric one in its mainstream development; it is thus a striking

example for the persistent need to reflect artistic canons. Demand criticises Gombrich's inability to overcome particular traditional 'communities of

consensus' (Konsensgemeinschaften) and his related inability to accept cultural and artistic pluralities which go beyond an established canon.61 Demand's main

interest lies in the aesthetics of modern art, and his test case is the work of

Joseph Beuys, which he says was rejected by Garnbrich because it did not fit into the traditional definition of art and 'mastership' (esp. Demand 2010: 196-197) .

Here, Beuys's work assumes the role of the outsider. Demand describes two main options for coping with art marked with outsider status: to declare it unsuitable to and thus outside of the master-narrative or to make it part of an enlarged or

60 Ernst Gombrich, The Story of Art, was first published in 1950. It has been translated into numerous languages and republished several times since then. On Gombrich's biography, see Lee Sorensen, s.v. Gombrich, Ernst H. Sir, in: http:/ /www.dictionaryofarthistorians. org/gombriche.htm as well as McGrath (2002) and Feist (2007). 61 See, for example, Demand (2010: 204, 207). However, it must be noted that Gombrich was famous for introducing non-canonical images such as contemporary cartoons into his academic ecumene. He also at least touched upon non-European art in his Story of Art, even if in a way that confirms the rather marginal status of these branches in relation to an established canon. See also Feist (2007: 133) and Shalem (2011: 254).


modified re-iteration of the master-narrative (Demand 2010: 1 96). Considering the many radical vanguard movements of the twentieth century and increasing publication and awareness of non-European art and architecture, one might also want to add as a third option: to dispense with the master-narrative altogether.

Comparing these two options to the precarious position of Islamic artefacts

in the early twentieth century-which altemated between assimilated 'masterpiece' and bridge towards the 'absolute other'-it becomes clear that their dual position has in many ways acted as a blueprint for general conflicts of art and art history in the twentieth century, between established 'communities of consensus' and cultural pluralisation. On a more abstract level, it shows that alterity is not only a transcultural problem; at the same time, it shows that the observation of cross-cultural reception processes may shed significant light on the idea of 'othemess' as a universal experience of modemity.

PHOTO CREDITS All illustrations in this chapter are scans or photographs by the author and are to be considered quotes from the original publications: Plate 1 3. 1 (Migeon & Saladin 1907, Vol. II: 178-179), Plate 1 3.2 (Sarre 1906-09: plate VII), Plate 1 3. 3 (Sarre & Martin 1912, Vol. II: plate 176, photo by Bruckmann 1910), Plate 1 3.4 (Diez & Glück (1925: plate XXXII, photo by Bruckmann 1910), Plate 1 3.5 (frontispiece page from Cohn-Wiener (n.d. [1923] ), with a photo from the Munich campaign, photo by Bruckmann 1910), Plate 1 3.6 (Cohn-Wiener (n.d. [1923] : 153),

Plate 13.7 (Hausenstein 1923: plate 167).

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