Summers David. Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism

New York: Phaidon, 2003. — 704 p. — ISBN-10: 0714842443; ISBN-13: 978-0714842448.David Summers sets forth that current formalist, contextual and post-structural approaches fail to provide an adequate account of all art, particularly art produced outside the Western tradition. He argues that there are profound problems right at the heart of Western thinking about art, and his new framework is an attempt to resolve these problems.At the core of the argument is a proposal to replace the notion of the 'visual arts' with that of the 'spatial arts', comprising two fundamental categories: 'real space' and 'virtual space'. Real space is the space we share with other people and things: the fundamental arts of real space are sculpture (the art of personal space) and architecture (the art of social space). Virtual space - which always entails a format in real space (thus making real space the primary category) - is space represented in two dimensions, as in paintings, drawings and prints.Adopting a wide definition of art that in principle embraces anything that is made, and underpinning his arguments with detailed examination of artefacts and architecture from all over the world, Summers develops his thesis in a series of chapters that broadly trace the progress of human skill in many different traditions: from the simple facture of the first tools to the sophisticated universal three-dimensional grid of modern technology, which he describes as 'metaoptical' space. In a sequence of far-reaching and revealing discussions of facture, places, centres, three-dimensional and planar images, virtuality and perspective, and the centreless metaoptical world of Western modernism, Summers creates a conceptual framework that always relates art to human use, and enables us to treat all traditions on an equal footing within universal categories.At the same time, this infrastructure can help to understand the dynamics of opposition and conflict both within and between cultures. Formalism and other theories of art are not rejected. Rather, in this wider context they can be identified and evaluated within the Western tradition whence they originated, without some naive universal validity being ascribed to them.Within this broad plan there is incredible wealth of detail and energy of description. The author's constant engagement with actual works of art is always lively and convincing; his analysis of the concrete metaphors that lie behind our critical vocabulary is revealing and thought-provoking; and his clear-headed and courageous engagement with important issues is most impressive.Some of the author's language and terminology may, for the novice, prove an alluring challenge at first. However, Summers writes with exceptional clarity: new terms are carefully defined and explained in such a way, that the reader will not only understand them but also appreciate why such terminology is essential to a work of such profound philosophy. What is striking is that the author is always using language in order to think about the real world, and not in order to retreat into a closed world of academic scholasticism. He insists that all art is made to fit human uses, and can never be separated from the primary spatial conditions of those uses.With its universal scope and its sympathetic understanding of the innumerable forms that art can adopt, this is a book that will stimulate people to think in entirely new and fruitful ways about the human purposes of art, and also to think more deeply and critically about the intricate relations between art, political order and technology.ContentsPreface and acknowledgementsIntroductionPost-formalist Art History
Form, Pictorial Imagination and Formalism
Real Spaces, Conditions and Cardinality
The ‘Visual Arts’ and the Spatial Arts
Real Space and Virtual Space
An Image in Real Space: the Aztec Coatlicue
Virtual Space and the Primacy of Real Space
Given Nature and Second Nature
Real Space and Art-Historical Interpretation
Art History and AestheticsFactureConditions of Presentation
Configuration: Functions and Purposes
Arbitrariness.
The Principle of Definition and Series
Authority and Series
Technology, Medium, Technique and Style
Diachronic and Synchronic
Facture
Facture and Materials
Facture and Value
Refinement and Distinction
Ornament
Play
Notionality.
ModelsPlacesIntroduction
Place, Relation and Hierarchy
The Navajo Hogan.
Real Space, Gender and Ritual
Centres
A Traditional African Social Space
Shrines
Jerusalem
Boundaries and Precincts
Paths
Elevation.
Difficulty of Approach.
Centres and Verticality
Ascent
Alignment and Orientation
North, South, East, West
Tumuli and Domes
Peripheries.
Land and Division.The appropriation of the CentreOrientation, Kingship and Empire
The Sumerians
Temple and Palace
Kingship in Egypt
The Pyramids at Giza
The Lord of the Four Quarters
Augustus
Angkor
Chinese Imperial Cities
Beijing
Versailles
RevolutionImagesThe Origins of Images
Realities of Images
Images and Cultural Difference
Traces, Images of Traces, Sight and Abstraction
Real Metaphor
Real Metaphor and Recognition
Contour and Comprehension
Lepinski Vir
Shiva
Upright Stones and Aniconic Images
Maya Stelae: 18 Rabbit at Copan
Manipulation
Votive Images
Icons.
Magnified Anthropomorphism
Effigies and Images with the Value of Effigies
Effigies and Size.
Icons and Iconoclasm
Masks
Greek Drama
Theatre and Politics
Character and Comedy
Fooling the Gods: On the Beginnings of Metric
and Optical Naturalism
Abstraction, Vision and Drawing
Mental Images
Icons and Imagination
Automata
Some Italian Renaissance Portraits
Images on Surfaces: Effigy, Surface and ‘Field of Vision’
Surficiality and Planarity
Sur-face
Double Distance
Surfaces, Recognition and Relation
Virtuality, Completion and Double Metaphor
Succession, Narrative and FictionPlanarityIntroduction
Palaeolithic Women
Ex-planation
Planes and Places
Independence and Dependence
Images and Places as Vertical and Horizontal Planes
Recognition and Planarity, Contour and Definition
Order and Proportion
Ambivalences of Measure
Planar Images, Redundancy and Absolute Colour
Definition, Division and Format
Rotation and Translation
Planar Arrangement and Hierarchy
Planar Oppositions
Pharaoh and Centre
Ashurnasirpal’s Throne Room
A Benin Royal Plaque
A Chinese Emperor Portrait
Identity and Opposition
Full-face, Profile and Virtuality
Ornament
Ornament,Sacred Texts and Places
Measure and Ratio
Ratio, Proportion and Harmony
Grids
Grids and Cardinality
Scale and Format
Planes, Grids and Social Space:
Grids, Measure and Agriculture
Colonies
MapsVirtualityIntroduction
Surfaces and Virtuality
Surface as Potential Random Order
Framing
Groundlines and Surfaces; Stage Space and Viewer Space
The Virtual Co-ordinate Plane
Relief Space
Overlapping , Foreshortening, Oblique Lines, Diminution
The Optical Plane and Stage Space
Optical Planar Order
Viewer Space: Framing and Detail in Chinese Painting
Light as a Theme
Modelling, Depicted Shadows and Reflection
The Optical Plane and the Visual Angle
Classical Skenographia
The Optical Plane in Greek and Roman Painting
The Ambiguity of the Optical Plane
The Optical Plane in the European Middle Ages
The Optical Cube
Skene, Hierarchy and Theatre
Alhazen’s Theory of Vision
Brunelleschi’s First Perspective Demonstration
Renaissance Painters’ Perspective
Isometry and the Ambiguity of Perspective
Composition, Rhetoric and Allegory
Quadratura
Perspective, Modelling and ChiaroscuroThe conditions of modernismIntroduction
Metaopticality
Force
Force and Counterforce
Force and Representation
The Ends of Art, Nature and Man
Perspectives
Sublimity
Two German Romantic Landscapes
Impression
Caricature
Naturalism and Photography
From Realism to Construction
The Rothko ChapelEpilogueNotes
Glossary
Index
Illustration credits