I am increasingly finding the close reading of Berger necessary to
produce even a weak precis very unproductive. I think this is because
Berger's thought is influenced heavily by French post structuralists of the
late
sixties. There is a sort of stale feeling mounting up,a sense of defending a
redoubt of thought which has long since been taken.
The newsletter of the Historians of Netherlandish Art has this to say:
Anti-theoretical as this catalogue is, the other extreme should also be
mentioned, a book written by an outsider coming from literary studies:
Rembrandt's fictions of the pose. Rembrandt against the Italian Renaissance, by
Harry Berger Jr., of which the first 350 pages entirely consist of theory,
covering almost all aspects of post modern cultural theory and the politics of
portraiture in the early modern period, while the last 200 pages contain a
provocative discussion of Rembrandt's self-portraits, shifting the attention
from the painter's act of painting likeness, to the sitter's part in the act
of portrayal and self-portrayal.
The newsletter then continues on to the delights of Art for the Market
and the new book about Hoogstraten,without adding the encomiums to Berger
often found in US journals. I think we have in Fictions of the Pose an
example of American enthusiasm for French thought done amazingly
skillfully,still
on the attack, but not useful at present.
As for the starting premise-that portraits are a collaboration between
the subject and the artist and that they result in a an idea of the
subject in his cultural habitat,I don't think it can be argued with. The
Fiction of the pose is the naive idea that all portraits everywhere are a
mimetic
representation of the subject as he is-Cromwell's warts come to mind- and I
am sure that other listers realize this. The premise that Rembrandt was
trying to subvert the fictions of Renaissance portraits is more
contentious. Berger's concept of the Renaissance fiction of the pose is
also
contentious,a quick look at John Shearman's essay in Only Connect ,mentioned
in
Fictions of the Pose,will raise several questions. His discussion of the
self portraits includes extensive discussion of Kenneth Clarks' book on
Rembrandt and the Renaissance and Alpers' work on Dutch art.
I am sure that Miller will exult in this capitulation,ascribing
it to Cheerskeps' unthinking condemnation of it at the beginning of the
project. I don't like being told what to think, I don't like being told what I
have thought,and whatever others have said has only impelled me to look
more carefully when it seemed there might be a problem. There is a problem,I
am not sure what it is, I think it has something to do with Berger's
approach,and not necessarily with his conclusions which might be reached by
other
means. It is a useful book in that it describes from a specific viewpoint a
good deal of American poststucturalist thought. The pictures are excellent
and all the texts mentioned that I have read are also excellent, with
the exception of Simon Schama. Miller would do well to read everything
mentioned and to read with some care the description of Peirce in the
introduction.
Kate Sullivan
