The Ruins of Rembrandt

Abstract

Who would dare to defend the ‘Romantic myth’ that Rembrandt's Nightwatch caused a scandal in its time? I would. Beginning with Alexander Korda's film Rembrandt, I argue that Romantic accounts are historically more accurate and aesthetically more sophisticated than current explanations, and more relevant, since they can accommodate our own relation to Rembrandt's art. Romantic constructions can also be traced back to Rembrandt's innovations. Conversely, confusion about Rembrandt's autograph oeuvre results from the efforts and investments of later commentators, not Rembrandt. Drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, and Aloïs Riegl, I propose that Rembrandt's works can be understood as ‘ruins,’ or historical phenomena of artistic significance to our time, understood belatedly, in an ongoing, imperfect process.These issues are directly relevant to reception studies. In my view, the meaning of Rembrandt's work does not necessarily reside in the perspective of his contemporaries, whereas other forms of reception, such as later commentaries or popular consumption and commercial use of his art, offer insights inaccessible to current scholarship. Indeed, art historical scholarship is itself reception, the unfolding of the meaning of historical art in the present. Instead of limiting the work to its ostensible historical function, our task should be to understand how the work makes possible our present concepts of art and art history, which we must continue (philosophically) to rethink and to refine.