Winckelmann divided: mourning the death of art history.

Abstract

The discipline of art history is often said to have been invented in the writing of J.J. Winckelmann (1717-1768). In his Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture (1754) and History of Ancient Art (1764), Winckelmann dealt with the homoerotic meanings of Greco-Roman arts in complex ways. To do so, he imagined a split between his subjective position as an observer with specific erotic and political interests and his objective position as an historian. His importance for art historians today derives from his own recognition and further elaboration of his "division," an awareness manifested in his principal metaphor for the status of the art historian as a "maiden" mourning her "lover," the "lost object" of her desire, namely, ancient representations of beautiful young men. This metaphor and related features of Winckelmann's texts situated the homoeroticism of art and of the art historian in mutual relations that enable the art historian to reconcile, if not to resolve, his fundamental "division." Winckelmann's image of art history presents a more adequate sense of the enterprise than the misleading polarization of "objective" history and "subjective" interpretation frequently encountered today.