History has played a critically important role in shaping both aesthetic values and the actual art that human beings produce. Long before it ever acquired a name and was recognized for its theoretical importance, historicism profoundly influenced civilizations throughout the world by stimulating the creation of contemporary art based upon traditional forms, styles, materials, and techniques. Notwithstanding the fact that it has been misapprehended and misapplied--the propagandistic exploitation of the past by the Nazis and fascisti can neither be forgiven nor forgotten--historicism has repeatedly demonstrated its positive benefits by conferring upon artists the freedom to explore, illuminate, interpret, and give expression to the full spectrum of human experience in space and time.¹

Historicist art may be of several types. Derivative-historicist art is based on one or more clearly discernible historical models, such as Edouard Manet's Luncheon on the Grass (1863, Fig. 3). In his History of Art, H. W. Janson identifies the source of Manet's painting as a detail in Marcantonio Raimondi's The Judgement of Paris (c. 1520, Fig. 2), an engraving which itself can be traced through Raphael back to a third-century Roman sarcophagus (Fig. 1).² A more recent example is Stanley Kubrick's Academy Award-winning Barry Lyndon (1975), a superb film portrayal of the eponymous character in Thackeray's 1844 novel, which Kubrick strove to interpret with such complete accuracy that even costumes worn by the actors were actual antique apparel.³

One of the most exacting but controversial types is pure-historicist art--work which authentically expresses the essence, manners, forms, or styles of a period earlier than that in which it was created. Arthur Miller's The Crucible (1953), a chilling dramatization of the seventeenth-century Salem witch trials, is a particularly fine literary example which effectively demonstrates how historicism, far from restricting the artist to the role of a mere laudator temporis acti, actually enables him to expose and interpret the shortcomings and failures of the past.⁴ Mozart's Suite in C Major, K. 399/385i, an imposing keyboard work in the grand baroque manner, reveals how completely this quintessentially neoclassical composer had mastered the stylistic idioms and contrapuntal complexities of Bach, Handel, and their contemporaries. (To listen to a MIDI file of the concluding Courante, please click the link below.)

Eclectic-historicist work, in which elements of two or more more historical periods are blended, is evident in Leo von Klenze's Propylaea (1846-50), the dramatic entry to Munich's Königsplatz which marshals the powerful affects of both classical Greek and Egyptian architecture. London's original Kew Gardens (1760s) as planned by William Chambers were even more stylistically diverse: Greek, Roman, Gothic, Islamic, and Chinese landscape architectural features collectively conspired to transport the pleasure-seeking visitor beyond the conventional frontiers of space and time, much like the twentieth-century Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom and EPCOT in Florida.

Adaptive-historicist art is that in which historical material is interwoven with elements considered contemporary or new at the time of creation. This type is represented by such works as Igor Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks Concerto (1938), a "little concerto in the style of the [Bach] Brandenburg Concertos,"⁵ and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Ecce Ancilla Domini (1849-50), the widely admired Pre-Raphaelite painting whose numinous medievalism is underscored by subtle traces of contemporary style and technique.

Some of the above categories obviously overlap: Stravinsky's Sophoclean opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex (1927)--with text by Jean Cocteau--and Federico Fellini's Satyricon (1969)--an irreverently "anachronistic" marriage of Petronian debauchery and twentieth-century cinematographic license--are both clearly derivative, but they are also adaptive in that their classicism has been substantially modified by contemporary idiomatic twists and accretions.

Historicism has been repeatedly attacked by modernists, avant-gardists, and other "progressive" ideologues. They allege that their historicist colleagues have so little creativity of their own that they must stoop to plundering the art of the past with the intent of seducing the eyes and ears of the public with sights and sounds made venerable--and hence marketable--by virtue of their familiarity.

Indeed, the public may be more receptive to historicist art than it is to modern art which challenges or openly violates traditional concepts of beauty, meaning, and function. But with only limited financial support actually available for artists of any persuasion, such an allegation--clearly motivated by feelings of professional rivalry or personal insecurity--is simply unsupported. The average citizen, who knows little about art and has relatively few dollars to spend, buys kitsch. The wealthy patron, corporation, or institution, upon the advice of art and investment consultants, typically favors only "important" modern work or that of "recognized" masters. Underappreciated modernist artists, therefore, would do better to address their complaints to the purveyors of kitsch and the so-called experts. Their historicist colleagues, on the other hand, can hardly take an adversarial stance towards modernist art per se, as it has already become--or is fast becoming--history.

The success of such artists as Marcel Duchamp (see below), his extremist contemporaries, and succeeding generations of "past-bashers" who have learned so well how to conceal their debt to history is largely responsible for making antihistoricism fashionable. Among their many propagandistic victories, none has been more important than that in the field of American higher education. Even today there are college, university, and conservatory programs that largely discourage if they do not openly impede students in the arts from acquiring anything more than a superficial practical knowledge of historical forms and styles, with the almost universal result that their graduates could not produce truly accomplished "traditional" work if their lives depended on it. Indeed, decisions by arts institutions about who should be admitted into graduate programs or who should receive grant or scholarship money are routinely based upon how "original" an artist's work is judged to be. Since many controlling the purse strings continue to deny that historicism is a legitimate basis for creative expression and dismiss its proponents as inconsequential reactionaries, some of the most talented have been denied the educational and financial resources needed to advance their careers. It is difficult to estimate how many artists have suffered thus for their aesthetic convictions, but it is certain that a substantial number of their politically and stylistically correct colleagues have been advanced to positions of authority in leading cultural, educational, and governmental institutions.

Although the musical landscape has changed over the past several decades, antihistoricism continues to enjoy virtual cult status in many quarters, and for years to come its priests will sit enthroned in their temples of modernity, enjoining their flocks to celebrate and safeguard American emancipation from the shackles of art history and European high culture. New art and high technology--those often indistinguishable fetishes wrought by post-war Yankee pride, prosperity, and ingenuity--will not cease to be venerated as the inviolate and inviolable icons of free expression and free enterprise by those who have embraced the faith.

Reality, however, grimly belies the illusion. Modern American capitalism and the ceaseless innovations it has spawned as a consequence of relentless competition have resulted in a different--but not necessarily better--world which in some ways has become more frustrating and frightening than any which has ever existed before. American history seems to have followed the very course predicted by Francis Bacon when he wrote, "In the youth of a State, Armes doe flourish: in the middle age of a State, Learning; and then both of them together for a time: in the declining age of a State, Mechanicall Arts and Merchandize."⁶ As the world seems poised once more for war and the community of scholars struggles to survive in the midst of increasing social and economic chaos, Americans are growing poorer and more isolationistic; civil liberties are being circumscribed; and mounting class, ethnic, and ideological tensions threaten to tear apart the very fabric of civilization. Will the Pax Americana, purchased at the cost of thousands if not millions of innocent lives, ultimately yield nothing more than the advancement of technology and trade and the continued global hegemony of the privileged few?

As Dr. Paul Halpern, Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, has well said, "One can no longer assume that the invention of more efficient machinery will solve the problem of inadequate natural resources, nor can one successfully argue for territorial expansion as a cure-all. Eventually there is nowhere to go; even the colonization of space is limited by the prospect of stellar and galactic extinction."⁷

Environmental activist Jeremy Rifkin, President of the Foundation on Economic Trends, points to the fact that instead of taking appropriate measures to slow up global entropy, man has actually accelerated it by choosing increasingly wasteful and inefficient technologies. For example, by switching from walking to horse-drawn carriages to trains to automobiles, and by adopting modern agricultural methods which require more energy input per crop yield than those of the Middle Ages, the human species has embarked on a path which will inevitably hasten planetary destruction.⁸

It has become increasingly apparent that innovation per se constitutes evidence neither of creative superiority nor of cultural amelioration, for if it did, we might be far more indebted to the trend-setting opportunism of the cleverest automotive engineer, crop geneticist, rock video producer, or business software designer than we are to the stodgy traditionalism of such artistic giants as Andrea Palladio, Johann Sebastian Bach, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and Walter Scott.

Recent attempts to renovate public education, often at the expense of already anemic arts programs, merely accelerate the descent into cultural illliteracy that has resulted in a people who find traditional and new art alike to be irrelevant, much preferring the sensationalistic entertainment whereby Hollywood and the commercial music industry hold them in thrall. How many American adolescents now fantasize about becoming one of those skimpily clad rock stars whose deafening dronings--liberally punctuated by erotic gestures, drum machines, and laser blasts--have made the top of the charts, ensuring them a place in the new music history? And what will become of the serious new-music composer, that graying ivy-league graduate who, having acceded to the coveted position of tenured university professor never manages to fare nearly so well as the unlettered singing stud or exhibitionistic "material girl"? He will doubtless remain below the radar, praising or reviling colleagues at scantily attended contemporary music concerts, deploring the fact that the public still cannot recognize him as the brilliant innovator he actually is, and silently accepting the likelihood that the products of his creative genius will end up decomposing on the shelves of some musty college archive.

As modern academic composers attempted to negate or conceal historical influences in their work and music increasingly became an esoteric art eclipsed by commercial pop culture, they gradually found themselves hoist by their own petard. If, as they insisted, art should express the time in which it was created, it only stands to reason that it should also express the knowledge to which men living in that time have access. This was certainly true of the Renaissance, one of the most creatively rich periods in European history, aptly named for the veritable rebirth of learning wrought by the intellectual midwifery of such historically attuned luminaries as Petrarch, Alberti, and Raphael.

Today's artists are in a much better position to draw upon the rich resources of history than even the most avid renaissance or Victorian antiquarian. Generations of academics have analyzed and categorized art from every known period in such meticulous detail that it is now possible to state with considerable precision what makes baroque different from rococo or even what makes early Beethoven different from late Beeethoven. But there is a catch: since this unprecedented wealth of knowledge now does little more than serve as intellectual fodder for succeeding generations of scholarly taxonomists who disgorge their findings in erudite articles and abstruse lectures, it remains largely unknown and inaccessible to the practicing artist. Factor in the influence of their progressive faculty colleagues who discourage students in creative disciplines from turning to the past for inspiration, and the enormity of this state of affairs becomes all too apparent.

Although the personal styles of individual artists and the collective artistic styles of entire cultures have rightly undergone significant changes, it is a grievous mistake to punish our fundamental human desire to revisit and interpret history. Simply accepting as an article of faith that each succeeding generation of artists must reject or radically modify preexisting manners, modes, and media does not alter but only serves to thwart this basic exploratory, expository urge. Indeed, antihistoricism taken to its extreme would impose near-impossible restrictions on the artist: composers would have to stop writing for traditional orchestral instruments and perpetually synthesize hitherto unknown sounds for their exclusive new acoustic constructions; sculptors would have to abandon such objectionably archaic media as marble and bronze and use only the latest industrial synthetic or alloy to realize their one-of-a-kind abstractions; and poets would be reduced to the composition of neologistic babble.

Even if reason should prevail and historicism one day gains a place of honor in academe and society at large, many will likely persist in turning a cold shoulder to the past, if only for fear of being overwhelmed by the magnitude of its achievements.

The value of historicism to any particular individual depends largely on personal perceptions of the past. This is a matter of considerable complexity which requires careful examination within a variety of artistic and scientific contexts.

Some deny that the past has any existence at all, or insist that it is nothing more than a vague, shadowy concept. Others believe it exists only in the form of memories; dinosaur bones and geological formations; archaeological ruins and museum artifacts; and records stored in filing cabinets and libraries or on computer disks. Even those who think of the past as something moderately useful often don't believe it measures up in importance to the present or the future.

Ironically, attitudes about the past are shaped by the past. If one has been taught that history is something of value, the more likely it is that the past will be perceived and appreciated as an important creative resource. If, on the other hand, one has been conditioned to think of history as dull or irrelevant, revisiting the past would seem both boring and pointless. Because a great many twentieth-century artists and critics succumbed to modernist propaganda, they came to regard the past as little more than a corpse and equated historicism with the unsavory business of conjuring the dead. Like the evil Dr. Frankenstein, the historicist was a madman whose attempt to create new life out of used body parts inevitably turned to disaster because it violated the fundamental laws of man and nature. Instead of this twisted tale of crime and punishment, however, one might just as easily imagine the historicist as a resourceful healer through whose knowledge, art, and skill the old and forgotten are miraculously restored to youthful vigor after a long period of unjust ostracism and neglect.

In other times and cultures, retrieving and recreating the past served a primary cultural function. For example, in eighteenth-century Europe,

an increasingly pluralistic age, with authoritarianism giving way to individualism and cultural relativism, historicism cast a far wider net and, in doing so, filled a vacuum and was elevated from a secondary to a central architectural role. As all historical styles became available to satisfy an infinity of moods, tastes, and needs, it was not as a parade of styles, as historicism is often called disparagingly, but as a protean, dynamic style itself (like Renaissance or Baroque). It was a style that expressed the complex nature of modern society, no longer stable and monolithic as it had been for centuries, but volatile, pluralistic, and in constant need of ever-new and varied architectural forms.⁹

The creative spirit ultimately resists being forced to assume only one shape or role or mode of behavior. The historicist artist is, indeed, a Proteus--the Old Man of the Sea in Homer's Odyssey who had the ability not only to take on any shape he pleased but also to prophesy the future. Because life itself is synonymous with transformation, so must an artist's styles vary with his changing needs and interests. If, however, he allows himself to be confined within the framework of any needlessly restrictive ideology, he forfeits his freedom and succeeds only in diminishing the scope of his vision, action, and ultimate contribution to society.

proteus@newmusicclassics.com