TOWARD A STRUCTURALIST ANALYSIS OF BAROQUE ART

Author(s): David Carrier

Source: Source: Notes in the History of Art, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Summer 2008), pp. 32-36
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TOWARD

A STRUCTURALIST
David

The reason for invoking the structuralist field

is essentially historical. Something occurs in
which upsets the
the historical succession,
fundamental
binary and needs to be ex
plained.

Rosalind

Krauss

In one recent essay, I discussed two repre

sentations in contemporary Neapolitan paint
1647 revolt.1 I asked
ing of Masaniello's
these
showing con
history
paintings
why
In another,
were
made.
events
temporary
even more recent commentary, I analyzed
Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria (1504
1507), an enormous
painting by Gentile
after his death by his
Bellini, completed
brother, Giovanni.2 I considered the impli
cations of setting a saint in the Islamic world.

These two essays deal with individual pic

tures. In this, the third and final installment
of my trilogy, building upon these results, I
frame
will argue that a novel conceptual
work offers a suggestive way of considering
these pictures, thus causing the rethinking of
the nature of Baroque art.
A few decades ago, two scholars indepen
dently developed structuralist theories of art. In
"The Art World," Arthur Danto presented a
style matrix. Let us list, he proposed, the
relevant qualities of a work of artsay, A, B,
C. (The list could be arbitrarily long. This is
just an example.) We then can map out all
artworks according to whether they possess
these qualities. If there are these three qualities,
then there are eight possible works of art:

ANALYSIS

ART

OF BAROQUE

Carrier

Quality

Quality

1
2

+
+

+
+

4
5

+
-

Quality

s
Danto had "a kind of political vision that all
works of art were equal, in the sense that
each artwork had the same number of stylis
tic qualities as any other."3 A Baroque altar
piece and a minimalist sculpture could thus
be juxtaposed using this ahistorical approach.
Some years later, Rosalind Krauss inde
pendently developed a structuralist analysis in

her "Sculpture in the Expanded Field" (1978).

While Danto's concerns were philosophical,
hers were art-historical, for her goal was to
map out the postmodernism of Carl Andre,
Robert Morris, Robert Smithson, and the
other artists of that generation. Rejecting the
claim that appeal to precedents would help us
understand the radically original minimalism
and earth art, Krauss laid out a structure
relating this art to landscape and architecture.
Traditionally,
sculpture is defined as not
landscape

and not architecture:

Not

Not landscape

architecture

Sculpture

In postmodernism, as this structure gets filled

in, other options become possible.

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33
his chart. Danto

Site construction

Architecture

Landscape
Marked

Axiomatic

sites

structures

Not architecture

Not landscape

Sculpture

Writing as an analytical philosopher, Danto

presented his logical analysis without any
elaborate methodological assumptions. Krauss
borrowed her way of thinking from Algirdas
Greimas, whose structuralism attracted at
tention in this country thanks, in large part, to
Fredric Jameson, who, in turn, presented it in
The Prison-House
(1972) and
of Language
then, in The Political

Unconscious
(1981),
suggestively employed Greimas's diagrams.4
whose anthropology
Claude Levi-Strauss,
attracted attention, was interested in cultures
that did not evolve. In undermining the cus
tomary distinction between diachronicthat
is, historicaland synchronic analysis, Grei
mas in effect treated all societies in anthro
pologists' terms.5 For literary scholars, struc
turalism offered a way to translate temporal
into visual diagrams.
narrative accounts
Greimas "postulate[d] a level of thought prior

to language, in which these rudimentary op

positions are given anthropomorphic shape."6
He claimed to be describing the structure of
the world, like a metaphysician. Extending
logic to describe the world's structure would
turn interpretation into a kind of science, ef
facing the usual distinctions between the
humanities and the social sciences.
Neither Danto nor Krauss nor their follow
ers developed
these structuralist ways of
thinking. Philosophers focused attention on

Danto's
account of Andy Warhol's Brillo
Box (1964) but did not pay much attention to

himself came to think that

this structuralist analysis was inconsistent

with his interest in the history of art and his
much discussed claim that this history has
ended.7 Krauss's analysis attracted attention.
But then, whether because
her interests
shifted or because art historians found her
terminology forbiddingly technical or, per
haps, because these diagrams were associ
this
ated with unconvincing
metaphysics,
was
not
analysis
developed.8
Here, I am not concerned with the dif
ferences between these ways of formulating
a structuralist analysis, but with the implica
tions of their shared way of looking at
history for study of the Baroque. Like Danto,
I present structuralism without making any
metaphysical assumptions. But where he is
in an ahistorical
essentialist
interested
definition of art, I follow Krauss in using
in
structuralism
to understand
changes

artistic styles at a particular historical mo

ment. Greimas diagrams may not reveal the
nature of the world, but they do provide
marvelously suggestive ways to interpret art.
When, for example, we identify Caravaggio
as the opposite of Poussin, we do not speak
in logicians' terms.9 Caravaggio might never
have existed, and Poussin could have painted
differently. And so our account, unlike that of
a logician,
presents a merely contingent
These
are a heuristic
diagrams
history.
us
to
better
see works of
device, allowing

art.10 We do not claim to describe Baroque

art as seen within that culture. But this is not
to say that our analysis is merely subjective.
The goal is to help us see the pictures better,
as they really are, by presenting convincing
visual comparisons. In that way, our analysis
is objective.
Let us begin by considering three catego
ries relevant to the Baroque. History paintings
show the distant past, scenes from classical

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34
antiquity or rrom sacred Christian Scripture.
The oppositewhat
we will call genre
events
of the immediate
paintingsshow

present. Second, paintings may show their

subject from a distance or close up. Third,
paintings may be site-specific or, conversely,
movablewhat
we will call easel paintings.

painting. Two categories,

finally, are not
within
art:
number
6, a close
options
Baroque
up, site-specific genre painting, and number 7,
a genre easel painting from far away.
We may then translate this style matrix into
a Greimas diagram:

Following Danto, our three categories, then,

yield eight options in this style matrix:
History/
Not History

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

tar/
Not tar

bite-specific/
Not bite-specific

painting

Site-specihc

Not

rar

Not far

site-specific

+
+
-

+
-

+
-

+
+

History

painting

8
The first of these options is realized by
Poussin's history paintings, easel paintings
that show events of the distant past from far
away. The second is found in Caravaggio's

site-specific pictures such as the Crucifixion

of Saint Peter, history paintings that present
events from close up." The third appears in
the two paintings examined in the first essay
of my trilogy, Micco Spadaro's
Revolt of
Masaniello
and Michelangelo
Cerquozzi's
with the same

title. They present

treated
with all of the
contemporary events,
of
traditional
historical themes, in
dignity
easel paintings. The fourth option is realized
picture

Genre

by quadratura on ceilings, illusionistic archi

tectural, site-specific paintings, history scenes
shown from far away.12 Pietro da Cortona's
fresco in the Palazzo Barberini, Rome, is a

prominent example. The fifthoption is exem

plified by the many Caravaggios that are not
site-specific. Option 8, the close-up easel
genre painting, is exemplified by still-life

Our suggestive diagram allows us to bring

together three novel seventeenth-century de
velopments that otherwise appear to be dis
tinct: Caravaggio's
highly influential presen
tation of historical events from close up;
and Cerquozzi's
Spadaro's
development of

history paintings of contemporary political

Earlier partial
events; and the quadratura.
precedents can be cited for these three art
forms.13 But they become fully developed
only in the seventeenth century, which thus
in the
roughly breaks with the Renaissance,
same way that minimalist postmodernism de
fines a rupture with modernism (as Krauss
claims). Poussin, as it is often said, believed
that Caravaggio
was born to destroy paint

ing.14 Where Poussin shows us historically

and visually distant scenes, Caravaggio gets
close up"in our face," as it werein the
style of a realist film director. In his later art,
like Poussin a history painter,
Caravaggio,
shows sacred subjects. Spadaro and Cerquoz
zi, by contrast, present contemporary events
from a physical distance. And, finally, the
ceilings of Pietro da Cortona show sacred
events from far away.

then, we have a picture of the

options open within the Baroque. In a letter
Here,

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35
mentioning the execution of Charles I in
revolt in Naples, and
England, Masaniello's
the political unrest in Poland, Poussin writes:
"It is a great pleasure to live in a century in
which such great events take place, providing
that one can take shelter in some little corner

and watch the play in comfort."1' He was not

a political painter, but his apolitical images are
one option within the Baroque; another option
was political painting. The aim of these dia
grams, Krauss observes, is to describe his

torical breaks. Here we show the novel pos

sibilities created within the Baroque.
We have displayed
the period style of
the
various options. But
art,
Baroque
showing
we may also

employ them to present the

Let
us add a fourth category to
larger history.
our chart and consider very briefly just one of
the sixteen possible

History/
Not History

options:

Far/
Not Far

Site-specific/
Not Site-specific

Islam/

Mark Preaching in Alexandria (1504-1507).

And the anonymous Venetian painting The
in
Reception of the Venetian Ambassadors
Damascus
is
an
of
(1511)
eyewitness image
the Islamic world.16 Spadaro and Cerquozzi
do not depict Muslims. But the Spanish rulers
of Naples were much concerned about con
taining Islam. They faced threats of piracy
and invasion. Just before Masaniello's

revolt,
a mock battle was staged using men with
blackened faces and dressed as Moors.17 The
ongoing struggle against the Ottoman Em
pire, which created insoluble taxation prob
lems, played a major role in bringing about
Masaniello's
revolt. So even though Mus
lims are not represented in our political paint
ings, they were not out of the picture. And al
though Poussin did not depict the exotic

Muslim world in his paintings, he worked

within a cultural context in which Islam was
present.
Because

Not Islam
+

All of our earlier examples were paintings

that did not show Islam. But there are some
Renaissance
examples that do, and so they
can be added to our style matrix. Muslims are
shown in Gentile and Giovanni Bellini's Saint

we have added this fourth stylis

tic option, Baroque art can be put in wider
historical perspective. A further structuralist

analysis would take this story into the twen

tieth century, when Henri Matisse employed
decorative Islamic-style composition in his
easel paintings. But developing this analysis
remains the task for another occasion.18

NOTES
This

essay

is for Rosalind

dence

provides
of this material
Performance
Rome,

23 Sept.

Her correspon
Krauss.
my epigraph. A very different version
was presented at "Performativity
and
in Baroque
Art," Swedish
Academy,
2006.

in Alexandria
SOURCE:
(1504-1507),"
Preaching
Notes in the History of Art, forthcoming.
3. Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art: Contem
porary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton:
ton University Press, 1997), p. 164.
4.

1. David

Carrier,

"Two

in Con
Representations
1647
Paintings of Masaniello's

temporary Neapolitan
Notes
Revolt," SOURCE:

1 (Fall 2007):32-38.
2.

Id., "Gentile

in the History

and Giovanni

Bellini,

of Art 27, no.

Saint

Mark

Fredric

Jameson,

guage: A Critical Account

sian Formalism
(Princeton:

Prince

The

Prison-House
of Lan
and Rus
of Structuralism
Princeton University Press,

Unconscious:
Narrative
1972), and id., The Political
as a Socially
Symbolic Act (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Uni
See also Clayton
The
Roberts,
versity Press, 1981).

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36
Park. Pa.:
Explanation
(University
of Historical
State University
ch. 7,
Press,
1996),
Pennsylvania
"Structure and Theory in History."
5. Heinrich Wolfflin has been called a structuralist
Logic

since

his charting of the classical

versus the Baroque
of oppositions,
closed
and
linear/painterly,
and so on can be seen in these
composition,

heim,

12.

in terms

Parma

open
terms.

Press,

6.

13.
Robert

Structuralism

Scholes,

in Literature:

An

Introduction

Haven:
Yale
Press,
(New
University
1974), p. 103. See also Jonathan Culler, Structuralist
and the Study of
Poetics:
Structuralism,
Linguistics,
N.Y.:
Cornell
Literature
Press,
(Ithaca,
University
1975);

the two volumes

Daniele

of Passions:

From States

of Affairs to States
of Minnesota
University

of Feeling
(Minneapolis:
Press, 1993).
7. See my "Danto's
Aesthetic:
Claims?"

Rivista

di Estetica

Is It Truly General
35 (2/2007):45-66.

as

I present
structuralism
in Rosalind
Krauss's
Krauss
and American
Art Criticism:
Philosophical
From Formalism
to beyond Postmodernism
(Westport,
8.

9.

Praeger, 2002), ch. 2.

This much discussed
contrast

Genevieve

Visual

See

Carolyn
Smyth, Correggio's
Cathedral
Princeton
(Princeton:

Frescoes

in

University

1997).
See Irving
Arts,

Lavin, Bernini and the Unity of the

2 vols. (New York: Oxford University
and John Shearman,
I, pp. 41-43,
Only

Press, 1980),
Connect:
Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renais
sance (Princeton:
Princeton
Press, 1992).
University
14. The fullest account
on this much-discussed

Andre

An Attempt at a Method, trans.

Ronald
Schleifer, and Alan Velie

Press, 1983), p. 35;

University of Nebraska
Perron and Paolo Fabbri, "Foreword,"
in Al
and Jacques
Julien Greimas
The
Fontanille,

Conn.:

Uni

Semantics:

(Lincoln:
and Paul

He

Princeton

is Louis
To Destroy
trans.
Marin,
phrase
Painting,
Mette Hjort (Chicago:
of Chicago
Press,
University
1995). The remark is attributed to Poussin's
champion

McDowell,

girdas
Semiotics

as an Art (Princeton:

of Franfois Dosse,
History of
trans. Deborah
Glassman
(Minneapolis:
of Minnesota
Press, 1997); A. J. Greimas,

Structuralism,
University
Structural

Painting

versity Press, 1987), p. 195.

11. See my "Painting
and Its Spectators,"
Journal
and Art Criticism 45, no. 1 (1986):517.
of Aesthetics

Warwick's,

"Introduction"

in
is presented
to a volume that

she edited:

Realism, Rebellion,
Caravaggio:
Reception
Press, 2006), p. 20.
(Newark:
University of Delaware
Richard
10. From his very different perspective,
Wollheim
this approach
when he proposed
anticipated
to understand

Courbet's

Le Sommeil

(1866)
by look
in Poussin's
Rinaldo
and

see Howard
Felibien;
Hibbard,
Caravaggio
(New York: Harper & Row, 1983), p. 308. The recent
reconstruction
of Poussin's
early career in Denis Ma
Poussin:
Works from His First Years in
hon, Nicolas
Rome

Israel Museum,
(Jerusalem:
1999), shows how
this cliche is.
misleading
15. Quoted
in Anthony Blunt, Nicolas
2
Poussin,
vols. (London:
Phaidon,
1967), I, p. 169. See also my
Nicolas
Poussin:
Lettere sull'arte
Hestia Edi
(Milan:
zione,

1995).
See my review "Venice
and the Islamic
World
The Metropolitan
828-1797:
Museum
of Art (March
2007):56.
27-July 8, 2007)," ArtUS 19 (Summer
17. Peter Burke, "The Virgin of the Carmine and the
16.

Revolt

of Masaniello,"

Past

and

Present

99

1983):8.

(May

18.

This trilogy is a first draft of larger project, a re

of my Poussin's
A Study in Art-His
Paintings:
torical Methodology
Park: Pennsylvania
(University

vision
State

wrote:

In that book (p. 41), I

Press, 1993).
University
"We do not see Bernini's
Rome in Poussin's

man
ing to the sleeping
Armida (1626):
"Where have I seen this face before?
. . . [An] answer of surprising precision,
comes
into
We have seen this very face in ...
consciousness....

To understand
why it is not, still, outside the
frame of his paintings, we must recover his concept of
I develop a structuralist analysis in my
representation."
World Art History (University Park: Pennsylvania
State

Courbet....

University

We cannot use this as evidence for, but we

might use this as a guide to what, freed from prior con
viction, the young knight's features show us." His goal
is to identify suggestive visual parallels. Richard Woll

works.

Press,

2008)

and in Proust/Warhol:

lytical Philosophy
of Art (forthcoming).
Danto for correcting an error.

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Ana

I thank Arthur