 | Studies in bibliography |  |
The Textual Criticism of Visual
and Aural Works
by
G. THOMAS TANSELLE
Textual criticism—the study of the relationships
among
variant texts of works—has primarily been associated,
throughout
its long history extending back to antiquity, with
verbal works as transmitted
on tangible objects such as
parchment and paper. But all works, whether
constructed of words or
not, have had histories that—if fully
told—would reveal stages of growth
and change, reflecting not only their
creators' intentions but also the ef-
fects of their passage to the public and
through time. All works, in other
words, have textual histories. Whether or not
one chooses in every case
to use the word "text" to refer to the arrangement of
elements that make
up a work is irrelevant; the point is that the issues and
problems dealt
with in the textual criticism of verbal works have their
counterparts in the
study of all other works.
One reason that this point has not been as widely acknowledged as
it ought to
have been is perhaps the fact that the varying media used
in different arts
affect the nature of the accompanying scholarship. The
textual criticism of
verbal works, for example, often leads to the produc-
tion of scholarly
editions, which embody insights derived from the study
of textual history.
Because the medium of verbal works—language—is
fundamentally
intangible, a work can be represented by a text in a newly
produced physical
object (the one conveying the scholarly edition) with-
out making any
alterations to the historic artifacts that had transmitted
earlier texts of the
work to the present. But a work in a tangible medium,
like a painting or a
sculpture, cannot as freely be accorded scholarly edi-
tions, since any
alteration deemed appropriate by the editor would per-
manently alter the
artifact that uniquely is the site of the intended work
and thus would deprive
the future of some of the evidence that had been
available to the editor.
Regardless of whether textual scholarship leads to editions or to es-
says, the
medium employed in each art determines the nature of the
evidence available for
reconstructing textual history. (I am not speaking
of the quantity of evidence,
which can vary irrespective of the medium.)
by sketches, which are analogous in some respects to the drafts of a verbal
work. But, being made of a physical material that is applied to a physi-
cal surface, a painting may preserve earlier stages of its text that exist on
the same surface beneath the layer of paint that is now on top, and these
stages can be revealed, in varying degrees, by modern technology. Some
works in intangible media, such as literature and music, can be transmit-
ted either by direct imitation or by tangible aides-memoirs. When a textual
tradition is entirely of the intangible kind, knowledge of a work's history
is dependent on memory; when texts are passed along in physical objects,
there is direct access to certain moments of the past (the moments when
the documents were prepared), but the texts thus reported are not neces-
sarily more trustworthy than those carried forward in human memory.
The objects, however, inevitably carry traces of their own manufacture;
and when those clues are uncovered through analysis, they can help ex-
plain how the text came to be constituted as it is. This procedure is the
counterpart to scrutinizing a canvas for underlying layers of paint: the
examination of objects can be as crucial to reconstructing textual histories
of works in intangible media as it is for those in tangible media. Textual
critics must of course assess whatever evidence is available to them, but
the process must take into account the fact that some evidence may be
transmitted by media different from the medium of the work itself.
Furthermore, the textual history of a work proceeds beyond the point
at which
the creator or creators of the work die or cease to make changes
in it. The
discipline of textual criticism has traditionally focused on the
evolution of
texts only up to that point, though the evidence often has
to come, by default,
from later documents. But the alterations that texts
undergo as they are
disseminated to the public, both during and after
their creators' lifetimes,
are part of the full story of the life of any work
(as textual critics have
increasingly come to recognize). Such alterations
take different forms for
works in different media. Since works in tangible
media exist in their
originally created form only at the geographical loca-
tions where they are
placed at any given time, they are often reproduced
in order to allow people to
experience them, at least to some extent,
without traveling to those locations.
Such reproductions cannot dupli-
cate precisely the physical material of the
original, and they frequently
use different media, as when an oil painting on
canvas is reproduced by
a photographic process on paper (inevitably with
differences in coloring
and perhaps with different dimensions as well). Many
more people may
be familiar with an image in its reproduced forms than have
ever seen it
in the original, and those textually different forms are therefore
relevant
to the historical study of a work's reputation and influence. In the
case
of verbal works transmitted on paper, their physical forms were not, in
works. But because the physical features of books reflect contemporary
culture and frequently have an effect on readers, those features become
textual elements for the study of cultural change and reception history.
None of these points is surprising: they follow naturally from the rec-
ognition that some works (such as paintings, sculptures, and buildings) are
basically made of tangible materials and that others (such as literature,
music, dance, and film) are basically intangible in nature. In practice,
works
may consist of mixed media—not merely in the sense that differ-
ent
ingredients associated with a single art form are brought together
(as when
watercolor and crayon are used in the same work) but, more
significantly, in
the sense that elements of different arts (including those
with a different
ontological status) are made parts of a single work (as
when words and music,
or words and visual effects, are joined). The tex-
tual study of any work,
mixed or not, can proceed more thoughtfully and
logically if it is conducted
with an awareness of the relationships among
the media employed by all arts and
the conditions set by each medium in
regard to textual change.
In what follows, I shall look at a variety of arts and comment on some
of the
similarities and distinctions among them from the point of view of
textual
criticism. Although I outlined these considerations in A Rationale
of Textual Criticism (1989), I wish now to expand the discussion in the
hope of clarifying some of the issues that are often raised, sometimes confus-
ingly, in popular discourse on the arts. (My examples come from the New
York
Times, to which all parenthetical dates below refer.) I
hope that these
comments, which are intended to be no more than suggestive, can
begin
to show how a framework might be formed for thinking about the textual
histories of human creations in all media.
Work in Intangible Media
1. Verbal Work
Works constructed of verbal languages are a useful starting point be-
cause they have been so extensively discussed in the literature of textual
criticism that for many people they constitute a natural frame of refer-
ence for textual questions in general. Yet (or perhaps not surprisingly)
the
medium of language is the most mysterious of all media. It would not
be
so if it were unquestionably oral, with tangible texts being only the
re-
cords (like musical scores) by which the vocal work is recreated. Not
only
is it possible, however, to have languages without oral components
but
also—and more importantly for present purposes—it is
common for au-
thors to expect their works to be read silently, without
the spoken sounds
of the words being formed imaginatively in the mind. Of
course, some
but even in those cases, or most of them, the authors feel that the works
have been experienced in their intended medium whether read silently or
aloud. Whatever may be said about the origins of language, in practice it
is a medium that can exist apart from speech. But its written presentation
on a physical surface is not its primary form either: most writings, from
the point of view of their creators, are not visual works, for the works still
exist when presented in different handwriting or typefaces on different
papers. However difficult it is to define the medium of language, one thing
is therefore clear: the medium is intangible. Like all works in intangible
media, verbal works require performance of some kind (oral or internal)
for their realization; and because performances have duration, such works
consist of sequential texts, intended by their creators to be experienced
from a beginning to an end.
One of the problems that these conditions pose for textual criticism is
the likelihood of confusing the work with its means of transmission. When
verbal works are communicated on paper, readers (and even, at times,
the
class of readers called textual critics) may think of the works as what
they see rather than as what they silently perform. They may automati-
cally correct a typographical error, for example, without realizing that
other places in the text may also be erroneous (from the point of view of
the author's or the publisher's intention). What textual critics and other
readers have available to them in documentary texts are various attempts,
from various past moments, to provide instructions for recreating a work.
The fact that words and punctuation on paper are perceived by the eye
does not in itself make the text a work of visual art, for the artistry
of the
physical design is not normally a part of the intended verbal
work. (Punc-
tuation is no more visual from this point of view than the
words; it, like
them, is an element of linguistic meaning, transferrable
into pauses and
intonations in recited texts.) Authors do at times,
however, choose to use
visual effects, creating mixed-media works that
employ both a tangible
medium (since the pictorial images and spatial
arrangements exist in ink
on paper) and an intangible one (language). The
relative proportions of
each medium can vary: at one end, for example,
are primarily verbal
works in which some of the text is shaped (like
George Herbert's bird-
wings and Lewis Carroll's mouse-tail, or indeed
stanza indentations and
spacing), and at the other are primarily visual
works in which language is
simply a significant element (like concrete
poetry).
Textual criticism, which elucidates these conditions, controls the op-
tions for editors: in the first of these situations, new editions (with
critical,
reset texts) are possible so long as the shaping is maintained;
in the sec-
ond, where the work is totally dependent on physical
presentation, only a
facsimile reprinting could be considered (and not
even that if the quality
serving authorial intention). There is no doubt that the physical presen-
tation of a verbal work conveys information about the cultural milieu in
which the document was produced and can have an influence on readers,
regardless of whether any visual effects were intended by the author. But
many readers have always been interested in authorially intended texts
and make an effort to exclude documentary features that they suspect
were not so intended; thus authorial intention is a factor in the history
of reading. Textual criticism properly studies all these interchanges over
time, but any editions that result will inevitably follow different guidelines
according to whether the focus is on authorial intention or social-cultural
history.
The intended texts of a verbal work and the varying physical texts
aimed
at conveying that work are all worthy of study, but understanding
that
"the texts of works" and "the texts of documents" are not synony-
mous
phrases is central to clear thinking about the texts of works made
of
language. This point applies equally to verbal works transmitted in
oral
form (as in nonliterate societies, but not only in them), for each oral
rendition is a "document" and not necessarily the work. When the texts
of
such performances are written down (as they often are at some point,
if
only by anthropologists or other historians), a tangible documentary
record becomes available for analysis by textual critics, supplementing
any ongoing oral tradition.
2. Music
The points that can be made about the nature of verbal works are
directly
applicable to thinking about music, even though the medium of
music,
sound, is less enigmatic than the ontology of language. What is
immediately comparable about the two is that in each case the notation
present on paper provides instruction for some kind of performance and is
not in itself—except in unusual instances—part of the work of
art. Com-
posers do sometimes create scores that are meant to have visual
appeal,
but the result is not necessarily a mixed-media work, unless the
composer
intended that anyone listening to a performance of the music
should also
be looking at the score. Nevertheless, such scores limit the
freedom of edi-
tors to alter the design of the notation, in much the
same way that shaped
verbal texts do. Another similarity between musical
scores and verbal
texts on paper is that each can be the basis for a
silent performance as
well as a rendition out loud. Many people are adept
at "hearing" music
by reading scores, though when they do so, they are
not experiencing the
work in the medium in which its creator intended it
to be experienced
(unlike the silent readers of verbal texts). No two
performances, silent or
aloud, can ever be precisely identical, for the
most that a score (like a
and delimits, a variety of performances.
The composer Richard Wernick once said, "Conductors and compos-
ers are
privileged in that our training has given us the capacity to hear a
piece
of music as we see it on the written page. But, unfortunately, there
is
an intermediary between the music and the public." This comment was
criticized as "silly" by a writer for the New York Times
(John Rockwell,
on 17 December 1989), but one understands what Wernick
was getting at:
every performance may depart from what the composer
intended. To me,
the problem with Wernick's statement is not the word
"unfortunately"
(which bothered Rockwell) but the idea that the musical
work is present
on paper and that those trained to read scores can
experience "the mu-
sic" directly. Will every trained reader of a score
of Wernick's "hear" the
music exactly as Wernick does? Will even Wernick
"hear" it the same way
every time he looks at it? In other words, the
reader of a score is an "in-
termediary" just as much as a person
performing aloud. It is in the nature
of works in intangible media that,
however determinate the instructions
for their recreation may be, the
texts of the works themselves are always
indeterminate. Textual critics
of music have available to them not only
written and printed texts but
also evidence of specific performances, both
in anecdotal accounts and in
sound recordings. All this material is essen-
tial for following the
textual history of a piece of music over time, but only
a part of it is
relevant to the study of authorial intention. Editors of music
have to
realize, along with editors of verbal works, that no single text can
accommodate all aspects of textual history simultaneously.
And many of those who use or discuss editions of music need (like
readers
of verbal editions) to learn more fully what the function of a
scholarly
edition is. When Donal Henahan commented (20 March 1983)
on the first
volume (
Rigoletto
) of the University of Chicago critical edition
of Verdi, he
noted that not every "discovery or interpretation" in the edi-
tion will
be "honored" by every performer. "Interpreters," he said, "will
always
want to slip the bonds. The eternal struggle between purity and
practicality is not merely inevitable but one of the dynamic forces that
keep the musical world going around." This is a peculiar way to talk about
a scholarly critical edition, especially since Henahan recognizes that
the
text is a product of critical judgment throughout and that the
editorial
annotation calls attention to many unresolved cruxes. To speak
of "slip-
ping the bonds" when one does not "honor" the text, which
suggests that
one is being a renegade, fails to acknowledge a primary aim
of a scholarly
edition: to give readers evidence for reconsidering the
text. The poles of
"purity" and "practicality" (if they are poles) have
no meaning in relation
to texts of music, or other works in intangible
media. Accepting any text
negligent; and departing from any text as a result of critical evaluation
is not being "practical" but is simply being responsible—it shows an ac-
ceptance, that is, of the responsibility that follows from understanding the
status of texts as fallible instructions for the recreation of works. Whether
one's goal is a stage of authorial intention (as in the Verdi edition) or a
stage of a work's later development, the makeup of the tangible text is a
matter of judgment, as is the range of performance that seems justified
by it.
Distinguishing between authorial intention and authorial expectation,
which I have often found useful in discussing textual questions relating to
verbal works, can also help to clarify textual dilemmas posed by music.
Thus the amount of interpretive variation and outright embellishment
engaged in by performers is a matter of convention that has differed from
one period to another. Composers of the past naturally expected their
work to be performed in whatever manner was conventional at the time,
but their own textual intentions may have been different. (There is, for
example, reason to believe that Verdi came to disapprove of some of the
embellishments regularly added by singers in his time.) To the extent
that
evidence is available, textual criticism and scholarly editions
should delin-
eate intended texts as well as those that were actually
heard by listeners.
Furthermore, the concept of expectation helps to approach the issues
argued about in the "early-music" debates of recent decades. Composers
clearly expected their works to be performed on the instruments available
in their own time, and they probably thought of the sounds produced by
those instruments when they read music silently. But does it follow, as
"early-music" adherents claim, that one is not being faithful to authorial
intention if one listens to music played on instruments developed later
than the composers' lifetimes? Not necessarily, if one regards composers'
expectations about instruments as a separate matter from
their intentions
to have certain notes and interpretive instructions in their scores. The
differing sounds of instruments made at different times are (like varia-
tions in tempo and volume) just one of the variable aspects of individual
performances. As the pianist Malcolm Bilson has pointed out (14 June
1998), instruments have always "played a role in determining interpreta-
tion," and performing a work on instruments of different periods is one
"avenue" for exploring what the music has to offer.
The use of modern instruments for earlier music is not analogous to
the
modernizing of verbal texts, an issue that has generated equally ve-
hement debate. Such modernizing normally refers to spelling and punc-
tuation, and the equivalent in music would be the modernizing of the
notation in scores; neither practice is defensible in scholarly editing since
to interpretation. For verbal works, the equivalent of modern instruments
would be modern pronunciation, which also is a feature of performance
encompassed within the framework that is provided by the set of printed
or handwritten instructions (a point not contradicted by the occasional
presence of rhymes or puns that require earlier pronunciation). The aural
texts of performances (including the nature of the sounds produced by
varieties of the "same" instrument) are thus, for the most part, materials
for social textual criticism (dealing with public texts and their reception),
whereas the study of authorial intention is primarily focused on visible
(notated) texts—at least when there is a written tradition that can be con-
nected with the creator(s).
But of course some music, like some verbal work, does not have a
written
tradition. Folk music of the past may have been transmitted by
imitation
over a long period of time before being written down, and at
present
there is music that has not yet been written down (as there was at
any
given moment of the past). Performances of pieces that originated in
the
past but that are not yet reported in written form or in sound record-
ings (or for which there is an independent living tradition) have a different
status for textual criticism from performances in the present by the
person
or persons who are creating or improvising the music as they
perform it.
Performances of the first kind provide evidence for
recreating intended
texts, whereas those of the second kind constitute
the intended works
themselves. Thus jazz, often created in performances
of this second type,
is analogous to such verbal (or partially verbal)
works as those produced
by performance artists and story-tellers.
The comparison between works of music and those of verbal language
brings
to mind another connection: verbal texts are often combined with
musical
ones (as in songs and opera) to form mixed-media works. The fact
that in
vocal music some sounds are produced by human voices is not
what makes
such works mixed, for the voices are simply musical instru-
ments;
rather, the mixed-media status of these works is produced by the
presence
of words that have meaning apart from the music. (Opera is of
course
mixed in a further way because of its use of the physical art of stage
sets and costumes.) Textual criticism of these verbal texts can be pursued
as one would any other verbal text; and, in the case of those written as
separate works (with no thought of their being set to music), variants
from
the original texts cannot be considered errors if they were the
intended
readings of the creators of the musical-verbal works. The many
similari-
ties between literature and music underlie the fact that in
musicology as
in literary scholarship there is a tradition of textual
study; and many of
the scholars currently engaged in editing music are
well versed in the
theoretical writings that editors of literature have
produced.
3. Dance
A work of dance may of course be transmitted by direct instruction
from
one choreographer or dancer to another. This kind of transmission,
like
the oral transmission of verbal works, presents at any moment the lat-
est stage (or one of the latest stages) in a continuously evolving tradition.
This social product may be judged aesthetically satisfying and is
certainly
of importance for cultural history. But another legitimate
interest—in the
intentions of the creator(s) of the
work—may in many instances be more
accurately conveyed by a
physical document, even if the earliest surviving
one does not go back to
the time of the creator(s), since the text of any
given document is
relatively stable (barring unusual physical deteriora-
tion). In any
case, the physical recording of dance texts, like that of music
texts, is
obviously desirable. But there is a major difference in the histori-
cal
development of such recording in the two arts, for symbolic dance
notation on paper (as opposed to written verbal accounts or printed step
tablature) goes back only to 1700 (the Beauchamp-Feuillet system), and
no
one notation system even today has such widespread acceptance as
the now
conventional music notation does. It is instructive to look at the
illustrations in Mary Ann Malkin's 2003 Dancing by the
Book, which give a
sense of the variety of systems proposed in
the eighteenth century.
At present, Labanotation, a system introduced in the 1920s, may be
regarded as the dominant form, having been championed by the Dance
Notation Bureau, which possesses over seven hundred Labanotated scores
(see Erika Kinetz's article, 7 November 2005). The Benesh system, how-
ever, has been favored by the Royal Ballet in London. Although stan-
dardization is helpful, any comprehensible notation is important for the
preservation of individual works. Nijinsky, for example, who was much
interested in the problem, created his own notation and on more than
one
occasion wrote out a score for L'Après-midi d'un
faune (as reported by
Jennifer Dunning, 9 December 1989). Textual
critics of dance may in
some cases have variant texts on paper at their
disposal; and any dance
score—like any piece of musical or verbal
notation—may contain erro-
neous readings, identifiable both
through an intimate knowledge of what
is stylistically plausible for the
choreographer in question and through
recourse to such external sources
as reviews and other contemporary
commentary.
If the search for appropriate notation has been a significant strand
in
dance history, another—not surprisingly—has been experimenta-
tion with technology that can record movement. For many decades now,
dances have routinely been filmed or videotaped, often from multiple
angles. More recently, digital photography has been used, and there has
been research on software (such as LabanDancer) to convert scores into
animation. Computer programs are used by some choreographers as an
critics access to drafts. Motion-capture technology can create a digital
record of a performance in a sequence of shifting lines and shapes, which
can in turn be given vestigial human form. Trisha Brown's how long is an
example of a dance piece that includes a video projection of a digital re-
cord of the movements being made simultaneously by the human dancers.
(It was discussed by Matthew Mirapaul on 13 April 2005.) A film record
of a performance of this piece would thus also preserve a second kind
of record of the movements involved. There have been choreographers
who regard pictorial representations of dance as perhaps more valuable
than scores. Martha Graham's admiration for certain still photographs of
dancers is well known; and Murray Louis recently expressed satisfaction
with the preservation of his legacy through videotapes of his repertory
(reported by Anna Kisselgoff on 17 December 2005).
One can understand how still and motion photography can be crucial
for
the study of an individual dancer's technique. And of course the tex-
tual criticism of dance must take into account every kind of documenta-
tion that exists for any given work. But the idea that a visual record of a
dance might be superior to a score, or even render it unnecessary, simply
because the dance is a visual form of art, betrays a misunderstanding of
the relation of work and performance in the performing arts. Each visual
record preserves only a single performance, which is an interpretation of
a set of instructions; every performance is a postulation of the work,
and
the instructions accommodate them all, except when an interpretation
goes beyond what can be regarded as implicit in the instructions. The
instructions themselves may be consciously altered over time, as differ-
ent generations adapt the work to their own sensibilities. But for anyone
interested in authorial intention, even a film of a performance directed
or
performed by the choreographer has its deficiencies, since it still
reflects
only one occasion and since (even with multiple cameras) it
cannot show
everything that could be observed by viewers of the live
performance.
The situation is precisely the same as the one that exists
in music, where
no one performance can be a substitute for the score.
Muriel Topaz, one
of the directors of the Dance Notation Bureau, made the
point well at
a 1962 conference: a dance, she said, like works in any of
the other per-
forming arts, has "a substance, a compositional integrity
that transcends
the initial [and, one should add, any other] performance"
(quoted in Jack
Anderson's obituary of her, 1 May 2003). That
transcendent integrity is
distilled in the score or scores, which
encompass various interpretations
reflected in performance.
Topaz's comment was concerned with the originating choreographer's
intention, but it could be applied to the revising vision of later choreogra-
phers who alter a piece. Pictorial evidence is of course basic for
studying
intended texts, as they changed over time because of shifting intentions
on the part of the creator of a piece as well as of others, scores are of
crucial importance, when they exist (though pictorial evidence should in
any case be scrutinized critically for clues to such intentions not available
elsewhere). Scores may contain music notation and words along with the
dance notation if the work includes music and/or words (sung or spoken),
as most works of dance do. The music and/or words may have their own
independent textual history, but once they are joined with dance, the cho-
reographer's intention for them takes precedence over earlier intentions,
and what might have been regarded as a textual error in the music or
the words under other circumstances would not be erroneous if intended
by the choreographer. Nevertheless, a dance score may contain errors in
any of its conjoined elements, and a knowledge of the textual history of
each of those elements gives an editor the basis for making emendations.
What may seem to be an error in the musical text may be shown to be
an error indeed by analyzing it in conjunction with the dance notation
at the same point. The situation is in principle the same as that faced by
textual critics of all mixed-media works, whether or not the elements in
them have separate histories.
4. Film, Video, and Digital Art
Confusion about the distinction between work and document in the
field of
film is epitomized by Andrew Pollack's article (16 March 1998)
on the
issues raised by digital film restoration. He points out that in an
opening scene of Gone with the Wind there is a gap
between a flagpole
and the building to which it is supposed to be
attached (showing that the
scene was not a natural shot but was produced
by special effects, ineptly
handled). This error can be corrected
digitally by scanning the frames
involved and then copying and inserting
certain pixels. But Pollack raises
a question: "Should the flaw be fixed
or retained as an intrinsic part of the
original masterpiece?" The
trouble with his question is that the "master-
piece"—that is, the
work—does not necessarily consist of everything that
is on the
film The levitating flagpole is no more a part of Gone with
the
Wind (the work) than the typographical error "fastidions"
(for "fastidious")
in the original American edition of Moby-Dick is a part of that work. Both
are obvious flaws in the
documents that make possible the transmission of
those two works, but
they are not parts of the works as intended by an
one at any time. A
printed edition of a verbal work, consisting of multiple
supposedly (but
not quite) identical copies, is analogous to the copies of
a film made
for distribution to theaters: in both cases, the multiplicity of
copies
allows for the simultaneous experiencing of the work at different
locations, even though there is no guarantee in either case that the cop-
one case, the projection in the other), are the same. This point proves (if
proof is needed) that cinematic works employ an intangible medium: the
work is not a roll of celluloid but rather the sequence of moving images
(now usually supplemented by sound) that it enables us to recreate. But we
can never be sure whether the basis for this recreation is accurate—and
whether the details of the projection lead to what was intended at any
previous time.
Intention is of course not the only possible aim, but people often seem
to think that a choice has to be made between preserving the document
and
restoring authorial (or some other) intention. Pollack quotes and
paraphrases Michael Friend (director of the film archive at the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) as follows: "The goal should be to
'restore the original achievement,' not the presumed original intention
of the film maker." The statement would be clearer if Friend had said
"document" instead of "achievement"; but the main point to be made
about
his comment is that there is no need to choose between the goals.
It is
always important for historical study to have the documents that
were the
basis for public showings in the past; but critically emended texts
enable a fuller appreciation of the filmmaker's artistry. Another archivist
opposed to editorial alteration also confuses the discussion. Pollack
quotes
Richard R. May (vice president of film preservation for Warner
Brothers)
as saying, "To change something just because we have the
technology to
do it, I am, and I think other archivists are, against it."
Obviously the
existence of technology is not in itself an appropriate
reason for making
a change; but when technology makes possible the
correction of an error,
it is a valuable tool for the study of artistic
intentions.
The matter of technical knowledge is worth pausing over for a mo-
ment.
The fact that digital technology did not exist when Gone with
the
Wind was made does not mean that using it to correct the
flagpole error
is an act of modernizing—for the correct flagpole
image was achievable
by special-effects technology in 1939. For the same
reason there can be no
objection to using modern technology to add an
animal's missing foot in
one frame of Fantasia. It
is wrong to object to this kind of emendation
by regarding it as "akin to
efforts to fix the poor sense of perspective in pre-
Renaissance
paintings" (a view reported by Pollack). Restoring what was
intended at a
past time is not at all the same as imposing a more recent
visual
vocabulary on a work from the past.
There have been, however, some attempts at film alteration that are
indeed akin to revising pre-Renaissance perspective. The two best-known
ones are probably stretch-printing and colorizing. The former attempts
to
smooth out the jerky, stylized movements in some silent films (such as
Chaplin's) by repeating every second or third frame (see Walter Kerr's
black-and-white films look as if they had been shot in color (the subject of
many complaints in the Times, such as those by Vincent Canby on 2 and
30 November 1986). Neither of these techniques truly achieves its aim;
but even if they were successful, they would be unjustifiable to anyone
interested in authorial intention, for both involve changes in the visual
language used by the filmmaker. Whether that language was employed by
necessity or by choice (whether, for example, black-and-white photogra-
phy was used in a film of 1920 or one of 1970), it was what the filmmaker
was working with to express a vision. Those who defend stretch-printing
and colorization without admitting that new works are thereby created
put themselves in a position just as indefensible as those who think that
the spelling and punctuation of a verbal work can be modernized without
affecting meaning.
In other words, a distinction must be made between, on the one hand,
altering the cinematic vocabulary of a film (which is an act of adapta-
tion, not a historical undertaking) and, on the other, correcting errors,
reincorporating unauthorized deletions, or restoring degraded images (all
of which aim to recover authorial intention). The latter category is il-
lustrated by two "critical editions" of classic films that were unveiled in
New York within a few days of each other in early 1989. On 30 January,
a restored Gone with the Wind brought back the
intended colors: a new
negative had been made in a two-year process that
involved combining
the three original negatives (each for a different
dye), thus resulting in new
prints that were faithful to the original
intention, unlike the degraded and
unstable film stocks that had been
used for showings in previous decades.
On 8 February, a reconstructed Lawrence of Arabia restored twenty minutes
of
footage that had been deleted without David Lean's permission; it also
corrected such errors as the reversed printing of the second reel (which
had caused Lawrence's wristwatch to switch from one wrist to the other).
(See the articles by Max Alexander and Janet Maslin on 29 January 1989.)
These two "editions" show how the properly researched alteration of a
received film text can produce a version that is closer to the intention of
a director at a particular past time, just as the scholarly emendation of
documentary verbal texts, when undertaken with a historical goal like the
restoration of authorial intention, can take readers back to certain past
moments more faithfully than can the documents that physically survive
from the past. In both cases, given the relation of documents to works in
these arts, the historic documents need not be damaged in the process of
creating new texts.
The fact that Lean did not approve of the cuts made in Lawrence of
Arabia points to a major strand of film history that
must be investigated
by textual critics. Just as authors of verbal works
have often felt that their
ers, many film directors have been angered but powerless in the face of
deletions required by studios. The changes in each case are of interest for
what they reveal about the cultural climate of the times that produced
them, but textual critics will also wish to understand the stages of textual
evolution that preceded publication or public release. Whether the evi-
dence that leads to such knowledge can support the production of new
texts varies from case to case, but in general one may say that the editor of
a verbal work may more often be able to recreate the text of a deleted pas-
sage than the editor of a cinematic work can, for even the survival of the
script of lost footage does not in itself make possible the reassembly of all
that would be required to reshoot it. Rarely can one expect to duplicate
even the limited remaking that happened during the re-editing of Lawrence
of Arabia: the original actors were asked to re-record lost portions of the
soundtrack. That such an event took place underscores the mixed-media
nature of cinema and video, allowing for the separate reconsideration and
alteration of the soundtrack and the images.
Orson Welles once said that the only film he was "allowed" to com-
plete
as he wished was Citizen Kane; his intentions for the
others can be
reclaimed only in varying degrees. One can write about his
aims for The
Magnificent Ambersons, but without
the lost footage one cannot produce a
new text. For Touch of Evil, however, there is not only a surviving preview
print, which includes some later deleted material (fifteen minutes' worth),
but also a memorandum by Welles detailing what he found unsatisfac-
tory in the film as released. With those materials available, Walter Murch
was able to prepare a new "edition" (for 1998 release, forty years after
the original) that incorporates digital repairs, restoration of cut
scenes,
deletion of scenes added by the studio, a different structuring,
and the
replacement of Henry Mancini's music (the removal of which
allowed the
recovery of a suppressed layer of sound effects under it).
(Murch's account
of how his version follows Welles's memo "scrupulously"
appeared on
6 September 1998.)
Despite the expense of such restoration, there are other notable ex-
amples, such as the 1993 re-editing of A Streetcar Named
Desire, similarly
made possible not only by the survival of
excised footage but also by
external sources, including Elia Kazan's
autobiography. (See Bernard
Weinraub's report, 16 September 1993.) This
kind of careful recreation
of directorially intended film texts is to be
encouraged, and the advent of
videocassette distribution of films for
home viewing provided additional
occasions for undertaking re-editing. A
film like Angel Heart, which Alan
Parker was
forced to cut in order to receive an "R" rather than an "X"
rating, was
released in 1987 as a video with the uncut text. The trend
toward
providing home viewers with texts not available to theater audi-
cluding both commentary and excised footage on the digital video disks
(DVDs) of commercial films. These disks have in effect become what are
called documentary editions in the field of verbal-text editing: they aim
to present an unaltered reproduction of a received text, accompanied by
annotation and related documentary texts.
I should add immediately, however, that the main text is "unaltered"
in
the sense that its constituent elements have not been changed; but the
transfer from film to DVD, with the result that the work is viewed on
a
small (or relatively small) rather than a large screen, may in itself in
many cases be a departure from authorial intention. This point does not
of course apply to works made for video and computer-monitor viewing
in
the first place. The textual criticism of early television works is compli-
cated by the fact that before the late 1940s there was no adequate means
for preserving them and that the kinescope technology that followed was
not very satisfactory. Early digital art poses a somewhat different
problem
for historical study: whereas there was no difficulty copying it,
the
programs and equipment for retrieving it sometimes became obsolete
and
unavailable. But despite the technological differences between
celluloid
film, videotape, and digital disks, the theoretical framework
for textual
criticism is the same. What is preserved in each visual
document is not
simply (as with recordings of music and films of dance)
the record of an
individual performance; rather it is (when displayed) a
version of the work
itself—that is, the version of it represented
by the particular copy of the
physical film being used. Nevertheless, the
uncertainties attaching to the
constitution of all works in intangible
media remain present, since one
may still question the content of the
physical document and the manner of showing it.
Mention of television and digital art requires a brief word about
broadcasting—that is, the transmission (by radio waves, telephone,
cable,
and the like) of a visual or aural work from a central source to
any number
of locations simultaneously. Broadcasting is both a means of
reproduction
(as when a movie made for theaters is telecast or a concert
is radiocast)
and a means of original dissemination (as when a
made-for-television
documentary is released on a television network or
when a work of digi-
tal art is mounted on the artist's website).
Broadcasting enables a work
to be experienced in multiple places at the
same time (given appropriate
receiving equipment), without the need to
transport any documents (like
scripts, scores, or films) to those places.
And it does not always require au-
diences to be available at given
tunes, since the internet and on-demand
television channels allow viewers
to choose their own times for looking at
particular works. Although there
are obviously significant differences be-
tween broadcasting and other
means of bringing visual and aural works to
difficulty of ascertaining the variant texts that have been experienced.
Individual television stations, for example, may alter the programs they
receive from their network headquarters (especially by making deletions),
and each viewer's television set or computer monitor may display the
material somewhat differently. Yet so little of this information may be
recoverable as to hamper severely the writing of comprehensive textual
histories of works that have been broadcast.
5. Drama and Performance Art
It is not surprising that textual critics of literature have written ex-
tensively about drama, since plays are often read in printed form
and
since dramatic works—especially those by Shakespeare and his
contemporaries—have figured heavily in the development of English-
language textual criticism. Whereas earlier textual critics and editors of
Renaissance drama focused on authorial intention (treating plays as they
did nondramatic literature), some recent scholars have been more inter-
ested in the performance texts of plays, arguing that drama is
essentially
a collaborative art. Although it is true that drama, like all
performing
arts, cannot normally be experienced in its intended form
without col-
laborative effort, it does not follow that playwrights'
intentions are neces-
sarily superseded by what emerges from the
production process. Many
playwrights, even when they participate in that
so-called "development,"
are not fully sympathetic with the resulting
evolution of their plays. Ter-
rence McNally once said, "I worry that in
the process of developing my
new play I lose it" (7 December 1986). And
Andrew Bergman, noting
that movies "get filtered through other
sensibilities," wanted to create a
play that would, he said, "be my voice
purely, the way a novel is." He
rejected the idea of writing a
screenplay: "I didn't want to have to open it
up and put some action in
it where I don't want to" (reported by Mervyn
Rothstein, 12 April 1986).
Bergman may have been unrealistic in imagin-
ing the amount of control he
would have in the theater, but he made his
point of view very clear.
A celebrated example of a dispute over the alteration of a playwright's
intentions is the lawsuit brought by Samuel Beckett's American publishers
and lawyers against the American Repertory Theater, whose director,
Joanne Akalaitis, wished to set Endgame in a subway
station rather than
an empty room. Partly in response to this event, New
York University
in March 1985 held a panel discussion entitled "Authors
versus Direc-
tors: Who Has the Right of Interpretation?" Opinions were
expressed on
both sides (described by Samuel G. Freedman, 14 March 1985),
but not
much could have been expected from a discussion responding to
such
an unenlightened question. Thus John Guare's comment—"Theater
is
to collaborate with"—was not helpful, being limited to performances of
works by living playwrights (or during the life of a copyright) and over-
simplifying the issues even for those cases. "Interpretation" by performers
(whether or not so instructed by directors or authors) is a natural part of
the recreation of works in intangible media. The key point for discussion
should have been how to draw the line between interpretation that is in
keeping with the author's intention and interpretation that goes beyond
it and creates a different work. If the goal of a performance is compliance
with authorial intention, the range of permissible interpretation is usually
determined by the author-derived script, which in general (making allow-
ances for errors and variants) is the primary set of authorial guidelines,
subsuming certain kinds of interpretation. Thus the pacing of the action,
the exact brightness and tone of the lighting, and the actors' manner of
speaking can in many instances vary without violating the guidelines. But
a change that contravenes explicitly stated directives (such as moving the
setting of Beckett's play from a bare room to a subway station) is an act
of "interpretation" not in line with authorial intention.
If authorial intention is not a concern, directors are of course free to
make such changes or more drastic ones (at least for works out of copy-
right). And authorial intention need not be, and certainly is not, always
the aim: works in intangible media can be expected to undergo all man-
ner of changes in their performed texts over the years. Alterations not in
line with authorial intention may seem aesthetic improvements to some
people, and there is no reason in principle to disapprove of such
changes.
What may legitimately be deplored, however, is confused thinking
about
what does, or does not, conform with authorial intention and thus
about
whether or not a given performance is within the matrix of
possibilities
embodied in an authorial text.
The range of those possibilities varies in inverse proportion to the
explicitness of the stage directions and set descriptions. Some playwrights
compose extremely detailed paragraphs of such commentary, which in
published form make the plays read almost as novels but also provide sub-
stantial insight into how the playwright visualized stage presentation. The
use of furniture and other physical objects in staging is one indication
of
the mixed-media nature of drama, for such settings resemble
installation
art; but in drama, where physical details are usually
ancillary, some of
those details can be altered without violating the
guidelines of the script,
whereas in an installation any change of a
detail (except one aimed at
correcting an error) would compromise the
artist's intended text. (These
points obviously apply to stage settings
in opera as well.) Controversy
has recently arisen as to whether
directors should be granted copyrights
for their staging: playwrights
believe that such copyrights would limit
29 January 2006). But since any given staging would normally not be the
only one consistent with the authorially intended script (and might well be
inconsistent with it), any copyrighted staging could not logically be tied to
the copyright of the play, and permission to perform the play would not
entail the use of that particular staging.
Generally speaking, then, the consequential alteration of settings is an
example of a directorial change that would depart from authorial inten-
tion; but the exact pronunciation of the words would not—except when
a particular dialect is specifically indicated—be a matter
controlled by
the concept of an authorially intended text. The 2004 Globe
Theatre
production of Romeo and Juliet in what was
thought to be Elizabethan
pronunciation was naturally an enlightening
experiment in historical re-
construction, just as there is a valid
historical interest in hearing a piece
of music played on instruments
from the composer's time; but in neither
case are those precise sounds
dictated by authorial intention. Similarly,
a filmed record of a dramatic
performance, even one in which the play-
wright was involved, does not
supersede (though it may well supplement)
a printed text, any more than a
film of a dance work can replace choreo-
graphic notation. In a cinematic
work, of course, the angles of the shots
selected for inclusion, as well
as the pacing of the alternation between
close-ups and more distant
views, constitute the work; but for dance and
drama, a film is only one
limited record of one performance—and the
performance itself
cannot demonstrate all the possibilities inherent in the
score or
script.
Performance art presents a somewhat different situation in that nor-
mally the performer and the creator of the spoken language are the same
person. (Lecturing is clearly one category of performance art.) There
may
or may not be a script or outline, but in any case whatever the per-
former does and says reflects authorial intent, except in those instances
where a mistake is made or where the performer is reluctantly conform-
ing to the advice of someone else. Deciding when these situations obtain
is one of the judgments that a textual critic must make. Similarly, when
a performer-author adapts the language and action to a specific local
situation, the textual critic must consider whether the adaptation is a
departure from the essential work or whether the work encompasses all
such variants that occur in individual performances. (The textual criti-
cism of performance art, in other words, entails much the same process
of
thought as that applicable to jazz.) Filmed records of performance
works
are in one sense only documentation, since the work itself is the
live
performance. Yet these records have a different status from the filmed
documentation of a conventional play, for the variants preserved in them
(and perhaps nowhere else) may be parts of the intended work as much
rial intention, the work may comprise all (or many) of its variant perfor-
mances; this observation, however, could be made about a conventional
play only by thinking of the work as a social product rather than as a
reflection of individual authorial intention. Sport, which involves impro-
visation within clearly defined frameworks and plans, may be regarded as
a genre—predominantly collaborative—of performance art; the textual
history of a sporting event takes into account not only the various docu-
mentary records of what happened but also the variations that occur,
as a result of editorial decision or the equipment employed, when those
records in visual media are shown on different occasions.
Work in Tangible Media
6. Painting, Drawing, and Calligraphy
One might at first believe that critical editions of paintings (as opposed
to writings about the textual histories of paintings) would be extremely
rare, since editorial emendations would alter the unique art objects,
forc-
ing viewers in each instance to look at the emended text, and it
alone.
Such results, one might imagine, would not often be permitted by
own-
ers of paintings. (An editor could of course make alterations on a
photo-
graphic or other reproduction of a painting rather than on the
original,
or alternatively could make a photographic record of the
appearance of
the original before beginning editorial work, but either
way one or more
of the versions would simply be reproductions, not the
work expressed
in the materials intended by the painter.) To some extent,
this surmised
rarity of scholarly editions of paintings is correct, for
even when permis-
sion to edit is given, there can be only one edition at
any one time: each
successive edition would obliterate the one that went
before (except in
the form of a photographic or digital record). The
freedom of editors to
create new editions is inevitably restricted in the
case of works in tangible
media—certainly as compared with the
theoretically unlimited freedom
editors have to edit works in intangible
media, where documentary evi-
dence need not be destroyed in the
process.
In another sense, however, there have been many more scholarly
editions
of paintings than might have been expected, for cleanings and
"restorations" now routinely take place in museums. The technology for
analyzing the underlying layers and chemical makeup of paintings (in-
cluding infrared reflectography, Raman microspectrometry, and digital
imaging) and the skill of the restorers who remove substances from, and
add them to, paintings have become so sophisticated that museum cura-
tors feel justified in allowing the editing of paintings to take place. Such
editions often have a more dramatic effect on the text than occurs in
edi-
text, every square inch of it. Despite the impressive expertise that now
generally underlies these operations, there are grounds for raising disqui-
eting questions about them.
In the first place, the goal of both cleaning and other kinds of restora-
tion is normally final authorial intention—to bring the text of a
painting
back to what it was when the painter considered it finished. But
this is not
the only moment in the history of a painting that is of
interest, and some
would argue that it is not the moment of the greatest
interest. However
one feels about this matter, the fact remains that
every painting, simply
because it is a physical object, inevitably
undergoes alterations over the
years resulting from the atmospheric
conditions under which it has been
kept, and sometimes from accidental
damage as well. The present state of
each painting is a summation of all
that has gone before and is the base on
which its future evolution will
rest. Unless the painting is recent, it surely
will not look as it did
when it left the painter's hands; but it probably has
not looked that way
for a considerable time, and many viewers will have
responded to
intermediate states. Any old painting that has been the sub-
ject of
commentary over the years will have presented a different appear-
ance to
different writers. Since modern technology allows the recovery
of a great
deal of the evidence that lies beneath the top layer of dirt and
paint,
textual critics can write accounts of the evolution of a painting and
can
offer illustrative reproductions of various stages in its history without
taking any intrusive action that affects the physical object itself. Some
people would therefore say that the editing of paintings should not take
place at all (except perhaps to stop physical deterioration), leaving the
body of evidence embedded in the object to remain untouched for future
textual critics to examine, perhaps using even more advanced technology,
and in any case perhaps arriving at different conclusions.
This position values the physical evidence of the object and the con-
stantly changing appearance of the work over the text of the painting as
intended (at some point) by its creator. But the interest in artistic intention
is great enough to cause many people to feel that the recovery of
intended
forms of paintings is worth the price of losing some of the
accumulated
evidence reflecting the history of the object. In instances
where this view
is dominant, there is still room for disagreement about
the precise goal
and about whether that goal has been achieved. An
artist's intentions may
change, not only during the process of original
painting but also at a later
time (after the painting was considered
"finished"), and the layers of paint
reflecting these changing intentions
may be recoverable. Only one stage
can be selected; and even if agreement
were reached as to which is the
most appropriate, there would probably
still be disagreements as to how
much needs to be removed from the
present surface in order to reach
example, applied by the original painter, perhaps overpainting a previ-
ous "final" layer, or was it added by a later painter in order to make the
painting conform better to a later taste? Can one tell the difference be-
tween atmospheric contamination and the residue of the artist's method
of obtaining a particular color or finish?
These uncertainties are analogous to those attaching to critical edi-
tions in every field, since any text that emerges from acts of judgment,
however learned they may be, can be questioned by equally informed
persons who would have made different judgments. Uncertainty, in other
words, is unavoidable and has not prevented restoration projects from
being undertaken for major works. One of the best known examples is
the
Vatican's long and painstaking program (beginning in 1980) of clean-
ing
Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. The idea of removing the
candle soot and other pollutants that have darkened these paintings
may
sound admirable in the abstract; but only the naïve could imagine
that the process would not be problematic, and there have in fact been
serious criticisms made by James Beck, Tuti Scialoja, and others. They
have raised points that relate both to the long-term effects of the clean-
ing and to the determination of artistic intention. They say, for
example,
that the surface dirt and wax may have served as a preservative
and that
removing them may expose the paints to potentially destructive
modern
pollutants. There is also the possibility that Michelangelo
himself used
candle soot and animal fat as darkening agents to create
shadowy effects.
Furthermore, arguments have been made that removing
paint added af-
ter the plaster was dry, as if it were overpainting by
another hand, may at
some points destroy Michelangelo's final touches,
since he may sometimes
have regarded the paint he placed on the wet
plaster as a first draft. Thus
the restorer's every act of alteration is
an act of judgment; but unlike the
rejection of a reading in a literary
text, it cannot be reversed. (Two of the
many instances of the Times coverage of the controversy over the Sistine
restoration are articles by Douglas C. McGill on 6 November 1986 and
by
Mary Davis Suro on 4 January 1987.)
If these problems illustrate some of the issues inevitably raised by criti-
cal editing, another kind of problem—not inevitable—has
also come up
in connection with part of the Sistine work: lack of
coherence in formulat-
ing the goal of the restoration. Over the years,
various forms of drapery
were painted on forty nude bodies in the Last Judgment; but only the sev-
enteen coverings
added after 1750 were removed in the restoration. In
defense of this
retention of some of the coverings, Kathleen Brandt has
said that the
drapery was added "at the request of the patron, namely
the papacy," and
that it constitutes "a chart of notions of decorum over
time." (See John
Tagliabue's article, 9 April 1994.) But this reasoning
were to find a better justification for the significance of the 1750 state of
the work, there would still be the inconsistency between the handling of
this fresco and the others (in which the artist's final intention is the aim).
One cannot—in a painted work or a printed text—simultaneously re-
flect authorial intention and the accretions that emerged from later social
circumstances.
The current reputations of artists have a great deal to do with which
accretions to paintings get preserved. No one would be likely to raise
great objection to the removal of any of the added draperies in the Last
Judgment, since they are by lesser painters
than Michelangelo, nor would
anyone wish Michelangelo's work to be
removed in order to reveal the
frescoes of Perugino that lie beneath.
When the National Gallery in Lon
don undertook to restore Bellini's The Feast of the Gods, completed in 1514,
it
decided to concentrate on the painting's appearance in 1529, since
Titian
made major additions to it at that time, and the idea of removing
work by
Titian could not be contemplated. Preserving the 1529 form of
the work
can be justified not simply on the grounds of Titian's stature but
because it also keeps the portions of Dosso Dossi's intermediate revisions
that were not covered over by Titian and thus reveals the social attitude
toward painting texts in the sixteenth century, when an owner of a paint-
ing was less concerned with maintaining its integrity as the work of a
particular artist than with causing it to evolve in conformity with
current
taste. But of course the work that illustrates this important
historical point
cannot be regarded as a work by Bellini. The National
Gallery's 1990 ex-
hibition of the restored Feast
admirably showed how modern technology
allows some knowledge of a
painting's textual history by displaying X-ray,
infrared, and ultraviolet
photographs of the underlying images along-
side the presumed 1529 state
of the oil. (On this exhibition, see Michael
Kimmelman's 21 January 1990
piece.)
One of the Louvre's great possessions, Veronese's Marriage at
Cana,
can serve as an epitome of the concerns and occurrences
attendant on
cleaning and restoration. The recent cleaning
(1990–92) removed yellowed
varnish, revealing bright colors not
seen by viewers and commentators
for a very long time. The restorers,
using information obtained by X-ray
and chemical tests, removed paint
that they considered had been added
by a different painter, thereby
arousing a storm of protest from a group
of artists. The most
controversial decision was to change the color of the
coat worn by a
major figure in the foreground: the red layer was taken
away, exposing
the green one underneath. Critics argued that only the
lower part of the
red coat showed brushwork uncharacteristic of Veronese
and that this area
had been subjected to earlier repair; they also noted
that the coat is
red in the earliest known copy, made in 1607 (nineteen
intended text is now lost, whereas evidence of his earlier extensive altera-
tions, moving and inserting figures, is safe by being on a lower level and
has been made visible by X-ray pictures. The X-ray investigation also
made clear some of the vicissitudes endured by the physical object, for
it has many repaired nail-holes, and it retains the signs of having been
unstitched horizontally (to form two sections for ease of hanging) and
then—fifty years later— of having been stitched back. As if to continue
the punishment, an accident occurred when the canvas was being rehung
in June 1992, resulting in several gashes, three of them about three feet
long. An unexpected job of restoration was then required, in which the
cut threads were individually glued together and retouched. (See Marlise
Simons, 17 November 1992.) The object therefore tells the story of acci-
dental and intentional mutilations, of the artist's changing intentions, and
of several restorations. If the story is particularly dramatic in this case, the
combination of elements that make it up is not at all uncommon as the
underpinning of the texts of paintings that we now see.
We are by now accustomed to significant textual revelations being
brought
about by modern technology applied to paintings. Even in the
absence of
surviving preliminary studies, we are beginning to have for
some
paintings the kind of evidence of revisions that literary scholars
have
long had for verbal works in the form of rough-draft holographs.
(The
same technology is of course being used in the literary field to un-
cover words invisible or illegible to the naked eye.) Fortunately, museum
exhibitions are also increasingly paying attention to the textual criticism
of paintings, as in the Bellini and Veronese instances—or in the
2004
exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, showing that under the
surface
of Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande
Jatte—1884 is evidence not only of his
extensive revisions
of figures and colors but also of his brush work, which
originally
consisted of conventional strokes, not pointillist dots. (See the
report
by Holland Cotter, 20 August 2004.)
More discoveries will come, relating not only to oil paintings but also
to works in watercolor, tempera, charcoal, and other media capable of
covering up earlier drafts. Revisions in some media, like ink or pencil,
may be more likely to involve erasure than cover-up, but such evidence
as
there is will be uncovered in those cases as well. Textual criticism of
calligraphic art must also take into account the linguistic text formed by
the characters, just as if the work were a concrete poem, which in some
ways it is. Regardless of the amount of textual evidence available, all
visual works that consist of the actual surfaces on which the artist made
marks are ontologically the same and thus pose the same problems for
textual criticism and scholarly editing.
Since these works are so often presented in frames, it is perhaps worth
adding that the same observations apply to frames as to the visual ele-
ments in the presentation of tangible verbal texts: they very often have
an effect on audience response, but they are not always intended as parts
of the works. Frames, even if designed or selected by the creators of the
works they enclose, may not be regarded by those creators as textual ele-
ments in the works, though they must be taken into account in analyzing
the history of responses to the works. And many of them are deserving of
study as works of art in their own right.
7. Sculpture, Craft, and Installation Art
The extent to which some of the evidence for the textual history of
a
piece of sculpture can be found in the object itself varies according to
the material out of which the work is made, just as it does in the case of
two-dimensional works (that is, essentially two-dimensional ones, despite
the three-dimensional surface of paint or collage). Sculptures produced
by cutting material away, like those in marble or wood, do not readily
provide evidence of previous drafts. Any cuts that the sculptor regarded
as mistakes are obliterated by new cuts or were made to fit into a
revised
plan for the area involved. Analysis by a textual critic may
suggest likely
spots where such alterations occurred, but no editorial
emendation would
follow because the artist's final intentions are
reflected in those altera-
tions. (It is as if a writer, having made a
slip of the pen, incorporated the
accidental reading into the final form
of the sentence—an analogy that
can have an exact sculptural
parallel, when a letter-cutter makes a mis-
take in carving an
inscription in stone or wood.) And no one would be
likely to propose
recreating a hypothetical earlier intention at the price
of destroying
the final one—or would be allowed to undertake the task,
if
proposed, in any form other than a replica. On the other hand, sculp-
tures produced by casting or by a process of building up or adding on, as
with some works in metal, glass, or other materials (where separate units
are affixed to each other), may on occasion offer more internal evidence
of revision, but rarely on the scale of what technology has uncovered
beneath the surfaces of paintings. External evidence, as in sketches or
models, may of course exist, as it may for works of any genre; and such
evidence, when it exists at all, is more likely to be the only evidence than
is the case with painting.
The issues faced by editors of sculpture were discussed in a front-page
article in the New York Times on 15 July 2003, written
by Alan Riding to
explain the international controversy aroused by plans
to clean Michel-
angelo's David. Riding asked,
"Should the marble colossus be restored to
its original perfection or
simply cleaned of grime? Or should it learn to
live with the inevitable
streaks and blotches of venerable old age?" These
proaches available to all editors: the critical approach, in which altera-
tions are made with the goal of recreating a previous version of a work
(as intended at some past moment but not fully realized in any surviving
artifact); and the documentary, in which no changes are made to the
inherited state of a work, thus preserving the cumulative effects of its his-
tory. The former, as set out by Riding, subsumes two activities, restoring
and cleaning. But it is important to understand that cleaning is a form of
restoring, for its goal is the restoration of a work's earlier appearance. And
Riding's use of the word "simply" in connection with cleaning implies,
incorrectly, that it is necessarily less intrusive or less a matter of judgment
than the kind of restoring that involves additions. In cleaning marble, for
example, a decision has to be made not only about how much to take off
but also between a dry method (using brushes and rubbing) and a wet one
(using poultices), each of which has a different effect on the pores of the
stone and produces a different look.
Even though cleaning certainly involves critical judgment, there is un-
deniably a widespread perception that a restoration consisting of cleaning
alone is more conservative (that is, safer) than one that also includes
such
actions as filling cracks and nicks or supplying a replacement
element (like
the marble and plaster substitute toe that was added to the
David in 1991).
The argument that a less
intrusive procedure (whatever it may be) is more
justifiable can perhaps
be supported on practical grounds for works in
tangible media, though it
can never be supported logically. It is reminis-
cent of the claim made
with pride by some literary editors that they have
tried to keep their
alterations to a minimum. But in a critical edition one
must make
whatever changes are necessary to bring about the desired
goal, and there
is no virtue in doing less than that out of respect for the
misguided
notion that a small number of changes is desirable in itself. But
such
editions do not affect the documentary evidence, whereas in the case
of
sculpture and other works in physical media there are good practical
grounds for protecting such evidence at the price of editorial illogic.
In any case there would be no possibility of restoring the authori-
ally
intended texts of many sculptures, particularly those kept outdoors
and
made of materials that can be irreversibly affected by exposure to
weather. When Riding asked whether the David should be
"restored to
its original perfection," he knew that he was not describing
a realizable
goal, for later in the article he quoted a restorer who
pointed out that
"there is not one millimeter of its original surface
left"—partly as a re-
sult of weather damage, partly because of an
1843 cleaning that used
hydrochloric acid. The application of a new
surface, though a theoretical
editorial possibility, would surely not be
permitted, and it probably should
not be permitted, because one could
persuasively argue that in this situ-
of the work (unlike what happens with editorial conjectures in literature,
which leave readers free to experience the work without them). Even in
cases where the surface is not severely damaged, bringing a work back to
"its original perfection" would always be conjectural, as critical editing
necessarily is, and Riding's statement—like any expression of the goal
of critical restoration—should include wording that acknowledges the
contingencies inherent in such an aim. One must also remember, when
speaking of sculpture, that weather-produced alterations may sometimes
actually produce authorially intended texts, for sculptors may take into
account the changes (as in the colors of metals) that their materials will
undergo. Although there is always reason to be interested in textual shifts
over time, even when not intended by the creators of works, here is a situ-
ation in which some later changes—brought about by the course of time
and not by a scholarly editor—can be accepted as representing authorial
intention.
The attempt to restore the intended texts of some modern sculptures
poses
an additional difficulty in that these sculptures may contain a wider
range of fragile materials than earlier sculptures do. When such elements
show deterioration or damage, conservators hope to find replacement
parts; but identifying the source of the materials and trying to learn whether
they are still available are not easy tasks. For this reason Carol
Mancusi-
Ungaro, now the director of conservation at the Whitney Museum,
began
in the mid-1980s a video oral-history project in which artists
(painters as
well as sculptors) are asked to give advice on the
conservation of their own
works (see Randy Kennedy's account, 29 June
2006). These conversations
are valuable documents in ways that go beyond
their original purpose,
for artists' comments on the specific materials
they used naturally lead to
broader reflections on what they meant to
convey in their works. But the
textual usefulness of these interviews is
not as straightforward as some
might imagine. Any specific
identifications of materials and their sources,
when an artist's memory
is accurate, can indeed be helpful in restoring a
text; but one must
remember that any recommendations as to what ought
to be done reflect the
artist's thinking at the time of the conversation and
may, if carried
out, produce a new version of the work. The result of an
interview, then,
may be to provide one more stage of authorial intention
for the
conservator-editor (who can select only one) to consider.
There are of course many other three-dimensional objects, the prod-
ucts
of human creativity just as sculpture is, that are not usually called
"sculpture." Conventionally these objects have been regarded as examples
of "craft" or "design" or "decorative art" rather than of "fine art," but
this distinction does not have an ontological basis, or even one founded
on the genres of works involved. Fortunately art museums, and not simply
importance of "crafts," and specialized craft museums have also been es-
tablished. For present purposes, it is not necessary to worry about these
divisions, for the same points can be made about the texts of such objects
as about the texts of those usually called sculptures. This point, though
not stated in terms of "texts," was at the heart of a 1990 conference held
at the American Craft Museum in New York (and reported by Roberta
Smith on 22 January 1990), where George A. Kubler reiterated (in the
words of an earlier book of his) that "the idea of art can be expanded to
embrace the whole range of man-made things." Because many of those
things usually regarded as craft are utilitarian objects, the study of their
original states can be particularly difficult, owing to the wear that comes
with use and to the fact that people rarely hesitate to alter their utensils,
furniture, and clothing when alterations will improve (in their view) the
functioning of the objects.
One may justifiably be interested in the authorially intended texts of
such objects (whether created by anonymous artisans or famous silver-
smiths, cabinetmakers, and couturiers) as well as the texts that evolved
through use and the passage of time. The textual stages that are tradi-
tionally preferred vary according to the medium: curators of silver wish
to remove tarnish (as grime is lifted from paintings), whereas specialists
in old furniture prize the patina it acquires over time. These are simply
matters of convention, for every stage in the life-story of every object
is
of historical and aesthetic interest. Even so, there is a particular
appeal in
the current state of any utilitarian object, since it bears the
traces of the
object's shared life with human beings. For this reason
Brian Murphy, in
his 2005 book on Persian rugs, The
Root of Wild Madder, takes the view that
wear and what might be
called imperfections (such as awkward repairs)
are not objectionable. As
Kubler eloquently put it at the craft conference
(making the case in fact
for the social approach to all art): "to be in use
among the young who
transmute and re-enact the work of the dead is the
best of all
eternities." None of this negates an interest in the earlier (or
earliest) states of objects; but it does suggest that the destruction of later
evidence in an effort to bring back an earlier state may often be harder
to
justify for "crafts" than for "arts" in the minds of many people.
Stained-glass art, often classified as a craft, can afford unusual op-
portunities for uncovering post-production textual histories, especially
in such complicated structures as windows made up of many individual
pieces of glass held together by lead strips. The sophisticated research
now being done is illustrated by Drew Anderson's detailed reports on the
Gothic windows at the Cloisters in Manhattan. After comparing current
and
earlier photographs of a window digitally and making rubbings of
each
piece of glass, Anderson describes the deterioration, amateur repairs
enlarging of the lead to hold it in), and previous conservation efforts that
have occurred at each spot in the window. He is thus reading the windows
in much the same way that analytical bibliographers read the physical
evidence in books—a point that is particularly apt since medieval picto-
rial windows were meant to function in part as books, conveying biblical
stories to those who could not read. Textual critics must always try to
extract the story that the physical details tell, as preparation for evaluat-
ing the text of the work. "Each window tells its own story," Anderson
says. "And the more you work on them, the more you find out" (quoted
by Carol Vogel, 17 June 2006). This knowledge helps one to appreciate
the work, whether or not any editorial alterations seem advisable; and in
the case of stained-glass windows, attempting to recreate their original
condition would often be incompatible with preservation, since cleaning
can alter the colors. The situation once again illustrates how, with works
in tangible media, practical considerations may limit the editorial activity
that follows from a detailed knowledge of textual history.
Installation art, another form of sculpture, poses a few additional tex-
tual problems. Because installations are likely to consist of a variety of
objects and because the spatial relationships among them are crucial to
the work, the task of moving an installation (if it is not a
site-specific one)
to a different location is especially challenging.
Although it is possible to
recreate an installation precisely, so long as
all the same objects remain
available, it is likely that there will be
small textual differences (at least)
in each reinstallation. If the
artist supervises reinstallations, any differ-
ences may constitute
authorially intended versions, unless they result from
concessions made
in deference to a particular space, in which case they
are analogous to
adaptations for a special audience. Exact reinstallations
require exact
measurements of the original installation; photographs are
obviously not
adequate, and any sketches or notes by the artist do not
necessarily
predict or record what the artist actually did in setting up
the original
installation. Furthermore, installations are in many instances
mixed-media works par excellence, combining sculptural
items, paintings,
photographs, videos or film loops, music or other
sound, verbal texts in
visible form, and so on. Textual criticism and
scholarly editing of such
works therefore involve the issues
characteristic of each of the media in-
dividually, as well as the
analysis of the texts that have resulted from the
combination.
8. Architecture, Interior Design, and Gardening
As a class, works of architecture undergo significant alterations at
the
hands of their owners more often than any other works of art. The
changes
go far beyond the repairs necessitated by aging and weathering;
figuration of existing rooms, and the attachment of decorative elements
and coverings to the exterior, perhaps totally transforming its appear-
ance. Because buildings are meant to be inhabited, they are like large-
scale utensils, which preserve the traces of daily use as well as conscious
alteration aimed at increasing utility. The architect's original intentions
are less important to many (probably most) owners than creating spaces
that they deem more convenient or attractive. The present text of every
house or office building is interesting (like the present state of all works
of art in physical media) as the momentary culmination of its interaction
with human beings. The textual history of a structure is often partly vis-
ible without any prodding beneath the surface, but a great many details
are always hidden from sight. Some of them can be learned in the course
of ordinary repairs, but uncovering others may require the destruction of
part of what is presently visible.
The decision as to whether such destruction is justifiable—whether
what is recovered is more desirable than what is lost—involves
essentially
the same issues that arise with any other work of physical
art, despite
the fact that buildings have a utilitarian function. There
are increasing
numbers of owners of old houses who are eager not simply
to preserve
what they possess but to restore it to what it was at a
previous time, re-
gardless of whether the result will be more, or less,
comfortable. Thus the
scholarly editing of buildings is not an uncommon
activity, encouraged
by the historic preservation movement. Preservation
at the most basic
level is of course the prevention of destruction, but
it inevitably leads to
a second stage: since buildings require
maintenance for survival, repairs
(textual emendations) must be made, and
if they are to be made responsi-
bly, they must be directed toward a
stated goal. As with all critical editing,
one must first decide what
point in the textual history of the work is to
be the focus—the
latest, the earliest, or some intermediate one. And after
the historical
moment is settled on, one must determine what evidence
there is for
recreating it—whether, indeed, there is enough to make the
attempt
possible.
Among the factors that often affect the answer to the first of these
questions is the presence of alterations and additions made by a cele-
brated architect. The 1980s restoration of the main immigration building
on Ellis Island, for example, did not have as its goal the original 1900
state but rather that of 1918, when the Guastavino tile vaults were added.
(See Paul Goldberger's discussion, 14 August 1990.) Christopher Wren's
great addition to Hampton Court Palace in the 1690s destroyed a Tudor
courtyard, but no one would be likely to advocate returning the palace to
the form in which Henry VIII experienced it, since Wren's work would be
lost in the process. So when a serious fire in 1986 gutted the south wing
unthinkable. Surviving fragments (crystal, fabric, wood carving, and the
like) were pieced together with newly fabricated matching material. The
resulting mixture is not unlike what exists in the older parts of the palace
(or any other old building that has undergone repair). As Simon Thurley,
a curator at Hampton Court, said, "half of the 'Tudor' brick walls are
not really Tudor, and some are 19th-century" (quoted by Sherry Marker,
28 March 1993). The line between restoration and replica is not a distinct
one, for any emendation that involves new material can only produce an
approximation of the intended text, since the medium is physical and the
new material is a different physical object.
Determining the past time to be aimed for in a restoration is occa-
sionally taken out of the owner's hands if the building is located within a
designated historic district that has rules governing such matters.
Gener-
ally the regulations insist on the preservation of the mix that
existed at
the time the rules went into effect (with some alterations
allowed by ad
hoc permission); the focus, in other
words, is on the social text—of each
house, as it has evolved, and
of the neighborhood as a whole. The prob-
lems that can arise are
epitomized by a case that occurred in the 1980s in
East Hampton, Long
Island. The owners of an eighteenth-century house
in the historic center
of the village removed a Victorian porch that had
been added, because
they preferred the house to look as it had in 1790
and not to be an
amalgam of the styles of two periods. They had unwit-
tingly failed to
apply for a certificate of appropriateness, but it would not
have been
granted in any case, for the Design Review Board argued that
the
Victorian "Boardinghouse Era" was a distinctive part of the village's
history, and it ruled that the porch had to be built back.
This decision seems questionable—since the materials of which the
porch was constructed had been destroyed and since the porchless version
of the house does represent another period of East Hampton history—but
I am concerned less with the rightness of the decision than with what
this
episode illustrates about the editing of buildings. Judgment is
naturally
involved, as it is in all editing, and judgment is often
affected by fashion,
by evaluations embedded in the cultural milieu. Thus
Robert Hefner, a
preservationist employed by East Hampton, noted, "Thirty
years ago a
restoration architect would say, 'Rip this porch off.' The
philosophy was
to go back to the original form. Now preservation
philosophy is more
refined and objective, taking into account historical
periods" (quoted by
Michael Winerip, 20 July 1990). Although one might
question "refined"
and "objective," there is no doubt about the main
point: shifting scholarly
and intellectual predispositions influence
editorial decisions. Preserving
the mixture of period styles that are the
natural byproduct of a function-
evidence of past living is not intentionally destroyed. One cannot help
but think of the contrast between East Hampton's firm (perhaps obstinate)
insistence on preserving the historical record and Colonial Williamsburg's
equally inflexible desire to erase the nineteenth century.
The question of what evidence there is for a restoration, when res-
toration (to whatever moment) is settled upon, involves recognizing that
surviving plans or other external documents cannot be accepted at face
value. A plan may of course indicate what an architect intended at the
time when it was drawn, but the building may have been built in a dif-
ferent way—because the builder did not follow the plan, or the architect
had second thoughts (possibly recorded on a now-missing plan), or the
client asked for alterations. Evidence of the inadequacy of plans turns
up
all the time: to cite only one instance, when restoration of the ship
Moni-
tor was being considered, it was found,
as William J. Broad states, that
its "remains are often quite different
from plans and period drawings"
(30 July 2002). Complex structures like
buildings and ships, which in-
volve assembly from disparate parts,
frequently contain within themselves
many indications of their own
history; and sophisticated techniques are
now available to restoration
architects for uncovering such evidence, as
when they determine the
sequence and dates of multiple layers of paint.
When intrusive procedures (involving cutting, stripping, or even par-
tial demolition) are deemed necessary—whether the occasion is resto-
ration or remodeling—one is brought face to face with the actions
of
human beings in the past with an immediacy not often matched by tex-
tual investigations into other arts. Whenever Paul Eisemann, a New York
carpenter, cuts into a wall, "he views it [according to John Freeman
Gill]
as an opportunity to practice a kind of workingman's archaeology."
Eise-
mann says that "buildings will talk to you if you listen"; for
example, when
"you can see the original mortar on brickwork, sometimes
you can tell
what group of immigrants did the work" (1 January 2006). As
one undoes
past work—pulling out an old nail, for
instance—one learns something
about the technique and attitude of
the person who did the work in the
first place. When Verlyn Klinkenborg
was taking apart the oldest room
of his house, he thought of the original
carpenter and "how solidly he
did his job. He stinted nothing when it
came to lumber and nails and,
especially, screws." Behind the walls
"there is another house and another
set of lives." Klinkenborg, intrigued
by the decisions of previous owners,
recognizes that future owners will
equally marvel at his own decisions.
"The trouble," he says, "is that you
can see only what remains—not what
has been erased. When I'm
finished with my work, an era in the life of
this house will have
vanished" (25 November 2005). This is the essence of
there still often remains enough evidence for detailed textual histories to
be recovered.
The wall decoration, furnishings, and arrangement of objects within
a
house, or the landscaping and gardens that surround a house, may
or may
not have been created by the same person who designed the
house. From the
point of view of authorial intention, the extent to which
a house, its
interior decoration, and its gardens can be approached as
a single work
will vary with the circumstances; but from the social or
audience-response point of view, they are always inextricable, since they
are experienced together, and the ensemble affects one's response to each
element. One object that landscape architecture and interior design share
with other architecture is that of creating spaces to be lived in—they
are
all "living rooms"—and thus gardens and room decorations, like
houses,
often undergo textual alterations to accommodate their owners'
changing
needs and tastes. Interior design, textually considered,
involves the same
questions as installation art, for both create
arrangements of objects to
be experienced within defined
spaces—though interior design is more
frequently altered, since
owners of houses usually regard it as a utilitarian
craft rather than a
"fine" art.
The textual criticism of designed landscape must take into account
the
primary fact that distinguishes it from the textual study of buildings
and room decoration: the predominant elements in such texts are living
plants that change continuously. The human-made inanimate objects in
gardens—like flagstones, sundials, and statuary—are no different
textu-
ally from sculpture and craft. But whereas sculptors and
architects of
buildings often take into account the effects that weather
will have on the
materials they use, they do not have to think about
variations that are
perceptible on a daily basis. The plan for a garden,
whether on paper or
in the mind, provides a framework that subsumes the
constantly changing
details of the stages of growth of the individual
plants as well as the altera-
tions produced by necessary maintenance.
Such changes are part of what
is intended (by the original designer or a
later one who modifies the earlier
plan); the elements that are intended
to be relatively more stable include
color, height, and massing, as well
as the specific varieties of plants. Thus
the only editorial emendations
that are at odds with what was intended
are those that change elements of
this kind and their relationships. (That
the textual history of gardens
has been flourishing is suggested by the
intense interest in the work of
Gertrude Jekyll and Beatrix Farrand, by
programs of the National Trust in
England and the Smithsonian Institu-
tion in America, and by the
existence of the Thomas Jefferson Center for
Historic Plants at
Monticello and Mac Griswold's Sylvester Manor Proj-
ect on Shelter
Island.) Because plants are living and changing, they bring
ing; for that reason, the relation of written plans or designs to gardens is
like that of scripts and scores to drama and music.
9. Printmaking, Photography, and Book Design
The ability of audiences in different locations to experience a work
simultaneously is primarily associated with works in intangible media,
where multiple copies of notation for recreating the works can be widely
distributed. But some works using tangible media can exist in a number of
exemplars if the artist chooses to create an intermediate object that pro-
vides the means for mechanically producing multiple copies. Sculptures
in liquefiable materials like metal or glass, for example, are sometimes
cast in molds; and when the process and results are supervised and ap-
proved by the sculptor, each resulting piece constitutes the work from
the
point of view of authorial intention. The most voluminous category of
visual art intended to exist in multiple exemplars consists of those
works
on paper that are usually called "prints." Before photography (to
which
we shall turn in a moment), the intermediate objects used to
"print" the
paper with ink could take various forms, offering three
classes of printing
surface: a relief (protruding) surface, as on a
woodblock, where the area
not to print is cut away; an intaglio (or
sunken) surface, as on a metal plate
prepared for engraving or etching,
where grooves are cut to hold the ink
that will be transferred to the
paper; and a planographic (level) surface,
as on a lithographic stone,
where the greasy lines of a crayon drawing will
hold the ink. These
differing processes naturally affect the character of
the prints that
result, and an understanding of them is therefore relevant
to textual
criticism as well as to art criticism, for textual criticism (in any
field) can never be divorced from the effort to understand and appreciate
the works it addresses. But the differences among these production pro-
cesses need not be pursued here since the same textual issues are raised
by all of them.
The fundamental textual question to be asked about prints is how
each of
several exemplars can equally be "the work." One answer, from
the point
of view of authorial intention, is that if the artist approves these
exemplars and regards them as "the same," each one by definition is the
work. (The artist who makes the image sometimes does the work of pre-
paring the intermediate object and printing from it, though often one or
both of those operations are performed by others, subject to the artist's
approval.) But of course the exemplars cannot possibly be the same in ev-
ery minute detail, for no two physical objects ever are. Even without hu-
man intervention—that is, intentional alteration—prints may vary
as a
result of inking differences, for example, or the deterioration of
the block
or plate as a result of wear and the passage of time. The
artist may reject
are bound to have slight textual differences. What "the same" means
here can only be that the differences are so small as not to be regarded as
meaningful by the artist. Nevertheless, they may be noticeable to viewers,
whose responses may be affected. Alternatively, perhaps the artist does
not regard all the copies as essentially the same but is willing to consider
the variations as falling within the intended conception of a given work.
Either way, the idea that the work exists in each exemplar is shattered:
one ideally needs to see every copy in order to experience the full range of
textual nuance present in the "work," now taken to comprise the totality
of all the exemplars. (This point reminds one of the comparable necessity,
in studying the texts of verbal and musical works transmitted in printed
editions, of examining multiple copies.)
However impractical the goal of seeing every copy may be, it is worth
pursuing because the differences one will locate may go beyond the small
(but not necessarily insignificant) variants created by the printing process.
They may also include alterations made by the artist (or at the artist's
direction), reflecting early trials or changed intentions. Although a
block,
plate, or stone may not carry clear evidence of the alterations
made to
it, the impressions taken from it at various times do serve as a
record
of the states (or some of them) that it has gone through. This
point was
illustrated by a 2004 exhibition at the Frick Collection called
"The Un-
finished Print," which gave viewers the opportunity of comparing
prints
made from the same plates at different times (see Roberta Smith's
ac-
count, 4 June 2004). One of the most dramatic examples consisted of
the
first and eighth states of Félix Bracquemond's etched portrait
of Edmond
de Goncourt, which are different enough that they could be
regarded as
separate works. Although the title of the exhibition implied
that states
prior to the last are "unfinished" (as some in the show
clearly were),
there is no reason that more than one finished state
cannot exist, each
representing the artist's final intention at a
particular time. In the case
of Blake's illuminated books, Joseph Viscomi
has brilliantly shown—in
his 1993 Blake and the
Idea of the Book—that the impressions made at one
time,
though differing in small ways, share certain characteristics that
link
them together and distinguish them as a group from the impressions
made
at another time. Thus a comprehensive examination of the impres-
sions
taken from a given plate puts one in a position to judge (and it is
always a matter of judgment) which textual differences can be subsumed
under a single version and which create another version (or even perhaps
a distinct work).
The full textual history of an image created for printing includes forms
not intended by the artist, and they often exist in quantity, for a block
or plate can be used for printing (and be altered) by persons not associ-
has been the possibility, for the past century and a half, of reproducing
the image by various photographic means. An important distinction for
textual criticism is the one conventionally made between a "print" and
a "reproduction": the former is the direct product of the block, plate, or
stone on which an image was created, whereas the latter is at least another
generation removed, being a copy (photographic, xerographic, digital,
and the like) either of a print or of another reproduction. (The term "re-
productive print" is sometimes used to signify a print made from an object
that did not involve the collaboration of the original creator of the image,
as when a copyist engraves a plate after a painting, without the painter's
oversight; but of course such a print is still a print, not a reproduction, so
long as it is made directly from the plate.) Whether or not one is focusing
on authorial intention, this distinction is of intense textual significance,
since it refers to differences that profoundly affect viewers' responses.
A print pulled from a relief or intaglio surface, for example, has three-
dimensional attributes, whereas a reproduction of such a print normally
lacks them. Even a reproduction of a lithographic print shows differences,
if less dramatic. Yet the number of people who have experienced repro-
ductions of famous print-images is far greater than those who have seen
the prints themselves; and any study of the history of these works has to
take into account not only the prints, with all their variations, but all the
reproductions as well.
The art of photography raises the same considerations, since the pho-
tographic print is produced from an intermediate object, the negative
(reflecting choices made with the camera and the developing), and since
the handling of the printing process can lead to variant texts among the
finished prints. (Digital photography and printing employ different tech-
nology from traditional photography, but the textual upshot is that varia-
tions, including gross manipulation of the images, can be produced more
easily.) Furthermore, the distinction between prints and reproductions is
just as applicable (even though photography is the most common process
used for making reproductions), since a print is produced directly from
the artist's negative, whereas a reproduction is derived from a
photograph
of one of the prints (or from another reproduction). A good
example of
a photographer's changing intentions, as seen in variant
prints from the
same negative, is offered by Ansel Adams. Late in his
life, he reinter-
preted many of his earlier pictures by printing from
the old negatives in
a way that replaced "elegance with melodrama," in
the words of John
Szarkowski's 2001 exhibition catalogue, Ansel Adams at 100 (quoted in
Sarah Boxer's review,
1 September 2001).
For Adams, each act of printing could be seen in terms of the perform-
ing arts: "the negative," he said in 1943 (and often repeated the idea),
the print. … it can be performed so as to recreate the original visual-
ized intention." But it can also be performed, as his own later printing
showed, in a way that reflects a different intention. Although a musical
work can similarly be performed in diverse ways, Adams's comparison of
photography and music cannot usefully be carried further and indeed is
seriously misleading. Because musical works use an intangible medium,
they must be recreated (performed) each time they are experienced (that
is, in their intended "live" form, not as a recorded reproduction). But
photographs, which use a tangible medium and are stationary, do not
need to be printed afresh whenever one wishes to experience them, since
prints made earlier are physical objects that can be handed down through
time. What "performance" means in the two cases is very different: in
music it is an integral part of the work, whereas in photography it is part
of the work's prehistory. And these points remain the same whether one
is talking about authorial intention or the intentions of others.
Another art form involving multiple exemplars—each of which is a
"print" of an image transferred from an intermediate object—is the de-
sign of printed books, magazines, and newspapers (and of their
constituent
parts like advertisements). As with the kinds of prints just
discussed, which
can preserve evidence of changes in the underlying
plates and negatives
(and other such objects), books and periodicals from
a single edition (a
single act of typographical layout and design) vary
among themselves as
a result of changes, both intentional and accidental,
in the type-formes
or plates used—changes that may occur during
one printing session or
between such sessions. The conventional
terminology used by bibliogra-
phers is different from that used by art
historians, and both have their
limitations. In the book field, an
"impression" (or "printing") comprises
all the units produced in a single
continuous session (of however many
hours or days are required to
complete the desired number of copies),
and a second distinct session,
separated in time from the first, produces
another impression. In the
study of art prints and posters, on the other
hand, each copy is called
an impression—a usage that makes more literal
sense, since each
one does result from a separate act of impressing (or at
least printing
on) the paper. If the usage in art thus accords better with
the fact that
each copy is (if only slightly) different, the bibliographical
usage more
clearly accommodates another reality, that a group of copies
made in one
limited period of time may share characteristics not present
in groups of
copies made in other periods.
But the terminology, despite its awkwardness, should not prevent tex-
tual critics of any of these arts from dealing with variations. The existence
of differences among copies of any given edition of a printed book is
widely understood by editors of verbal texts, for whom such variations
are
edition can of course be viewed as a work of visual art, in which the art-
istry of type designers, papermakers, and (sometimes) binders is deployed
in a particular way by a book designer; and verbal variation is only one
of the many sources of difference among the exemplars of any such work.
(I am speaking here only of conventional books; artists also create quasi-
book objects that are best regarded as works of sculpture.) Even when
design drafts, pieces of type, type-formes, proofs, and other preliminary
materials survive, the primary evidence for the textual history of a piece
of book design is found in the finished objects themselves, since their
production over time allows them collectively to preserve a record of the
variations that occurred (or some of them). Approaching books as visual
art rather than as vehicles for transmitting verbal language brings us full
circle from where we began.
These notes are intended to illustrate a way of thinking, not to be com-
prehensive. Nor are the sections into which I have divided them meant to
be self-contained: certain issues are dealt with more fully under one head-
ing than under another, but many of those issues are equally applicable
to all the discussions. This interdependence reflects the fact that all
the
arts are related and that thinking about the textual criticism of one
art
can clarify the thinking about others, including those I have not
touched
on, such as the olfactory and gustatory arts. After all, texts of
every kind
of human creation are unstable (like the natural objects
studied by scien-
tists), and it is this basic condition that textual
critics in all fields are track-
ing. They are historians of
metamorphosis, chronicling the changes that
have in turn affected the
responses to human works at different times.
Textual critics' recognition of the inescapability of impermanence is
not
at odds, however, with the urge to produce scholarly editions, which
are
attempts to help an audience to encounter various past moments
in the
history of a work, rather than merely to read about them. How
textual
criticism and scholarly editing are carried out is contingent not
only on
the surviving evidence but on the distinctive characteristics of
the
different media in which works can be created. Yet the primary issues
are
identical, and that is why textual study in any field can benefit from
being conducted with a knowledge of the questions that have arisen, and
the answers that have been offered, in other fields. Approaching every
human creation with an understanding of its textual history, seen against
the panorama of all other textual histories, helps us to appreciate the
humanity movingly embedded in each version of a work and to enjoy the
hard-won accomplishment represented there.
| Studies in bibliography | |