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Van Rensselaer had articulated similar interests as early as 1881.
Writing about the New York painter William Merritt Chase, she maintained:
All works of art have, of course, an intrinsic value;
but they have also a relative value greatly dependent upon the time
and place of their production [my emphasis]. Merely to settle the rank
of any given picture as good or bad painting it is but necessary to know
the canvas itself. We are not concerned with the when and how of its creation,
or with the nature and circumstances of the man who created it: its pure
technics are alone under examination. But this is not half of what we understand
by a complete judgment on a picture, still less by a complete estimate
of any painter's work as a whole. To form such an estimate we must consider
his art as a factor in the local progress of civilization; we must examine
what were all his surroundings when he created it, and especially, what
was the general state of art at the time. 10
Van Rensselaer's two-pronged conception of value takes into account metonymic
explication that assumes and justifies the importance of context, the historical
value of inherent, embedded signs particular to the object in question,
especially in reference to quality, and the extent to which both avenues
of analysis take part in some kind of relativist dialogue that must recognize
its own contingent nature. Compare the above with recent attempts to describe
the place of context in the practice of the history of art,11
the ways in which the "new" art history has theorized a broadly based notion
of meaning making in relation not only to conditions of production but
their inherent, systemic, and discursive interests. Similarities will be
legion.
Van Rensselaer's call for a reconsideration or reconfiguration of the
materials of history also arguably masks another level in the attempt to
loosen the restrictions arising from gender and class privileges. For van
Rensselaer, formalism itself must be gendered as male because its language
is secured by and for a world of practices from  which
she is by her own admission excluded (it almost goes without saying then
that form itself must be assumed to be male, as opposed to the "lack" or
absence of form embodied by woman).12
The writer wants a history whose practice might allow a space for her own
contribution. Such personal interests are inseparable from her recognition
of their broader social base or framework, are virtually unrecognizable
without that framework, without some knowledge of the conditions of production
and general history of men. At the same time, almost certainly subconsciously,
she wants a history defined as much by lack as by its fulfillment or elision
by form. That is the point of believing in a history that is incomplete
and fragmentary, incapable of totalization. Such a deconstructive history
is precisely the history and critical practice defined by and about lack,
its omnipresence and cognizance of the contributions of historical figures
other than wealthy, privileged, mobile—upwardly and outwardly—men.
Discussing a particular example, van Rensselaer spells it out:
So much is there in short, and so much else is lacking,
that one who reads it and who knows from other evidence how similarly,
yet how differently, the author would do the work to-day, cannot but wish
with a very earnest longing that the book might to-day again be written.
We should then, I feel very sure, have just the book we want.
The author's belief in history as revisionist is made plain and, as previously
stated, dialectical; the fragmentary truth followed by quick denial: thesis,
antithesis, synthesis. Thus, despite the seeming randomness of a phrase
like "in short," this is in fact the key moment in the first sentence.
So much is implied, is made pregnant by the practice of history, and yet
that material is always "in short." It is this latter quality that ensures
for van Rensselaer the inevitability of revision, dialectic, refutation.
The constant, identified by the signifier "in short," determines the variable,
signified by the term "lacking."
Should we be reluctant, however, to credit van Rensselaer with a deconstructive
turn of mind, we might still allow for the extent to which her assumptions
about historical practice, the conditions of production, are born of dialogue
or confrontation with a perceived totalizing attitude toward the place
of architecture in a national psyche or gestalt:
I have never met a European, either face to face or in
the pages of a book, who, if he cared enough for architecture to think
about it at all, was willing to give up the claims of his own country to
the highest place on the list of its creators. (And if, by the way, Mr.
Ruskin should be cited as an exception, it will only be because, artistically
speaking, he has expatriated himself and transferred to the art of Italy
that affection which his fellow countrymen give to the art of England.)
Recognition of such problems must require a perspective on historical work
that can respond critically in appraisal of such situations. Thus
when I speak of historical and critical writing, it is
not such a confession as this that I expect or wish for—it is merely such
breadth of view and catholicity of taste as should acknowledge excellence
wherever found and explain its character truly, and should confess defects
wherever seen and define their bearing frankly. But even so I have never,
either in person or through print, made acquaintance with any European
man who seemed to me to be or to have been able to write such a general
history or to lay down such a broad and just system of appraisement as
we greatly need.
Of course it would strain credulity and perhaps color as irrational any
claims for her gender and expertise to push the above argument too far,
so it is followed by a qualification:
Saving and excepting only one. Saving and excepting
only Professor Freeman. I believe he could do it and do it easily
if he chose, for he has every qualification the task demands. He was born
with a dual endowment not often given—with the historical instinct and
with the aesthetic sense; and moreover with the sympathetic eye which enables
him to bring them both to bear together, each for the helping and enlightening
of the other. His patriotism, though no one's is stronger, does not militate
against his keen interest in other lands or his just appreciation of foreign
excellence and home defects. And I need hardly add that he has an encyclopaedic
fund of knowledge to draw upon. His fitness for such a task as I refer
to has been proved already by numberless detached essays and also by an
actual general history of architecture.
Van Rensselaer cites the work of Edward Augustus Freeman, and most particularly
his History of Architecture, published in London in 1849.13
It is a youthful work, as she will go on to point out, but one that manifests
qualities she deems necessary to the practice: an interest in both historical
and aesthetic concerns and how they merge, and elide each other; a check
on nationalistic tendencies, and the ability to exploit the extent to which
that check allows for some perspective on notions of otherness; an encyclopedic
fund of knowledge, with stress perhaps, given her closing encomium, on
fund; and of course his standing as a man. Freeman is, however,
the exception that proves the rule. He is singular, but as van Rensselaer
continues, "though [his general history of architecture] exists, it by
no means meets our crying need."14
"Crying need" is an interesting phrase; a figure of speech certainly,
but one that in this context further identifies the extent to which van
Rensselaer's desire emerges from an unrequited feminine space. In fact
one might argue that van Rensselaer unavoidably reproduces the stereotypical
form of the nineteenth-century woman seeking to transcend her normal social
expectations, that is, the hysterical woman. In this way she anticipates
the reception of a male-dominated world to her prescriptions. They will
call her fugitive, hysterical, and irrational, and thus the proximity
of the title of her article, its superimposition of criminality on the
practice as she writes it from her own forms of desire.
If the ability of a woman to secure the position of architectural historian
is for the moment out of the question—produces an unfulfilled "crying
need"—and Europe cannot produce, or has not produced the required historian,
then some sense of larger American identity as historian, as new repository
of history, as history maker, must obtain and describe an opportunity van
Rensselaer might still vicariously partake in:
We have already done so much to prove ourselves, as a
race, possessed of the historian's instinct, the power of aesthetic appraisement,
was not wholly left out of the clay when the mother-of-nations moulded her
youngest child. There is no reason to believe that an American hand could
not write just such a history of architecture in general and just such
special histories of national architectural development as we want; and
there is every reason to believe that, if such a hand does not do it, none
other will. Is it not a work which might well be taken as his life's work
by some one of those who are now devoting themselves to the service of
this greatest of the arts? Is it not a work almost, if not quite, as well
worth doing
as even the production of good structures for our present use— likely to
be as helpful to the general course of American architecture through the
enlightenment it would give, not only to the nascent generation of its
professors, but to that great outer public upon whose taste and knowledge
the progress of the art is so vitally dependent?
The penchant for historical and critical writing desired by van Rensselaer
and that she forecast for American historical and critical practice might
even constitute in and of itself a marginally feminized state, other to
the energies and identities that produce the structures and the unified,
closed rationale of excellence expected of the architectural practice itself.
The ultimate architectural history could even be written by the
empowered woman, given a shift in the conditions of production.
The project, however, is not without its own tendencies toward nationalism
and imperialism. A phrase like "just such special histories of national
architectural development as we want" smacks of a penchant for colonialism
that van Rensselaer or any American theorist of her class could hardly
resist, whatever her simultaneous sense of personal deprivation. It may
very well be that the mention of Freeman in and of itself was the result
of competing nationalist voices.15
Van Rensselaer's interests are in conflict; she embodies the dialectic
that drives her aspirations for the field. She can see or imagine
its needs, but cannot enact their fulfillment. As the endeavor is closed
to women, and only described as possible for one particular English historian/critic,
it falls back to a male architect,16
in the American version of the project, to produce the work of architectural
criticism and history. This is another allegation of the delimitations
of the field of historical practice, the extent to which it is in fact
hermetically sealed, and the sign we must recognize as signifying the extent
to which van Rensselaer's terms are not entirely our own, do not ultimately
approximate the current climate of critical theory and historicism, but
at the very least instantiate some sense of aspiration and vision for the
future. Thus again the irony of the article's title: "Wanted: A History
of Architecture." As if the goal had some fugitive quality to it; as if
van Rensselaer's own attempt to fulfill the promise of such a call might
constitute a criminal act, for the very reasons she cannot in the end participate
in a material, dialectical, but also complete and essential form.
Eric Rosenberg
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