When we look at a work of art we always do so in the light, or shadow, of ideas. We carry a more or less explicit set of assumptions around the gallery with us-assumptions which guide our eyes and fashion the kind of interest we take in what we see. But it sometimes happens that an apparently promising idea misfires and leads us away from the work we are considering. As a case in point, consider the idea of "anticipation." It is one of the most favoured terms of contemporary art critics. It records the way in which an older work may seem to foretell a later development in art. For example, at last year's Chardin exhibition (Royal Academy) we were told that Chardin's handling of paint in some of his later still-lives "anticipated" the work of the abstract expressionists. Anyone wanting to pass for a sophisticate would use this idea in the gallery.
We can think more carefully about the idea of anticipation by reflecting upon one of the most beautiful and powerful works in "Spirit of an Age," the current display of 19th-century German painting at the National Gallery (until 13th May). The Balcony Room by Adolph Menzel (see above) comes from a series of interiors he painted in the 1840s of his Berlin apartment. The doors to the balcony are open and a diaphanous curtain billows gently, allowing a streak of sunlight to brighten the floor. In a long mirror by the doors we see the reflections of a sofa with a gold-framed print hanging above it. Two simple but elegant chairs are turned away from one another. Unusually for a study of a domestic interior, we are shown neither inhabitants nor any precious objects. Of course, the room is occupied by the painter; and the painting is redolent of the peace and pleasure of being on one's own. Although sparely furnished, the balcony room is hardly spartan; the cornice is attractively painted and gilded. The painting has a slightly "unfinished" quality about it-the forms of objects are not closely defined and the paint has been handled in an attractively free way. What this does is help us to concentrate not on any particular feature but on the room as a whole-enticing us to attend to atmosphere rather than to objects.
It is hardly surprising that this painting is often linked to impressionism, although it was painted three decades bef-ore the first impr-essionist exhibition was staged in 1874. Menzel is thus said to have "anticipated" im-pressionism. The benign aspect of this way of speaking is easy to see. If we like impressionism and are familiar with its pictorial strategies-as many people are-we can usefully employ this sensibility to see something of what is going on in the work of a much less well known painter.
But this innocuous word brings with it a highly problematic view of art's history and a misleading sense of the importance of Menzel's picture. The assumption is that Menzel was a great painter because he was ahead of his time and employed a technique which was to come into general use only later. But why is this a good thing? The assumption is that there is progress in art and that the best painters are the ones who are most advanced in technique or subject matter-in short, the Whig view of art history or, in its modern guise, the idea of avant-garde art.
Yet in what sense can there be genuine progress, as opposed to mere change or even decline, in art? At its worst the progressive line goes like this: why was it good that Menzel anticipated impressionism? Because the impressionists were the springboard for the work of C?zanne. Why was that good? Because C?zanne was the father of modernism. And that was good because modernism led to Andy Warhol and finally to Britart and Britart is important because it leads to whatever comes next. The buck cannot stop because the merit of each movement has to be cast in terms of its forward momentum. From this crude line of thought we can discern the essential problem. Progress cannot explain merit, on the contrary a notion of progress is logically dependent upon a completely separate account of what is good.
Belief in an avant-garde depends upon a clear conception of why the art of the future is better than the art of the past. There are basically two options. One is to assert that later art is intrinsically superior-a position which is untenable. The other is to link developments in art to another kind of value-usually a political conception of the good society. The idea of the artistic avant-garde originated in France in the 1830s and sought to connect a socialist vision of society with the pursuit of radical techniques-at the time an unsparing realism. Political and artistic revolution would advance hand in hand.
But if we are sceptical of such justifications it is hard to see what real merit there is in being ahead of one's time and "anticipating" future developments in painting. So the praise implicit in "anticipation" is misplaced. The excellence of Menzel's painting has nothing to do with the fact that the technique he used was later employed by the impressionists. The work stands as fully before us today as it did the day he painted it. We can love it for what it is: for its evocation of simple satisfactions, for its capacity to hold a sense of place, for its intimation of undramatic happiness. Instead of getting closer to the work, a false sophistication can take us away from it.
