Expressive Things: Art Theories of Henri Focillon and Meyer Schapiro Reconsidered

The chapter discusses the art theories of Henri Focillon and Meyer Schapiro in order to explore the potential of an art history based on speculative realism. The focus lies on three basic positions in their writings, considered to be productive for the perspective of a speculative art history, as they transcend idealistic and language centered concepts of art history. First, both Focillon and Schapiro consider the artwork as an object with a reality of its own, causing things to happen. Second, both of them hold a relational and processual conception of the artwork: it is considered as a place of negotiation between human action, material and ideas. Thirdly, their materialistic and relational conception of the artwork is associated with a dynamic notion of form. These principals can be related to the speculative realist’s materialist and dynamic conception of the object. Focillon’s and Schapiro’s models may help to pave the way for an art theory that combines production and reception aesthetics, in understanding art as a never accomplished process of negotiation between the poles of artistic activity, material properties, society and the viewer.