Medieval Art after Duchamp: Hans Belting’s Likeness and Presence at 25

In the early 1990s Hans Belting’s Likeness and Presence initiated a consideration of the history of medieval art “in the era before art.” This book attempted to reconsider the binaries between the beautiful and the functional, the aesthetic and the cult image. These investigations, however, relied on beauty and neo-Kantian aesthetics to define art, circumventing the contemporary history of art and its discourses. While arguing for the validity of “non-art” as an object of investigation, I posit that this scholarship reified the very modernist myths from which it sought to distance itself by accepting such paradigms. In medieval studies, the years following—until now—have seen research into sensual experience, moving from the focus on visuality in the early 2000s to the present’s concern with the soundscape. Parallel to this trend is a growing neoformalism, a return to the alleged fundamentals of paleography, style, and iconography. While seeming to be wholly opposite projects, I contend that these threads evidence a concerted return to modernity’s bureaucratization of the senses and a faith in the transcendental signifier.