Leseprobe

157 provenance. And yet, inmuseumand exhibition practices, their status is quite ambivalent. On the one hand, an object label can be seen, as Derrida put it, as an element whose ‘tra- ditional determination [is] not that it stands out but that it disappears, buries itself, effaces itself, melts away at the moment it deploys its greatest energy.’ 4 On the other hand, the added effect the label bestows on the artwork obviously ‘is threatening’ in two senses. 5 Firstly, it disrupts viewers’ aesthetic experience of the artwork, and secondly, it jeopardizes the survival of the artwork through its potential to undermine its status as perceived from various angles: objects, viewers, and curators. With regard to their epistemic status, wall labels in art galleries can be compared to labels for plants such as those found in herbals. 6 Both are among the ‘material constants’ of their disciplines; 7 both provide information in a condensed form (the plant labels only include name, location, and date); and both primarily serve as a means of identification . Moreover, as is the case with systematic organization in botany, art displays, too, are dedicated to designating the presented objects accurately. Indeed, correctly identifying objects is the foundation of practically all areas of art history. Despite these commonali- ties, there is some difference in the value traditionally attributed to either form of identi- fication with regard to their relationship to the actual object. While the botanist who headed for the fields with pencil, paper, and vasculum was ‘scoffed at’ 8 in the nineteenth century, art history, on the other hand, has, for the last two hundred years, caricatured the museumgoer who ignores the artwork in favour of thoroughly studying the label or the catalogue. 9 Isaac Robert and George Cruikshank’s etching A Shilling Well Laid Out is one example of this kind of mockery (Fig. 1). The picture shows an exhibition roomof the early nineteenth century crowded with visitors who are all busying themselves with sophisticated chit-chat or at best glancing at the catalogue, but no-one actually engages with a painting. This is highlighted evenmore as an absurdity by the fact that many of the works are portraits. It seems that these visitors are quite ignorant of the proper behaviour in the presence of art as they absurdly overestimate the significance of the accompanying writtenmaterial. This illustrates the precarious status of exhibition catalogues, collection guides and labels throughout their history. And yet, their function as the identifying markers of art objects turns out to be per- ennial. Not only are objects without labelling just as confusing in amuseumas wall labels next to empty showcases. The value of theminimal version of the wall label also remained undisputed during the heated debate that took place in Germany in the 1970s about the question of the museum as ‘Lernort contra Musentempel’ (place of study versus temple the present essay was able to take some examples is Voss, Hinter weißenWänden , 2015, pp. 17–27.  4 Der- rida, The Truth in Painting , 1987 [1978], p. 82.  5 Derrida, The Truth in Painting , 1987 [1978], p. 56.  6 On labels in herbals see: teHeesen, ‘Beschriftungsszenen,’ 2008, pp. 106–115.  7  teHeesen, ‘Beschriftungssze- nen,’ 2008, p. 108.  8  te Heesen, ‘Beschriftungsszenen,’ 2008, p. 114.  9 Voss, Hinter weißenWänden , 2015, pp. 18–19, see also for the following example.