Page - 233 - in Der Arkadenhof der Universität Wien und die Tradition der Gelehrtenmemoria in Europa

memory’ in a double sense.26 This demonstrates that the function of the commemorative portrait or scholar’s monument is not purely or primarily epideictic, despite the visuality of its objecthood. In other words, it is an auratic, ritual object rath- er than an object for exhibition. As students are acquiring an education at Darwin College they are also acquiring an iden- tity associated with it – perhaps we might say that those who do not need to acquire this iden- tity do not need to see or even to know about these portraits.27 The College itself is a coalescing site of memory, which becomes more weighted with every commissioned portrait. Each por- trait is a formal and structured reinvestment in the College’s significance; the portraits trace the boundaries of a site of memory which is primar- ily addressed to those who inhabit the College as students, Fellows or staff (and alumni). Jan Assmann has described this structure in rela- tion to cultural memory: ‘The supply of know- ledge in the cultural memory is characterized by sharp distinctions made between those who be- long and those who do not, i.e., between what appertains to oneself and what is foreign. Ac- cess to and transmission of this knowledge is not controlled by what Blumenberg calls “theoretic- al curiosity,” but rather by a “need for identity” as described by Hans Mol.’28 The Masters’ portraits are material monu- ments created for the reflexive remembrance of a specific community. The uniqueness of the site increases in line with this ongoing symbolic re- investment. What Assmann has called a specif- ic society’s ‘unity and peculiarity’ we might call the College’s ‘Darwin-ness’ or ‘Darwinicity’.29 A scholar’s monument within the context of this College is a kind of commemorative storage re- ceptacle, providing a stable point of reference against which the college and its members can map out their discrete identity. The portrait’s role and function in this context may be regarded as performative. In this respect, the scholar’s monument is an objectivised means of transmission in the cul- turally institutionalized heritage of the particu- lar kind of society we call a college or university.30 Within this society, commissioning becomes a specialised practice, of which the RP becomes a part.31 The location of the portraits in the Com- mon Room indicates their importance; an im- portance signified by their restricted context of display. By contrast, the portrait of the College’s primary benefactor, Max Rayne (1968–9) by Gra- ham Sutherland, is placed in the College dining hall, a high traffic and possibly, higher risk area for a painting’s display.32 Such distinctions indi- cate the weight of the symbolic worth attached to portraits of Masters, even when they are paint- ed by lesser-known artists than Sutherland.33 Within an age of digital media and ubiqui- tous born-digital imagery, the sense of differ- ence, uniqueness and importance encoded in the object of the painted portrait entrenches and valorises it as a conveyance of cultural and col- lective memory – of tradition – within the aca- demic institution. Aleida Assmann writes that, ‘the different systems of the mass media culture Contemporary portrait Commissioning in British Universities 233 26 J. Assmann, Collective Memory and Cultural Identity, in: New German Critique, 65, 1995, pp. 125–133 (p. 129). 27 Members of the public can arrange to see the College portraits by appointment. The ‘public’ for such portraits is highly restricted; a point also made by L. Jordanova, Defining Features: Scientific and Medical Portraits, pp. 29–30, (cit. n. 1). 28 J. Assmann, Collective Memory and Cultural Identity, p. 130 (cit. n. 28). 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid, p. 131. 32 Reproduced in Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Portraits: from Lely to Hockney, pp. 22–23, cat. 38, (cit. n. 1). 33 Also discussed as ‘practices of portraiture’ by L. Jordanova, Defining Features: Scientific and Medical Portraits, p. 140, (cit. n. 1, 29).