1300 187 187
This book introduces to an English-language audience the writings of the so-called New Vienna School of art history. In the 1930s Hans Sedlmayr (1896-1984) and Otto P„cht (1902-1988) undertook an ambitious extension of the formalist art historical project of Alois Riegl (1858-1905). Sedlmayr and P„cht began with an aestheticist conception of the autonomy and irreducibility of the artistic process. At the same time they believed they could read entire cultures and worldviews in the work of art. The key to this contextualist alchemy was the concept of "structure," a kind of deep formal property that the work of art shared with the world. Sedlmayr and P„cht's project immediately caught the attention of thinkers like Walter Benjamin who were similarly impatient with traditional empiricist scholarship. But the new project had its dark side. Sedlmayr used art history as a vehicle for a sweeping critique of modernity that soon escalated into nationalist and outright fascist polemic, even while P„cht, a Jew, was forced into exile. Sedlmayr and the whole scholarly project of Strukturanalyse were sharply repudiated by Meyer Schapiro and later Ernst Gombrich.After an introductory essay, the book opens with two selections from Riegl. Following this are essays by Sedlmayr, P„cht, Guido Kaschnitz-Weinberg, and Fritz Novotny, all dating from the 1930s. The book closes with the divergent responses of Benjamin (1933) and Schapiro (1936). The difference of opinion between these two key voices raises again the question of the legitimacy and effectiveness of the method, and reveals the analogies between the New Vienna School project and the antiempiricist cultural histories of our own time. The book also contains an extensive bibliography.
"...illuminates the history of the discipline and its importation of the insights and ideals of other disciplines, such as science." Margaret Olin CAA Reviews
| Introduction | p. 9 |
| Bibliography | p. 73 |
| Methodological Foundations | |
| The Main Characteristics of the Late Roman Kunstwollen (1901) | p. 87 |
| The Place of the Vapheio Cups in the History of Art (1900) | p. 105 |
| Structure Analysis: Theory | |
| Toward a Rigorous Study of Art (1931) | p. 133 |
| The End of the Image Theory (1930/1931) | p. 181 |
| Structure Analysis: Practice | |
| Remarks on the Structure of Egyptian Sculpture (1933) | p. 199 |
| Design Principles of Fifteenth-Century Northern Painting (1933) | p. 243 |
| Bruegel's Macchia (1934) | p. 323 |
| passages from Cezanne and the End of Scientific Perspective (1938) | p. 379 |
| Contemporary Responses | |
| Rigorous Study of Art: On the First Volume of Kunstwissenschaftliche Forschungen (1931/1933) | p. 439 |
| The New Viennese School (1936) | p. 453 |
| Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9781890951153
ISBN-10: 1890951153
Audience:
Professional
For Ages: 22+ years old
Format:
Paperback
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 488
Published: 15th August 2003
Dimensions (cm): 22.4 x 15.6
x 3.587
Weight (kg): 0.752
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