Alois Riegl’s first and foremost task in his Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts, the foundatio... more Alois Riegl’s first and foremost task in his Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts, the foundational text of ‘art history as a scientific discipline’, was the definition of its proper subject. The preoccupation of the scientific art history was thus defined as dealing with elements, the developmental history of thereof, and the factors that determined that development. The elements in question are ‘form and surface’ (Form und Fläche), or, more precisely, the relation between them which is developed in the course of time and which constitutes different styles, all directed by specific worldviews, different for different time periods and peoples. In the definition of the subject of art history, precisely this conjunction of a style and its prescribing worldview (Weltanschauung) is most significant. It is also the starting point for Riegl’s fellow and following art historians, Heinrich Wölfflin, Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky and Frederick Antal, among others. Riegl, therefore, should be credited with establishing the paradigm for the subsequent art-historical investigation.
Izidor Cankar structured his magnum opus on the ‘evolution of artistic style’, the monumental His... more Izidor Cankar structured his magnum opus on the ‘evolution of artistic style’, the monumental History of Visual Art in Western Europe (Zgodovina likovne umetnosti v Zahodni Evropi) from the Early Christian period to the beginnings of the Baroque, around a concept of the ‘systematics of style’, which he had presented earlier in his Introduction to Understanding Visual Art (Uvod v umevanje likovne umetnosti. Sistematika stila). In his Introduction, he did not mention his professor from Vienna university Max Dvořák, even though it is obvious that Cankar borrowed Dvořák’s key terminological contrast between idealism and naturalism. However, he clearly foregrounded Dvořák as his methodological model in the preface to his History. In the present contribution, Cankar’s evolutionary-historical survey of artistic creativity is compared to Dvořák’s vision of the course of art history, as can be inferred from his various essays. It is argued that Dvořák and Cankar’s approaches to art history are comparable not only in terminology but also in content, in their fundamental conviction that art history is essentially a Geistesgeschichte.
Nikolaus Pevsner's Pioneers of Modern Movement is considered the foundational text of two new his... more Nikolaus Pevsner's Pioneers of Modern Movement is considered the foundational text of two new historical fields, the history of modern architecture and the history of design. This contribution, nevertheless, discusses this text in the context of art-historical discipline. Pevsner himself namely understood his work as a complement to Kunstgeschichte: by defining the 'Modern Movement' in established art-historical terms and also by discussing not only architecture but attempting to define the style and the worldview expressed in it for the whole period and all of visual arts. Specifically, this contribution is interested in the place that Pevsner allocated to the design within his art-historical edifice, since inclusion of objects of everyday use within an art-historical study was not (and still is not) usual. For Pevsner, on the contrary, design (linked to architecture) turns out to be a key component of his narrative, even if not for aesthetic but rather for moral or social reasons. Keywords: Nikolaus Pevsner, history of design, history of modern architecture, the Modern Movement, Herbert Read, Alois Riegl.
The answer to the question, »which is the foremost human activity, which activity is most worthy ... more The answer to the question, »which is the foremost human activity, which activity is most worthy of a man«, was for the Ancients simple enough: that can only be the activity of politics, with its concommitant skill of rhetoric. Consequently, the arts of politics and rhetoric were thoroughly theorised, they were profoundly thought over and written about in a systematical and analytical manner by the most important philosophers of the day. With the Italian Renaissance, in the context of humanism and the emerging modern state, the position of the most excellent human skill began to be taken over by the arts of building, of painting and of sculpting. The key step in that direction, as is well known, was made by Leon Battista Alberti. He was the first to truly theorise those visual arts – hitherto lowly, manual skills, unworthy of philosophical enquiry – and thus to provide the foundation on which the modern conception of art could be developed. Himself a humanist, writing in Latin for the cultivated governing elite, he grounded his project in the importance of the visual representation within the political situation of the day. Whereas Alberti's borrowings from the rhetoric have been profusely commented upon and much has been established about the political uses of visual arts in the Renaissance times, the final consequence of his particular association of rhetoric and politics and visual arts has not yet been sufficiently emphasized and explicated.
The answer to the question, »which is the foremost human activity, which activity is most worthy ... more The answer to the question, »which is the foremost human activity, which activity is most worthy of a man«, was for the Ancients simple enough: that can only be the activity of politics, with its concommitant skill of rhetoric. Consequently, the arts of politics and rhetoric were thoroughly theorised, they were profoundly thought over and written about in a systematical and analytical manner by the most important philosophers of the period. With the Italian Renaissance, in the context of humanism and the emerging modern state, the position of the most excellent human skill began to be taken over by the arts of building, of painting and of sculpting. The key step in that direction, as is well known, was made by Leon Battista Alberti. He was the first to truly theorise those visual arts-hitherto lowly, manual skills, unworthy of philosophical enquiry-and thus to provide the foundation on which the modern conception of art could be developed. Himself a humanist, writing in Latin for the cultivated governing elite, he grounded his project in the importance of the visual representation within the political situation of the day. Whereas Alberti's borrowings from the rhetoric have been profusely commented upon and much has been established about the political uses of visual arts in the Renaissance times, nonetheless the final consequence of his particular association of rhetoric and politics and visual arts has not yet been sufficiently emphasized and explicated.
The similarity between Ad Reinhardt’s »black« paintings and Malevich’s Black square on a white fi... more The similarity between Ad Reinhardt’s »black« paintings and Malevich’s Black square on a white field is plain, even though Reinhardt considered Mondrian rather than Malevich the key reference for his abstract painting. Similarity surpasses mere form, a shape of a square of black colour, for it also exists in the abundance of verbal explanation, justification of the act of nullifying and of negation, which is represented or performed by a black square in Malevich’s and Reinhardt’s art respectively. What does, then, Malevich’s appeal to »nonobjectivity«, to overcoming of the nature (the world as we know it) with art on the one hand, and Reinhardt’s swearing on the autonomy of art, on the exorcising the nature and the world from art, the swearing on the art’s »wordlilessness«, on the other hand, mean?
The theoretical contributions of two art historians, Erwin Panofsky and Keith Moxey, are presente... more The theoretical contributions of two art historians, Erwin Panofsky and Keith Moxey, are presented and confronted, especially in regard to their relations towards their art historical predecessors. Whereas Panofsky developed his iconological method on the basis of the already established formalism, Moxey – advocating his semiotic theory and calling for motivated history – posited Panofsky as that art historical position which ought to be opposed, surpassed, and replaced with a new one.
The exhibition "Malevich" at Tate Modern in London in 2014 is analysed in an attempt to discern h... more The exhibition "Malevich" at Tate Modern in London in 2014 is analysed in an attempt to discern how Kazimir Malevich’s artistic trajectory was presented as “groundbreaking, iconic, innovative” and his painting Black Square (1915) was emphasised as “an icon for a modern age.” It is pointed out what was underlined and what was understated at the exhibition; how Malevich’s work was de-contextualised, exempted from the context of the eventful Russian avant-garde, and re-contextualised into the neater development of Western modernist painting. The use of vocabulary pertaining to the images of a holy person is shown to be congruent with the modernist history of modern art.
This contribution will attempt to show that Aby Warburg was basically still a formalist art histo... more This contribution will attempt to show that Aby Warburg was basically still a formalist art historian, a representative of Stilgeschichte, who did strive to extend the narrow art historical question of style into a wider, cultural topic of the influence of Antiquity on subsequent historical periods, but he could hardly be labelled an iconographer in the usual sense, that is, as an art historian occupied primarily with the content of a work of art, as opposed to its form. The contribution will also attempt to demonstrate that his art historical work was not as fragmented and particularized as is usually believed, but was, on the contrary, guided throughout by a quite consistent vision of the development of art and its role in the cultural evolution of humanity
The article deals with the institutionalisation of art history as a »scientific discipline« at th... more The article deals with the institutionalisation of art history as a »scientific discipline« at the universities in the german-speaking countries at the beginning of the 20th century. Alois Riegl and Heinrich Wölfflin, basing themselves on the humboldtian notions of historiography and philology, posited that the art historian's task is to explore the artistic form (as opposed to the content of an artefact) and, through that, the worldview (of a certain people) which the artefact demonstrates. Their so-called Formalism therefore played its part in the politics of nationalism.
Ključne besede: renesančna teorija umetnosti, retorika, Leon Battista Alberti, Giorgio Vasari, re... more Ključne besede: renesančna teorija umetnosti, retorika, Leon Battista Alberti, Giorgio Vasari, renesančna država, Niccolò Machiavelli
Alois Riegl’s first and foremost task in his Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts, the foundatio... more Alois Riegl’s first and foremost task in his Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts, the foundational text of ‘art history as a scientific discipline’, was the definition of its proper subject. The preoccupation of the scientific art history was thus defined as dealing with elements, the developmental history of thereof, and the factors that determined that development. The elements in question are ‘form and surface’ (Form und Fläche), or, more precisely, the relation between them which is developed in the course of time and which constitutes different styles, all directed by specific worldviews, different for different time periods and peoples. In the definition of the subject of art history, precisely this conjunction of a style and its prescribing worldview (Weltanschauung) is most significant. It is also the starting point for Riegl’s fellow and following art historians, Heinrich Wölfflin, Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky and Frederick Antal, among others. Riegl, therefore, should be credited with establishing the paradigm for the subsequent art-historical investigation.
Izidor Cankar structured his magnum opus on the ‘evolution of artistic style’, the monumental His... more Izidor Cankar structured his magnum opus on the ‘evolution of artistic style’, the monumental History of Visual Art in Western Europe (Zgodovina likovne umetnosti v Zahodni Evropi) from the Early Christian period to the beginnings of the Baroque, around a concept of the ‘systematics of style’, which he had presented earlier in his Introduction to Understanding Visual Art (Uvod v umevanje likovne umetnosti. Sistematika stila). In his Introduction, he did not mention his professor from Vienna university Max Dvořák, even though it is obvious that Cankar borrowed Dvořák’s key terminological contrast between idealism and naturalism. However, he clearly foregrounded Dvořák as his methodological model in the preface to his History. In the present contribution, Cankar’s evolutionary-historical survey of artistic creativity is compared to Dvořák’s vision of the course of art history, as can be inferred from his various essays. It is argued that Dvořák and Cankar’s approaches to art history are comparable not only in terminology but also in content, in their fundamental conviction that art history is essentially a Geistesgeschichte.
Nikolaus Pevsner's Pioneers of Modern Movement is considered the foundational text of two new his... more Nikolaus Pevsner's Pioneers of Modern Movement is considered the foundational text of two new historical fields, the history of modern architecture and the history of design. This contribution, nevertheless, discusses this text in the context of art-historical discipline. Pevsner himself namely understood his work as a complement to Kunstgeschichte: by defining the 'Modern Movement' in established art-historical terms and also by discussing not only architecture but attempting to define the style and the worldview expressed in it for the whole period and all of visual arts. Specifically, this contribution is interested in the place that Pevsner allocated to the design within his art-historical edifice, since inclusion of objects of everyday use within an art-historical study was not (and still is not) usual. For Pevsner, on the contrary, design (linked to architecture) turns out to be a key component of his narrative, even if not for aesthetic but rather for moral or social reasons. Keywords: Nikolaus Pevsner, history of design, history of modern architecture, the Modern Movement, Herbert Read, Alois Riegl.
The answer to the question, »which is the foremost human activity, which activity is most worthy ... more The answer to the question, »which is the foremost human activity, which activity is most worthy of a man«, was for the Ancients simple enough: that can only be the activity of politics, with its concommitant skill of rhetoric. Consequently, the arts of politics and rhetoric were thoroughly theorised, they were profoundly thought over and written about in a systematical and analytical manner by the most important philosophers of the day. With the Italian Renaissance, in the context of humanism and the emerging modern state, the position of the most excellent human skill began to be taken over by the arts of building, of painting and of sculpting. The key step in that direction, as is well known, was made by Leon Battista Alberti. He was the first to truly theorise those visual arts – hitherto lowly, manual skills, unworthy of philosophical enquiry – and thus to provide the foundation on which the modern conception of art could be developed. Himself a humanist, writing in Latin for the cultivated governing elite, he grounded his project in the importance of the visual representation within the political situation of the day. Whereas Alberti's borrowings from the rhetoric have been profusely commented upon and much has been established about the political uses of visual arts in the Renaissance times, the final consequence of his particular association of rhetoric and politics and visual arts has not yet been sufficiently emphasized and explicated.
The answer to the question, »which is the foremost human activity, which activity is most worthy ... more The answer to the question, »which is the foremost human activity, which activity is most worthy of a man«, was for the Ancients simple enough: that can only be the activity of politics, with its concommitant skill of rhetoric. Consequently, the arts of politics and rhetoric were thoroughly theorised, they were profoundly thought over and written about in a systematical and analytical manner by the most important philosophers of the period. With the Italian Renaissance, in the context of humanism and the emerging modern state, the position of the most excellent human skill began to be taken over by the arts of building, of painting and of sculpting. The key step in that direction, as is well known, was made by Leon Battista Alberti. He was the first to truly theorise those visual arts-hitherto lowly, manual skills, unworthy of philosophical enquiry-and thus to provide the foundation on which the modern conception of art could be developed. Himself a humanist, writing in Latin for the cultivated governing elite, he grounded his project in the importance of the visual representation within the political situation of the day. Whereas Alberti's borrowings from the rhetoric have been profusely commented upon and much has been established about the political uses of visual arts in the Renaissance times, nonetheless the final consequence of his particular association of rhetoric and politics and visual arts has not yet been sufficiently emphasized and explicated.
The similarity between Ad Reinhardt’s »black« paintings and Malevich’s Black square on a white fi... more The similarity between Ad Reinhardt’s »black« paintings and Malevich’s Black square on a white field is plain, even though Reinhardt considered Mondrian rather than Malevich the key reference for his abstract painting. Similarity surpasses mere form, a shape of a square of black colour, for it also exists in the abundance of verbal explanation, justification of the act of nullifying and of negation, which is represented or performed by a black square in Malevich’s and Reinhardt’s art respectively. What does, then, Malevich’s appeal to »nonobjectivity«, to overcoming of the nature (the world as we know it) with art on the one hand, and Reinhardt’s swearing on the autonomy of art, on the exorcising the nature and the world from art, the swearing on the art’s »wordlilessness«, on the other hand, mean?
The theoretical contributions of two art historians, Erwin Panofsky and Keith Moxey, are presente... more The theoretical contributions of two art historians, Erwin Panofsky and Keith Moxey, are presented and confronted, especially in regard to their relations towards their art historical predecessors. Whereas Panofsky developed his iconological method on the basis of the already established formalism, Moxey – advocating his semiotic theory and calling for motivated history – posited Panofsky as that art historical position which ought to be opposed, surpassed, and replaced with a new one.
The exhibition "Malevich" at Tate Modern in London in 2014 is analysed in an attempt to discern h... more The exhibition "Malevich" at Tate Modern in London in 2014 is analysed in an attempt to discern how Kazimir Malevich’s artistic trajectory was presented as “groundbreaking, iconic, innovative” and his painting Black Square (1915) was emphasised as “an icon for a modern age.” It is pointed out what was underlined and what was understated at the exhibition; how Malevich’s work was de-contextualised, exempted from the context of the eventful Russian avant-garde, and re-contextualised into the neater development of Western modernist painting. The use of vocabulary pertaining to the images of a holy person is shown to be congruent with the modernist history of modern art.
This contribution will attempt to show that Aby Warburg was basically still a formalist art histo... more This contribution will attempt to show that Aby Warburg was basically still a formalist art historian, a representative of Stilgeschichte, who did strive to extend the narrow art historical question of style into a wider, cultural topic of the influence of Antiquity on subsequent historical periods, but he could hardly be labelled an iconographer in the usual sense, that is, as an art historian occupied primarily with the content of a work of art, as opposed to its form. The contribution will also attempt to demonstrate that his art historical work was not as fragmented and particularized as is usually believed, but was, on the contrary, guided throughout by a quite consistent vision of the development of art and its role in the cultural evolution of humanity
The article deals with the institutionalisation of art history as a »scientific discipline« at th... more The article deals with the institutionalisation of art history as a »scientific discipline« at the universities in the german-speaking countries at the beginning of the 20th century. Alois Riegl and Heinrich Wölfflin, basing themselves on the humboldtian notions of historiography and philology, posited that the art historian's task is to explore the artistic form (as opposed to the content of an artefact) and, through that, the worldview (of a certain people) which the artefact demonstrates. Their so-called Formalism therefore played its part in the politics of nationalism.
Ključne besede: renesančna teorija umetnosti, retorika, Leon Battista Alberti, Giorgio Vasari, re... more Ključne besede: renesančna teorija umetnosti, retorika, Leon Battista Alberti, Giorgio Vasari, renesančna država, Niccolò Machiavelli
Art for the 21 th Century Bern: Peter Lang, 2007, 473 strani Izhodišče antologije Tako radikalni ... more Art for the 21 th Century Bern: Peter Lang, 2007, 473 strani Izhodišče antologije Tako radikalni kot realnost sama. Spisi o marksizmu in umetnosti za 21. stoletje lahko najdemo v konferenci »Marksizem in likovne umetnosti zdaj«, ki se je odvila aprila 2002 v organizaciji University College London. V tej knjigi sicer niso objavljeni prispevki s same konference, je pa zato to delo »testament intelektualni vznemirjenosti, ki jo je konferenca porodila« (str. 15). Večinoma britanski univerzitetni profesorji (in nekaj profesorjev iz tujine ter umetnikov) so si za nalogo zadali poiskati odgovor na vprašanje, kako v trenutni zgodovinski konjunkturi dediščino marksistične teorije in prakse »refunkcionirati«, ponovno zagnati, kako -v duhu političnega optimizma in intelektualnega pesimizma -poiskati nove smeri tako za marksizem kot za teorijo in kritiko materialne kulture (str. 16).
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Papers by Rebeka Vidrih
Keywords: Nikolaus Pevsner, history of design, history of modern architecture, the Modern Movement, Herbert Read, Alois Riegl.
With the Italian Renaissance, in the context of humanism and the emerging modern state, the position of the most excellent human skill began to be taken over by the arts of building, of painting and of sculpting. The key step in that direction, as is well known, was made by Leon Battista Alberti. He was the first to truly theorise those visual arts – hitherto lowly, manual skills, unworthy of philosophical enquiry – and thus to provide the foundation on which the modern conception of art could be developed. Himself a humanist, writing in Latin for the cultivated governing elite, he grounded his project in the importance of the visual representation within the political situation of the day. Whereas Alberti's borrowings from the rhetoric have been profusely commented upon and much has been established about the political uses of visual arts in the Renaissance times, the final consequence of his particular association of rhetoric and politics and visual arts has not yet been sufficiently emphasized and explicated.
Keywords: Nikolaus Pevsner, history of design, history of modern architecture, the Modern Movement, Herbert Read, Alois Riegl.
With the Italian Renaissance, in the context of humanism and the emerging modern state, the position of the most excellent human skill began to be taken over by the arts of building, of painting and of sculpting. The key step in that direction, as is well known, was made by Leon Battista Alberti. He was the first to truly theorise those visual arts – hitherto lowly, manual skills, unworthy of philosophical enquiry – and thus to provide the foundation on which the modern conception of art could be developed. Himself a humanist, writing in Latin for the cultivated governing elite, he grounded his project in the importance of the visual representation within the political situation of the day. Whereas Alberti's borrowings from the rhetoric have been profusely commented upon and much has been established about the political uses of visual arts in the Renaissance times, the final consequence of his particular association of rhetoric and politics and visual arts has not yet been sufficiently emphasized and explicated.