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‘Julius Schlosser breaks yet another barrier’. Review of: Julius von Schlosser, Art and Curiosity Cabinets of the Late Renaissance: A Contribution to the History of Collecting, edited by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, translation by Jonathan Blower, Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2021, 222 pp., 7 colour and 103 b/w illustrations, 1 line drawing, paperback US $65.00, UK £55.00, ISBN 978-1-60606-665-2
Get PDFThis is the first book by Julius Schlosser to appear in English. Written in 1907, it offers an excellent translation of a text that is unusually difficult in many ways. It documents the history of collecting in the era before the first art museums, before the definitions of art we are familiar with, and is based on his work as curator of the Ambras collection then in Vienna and now largely reinstalled in the castle near Innsbruck. It gives insight into one aspect of Schlosser’s early work, but not yet into the better known methodological and theoretical issues that occupied him later
Max Dvořák’s Michelangelo
Get PDFIt has been shown that it was Max Dvořák who introduced into art-historical research the concept of Mannerism as an independent style that dominated the second half of the 16th century. Dvořák described the art of Raphael’s pupils and of Florentine painters such as Rosso Fiorentino or Jacopo Pontormo not as a decline in artistic development, but as an expression of a change in the cultural mood that needed to be voiced in artistic form. However, the historiography of Dvořák’s conception of Mannerism has to date neglected to devote any attention to how Mannerism actually emerged: what in Dvořák’s conception of art generated the need to describe the art of the late 16th century as a separate artistic style distinct from the Renaissance? As the study shows, the answer to this question may be found in Max Dvořák’s interpretation of the late art of Michelangelo Buonarroti
The history of an expression, tr. Karl Johns
Get PDFOriginally published as ‘Et Udtryks Historie’, Tilskueren: Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, Samfundsspørgsmaal og Almenfattelige Videnskabelige Skildringer, vol. 12, August-September, 1895, pp. 565-583, 674-705. Reprinted: Udvalgte skrifter af Julius Lange, ed. Georg Brandes and Peter Købke, vol. 2, Copenhagen: Det nordiske forlag, 1901, pp. 89-136
Identity built on myth. Fact and fiction in the foundational narrative of the ‘Cracow School of Art History’ and its relations to Vienna
Get PDFWidely acknowledged as the creator of the first coherent model of art historical practice and theory in Poland, Marian Sokolowski played an essential role in shaping the identity of the discipline. This article explores Sokolowski’s connections to the Vienna School and the impact of his choice of methodological identity on the development of the ‘Cracow School’.
In a curriculum vitae submitted in 1876 to the Jagiellonian University, Sokołowski, soon to be appointed as the first chair of art history in Poland, stated that he had studied ‘art history in Vienna under the supervision of Rudolf Eitelberger and Moritz Thausing’. While unsupported by the archival sources, this alleged mentorship has great symbolic significance. The highly institutionalised character of the ‘Cracow School’, as analysed by Stefan Muthesius, ensured that the founder’s choice of methodological affiliation would remain crucial for the identity of this research environment. The longue durée of relations with Vienna, present sometimes only in the sphere of myth (initiated by Sokołowski), would prove vital in determining the normative characteristics of the self-proclaimed ‘school’
Green Infrastructure for Roadside Air Quality (GI4RAQ) guidance & decision tree: an evidence-based approach to reducing roadside exposure to road transport pollution
Get PDFGreen Infrastructure for Roadside Air Quality, ‘GI4RAQ’, is an initiative by Dr James Levine and Prof Rob MacKenzie at the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR), University of Birmingham, to promote and facilitate evidence-based use of green infrastructure to reduce roadside exposure to road transport pollution. The GI4RAQ Guidance document describes the development of an evidence-based, albeit qualitative, approach to GI4RAQ with Yvonne Brown, Principal Policy Analyst for Air Quality and Climate Change at Transport for London (TfL). It includes essential guidance on the use of the GI4RAQ Decision Tree – a differential diagnostics approach, visualised using a PowerPoint Show with embedded links. Whilst the approach has been developed for TfL and refers to case studies in London, both this guidance and the GI4RAQ Decision Tree are applicable to roads in all towns and cities, and the authors hope that these resources will find widespread use.
The GI4RAQ Decision Tree guides the user through a short series of questions to identify the critical characteristics of the street in which they are seeking to reduce roadside exposure to road transport pollution. Subject to these characteristics, 'robustly beneficial' green infrastructure interventions are identified, as well as ones 'potentially beneficial to some at the expense of others'; the terms in inverted commas will be explained in due course. The accompanying guidance, provided here, builds on the “Reduce, Extend, Protect” concept introduced in the Trees & Design Action Group’s guide, ‘First Steps in Urban Air Quality for Built Environment Practitioners’ (Ferranti et al., 2019): first reduce the emissions of pollutants, then extend the distance between people and the sources of these emissions (i.e., vehicles) and, finally, protect those most vulnerable to their health impacts. This guidance is also consistent with, but elaborates on, that recently published by the Greater London Authority, ‘Using Green Infrastructure to Protect People from Air Pollution’ (GLA, 2019).
Within TfL, this evidence-based approach to reducing exposure to road transport pollution supports TfL’s Healthy Streets Approach in putting people and their health at the centre of design decisions and the use of public space; it is also integrated into TfL’s Environmental Evaluation Tool, designed to capture and manage the impacts of projects not requiring a full Environmental Impact Assessment under Town and Country Planning Regulations 2017 (MHCLG, 2017). ‘Clean air’, however, is just one of ten positive outcomes sought via TfL’s Healthy Streets Approach, and green infrastructure contributes to a further eight (see ‘Indicators Explained’ section of Healthy Streets Check for Designers spreadsheet). Likewise, whilst this guidance focuses on improving roadside air quality, we recognise that green infrastructure can (simultaneously) deliver further, major benefits; we will highlight the opportunities for co-benefits throughout the document. Improved air quality is just one benefit of – and one consideration in – the planning, planting and investing in green infrastructure for the long term
‘Byzantium in Brno: joining an Eastern and Western Middle Ages’. Review of: Byzantium or democracy? Kondakov’s legacy in emigration: the Institutum Kondakovianum and Andre Grabar, 1925-1952 by Ivan Foletti and Adrien Palladino, Rome: Viella, Brno: Masaryk University Press, 2020, 211pp, 381 b. & w. illus. € 25.00 ISBN 9788833134963
Get PDFThis book writes the history of a short-lived attempt to create in Prague a home for Byzantine art historians and historians exiled from Russia after the 1917 Revolution. Named after the distinguished Russian art historian, N. P. Kondakov, the Institutum Kondakovianum had a research library, art collection, a journal, the Seminarium Kondakovianum for Russian, Byzantine, and Migration art, as well as a monograph series that published a book by André Grabar. He was a student of Kondakov in Russia and the future professor at the Collège de France. Byzantium or democracy examines the history of the institute from the 1920s until its demise in the early 1950s and juxtaposes to it Grabar’s career in France during the same period, both little studied
Adaptation for transport resilience to climate change in low-income countries in Africa and South Asia
Get PDFEveryday life at the Dvořák Seminar, on the basis of contemporary sources. Addenda to the history of the Vienna School of Art History
Get PDFDiscussing the relationship of Max Dvořák and Johannes Wilde on the previous study (János (Johannes) Wilde and Max Dvorák or, can we speak about the Budapest School of art history), I proposed – indirectly – the provocative thesis that “there is no Dvořák without Wilde”. What justifies this polarized statement is the set of documents of source value found a few years ago in Wilde’s estate in archives of Budapest and London. Johannes Wilde cherished a profound relationship with his siblings, Ferenc and Margit, who did not have families of their own but lived with their mother Munisi until her death. They are the addressees of the letters of invaluable importance which Wilde wrote from Vienna and later from various stations of his forced exile. Wilde spent longer periods in Vienna twice: first, between 1915 and 1917, he was the student of the Vienna University department of art history led by Max Dvořák, and then, after the fall of the short-lived communist interlude, the Hungarian Republic of Councils, he returned to the Viennese capital as Dvořák’s protégé, colleague and friend. The few years spent side by side deepened their professional and personal relationship so much that when fate put an end to the life of the Czech-born professor still at an early age, Wilde was at the side of his death-bed and informed posterity of the details of this sorrowful event through his letters. In the this paper I am concentrating on the period of 1915–1917, starting with the moment when young Wilde left Budapest and the team of the drawings-and-prints department in the Museum of Fine Arts who knew Dvořák personally – Simon Meller, Frigyes Antal, Edith Hoffmann – upon his director Elek Petrovics’s encouragement who sent him directly to Dvořák to study. Lengthy passages are to be cited from the letters, since these weekly reports offer a direct insight into the life and daily routine of the Vienna School, particularly of the so-called Dvořák seminar and into Dvořák’s teaching methods
Today as history: Vasari’s Naples Resurrection and visual memory
Get PDFGiorgio Vasari’s (1511-74) literary contributions to the discipline of art history are incontestable. Rarely has scholarly literature given commensurate weight to his paintings. This article examines one of Vasari’s mid-career works, the Naples Resurrection (1545), and argues that the paintingsimultaneously typifies and singularly challenges the traditions of artistic production of its time through explicit and implicit references to Vasari’s contemporaries, namely Rosso Fiorentino, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and Raphael. A careful reading of these borrowings, some of which have long gone unnoticed, provides a new perspective on this often-overlooked painting and offers a deeper understanding of Vasari’s deliberate attempts at self-promotion and his relationship to the art of his time. This article considers how Vasari’s artistic practice embodied sixteenth-century themes of imitation and invention and had larger impacts on individual artistic identities and broader visual memory
Net-zero solutions and research priorities in the 2020s
Get PDFKey messages
• Technological, societal and nature-based solutions should work together to enable systemic change
towards a regenerative society, and to deliver net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
• Prioritise research into efficient, low-carbon and carbon-negative solutions for sectors that are difficult
to decarbonise; i.e. energy storage, road transport, shipping, aviation and grid infrastructure.
• Each solution should be assessed with respect to GHG emissions reductions, energy efficiency and
societal implications to provide a basis for developing long-term policies, maximising positive impact
of investment and research effort, and guiding industry investors in safe and responsible planning
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