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The Mannerist “revolution”, Dvořák and Soviet Art History
Get PDFMax Dvořák is widely recognized as a key contributor to the tectonic change in the perception of Mannerism amongst art historians. Soviet scholars could not ignore this shift. In this paper, I trace the impact of Dvořák’s writings on Mannerism in Italian and Northern art on generations of Soviet scholars, who had been working on Renaissance/Baroque topics and methodological issues. One can distinguish three periods in the reception of Max Dvořák’s ideas in Soviet art history. The first clash of methodologies occurred in the 1930s when an abridged collection of Dvořák’s essays was translated into Russian. The beginning of the Cold War marked the second period (the 1940s – 1960s), with its enforcement of ideological boundaries and the use of specific vocabulary; and yet, this period was ambivalent – the first efforts at rehabilitation were followed by the new outbreaks of dogmatic austerity. Lastly, I christened the third period, which lasted from the 1970s until the 1990s a ‘Dvořák Revival’ for it flourished with the new positive evaluations of his works and concepts
'A fresh look at Spain: urban views through foreign and domestic gazes (16th-19th centuries)'. Review of: Imago Urbis. Las ciudades españolas vistas por los viajeros (siglos XVI-XIX), Luis Sazatornil Ruiz and Vidal de la Madrid Álvarez (eds), Gijón (Asturias): Ediciones Trea and Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, 2019, 694pp., 412 col. Illus., €60.00 pbk ISBN 978-84-17987-45-9
Get PDFThis richly illustrated publication examines urban views of Spanish cities by Spanish and European travellers, from the 16th century to the 19th century. It was published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, Spain, in 2019 and consists of three introductory essays and a catalogue. The essays examine the specific problems of the illustrated book, a historical survey that provides an unifying narrative for the pieces in the catalogue, and a short history of urban views of Spanish cities in the early modern period. The catalogue entries are substantial, rigorous, updated and remarkably well illustrated. The ambitious time span, number of geographical areas covered, and variety of nationalities of the travellers, set Imago Urbis apart from previous studies, which are generally limited to a specific region, period, artist or nationality of the representations, thereby providing a unique, comprehensive, and cohesive study which is poised to become a fundamental source of information on the topic
Delineating the history of art literature by genre: Julius von Schlosser revisited
Get PDFJulius von Schlosser’s Die Kunstliteratur (1924) is a monumental handbook that has been used by generations of art historians. The present paper provides the first systematic analysis of its genesis alongside Schlosser’s biography from 1891 on – his objectives, his path and his doubts. Schlosser redefined the study of written sources in art history by shifting the focus to literary texts. He distanced himself from the study of archival documents (which tended to serve the histories of individual artworks) and instead sought to gain broader knowledge of the ‘spirit’ of each epoch. Around 1922 he envisioned a more modern ‘theory and history of art historiography’, although nothing ever came of it. The second part of the paper shows that, even before 1924, there were attempts to write histories of art literature with sources organised by literary genres and not, as with Schlosser, according to epochs. It argues that the following categories had a major impact on the artistic discourse in early modern Europe: treatises on the arts, artist biographies, histories of artistic monuments, monographs on single artworks, poetry about artworks, topographical works, collection and exhibition catalogues, and art criticism
Four colours and the visual separation of adjacent areas: lessons from mapping and ancient paintings
Get PDFThat four colours were sufficient to differentiate adjacent countries on a map was a 19th century conjecture which has taken 150 years to prove mathematically. In a different sphere, and two and a half millennia earlier in Ancient Greece, many painters including Apelles favoured the use of four colours. A story recounted by Pliny in which three or four colours were used to differentiate thin lines, however, serves to link these seemingly disparate observations of the mathematical and the artistic. Furthermore, the use of such few colours to achieve differentiation of adjacent areas can thus be seen to date back to classical times, if not beyond
Coins and Winckelmann. Winckelmann and coins
Get PDFJohann Joachim Winckelmann collected coins and cited them extensively in his History of Ancient Art and other works. An analysis of his use of them shows that, although he had a good knowledge of them and the relevant literature, he regarded them as being of less importance than the other arts. Nevertheless, his interest inaugurated a new art historical approach to the study of ancient coinage, which was adopted or modified by later important numismatists, such as Joseph Eckhel in Vienna in the eighteenth century and Barclay Head in London in the nineteenth century. Consequently, his views were very influential on the subject, having an impact for some two hundred years, until the middle of the twentieth century.
Keywords: Joseph Eckhel, Barclay Head, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, numismatic
Tracing cultural values through popular art historiographies: Australian popular magazines and the visual arts
Get PDFThis article explores histories of how the visual arts and art history have been covered in the Australian popular media. Focusing on popular magazines of the mid-twentieth century (such as Pix and The Australian Women’s Weekly) it analyses under-considered examples of how these magazines presented art history to broad Australian audiences, as well as how these magazines facilitated and revealed diverse audience engagement with the arts. Through these case studies the article argues for the benefits of using intermedial methodologies of popular art historiography, in order to trace and analyse histories of cultural value and popular arts engagement in Australia
Julius Lange (19 June 1838-20 August 1896)
Get PDFA brief biography and survey of the writings of Julius Lange, an art historian and brother of Carl Lange, the psychologist, who was best known in connection with the James-Lange theory of emotion. Aside from his lecture about Michelangelo’s idiosyncratic relation to his marble blocks, written after the Michelangelo celebrations of 1875, we present the English-speaking audience with a review of the publications of Greek grave stelae and three lectures tracing the history of human gestures as they appear and then disappear within the history of art. These are the hand laid on the chest, the heavenward gaze, and the unusual straddling stance. The latter was then further expanded by Johan Jakob Tikkanen in his immortal, unforgotten ‘Studien über den Ausdruck in der Kunst’
Connoisseurship today between “top-down design” and “bottom-up’ capabilities
Get PDFIt is yet unknown if, in the foreseeable future, thanks to rapid increases in artificial intelligence capabilities, databases will take over standard tasks of art historians, such as the stylistic classification of drawings into centuries and schools and the attribution of works to specific artists. However, the digital availability of an almost unimaginably huge volume of pictorial material has already led to major changes in art historical work with Old Master drawings. In an initial step, this paper proposes using the terms ‘top-down design’ and ‘bottom-up processes’, borrowed from the book The Evolution of Minds by American philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, to describe the re-positioning of the concept of connoisseurship in light of the digitisation of nearly all collections of drawings in the world. A second step highlights the particular insights that a digital approach to the object can generate in terms of the materiality of the drawing, which will make it necessary to modify the traditional concept of connoisseurship and art historical expertise
Heritage, history and heterotopia at Angkor Wat Review of: The second volume of Michael Falser, Angkor Wat: A Transcultural History of Heritage, Berlin/Boston Walter de Gruyter, 2020, Two Volumes, 1150 pp, approx.1500 photos/maps/illustration/sketches/notes, epilogues, bibliography, index, $198.99, ISBN 978-3-11-033572-9/ e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-033584-2.
Get PDFFalser’s voluminous, richly illustrated and meticulously researched book deals with the colonial and postcolonial history of the twelfth century Khmer monument, Angkor Wat. Covering the 150 years (1860 to 2010) history of the temple, spanning Europe and Asia, it sets out to show how the monument and its reputation were made, unmade and re-made in Europe as well as in Asia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as culture, science and politics became entwined. In Falser’s words, ‘This book project investigates the temple’s material traces and architectural forms as well as the literary and visual representations of the structure, with a view to analysing global processes of transfer and translation as well as the recent proliferation of hybrid forms of art, architecture and cultural heritage.
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