25: Dec21

Under the Greek sky: New approaches to Winckelmann’s reception and historiography

Guest editors: Fiona K. A. Gatty (Oxford) & Amy C. Smith (Reading)

Introduction 25/GS1

Eckart Marchand (Warburg Institute), ‘Apostles of Good Taste? The use and perception of plaster casts in the Enlightenment’ 25/EM1

Fiona K. A. Gatty (University of Oxford), ‘Re-dressing the balance: Winckelmann, Greek costume and the Ideal’ 25/FG1

Aris Sarafianos (University of Ioannina), ‘Convenient misunderstandings: Winckelmann’s History of Art and the reception of meteorocultural models in Britain’ 25/AS1

Andrew Burnett (Independent), ‘Coins and Winckelmann. Winckelmann and coins’ 25/AB1

Amy C. Smith (University of Reading), ‘Winckelmann’s influence on the Neoclassical reception of Greek vases’ 25/ACS1

The Influence of the Vienna School of Art History II: The 100th Anniversary of Max Dvořák’s Death

With the editorial assistance of Tomáš Murár (Czech Academy of Sciences)

Tereza Hrdličková (Charles University in Prague) and Tomáš Murár (Czech Academy of Sciences), ‘Conference report’ 25/HM1

Csilla Markója (Eötvös Lorand Research Network, Budapest), ‘Everyday life at the Dvořák Seminar, on the basis of contemporary sources. Addenda to the history of the Vienna School of Art History’ 25/CM1

Martin Horáček (Palacký University Olomouc, and the Faculty of Architecture, Brno University of Technology), ‘Max Dvořák: Catechism of Conservation for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries?’ 25/HM1

Rostislav Švácha (Charles University in Prague), ‘”A higher architectural unity”: Max Dvořák on new buildings in historical settings’ 25/RS1

Tomáš Murár (Czech Academy of Sciences), ‘Max Dvořák’s Michelangelo’ 25/TM1

Ivan Gerát (Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava and the University of Trnava), ‘Dvořák on the revolutionary temporalities of art’ 25/IG1

Barbara Czwik (Independent), ‘Max Dvořák, Rudolf Carnap and the question of Weltanschauung vs. Weltauffassung’ 25/BC1

Magdalena Kunińska (Jagiellonian University), ‘Identity built on myth. Fact and fiction in the foundational narrative of the ‘Cracow School of Art History’ and its relations to Vienna^’ 25/MK1

Milena Bartlová (Academy of Arts, Design and Architecture in Prague), ‘Max Dvořák in the 1960s: a re-construction of tradition’ 25/MB1

Stefaniia Demchuk (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv ), ‘The Mannerist “revolution”, Dvořák and Soviet Art History’ 25/SD1

Papers

Jim Berryman (University of Melbourne), ‘Bernard Smith and Robert Hughes: A Critical Dialogue’ 25/IB1

Hannah De Moor (KU Leuven) ,‘Netherlandish carved altarpieces: a historiographic overview with a focus on Sweden’ 25/HdM

Ivan Foletti (Masaryk University, Brno) and Adrien Palladino (Masaryk University, Brno), ‘Nomadic arts in emigration: Russian diaspora, Czechoslovakia, and the broken dream of a borderless Europe (1918–45)’ 25/IF1

Allison Kim (Wake Forest University), ‘Today as history: Vasari’s Naples Resurrection and visual memory’ 25/AK1

Stefanie Leibetseder (Independent), ‘Wilhelm Vöge’s sonnet “On the platform of Strasbourg Cathedral” and his monograph on Niclas Hagnower’ 25/SL1

Daniel Spaulding, (University of Wisconsin – Madison), ‘Panofsky’s Antinomies’ 25/DS1

Kate Warren (The Australian National University), ‘Tracing cultural values through popular art historiographies: Australian popular magazines and the visual arts’ 25/KW1

Document

Susanna Avery-Quash (National Gallery, London) and Elizabeth Goodall (Southampton City Art Gallery), ‘Crossing Borders to engage People through Art: Education and Outreach at Southampton City Art Gallery, 1974–2008’ 25/AQG1

The work of Julius Lange – translations and commentary

Introduction: Karl Johns (Independent), ‘Julius Lange (19 June 1838-20 August 1896)’ 25/KJ1

Kensy Cooperrider (Independent), ‘The many meanings of a gestural motif’ 25/KC1

Eckart Marchand (Warburg Institute), ‘Studying gestures in art’ 25/EM2

Julius Lange,‘The Hand on the Breast’, tr . Karl Johns (Independent) 25/KL1

Julius Lange ‘The History of a Motif’, tr. Karl Johns (Independent) 25/KL2

Julius Lange, ‘Michelangelo and marble (Copenhagen Gads, 1876)’, tr. Karl Johns (Independent) 25/KL3

Julius Lange, ‘Attic Grave Stelae’, tr. Karl Johns (Independent) 25/KL4

Julius Lange ‘The history of an expression’, tr. Karl Johns (Independent) 25/KL5

Reviews

Jaynie Anderson (The University of Melbourne) ‘The invention of curatorship in Australia’. Review of: Recent Past. Writing Australian Art by Daniel Thomas, edited by Hannah Fink and Steven Miller, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales/Thames and Hudson, 1 December 2020, pp. 348, 119 col. plates, 14 b. & w. illus., Aus. $. 64.99. ISBN. 9781741741506. 25/JA1,

Swati Chemburkar (Jnanapravaha, Mumbai), ‘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. 25/SC1

Hans Christian Hönes (University of Aberdeen) ‘Painting Art History’. Review of: Léa Kuhn, Gemalte Kunstgeschichte. Bildgenealogien in der Malerei um 1800, Paderborn: Fink 2020, ISBN-13: 978-3-7705-6453-8, 333pp., EUR 69,00. 25/HCH2

Hans Christian Hönes (University of Aberdeen), ‘Out of the shadows? Discovering Mary Warburg’. Review of: Hedinger, Bärbel; Diers, Michael (Eds.): Mary Warburg. Porträt einer Künstlerin. Leben, Werk, München: Hirmer Verlag 2020, ISBN-13: 978-3-7774-3614-2, 535 S., EUR 68.00. 25/HCH1

Abstracts

Under the Greek sky: New approaches to Winckelmann’s reception and historiography

Guest editors: Fiona K. A. Gatty (Oxford) & Amy C. Smith (Reading)

Introduction 25/GS1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003458)

Abstract: A brief survey of the papers presented in the special section of the journal — Under the Greek sky: New approaches to Winckelmann’s reception and historiography

Key words: art historiography, Winckelmann

Eckart Marchand (Warburg Institute), ‘Apostles of Good Taste? The use and perception of plaster casts in the Enlightenment’ 25/EM1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003459)

Abstract: In his ‘Treatise on the Capacity for Sensitivity to the Beautiful in Art …’ Winckelmann compares the feeling of the beautiful in art with liquid plaster poured over the head of the Apollo. While this reference to plaster as a material is unusual, his view of casts as propagators of good taste was widely shared. By looking at reactions to casts and cast collections by authors such as Goethe, Christian Gottlob Heyne, John Flaxman and others, this article analyses the complex relationship of notions of good taste on the one side and the perception of plaster casts on the other.

Keywords: Good Taste, plaster, plaster casts, moulds, Goethe, Diderot

Fiona K. A. Gatty (University of Oxford), ‘Re-dressing the balance: Winckelmann, Greek costume and the Ideal’ 25/FG1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003460)

Abstract: The paper explores the overlooked attention Johann Joachim Winckelmann gave to clothing and clothed statues. It engages with Winckelmann’s self-fashioning, the costume-based analysis through which he traced the cultural trajectory of antique peoples, and his descriptive and rhetorical passages on dress. It identifies the invisible and immaterial qualities which Winckelmann attributed to ‘tasteful’ clothing, and proposes that the elegance of Greek clothing was a signifier for the manifestation and transposition of perfect bodily form to the Greek ideal. This re-thinking seeks to address the focus on the Greek male nude figure as his emblem of ideal beauty and proposes that we should integrate draped statues as well as nude ones into Winckelmann’s historic and aesthetic framework.

Keywords: Beauty, ideal, clothing, drapery; fashion, Greek clothing, ideal beauty, imitation, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, taste, Neoclassicism

Aris Sarafianos (University of Ioannina), ‘Convenient misunderstandings: Winckelmann’s History of Art and the reception of meteorocultural models in Britain’ 25/AS1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/UOBXJAH.00003462)

Abstract: This essay deals with two much misunderstood aspects of Winckelmann’s work, his notion of the relations between art and climate and the fierce disputes his environmental model of culture engendered in Britain. Revisiting present-day suspicions towards Winckelmann’s climate language as a reductive and determinist ‘curiosity’, this essay aims to restore its historical significance as an interactive way of exploring the interconnectedness between the development of art and its changing material contexts, and to reveal its special place in the birth of art history as a discipline.

The study of the British reception of Winckelmann’s climate theory remains a rich resource in the critical understanding and historiographical evaluation of his contribution in art history. The controversies it generated produced a mixed and fragmented picture. This essay retrieves the many social, professional, and national interests embedded in these climate-related controversies in art and suggests that such competing motivations marked indelibly understandings of Winckelmann’s art historical model as well as his standing in Britain.

Keywords: ancient Greece, climate, context, cultural history, Hippocrates, James Barry, medicine, moral and physical causes, sensation, Winckelmann and reception

Andrew Burnett (Independent), ‘Coins and Winckelmann. Winckelmann and coins’ 25/AB1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003463)

Abstract: Johann 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, numismatics

Amy C. Smith (University of Reading), ‘Winckelmann’s influence on the Neoclassical reception of Greek vases’ 25/ACS1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003464)

Abstract: While Johann Joachim’s Winckelmann influence on the Neoclassical taste for antiquities and its dissemination north of Italy is well known, it is rarely considered with regard to the study, acquisition, and use of ancient Greek vases. This article seeks to redress this lacuna, considering his enthusiasm for ancient Greek vases, known in his time as Campanian because of their findspots, visits to Neapolitan collections, and encouragement of others’ acquisition of these antiquities. It considers his introduction of these vases into his History of the Art of Antiquity (1764) and its revision, the value he and his predecessors put on such archaeological materials for the purposes of autopsy, his comparison of their drawings to those of Raphael, thus elevating the perceived and actual value of these otherwise humble antiquities. It also addresses Winckelmann’s precluded influence on the dissemination of the Neapolitan and Sicilian opinion, based on the evidence of inscriptions, that ‘Campanian’ and some other vases found in Italy were produced by ancient Greeks.

Keywords: Cumae, Campania, Greek vases, Felice Maria Mastrilli, Meidias hydria, Naples, Neoclassicism, Nola, Joachim von Sandrart, Johann Joachim Winckelmann

The Influence of the Vienna School of Art History II: The 100th Anniversary of Max Dvořák’s Death

With the editorial assistance of Tomáš Murár (Czech Academy of Sciences)

Tereza Hrdličková (Charles University in Prague) and Tomáš Murár (Czech Academy of Sciences), ‘Conference report’ 25/HM1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003465)

Abstract : The report concludes the results of the international conference organized on 15-16 April 2021 by the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences to commemorate 100 years since the death of Czech born Viennese art historian Max Dvořák’ (1874–1921). It shows the wide range of professional work that Dvořák covered during his short life as well as wide range of possibilities of how his work influenced the art history elaborated after his death. The report also shows the plurality in which Dvořák’s art historical research is interpreted today.

Key words: Max Dvořák’, Vienna School of Art History, international conference, anniversary

Abstract: Discussing 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.

Key words: Vienna School, daily life, Johannes Wilde, Dvořák seminar, methods

Abstract: Max Dvořák’s Catechism of conservation [Katechismus der Denkmalpflege], first published during the 1914–18 war, is considered a milestone in the history of heritage conservation. The book emerged out of specific political circumstances, as part of the political agenda of Archduke Franz Ferdinand d’Este, heir to the Austrian imperial throne. Although the archduke’s involvement may complicate the book’s legacy, the mission of the Catechism is humanistic and open to general audiences regardless of nationality, citizenship or class affiliation. The paper examines Catechism of conservation from the standpoint of its relevance for contemporary heritage conservation. Do Dvořák’s main concerns differ from the concerns of the current generation of conservationists? Which of Dvořák’s points seem outdated, and which are still relevant? How does Dvořák’s approach to heritage value meet current challenges?

Keywords: Max Dvořák, heritage conservation, Katechismus der Denkmalpflege, Franz Ferdinand d’Este, heritage value, world heritage

Rostislav Švácha (Charles University in Prague), ‘”A higher architectural unity”: Max Dvořák on new buildings in historical settings’ 25/RS1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003468)

Abstract: In the early 20th century, heritage conservation in Central Europe extended the focus of its interest to old towns seen as a whole. Around the same time, the first buildings in the Modernist style began to be introduced into these historical urban settings, and so the question of their ‘contextuality’ arose for the first time. Several texts written by Max Dvořák reacted to both these processes. Dvořák was an opponent of Historicism, and so he did not object to the introduction of Modernism into old towns, but only on condition that a ‘higher architectural unity’ or ‘internal unity’ of old and new was created. Otto Wagner’s designs for the Karlsplatz in Vienna did not meet with Dvořák’s approval because they broke away too radically from the old architectural culture and did not work towards a ‘higher unity’. Dvořák cooperated with the Club for Old Prague on the conservation of heritage sites in Prague. However, the Club had a greater predilection for Modernism than he did. The problem with the terms used by Dvořák lies in their aesthetic nature. This means that they are too open to subjective interpretations.

Key words: preservation, old towns, Modernist architecture, aesthetics, Otto Wagner, Klub Za starou Prahu, Pavel Janák, Cubism in architecture

Tomáš Murár (Czech Academy of Sciences), ‘Max Dvořák’s Michelangelo’ 25/TM1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003469)

Abstract: It 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.

Key words: Max Dvořák, Michelangelo, Mannerism, modernism, El Greco, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, postwar Vienna, Vienna School of Art History

Ivan Gerát (Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava and the University of Trnava), ‘Dvořák on the revolutionary temporalities of art’ 25/IG1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003470)

Abstract: This text discusses the relations between temporality and art in some elucidative texts written by Max Dvořák (1874–1921) in the last years of his short life. Dvořák did not hesitate to see medieval (or older) art as art but he explicitly talked about a change in the understanding of art, or a new concept of art. He described the radical multi-level changes of this concept as ‘an imaginative revolution’, which started a departure from ‘a period of decadence’. However, a closer look at the meanings of ‘revolution’ in several early twentieth century thinkers’ texts and actions (for example these by Lenin, Trotsky and Freud) reveals substantial temporal differences in the way it was understood.

Keywords: art, temporality, revolution, religion, idolatry

Barbara Czwik (Independent), ‘Max Dvořák, Rudolf Carnap and the question of Weltanschauung vs. Weltauffassung’ 25/BC1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003471)

Abstract: This paper takes a comparative approach to the later work of Max Dvořák (Czechia 1874–1921) and the early writings of Rudolf Carnap (Germany 1891–USA 1970). The texts will be viewed in their context, with a particular eye to the historical conditions that shaped the problems tackled by both thinkers. My starting point is the dispute around the concepts of Weltanschauung (world-view) and wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung (scientific world-conception) that took place in the 1920s. On the basis of this dispute, it would be easy to conclude that Dvořák’s Geistesgeschichte (often translated as “history of ideas” or “intellectual history”) is the direct opposite of Carnap’s Wissenschaftstheorie (theory of science). However, as this study will prove, such a view is inadequate.

The first section concerns the intellectual starting situation of the two thinkers under discussion. The situation in which Dvořák and Carnap operated was shaped by currents rooted in the Enlightenment and in Romanticism. The second section will address what is usually called the nineteenth-century German Bildungstradition (roughly, “educational tradition”; see below), which is relevant to both Dvořák and Carnap, approaching it as a variant of Enlightenment culture. The third section will describe those aspects of the philosophy of Wilhelm Dilthey—whose own work was rooted in this specifically German tradition—which was a common source of inspiration for both thinkers, and forms a connection between their respective bodies of work. Building on this, the fourth section will look in detail at Dilthey’s reception in Dvořák and Carnap. Finally, I will demonstrate that Carnap and Dvořák’s approaches are not opposed at all. Rather, they complement and complete one another.

Keywords: Max Dvořák, Wilhelm Dilthey, Rudolf Carnap, Weltanschauung, wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung

Abstract: Widely 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’.

Keywords: Marian Sokołowski, Vienna School, Art Historiograhy, Adam Małkiewicz, Cracow School of Art History

Milena Bartlová (Academy of Arts, Design and Architecture in Prague), ‘Max Dvořák in the 1960s: a re-construction of tradition’ 25/MB1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003461)

Abstract: The impact of Max Dvořák is habitually considered to consist of reading his texts. I would like to argue that the key aspect is rather an interpretation and representation and that their mode depends on specific conditions of time and place. A recapitulation of renewed interest in Dvořák in Czech art historiography during the 1960s recognizes the strategies that were used to adapt his “idealistic” methodology for the use of the period Marxist-Leninist scholarship. It was only due to success of this re-interpretation campaign that Dvořák was able to fill the position of the “father of Czech art history”.

Key words: Max Dvořák (1874-1921), history of ideas, history of art history, Marxism, 1960s

Stefaniia Demchuk (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv ), ‘The Mannerist “revolution”, Dvořák and Soviet Art History’ 25/SD1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003473)

Abstract: Max 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.

Keywords: Mannerism, Max Dvořák, the Vienna School of Art History, Soviet art historiography

Papers

Jim Berryman (University of Melbourne), ‘Bernard Smith and Robert Hughes: A Critical Dialogue’ 25/IB1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003472)

Abstract: This paper explores the origins and development of the public dialogue between Bernard Smith (1916-2011) and Robert Hughes (1938-2012). Smith and Hughes were giants of Australian art history of the twentieth century. Both, however, followed very different career paths: Smith’s readership was primarily academic and local, while Hughes’s audience was popular and international. And yet, despite their differences, a considerable amount of exchange existed between the two. After first locking horns in 1961, Smith and Hughes engaged in public debate intermittently for more than four decades. This dialogue, which transpired in the pages of published sources, especially their reviews and books, was characterised by acrimony and bitterness, as well as moments of conciliation and mutual respect. When contesting issues of common interest, both writers played to their natural strengths. Smith was dominant in the field of art history, while Hughes had the upper hand in art criticism. Each, however, encroached upon the other’s area of expertise: Smith wrote art criticism and Hughes wrote art history. Conflict was greatest in areas where their respective spheres of authority overlapped. Although tensions receded after 1964, when Hughes left Australia, they did not end. Key topics of debate included abstract art and modernism; provincialism and internationalism; and most importantly the vexed issue of Australian cultural isolation, which was defined in terms of Australian art and its relationship to European art history (or, as Smith termed it, ‘Renaissance tradition’).

Key words:Bernard Smith (1916-2011), Robert Hughes (1938-2012), Australian art history, modernism, art criticism

Hannah De Moor (KU Leuven) ,‘Netherlandish carved altarpieces: a historiographic overview with a focus on Sweden’ 25/HdM (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003475)

Abstract: Netherlandish carved altarpieces have attracted much new scholarly attention over the last decades. The objective of this article is first to provide a comprehensive historiography of the existing body of research, and second to outline the main research trends from the late nineteenth century until now. Even though Sweden still houses no less than thirty-eight late medieval Netherlandish carved altarpieces, about ten retable fragments, and two wooden Malines statuettes,and much has already been written on the pieces preserved there, an extensive description of this research field is currently lacking. The third aim of this paper is to fill the remaining gap by providing an extensive status quaestionis of the research on Netherlandish carved altarpieces in Sweden.

Key words: Netherlandish carved altarpieces, Medieval sculpture, Sweden, Netherlandish art, retables

Ivan Foletti (Masaryk University, Brno) Adrien Palladino(Masaryk University, Brno), ‘Nomadic arts in emigration: Russian diaspora, Czechoslovakia, and the broken dream of a borderless Europe (1918–45)’ 25/IF1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003476)

Abstract: In 1925, Nikodim Kondakov died in emigration in Prague. During his last years in Czechoslovakia, the Byzantinist had been asked to teach on nomadic art, a topic to which he had devoted only his early career. This essay aims to understand why Kondakov returned to these interests. Kondakov was indeed not the only scholar drawn to the material culture of nomadic peoples, a topic which became fundamental in Czechoslovakia, a new “nation-state” seeking its identity. This movement was further fostered by the presence of numerous Russian émigrés in Czechoslovakia, who developed the idea of “Eurasia”. These notions came to be explored by scholars from diverse backgrounds, living in Mitteleuropa, a space then shattered by the rise of totalitarianisms and WWII.

Key words: Russian emigration, nomadic art, Eurasia, Czechoslovakia, Interwar period, Byzantine studies

Allison Kim (Wake Forest University), ‘Today as history: Vasari’s Naples Resurrection and visual memory’ 25/AK1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003477)

Abstract: Giorgio 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.

Key words: Vasari, painting, Renaissance, Italy, imitation, invention, memory

Stefanie Leibetseder (Independent), ‘Wilhelm Vöge’s sonnet “On the platform of Strasbourg Cathedral” and his monograph on Niclas Hagnower’ 25/SL1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003478)

Abstract: Wilhelm Vöge (1868–1952) was a pioneer of German art history whose scientific work connects profound historical research with a language of description very close to poetry, meant to concentrate his scientific findings in order to get into contact with the creative side of the artistic self. Therefore, it is interesting that a yet unknown sonnet exists about the Cathedral of Strasbourg and some famous artists of the Upper Rhine, among them Grünewald, the master of the Isenheim altar and the Stuppacher Madonna, written by Vöge himself at the back of his personal copy of his Nicolas-Hagnower-monograph (1929/30) that extrapolates Vöges scientific findings poetically.

Keywords: Wilhelm Vöge, art history, First World War, Niclas Hagnower, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Albrecht Dürer, Mathis Neithart gen. Grünewald, Stuppacher Madonna, sonnet, lyric, Ludwig Thormaehlen

Daniel Spaulding, (University of Wisconsin – Madison), ‘Panofsky’s Antinomies’ 25/DS1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003479)

Abstract: This article reconstructs the Neo-Kantian framework of Erwin Panofsky’s theoretical essays of the 1910s and 1920s, demonstrating that the schematic subject/object relation developed in these publications is also implicitly at work in Panofsky’s Perspective as Symbolic Form as well as early iconographic studies such as Hercules am Scheidewege. The article then draws on György Lukács and Gillian Rose to argue that there is a circularity in Panofsky’s method whereby the empirically given assumes the role of a ‘quasitranscendental’ a priori object, and furthermore that Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of culture (with which Panofsky was in close dialog) shares this circularity. The aim of this article is not primarily to expose inconsistencies in Panofsky’s method, but rather to suggest that the impasses that art history encountered in its attempts to formalize itself as a discipline may serve as the point of departure for a future materialist art history.

Key words: Erwin Panofsky, Ernst Cassirer, György Lukács, Gillian Rose, iconography, Neo-Kantianism

Kate Warren (The Australian National University), ‘Tracing cultural values through popular art historiographies: Australian popular magazines and the visual arts’ 25/KW1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003480)

Abstract: This 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.

Key words: Australian art history, popular art historiography, magazines, The Australian Women’s Weekly, Pix, popular media, media histories

Document

Abstract: Southampton City Art Gallery is a much admired place of energy and activity. This article investigates the ambitious educational provision developed by Southampton’s art gallery for three decades from the appointment of its first Keeper of Education in 1974. It aims to record a significant moment in the history of UK museum education and to consider approaches that may be useful for museums today as they seek to re-connect audiences with art after a testing period of non-physical access due to the global pandemic. It shares new research undertaken for the exhibition, Creating a National Collection: The Partnership between Southampton City Art Gallery and The National Gallery (Southampton, 28 May-5 September 2021), the major outcome of an Art Fund Curatorial Traineeship project between the two institutions (2019–21).

Key words: Southampton City Art Gallery, The National Gallery, learning, community engagement, leadership, collaboration

The work of Julius Lange – translations and commentary

Introduction: Karl Johns (Independent), ‘Julius Lange (19 June 1838-20 August 1896)’ 25/KJ1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003482)

Abstract: A 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’.

Key words: Michelangelo, grave stellae, gestures, hand on chest, heavenward gaze, straddling stance

Kensy Cooperrider (Independent), ‘The many meanings of a gestural motif’ 25/KC1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003483)

Abstract: In an insightful 1887 essay, the Danish art historian Julius Lange explored the many meanings of a common but overlooked gesture—that of bringing a hand to one’s chest. Through a close study of how this motif changed across centuries of European art, he raised questions about the nature of bodily meaning, its multiplicity, and the forces that shape it—questions that contemporary gesture researchers still grapple with. His essay also raised questions—tantalizing if perhaps unanswerable—about how gesture in art compares to gesture in life.

Keywords: gesture, painting, expression, emotion, pointing

Eckart Marchand (Warburg Institute), ‘Studying gestures in art’ 25/EM2 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003484)

Abstract: In 1887, when art history was concerned with aethetics and the study of individual artist, Lange, like Warburg after him, encouraged the discussion of broader issues of representation, positioning his study of the representation of a human gesture at the intersection of psychology and art history. Lange inspired J.J. Tikkanen and others to conduct more thorough histories of individual gestures, while the enquiry in the formation and tradition of human expressive gestures in art was continued by Warburg, Saxl and Gombrich. My introduction traces these developments from the viewpoint of a more recent, Baxandallian, approach that defines gesture as entirely conventional.

Keywords: gestures, Julius Lange, J.J. Tikkanen, Fritz Saxl, Aby Warburg, Ernst H. Gombrich, Michael Baxandall, pathos formula

Julius Lange,‘The Hand on the Breast’, tr . Karl Johns (Independent) 25/KL1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003485)

Abstract: Originally published as ‘Haenden paa Brystet,’ Tilskueren: Maanedsskrift for Literatur, Samfundsspørgsmaal og almenfattelige videnskabelige skildringer, 4^th year, 1887, June-July, pp. 455-471, August pp. 571-588, reprinted: Udvalgte skrifter af Julius Lange, udgivne af Georg Brandes og P. Købke, Andet bind, København: Det nordiske forlag, 1901, pp. 10-48.

Key words: motifs, hand on breast, gesture

Julius Lange ‘The History of a Motif’, tr. Karl Johns (Independent) 25/KL2 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003486)

Abstract: Originally published as ‘Et Motivs Historie’, Nordisk Tidskrift for vetenskap, konst och industri, Letterstedtska foereningen, 1888, pp. 475-494. Reprinted: Udvalgte skrifter af Julius Lange, udgivne af Georg Brandes og P. Købke, Andet bind, København: Det nordiske forlag, 1901, pp. 69-88.

Key words: the straddling stance, spread legs, masculinity, sweetness

Julius Lange, ‘Michelangelo and marble (Copenhagen Gads, 1876)’, tr. Karl Johns (Independent) 25/KL3 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003487)

Abstract: Originally published as ‘Michelangelo og marmoret (1876),’ Axel Sophus Guldberg ed., Fra Videnskabens Verden Almenfattelige Smaaskrifter af danske og norske Videnskabsmænd, 3^rd ser., Copenhagen: Gad, 1876, Julius Lange, Billedkunst skildringer och studier fra hjemmet og udlandet, København: P. G. Philipsens forlag, 1884, pp. 68-128. Reprinted: Udvalgte skrifter af Julius Lange, udgivne af Georg Brandes og P. Købke, Tredje bind, København: Det nordiske forlag, 1903, pp. 42-77. And in German translation as ‘Michelangelo und der Marmor,’ Julius Lange’s ausgewählte Schriften (1875-1885), herausgegeben von Georg Brandes und Peter Købke, unter Mitwirkung von Alfred Wien übersetzt von Ida Anders, Strasbourg: Heitz, Erster Band, 1911, pp. 45-78.

Key words: block, Dinocrates, Alexander the Great, colossus, relationship to the marble, idea, figure in the block, sonnets, Varchi

Julius Lange, ‘Attic Grave Stelae’, tr. Karl Johns (Independent) 25/KL4 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003488)

Abstract: Originally published as ‘Attiske Gravmæler,’ Nordisk Tidskrift for vetenskap, konst och industri, 1896, pp. 27-45, reprinted: Udvalgte skrifter af Julius Lange, udgivne af Georg Brandes og Peter Købke, Andet bind, København: Det nordiske forlag, 1901, pp. 385-400.

Key words: Attic, grave stellae, expression, ideal figures, emotional intimacy

Julius Lange ‘The history of an expression’, tr. Karl Johns (Independent) 25/KL5 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003489)

Abstract: Originally 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.

Key words: expressive corporeal movement, orientation to heaven, eye direction, Homeric poems, religiosity, devotion, tragedy, physiognomy

Reviews

Jaynie Anderson (The University of Melbourne) ‘The invention of curatorship in Australia’, Review of: Recent Past. Writing Australian Art by Daniel Thomas, edited by Hannah Fink and Steven Miller, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales/Thames and Hudson, 1 December 2020, pp. 348, 119 col. plates, 14 b. & w. illus., Aus. $. 64.99. ISBN. 9781741741506. 25/JA1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003490)

Abstract: Daniel Thomas’s first volume of collected writings is a small sample from about a thousand articles written over seventy years. From the time Thomas returned to Australia from Oxford to become the first curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1958, he emerged as a leading figure in the Australian art world. Then as the inaugural head of Australian art at the newly established National Gallery, Canberra (1978-1984), and as Director of the Art Gallery of Australia (1984-1990), he developed curatorship as a profession, created national collections with remarkable acquisitions, developed provenance research and much more. This book is essential reading for anyone who writes on Australian art.

Keywords: Australian art, abstract art, Bauhaus, curatorship, connoisseurship, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia

Swati Chemburkar (Jnanapravaha, Mumbai) 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. 25/SC1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00003491)

Abstract: Falser’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.’

Keywords: Angkor, Angkor Park, Angkor Wat, anastylosis, Apsara dance, heritage, hydraulic city, Khmer Rouge, UNESCO

Abstract: In her new book “Gemalte Kunstgeschichte” [Painted Art History] Léa Kuhn argues that the late 18^th-century saw not only the rise of modern art historiography as a scholarly discipline, but that artists increasingly painted pictures that reflected on their own historicity. Kuhn develops her argument through close-readings of three self-portraits by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, William Dunlap, Marie-Gabrielle Capet. This review discusses her approach and its the insights it offers for the study of art historiography.

Keywords: self portraiture, self-reflexivity, genealogy, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, William Dunlap, Marie-Gabrielle Capet

Abstract: This book review discusses the lavishly illustrated catalogue raisonné of the work of Mary Warburg, nee Hertz. Warburg is undoubtedly best known as the wife of art historian Aby Warburg. This catalogue aims to highlight, for the first time, Warburg’s independent achievements as an artist. The review highlights the merits of the book, in particular its in-depth contextualization of Warburg’s work within the social and cultural history of Hamburg. The review also reflects more broadly on the merits of such large-scale cataloguing endeavours today, especially when ‘minor figures’ such as Mary Warburg are concerned.

Keywords: Mary Warburg, Aby Warburg, women artists, middlebrow, dilettantism

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