We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2023
Evolutionism is dead.
E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion.Freedom and compulsion … turn out not to be incompatibles.
Otto Pächt, ‘Alois Riegl’.If Strukturforschung was devoted to the integrity of the work of art it also had a theory of history that, in a sense, was committed to the integrity of history. Jan Bakoš calls this a ‘structural evolutionary conception of art history’. One could say that in this conception the structure of the work of interlocking that moved real history beyond mere ‘genetic’ links of the ‘first’ task of art history. This evolutionism ultimately comes to terms with Riegl’s mysterious notion of the Kunstwollen, which both Sedlmayr and Pächt embrace with qualifications.
In a very provocative way, Sedlmayr ended his essay on Riegl asking us to accept the theoretical premises that his forbear had established for contemporary art history:
The notion that art is not an autonomous,
irreducible, and irreplaceable expressive
possibility of the human mind, but rather an epiphenomenon.
The view that regards individuals as primary
and the only real entities, and sees groups as
merely a sum or the epitome of such individuals,
and for which, therefore, the collective
intellectual formations grounded in these groups
do not constitute real entities, but instead mere nominal fictions.
Quite specifically, the idea of the unity and
immutability of human nature and reason …
The view that the artist is either imitating or stylizing an unchanging nature …
The thesis that the entire movement of history is
only the result of individual forces working blindly
together, a network of individual causal threads.
The argument – made on empirical grounds – is that contemporary theory has validated Riegl. The result of course was an apparent holistic form of determinism, with obvious ominous tones when seen in retrospect.
Of course, both Riegl’s Kunstwollen and the Vienna approach to Strukturforschung hit a major brick wall in Gombrich’s influential critique of both in Art and Illusion.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
