Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s [Paperback]

Christopher S. Wood (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2003

This book introduces to an English-language audience the writings of the so-called New Vienna School of art history. In the 1930s Hans Sedlmayr (1896-1984) and Otto Pächt (1902-1988) undertook an ambitious extension of the formalist art historical project of Alois Riegl (1858-1905). Sedlmayr and Pächt began with an aestheticist conception of the autonomy and irreducibility of the artistic process. At the same time they believed they could read entire cultures and worldviews in the work of art. The key to this contextualist alchemy was the concept of "structure," a kind of deep formal property that the work of art shared with the world. Sedlmayr and Pächt's project immediately caught the attention of thinkers like Walter Benjamin who were similarly impatient with traditional empiricist scholarship. But the new project had its dark side. Sedlmayr used art history as a vehicle for a sweeping critique of modernity that soon escalated into nationalist and outright fascist polemic, even while Pächt, a Jew, was forced into exile. Sedlmayr and the whole scholarly project of Strukturanalyse were sharply repudiated by Meyer Schapiro and later Ernst Gombrich.After an introductory essay, the book opens with two selections from Riegl. Following this are essays by Sedlmayr, Pächt, Guido Kaschnitz-Weinberg, and Fritz Novotny, all dating from the 1930s. The book closes with the divergent responses of Benjamin (1933) and Schapiro (1936). The difference of opinion between these two key voices raises again the question of the legitimacy and effectiveness of the method, and reveals the analogies between the New Vienna School project and the antiempiricist cultural histories of our own time. The book also contains an extensive bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...illuminates the history of the discipline and its importation of the insights and ideals of other disciplines, such as science." Margaret Olin CAA Reviews

About the Author

Christopher S. Wood is Professor in the Department of History of Art, Yale University. He is the author of Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape, and the editor of The Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s (Zone Books, 2000).

Product Details

• Paperback: 488 pages
• Publisher: Zone (August 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890951153
• ISBN-13: 978-1890951153
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,024,653 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Methods ALWAYS Reflect Worldview  Often Unintentionally, October 19, 2000

By 

J. Duncan Berry (Yarmouth Port, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s (Hardcover)

Wood has done a fantastic job of assembling a representative group of texts that documents the emergence and impact of a relatively obscure school of art historical research. But its obscurity, thankfully, is now a thing of the past.

What makes this material so fascinating is that wrapped up in an academic debate one would normally consider to be a dry and remote subject - art historical methodology - are enormously important philosophical and political issues that are just as vital today as when the debate originally took place (the 1930s).

Wood does an absolutely singular job of delineating the cast of characters, setting the stage and describing the plot. To his great credit, he has also selected essays for translation, many of which appear for the first time in English, that illustrate the issues in compelling ways. One only wishes that more could have been incorporated - especially translations of Hans Sedlmayr's 1929 introduction to Riegl's Collected Essays, his 1925 piece on "Shaped Vision," and Otto Pächt's article on Michael Pacher.

What Wood demonstrates is that continuing interest in the Vienna School of Art History, and its primary protagonist Alois Riegl (three of whose main books were finally translated into English nearly a century after their original publication), constitutes a curious demand for more translations of these vivid, multivalent texts after decades of relative neglect.

I must confess that Wood does not see the full range of political issues imbedded within these writings. This is somewhat odd, because in a previously edited volume on Otto Pächt's own art historical methods in which these issues are brought right to the surface, Wood avoided a thorough discussion as well. Perhaps he is uncomfortable with this material, or perhaps he is simply "politically tone deaf." All interpretation is through the typically Leftist academic lens, but not surprisingly, the material is far too nuanced for so puerile an instrument. In short, much remains to be said about this material, and why it still fascinates modern collectivists on the political Left.

Read it yourself and see if you agree. You will not regret the time spent. If you are an art history "buff," student or professor, this is simply MUST reading.