Notes on Franz Wickhoff’s School and Max Dvořák’s Italian Renaissance studies based on new archival materials

The article deals with Franz Wickhoff´s influence on Max Dvořák´s formulation of his late method of art history today widely known as ‘Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte’. The article proposes a thesis that already in Wickhoff´s thinking an inclination toward the ‘geistesgeschichtliche’ interpretation of art history can be evident, as shown on a comparison between his and Dvořák´s interest in the Italian Renaissance art. The other way of Wickhoff´s influence on Dvořák´s art history is shown as grounded in their deep personal relationship that is documented in their mutual correspondence from the early 20th century, recently rediscovered in the Archive of the Institute of Art History of the Vienna University

Notes on Franz Wickhoff’s School and Max Dvořák’s Italian Renaissance studies based on new archival materials

The article deals with Franz Wickhoff´s influence on Max Dvořák´s formulation of his late method of art history today widely known as ‘Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte’. The article proposes a thesis that already in Wickhoff´s thinking an inclination toward the ‘geistesgeschichtliche’ interpretation of art history can be evident, as shown on a comparison between his and Dvořák´s interest in the Italian Renaissance art. The other way of Wickhoff´s influence on Dvořák´s art history is shown as grounded in their deep personal relationship that is documented in their mutual correspondence from the early 20th century, recently rediscovered in the Archive of the Institute of Art History of the Vienna University

Devouring One´s Own Tail

Like the ancient ouroboros devouring its own tail, we are products of our own education, our own rules and methods of cognizing and shaping the world. As such, we are also their victims, living mostly by habit and inherited rules of conduct questioning them only in the moments of crises and sometimes even not then. The purpose of this book is to explore the nature of autopoiesis or the ability of society and its various forms to create, re-create and maintain itself, by putting it in the broader interdisciplinary perspective as having been established within the project itself. The mark of the book is its broad interdisciplinary quality, stretching from philosophy, religious studies and literary theory to new media, linguistics, and political theory.Publishe

Art as a Principle and Pattern. Vojtěch Birnbaum’s Concept and Method of Art History. 17/TM1 English version of Umění jako princip a zákonitost. K dějinám a metodologii umění Vojtěcha Birnbauma, Archiv výtvarného umění, z. s., Kostelec nad Černými lesy, 2017.

This book was published to coincide with an exhibition titled Vojtěch Birnbaum: The Principle of Art organised by the Archive of Fine Arts at the Centre for Contemporary Art DOX in Prague in 2017, commemorating the 140th anniversary of the birth of art historian Vojtěch Birnbaum (1877–1934), a pioneering figure in the scholarly study of art in the Czech lands. It explores Birnbaum’s concepts of a ‘principle’ and ‘pattern’ in art, which he developed and wrote about in the 1920s and 1930s. The book also traces the roots of Birnbaum’s theoretical work within the broader context of European art-historical and philosophical thinking and describes the impact his concept of ‘development’ in art had on the next generation of art historians, who became formative figures in the evolution of this field

“A work of art is an object that necessitates contemplation”. Latency of visual studies within the Vienna School of Art History?

This article investigates a research method of the so-called Vienna School of Art History, mainly its transformation by Max Dvořák around the First World War. The article suggests the possible influence of Georg Simmel’s philosophy on Dvořák in this time, evident mainly in Dvořák’s interpretation of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s art, written by Dvořák in 1920 and published posthumously in 1921. This another view on the Vienna School of Art History is then researched in writings on Pieter Bruegel the Elder by Dvořák’s students Hans Sedlmayr and Charles de Tolnay when Tolnay extended Dvořák’s thinking and Sedlmayr challenged its premises – both Tolnay and Sedlmayr thus in the same time interpreted Bruegel’s art differently, even though they were both Dvořák’s students. The article then suggests a possible interpretative relationship of the Vienna School of Art History after its transformation by Max Dvořák with today’s approaches to art (history), mainly with the so-called visual studies

Kunstwollen: Transfer a prekérní přežívání jednoho umělecko-teoretického pojmu v českých dějinách umění 20. století

The influential art-historical concept of Kunstwollen or ‘will-to-art’, connected first with the socalled Vienna School of Art History, then transferred into Czech art history and therein surviving to this day, was introduced in three art-historical studies by Alois Riegl (1858–1905). While the concept has found numerous interpretations, these share the incapacity to define clearly what the concept means in Riegl’s own theoretical and methodological framework. In order to gain a better grasp of the concept, the article inquires into Riegl’s understanding of temporality with respect to Kunstwollen, employs several English translation in order to highlight the structure of the German term, and finally analyses the theoretical work of the Czech art historian and Riegl’s former student Vojtěch Birnbaum (1877–1934), whose theoretical claims regarding the arts and their laws are demonstrably inspired by Riegl’s concept, while transforming it and developing it further. Immediately after World War One, Birnbaum’s teaching had an impact on a number of students of Charles University, Prague, and Riegl’s concept was thus part of the formative process of modern Czech history of art.Článek sleduje problematiku přenosu a užití vlivného uměleckohistorického konceptu začátku 20. století mezi takzvanou Vídeňskou školou dějin umění a českým dějepisem umění. Zkoumaný koncept je znám jako Kunstwollen a pochází ze tří významných uměleckohistorických studií Aloise Riegla (1858–1905). Tento pojem od svého prvního užití na konci 19. století přežívá v uměleckohistorickém přemýšlení až dodnes. V odborné literatuře existuje mnoho interpretací, avšak všechny tyto studie mají jedno společné; nejsou schopny s jistotou určit, co Kunstwollen znamená v jeho teoretickém a metodologickém rámci. Aby byl schopen dostat se blíže k podstatě tohoto Rieglova pojmu, zkoumá autor Rieglovo chápání času v rámci Kunstwollen, užívá anglických překladů původně německého slova pro pochopení jeho struktury a nakonec zkoumá teoretickou práci českého historika umění Vojtěcha Birnbauma (1877–1934), který byl na počátku 20. století Rieglovým žákem. V jeho teoretickém uvažování o umění a jeho zákonitostech lze sledovat inspiraci Rieglovým Kunstwollen. Birnbaum však nekopíroval Rieglovu práci, rozvinul ji a transformoval. V letech po první světové válce Birnbaum ovlivnil řadu studentů pražské Univerzity Karlovy; Rieglův koncept tak byl součástí procesu formování moderního českého dějepisu umění.424

Nighthawks in The Age of Anxiety. The work of Edward Hopper of the 1940s and a "Baroque Eclogue" by Wystan Hugh Auden from the perspective of an intermediality.

The main aim of the Master Thesis is the work of the 1940s by the American painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967) in a relationship to the long poem by Wystan Hugh Auden The Age of Anxiety. A Baroque Eclogue (1947). The Thesis in ten chapters researches Hopper's painting Nighthawks (1942), which is considered to be one of the most important works by Hopper from the war years. Unique position of this painting is reconstructed through intermedial projections and linkages towards the Auden's poem. Next to the interpretation of the intermedial relations, in the centre of the Thesis are time-space relations to Hopper's painting semantics due to period thoughs of temporality, atemporality and aperspectivism. An attention is also paid to the relation of the painting and phenomenology of temporal consciousness and continuance in connection with semantics of the space as "heterotopia"

Memoria et monumentum: Vojtěch Birnbaum's 'Baroque Principle' and Antonín Engel's 'The Essence of Monumentality'

The article focuses on the relationship between two works of art theory: 'The Baroque Principle in the History of Architecture', written in 1924, and 'The Essence of Monumentality', written in 1944. It highlights possible theoretical references to the work of Czech art historian Vojtěch Birnbaum in the first half of the 1920s that can be found later in the ideas of Czech architect Antonín Engel in the first half of the 1940s. When the first edition of Birnbaum's study was published there was almost no response to its theoretical content. The work was viewed primarily as an attempt to rehabilitate the baroque as a concept and to understand the creative essence of the baroque. This article seeks to show that the Baroque principle was met with a response and began to spread after the publication of the second edition of the work in 1941, which seemed to get fit in the events of the 1940s. As Antonín Engel's Essence of Monumentality in Architecture implied in 1944, Birnbaum's 1924 theory, which discussed the need to tap into cultural memory and to work with it through the individuality of the artist in a baroque way as the natural direction of artistry, was met with recognition twenty years after it was first published.The article focuses on the relationship between two works of art theory: 'The Baroque Principle in the History of Architecture', written in 1924, and 'The Essence of Monumentality', written in 1944. It highlights possible theoretical references to the work of Czech art historian Vojtěch Birnbaum in the first half of the 1920s that can be found later in the ideas of Czech architect Antonín Engel in the first half of the 1940s. When the first edition of Birnbaum's study was published there was almost no response to its theoretical content. The work was viewed primarily as an attempt to rehabilitate the baroque as a concept and to understand the creative essence of the baroque. This article seeks to show that the Baroque principle was met with a response and began to spread after the publication of the second edition of the work in 1941, which seemed to get fit in the events of the 1940s. As Antonín Engel's Essence of Monumentality in Architecture implied in 1944, Birnbaum's 1924 theory, which discussed the need to tap into cultural memory and to work with it through the individuality of the artist in a baroque way as the natural direction of artistry, was met with recognition twenty years after it was first published

BEYOND THE MAN: Transformations of the image of the man in painting from the mid-1940s until the 1960s. Theoretical and methodological principles.

The dissertation thesis deals with the interpretation of the "beyond-the-man" concept, which is being interpreted, on one hand, as a part of the art-theoretical and art-historical European modernity of the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, on the other hand, as a theoretical and methodological starting point for an interpretation of the transformation of the human image in the painting of the second half of the 1940s until the beginning of the 1960s. The foundation for such an interpretation is an assumption of the necessary transformation of the intellectual concepts after the World War II, as it was postulated by Theodor W. Adorno and how it was researched by Giorgio Agamben and Miroslav Petříček in the political-philosophical discourse. The thesis thus researches the "beyond-the-man" concept in the theory and history of art of the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century in a way of it being as re-formulated art-creative concept after 1945, evident especially in abstract painting. The interpretation of the "beyond-the-man" concept is developed on reading of Fritz Novotny's interpretation of Paul Cézanne's art from the beginning of the 1930s. Novotny in Cézanne's painting described the concept of "beyond-the-man" (Außermenschlichkeit) as a breaking point of the..

Kunstwollen: The Transfer and Precarious Survival of an Artistic-Theoretical Concept in Czech Art History of the 20th Century

The influential art-historical concept of Kunstwollen or ‘will-to-art’, connected first with the socalled Vienna School of Art History, then transferred into Czech art history and therein surviving to this day, was introduced in three art-historical studies by Alois Riegl (1858–1905). While the concept has found numerous interpretations, these share the incapacity to define clearly what the concept means in Riegl’s own theoretical and methodological framework. In order to gain a better grasp of the concept, the article inquires into Riegl’s understanding of temporality with respect to Kunstwollen, employs several English translation in order to highlight the structure of the German term, and finally analyses the theoretical work of the Czech art historian and Riegl’s former student Vojtěch Birnbaum (1877–1934), whose theoretical claims regarding the arts and their laws are demonstrably inspired by Riegl’s concept, while transforming it and developing it further. Immediately after World War One, Birnbaum’s teaching had an impact on a number of students of Charles University, Prague, and Riegl’s concept was thus part of the formative process of modern Czech history of art