The subject of scientific art history according to Riegl ... and his followers

• Published in: Journal of art historiography Vol. 29; no. 29S2; pp. 1 - 10
• Main Author: Vidrih, Rebeka
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Glasgow Journal of Art Historiography 01.12.2023; Department of Art History, University of Birmingham
• Subjects: aby warburg; Academic disciplines; alois riegl; Art history; Artistic movements; Culture; ernst h. gombrich; erwin panofsky; frederick antal; heinrich wölfflin; Historical analysis; Historiography; Riegl, Alois (1858-1905); Science; t. j. clark; Visual arts; weltanschauung; worldview
• ISSN: 2042-4752
• DOI: 10.48352/uobxjah.00004359

Alois Riegl's self-imposed task of founding the truly modem, properly scientific art history is positioned within Wilhelm von Humboldt's concept of university with its postulate of Bildung durch Wissenschaft and Wilhelm Dilthey's discussion and definition of Geisteswissenschaften. All the human sciences, according to Dilthey, have a common subject, the socio-historical reality of humanity in its entirety, that is, everything in which human spirit has objectified itself.1 However, each particular human science studies only a part of that reality. In its formation, it isolates a particular content of that socio-historical reality, and it studies it only relatively, only from a limited perspective.2 Each particular human science should therefore be aware of its connection to other human sciences, of its participation in the great project of Geisteswissenschaften, whose final aim is education and cultivation of human beings.3 The meaning of the human sciences and their theory is 'to assist us with what we have to do in the world, with what we are able to make of ourselves, and with what we can do with the world and it with us'.4Faced with these requirements, constructing his 'historical grammar of the visual arts' as the foundation of 'art history as a scientific discipline', Riegl announced that 'we will be dealing with (1) elements; (2) the developmental history thereof; (3) the factors that determined that development'.5 First he had to establish the proper object for art history as a specific, autonomous scientific discipline. After indicating the five elements - the purpose, the materials, the technique, the motif and the relation between form and surface - that need to be considered when evaluating a work of art, he concluded that the way a work of art is fashioned, the 'how', the relation between form and surface, is the most artistic of the elements and therefore the most specific to the art historical discipline.6 Since all works of art of a certain period are constituted and binded by certain common elements,7 it is the style of a particular period that art history should really concentrate on.