Art history

The art history or art history is the study of the historical development of the visual arts and its iconography, iconology, as well as substantive determination. It examines and also describes the cultural function of art in terms of their artistic and ideological factors, as well as the creative process of the artist.

• 3.1 Central positions
• 3.2 Important research institutions
• 3.3 University Institute 3.3.1 Germany
• 3.3.2 Austria
• 3.3.3 Switzerland

Objects and aims of the History of Art

The history of the visual arts is accomplished by changing the social function and position of art, the theoretical conception of them as well as by the development of art forms and styles. The aim of the history of art (or art history ) is to question the artistic objects according to their contents ( iconography ) to determine their formal design, arrange the plants in space and time and pursuing their reception; this stylistic relationships are discussed on the one hand, on the other hand is trying to understand the historical context as a condition of an artwork or involve him to the understanding of the work.

In contrast to art criticism, art history generally chooses historical objects or at least tries to contemporary topics to approach with a scientifically proven, methodical approach defined. It is acknowledged that (scientific ) reception and interpretation are time-bound actions themselves.

The classic study objects of art history are European and Near Eastern works of painting and graphic art, sculpture and architecture in the period from the early Middle Ages to the present. Since about the second half of the 19th century are also items from the church treasures, the so-called minor arts, analyzed. The prehistory and early history of treated (also) the artistic development before the emergence of writing. The archeology and Egyptology treat (also) the artistic development of the early civilizations of the Mediterranean. The history of art devoted to the study of the historical development of European art from the date on which Christianity is in the 4th century in the Roman Empire state religion. In the present, the study area extends to the world's cultural influence zones of the so-called Western Hemisphere, so also about America or contemporary artists participating in the art market. The history of architecture is often affected by the history of art, although it is to be counted in the core of today's cultural studies. However, barely a general art history comes from without the mention of architectural history.

The art of non-European cultures and countries is outside of these countries in the respective country customers ( Chinese Studies, Arabic, African, etc.) miterforscht or in cross- disciplines such as anthropology. The History of Art opened since the first half of the 20th century (see Carl Einstein, Leo Frobenius ) and other cultures, such as the African or Asian art history. In addition, new forms of representation such as photography, media arts and genres, arts and crafts, design are investigated. Recent developments seen in the history of art, a picture science that - regardless of the artistic quality of an image - features and developments are analyzed (see, for example, also Game Studies ).

History of Art Research

The terms of art history or art history are a creation of the 19th century, dating back to Johann Joachim Winckelmann ( 1717-1768 ), who has taken in his works of art of the ancient world for the first time detailed stylistic studies. In the late 18th century Fiorillo presented at the University of Göttingen the foundations for art history as an academic subject. The second suggestion brought the theory of art, most notably Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Johann Gottfried Herder and the romance.

Foundations for the study of art designed by Karl Friedrich von Rumohr and Gustav Friedrich scales. It was founded as a specialized science on the one hand by historians such as Jacob Burckhardt, Herman Grimm and Carl Justi, which included the art in the general framework of cultural history. Second, from the beginning antiquarian sighting and order of traditional art, which was closely connected with the art collecting. From it the positivist and kennerschaftliche Art History ( Giovanni Morelli, Gottfried Semper ) emerged. A third root of the history of art came from the philosophy and aesthetics, by Heinrich Gustav Hotho, Karl Schnaase; many later art historians studied art history and philosophy ( Heinrich Wölfflin ).

Viewing art in antiquity

From an independent discipline of art history can speak only since the 19th century. In previous writings were mostly looking at art and biographical descriptions. The development there were preparing treatises composing and schriftstellernde artist, art writer, philosopher and art critic. Even in ancient times arise texts about art, however, describe how Lucian art in synesthetic form of Ekphrasen, or as in Pliny the elder art history as part of a general complete works ( Pliny the Elder: . Naturalis historia (History of Nature) ) deal with.

In a similar manner as part of a larger work on a different topic ( Architecture ) is employed by Vitruvius in his 33-22 incurred BC 10 books on the architecture and the art in which he concludes that the architecture of a primate have about the forms of fine art.

While the work in his time and in the following centuries attracted little attention, this changed in the Renaissance, in which Vitruvius' theories major artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo Da Vinci inspired to sketch. Meanwhile Illustration " The Vitruvian Man " is one of the most famous works of art and founded Vitruvius late fame.

Viewing art in the Renaissance

This practice will only be taken up again in the Renaissance of an author who had in common with Leonardo da Vinci, an extraordinary breadth of scientific and artistic activity field: Giorgio Vasari. Born in 1511 ( † 1574 ), architect, court painter to the Medici and writer at the same time acting as a biographer of contemporary Florentine artist was one of the first systematic preceding art historian. The creativity of his other occupations he showed as a writer: With the " Gothic ", which he described as barbaric ( Italian: Gotico ) as followers of ancient art and felt the "Renaissance", he invented key concepts that characterize art history today. His work " Le Vite de ' più eccellenti Architetti, Pittori et Scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a' tempi nostri " ( The Lives of the most eminent Italian architect, painter and sculptor, from Cimabue down to our own time) appeared 1550th A second, strongly revised edition with additional descriptions of artist Leon Battista Alberti, Albrecht Dürer, Andrea Palladio, inter alia, appeared in 1568 in these conditions for the first time the most important artists of an era were summarized in a factory, -. comparative part - described and classified according to their importance.

In 1604 published work " signs - Boeck " the Dutchman Karel van Mander led this tradition. Van Mander, too, was of the house of painter and teacher of such famous artists such as Frans Hals, before he worked as an author of art-historical writings. His three-part " painter - book" was the first north of the Alps, published art theoretical writing and addressed in the first part with the basics of the art, in the second with biographies of various ancient painters and famous Italian painter and in the third with related in Dutch painting mythological text sources.

Viewing art in the modern era ( since 1700 )

1755 published Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the overall supervision of the antiquities in Rome should have later first foreigner in Dresden his first book: Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture Art, where he was handed out in later editions other texts. This new, momentous thoughts are included, which he outlined in his 1764 published major work, The History of Ancient Art in 2 volumes, in detail. Winckelmann describes is not only the chronological order of an art history of the ancient world, but a system of Greek art. He developed an aesthetic criteria of beauty and identifies a classical style, which he rises to the measure of his judgment. Although this search is for the beautiful yet at the center, but the attempt at a history of style are the ideals of noble simplicity and quiet grandeur a first context. Winckelmann maintained contacts with contemporary artists ( Anton Raphael Mengs ) and constantly made ​​references to the artistic past in the former presence here. For " first art historian " makes him, among other things, that he went out as an archaeologist and excavation director of the substantive knowledge of his research subjects; that he used precise descriptions as a method of knowledge; that he cared for the systematizing of his research subjects.

The emergence of the history of art as a science

In Göttingen, the first professor of art history in 1799 set up. The drawing teacher Johann Dominik Fiorillo was responsible for the art collection and taught the first students.

The development of the scientific discipline of art history has made progress again and again through the discourse on exemplary case studies of the subject in the 19th century. A special role was played by, inter alia, the Laocoon group, or the Dresden Holbein dispute. The Basel historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818 - 1897) was dedicated to the first view of a whole cultural landscape in terms of their artistic production at times a certain era. Of fundamental importance for the university art history at that time was the history of style, so the stylistic analysis of works of art, the question of the artistic As to the history and auxiliary scientific research into a work of art as a further means of knowledge - that is the question of what - came. Later, this ratio should be reversed.

Like hardly any other science, the history of art was coined to power in 1933 by German scholars and teaching at German universities. Important German -language schools of art history before the Second World War were:

The Berlin School

With Karl Friedrich von Rumohr, Franz Theodor Kugler, Gustav Friedrich scales, Heinrich Gustav Hotho, Heinrich Wölfflin and Carl Schnaase.

The Vienna School or the documents customer

The Vienna school include their representatives Franz Wickhoff, Alois Riegl, Julius von Schlosser, Moritz Thausing, Rudolf Eitelberger, Max Dvořák, Otto Pacht and Hans Sedlmayr. Fritz Saxl, Ernst Kris, Ernst Gombrich. They were all trained in Vienna. Max Dvořák coined the term of art history as intellectual history, Alois Riegl research on the artistic intent and coined the term the late Roman art industry.

The Munich school, or formalism

With Heinrich Wölfflin, Hans Jantzen, Wilhelm Pinder. Wölfflin coined in the first half of the 20th century, the history of art through his formalist style concept.

The Hamburg School and the iconography

Aby Warburg, Gertrud Bing, Fritz Saxl, Erwin Panofsky, William S. Heckscher, Edgar Wind, after Warburg's death Ernst H. Gombrich. The eldest brother founded Warburg in Hamburg his library to research the afterlife of antiquity in modern times, with Saxl and Bing as close associates. Panofsky and Wind studying in Hamburg at Ernst Cassirer, who used the Warburg Library of Cultural Studies for his exploration of symbolic forms. Panofsky founded the art-historical research branch of iconology in non-Christian understanding.

History of Art during the Nazi era

On the basis of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service lost many Jewish art historians after 1933 their teaching license and were forced to emigrate. Among the best known were Erwin Panofsky ( Princeton ), Walter Friedlaender (New York University), Julius Held, Ernst H. Gombrich, in London at the Warburg Institute, whose director he was from 1959 to 1976, Ernst Kris, Nikolaus Pevsner and Ernst Cohn- Vienna.

Your posts were filled also by art historians, who agreed with the objectives of National Socialism emphatic. In terms of their relationship to the " Third Reich" Been themselves objects of art historical research: inter alia, Wilhelm Pinder (Munich, Berlin ), Hans Sedlmayr (Vienna) and Percy Ernst Schramm (Göttingen).

By the expulsion important scientist from the Nazis came abroad important centers of art historical research: in the UK the Warburg Institute, Courtauld Institute and Oxford, and in the United States at Princeton, Columbia, Berkeley and Stanford.

Art history in non-German speaking countries

The most important representatives of the subject were:

• Italy: Giovanni Morelli, Benedetto Croce (also Philosophy ) and Luca Beltrami.
• France: Denis Diderot - Quatremère de Quincy - Emile Mâle - André Chastel
• England: John Ruskin

Art history and art history today

Today the subject of schools is less, because coined outstanding personalities and specific research areas.

Headquarters positions

The most important research fields in recent art history are seen by some art historians no longer in inventory control, dating and assignment of individual works of art, but in the study of functions, structures and sociological significance of works of art and art in general. This art historians engage with it on the developments in other humanities disciplines. Nevertheless, the Building Research and connected to it an object- oriented approach in art history will not continue to be neglected, as well as theory -heavy work only appear credible if they - as it is often not the case - can be based on exact verifiable findings.

• Reception Aesthetics: Wolfgang Kemp
• Art in Context: Hans Belting - Werner Busch - Michael Baxandall - Svetlana Alpers
• Feminist Art History: Ellen Spickernagel - Sigrid Schade - Linda Nochlin - Lucy R. Lippard
• Sociology of Art: Martin Warnke - Klaus Herding - John Berger - TJ Clark - Jutta Hero - Peter Burke
• Materialikonographie / Materialikonologie: Günter band man - Monika Wagner

Important research institutions

• Central Institute for Art History, Munich
• Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence ( Max Planck Institute )
• Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome ( Max Planck Institute for Art History)
• German Forum for Art History, Paris
• The Technical Image, the Hermann von Helmholtz Center for Cultural Technology ( PAC ) of the Humboldt University of Berlin

• Courtauld Institute of Art, London

• Getty Center, Los Angeles

• Institut National de l' Histoire de l'Art, Paris

University Institute

Germany

• Aachen: Institute and Chair of Art History at the RWTH Aachen
• Bamberg: Departments of Art History at the Otto -Friedrich- University of Bamberg
• Berlin: Institute of Art History at the Department of History and Cultural Studies at the Free University of Berlin
• Berlin: Institute for Art and Visual History at the Humboldt University in Berlin
• Berlin: Institute for Art Research and Historical Urban Studies at the Technical University of Berlin
• Bochum: Department of Art History Institute of the Ruhr - University Bochum
• Bonn: Institute of Art History of the Rheinische Friedrich- Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
• Braunschweig: Institute for Art Research Academy of Fine Arts in Braunschweig
• Darmstadt: Subject Art History at the Faculty of Architecture. Technical University of Darmstadt
• Dresden: Subject Art History of the Institute for Art and Musicology at the University of Technology Dresden
• Dusseldorf: Heinrich- Heine- University Dusseldorf: Department of Art History
• State Art Academy Dusseldorf: Department of Art History
• Erlangen- Nuremberg: Institute of Art History at the Friedrich -Alexander -University Erlangen -Nuremberg
• Frankfurt am Main: Art History Institute of the Johann -Wolfgang- Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main
• Freiburg im Breisgau: Kunsthistorisches Institut der Albert -Ludwigs- University of Freiburg
• Göttingen: Department of Art History at the Georg- August- University of Göttingen
• Greifswald: Institute of Art History of the Ernst- Moritz- Arndt University of Greifswald
• Hamburg: Department of Art History University of Hamburg
• Heidelberg: Institute of Art History at the Ruprecht -Karls- University of Heidelberg
• Jena: Department of Art History at the Friedrich -Schiller- University Jena
• Karlsruhe Institute of art and architectural history of the KIT Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (formerly University of Karlsruhe), Institut art history and media theory of HFG Karlsruhe
• Kassel: course art science of Kassel Art Academy
• Cologne: Institute of Art History, University of Cologne
• Leipzig: Institute of Art History, University of Leipzig
• Mainz: Institute of Art History at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
• Marburg: Art History Institute of the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg at the Department of German Studies and the Arts of the University of Marburg
• Munich: Institute for Art History in the Department of History and Art History at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich
• Münster: Institute for Art History (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster)
• Münster: Münster Academy of Art ( with Professor of Art History - Department of Art and the Public )
• Osnabrück: Institute of Art History in the Department of Culture and Geosciences, University of Osnabrück
• Regensburg: Institute of Art History, University of Regensburg
• Stuttgart: Institute of Art History, University of Stuttgart
• Trier: Institute of Art History, University of Trier
• Tübingen: Institute of Art History of the University of Tübingen
• Würzburg: Institute of Art History, Julius -Maximilians -Universität Würzburg

Austria

• Vienna: Institute of Art History, University of Vienna
• Graz: study art history at the University of Graz
• Krems an der Donau: Department for Image Science at the Danube University in Göttweig
• Salzburg: study Art History at the University of Salzburg
• Innsbruck: Institute of Art History, University of Innsbruck

Switzerland

• Basel: Art History Department of the University of Basel
• Berne: Institute of Art History, University of Bern
• Zurich: Institute of Art History at the University of Zurich

Trade associations

The following trade associations represent the interests of art historians:

• Association of German art historian
• Ulmer Club - Association of Arts and Cultural Studies

Magazines and Periodicals

• Yearbook of the Central Institute for Art History
• Journal of Art History
• Kunstchronik
• Art History worksheets, published monthly ( KAb ) ( refer to the large circle of art history interested readers, especially the students of art history and art educators. Contributions of each issue offer facts, analyzes, interpretations, and information. Source texts and a study index complete the picture from. )
• Art History Yearbook for image critique, edited by Horst Bredekamp, Matthias Bruhn and Gabriele Werner, Akademie Verlag Berlin, band 1.1 was released in 2003
• Minerva. Jena writings on art history, ed. by Franz -Joachim Verspohl, Volume 1 was released in 1995, published by Walther König, Köln
• Critical reports