Grammaire historique des arts plastiques: volonté artistique et vision du monde

by Alois Riegl, Éliane Kaufholz (Contributor), Otto Pächt (Contributor)

The work of Alois Riegl (1858-1905) has been highly influential in art history of the modern age. Riegl, the most important member of the so-called Vienna School, developed a refined technique of visual or formal analysis that departed from the iconological method, which emphasized decoding motifs through recourse to texts. Riegl also pioneered understanding of the changing role of the viewer, the significance of non-high art objects (or what would now be called visual or material culture), and theories of art and art history, including his much-debated neologism Kunstwollen (the will of art). His major works include Foundations for a History of Ornament , Late Roman Art Industry , and The Group Portraiture of Holland . Riegl's Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts , which brings together the diverse threads of his thought, is now available to an English-language audience, in a masterful translation by Jacqueline E. Jung. In one of the earliest and perhaps the most brilliant of all art historical surveys, Riegl addresses the different visual arts within a sweeping conception of the history of culture. His account derives from Hegelian models but decisively opens onto alternative pathways that continue to complicate attempts to reduce art merely to the artist's intentions or its social and historical functions.

Genres: Art, Art History, Nonfiction

212 pages, Paperback

First published February 13, 2003

About the author

Alois Riegl was an Austrian art historian, and is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History. He was one of the major figures in the establishment of art history as a self-sufficient academic discipline, and one of the most influential practitioners of formalism.

Reviews

[Dan Crews · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are interested in Formal Criticism in the Visual Arts this is the book. It is the precursor to Fry, Bell and Greenberg. It develops a more organic relationship to Formalism. Sort of promoting a Historical/Psychological development of form through the history of art production. It is a rigorous text and one must read it closely. There is so much fertile information in there. But don't put it down. Everything is build up together, it is easy to get lost in his web. If you do put it down for a while it is difficult to get back in. But well worth the struggle.

[Smiley III · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good!!! :) #yeah--