art history of twentieth century

ART HISTORY IN THE LATE NINETEENTH AND
EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES
From this brief and necessarily selective overview, various points
can be made about the origins and general character of later
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art history. First, it was a
discipline dominated by continental thinkers (Austrian, German
and Swiss), who in turn drew upon a broader intellectual tradition
rooted in idealist philosophy. In practice, this meant that the
study of art and the wider realm of the aesthetic – how we
respond to what we see – was based on particular assumptions
concerning value and meaning. For example, aside from its
intrinsic interest, art was valued because it was considered to be a
universal and humanistic expression of our central place and unique
identity within nature and the world, a sentiment re-stated by
the German-born art historian Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968) (1993:
3–31).
Second, the category of objects accorded artistic status reflected a
general consensus about the central importance of a Western and
broadly Mediterranean canon of art making, with its origins in classical
Greek and Roman culture. In turn, these examples were
regarded as the ‘height of artistic value and aesthetic excellence’
(Edwards 1999: 3). Typically, the areas of study or those objects
presumed to have aesthetic interest included architecture, sculpture,
painting, print-making and decorative design – an ordering little
changed from Vasari’s day. Despite differing areas of emphasis, the
category of art was understood as a relatively bounded and unproblematic
term – it was broadly something which different cultures
and people did. A central aspect to an art historian’s role was therefore
to describe, categorise and place such artefacts in relation to the
established (Western) canon determined by the various European
academies throughout the preceding centuries.
Third, there was a central and recognisable art historical tradition.
In other words, it was a case of ‘art history’ rather than ‘art
histories’. As we shall see, these overall characteristics were important
since they established an academic orthodoxy with broadly shared
assumptions and values. Among these shared assumptions was a
belief that art history was primarily concerned with stylistic
analysis (‘connoisseurship’) whether situated in relation to the
art theories and art histories 25
artist, the broader culture or an even more generalised sense of the
zeitgeist – the spirit of the time.
This characterisation of art history as a broadly formalist discipline
was to be revised and disputed in the early 1930s by a
politicised generation of émigré art historians for whom art was a
profoundly ideological phenomenon which mediated particular
social and economic relationships.