The Expressionist Turn in Art History: A Critical Anthology 9781409449997

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Wilhelm Worringer
Fritz Burger
Ernst Heidrich
Max Dvoák
Heinrich Wölfflin
Carl Einstein
Expressionist Art and Art History
Overview of Contents
Notes
PART I: WILHELM WORRINGER
1 Illustration and Advertising: Wilhelm Worringer’s Die altdeutsche Buchillustration
Illustration and Abstraction
Woodcuts as Art and Kultur
Abstraction in Advertising and Art
Return to Abstraction
Notes
2 Introduction to Old German Book Illustration (1912)
Notes
PART II: FRITZ BURGER
3 Expressionism and Empathy: Fritz Burger’s Theory of Art
Introduction
Burger and Renaissance Italy: Between Expressionism and Empathy
1911: The Turn to the Modernists
1912: A Theory of Art Criticism
1913–1914: Theoretical Writings and Major Publications
1915–1916: The Expressionist as Empathic Art Historian
Critical Reception
Notes
4 From Cézanne and Hodler: Introduction to the Problems of Contemporary Painting (1913)
Foreword
Problems of Modern Painting
Notes
PART III: ERNST HEIDRICH
5 Ernst Heidrich as an “Expressionist” Art Historian A Look at Vlaemische Malerei and Other Volumes Written for the Jena Arts Publisher Eugen Diederichs
Notes
6 From Flemish Painting (1913)
Notes
PART IV MAX DVOÁK
7 Inventing “Mannerist Expressionism”: Max Dvoák and the History of Art as History of the Spirit
Vienna, November/December 1920: Max Dvorák Gives Lectures on Tintoretto
Tintoretto as Painter of the Spiritual around 1920: Ernst Bloch, Max Dvorák, Emil Waldmann, and the Legacy of Henry Thode
Max Dvorák in 1917: Mannerism as the Expressionism of the Sixteenth Century
Prerequisites I: From the Baroque to Modernity and the Crisis of Evolutionary Paradigms of Art History (1900 to c. 1914)
Prerequisites II: The Turn to the History of Spirit under the Sign of an Antinaturalistic and Idealistic Modernity (c. 1912–1917)
Tertium Datur: Mannerism as a Subjective Art of Expression beyond Naturalism and Aestheticism (c. 1917–1921)
Max Dvorák, an Expressionist Art Historian?
Notes
8 “Tintoretto” (1920)
Note
9 Foreword to Oskar Kokoschka: Variations on a Theme (1921)
PART V: HEINRICH WÖLFFLIN
10 Heinrich Wölfflin and the German Sense of Form
Form as Expression
Ausdruck and Art History
The Subject of Expression
Notes
11 “Italy and the German Sense of Form” (1921–1922)
12 “Principles of Art History: A Revision” (1933)
Notes
PART VI: CARL EINSTEIN
13 Carl Einstein and Expressionism: The Case of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Notes
14 “Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,” from Art of the Twentieth Century (1926)
Note
15 “Kandinsky” (1926)
Note
16 “George Grosz” (1926)
Notes
Bibliography
General Sources
Fritz Burger
Max Dvorák
Carl Einstein
Ernst Heidrich
Heinrich Wölfflin
Wilhelm Worringer
Index

Citation preview

the expressionist turn in art history During the period in which Expressionist artists were active in central Europe, art historians were producing texts which also began to be characterized evocatively as “expressionist”, yet the notion of an expressionist art history has yet to be fully explored in historiographic studies of the discipline. This anthology offers a cross-section of noteworthy art history texts that have been described as expressionist, along with critical commentaries by an international group of scholars. Written between 1912 and 1933, the primary sources have been selected from the published scholarship of both recognized and less-familiar figures in the field’s Germanic tradition: Wilhelm Worringer, Fritz Burger, Ernst Heidrich, Max Dvořák, Heinrich Wölfflin, and Carl Einstein. Translated here for the first time, these examples of an expressionist turn in art history, along with their secondary analyses and the book’s introduction, offer a productive lens through which to re-examine the practice and theory of art history in the early twentieth century. Kimberly A. Smith is Professor of Art History at Southwestern University, where she teaches the history of modern art.

StudieS in Art HiStoriogrApHy Series Editor: Richard Woodfield, University of Birmingham, UK The aim of this series is to support and promote the study of the history and practice of art historical writing focusing on its institutional and conceptual foundations, from the past to the present day in all areas and all periods. Besides addressing the major innovators of the past it also encourages re-thinking ways in which the subject may be written in the future. It ignores the disciplinary boundaries imposed by the Anglophone expression ‘art history’ and allows and encourages the full range of enquiry that encompasses the visual arts in its broadest sense as well as topics falling within archaeology, anthropology, ethnography and other specialist disciplines and approaches. It welcomes contributions from young and established scholars and is aimed at building an expanded audience for what has hitherto been a much specialised topic of investigation. It complements the work of the Journal of Art Historiography.

in the same series A Theory of the Tache in Nineteenth-Century Painting Øystein Sjåstad Victorian Perceptions of Renaissance Architecture Katherine Wheeler Alois Riegl in Vienna 1875–1905 An Institutional Biography Diana Reynolds Cordileone

The Expressionist Turn in Art History A Critical Anthology

Edited by Kimberly A. Smith

First Published 2014 by Ashgate Publisher Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Kimberly A. Smith 2014 Kimberly A. Smith has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: The expressionist turn in art history : a critical anthology / edited by Kimberly A. Smith. pages cm. -- (Studies in art historiography) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4094-4999-7 (hardcover) 1. Art. 2. Expressionism in literature. 3. Art-Historiography--History--20th century. I. Smith, Kimberly A., editor. N7443.E97 2014 709.04'042--dc23 2014019223 ISBN: 978-1-4094-4999-7 (hbk) Permission to translate Carl Einstein’s “Kandinsky. Zum 60. Geburtstag. 5. Oktober 1926,” “George Grosz,” and “Ernst Ludwig Kirchner” has been granted by Günther Fannei of Fannei & Walz, Berlin. Heinrich Wölfflin’s “Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Eine Revision” and “Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl” are translated by permission of Schwabe AG Verlag, Basel. Permission to translate Wilhelm Worringer’s introduction to Die altdeutsche Buchillustration has been granted by Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich. Source information for the original German texts may be found on the first page of the relevant chapters.

For Nadia and Enzo

Contents

List of Illustrations   Notes on Contributors   Acknowledgments  

Introduction   Kimberly A. Smith

xi xv xix

1

Part I WIlhelm WorrInger 1

Illustration and Advertising: Wilhelm Worringer’s Die altdeutsche Buchillustration Kathleen Chapman

2

Introduction to Old German Book Illustration (1912) Wilhelm Worringer

57

81

Part II FrItz Burger 3

Expressionism and Empathy: Fritz Burger’s Theory of Art   Elena Filippi

4

From Cézanne and Hodler: Introduction to the Problems of Contemporary Painting (1913) Fritz Burger

99

123

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THE ExPRESSIONIST TURN IN ART HISTORy

Part III ernst heIdrIch 5

6

Ernst Heidrich as an “Expressionist” Art Historian? A Look at Vlaemische Malerei and Other Volumes Written for the Jena Arts Publisher Eugen Diederichs   Eveliina Juntunen From Flemish Painting (1913) Ernst Heidrich

145

167

Part IV max dVořák 7

Inventing “Mannerist Expressionism”: Max Dvořák and the History of Art as History of the Spirit   Hans Aurenhammer

8

“Tintoretto” (1920) Max Dvořák

209

9

Foreword to Oskar Kokoschka: Variations on a Theme (1921) Max Dvořák

231

187

Part V heInrIch WölFFlIn 10

Heinrich Wölfflin and the German Sense of Form Michela Passini and Francesco Peri

237

11

“Italy and the German Sense of Form” (1921–1922) Heinrich Wölfflin

253

12

“Principles of Art History: A Revision” (1933) Heinrich Wölfflin

263

Part VI carl eInsteIn 13

Carl Einstein and Expressionism: The Case of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Charles W. Haxthausen

273

CONTENTS

ix

14

“Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,” from Art of the Twentieth Century (1926) 305 Carl Einstein

15

“Kandinsky” (1926) Carl Einstein

309

16

“George Grosz” (1926) Carl Einstein

311

Bibliography   Index

317 339

List of Illustrations

Cover Illustration Franz Marc, Reconciliation (1912), woodcut on woven paper, 20 × 25.71 cm. The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. Purchased with funds provided by Anna Bing Arnold, Museum Associates Acquisition Fund, and deaccession funds. 83.1.1391.20. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California. Digital image © 2013 Museum Associates / LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, Ny.

de France (BnF), Paris. Photo: Snark / Art Resource, Ny. 2 Introduction to Old German Book Illustration (1912) 2.1 Pyramus and Thisbe (c. 1474), hand-colored woodcut, 80 × 110 mm. Leaf [c]5v, f. [xv]. From Giovanni Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris, printed by Johannes Zainer at Ulm. University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library—Incunables, Inc B-720.

1 Illustration and advertising: Wilhelm Worringer’s Die altdeutsche Buchillustration

3 expressionism and empathy: Fritz Burger’s theory of art

1.1 Urs Graf, Saint Mary Magdalen Washing Christ’s Feet (1507), woodcut, 28.8 × 21.3 × 1 cm. Plate 4 of Hans Wechtlin (attributed to), Der text des Passions oder Leydens Christi auß den vier Evangelisten zusammen in ein Sinn bracht mit schönen Figuren. Printer: Johann Knobloch the Elder. Editor: Johann Ringmann. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New york, Ny. Anonymous gift, 1920 (20.18) / Art Resource, Ny.

3.2 Franz Marc, Tierschicksale / Fate of the Animals (1913), oil on canvas, 195 × 263.5 cm. Kunstmuseum Basel. © Hans Hinz / ARTOTHEK.

1.2 Albrecht Dürer, The Opening of the Fifth and Sixth Seals (1498), woodcut. From The Revelation of Saint John (Rev. 6: 9–15), B.65. Bibliothèque Nationale

3.1 Fritz Burger, Es werde Licht / Let There Be Light (1916), pastel on board, 52 × 90 cm. Private Collection, Heidelberg. © Estate of Fritz Burger.

3.3 Fritz Burger, Self-Portrait (1915), pastel on board, 30 × 48 cm. Private Collection, Munich. © Estate of Fritz Burger. 3.4 Fritz Burger, Waldlichtung / Forest Clearing (1916), pastel on board, 30 × 48 cm. Private Collection, Heidelberg. © Estate of Fritz Burger.

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4 From Cézanne and Hodler: Introduction to the Problems of Contemporary Painting (1913) 4.1 Ferdinand Hodler, Bewunderung / Admiration (c. 1903), oil on canvas, 133 × 71.5 cm. Kunstmuseum Bern, Inv. Nr. G 1970. Gift of Hanni Kaiser-Kissling, Bern. 4.2 Paul Cézanne, Bathers (Five Men) (1892–94), oil on canvas, 27 × 41 cm. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, Ny.

6.3 Peter Paul Rubens, Helena Fourment in a Fur Wrap (Little Fur) (1636–38), oil on canvas, 176 × 83 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo: Album / Art Resource, Ny. 6.4 Peter Paul Rubens, Peasants Returning from the Fields (c. 1640), oil on canvas, 121 × 194 cm. Palazzo Pitti, Florence. Photo: Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, Ny. 8 “tintoretto” (1920)

4.3 Franz Marc, Die grossen blauen Pferde / The Large Blue Horses (1911), oil on canvas, 105 × 181 cm. Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Gift of the T.B. Walker Foundation, Gilbert M. Walker Fund, 1942.

8.1 Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto, The Miracle of the Slave (1548), oil on canvas, 416 × 544 cm. Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. Photo: Mauro Magliani / Alinari / Art Resource, Ny.

5 ernst heidrich as an “expressionist” art historian? A Look at Vlaemische Malerei and other Volumes Written for the Jena arts Publisher eugen diederichs

8.2 Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto, The Last Supper (1566), oil on canvas, 221 × 413 cm. S. Trovaso, Venice. Photo: Cameraphoto Arte, Venice / Art Resource, Ny.

5.1 Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke, front cover of the book jacket designed for Ernst Heidrich’s Vlaemische Malerei (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1913).

8.3 Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto, The Crucifixion (1565), oil on canvas, 536 × 1224 cm. Scuola Grande di S. Rocco, Venice (Sala dell’Albergo). Photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, Ny.

5.2 Peter Paul Rubens, Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints (c. 1627–28), oil sketch, 564 × 408 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Photo: bpk / Gemäldegalerie, SMB / Jörg P. Anders. 6 From Flemish Painting (1913) 6.1 Peter Paul Rubens, The Last Supper (1630–32), oil on canvas, 304 × 250 cm. Pinacoteca de Brera, Milan. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, Ny. 6.2 Peter Paul Rubens, Massacre of the Innocents (1637), oil on wood, 198.5 × 302.2 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesammlungen, Munich. Photo: bpk, Berlin / Alte Pinakothek / Art Resource, Ny.

8.4 Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto, The Ascension of Christ (1578–81), oil on canvas, 529 × 485 cm. Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice (Sala Superiore). The Bridgeman Art Library. 8.5 Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto, The Gathering of the Manna (1592–94), oil on canvas, 377 × 576 cm. San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. Photo: Cameraphoto Arte, Venice / Art Resource, Ny. 8.6 Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto, The Last Supper (1591–92), oil on canvas, 364 × 568 cm. San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. Photo: Cameraphoto Arte, Venice / Art Resource, Ny.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

9 Foreword to Oskar Kokoschka: Variations on a Theme (1921) 9.1 Oskar Kokoschka, Das Konzert II / The Concert II from the series Das Konzert (1920, published 1921), lithograph, 66.7 × 48 cm; sheet, 84.5 × 61.4 cm. Publisher: Paul Cassirer. Printer: Pan-Presse, Berlin. Edition: 100 numbered and signed. The Museum of Modern Art, New york. Gift of Samuel A. Berger. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by Scala / Art Resource, Ny. 11 “Italy and the german sense of Form” (1921–1922) 11.1 Albrecht Dürer, St. Jerome in His Study (1514), engraving, 24.7 × 18.8 cm. Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Corte di Mamiano, Italy. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, Ny. 13 carl einstein and expressionism: the case of ernst ludwig kirchner 13.1 E.L. Kirchner, Hackney Carriage in the Street, Leipziger Straße II (1914), graphite on paper, 20.6 × 16.6 cm. BrückeMuseum, Berlin. © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn. 13.2 E.L. Kirchner, Fehmarn Coast (1913), chalk on paper, 50.3 × 32.3 cm. Graphische Sammlung, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: U. Edelmann—Städel Museum / ARTOTHEK.

xiii

13.5 Pablo Picasso, Woman with Pears (1909), oil on canvas, 92.1 × 70.8 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New york. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by Scala / Art Resource, Ny. © 2014, Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New york. 13.6 E.L. Kirchner, Woman Rider (1931–32), oil on canvas, 200 × 150 cm. Kirchner Museum, Davos. Photo: Jakob Jägli-Schmelz. 13.7 E.L. Kirchner, Oskar Schlemmer (1914), oil on canvas, 70 × 60 cm. Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt. Photo: Wolfgang Fuhrmannek. 13.8 E.L. Kirchner, Belle-Alliance Platz, Berlin (1914), oil on canvas, 96 × 85 cm. Staatliche Museen, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie Berlin. Photo: bpk, Berlin / Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen / Joerg P. Anders / Art Resource, Ny. 13.9 The Halle Gate and BelleAlliance Platz, Berlin (c. 1890–1905), photomechanical print. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 16 “george grosz” (1926)

13.3 E.L. Kirchner, Head of a Man: SelfPortrait (1926), color woodcut, 19 × 14 cm. Kirchner Museum, Davos. Photo: Jakob Jägli-Schmelz.

16.1 George Grosz, Café Scene (1914), pen and ink on paper. Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library. Art © Estate of George Grosz / Licensed by VAGA, New york.

13.4 E.L. Kirchner, Melancholy of the Mountains (1929), color woodcut, 50 × 35 cm. Graphische Sammlung, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: U. Edelmann—Städel Museum / ARTOTHEK.

16.2 George Grosz, Far in the South, Beautiful Spain (1919), watercolor and pen on paper, 38 × 30 cm. Private Collection. Photo: Foto Marburg / Art Resource, Ny. Art © Estate of George Grosz / Licensed by VAGA, New york.

notes on contributors

hans aurenhammer is Professor of Art History at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. He studied in Vienna and Venice, and has worked as Assistant Professor and Extraordinary Professor in Vienna, and as Visiting Professor at the Universities of Venice, Berlin, Dresden, and at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris. In 2008 he became corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Since 2009 he has been a member (since 2013, chairman) of the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Center for Venetian Studies in Venice. Since 2011 he has also been a member of the board of the Forschungszentrum für Historische Geisteswissenschaften at Frankfurt University. His main areas of research are Italian art and architecture of the Renaissance; the history of art theory in the early modern period; and the history and methodology of art history. kathleen chapman is Assistant Professor of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University. She specializes in European and American modernism, with an emphasis on late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury German art and culture. Her research focuses on how interactions between art, art criticism, and art history have shaped conceptions of visual modernism, and how our current versions of the story of modernism can be revised. She is currently working on a book-length study of the intersections between art criticism, art history, and advertising theory and imagery in the development of German Expressionism. elena Filippi is Associate Professor of Art History at the Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences Alfter in Bonn, Germany, and Scientific Member of the Kueser Akademie für Europäische Geistesgeschichte. She has PhD degrees in both art history and philosophy, and has taught at the University of Venice, University of Ferrara, University of Trento, and the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, Venice. Her research interests focus on Italian, German, and Flemish Renaissance visual culture and theories of

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art, as well as methods of art history in the early twentieth century. She has published numerous scholarly books and articles, including seven singleauthored volumes. In 2012, she was awarded the Premio Salimbeni prize by the Fondazione Salimbeni per le Arti Figurative for her book Umanesimo e misura viva: Dürer tra Cusano e Alberti. charles W. haxthausen teaches art history at Williams College, Massachusetts. He is the author of Paul Klee: The Formative Years (1981), co-editor (with Heidrun Suhr) of Berlin: Culture and Metropolis (1990), and editor of the The Two Art Histories: The Museum and the University (2002) and Sol LeWitt: The WellTempered Grid (2012). He has published widely on modern and contemporary German art and early twentieth-century German art criticism. His Refiguring Vision: The Art Theory and Criticism of Carl Einstein, is under contract with the University of Chicago Press. eveliina Juntunen studied art history, German, and English literature at Jena University and the University of Edinburgh. She wrote her thesis on art theoretical concepts in Peter Paul Rubens’s mythological paintings, and received her PhD from Jena University after extended stays in Munich and Antwerp. Currently she is assistant professor for early modern and modern art history at Bamberg University, and is preparing a Habilitationsschrift on German prints between 1880 and 1930. She is especially interested in questions of how this low-ranked medium contributed to the development of modern German art. In addition to this focus on modern art, she regularly contributes to scholarship on Netherlandish painting and sculpture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. michela Passini received her PhD from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy. She is a tenured researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris (CNRS, Institut d’histoire moderne et contemporaine) and a lecturer in the history of museology at the Ecole du Louvre. Her publications include La fabrique de l’art national. Le nationalisme et les origines de l’histoire de l’art en France et en Allemagne, 1870–1933 (2012) and editions of texts on art, art history, and cultural heritage by Gabriel Séailles (2011, with Sarah Linford), Eugène Müntz (2012), and Maurice Barrès (2012, with Michel Leymarie). Her research focuses on the history of art historiography and the history of museums and art exhibitions. Francesco Peri is a graduate of the Scuola Normale Superiore and the University of Pisa, Italy. He holds a PhD in philosophy, and is pursuing a second doctoral degree in German studies at the New Sorbonne University. A specialist in the history of art and music criticism, he has published on Th.W. Adorno’s musical background; the epistemology of art historical “description” in early modern and modern Europe; the theory of music criticism; and issues

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

xvii

of aesthetics. His present scholarly interests include the cultural and medical history of the concept of “Nervenkunst” in fin-de-siècle European culture; the construction of “modernity” in German and French music criticism; the Naturalist and post-Naturalist novel; and transnational literary circulations. As a professional translator, he has provided Italian editions of prominent German, French, and American/British scholars. kimberly a. smith is Professor of Art History at Southwestern University, Texas, where she teaches the history of modern art. She received her PhD in art history from yale University. Her research focuses on the visual culture of early twentieth-century Germany and Austria, and the intellectual history of art history. She is the author of Between Ruin and Renewal: Egon Schiele’s Landscapes (2004), the first book-length critical study of the Viennese Expressionist’s city- and townscapes. She has published essays on a range of topics, including avant-garde fashion in turn-of-the-century Vienna; the relationship between Alois Riegl’s writings and modern art; and the work of the Blaue Reiter artist Franz Marc.

acknowledgments

This anthology is the result of more than a decade of work, and has lived through various permutations before finally emerging in its current form. In the first stages, researching the topic of an expressionist turn in art history was a solo undertaking, as I charted out the book’s historiographic problems and possibilities. During the last several years, I was joined by the authors who contributed its interpretive essays, and I am most grateful for their commitment to a project that took rather longer than any of us anticipated. I thank each of them for many informative discussions – in person and via email – as the anthology took shape. My thanks go also to the translators, who worked assiduously to make their translations from the original German both accurate and readable. The final manuscript is a result of and testament to all of these contributors’ ideas and expertise. Needless to say, as editor of the project and its chief advocate, any omissions or shortcomings in the anthology as a whole are my own. Here seems an opportune moment to note that every attempt been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyright material. If any proper acknowledgment has not been made, copyright holders are invited to inform this editor of the oversight. Early stages of research for this book were supported by faculty development grants from Southwestern University, in the form of a Brown Research Fellowship and then a semester sabbatical, during which I was able to conduct research in archives at the Universität Basel, and the LudwigMaximilians-Universität in Munich. Contributions from the Cullen Faculty Development fund helped to support further research, including crucial access to primary materials, as well as funding several of the anthology’s translations. At Ashgate Publishing, I would like to thank Meredith Norwich for her early and enthusiastic support for this project. Margaret Michniewicz shepherded the manuscript through the processes of review and completion with boundless reserves of patience and professional good will, and Emily Pace expertly oversaw the final stages of production. I thank the anonymous reviewer for

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very careful readings of the text at both the proposal and full typescript stages. The final anthology is a stronger collection as a result of these recommendations. Richard Woodfield brings his characteristic erudition to editing the Studies in Art Historiography series; it brings me no small pleasure that the book will participate in the series’ mission of expanding both the subjects and reach of historiographic research. Many colleagues have helped to clarify the aims and content of this anthology, in venues large and small. As a graduate student, I had the good fortune to study the intellectual history of art history with Christopher Wood. I am particularly grateful for the valuable discussions we had about German aesthetics, in which I was first introduced to the writings of Wilhelm Worringer and Fritz Burger. I had the opportunity to explore some of the issues in this book as a participant at conferences sponsored by the College Art Association, the International Association for Word and Image Studies, the Modernist Studies Association, and the German Studies Association. In other contexts, helpful feedback was provided by Erika Berroth, Esther da Costa Meyer, Stephen Eisenman, Alisa Gaunder, Christopher Hailey, Patrick Hajovsky, Lauren Hamer, Alison Kafer, Christopher Long, Jordana Mendelson, Helene Meyers, and Sherwin Simmons. Some of these conversations were sustained over several years, others occurred more fortuitously, but all provided conceptual guideposts. Elizabeth Duquette offered especially sage advice at key moments in the evolution of the anthology, and I thank Eileen Cleere, Elizabeth Green Musselman, and Lisa Moses Leff for countless insights and words of encouragement. Finally, I thank my family for trusting that this undertaking was worth the effort. Michael Hsu has provided enduring support for the scholarly work that folds in and out of our daily lives. My children, Nadia and Enzo, are insatiable seekers of knowledge, joyful and ever-present reminders that the writing of history matters.

Introduction Kimberly A. Smith

Art history has experienced a surge of interest in recent years in mining the literature of its own history, particularly those texts and scholars associated with the field’s Germanic tradition, the “mother tongue of the discipline.”1 From translations and historiographic accounts of important individual figures, such as Erwin Panofsky and Alois Riegl, to a variety of useful compendiums in which key writings from the eighteenth to the twentieth century are collected, we are better equipped at this moment than perhaps any other to think about how to situate the contemporary practice of art history within its long evolution. yet in spite of the protracted attention that the history of art history has received, certain strains of the field have remained stubbornly out of view, including what might be called the “expressionist turn” active during the first years of the twentieth century. It is this tradition that is represented in this volume, in which one may find examples of a so-called expressionist art history as well as secondary essays which offer scholarly analyses of these primary texts. The collection stands as an argument for revisiting the works of certain art historians—some well known and others much less so—with an eye towards the presence of methodological and stylistic traits which may be (and have been) described as expressionist. For example, in his well-known and widely read history of the discipline, Udo Kultermann dedicated a chapter to what he called the “art history of Expressionism,” grouping certain practitioners together as examples of a mode of art history which, it was implied, may be taken as methodologically coherent and consistent with the goals of Expressionist art.2 Aside from Kultermann’s study, allusions to individual art historians as “expressionist” or to their works’ affinity with Expressionism may be found scattered across multiple sources, yet few elaborate on what it might mean to designate scholarship as expressionist, or what it might suggest about the intellectual history of the discipline if an expressionist model of

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scholarship can be traced beyond a few isolated examples.3 At the same time, however, I am not presuming that the term “expressionist” invoked in this collection signifies in any easy or unproblematic way.4 Like the larger movement of Expressionist art, a category which always has been subject to indeterminacy and interpretation, an expressionist turn in art history cannot be said to occupy a singular or stable position in the discipline. Expressionist artists like Wassily Kandinsky (Munich), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (Dresden/ Berlin), and Egon Schiele (Vienna) did not conceive of their works as united in any obvious way until contemporary writers began to frame their art rhetorically as belonging to a shared, anti-Impressionist, distinctly Germanic modern style.5 In the same years as the Expressionist artists were making and exhibiting their work, art historians in central Europe were writing texts which also began to be described evocatively as expressionist. For example, Formprobleme der Gotik [Form Problems of the Gothic] by Wilhelm Worringer was described by a contemporary as “a manifestation of Expressionism” and, of the authors in this collection, it is perhaps Worringer whose work has been most consistently described as expressionist.6 Worringer himself helped to conceptualize the connection between visual and scholarly forms of Expressionism. In an essay published in 1920, he wrote: Books are written that are disciplined scholarly visions, nourished by a sensualness of historical perception that is the purest incarnation of our times … scholarship itself is becoming art, is beginning to carry out its work with an élan that is artistic. And here there is a spiritual impulse at work that embodies the phenomenon of Expressionism more authentically, in a manner more appropriate to our time, than does Expressionist painting … The drive for spiritual expansion, whether one wants to call it Expressionism or whatever, has migrated from paintings to books.7

Here, then, is a critical historiographic moment, in which Worringer proposes that scholarship itself may be as expressionist as painting, literature, poetry, or architecture. This begs several questions, though, which will be addressed in due course. For example, is the expressionist identity of scholarship determined by its method, its style, or its content? What is the relationship between Expressionist art and expressionist scholarship? Although Expressionist artists looked specifically to Worringer’s ideas for theoretical support, Worringer himself held an ambivalent attitude towards the new Expressionist art. In other words, when art historians are described as expressionist, what is this characterization intended to suggest? What work does such a designation perform? Surveying both the primary and secondary literature, it appears that “expressionist” has seemed to multiple writers at various times an adequate way of describing certain kinds of scholarship, which suggests the possibility of an implicitly present, if under-theorized, disciplinary practice. Dating from

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between 1912 and 1933, the primary sources in this anthology are drawn from the published work of Worringer, Fritz Burger, Ernst Heidrich, Max Dvořák, Heinrich Wölfflin, and Carl Einstein. While some of these names may be familiar to Anglo-American readers (Einstein, Wölfflin, Worringer), others have received less sustained attention (Dvořák) or have never been translated at all (Burger, Heidrich). And while some are customarily viewed as expressionist in their approach, others’ connection to an expressionist mode is less expected. Worringer, for example, is commonly considered the quintessential expressionist art historian, whereas Wölfflin is not standardly described in this way; yet it can be argued that his theories too position him in this category. Thus, these previously untranslated essays, book excerpts, and lectures offer us a productive lens through which to examine the practice and theory of art history in the early twentieth century, prompting us to recognize the work of scholars virtually unknown to an English-speaking audience, as well as to reconsider the work of those more familiar to us. The goal of this anthology is not to present a comprehensive survey of expressionist art history, then, but to offer a cross-section of noteworthy essays that have been described as “expressionist,” along with informed, critical interpretations of those texts.8 I take the phrase “expressionist art history” to be a slippery but potentially instructive term. Framing these scholars’ work as “expressionist,” while not intended here as an essential or stable category, offers us the chance to identify methodological intersections among these writers, as well as consistencies in how their work has been received. I will retain the descriptive “expressionist” when discussing these scholars, not because it can simply be accepted as an unproblematic given, but as a historiographic reminder that this term has seemed at various times to convey something accurate about their work, and as a proposal that foregrounding the concept of expressionism can aid us in clarifying what they have in common with each other and their culture. Methodologically, these art historians represent the emphatic push in early twentieth-century scholarship towards a neo-idealist, anti-positivist model of art historical knowledge, as well as (with the possible exception of Einstein) a shared belief in the expressivity of form and the conviction that an engaged, intuitive beholder can infer broad cultural truths from those forms.9 Furthermore, what emerges from an analysis of the texts themselves, and just as importantly the discourse about these texts, is the functionality of the term “expressionist,” which can stand in for a range of attributes that are associated with Expressionist art as well—traits like formalist, spiritual, poetic, intuitive, passionate, psychologized, or nationalist. In order to begin addressing these issues, the following section will outline the methods and careers of the art historians selected for this volume, calling out instances in which each has been specifically associated with an expressionist model of art history. After discussing some of the methodological kinships between

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these scholars, I will then consider ways in which we might draw connections between expressionist scholarship and Expressionist art. Finally, the last section will introduce the primary texts translated in this volume, and present brief synopses of the secondary critical analyses that accompany them.

Wilhelm Worringer In the field of art history, as well as in related disciplines, Wilhelm Worringer has come to occupy the position of standard-bearer for an expressionist art history. Neil Donahue’s important anthology dedicated to Worringer, the only English-language book-length publication to concentrate solely on him, was thus symptomatically entitled Invisible Cathedrals: The Expressionist Art History of Wilhelm Worringer.10 Although Worringer was widely read at the beginning of the twentieth century, especially his highly influential first book, Abstraction and Empathy, in Anglophone art history he fell largely out of view for several decades, presumably because his scholarship had always been held somewhat suspect in the discipline as being too speculative and hyperbolic to be taken seriously. yet the volume edited by Donahue, as well as several instructive essays that have appeared in the last 30 years or so, urge us to remember Worringer’s relevance for understanding not only the history of modern art, the creators of which were instrumentally influenced by Worringer’s ideas, but for the history of art history as well.11 Worringer wrote Abstraction and Empathy as his dissertation, which he selfpublished in 1907. It was brought out by Piper Verlag in 1908, with the added subtitle A Contribution to the Psychology of Style, after which multiple editions appeared due to the book’s continued and striking success.12 His next book, Form Problems of the Gothic (1911), was also extremely popular, going through multiple editions in subsequent years.13 Between the two publications, Worringer took a position as lecturer in the art history program at the University of Bern, which he held until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. After the war, he taught at Bonn as lecturer (1918–25) and professor (1925–28), then as Professor Ordinarius at Königsberg (1928–45) and Halle (1946–50).14 Although he continued to publish throughout these years, his status as one of the most widely read art historians of the century rests largely on the success of his early work. In Abstraction and Empathy, Worringer famously proposed a model of art history in which style could be understood not as an aesthetic element secondary to subject matter, as the result of an anomalous act of creative genius, or as a manifestation of skill, to be evaluated according to the degree to which the artist was able to create a properly illusionistic image. Rather, in a system that has been described as a “radically subjective method” of examining art,15 Worringer asserted that only psychology offered a useful explanatory model for differences in artistic form, which accordingly could

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be understood as the result of the subjective attitudes that typified not only a single artist but a whole culture’s feeling towards the world. Building on the theories of Einfühlung (empathy) then prevalent in both psychology and aesthetics, particularly those of Theodor Lipps, Worringer identified two essential psychological poles between which the art of all ages vacillated.16 The first, “empathy,” described those cultures and people who experience a happy, untroubled, secure union with the natural world, a feeling which creates the desire to repeat and enjoy those same lively, organic forms in their art. Alternatively, Worringer used the term “abstraction” to refer to the angst and fear before the natural world experienced by “primitive” and “Oriental” cultures. This internal feeling of nervousness, distrust, and apprehension towards the unpredictable forces of the external world led these peoples to produce art which sought to embody a spiritual rather than phenomenal reality—a fixed, regular, and knowable style which, in its controlled abstraction, offered a timeless antidote to the natural world’s organic flux. As others, including Worringer himself, have recognized, Alois Riegl’s influential (and flexible) Kunstwollen concept provided the theoretical model for Worringer to conceptualize a unified cultural attitude in which desire, rather than material or skill, determines the outcome of artistic practice.17 Not only did this have the effect of relativizing art historical styles, so that the naturalistic forms of ancient Greek or Italian Renaissance art could no longer claim superiority over the abstracted forms of other cultures and periods, but here we encounter a trait central to the work of all the art historians in this book, and a supposition held by many scholars of the expressionist era: that form is innately expressive of the cultural beliefs of its era, and that close analysis of that form will yield essential knowledge about a whole culture’s defining world view. As to the problem of how to chart the journey from psychological drives to aesthetic artifact, or, put differently, from Wollen to Kunst—a question that Riegl himself had not been able to adequately answer—Worringer provided a self-consciously alogical solution. He did not rely on archival documents, historical evidence, or biographical details to trace the connection between cultural psychology and material form. Instead, he “brought his own highly individualistic view to ancient art and art historical processes with expressive language and essayistic brevity.”18 Indeed, Worringer was explicit about the need for historians to pry themselves away from the dry but uninformative data about the past, and to embrace a notion of the historian as an instinctual interpreter of form: …mere empiricism and induction no longer suffice. At this stage, he [the historian] must fall back on his faculty for divination. From the inanimate historical material that is available, he must proceed to infer the immaterial conditions to which that material owed its formation. This is an inference into the unfamiliar, into the unknowable, for which there is no other security than that of intuition.19

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With his explicit emphasis on the speculative engagement of the interpreting historian, Worringer in effect translated the psychological theory of empathy to the work of the scholar, who was now seen as a subject casting his own imaginative life onto those of the past: “we are instinctively aware that all knowledge is merely indirect—fettered as it is by the time-conditioned Ego … by means of an ideal duplication of our Ego around its opposite, we project into the boundless realms of history a more extensive sphere of knowledge.”20 As Jutta Müller-Tamm writes, Worringer “made the psychological aesthetic of empathy the methodological basis of his entire analysis.”21 Worringer’s intuitive method of analysis and his mythologization of the history of style positions him as an expressionist scholar; but just as important for this designation is the profound effect that his writing had on the contemporary artists who were just then refining the style that would come to be known as Expressionist.22 Worringer’s enthusiastic theorizing of the spiritual merits of abstraction gave these artists the conceptual arguments they needed to wrest art from its long-established task of imitating the appearances of the natural world. With Worringer’s psychocultural poles in mind, they produced abstracted forms which could be seen not simply as failed art, but as authentic spiritual expressions of a culture wracked by doubt in the materialist ethos of a capitalist, positivist, and technocratic modernity. Worringer’s contemporaries were also enthralled by his Form Problems of the Gothic, in which he continued his exploration of the psychological poles adumbrated in Abstraction and Empathy, but with a focus on the abstracted forms of a Gothic style that he now associated specifically with a German proclivity towards spiritual and immaterial experience. Both books were, as mentioned, widely read (both have also been translated into English), making Worringer one of the most influential art historians of the twentieth century—if not among his peer art historians, who were often uncomfortable with his hypostatized categories, then certainly with contemporary artists, critics, and literary writers.

Fritz Burger Although today Worringer is the name most commonly associated with an expressionist mode of art history, the Munich art historian Fritz Burger was well known and widely discussed during the years before his death on the war front in 1916. Burger studied under Henry Thode in Heidelberg, where he received his doctorate and became skilled in the positivist methods of art historical investigation. There he was trained in the conventional procedures and subjects of art history, focusing on Italian Renaissance art, then considered to be the apex of European art history. Accordingly, his first

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major publications studied Italian tombs and the Palladian architecture of the Renaissance.23 Although there are signs of Burger’s shift in approach even as early as the Palladian study, by about 1913 Burger had moved decisively towards a mode of art historical writing in which both the author’s personal preferences were foregrounded, as well as those formal characteristics of the works which previously might have been merely categorized according to their relationship to a stylistic genus but were now seen by Burger as innately expressive and consequential on their own terms. What we might call Burger’s expressionist turn seems to have emerged through his encounters with nineteenth- and early twentieth-century painting, and can be observed in his first major publication on the topic, an introduction to the holdings of the Schack Galerie in Munich,24 where Burger taught art history as a lecturer and adjunct professor at the University of Munich from 1906 until 1914.25 Influenced by Conrad Fiedler’s theories on the work of art as an autonomous entity, in which form creates a world unto itself rather than merely duplicating or altering the appearances of the world external to it, Burger strives to pin down the qualities of this particular form of knowing, of what he calls aesthetic knowledge [künstlerische Erkenntnis].26 With information drawn almost exclusively from his extended descriptions of form, focusing especially on the quality of color and its effects, Burger left the evidence of biography, patronage, and social circumstances almost entirely behind, instead drawing broad, speculative connections between this form and the spiritual currents of its time. Burger’s intuitive model of art history is most pronounced in his final book-length studies dedicated to modern art. It comes to its most emphatic manifestation in Einführung in die moderne Kunst [Introduction to Modern Art], but his subjective approach is also clearly evident in the earlier Cézanne und Hodler: Einführung in die Probleme der Malerei der Gegenwart [Cézanne and Hodler: Introduction to the Problems of Contemporary Painting], excerpts of which are included in this anthology.27 Building on Burger’s reputation as one of the emerging leaders of the field, as well as his enormously popular lectures at the University of Munich, both books were extremely successful. 23,000 copies of Einführung in die moderne Kunst had been purchased within only a year of its publication in 1917; and Cézanne und Hodler sold almost 50,000 copies between 1913 and 1931, more than any other German-language book on modern art during this period.28 Burger’s attempt to claim instinct and fantasy as a legitimate component of scholarly interpretation emerges in Cézanne und Hodler, alongside more restrained descriptions of style and theoretical expositions, and finally comes to decisive fruition in Einführung in die moderne Kunst. In the afterword to this posthumously published book, Albert Brinckmann paid homage to his deceased colleague’s distinctive approach to his discipline:

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Each historical subject that he took up became for him a spiritual [geistig] expression to which he had to yield. Instead of working objectively as a historian, he forcefully subjectivized his history writing. He created the type of the scholarly expressionist, without suspecting that the adjective in this title would be corroded by the noun, so that personal intuition could endlessly wrench out the most secret nerves from the historical.29

Several years, then, before Worringer discussed the tendency for scholarship to appropriate Expressionism’s characteristics, Brinckmann had already anointed Burger as one of the first of a new genre of scholars: the expressionist art historian.30 This understanding of Burger as a novel type of art historian, whose approach was somehow in keeping with the ambitions of Expressionist art and literature, punctuates discussions of his work during the 1920s and 1930s, when his books were still widely available and known within and beyond the academy. Robert Hedicke, for example, wrote that Burger “became an expressionist artist … and a contemporary man in his whole attitude. He began to consider art history from the perspective of the active expressionist movement, and from his own subjective, contemporary struggle.”31 By the last half of the twentieth century, Burger’s legacy had all but disappeared from most historiographic accounts of the discipline. Aside from occasional references to his early work on Palladio, which predated his rejection of conventional art historical methods, there are few mentions of Burger in either the German or English-language literature. Kultermann includes Burger in his chapter “The Art History of Expressionism,” and Christopher Wood has offered a brief but insightful account of Burger’s method.32 But perhaps because none of Burger’s essays or books have yet been published in translation, he is otherwise almost completely absent from English-language studies of art history’s history. This in spite of the fact that Burger was one of the most widely read scholars of contemporary art in the first decades of the century, in the formative, Central European context in which the discipline of art history was hewn. The reasons for the appeal and persuasiveness of his work, as well as a fuller consideration of what it might mean to describe such scholarship as expressionist, continue to remain largely unexplored.

ernst heidrich In Kultermann’s study, the art historian Ernst Heidrich is included among those whose scholarship may be considered expressionist.33 If Burger is little known, Heidrich is even less so, even among German-speaking readers. However, Heidrich enjoyed a solid reputation during his time as one of the most promising young scholars of his generation. Like Burger, however, Heidrich’s career and life came to an abrupt end as a result of World War I. Heidrich died in the fall of 1914 on the Belgium front, not long after he had

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won the coveted offer to succeed Georg Dehio at Strasbourg. From 1911 until 1914, Heidrich was chair of the art history program at the University of Basel, the post formerly held by Jakob Burckhardt and Heinrich Wölfflin.34 Heidrich earned his doctoral degree in 1905 under Wölfflin’s supervision, with a study of Albrecht Dürer’s images of the Virgin Mary, and is often described as Wölfflin’s favorite student. Wölfflin contributed an introduction to Heidrich’s collected volume of materials from Dürer’s literary estate; edited the posthumously published volume Beiträge zur Geschichte und Methode der Kunstgeschichte (based on lectures given by Heidrich in 1912 and 1913); and in a memorial essay mourned the loss of his student who, Wölfflin wrote, would have gone on to “write the German history of art which everyone wants but does not yet exist.”35 Although the quote implies that Heidrich’s potential had not yet been reached, he was already widely regarded as one of the torch-bearers of a neo-idealist method of art historical analysis, one which departed from the methodical demands of an art history based on classifying stylistic types towards a more intuitive, passionate, and ambitious model of art history writing. His 1909 study of German Renaissance art, with its celebratory focus on Dürer, was described as a work of “ardent fervor, tracking down with loving intuition the fundamental characteristics of the revered hero.”36 In his 1924 review of the discipline, Hedicke drew a connection between Heidrich and Burger as exemplars of the new movement in art history, identified by its rejection of the neat objectivity associated with Kunstwissenschaft in favor of an engaged and expressive history, which Hedicke called Geistesgeschichte (history of the spirit).37 In the field of art history, the term Geistesgeschichte is perhaps most closely associated today with Max Dvořák, also included in this anthology, yet the phrase can be traced to nineteenth-century sources, most significantly the historian Wilhelm Dilthey. Dilthey believed that the natural sciences would never be able to access the intellectual, spiritual, and emotional contours of human history, those elements of experience that are lived rather than thought.38 He called his alternative approach Lebensphilosophie, and his call for a human science that would vie with the natural sciences to produce a true picture of the broad cultural desires of a people resonated with the generation of scholars to which Heidrich belonged.39 In his desire to incorporate the ineffable sphere of the spirit, or the mind, in his study of art’s history, Heidrich can be considered one of the earliest practitioners of this new model of interpretation which united the history of style with that of the spirit. Indeed, Hedicke considered Heidrich to be the discipline’s first representative of the history of art as Geistesgeschichte, usually translated as the history of ideas.40 We should be careful, however, not to equate Geistesgeschichte with the more recent, Anglo-American phrase “intellectual history,” as Marlite Halbertsma has pointed out.41 The history of art as Geistesgeschichte focuses on drawing broad, inferential connections between the formal aspects of an artwork and

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the totality of a culture’s spiritual or intellectual worldview, which is assumed to be consistent across phenomena (literature, religion, politics, etc.) and thus also expressed in that art object.42 The sticking point in such a project is how to make the leap from artifact to Geist. How precisely does a culture’s total spiritual identity come to be manifest in, say, an oil painting? In Heidrich’s case, the analytic approach he adopted to tackle this issue took on an explicitly expressive component, which can be seen in the three major publications he undertook for the publishing house of Eugen Diederichs, the last of which is excerpted in this volume. As Nikolaus Meier describes, Diederichs’s “publishing house was intended to be a rallying place for all those who fought against the rule of rationality in order to feel life directly.”43 With the specific aim of providing texts that would counter the dry philology of the sciences, Diederichs began a series devoted to a modern style of education (Bildung) that would enable German readers to realize their “inner spiritual freedom”—a project which included Heidrich’s Die alt-deutsche Malerei [Old German Painting], Altniederländische Malerei [Old Netherlandish Painting], and Vlaemische Malerei [Flemish Painting], the last of which is excerpted here.44 The books Heidrich published with Diederichs’s house in Jena were intended to make art historical scholarship accessible to a wide, non-specialist audience, and made him a well-known name outside of the academy.45 Hans Tietze described him as the best “teacher to the nation” of art history, noting that Heidrich did not draw distinctions between the public and specialists in the field.46 Particularly during his time as chair in Basel, Heidrich gained a reputation for his public lectures and his rhetorical eloquence, which one colleague attributed to his “emotional [seelischen] penetration of the subject.”47

max dvořák Although Heidrich was named by Hedicke as the first art historian to fully implement the Geistesgeschichte approach to interpretation, Max Dvořák has become more widely associated with this method, primarily on the basis of the posthumously published book of his collected essays, Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte [The History of Art as the History of the Spirit].48 Like Heidrich, Dvořák was largely forgotten within the Anglophone field of art history for much of the century; but, in contrast to Heidrich’s continued invisibility, Dvořák has gradually been rediscovered, due not only to translations of some of his key texts but also recent scholarship which has helped to locate his work within the Vienna school of art history and the broader context of early twentieth-century Central European culture.49 Unlike any of the other figures in this volume, Dvořák was born, educated, and worked in the AustroHungarian Empire. Hailing from its Czech region, Dvořák began his studies in

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Prague, moved to Vienna in 1895, and received a doctoral degree in history in 1897. He shifted his attention to the history of art, becoming Franz Wickhoff’s assistant at the University of Vienna in that year, then after his Habilitation was appointed lecturer in the art history program in 1902. In 1905, Dvořák became associate professor and director of the Central Commission for the Preservation of Artistic and Historical Monuments after both posts were left vacant by Riegl’s death. By 1909, still only in his mid-30s, Dvořák had been appointed chair of the art history program, a highly prestigious, if deeply contested, position formerly held by Wickhoff.50 In this role as head of one of the most illustrious art history programs in central Europe, Dvořák lectured and wrote about the intimate connection between works of art and the broad spiritual worldview of their times. He strove to align the observable phenomena of history – its material artifacts and archival documents – with the internal, ineffable, but for him no less real world of both personal and shared spiritual experience. Like the other authors in this volume, Dvořák bridged the gap between the material and immaterial largely through sweeping, imaginative strokes of poetically described linkages. Wood describes Dvořák’s scholarship at this time as “relying heavily on intuitive and unsystematic analogies between works of art and broader cultural patterns,” producing a kind of art history that, as he notes, is at times described as “expressionist.”51 For example, in his classic study of the intellectual history of Austria, William Johnston wrote that Dvořák “embodied an expressionist desire to revive the emotional spontaneity that he attributed to the Middle Ages.”52 A sense that Dvořák’s scholarship was somehow consonant with the aims of Expressionist art can also be found in the descriptions of his contemporaries. In a review of a book of drawings by the Austrian Expressionist Oskar Kokoschka, to which Dvořák had contributed the foreword translated in this volume, art historian Otto Benesch described Kokoschka and Dvořák as “two deeply related spirits,” and went on to praise Dvořák for not being “a petty prisoner to the restrictions of a limited field of research, like so many of his colleagues; rather the breadth and depth of the whole spiritual world of the past as well as of the present stood open to the pure and unrestrained life force of his soul.”53 This expressionist aspect of Dvořák’s writing and teaching is usually associated with his later works, particularly those essays and lectures produced after 1914. Here Dvořák went beyond merely identifying the affinities between cultural belief systems and the concrete details of artworks. Instead, he engaged in an ongoing, ambitious undertaking—manifested in multiple essays and lectures given during this period—in which he sought to trace and champion the long history of spiritual expression in art, and thus to chip away at the belief in the primacy of classical and Renaissance representation that continued to inform much art historical scholarship.54 In his version of art history as Geistesgeschichte, then, Dvořák not only identified

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evocative symmetries between works of art and the worldview of an age, but he valorized that art which he saw as most finely in tune with the desire to express an inwardly felt spirituality, a model which he came to think of as the primary logic of artistic evolution. Dvořák pursued this speculative method in the writings collected in Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte, most famously in the essay entitled “On El Greco and Mannerism” in which he celebrates the overtly expressive style of El Greco as one which not only rejected the dictates of naturalist observation but pointed the way prophetically towards the reenchanted world which Dvořák urgently sought.55 This pursuit of a scholarship that would both rewrite art’s history according to its capacity for psychological expressiveness and contribute to the spiritual restoration of contemporary culture permeates other studies from these years that remain as yet untranslated, including the lecture on Tintoretto included here. Over the course of his late career, with what has been described as an almost “missionary” zeal, Dvořák seemed convinced that “after the collapse of materialistic culture, the human sciences [Geisteswissenschaften] would assume the responsibility of leading into a new, spiritual age.”56

heinrich Wölfflin In a 1915 essay entitled “On New Art,” the architectural critic Adolf Behne wrote: “Is one justified in using the concept of ‘expressionism,’ which took painting as its point of departure, also for other areas, [as something] first occurring in art and then in intellectual [geistigen] work in general?” Noting that he observed expressionism in architecture, Behne continues: “I don’t hesitate to extend the concept of ‘expressionism’ also to poetry and science [Wissenschaft], indeed I believe it is entirely possible that there is a certain way of working in each field of intellectual creation that may be designated as ‘expressionist,’ in contrast to another, for which the catchword ‘impressionist’ presents itself.”57 As an example of an impressionist style of scholarship, which he saw as merely able to categorize the surfaces of artistic phenomena, Behne pointed to the contextual work of Hippolyte Taine, whereas the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin stood for Behne as an example of an expressionist scholar able to discern the internal essence of artworks.58 Behne’s rhetorical framing of impressionism as a superficial mode of knowledge, in contrast to expressionism’s capacity to see into the spirit of things, is consistent with what was then becoming the dominant understanding of Expressionism as a form of art able to psychologically intuit the essence of experience, and thus a palliative to the type of rational, descriptive, and naturalist art typically seen as beginning with the Italian Renaissance and extending through Impressionism. In this way, Behne’s structuring of Impressionism and Expressionism as the two axes of intellectual as well as

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art history comes as no surprise. However, for many readers, it probably is unexpected to see Behne use the term “expressionist” to characterize a scholar who we usually associate with the descriptive categories laid out in detail in his iconic study of that same year, Principles of Art History.59 In the preface to the first edition, Wölfflin famously called his approach an “art history without names,” proposing instead a history of art as the history of vision, suggesting that expressivity was to take a back seat to a strictly objective ordering of style.60 As one of the “double roots” of style, form was not inherently expressive of anything but itself, and Wölfflin’s professed goal was to transform art history into a science by systematically charting the identifying traits that differentiated classic (Renaissance) from baroque form. This is the version of Wölfflin that we have come to know in the multiple editions of Principles of Art History since it first appeared. If we are to understand why Behne thought of Wölfflin’s scholarship as expressionist, the most likely candidate for such a description would seem to be Wölfflin’s 1886 dissertation, Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture.61 Translated into English over a decade ago, this early work seems to present an entirely different Wölfflin than the empirical formalist who has at times been christened the father of modern art history. Instead, in typically idealist fashion, the Prolegomena offered what Frederic Schwartz calls a “spiritualized notion of style”62 as a manifestation of the immaterial feelings of a culture, thus placing Wölfflin’s method squarely with other art historians who assumed that form necessarily embodied the mood of an age. For Wölfflin, the significance of form could be identified across its multiple cultural instances, as he indicated in a diary entry from 1889: “From the way a room is furnished, or the way a table is set, to the form of a prayer or a funeral … everywhere a soul is expressed, something from the very heart of man.”63 In response to the thorny question of how form and spirit were to be connected, Wölfflin turned to psychological theories of Einfühlung (discussed previously with regard to Worringer), particularly those of Johannes Volkelt and Robert Vischer. Wölfflin proposed a Formpsychologie, or psychology of form, a phrase later to be echoed in Worringer’s Stilpsychologie.64 Unlike Worringer, in his Prolegomena, Wölfflin did not adhere to a concept of empathy as pantheistic enjoyment in the universe, but rather emphasized a universal and corporeal model of empathetic connection with the object. For Wölfflin, the body functioned as a sensitive psychological tool, providing the means to project the embodied feelings of the human subject onto the objects of art and culture, and thus enliven them with meaning. Fundamentally, [for Wölfflin] works of art can only be explained from psychological processes. The history of art is the expression of how people felt in a particular period. … Now the emphasis lay on the empathy of the viewer, who must sharpen his aesthetic ability in order to obtain contact with the artwork by entering into the spirit of the work directly and reflecting on

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this “living in” [Einleben] independent of any historical information. According to Wölfflin, the artwork had to be defined as a way of seeing and feeling, of experience and assimilation.65

Because of the intellectual prestige held by psychology at the turn of the century, Einfühlung thus offered Wölfflin an extraordinarily flexible and legitimate model for conceptualizing the genesis, meaning, and interpretation of works of art. With empathy as the conduit linking artist, work, and observer not only was the object the material evidence of its maker’s internal life, itself bound up with the broader psychology of a people, but by extension the historian’s job was to bridge the gap between past and present by himself engaging empathetically with the immediacy of the work. Real understanding could be gained only through this method of intuitive, subjective interpolation. Wölfflin went on to have a long and illustrious career, and an enormous presence in the discipline. Born in Switzerland, in 1893 he was appointed to the chair at Basel, previously held by Jacob Burckhardt and later to be held by Heidrich. He moved then to Berlin in 1901, Munich in 1912, and finally, after resigning from his position in Munich in 1924, back to Switzerland to take up a post in Zurich. It is typically assumed that Wölfflin gradually disentangled himself from the emotional aesthetics of the Prolegomena, making his way first in Renaissance and Baroque (1898), then in Classic Art (1899), and finally in the Principles towards the rigorous analysis of form which promised to transform art history into a mature science.66 However, there is a strong case to be made against such a linear narrative, which deceptively pits subjective immaturity against an evolved objectivity. Behne, for example, was not referring to the Prolegomena when he described Wölfflin as an expressionist scholar, but instead to his study of the Italian Renaissance, Classic Art. In his introduction to the 1952 English translation of Classic Art, Herbert Read credits this book with laying the groundwork for Wölfflin’s formalist method—it is here that he first coins the phrase the “double root of style”67—yet Read simultaneously acknowledges the intuition and quasi-poetic descriptions still very much at work in the text. “In this volume,” he writes, “Wölfflin is by our present standards almost embarrassingly effusive.”68 Even as he focused his attention on the specificity of form, the visual root of style, Wölfflin continued to think through the mechanisms by which form is spiritually expressive.69 And in doing so, as several recent studies have suggested, he continued to rely on an empathetic model of interpretation, linking style with expressive content through prose that was often as evocative as it was merely descriptive. This is true not only of the earlier Renaissance and Baroque and Classic Art, but even of the canonical Principles which famously pits the composed, linear clarity of the classic style against the restless, painterly flow of the baroque. yet in an important essay, Marshall Brown has demonstrated how the “distinctions between opposing pairs only become

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clear when the categories are translated into their psychological equivalents, for their true function is to identify the expressivity, not the patterning, of the work of art.”70 Moreover, as Wölfflin’s writing spirals around its categories, the lively energy of the baroque encroaches on the stately unity of the classical— proving, says Brown, that the classic does not exist. The critical distance of the historian is revealed to be animated itself by a baroque expressivity.71 The supposed objectivity and cool clarity of this book are betrayed by the author’s constant “rhetorical excesses,” “effusive writing,” “baroque or expressive prose,” “emotional response,” and “inherent subjectivity.”72 Similarly, Mark Jarzombek traces through all of Wölfflin’s writings an affective prose that invokes empathetic responses: [The body] provides the locus of a universal experience … that unites object and viewer around the symmetrically placed axis of experience … His “descriptions” [of artworks], appearing simply to tell the reader “what is there”, were filled with subtle empathetic directives aimed at achieving an ontological unity of mind and object.73

Jarzombek draws from the full range of Wölfflin’s work to demonstrate his points: from the early Prolegomena, to Renaissance and Baroque and Principles of Art History, and finally Wölfflin’s last monograph, Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl from 1931. (This was translated in 1958 as The Sense of Form in Art, though more accurately the title should be Italy and the German Sense of Form.)74 In this study of sixteenth-century Italian and German art, Wölfflin’s rhetoric again reveals the writer’s emotional and empathetic connection to form as his primary interpretive instrument: “Let us look at the marble screens in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Again, we experience how the proportions simply overwhelm us.” Or “Italian architecture consists of nothing other than the most intensely felt life of definite surface extension, in harmony, of course, with the equally intensely felt total organism.”75 Wölfflin pursues a reading that would yoke the history of perception intimately to the character of a nation, to the “national concept of form” which he saw as essentially fixed across time: “It proves to be very clear that every concept of form has a spiritual content. … The development of art cannot be viewed exclusively as an internal organic evolution … besides this, art is bound up with the total life of a people, with its changing content.”76 In this study, Wölfflin clearly sides with the passionate, “expressionistic” feeling that he associates with the Germanic sense of form.77 Peppering his language with discussions of feeling, fantasy, passion, surrender, and instinct, Wölfflin produced in this last book a kind of art history that has itself been described by Nikolaus Meier as “a declaration, which brings forth its message in an expressionist way, as exclamation, and hence does not require scientific proof; indeed, it might not even desire scientific execution, and in this lies both its weakness and its quality.”78

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carl einstein Carl Einstein occupies a distinctive and somewhat anomalous place among the group of expressionist scholars collected here, in part because he made significant contributions not only to the writing of art history but to modern literature as well. As a writer of prose and plays, Einstein stands as one of the most important representatives of the Expressionist aesthetic. He was involved with the main German Expressionist periodicals of the day— including Die Aktion, Die weißen Blätter, and Pan—and was friends with key figures in Expressionist literary culture, including Gottfried Benn and Franz Blei. With his radical experiments in language, including his first and stunningly inventive “anti-novel” Bebuquin, or Dilettantes of the Miracle (1912), he is now considered to be central to the development of Expressionist literature.79 Bebuquin was published in Die Aktion, edited by Franz Pfemfert and to which Einstein contributed not only his first play and reflective pieces but also essays on contemporary art. Indeed, while scholars of German literature have focused on his prose and plays, Einstein wrote prolifically on art. His major publication on African sculpture, Negro Sculpture (1915), is famously the first study of African art to appraise its aesthetic rather than ethnographic significance.80 A second book on the topic, entitled Afrikanische Plastik [African Sculpture], followed in 1921.81 In 1926, only a quarter of the way into the century which is its focus, Einstein published his monumental study of modern art, The Art of the Twentieth Century, new editions of which appeared in 1928 and 1931, the last significantly revised by the author.82 These well-known texts are accompanied by numerous theoretical essays and critical pieces in avant-garde journals, including the Surrealist Documents, and a 1934 book on Georges Braque that is as much an exposition of Einstein’s late, psychoanalytically inflected aesthetic theory as it is an account of the artist’s work itself. The latter two projects were written after Einstein’s move to Paris in 1928, where as a German-Jew he was then necessarily exiled after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. Einstein’s faith in the transformational possibilities of the avant-garde faltered during these last, bitter years. Rejecting artistic revolution for military resistance, in 1936 he joined the anarchist militia in the Spanish Civil War, and his monumental survey of world art, entitled Handbuch der Kunst [Handbook of Art], was still unfinished when he took his own life in 1940 as the Germans invaded France. It is his perceptive and conceptually provocative writings on art, produced over the course of some three decades, that have brought Einstein to the attention of art historiographers and, as a result, analyses and translations of these texts have multiplied in recent years. As a student at Berlin University between 1904 and 1908, Einstein studied philosophy with Georg Simmel and art history with Wölfflin. He did not earn a university degree, however, since he had not come in with the requisite Abitur. Thus Einstein was, properly

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speaking, an art critic rather than an art historian, and his work operated in sometimes tense adjacency to the professional discipline of art history. He is often described now as an art historian, but he seems to have had little interest in occupying that position in an academic setting. He turned down the position of professor at the Bauhaus, as well as an invitation to lecture at the Institut d’Art et d’Archéologie in Paris. In terms of the institutionalization of art history and its curious neglect of its own expressionist histories, Einstein stands then rather outside the field and its forgetfulness. He is nevertheless included in this collection, steeped as he was in the intellectual history of the period, because of his important and theoretically intricate writings on art, and the influence that he exerted on art history as a sophisticated thinker operating at the margins of the discipline. In the realm of art criticism and art history, as in literature, Einstein’s writing has frequently been characterized as Expressionist. Matthias Müller-Lentrodt has compared Einstein to Fritz Burger, for example, asserting that “both were shaped by the Expressionist awakening, by the passionate spirituality [Geistigkeit] of an art movement eager for revival.”83 And of Negro Sculpture, perhaps Einstein’s best-known work, Rhys Williams writes: “Negerplastik encapsulates so many characteristic features of the Expressionist period as to make it a particularly valuable document … .” He continues: In Einstein’s language, “Vision” was associated with the suspension of the subject/object dichotomy and characterized by “intensity” and “simultaneity,” two notions which dominated the theoretical reflections of the expressionist period … The motif of regression … the peeling away of the layers of bourgeois civilisation, is the thematic correlative of the formal distortion of syntax and perspective which the expressionist quest for intensity and simultaneity produced. The “Pathos” of expressionist dramatic language is the equivalent of the “fixierte Ekstase” which Einstein defined as the essence of the African mask.84

Einstein concentrates in this book on the sophisticated forms of African sculpture, which he describes with great care—though never referring specifically to any one of the 119 illustrations that accompany his essay.85 He reaches his conclusions about the accomplishments of African sculpture, which he argues embodies mythic totality, without the distractions of discrete anthropological evidence. Referring instead to the general role of ritual in African life, Einstein relies on form to reveal what is essential about the work. As with the other scholars included in this volume, Einstein’s intense focus on form cannot be understood through the lens of a modernist narrative in which form is purified of any meaning that might corrupt it. His stance towards formal autonomy is far more complex than that explanatory model can allow. Like other expressionist writers considered here, particularly Burger, Einstein was indebted to the theories of Conrad Fiedler, in which the work of art is

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posited as a form of knowledge, undermining the traditional distinctions between a mimetic and an idealized representation of the world.86 This was for Einstein, as for Fiedler, entirely beside the point. Works of art are forms of knowing, in which epistemology and morphology are indistinguishable from one another. Art does not mimic, improve, or otherwise repeat the appearances of the world. On the contrary, as a structure of seeing and knowing, form makes the world possible. The political dimension of such an approach to form figures prominently in Einstein’s work. Within Negro Sculpture, as with all of his writings on art, roils a pronounced antagonism towards the technocratic rationality of the European industrial age. African sculpture, with its cubic totality, instantiates a way of knowing that relies on myth rather than reason, on transcendence and what Einstein calls “simultaneity” rather than an optical illusionism calculated to accommodate the viewer’s expectations. African sculpture’s abstract “distortions” embody rather than merely represent the divine. In this association of abstraction with a primitivist impulse for the spiritual, Einstein scholars have identified the influence of Worringer and his discussion of primitivism and abstraction in Abstraction and Empathy.87 Einstein’s theories of aesthetic totality and simultaneity in Negro Sculpture, and in the 1914 essay “Totality,” also emerged out of his fascination with French Cubism, which he encountered in Paris in the years before the war.88 In Cubist painting too, Einstein perceived the artwork’s ability to render the manifold of perception in an autonomous Gestalt. As Uwe Fleckner points out, Einstein’s profound engagement with Cubism during this period was largely unknown to a reading public that thought of him primarily as an expert on African art.89 This changed in 1926, when the first edition of Einstein’s massive Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts [Art of the Twentieth Century] appeared as volume 16 of the prestigious Propyläen-Kunstgeschichte series, and in which Einstein dedicated a substantial chapter laying out the aesthetic and theoretical significance of Cubism. Just as he had assessed African art as a more authentic kind of realism than mere mimeticism, in Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Einstein champions Cubism “as an epistemological process which gives artistic representation to the ‘direct experiences of the subject, his ideas of space.’”90 What must be foregrounded as crucial to Einstein’s aesthetic project is the conviction that art not simply concretize the experience of seeing but, through its intensity and simultaneity, produce forms of knowledge and being in the world. For Einstein, the Cubist work matters, indeed all art worth the name matters, because in its gathering of perceptual multiplicity into the totality of form, new realities are made and not simply reproduced. In its conjuring of the heterogeneous ways in which the subject moves through and apprehends the world, the object produces a moment of particularity and transcendence, of being apart, of imagining something altogether different. The notion

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of transcendence in Einstein’s theory departs then from an idealist model; it proposes immanence rather than immateriality. And thus the primitive in Einstein’s schema promises not so much a nostalgic return to atavistic origins as a radical refiguring of a communal present.91 Here is where the politics of Einstein’s thought lies, and also one of the important ways in which it may seem to deviate from the other art historians represented in this collection. Whereas for the other expressionist scholars considered here form is fundamentally expressive of a time and place, secured to the Kunstwollen of an era or bearer of a culture’s Geist, Einstein’s relationship to this model of art history is more problematic. For Einstein, the formed object is/produces reality; it does not merely reflect it.92 The expressivity of form seems to be called into question here, bound as it is to a notion of art as the necessary byproduct of a historical and cultural moment. One might counter, however, that Einstein certainly complicated but perhaps never entirely abandoned the paradigm in which art emerges in some kind of relationship with a historical constellation. For example, in a recent article on Negro Sculpture, Joyce Cheng has argued that, far from theorizing the significance of African art as wholly divorced from its cultural circumstances, Einstein saw these objects as conditioned by their historical use as ritualistic objects, as products of a “symbiotic relationship between form and ritual mediation.”93 Perhaps the Kunstwollen schema that was so influential for at least a generation of art historians did not fail to leave its mark on Einstein as well, even if he was suspicious of it. yet in contrast to those who might wish for a straightforward correlation between an era’s Kunstwollen and its resulting art, Einstein recognized the mutability, uncertainty, and anxiety in such a transaction. The work of art should not, indeed cannot, simply transfer Wollen to form, smoothly translating inchoate spirit into legible signs.94 It is instead a dialectical, traumatic, disruptive process, as much about crisis and excess as it is about structure and order.95 Einstein insisted that we recognize the irrationality of this dynamic, that we resist the urge to identify causality as the only force behind artistic production, and merely organize works of art in tidy historical rows. As Georges Didi-Huberman writes: At this level Einstein’s great epistemological bravery consists in implicating the discourse of art history itself in the very fragile force of the augural “reawakening.” What use is art history? Not a lot, if it contents itself with neatly classifying objects that are already known, already recognised. Plenty, if it manages to pose non-knowledge at the centre of its problematic and to make of this problematic the anticipation, the opening of a new knowledge, a new form of knowing, if not of action. Therein lies the greatness of Carl Einstein in the history of the discipline: he was not better than others at classifying or interpreting objects already integrated into the corpus of history; he invented objects, and in so doing anticipated new forms of knowing about art …96

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***

In some respects, with the possible and important exception of Einstein, the art historians described above adopted a method that does not necessarily appear to be in conflict with how the discipline is practiced today. As should be clear from this brief review of methods and principles, at some level their goal was simply to draw connections between the formal aspects of a work and the broader concerns of the culture in which that work was created. Tietze wrote that Heidrich, for example, “explained the artwork to us not only as form, but simultaneously as a spiritual [geistiges] means of expression.”97 This stood as a patent rejection of both a model of art history in which style was seen as something merely to be categorized according to morphological properties, and against a nineteenth-century idealist tendency to see artworks as reflections of a Geist that would first be identified through its literary, religious, or other societal manifestations, with little sense of what was peculiar to art. The first approach failed to acknowledge the cultural significance of art, the second to realize the specificity and power of form. Or, to put it differently, the Kantian bracketing of the aesthetic came up against the Hegelian theory of art as the materialization of Spirit. The Geistesgeschichte approach to art history sought to solve this problem by retaining the sense that form is significant, not because of its marooned autonomy but because it stands in some fundamentally expressive relationship to the defining beliefs of its time. In other words, the art historians collected in this volume assumed that the forms of a work are inherently and necessarily expressive, and that the content of that expression had something to do with the values and ideas of the time and place in which they were created. Stated in this way, their approach appears rather benign and not (necessarily) inconsistent with current scholarship. Their method, as ours, was built on the foundation of the Viennese art historian Alois Riegl, whose exhaustive studies were so foundational for the discipline as a whole. Riegl sought to both scrupulously chart the transformations of form while recognizing that these forms mapped inexorably onto the broader spirit of an age, and were therefore an expression of a particular era’s Kunstwollen, its will to form. Riegl solved the issue of how to trace the journey from spirit to form, or from form to spirit, by identifying loose affinities between style and society. As Christopher Wood writes: “Riegl, too, had permitted himself wild and basically meaningless analogies between form and world … Intuitionism is either the magic of Riegl’s art history or the beginning of its unraveling into mysticism, lyricism, and ahistoricism.”98 At the turn of the century, this problem of how to navigate the thread between work and world became a pressing methodological question for any art historian who sought to identify the cultural expressivity of form. Or, as Wölfflin once put it: “we still have to find the path that leads from the cell of the scholar to the mason’s yard.”99 Although we should be careful not to overlook

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their differences, it is significant that the scholars included in this volume shared the conviction that the spirit of an age could be read directly through form, virtually without recourse to historical documents. Form itself was all one needed to identify the broad character of a period or a people, as it was the material embodiment of that Geist. The modern observer should look not to the clerical evidence of history and read that information back into form, but precisely the opposite. Form is the visual manifestation of a culture’s way of being in the world, described by these writers typically in the most general of terms, which could be perceived simply by close looking. yet, as we have seen, this does not really resolve the issue of how to bridge the gap between Kunst and historical Wollen. In order to assign meaning to these forms, the historian must describe them as carefully and evocatively as he can, so that he is necessarily thrust into the role of interlocutor. It is his agency, as much as that of the forms he witnesses, that animates the works. And it is his subjective, interpreting voice that is called upon to divine the connections between aesthetic form and cultural Weltanschauung which the scholar presumes exists but, in the absence of historical documentation, can in the final analysis only be intuited. The leap from object to Geist—from surface to essence—is made possible primarily through the insertion of the author’s subjective position into that exchange. Because so much rides on the inferential insights of the observer, the persuasiveness of his claims had the potential to be heightened, rather than diminished, by a text that is self-consciously rhetorical, fulsome, and poetic. This opened the door to the demonstrative, expressive writing of these historians, who could now be admired as participants in the creation of meaning, seers of historical truths rather than mere actuaries. They could be celebrated for the sensitivity of their intuitions, as one colleague wrote of Heidrich, who had a “deep propensity for sinking into sensuous beholding, into the Kunstwollen of man, that innermost, spiritual jurisdiction and its unconscious changes which is the deepest play of history.”100 Perhaps this accounts, at least in part, for the tremendous success that many of these writings had with the public. Although their popularity might make these expressionist scholars suspect from certain points of view, it should also encourage us to recognize the broad-based appeal that an impassioned art history held, with its populist promise of educating professionals and laypeople alike in the secret history of art.

expressionist art and art history The rhetorical flair, vivid prose, and instinctual declarations in this mode of art history—which has prompted both its critics and champions over the years to describe these texts as effusive, penetrating, speculative, subjective, exclamatory, emotive, etc.—these are all of course qualities that we also associate with Expressionist art. In both its visual and scholarly manifestations,

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what is valorized in the expressionist method is personal response and an intuitive ability to see beyond the surface details of things into some pure essence of experience. From the overview of the expressionist art historians’ working methods and writing style given above, it should be apparent that this designation has been called on over the years to describe the work of scholars whose interpretations rest on broad, intuitive insights into the content of the work, usually the worldview of past and present eras as concretized in form. The use of the term “expressionist” suggests, or implicitly assumes, a kindred relationship with Expressionist art; thus one of the questions hanging at the edges of such a comparison is the extent to which an expressionist turn in art history can be correlated with Expressionist art of the period. Before getting into the specifics of this relationship, it is worth noting that the scholars in this book all embraced, to varying degrees, the general worth of evaluating the past through the prism of the present. This idea that the historian is necessarily bound to his own temporal and cultural moment, and could not extricate himself from that condition even if he wanted to, can be traced to various nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sources, including Dilthey, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ernst Troeltsch.101 In his popular guide to Munich’s Schack Galerie, Burger wrote of this situation: “We have learned from history that the past can never convey its spirit to us, but rather reflects our own character.”102 For the art historian willing to acknowledge and even capitalize on this condition, the art of distant eras, particularly those styles that previously had been ignored altogether or written off as incompetent, could be productively refracted through the experimental forms of the modern age. “Art and art history,” wrote Wölfflin, “run parallel.”103 The scholars we are interested in here alluded—more or less explicitly—to their ability to see the art of the distant past more clearly because modern art had opened the way to acknowledging more varied forms of art-making than realism or idealism. For example, in his study of the eleventh-century Ottonian manuscript illumination the Bamberg Apocalypse, Wölfflin pointedly compared the linear, flattened, rhythmic forms of medieval art to those of modern painting. Colleagues took note, as evidenced in a contemporary review of Wölfflin’s book: “in its judgments and preferences, science [Wissenschaft] is always influenced and understood through the spiritual currents of the period … science will gain new points of view from the progressive change of artistic impressions [Kunstanschauungen].”104 This did not always mean that Expressionist art was the most ready reference, however. Heidrich spoke in typical terms about the inwardness of German culture and aesthetic expression, adopting language that was firmly in place in discussions of modern art in general, though not acknowledging that source outright. And when Worringer wrote Abstraction and Empathy, he was projecting a broadly intellectual understanding of spiritualized culture onto the forms of the past. As he began to draw comparisons between modern and

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historical art, he was thinking more of Hans von Marées, Ferdinand Hodler, or Adolf von Hildebrand than Wassily Kandinsky or Franz Marc.105 Indeed, German modernism in general did not necessarily function as the frame for evaluating the art of the past or of other cultures. It was French Cubism that provided Einstein with a perceptual model for understanding the cubic or spatial totality of African sculpture.106 And in 1911, when Dvořák wrote that “art history has the development of modern art to thank for finally opening its eyes to perceiving the aesthetic qualities of the artworks of the past,” he was most likely referring to Impressionism, the opticality of which had provided him with a template for his early understanding of Tintoretto.107 However, Dvořák’s evaluation of Tintoretto changed dramatically over the next ten years, and the Mannerist artist who he had first compared to the sensual surfaces of Impressionism, Dvořák now analyzed in the spiritualized terms of an abstracted, Expressionist style.108 By 1913, with a growing awareness of contemporary and especially Expressionist art, Dvořák reevaluated art historical evolution in terms of both the naturalism associated with classical and Renaissance art, and the abstracted idealism championed by the Expressionists, which Dvořák now projected back onto the spiritually resonant works of the past.109 For example, he explicitly aligned the insular ornament in eighth-century manuscript illumination, described as an “abstract linear phantasy,” with the abstracted compositions of contemporary Expressionism. As Hans Aurenhammer writes, Dvořák described his own age as “in the throes of a disastrous upheaval comparable to the early Middle Ages and, following the collapse of all values, informed by a similar ‘yearning for the absolute’. Contemporary art accordingly based itself solely on the authority of the ‘spirit of inner experience.’”110 Here is an instance, then, in which Expressionist images had a transformative impact on scholarship, offering up the visual and conceptual terms with which to engage with parts of art’s history for which previously there simply would have been no useable set of standards available as points of reference. Somewhat surprisingly, Wölfflin too seems to have been both well acquainted and even receptive to the most recent movements in contemporary art. In 1923, he taught a course at the University of Munich entitled “The Art of the Nineteenth-Century: From Classicism to Expressionism,” which ended with a consideration of Franz Marc.111 It is likely that Wölfflin saw Marc’s work in person on at least one occasion, and Martin Warnke has suggested that part of Wölfflin’s “emancipation” of form in Principles of Art History can be attributed to what he learned from the abstracted forms of Expressionist artists.112 Einstein and Burger were both very aware of the current work of the Expressionist artists as well as being in regular communication with them, though Einstein, as we will see, was deeply skeptical about Expressionism as a valid means of capturing real experience. On the other hand, Burger not only stayed informed about contemporary Expressionist practice in Munich,

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where he lived, but eventually advocated on their behalf. In 1912, several years before Wölfflin, Burger began to introduce courses into his curriculum which included the most recent developments in modern art. These courses, which he structured as guided tours through contemporary art galleries and studios, were, like his other lectures, extremely popular.113 Burger’s conviction that the forms of art both embodied and were the product of a specifically aesthetic way of knowing demanded that the historian become intimately familiar with those forms, something that Burger began to see as perhaps more available to the interpreter within the arc of his own time and its art. Focusing on the spiritualized, anti-mimetic style of the Expressionists, and the demands it made on the subjective instinct of the viewer, could teach historians how to engage intuitively with the art of the past. Burger and Dvořák’s interest in, and promotion of, Expressionist art was not limited to lectures. Both scholars troubled the distinction that is usually taken for granted between art history and art criticism by publishing on the most contemporary examples of Expressionist art. For Burger, this became an essential element of his entire approach to scholarship, leading to his Einführung in die moderne Kunst, in which the works of Kandinsky and Marc hold a privileged position. Both had made appearances in Cézanne und Hodler, as provocative side notes, yet when he wrote this book, Burger had not completely reconciled himself to the radically formal choices of Expressionist art, especially that of Kandinsky. There, he hesitates before Kandinsky’s willingness to abandon mimetic representation altogether, which he worries might exclude any viewer but the artist from understanding it. The encounter with these images, and with Kandinsky’s own writing in On the Spiritual in Art, pushed even Burger, who was already fairly daring in his methods, to the limits of his artistic theory. So when Kandinsky’s work received a particularly insensitive and scathing review, Burger publicly came to his defense in an article entitled “For Kandinsky.”114 His reorientation towards Expressionist art is most obviously present in the Einführung in die moderne Kunst, where it is clear that Burger now not only understands the evolution of all modern art through the spiritualized language of Expressionism, but that he is a dedicated champion of the new art and its resacralization of a materialist, overly scientific, and spiritually impoverished modernity. By this point, Burger was personally acquainted with Kandinsky.115 But it is Marc above all who receives Burger’s highest praise, delivered in unabashedly rhapsodic language: Colors lose their material corporeality becoming the powerful energy of a gigantic but immaterial space, in which the limitless vastness of cosmic expanses are radiantly formed out of the cyclopic ruins of empirical existence. The colors are object-ready [gegenstandsbereite] spatial complexes, and are therefore neither actual light nor color for themselves, but [extend] towards all dimensions with limitless, forceful energies—joyful, clear, fiery, deep, unrestrained, and yet not anarchic.116

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Einführung in die moderne Kunst concludes with a woodcut by Marc entitled Versöhnung [Reconciliation], which appeared on the cover of the Expressionist journal Der Sturm in 1912, and is likewise reproduced on the cover of the current volume. By 1921, a few years after Burger’s posthumous publication, Dvořák also polemically celebrated the contemporary and radical art of Expressionism in a short essay that he contributed to a catalogue of drawings by the Viennese Expressionist Oskar Kokoschka.117 That text is included in this anthology as Dvořák’s only published account of contemporary Expressionism, and in which his views are palpably clear. Comparing Claude Monet’s haystacks with Kokoschka’s drawings of Kamilla Swoboda, Dvořák writes: Kokoschka’s Variations stand simultaneously between two periods; they represent a turning point, a fruit of the previous revolutionary moment, but at the same time they are a step towards a future realm of a new German idealism that will be founded not on the world of the senses but will take its ideal forms from the spheres of the spirits …118

Here Dvořák reiterates a by then firmly established paradigm in which Impressionism represents both an art and a worldview tied to the mechanical repetition of external appearances, while Expressionism delivers modern viewers from that positivist past, offering instead a transcendent, spiritual, and inwardly focused art. (Likewise, Dvořák echoes the era’s insistence that German and French culture are born of spiritual and sensual characters respectively, more on which shortly.) Worringer and Einstein also addressed Expressionism in their published writings, yet both were far less optimistic about its achievements. In his “Remarks on the Historical Developments of Contemporary Art,” Worringer made the familiar distinction between an Impressionist aesthetic, seen again as merely the last gasp of a centuries-long materialist trend that began with the Italian Renaissance, and a contemporary will to perceive what lies beneath the surface: “The great wealth of external knowledge of prior epochs has left us impoverished and from this feeling of poverty we impose today certain demands on art that correspond roughly to those that primitive mankind naively posed.”119 Worringer, however, was less convinced than Dvořák or Burger that Expressionism represented the best hope for a modern, re-enchanted art, as Magdalena Bushart has demonstrated.120 His relationship to the new art was cautiously appreciative. It represented a necessary corrective to an aesthetic of surfaces, but his ambivalence about the radicality of Expressionism’s inchoate forms tempered his embrace of the new movement, and led eventually to his rejection of Expressionist art as the truest incarnation of a spiritualized worldview which he now saw, as mentioned at the outset of this chapter, in the intellectual rather than artistic products of

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the era. The longstanding tendency to see Worringer as an active apologist for Expressionist art is not persuasively borne out, then, by his own writings. For his part, Einstein’s faith in art’s ability to grasp the multiple perceptual truths of experience lay not with Expressionism but with Cubism, which in its fractured totality came closest to the production, rather than representation, of reality that is art’s true task. This becomes clear in Einstein’s lengthy discussion of Cubism in the 1926 Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, an ambitious undertaking that was originally intended by the Propyläen-Verlag to offer a concise overview of “the latest art (Expressionism)” [die jüngste Kunst (Expressionismus)].121 The term “Expressionism” in the publisher’s contract may have referred to contemporary avant-garde art tout court, rather than its specific variant in German Expressionism.122 In the end, Einstein did produce a wide-ranging study of twentieth-century modern art that was, in any case, far longer than the publisher’s original request. He was ultimately scathing in his assessment of the Expressionists who, with few exceptions, he mostly criticizes for creating work characterized by insular solipsism and misguided metaphysics. In the 1931 edition of Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, written after Einstein’s move to Paris and involvement in the Surrealist journal Documents, Einstein introduced significant changes to the text’s structure and content, including not only a chapter on Surrealism but also a much longer discussion of Paul Klee in a chapter now dedicated to Der Blaue Reiter.123 His new introduction to the Expressionist artists of the Blaue Reiter frames their project somewhat more positively than before, retrospectively assessing its members’ willingness to engage emotional and psychological experience through the filter of the Surrealists’ hallucinatory explorations of the irrational psyche. “This group … ,” he writes, “seems to me to be at the center of modern German art history.” The “Blaue Reiter” was a community of men, who understood and set a completely new goal for German art: that painting, if it has any legitimacy, must be other and more than pure craft and the skillfulness of super-apes … . More uncompromisingly than the other Germans, Marc, Kandinsky, and Klee attempted to bear [tragen] an altered human attitude in pictures. Finally, one had the courage to destroy repressive and exhausted conventions [Übereinkunfte], and dared to draw discovered visions unreservedly. One tried to capture the process of inner seeing, to make the picture dynamic, so that a visionary event acts directly in the picture itself. The painter was no longer one who represents or arranges, but the pure medium of visions.124

Einstein softens his earlier attitude towards Expressionism here, recognizing the Blaue Reiter’s desire to make painting of authentic spiritual content that moved beyond the mechanics of mimeticism, yet not even at this point could he be called a convert to the cause. His original comments on Kandinsky and Marc appear later in this chapter, virtually unchanged from earlier iterations, with their biting mistrust of Expressionism’s sentimentality intact: “… they

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constricted themselves in egocentric mysticism, since they still wanted to divine psychic processes with the static clichés of an obsolete physics.”125 In the end, only the “magical force” and “metamorphotic power” of Klee’s images receive Einstein’s ultimate approval in this section, indicators not really of Expressionism’s or even of the Blaue Reiter’s general value, but of Klee’s singular ability to create pictures that have the capacity to transform and construct a new “spiritual structure.” yet while neither Worringer nor Einstein can be counted as advocates of Expressionist art, or were at best ambivalent about the ultimate merits of the Expressionist aesthetic, the artists themselves were keenly aware of these authors’ writings. In 1912, Marc and Kandinsky were in communication with Einstein as they began planning for a second edition of the Blaue Reiter Almanac. The two editors were already familiar with his poetic writing and art criticism, and appear to have been discussing the possibility of including an essay by Einstein in the next version of the Almanac. This second edition never materialized, however, due to the outbreak of World War I and Marc’s death on the front, and so we cannot be sure which essay was being considered. The text was perhaps the unpublished “Antiquity and Modernity” [Antike und Moderne] in which, as Uwe Fleckner has argued, Einstein’s discussion of the elementary authenticity and spiritual character of an eclectic array of non-Western art objects seems to have been inspired by the first edition of the Almanac and its constellation of unconventional pictorial sources.126 Expressionism as well as Cubism appears to have urged Einstein to consider the spiritual and perceptual complexities of “primitive” art, but it was then his writing in turn which had a demonstrable impact on Expressionist practice in Germany. Turning to the artists of the Brücke, for example, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff specifically modeled his abstracted, wooden sculptures after the illustrations in Einstein’s Negerplastik.127 Similarly, a direct link between Worringer and contemporary art lies in the artists’ enthusiastic reception of Worringer’s theories, as has been well documented.128 Abstraction and Empathy, which may itself have influenced Einstein’s writing of Negerplastik,129 laid out a theory of stylistic origins in which abstracted forms were as meaningful as naturalist ones, since both emerged as the most authentic mode by which the “will to form” of the period was made manifest. Marc, Kandinsky, and August Macke seized on Worringer’s psychological history of style as a way of both explaining and justifying their own increasingly abstract works. Thus Marc could write to Kandinsky in 1912: “I just read Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy; a fine mind, which we could very much use. Marvelous, scholarly thinking … .”130 Worringer’s theories functioned as the most visible and widely discussed mediator between art and art history’s expressionist demands for intuitive insights and increasingly autonomous form. yet one can say, more generally, that the authors in this collection created a conceptual window through which

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Expressionist art could be seen as viable, not only when they specifically addressed Expressionist art or by virtue of their own expressive methods of scholarship, but because they tended to privilege those past forms of art which seemed driven by a more inwardly oriented, spiritual, or irrational worldview. For example, Dvořák’s marked enthusiasm not only for Kokoschka, but more broadly for what he saw as the metaphysically profound art of the Mannerists, helped to theoretically legitimize the work of the Expressionist painters in Vienna.131 Or, as Otto Kurz put it less generously, “when Dvořák speaks of El Greco, he wants instead to say Kokoschka.”132 Reviewing the relationship between Expressionist art and an expressionist turn in art history, then, a network of connections was at play between these two modern modes of understanding the spiritually expressive content of form. Sometimes it seems that the theories of abstraction or Geistesgeschichte proposed by art historians shored up an Expressionist artistic practice that would otherwise have been largely unintelligible and indefensible in the eyes of the contemporary beholder. But the relationship worked in reverse as well, with the art of the Expressionists providing a lens that scholars could turn back onto the art of the past, urging them to reconsider styles that might previously have been dismissed as failed art, and to look for signs of a spiritual drive that could explain those forms that strayed from the classically mimetic directives of both idealized and realist illusionism. Here then is another point of contact between Expressionist art and expressionist art history. These artists and scholars both turned towards those moments in art’s history which had formerly been dismissed as examples of poor execution, unartistic taste, or cultural irrelevance. It was precisely this deviation from a classical or academic norm that drew Expressionist artists to so-called primitive objects, medieval prints, baroque painting, and the other styles which seemed to offer a revitalized, metaphysical, and authentic model of visual expression. If classical antiquity, the Italian Renaissance, academic naturalism, and Impressionism were all examples of a moribund, materialist conception of art, then African art, German woodcuts, El Greco’s paintings, and Post-Impressionism represented the overlooked spiritual history of art. Seen as either before or somehow outside the positivist sphere of influence, Expressionist artists incorporated the formal lessons of these images into their own work, emulating their flattened spaces, graphic line, unmodulated and non-mimetic color, and contorted figures.133 One sees a similar shift in scholarship of the period, with our art historians gravitating towards those styles that broke the rules of illusionistic representation in order, or so it seemed to these writers, to better express a collective, spiritual worldview. Although the discipline as a whole was slowly recognizing the need to diversify its objects of study, nevertheless histories of Italian Renaissance art continued to dominate the field. In this context,

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the introduction of atypical and under-represented periods and styles still represented a departure from professional expectations. Worringer cast a bright light on the art of his so-called primitive, Oriental, and Gothic types. Burger shifted from writing about the Italian Renaissance to studying nineteenth- and twentieth-century modern art. Heidrich published on the Northern Renaissance and Flemish Baroque, still a largely scorned style at that time. Dvořák turned his attention to the Mannerist painters of Italy and Spain, artists who had long been accused of corrupting the great works of the Renaissance into a debased, affected style. Wölfflin produced a study of Renaissance and baroque art in which, counter to all expectations, it is the flux and energy of the Baroque and not the restful harmonies of the Italian Renaissance that are continually privileged. And Einstein wrote ferociously insightful criticism not only about the abstractions of contemporary art and African sculpture, but also Japanese woodcuts, the art of the South Pacific, and pre-Hellenic bronzes.134 They all directed their attention towards styles whose ugliness (according to the terms of the day) they deemed expressive, whose distortions they described as spiritual, whose spatial compressions they viewed as transcendent. Partisan and poetic, in the manner outlined above, their descriptions of these works often seem to adopt the voice of acolyte or advocate rather than mere analyst. Discussing the shift in Dvořák’s later work, for example, Otto Benesch135 wrote that Dvořák began to focus on key moments in what he believed was an ongoing battle between matter and spirit, noting that Dvořák sided clearly with spirit: What is most noble in humanity, the only thing of worth and sublimity, is the realm of the spirit [Geistes], the realm of spiritual goods, of eternal truths … Thus we note how, in his most recent understanding of history, Dvořák’s estimation declines of those periods in which the spirit is estranged from itself, in which it bows down under the rule of matter.136

Dvořák thus made it absolutely clear where his sympathies lay—with past and present art forms that revoked materialism and made visible a spiritual realm. The other art historians in this collection held similar views, stated with varying degrees of explicitness. In this search for art forms that sidestepped the supposedly base materialism of illusionism, then, the artists and scholars of expressionism shared a fundamental understanding of how to evaluate past and present styles. This quickly opened onto an ethical question for both groups as well. For the artists, abstracted forms offered a very real way of saving a lost society. The members of the Brücke or the Blaue Reiter believed intensely in the necessity of their work, that it had the utopian potential to return a fallen, materialist culture to a state of spiritual grace. The expressionist art historians participated in this mission, finding the language to valorize the visual experiments of the era in their

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studies of past forms driven, they argued, by similar yearnings for the spiritual and the collective. This collapsing of the past and present, with its salvational current, often took on nationalist inflections in both art and art history. The quest for authentic form repeatedly led artists and historians to an internal “primitive,” to the art of a northern Germanic tradition that was consistently described in spiritual terms. Gothic German art in particular was celebrated as containing expressive qualities unique to the German people.137 Worringer had firmly established the link between the Gothic style and a psychological German essence, first in Abstraction and Empathy and then in Form Problems of the Gothic, and this homology between the expressive Gothic and German spirit echoed throughout the culture. These same traits were then telescoped forward to describe the works of modern northern European artists.138 Thus the search for the spiritual in art and art history could quickly acquire nationalist connotations, the consequences of which became that much more acute after the advent of World War I. Burger, for example, who had repeated the trope of the Germans being an innately expressive people in Cézanne und Hodler, focused even more insistently on questions of national difference in Einführung in die moderne Kunst. Here he starkly differentiated the passive, objective character of the French from that of the German Volk, for whom—he argued—form is the “shy, holy devotion of a deeply-religious sense, which unassumingly believes itself only to represent the spirit of a higher power.”139 At the same time, this “shy” and “unassuming” German spirit is the destiny of all true culture, Burger grandiosely proposes, and its ultimate redemption. While Burger’s declarations seem particularly hyperbolic, and uncomfortably in tune with the racist bombast of Germany’s most conservative elements, similar sentiments percolate through many of the expressionist art historians’ writings. The important exception here is, again, Carl Einstein, who was staunchly internationalist in his perspective and deeply critical of those who would assign some kind of innate superiority to German culture. Among these scholars, it is Einstein who fully recognized the powerful dangers of such thinking, which only became that much more apparent in the final years of the Weimar Republic.140 The other art historians included here, however, seem to have found themselves at a place where recognizing the uniqueness of the German culture and spirit had become a legitimate, worthy historical enterprise. Wölfflin, in his remembrances of Heidrich, wrote that “among all the younger scholars, it seems to me that no one would have been called like Heidrich, through talent and training, to write this German history of art as a self-confession of the German people [Volkes].”141 In a memorial essay by another colleague, Heidrich’s personality, method, and objects of study are handily fused into a single Germanic concept:

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Heidrich was closely bound up with the spiritual soil of the north German homeland. Just as the threads of his own soul were connected in multiple ways with his people’s expressions of life, so he could never imagine a creative art without seeing it intimately connected to the weave and life of the nation, and its inner meaning.142

In the quote cited earlier, Dvořák welcomed the “new Germanic idealism” that he believed Kokoschka’s art represented. The spiritual age that Dvořák envisioned was bound up with a German soulfulness, an expressive spirit that was the true sign of northern identity and simply foreign to other peoples. In Dvořák’s writings, when the Spanish El Greco or Italian Tintoretto’s work seemed to be enlivened by these same qualities of immaterial religiosity and transcendence, he shifted the ground a bit, explaining that their expressive force was due to an affinity with the German northern spirit.143 Anachronistically, he claimed these southern European painters for a northern tradition, thus leaving the narrative of Germanic spiritual authenticity and expressive power intact. Often heavy-handed and insistent, refrains of German singularity thread through these texts—declarations of a timeless northern identity marked by spiritual insight, anti-rational feeling, and völkisch unity. Coming in the first decades of a century that would be shattered by the racist violence of German fascism, these examples of an expressionist turn in art history might seem unforgivably blinkered by nationalist fervor. As the exception to this conservative rhetoric, Einstein’s equally forceful opposition to such chauvinism appeals to readers schooled in the politics of modernism. His refusal to tolerate any notion of an anointed German Volksgeist is more in line with what we typically expect from the early twentieth-century avantgarde. yet we do both these scholars and ourselves a disservice if we fail to recognize how deeply intertwined such nationalist sentiments were not only with artistic movements of the period, but with the intellectual history of modern Germany in general. We do not have the luxury of writing these exuberant texts off as excessively illogical and nationalist, of dismissing them as proto-fascist. The history of fascism is inextricably bound up with that of modernism. Mark Antliff writes: the rise of fascism in Europe responded to a widespread search for spiritual values and “organic” institutions capable of counteracting what was considered the corrosive effects of rationalism (and capitalism) on the body politic … we now recognize that many of the paradigms that spawned the development of modernist aesthetics were also integral to the emergence of fascism.144

Just as the nationalist dimensions of German Expressionist art have been, and must be, analyzed for their complex relations to the conservative political and intellectual currents of their time, so too should those models of art history which can seem at times to be too in thrall to the myth of German exceptionalism.

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overview of contents This volume has been organized into six sections, each focusing on one of the expressionist art historians just discussed. The sections contain translations of primary sources from German into English, followed by analyses written by an international group of scholars. Each of the primary texts has been selected for its ability to illuminate the expressionist tendencies of the author’s work, and thus lend insight into his overall scholarship; in addition, each has previously been available only in German and is translated here into English for the first time. Fritz Burger and Ernst Heidrich are translated here for the first time altogether, as their writings have not previously appeared in English in any published form. The accompanying secondary essays offer readings of the anthology’s primary texts and their authors, identifying their conceptual programs, methodological premises, contextual ties to cultural and art history, and their relevance for how we think about the practice of art history today. Although the main task of these critical responses will be to offer insights into the primary sources translated in this collection, they also situate these texts within the expressionist art historians’ broader scholarly output and the intellectual life of the period. Worringer’s next publication after Abstraction and Empathy and Form Problems of the Gothic was Die altdeutsche Buchillustration [Old German Book Illustration]. Here Worringer pursued similar themes as his first two, immensely popular publications, focusing in this case on the spiritual expressiveness of lateGothic German book illustration. Worringer maintains his earlier antipodes of empathy and abstraction, reframing them as the opposition between representational and expressive art in order to champion medieval German book illustration as one of the consummate examples of a uniquely German expressive art. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that many of the images of German medieval illustration that Kandinsky and Marc chose for their pivotal Expressionist work, the Blaue Reiter Almanac (1912), came from Worringer’s publication. The art of the “gothic Mensch” ultimately held a privileged role in Worringer’s system of ideal types, as Beate Söntgen has noted: “as intensified expression on an inorganic foundation, as the uncanny enlivening of abstract, mechanical laws, the Gothic is ‘sublime hysteria,’ it is the sign of a spirituality which … also characterizes the modern age.”145 In her essay on Worringer, Kathleen Chapman identifies how the identity of “old German book illustration” lies for Worringer in its dependence on the abstractions outlined in the text that it illustrates, rather than on references to the material world outside the text. Because Worringer is so concerned with conceptualizing illustration as a purely spiritual phenomenon, it would seem that his understanding of illustration would have little in common with contemporary commercial illustration. yet Chapman shows how for Worringer, just as text and picture join in his ideal of illustration as the

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expression of abstract content unattached to the material world, words and images work together in the commercial advertisement to create a perfect model that transcends the mundane physicality of the ad and its objects. She outlines the striking convergences between Worringer’s aesthetics and the discourses of advertising and commercial art; and, as such, her essay offers a valuable contribution to the growing literature on the intersections between mass culture, art history, and modern art in early twentieth-century central Europe. The section on Fritz Burger includes an excerpt from Cézanne und Hodler, which represents a significant moment in his turn towards a more expressionist model of art history and, as noted earlier, was widely read in Germany at the time of its publication. Turning away from his earlier studies of Renaissance art and architecture, this book marks a shift in Burger’s work towards the art of the modern era. Arguing that both Cézanne and Hodler’s art represent philosophical attempts to manufacture harmony from conflict, Burger veers emphatically away from positivist, evidential analysis towards interpretations based primarily on his provocative formal readings of the paintings under review, combined with a dizzying array of theoretical traditions ranging from Kant to Simmel. In her consideration of Burger’s scholarly evolution, Elena Filippi argues that Burger’s art history may be classified as “expressionist” from several points of view. In his writings about Expressionist art, and modern art in general, Burger attempted to evoke through mimetic, empathetic language the same atmosphere of the image being discussed. In addition, Burger’s style of writing itself, in its sentence construction and word choices, may often be described as expressionist. Filippi explores these characteristics while also positioning Burger’s texts within his larger scholarly output. She discusses how Burger epitomized a mode of irrational metaphysics in his scholarship, one not necessarily at odds with other cultural products of the period. Looking closely at a range of texts, Filippi discusses in detail Burger’s desire to identify the universal quality held by all works of art. She argues that Burger founds his expressionist art history on a broadly philosophical understanding of art as a kind of ontological question, specifically, as the materialization of thought. Like Burger, Heidrich’s work has not been published in English, so for both authors, translations are much needed in order to introduce an Anglo-American audience to these widely read texts. In Heidrich’s case, either the first or third of the Jena books could have ably represented the popular appeal of his scholarship, with its poetic identification of distinct stylistic features with the personality of the artist, as a manifestation of the culture’s broader habit of mind. And in both instances, Heidrich privileges those artists (Dürer and Rubens respectively) who he sees as most forcefully inward and passionate, impressed by their ability to persuasively concretize the spiritual in art. Heidrich’s prose is probably more florid in the earlier Die

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alt-deutsche Malerei [Old German Painting], and he is particularly unmoored from the works in this book, occupied primarily with identifying the general spiritual concerns of the period. yet in Vlaemische Malerei [Flemish Painting], though his tone is slightly cooler, we see Heidrich wrestling more explicitly with the notion of meaningful form, trying to negotiate the tension between the special character of form and its presumed expressivity. And of the two books, Flemish Painting was considered by Heidrich’s contemporaries to be the most mature, ambitious, and consequential manifestation of his method. Rintelen wrote that it was “wonderful to see” how Heidrich wrote about Rubens as an artist who singularly arrived at an “emotive [seelische] power which he revealed as a victory of the spirit, even in that which seemed most material.”146 Hedicke called Flemish Painting Heidrich’s first real attempt at Geistesgeschichte, and Wölfflin said that, of the three Diederichs books, this was the most perfect [vollkommenste].147 In the excerpt chosen here, Heidrich directs an impassioned eye at the late works of Rubens, weaving connections between the form, content, and viewer of the painting, all of whom become “ensouled,” he argues, by Ruben’s exuberant, and definitively northern, style of painting. The pronounced visibility of Heidrich in the context of his own time is matched inversely by his almost complete invisibility now. As the bibliography attests, extremely little has been written about Heidrich, in either English or German. Our anthology makes its contribution to that literature with an essay by Eveliina Juntunen in which she investigates Heidrich’s method of uniting a subjective, empathetic response to the image with an emphasis on the work’s place within broader spiritual and historical connections of the time. Focusing on Flemish Painting, Juntunen establishes the relationship between this volume and the larger program of its influential publisher, Eugen Diederichs. Diederichs’s publishing house hoped to educate and respiritualize modern readers; and, Juntunen argues, Heidrich’s contributions to the publisher’s Art in Pictures series must therefore be assessed in terms of this broader agenda, as well as for the ways in which the texts resonate with a number of contemporary issues that defined the worldview of an expressionist generation. As discussed previously, Max Dvořák’s expressionist turn is typically associated with his late work: those essays and lectures produced around 1914 and after. During these years, Dvořák gravitated towards marginalized styles, especially Mannerism, which did not conform to the conventional expectations of aesthetic worth and had, thus, largely been ignored. Following a trend that had begun with Wickhoff and Riegl, Dvořák reoriented his scholarship around these previously disdained styles, embracing a relativized history of art in which standards of quality could not be limited to a classical ideal. Dvořák’s essay on El Greco was translated as part of his The History of Art as the History of Ideas and then reprinted in Gert Schiff’s 1988 anthology on German art history. As such, in Anglo-American art history, the El Greco

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essay is usually considered emblematic of his late expressionist method. Here Dvořák claims El Greco for a spiritual tradition in art that both emerged from his period’s loss of faith in rationalism while also referencing his current culture’s rejection of what he calls “the cult of materialism.”148 yet Tintoretto also served as a crucial piece in Dvořák’s sweeping sense of the history of art as one in which either matter or spirit held sway. In the El Greco essay he refers to Tintoretto’s painting as an “art of inner sensation” consisting of “smoky masses or brilliant flashes of light reflecting subjective, spiritual states which have nothing in common with what we actually see.”149 The El Greco essay was first given as a lecture in Vienna in 1920 before being included in The History of Art as the History of Ideas in 1924. But several years earlier, in lectures given in 1914, Dvořák had already begun to shift his understanding of Tintoretto’s significance as a producer of mystical images expressing the anti-rational visions of a doubtful age. He then revisited these themes in a series of lectures on the Renaissance given between 1918 and 1921, which were published posthumously as Geschichte der italienischen Kunst im Zeitalter der Renaissance [History of Italian Art in the Age of the Renaissance].150 In the lecture translated here, Dvořák discusses Tintoretto’s late works, including the pictures in the Choir of San Giorgio Maggiore. Employing a lively descriptive style and an explicitly spiritual worldview, he interprets Tintoretto’s paintings as embroiled in an epic conflict between matter and spirit, a battle which is paradigmatic for all art historical change, and which defines Dvořák’s approach to understanding Oskar Kokoschka’s portraits of Kamilla Swoboda in the second text included here. In the accompanying critical essay, noted Dvořák scholar Hans Aurenhammer places the Tintoretto lecture within the context of Dvořák’s investigations into sixteenth-century European art in general. He argues that Mannerism appeared to Dvořák as an anti-natural Expressionism which, as a symptom of a deep spiritual crisis, radically opposed the elite aestheticism of the high Renaissance. Dvořák’s re-evaluation of Mannerism and his “spiritual turn” led him to substantively revise the methodological premises that were until then obligatory. Aurenhammer identifies the connections between Dvořák’s art history and the newly idealistic and spiritual ideologies of the time, tracing the evolution of his understanding of Mannerist expression until its final iteration in his last lectures. The chapter on Heinrich Wölfflin includes two short primary texts. The selections here were chosen because of Wölfflin’s emphatic insistence on the ability of visual form to convey internal truths, specifically with regard to the spirit of a national collective. Both present a version of Wölfflin that seems rather different from the cool empiricist we think we know from Principles of Art History. yet, as we have seen, Wölfflin was never as classical or methodical as he has been made out to be, particularly by scholars in the United States who adopted his comparative descriptions as a supposedly objective tool in

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almost every art history classroom. This discrepancy becomes more clear if we focus our attention on these two later texts written by Wölfflin, neither of which has been translated before. The first, “Italy and the German Sense of Form,” was published in 1921–22, and would later be expanded into the book Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl (1931).151 Here, in preliminary form, we see Wölfflin thinking through the national dimensions of artistic style, an issue which was certainly present in the Principles but is here foregrounded much more explicitly. Insisting on the affective root of style, on form as the concretization of a people’s psychological disposition, Wölfflin relies on the language of instinct, emotion, and expressive essence in order to establish the fundamentally distinct artistic dispositions of German and Italian peoples. In the second essay, “Principles of Art History: A Revision” (1933), Wölfflin revisits his phenomenally influential Principles of Art History, at once asserting the continued relevance of its claims of formal autonomy and the independence of vision, while at the same time insisting on the expressivity of form. There was always a double-root of style, Wölfflin says, and here he puts the emphasis squarely on the mysterious passage of cultural and national Geist into aesthetic form. The text reads as a poignant plea to not be misunderstood, to not go down in the history books as the man who bled form of its expressive potential, yet the essay has been almost completely ignored since its publication. In the accompanying chapter, co-authors Michela Passini and Francesco Peri turn to these two essays in order to analyze the role that “subjectivity” and “selfexpression” play in Wölfflin’s aesthetic system as a whole. By 1900 the concept of Ausdruck (“expression”) was a staple of German aesthetics, yet they want to explore the specific uses to which Wölfflin puts this notion. In the 1933 essay, Wölfflin dismisses the idea that an individual artist’s subjectivity can be held accountable for more than a small portion of those features of a work that can be seen as “expressive”; but he also acknowledges that the expressivity of certain forms and qualities is undeniable. The twisted forms of late Gothic architecture render above all others the German “character,” and the formal qualities of symmetry and balance mirror those of the Italian sensibility. Passini and Peri also turn their attention to Wölfflin’s 1921–22 précis of what would become Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl. Wölfflin’s ideal Germany is a construct of and against his image of Italian art: he oscillates between German longing and Italian repose, subjectivity and objectivity, meaning and form. The notion of “expression” subsumes and resolves each of these binary oppositions. Thus, they argue, expression is the linchpin of Wölfflin’s system and the motor of his intellectual development. In its choice of primary texts by Carl Einstein, the anthology takes up the question of the famously exacting author’s attitude towards German modernism. We know Einstein was an avid champion of Cubism’s significance, and that in his later years he would turn also to dissident Surrealism for its opposition to what he viewed as reason’s stranglehold on

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European thought. But what of Expressionism, or of modern German art more generally? As discussed earlier, Einstein took note of the Blaue Reiter Almanac’s eclectic assortment of “primitive” objects, and seems even to have considered contributing to the Almanac’s second edition. yet he soon distanced himself from Kandinsky and Marc’s metaphysics, and remained highly skeptical about their art’s merits, even if by 1931 he had acknowledged the Blaue Reiter’s early willingness to explore the irrational and spiritual aspects of human experience. The three short texts chosen for this volume all date to 1926, the year in which the first edition of Einstein’s Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts appeared in print, when the separate section on the Blaue Reiter had not yet been added. In that same year, Einstein published the two pieces included here, on Kandinsky and on the younger George Grosz. In these brief essays, he adopted an overtly poetic voice, deploying an aphoristic and fragmented syntax to deliver his judgments. In the crisply short text written for Kandinsky’s sixtieth birthday, we can see Einstein sorting out his position on what he perceived as the failed mission of Kandinsky’s abstraction, which in Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts he derisively described as “negative aesthetics.” But Einstein was on friendly terms with Kandinsky until at least the early 1920s, and as we know considered contributing to the Almanac.152 Alongside his critical assessment of the artist’s abstraction, which he eventually characterized as empty mysticism, lies an initial hope in this work’s possibility which will resurface to some degree in the final edition of Art of the Twentieth Century. In its jagged language and abbreviated narrative, the piece for Kandinsky’s birthday reveals some of these tensions, acknowledging the spiritual audacity of the painting, puzzling over its refusal to engage with the objective realities of experience, and finally briefly pitting this abstraction against the newly emergent modern art in Germany, Neue Sachlichkeit [New Objectivity]. The piece on Grosz gives us insight into Einstein’s assessment of both the artist and of the broader trend towards “New Objectivity” during the Weimar Republic. Einstein acerbically dismissed some strains of this movement, seeing them as a conservative retreat to mere illustration. But certain artists, Grosz and Otto Dix especially, created a verism that took the object and used it as a vehicle for cultural critique. Einstein had co-edited the Dada journal Der blutige Ernst with Grosz, and the two remained friends in the following years. Our text is one of two reviews of Grosz’s works by Einstein published in 1926, in which Einstein describes the ability of Grosz’s drawings to destroy rather than confirm the platitudes of a moribund reality. Here Einstein regards Grosz’s pictures as a true realism which, as Uwe Fleckner writes, was “not attached to the surface of objects, but penetrated deeply into the structures of the personalities of the figures depicted.”153 The review represents a moment of continued faith in Grosz’s project, which faltered by 1931, when Einstein pointedly asked whether “perhaps with Grosz the subject is more

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revolutionary that the strength of the formal composition [Gestaltkraft]. Here the question is raised whether art which deals with current subjects, yet processes them conventionally, is not in the final analysis reactionary.”154 The anthology also includes a section from the 1926 edition of Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, which focuses on the Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Einstein was generally dismissive of the Brücke artists, condemning their painting as ornamental, stylized, and clichéd.155 Thus, as Charles Haxthausen shows in his essay, it is that much more surprising to read Einstein’s spirited celebration of Kirchner’s work and find that he represents a major and somewhat bewildering exception to this view, one which has received little attention in the voluminous literature on Einstein. Haxthausen, noted Einstein scholar and the expert translator of several of his most important essays, contributes both the translation of Einstein’s Kirchner text and an analysis of its significance for his aesthetic theory. A close reading of this text, along with correspondence and other writings by Kirchner, allows Haxthausen to explore the reasons why Einstein held Kirchner in such high esteem. He may have seen Kirchner as one of the best representatives in Germany of a fundamentally (if not nominally) Cubist style, a significant interpretation given the importance that Cubism held in Einstein’s critical aesthetics. yet equally, as Haxthausen argues, these materials suggest that Einstein’s writing should be figured into our understanding of how and why Kirchner’s art took on a noticeably different style in the years after the publication of Art of the Twentieth Century. With Einstein as the subject of its final section, this book concludes with a writer considered central to the development of Expressionist literature, whose art criticism and art history shares several traits with the other expressionist art historians collected here, yet deviates from them in significant ways. We end purposefully, then, not with a resounding certainty about who or what counts as expressionist in art history, but with an author who casts the mutability of the term into high relief. Unconvinced of Expressionism’s authenticity, Einstein nevertheless strove to assess it with his characteristic bite and conscientious rigor; and his theories, as Haxthausen demonstrates, left their mark on Kirchner’s art. Moreover Einstein’s writings on the perceptual complexity, ritualistic significance, and anti-rational form of African sculpture seem to have not only been prompted in part by modern art’s turn to primitive sources, but also acted as a cultural catalyst, inspiring a generation of Expressionist writers and artists to turn to the primitive as a source of provocation and invention. Einstein’s interest in the ability of African and other non-western aesthetic objects to offer a profound challenge to the optical hegemony of European naturalism, to what he perceived as its naive faith in logic and the rational subject, puts him generally in the same camp as the other poets, artists, and scholars who wanted to launch a full-scale attack on those paradigmatic systems of the industrialized modern world which they believed would be

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its ultimate undoing. Einstein too looked to modern art as a vehicle for that assault, hoping that its cubic, abstracted, three-dimensional, irrational, or perceptual totality could—precisely by means of its existence as a particular, formally composed object—summon a different reality. Still, as we have seen, Einstein’s relationship to the intellectual tradition of Geistesgeschichte or to the Rieglian legacy of the determining Kunstwollen was more complicated than that of most of the expressionist authors represented here, indeed probably than most art historians of the era. For Einstein, art did not merely express the spirit of an age, but fundamentally produced it, creating rather than reflecting realities. yet Riegl’s Kunstwollen had always been a rather hazily defined concept, its conceptual fluidity giving rise to both intellectual enthusiasm and exasperation. Indebted as it was to Fiedler’s epistemological understanding of the object as a form of knowledge, the Kunstwollen model of art history left room for the work to be as world-defining as it was world-reflecting. Thus, although the other expressionist art historians rarely articulated Einstein’s conviction with the same amount of conceptual precision, it could be asserted that at some level they too were convinced of art’s ability to alter the course of history, to intervene in the formation of humanity’s spiritual structure. This is perhaps, in the end, what makes expressionists of them all, as each sought out art forms that in their formal or abstract integrity represented a spiritual antidote to the impoverished materialism of modernity.

notes 1 Dan Karlholm, Art of Illusion: The Representation of Art History in NineteenthCentury Germany and Beyond (New york: Peter Lang, 2004), 12, n3. 2 Udo Kultermann, The History of Art History [originally published as Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte: der Weg einer Wissenschaft, 1966] (New york: Abaris Books, 1993), 199–210. 3 An important exception in this regard is Christopher S. Wood, whose discussion of an expressionist type of art history is brief but informative. See his introduction to The Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s, ed. Christopher S. Wood (New york: Zone Books, 2000), 29–30 and 34–35. 4 I will use the term “expressionist,” in the lower case, when describing the art historians in this volume in order to make the historiographic point that these scholars have never been retrospectively collected or acknowledged as a school, a model, or a group, in spite of the fact that they are referred to as “expressionist” in multiple sources. yet rarely is any particular expressionist turn or tradition theorized in these instances. By contrast, I will use “Expressionist” when discussing the Expressionist artists of the period, since they were eventually written into history together as a movement, and this understanding of these artists as engaged in some kind of common aesthetic project—though not without its problems—has become the standard way we talk about early twentieth-century modernist German and Austrian art.

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5 Indeed until around 1912, the term “expressionist” was used by critics and collectors to describe virtually any work of art, from any country, which used color and line expressively, eschewed the customary procedures for creating the illusion of space, retreated from mimetic representation, and focused on emotive or spiritual rather than materially observable phenomena. See Donald Gordon, “On the Origin of the Word ‘Expressionism,’” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 (1966): 368–85; Marit Werenskiold, The Concept of Expressionism: Origin and Metaphorphoses, trans. Ronald Walford (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget; New york: Columbia University Press, 1984); Ron Manheim, “‘Expressionism’: Zur Entstehung eines kunsthistorischen Stil- und Periodenbegriffes,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 49 (1986): 86–94. 6 Richard Hamann, “Besprechung: Wilhelm Worringer, Formprobleme der Gotik,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 10 (1915): 360; translated and cited in Charles Haxthausen, “Modern Art After ‘The End of Expressionism,’” in Invisible Cathedrals: The Expressionist Art History of Wilhelm Worringer, ed. Neil H. Donahue (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995): 120–21. 7 Wilhelm Worringer, Künstlerische Zeitfragen (Munich: Bruckmann, 1921); reprinted in Fragen und Gegenfragen: Schriften zum Kunstproblem (Munich: Piper, 1957), 123, 128; translated in Haxthausen, “Modern Art After ‘The End of Expressionism,’” 120–21. 8 As with any anthology collection, including all possible texts is impossible as a matter of practicality, and something must necessarily be left out. An editorial decision was made to focus primarily on scholars who were associated with university departments of art history, with the exception of Carl Einstein. Doing so has the virtue of calling attention to the presence of what we might call art criticism even in the institutionalized space of art history. Among academic art historians, figures who could potentially also be included in a discussion of expressionist scholarship are Wilhelm Pinder, Friedrich Rintelen, and August Schmarsow, among others. 9 Neo-idealism is meant here to refer to the division drawn between the natural and human sciences by Wilhelm Dilthey and others, who proposed that cultural history cannot adequately be assessed with those laws of objectivity that belong to the natural scientific method. 10 Neil H. Donahue, ed., Invisible Cathedrals: The Expressionist Art History of Wilhelm Worringer (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995). 11 The literature on Worringer has grown quite large in recent years, but in addition to the Donahue anthology, a few of the more notable publications include: Hannes Böhringer and Beate Söntgen, eds., Wilhelm Worringers Kunstgeschichte (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2002); Mary Gluck, “Interpreting Primitivism, Mass Culture and Modernism: The Making of Wilhelm Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy,” New German Critique, no. 80 (Spring–Summer 2000): 149–69; W. Wolfgang Holdheim, “Wilhelm Worringer and the Polarity of Understanding,” boundary 2 8, no. 1 (1979): 339–58; Andreas Michel, “‘Our European Arrogance’: Wilhelm Worringer and Carl Einstein on Non-European Art,” in Colors 1800/1900/2000: Signs of Ethnic

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Difference, ed. Birgit Taut (Amsterdam and New york: Rodopi, 2004); Richard Sheppard, “Georg Lukács, Wilhelm Worringer and German Expressionism,” Journal of European Studies 25 (1995): 241–82; William V. Spanos, “Modern Literary Criticism and the Spatialization of Time: An Existential Critique,” Journal of Aesthetic and Art Criticism 29 (Fall 1970–71): 89–104; Geoffrey Waite, “Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy: Remarks on Its Reception and the Rhetoric of Its Criticism,” in The Turn of the Century: German Literature and Art, ed. Gerald Chapple and Hans H. Schulte (Bonn: Bouvier, 1981). 12 Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraktion und Einfühlung: Ein Beitrag zur Stilpsychologie (Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1908); translated by Michael Bullock as Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style (New york: International University Press, 1953; reprint Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1997). 13 Wilhelm Worringer, Formprobleme der Gotik (Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1911); unattributed translation as Form Problems of the Gothic (New york: Stechert, 1920); and translated by Herbert Read as Form in Gothic (London: G.P. Putnam, 1927). 14 Peter H. Feist, “Wilhelm Worringer,” in Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: 210 Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten, ed. Peter Betthausen, Peter H. Feist, and Christiane Fork (Stuttgart and Weimar: J.B. Metzler, 2007), 525–6. 15 Veronika Schroeder, El Greco im frühen deutschen Expressionismus: Von der Kunstgeschichte als Stilgeschichte zur Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1998), 57, n121. 16 On Worringer’s reliance and “misprision” of Lipp’s theories, see Waite, “Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy,” esp. 23–5. For a contextual consideration of Worringer’s use of Einfühlung, see also Juliet Koss, “On the Limits of Empathy,” Art Bulletin 88, no. 1 (March 2006): 139–57. 17 There are numerous references to Riegl’s influence on Worringer in scholarship on both figures. See, for example, Michael W. Jennings, “Against Expressionism: Materialism and Social Theory in Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy,” in Donahue, Invisible Cathedrals, 87–90. Riegl first proposed his idea of the Kunstwollen in Stilfragen: Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik (Berlin: Siemens, 1983). The literature on the meaning of the Kunstwollen in Riegl’s method and its historiographic significance is too vast to cite in full here. Recent publications include Jas’ Elsner, “From Empirical Evidence to the Big Picture: Some Reflections on Riegl’s Concept of Kunstwollen,” Critical Inquiry 32, no. 4 (2006): 741–766; Andrea Reichenberger, Riegl’s ‘Kunstwollen’: Versuch einer Neubetrachtung (Sankt Augustin: Akademia, 2003); and the essays by Alina Payne, Arnold Witte, and Andrew Hopkins in Alois Riegl, The Origins of Baroque Art in Rome, ed. and trans. Andrew Hopkins and Arnold Witte (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2010). The authors in the current volume occasionally utilize the customary translations of “will to form” or “artistic volition,” but as the term Kunstwollen is famously difficult to translate, the original German will more often be used. 18 Feist, “Wilhelm Worringer,” 526. 19 Worringer, Form in Gothic, 2. Translation revised.

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20 Ibid. Or, as Waite writes, Worringer “has no choice … but to use the empathy he has misread if he is to advance his thesis and convey it to his text’s implied reader.” Waite, “Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy,” 28. On this topic, see also Frank Büttner, “Das Paradigma ‘Einfühlung’ bei Robert Vischer, Heinrich Wölfflin und Wilhelm Worringer. Die problematische Karriere einer kunsttheoretischen Fragestellung,” in 200 Jahre Kunstgeschichte in München: Positionen, Perspektiven, Polemik 1780–1980, ed. Christian Drude and Hubertus Kohle (Munich and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2003), 82–93. 21 Jutta Müller-Tamm, Abstraktion als Einfühlung: Zur Denkfigur der Projektion in Psychophysiologie, Kulturtheorie, Ästhetik und Literatur der frühen Moderne (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 2005), 274. 22 For an excellent and detailed account of Worringer’s influence on contemporary artists, see Magdalena Bushart, Der Geist der Gotik und die expressionistische Kunst: Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttheorie 1911–1925 (Munich: Verlag Silke Schreiber, 1990), especially chapters 1–3. 23 Fritz Burger, Geschichte des florentinischen Grabmals von den ältesten Zeiten bis Michelangelo [History of Florentine Tombs from the Earliest Time until Michelangelo] (Strasbourg: Heitz, 1904); Die Villen des Andrea Palladio: Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Renaissance-Architektur (Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1909). 24 Fritz Burger, Die Schack-Galerie München (Munich: Delphin Verlag, 1912). The guide was well received by the public, going through two editions before being issued again in 1916 with the revised title, Die deutschen Meister in der Schackgalerie München von Genelli bis Böcklin (Munich: Delphin Verlag, 1916). 25 Burger’s lectures were astonishingly popular. For example, 726 students registered to attend his lectures in the winter semester of 1910. See Liane Burkhardt, “‘Bei aller Wissenschaftlichkeit, lebendig …’: Zu einzelnen positionen des Kunsthistorikers Fritz Burger (1877–1916),” Kunstchronik 51, no. 4 (1998): 171. 26 See the precise discussion of Fiedler in the introduction by Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou to Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics 1873–1893, ed. Mallgrave and Ikonomou (Santa Monica.: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994), 29–39. On Fiedler’s influence on Burger, see Matthias Müller-Lentrodt, “‘Subjektivieren mit höchster Kraft’—Carl Einstein und Fritz Burger: Über die expressionistische Wende in der Kunstgeschichte,” in Die visuelle Wende der Moderne: Carl Einsteins Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. K.H. Kiefer (Munich: Fink Verlag, 2003), 71, and Wood, introduction to Vienna School Reader, 30. 27 Fritz Burger, Einführung in die moderne Kunst [Introduction to Modern Art] Handbuch der Kunstwissenschaft: Die Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1917); Cézanne und Hodler: Einführung in die Probleme der Malerei der Gegenwart [Cézanne and Hodler: Introduction to the Problems of Contemporary Painting] (Munich: Delphin Verlag, 1913). 28 See Karl Heinz Herke, “Kunstwissenschaft oder Kunstgeschichte? Ein Gedenkblatt für Fritz Burger,” Hochland 17, no. 1 (1919/20), 709, and Feist, “Fritz Burger,” in Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon, 49.

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29 Albert Erich Brinckmann, afterword to Fritz Burger, Einführung in die moderne Kunst, 135. For other references to Burger as an “expressionist,” see Herbert Ellsworth Cory, “The Conception of Expression in Esthetic Theory,” part 1, Journal of Philosophy 25, no. 2 (January 19, 1928): 42; Müller-Lentrodt, “Subjektivieren mit höchster Kraft”; and Wood, introduction to Vienna School Reader, 29–30. 30 Worringer’s “Künstlerische Zeitfragen” [Questions About Contemporary Art] was first given as a lecture in 1920, for the Ortsgruppe München der deutschen Goethe-Gesellschaft, before being published as an essay in 1921. 31 Robert Hedicke, Methodenlehre der Kunstgeschichte: Ein Handbuch für Studierende (Strasbourg: Heitz, 1924), 153–4. 32 Kultermann, History of Art History, 204–7; Wood, introduction to Vienna School Reader, 29–30. Aside from these published sources, the only consideration of Burger in English that I am aware of is the master’s thesis by Lauren Grace Hamer, “Im Geist der Gegenwart: The Speculative Method of the Art Historian Fritz Burger,” The University of Texas at Austin (August 2009). 33 Kultermann, History of Art History, 207. Joseph Koerner also notes a connection between the expressionist values of Worringer and those of Heidrich in their respective studies of Lukas Cranach. See Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 30–32, and 447, n20. 34 Wölfflin recommended Heidrich for the position. See Nikolaus Meier, “Ernst Heidrich (1880–1914). Zur Grundlegung der Kunstwissenschaft,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 25, no. 1 (1980): 19. 35 Ernst Heidrich, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Methode der Kunstgeschichte [Contributions to the History and Method of Art History] (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1917). For the Wölfflin quote, see Heinrich Wölfflin, ed., Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1914), 13. 36 Hans Tietze, in Wölfflin, Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich, 42. 37 Hedicke, Methodenlehre der Kunstgeschichte, 151. Geistesgeschichte is notoriously difficult to translate. It is most commonly rendered as “history of ideas.” yet this empties the phrase of its more flexible meaning, which seeks to account for the immaterial processes that can be described as much by the notion of spirit as that of idea. For that reason, I will typically use either “history of the spirit” or the original German phrase. 38 See W. Eugene Kleinbauer, “Geistesgeschichte and Art History,” Art Journal 30, no. 2 (1970–71): 148. Kleinbauer proposes that Dvořák was the first art historian to practice Geistesgeschichte, but Hedicke considered Heidrich to be the first. On Dilthey, see the classic study by Rudolf A. Makkreel, Dilthey: Philosopher of the Human Studies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). 39 On Dilthey’s influence on Heidrich, see Meier, “Ernst Heidrich,” 30–32; Julius Petersen, in Wölfflin, Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich, 49; and the essay included here by Eveliina Juntunen. 40 Hedicke, Methodenlehre der Kunstgeschichte, 151. 41 “‘Art history as the history of ideas’ does not stand for a kind of ‘intellectual history’ (to use a modern phrase), but rather signifies putting ‘basic principles’

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[Grundprinzipien] into place which can be recovered through the formal analysis of the artwork.” Marlite Halbertsma, Wilhelm Pinder und die deutsche Kunstgeschichte (Worms: Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1992), 48. 42 Hedicke points this out quite clearly in his 1924 historiographic study which was also intended to offer an argument for the merits of art history as Geistesgeschichte: “the Geistesgeschichte direction [in art history] is only present where insight appears into the intellectual [geistigen] connection of all the human sciences.” Hedicke, Methodenlehre der Kunstgeschichte, 150. 43 Meier, “Ernst Heidrich,” 23. 44 Die alt-deutsche Malerei (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1909); Altniederländische Malerei (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1910); Vlaemische Malerei (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1913). On the role of Diederichs’s publishing program and Heidrich’s participation in it, see Meike G. Werner, “Provincial Modernism: Jena as Publishing Program,” Germanic Review 76, no. 4 (2001): 327. 45 See Wölfflin, p. 11 and Friedrich Rintelen, p. 25 in Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich. Rintelen points out that Heidrich’s decision to write three books for a popular audience which contained no new empirical research drew criticism from some of his colleagues. On Diederichs’s goal of publishing works that would educate the wide public in the hopes of cultivating a creative culture, see Werner, “Provincial Modernism,” 326–7. 46 Tietze, in Wölfflin, Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich, 35. 47 See Wilhelm Jäger, ibid., 54. 48 Max Dvořák, Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte: Studien zur abendländischen Kunstentwicklung (Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1924); translated by John Hardy as The History of Art as the History of Ideas (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984). The German should more accurately be translated as The History of Art as the History of the Spirit, which is the translation adopted by Hans Aurenhammer in his contribution to the current volume. Chapter 2 of the original appeared in English as Idealism and Naturalism in Gothic Art, trans. Randolph J. Klawiter, preface by Karl Maria Swoboda (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967). 49 Some of the more noteworthy publications in English are: Hans Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák and the History of Medieval Art,” trans. Judith Rosenthal, Journal of Art Historiography 2 (June 2010); Ján Bakoš, “Max Dvořák: A Neglected ReVisionist,” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 8 (2005): 55–72; Matthew Rampley, “Max Dvořák: Art History and the Crisis of Modernity,” Art History 26, no. 2 (April 2003): 214–37; and Mitchell Schwarzer, “Cosmopolitan Difference in Max Dvořák’s Art Historiography,” Art Bulletin 74, no. 4 (December 1992): 678–80. In German, see Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák, Tintoretto und die Moderne: Kunstgeschichte ‘vom Standpunkt unserer Kunstentwicklung’ betrachtet,” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 49 (1996): 9–39; Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák und die Moderne Architektur: Bemerkungen zum Vortrag ‘Die Letzte Renaissance’ (1912),” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 50 (1997): 23–39, 325–30; and Irma Emmrich, “Max Dvořák und die Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte,” in Dvořák, Studien zur Kunstgeschichte, ed. Irma Emmrich (Leipzig: Reclam, 1989).

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50 The matter of who would succeed Wickhoff led to a heated debate among the faculty at Vienna, some of whom argued vehemently for Josef Strzygowski, who was famously xenophobic and nationalist. Strzygowski was appointed chair, but a second chair was created for Dvořák, and they ended up directing two competing, adjacent institutes. 51 See Wood, introduction to Vienna School Reader, 29. See also Hedicke’s inclusion of Dvořák with the other representatives of a spiritualized art history: Heidrich, Burger, and Wilhelm Pinder. Hedicke, Methodenlehre der Kunstgeschichte, 151. 52 William M. Johnston, The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History, 1848–1938 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 155. Other references to Dvořák as an ‘expressionist’ art historian can be found in Jost Hermand, Literaturwissenschaft und Kunstwissenschaft: Methodische Wechselbeziehungen seit 1900, 36 and 68; Christopher P. Heuer, “Show of Hands: Christopher P. Heuer on Hendrick Goltzius (From the Vault Preview),” Artforum International (January 2003): 60; Kultermann, History of Art History, 168; and Richard Woodfield, “Expression, Form and Kunstwissenschaft,” in Aesthetic Matters: Essays Presented to Göran Sörbom on his 60th Birthday, ed. Lars-Olof Åhlberg and Tommie Zain (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 1994), 155. 53 Otto Benesch, “Oskar Kokoschka: Variationen über ein Thema,” in Collected Writings, 4, ed. Eva Benesch (New york: Phaidon, 1973), 177–8. 54 See Rampley, “Max Dvořák: Art History and the Crisis of Modernity,” 224–8. 55 The El Greco essay is included and translated in The History of Art as the History of Ideas, and was reprinted in German Essays on Art History: Winckelmann, Burckhardt, Panofsky, and Others, ed. Gert Schiff (New york: Continuum, 1988). An abridged form also appears in translation in The Magazine of Art 46, no. 1 (1953): 14–23, trans. John Coolidge. 56 Feist, “Max Dvořák,” in Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexicon, 69. See also Götz Pochat, “Der Epochenbegriff und die Kunstgeschichte,” in Kategorien und Methoden der deutschen Kunstgeschichte 1900–1930, ed. Lorenz Dittmann (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 1985), 147–8. 57 Adolf Behne, “Zur neuen Kunst” (1915), in Architekturkritik in der Zeit und über die Zeit hinaus Texte 1913–1946, ed. Haila Ochs (Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1994), 46–47. 58 Ibid., 51. 59 Heinrich Wölfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Das Problem der Stilentwicklung in der neueren Kunst (Munich: Bruckmann, 1915); translated by M.D. Hottinger (based on the 1932 edition) as Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art (New york: Dover, 1950). 60 Wölfflin removed this phrase from subsequent editions. 61 See Wölfflin, “Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture” [“Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur”], trans. Mallgrave and Ikonomou, in Empathy, Form, and Space. For an excellent discussion of this text, see the introduction by Mallgrave and Ikonomou in the same volume, pp. 39–56.

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62 Frederic Schwartz, “Cathedrals and Shoes: Concepts of Style in Wölfflin and Adorno,” New German Critique no. 76 (Winter 1999): 7. Although I will not go into his arguments here, Schwartz offers a brilliant analysis of Wölfflin’s belief in a unified style as expressed through form as a symptom of the crisis of capitalist modernity, in which style stood for the coherent spiritual expressions of a past age while fashion was merely the sad fate of contemporary, consumerist, pluralistic form. 63 Wölfflin, diary entry from April 4, 1889. Cited in Magdalena Bushart, “‘Form’ und ‘Gestalt’: Zur Psychologisierung der Kunstgeschichte um 1900,” in Krise des Historismus, Krise der Wirklichkeit: Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur 1880–1932, ed. Otto Gerhard Oexle (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 148. 64 On Wölfflin’s influence on Worringer, who would have heard the elder scholar’s lectures during his 1904 summer semester in Berlin, see Siegfried K. Lang, “Wilhelm Worringer’s Abstraktion und Einfühlung,” in Wilhelm Worringers Kunstgeschichte, ed. Hannes Böhringer and Beate Söntgen (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2002), 88–89. 65 Halbertsma, Wilhelm Pinder und die deutsche Kunstgeschichte, 39. 66 Heinrich Wölfflin, Renaissance und Barock: Eine Untersuchung über die Entstehung des Barockstils in Italien (Munich: Ackermann, 1888); translated by Kathrin Simon as Renaissance and Baroque (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966). Wölfflin, Die klassische Kunst: Eine Einführung in die italienische Renaissance (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1899); translated first as The Art of the Italian Renaissance: A Handbook for Students and Travellers, with a Prefatory Note by Sir Walter Armstrong (New york and London: Putnam, 1913), and then by Peter and Linda Murray as Classic Art: An Introduction to the Renaissance (New york: Phaidon, 1952). 67 Wölfflin, Classic Art, 287. 68 Herbert Read, introduction to Classic Art, vii. 69 On this topic see, for example, Michael Ann Holly, Past Looking: Historical Imagination and the Rhetoric of the Image (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996), 100; and Schwartz, “Cathedrals and Shoes,” 9. 70 Marshall Brown, “The Classic is the Baroque: On the Principles of Wölfflin’s Art History,” Critical Inquiry 9 (December 1982): 390. 71 Michael Ann Holly makes a similar argument in Past Looking, 91–111. 72 Brown, “The Classic is the Baroque,” 386, 387, 388, 391. When Brown’s text was reprinted in a volume of his collected essays, the jacket blurb described that chapter as an analysis of the “expressive flux in the formalism” of Wölfflin. See Brown, Turning Points: Essays in the History of Cultural Expressions (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). 73 Mark Jarzombek, “De-Scribing the Language of Looking: Wölfflin and the History of Aesthetic Experientialism,” Assemblage: A Critical Journal of Architecture and Design Culture 23 (Summer 1994): 36. In addition, Helen Bridge has recently argued that the commonplace notion of Wölfflin leaving empathy theory behind in his later works needs to be corrected. Although she does not see the body as the primary locus of this empathy in his later works, she maintains that even the later works invest in the idea of the object’s expressivity,

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and the notion that the emotional investment of the viewer animates the work. See H. Bridge, “Empathy Theory and Heinrich Wölfflin: A Reconsideration,” Journal of European Studies 41, no. 1 (2011): 3–22. 74 Wölfflin, Die Kunst der Renaissance: Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl (Munich: Bruckmann, 1931); translated by Alice Muehsam and Norma Shatan as The Sense of Form in Art: A Comparative Psychological Study (New york: Chelsea Publishing, 1958). On the English title, see Michela Passini and Francesco Peri’s essay in this volume. 75 Both quotes cited and translated in Jarzombek, “De-Scribing the Language of Looking,” 40, 52. As Jarzombek notes, the psychological force of this language is often lost in the existing English translation. 76 Wölfflin, The Sense of Form in Art, 226–7. 77 “If one wishes to ascribe an expressionistic bent to German art, no objection can be made.” Ibid., 210. 78 Nikolaus Meier, “Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl,” in Kunstliteratur als Italienerfahrung, ed. Helmut Pfotenhauer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991), 321. 79 Carl Einstein, Bebuquin: oder Die Dilettanten des Wunders (Berlin-Wilmersdorf: Die Aktion, 1912); reprinted in Werke Band 1. 1907–1918, Berliner Ausgabe, ed. Hermann Haarmann and Klaus Siebenhaar (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1994), 92–132. I thank Charles Haxthausen for referring me to a correct translation of this title in his “An Optics of Fragmentation,” in A New History of German Literature, ed. David Wellbery et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 688–693. On Einstein and Expressionist writing see also Neil H. Donahue, introduction to A Companion to the Literature of German Expressionism, ed. Neil Donahue (London: Camden House, 2005), 14–15, though there is now a wide-ranging body of work on Einstein’s role in Expressionist literature. 80 Carl Einstein, Negerplastik (Leipzig: Verlag der Weißen Bücher, 1915; Munich: Kurt Wolff, 1920); reprinted in Werke 1, 234–52; translated by Joachim Neugroschel as “African Sculpture,” in Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art: A Documentary History, ed. Jack Flam with Miriam Deutch (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 77–91; and by Charles W. Haxthausen as “Negro Sculpture,” in “Carl Einstein,” special issue, ed. Sebastian Zeidler, October 107 (Winter 2004): 122–38. I have chosen to use the 2004 translation and thus refer to the essay as “Negro Sculpture.” 81 Carl Einstein, Afrikanische Plastik (Berlin: Wasmuth Verlag, 1921); reprinted in Werke Band 2. 1919–1928, Berliner Ausgabe, ed. Hermann Haarmann and Klaus Siebenhaar (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1996), 61–145. 82 Carl Einstein, Werke Band 5. Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Berliner Ausgabe, ed. Uwe Fleckner and Thomas W. Gaehtgens (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1996). 83 Müller-Lentrodt, “Subjektivieren mit höchster Kraft,” 66. 84 Rhys Williams, “Carl Einstein's Negerplastik and the Aesthetics of Expressionism,” in Expressionism in Focus: Proceedings of the First UEA Symposium on German Studies, ed. Richard Sheppard (Blairgowrie: Lochee, 1987), 86–7. See also Williams’ discussion of Negerplastik as an example of Expressionist theory in “Prosaic Intensities: The Short Prose of German Expressionism,” in Donahue, A Companion to the Literature of German Expressionism, 91–92.

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85 As Andreas Michel points out, Einstein’s use of the phrase “African sculpture” is no less problematic than the book’s title. “African sculpture” belies the diversity of the traditions illustrated in the book, which contains examples from not only West Africa but also the South Seas. The Melanesian objects were removed from the second edition of the book (1920). See Andreas Michael, “Formalism to Psychoanalysis: On the Politics of Primitivism in Carl Einstein,” in The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy, ed. Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, and Susanne Zantop (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998): 148, n11. 86 On Einstein and Fiedler, see Hansjörg Diener, Dichtung als Verwandlung: Eine Studie über das Verhältnis von Kunsttheorie und Dichtung im Werk Carl Einsteins (Zurich: LEU-Verlag, 1987), 18–20; Andreas Michel, Europe and the Problem of the Other: The Critique of Modernity in the Writings of Carl Einstein and Victor Segalen (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1991), 54–78; and Sybille Penkert, Carl Einstein: Beiträge zu einer Monographie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), 46–7. 87 See Neil Donahue, “Analysis and Construction: The Aesthetics of Carl Einstein,” The German Quarterly 61, no. 3 (Summer 1988): 420–23; Andreas Michel, “‘Our European Arrogance’: Wilhelm Worringer and Carl Einstein on Non-European Art,” in Colors 1800/1900/2000: Signs of Ethnic Difference, ed. Birgit Tautz (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), 143–62; Williams, “Carl Einstein's Negerplastik,” 80– 82; Rhys Williams, “Primitivism in the Works of Carl Einstein, Carl Sternheim and Gottfried Benn,” Journal of European Studies 13 (1983): 255; and Rhys Williams, “Wilhelm Worringer and the Historical Avant-Garde,” in Avant-Garde/ Neo-Avant-Garde, ed. Dietrich Scheunemann (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), 55–9. 88 Carl Einstein, “Totalität,” Werke 1, 223–9; translated by Charles W. Haxthausen and Sebastian Zeidler as “Totality,” in Zeidler, “Carl Einstein,” special issue, 115–21. 89 Uwe Fleckner, The Invention of the 20th Century: Carl Einstein and the Avant-Gardes, exh. cat., trans. Judith Hayward (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2009), 181. 90 Ibid., 184. 91 Or, as Zeidler writes, “a primitivization: the rupture, in the act of aesthetic experience, of a modern subject model based on vision as knowledge by the encounter with an object that stages form as an actualization of the virtual.” Sebastian Zeidler, “Totality Against a Subject: Carl Einstein's Negerplastik,” in “Carl Einstein,” special issue, 38 [italics in original]. 92 See Liliane Meffre, Carl Einstein et la problematique des avant-gardes dans les arts plastiques (Berne: Peter Lang, 1989), and Zeidler, “Totality Against a Subject,” esp. 39–41. 93 Joyce Cheng, “Immanence Out of Sight: Formal Rigor and Ritual Function in Carl Einstein’s Negerplastik,” RES 55/56 (Spring/Autumn 2009): 89. See also Andreas Michel’s comment: “Einstein never loses sight of the social import of this art. On the contrary, in his analysis the social function of such sculpture is closely tied to its formal characteristics. This intimate nexus between form and function is grounded in Einstein’s adherence to a strong version of autonomy aesthetics.” Michel, “Formalism to Psychoanalysis,” 150.

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94 See David Quigley, Carl Einstein: A Defense of the Real (Vienna: Schlebrügge, 2007), 139. 95 Georges Didi-Huberman discusses this aspect of Einstein’s aesthetic theory expertly in “‘Picture = Rupture’: Visual Experience, Form and Symptom according to Carl Einstein,” trans. C.F.B. Miller, Papers of Surrealism 7 (2007): 1–25. 96 Ibid., 18. 97 Tietze, in Wölfflin, Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich, 41.Tietze continues: “Considered in this way, a cultural-historical method does not at all stand in contrast to an explanation based on the evolution [of form], but expands this into a fully rounded understanding of the artwork in the conditions of its historical situation.” (41) His summary of Heidrich's method would fit generally, then, with how art history is typically introduced today. Margaret Iversen and Stephen Melville address the ubiquity of this model: “How does a field like the history of art come into being? If one looks at the standard art history curriculum in universities, the answer looks easy: there is art; it is widely spread out in time and space; and art history is the study of this object with due attention to its historical and social specificity…,” a formula that they go on to note “remains at once arbitrary and obvious.” Iversen and Melville, “What's the Matter with Methodology,” in Writing Art History: Disciplinary Departures, eds. Margaret Iversen and Stephen Melville (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press: 2010), 1–2. 98 Wood, introduction to Vienna School Reader, 35. The rest of this quote is worth citing as well: “Riegl’s intuitionism flashes rarely; but it may turn out that any cultural analysis grounded in formal analysis will have to rely at some point, with more or less explicitness, on intuitive links between form and world. Whether this kind of writing actually gets disparaged as expressionist may simply depend, in the end, on rhetoric, tone, and the degree of belletristic or demagogic ambitions.” 99 Wölfflin, Renaissance and Baroque, 77. 100 Franz Roh, in Wölfflin, Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich, 61. A generation later, as Wood discusses, the scholars of the New Vienna School were at pains to distance themselves from their expressionist predecessors; yet, claims to objectivity notwithstanding, the results of Strukturanalyse also hinged on the creative work of the art historian. See Wood, introduction to Vienna School Reader, 34–35 and 43–44. 101 On the problem of historical knowledge, see for example Charles Bambach, Heidegger, Dilthey, and the Crisis of Historicism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995); and David D. Roberts, Nothing But History: Reconstruction and Extremity after Metaphysics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 102 Burger, Die Schack Galerie, 137. 103 Wölfflin, Gedanken zur Kunstgeschichte: Gedrucktes und Ungedrucktes (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1941), 118. 104 W.Sch., “Review of Die Bamberger Apokalypse,” Kunstblatt 3, no. 12 (1919): 380.

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105 See Magdalena Bushart’s extensive discussion of this issue in “Changing Times, Changing Styles: Wilhelm Worringer and the Art of His Epoch,” in Donahue, Invisible Cathedrals, esp. pp. 72–9. 106 Klaus H. Kiefer, “Fonctions de l’art africain dans l’oeuvre de Carl Einstein,” in Images de l’Africain de l’Antiquité au XXe Siècle, ed. Daniel Droixhe and Klaus H. Kiefer (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1987), 152–4; Williams, “Primitivism in the Works of Carl Einstein, Carl Sternheim and Gottfried Benn,” 251. 107 Cited in Oskar Bätschmann, “Logos in der Geschichte: Erwin Panofskys Ikonologie,” in Dittmann, Kategorien und Methoden der deutschen Kunstgeschichte, 102, n29. On Dvořák’s early appraisal of Tintoretto, see Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák, Tintoretto und die Moderne,” 15–16, and Rampley, “Max Dvořák,” 222. 108 Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák, Tintoretto und die Moderne,” 9–39. 109 Karl M. Swoboda, introduction to Idealism and Naturalism in Gothic Art, xxi–xxv. Several sources review the ways in which Expressionism affected Dvořák’s method. See Kleinbauer, “Geistesgeschichte and Art History”; Bakoš, “Max Dvořák: A Neglected Re-Visionist”; Riccardo Marchi, introduction to Idealismo e naturalismo nella scultura e nella pittura gotica [Italian translation of Idealismus and Naturalismus in der gotischen Skulptur und Malerei] (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2003); and Norbert Schmitz, “Max Dvořák: Das Spirituelle in der Kunstgeschichte,” in Kunst und Wissenschaft im Zeichen der Moderne: Exemplarische Studien zum Verhältnis von klassischer Avantgarde und zeitgenössischer Kunstgeschichte in Deutschland: Hölzel, Wölfflin, Kandinsky, Dvořák (Alfter: VDG, 1993). 110 Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák and the History of Medieval Art,” 11–12. 111 Thomas Lersch, “‘… in begrenztem Umfange geeignet’: Franz Roh an der Müncher Universität,” in 200 Jahre Kunstgeschichte in München: Positionen, Perspektiven, Polemik 1780–1980, ed. Christian Drude and Hubertus Kohle (Munich and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2003), 228. 112 Martin Warnke, “On Heinrich Wölfflin,” Representations 27 (Summer 1989): 178–80. Joseph Gantner makes a similar claim in “Heinrich Wölfflin und die moderne Kunst,” Merkur 13 (1959): 944, where he writes: “Everyone who spoke with him about art will remember how very interested, for example, he was in the theoretical statements of Kandinsky and Marc.” 113 On Burger’s teaching roster and popularity, see Rolf Hauck, “Fritz Burger (1877–1916). Kunsthistoriker und Wegbereiter der Moderne am Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts” (PhD diss., Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, 2005), 56–7. 114 Fritz Burger, “Für Kandinsky,” in Der Sturm 152/3 (March 1913): 288. 115 See Müller-Lentrodt, “Subjektivieren mit höchster Kraft,” 69. 116 Burger, Einführung in die moderne Kunst, 132. 117 Max Dvořák, foreword to Oskar Kokoschka: Variationen über ein Thema (Vienna: Lanyi, 1921); reprinted in Oskar Kokoschka. Das Konzert: Variationen über ein Thema: Hommage à Kamilla Swoboda, ed. Reinhold Graf Bethusy-Huc (Salzburg: Galerie Welz, 1988), 29–32. All references here will be made to the 1988 copy.

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As Kathryn Simpson notes, Dvořák prized Kokoschka’s aesthetics of ugliness because it seemed to issue from authentic spiritual expression. Simpson, “Viennese Art, Ugliness, and the Vienna School of Art History: The Vicissitudes of Theory and Practice,” Journal of Art Historiography 3 (December 2010): 10. 118 Dvořák, foreword to Oskar Kokoschka: Variationen über ein Thema, 32. Translation in this volume by Heather Mathews. 119 Wilhelm Worringer, “Entwicklungsgeschichtliches zur modernsten Kunst,” in Im Kampf um die Kunst (Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1911): 92–9; translated in Bushart, “Changing Times, Changing Styles,” 79. 120 Bushart, “Changing Times, Changing Styles.” 121 Fleckner, The Invention of the 20th Century, 171; and “Contract between Carl Einstein and Propyläen-Verlag” (March 13, 1922), reprinted in Einstein, Werke 5. Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, 819–20. 122 The continued use of the term “Expressionism” to describe a broad range of contemporary art, even into the 1920s, is discussed in Charles W. Haxthausen, “A Critical Illusion: ‘Expressionism’ in the Writings of Wilhelm Hausenstein,” in The Ideological Crisis of Expressionism: The Literary and Artistic German War Colony in Belgium, 1914–1918, ed. Rainer Rumold and O.K. Werckmeister (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1990), 170–72. My thanks to the author for pointing out the possibility of this meaning in the Propyläen contract. 123 On this text and the importance of Klee to Einstein’s theory in the 1920s, see Charles Haxthausen, “‘Die erheblichste Persönlichkeit unter den deutschen Künstlern’: Einstein über Klee,” in Kiefer, Die visuelle Wende der Moderne: Carl Einsteins, 131–46; and also Sebastian Zeidler, “Form as Revolt: Carl Einstein’s Philosophy of the Real and the Work of Paul Klee,” RES 57/8 (Spring/Autumn 2010): 230–63. 124 Einstein, Werke 5. Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, 241. 125 Ibid., 249. 126 See Uwe Fleckner’s informative discussion of this issue in Carl Einstein und Sein Jahrhundert: Fragmente einer intellektuellen Biographie (Munich: Akademie Verlag, 2006), 87–91. Andreas Hüneke has also identified “Antike und Moderne” as the text being considered for the Almanac. See Hüneke, “Hinter einem schwarzen Vorhang tanzende Gedanken: Pläne des Blauen Reiters,” in Der Blaue Reiter, exh. cat., ed. Christine Hopfengart, (Bremen: Kunsthalle Bremen, 2000), 27–33. Fleckner previously believed the essay to be “Totality,” and Dirk Heisserer has recently claimed that the text was an unpublished “Picasso” essay which later appeared as “Totality.” See Dirk Heisserer, “Das ‘Problem der Form.’ Der Blaue Reiter und die Negerplastik: Zu den Voraussetzungen der Kunstkritik Carl Einsteins,” in Kiefer, Die visuelle Wende der Moderne: Carl Einsteins, 29–32. 127 Donald Gordon, “German Expressionism,” in Primitivism in 20th Century Art, exh. cat., ed. William Rubin (New york: Museum of Modern Art; New york Graphic Society, 1984), 393–5; Walter F. Ingo, Art of the Twentieth Century (Cologne: Taschen, 2000), 424. 128 For a detailed discussion of this reception, see Bushart, Der Geist der Gotik, 18–25. See also Haxthausen, “A Critical Illusion,” 173–7.

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129 Cf. Williams, “Carl Einsteins Negerplastik,” 81–2. 130 Cited in Bushart, Der Geist der Gotik, 48. 131 See Schwarzer, “Cosmopolitan Difference in Max Dvořák’s Art Historiography,” 676. 132 Otto Kurz, “Julius von Schlosser, Personalità, metodo, lavoro,” in Critica d’arte 11/12 (1955): 419; cited and translated in Schiff, introduction to German Essays on Art History, lii. 133 The literature on German and Viennese Expressionism, and their relationship to these past precedents, is far too large to list here. For useful accounts of these issues, I refer the reader to Shulamith Behr, Expressionism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Timothy Benson, ed., Expressionist Utopias: Paradise, Metropolis, Architectural Fantasy, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1993); Donald Gordon, Expressionism: Art and Idea (New Haven and London: yale University Press, 1987); Jill Lloyd, German Expressionism: Primitivism and Modernity (New Haven and London: yale University Press, 1991). 134 See David Pan, Primitive Renaissance: Rethinking German Expressionism (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 123–4, 212, n14. 135 Benesch wrote his dissertation under Dvořák and would go on to direct the Albertina Museum. 136 Otto Benesch, “Max Dvořák: Ein Versuch zur Geschichte der historischen Geisteswissenschaften,” Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 44 (1924): 194. 137 See Hermand, Literaturwissenschaft und Kunstwissenschaft, 10. However, with the exceptions of Worringer and Einstein, the expressionist scholars considered here did not share with Expressionist artists an interest in the primitive cultures of Africa, Oceania, or other non-Western sites. In this sense, their search for an anti-rational visual tradition which would simultaneously exclude non-European peoples and draw on the vitalism of a pre-modern national past comes uneasily close to the racialized mysticism of German fascism. On the complicated meanings associated with the concept of primitivism with regard to German fascism and Nazi politics, see Russell Berman, “German Primitivism/Primitive Germany: The Case of Emil Nolde,” in Cultural Studies of Modern Germany: History, Representation and Nationhood (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993). 138 The most extensive treatment of the interconnections between the fascination with the gothic style, Expressionism, and Germanic nationalism remains Magdalena Bushart’s excellent study of these issues, Die Geist der Gotik. 139 Burger, Einführung in die moderne Kunst, 48. On this issue, see Wood, introduction to Vienna School Reader, 30. 140 As Sebastian Zeidler notes, Einstein critiques this cultural conservativism and its misreadings of Nietzsche in “Der Verfall der Ideen in Deutschland,” in Carl Einstein, Werke 2, 533–49. See Zeidler, “Form as Revolt,” 232 and 238. 141 Wölfflin, in Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich, 13.

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142 “Jäger, ibid., 55. Similarly, in the same volume another colleague wrote: “But what gave his books their power was the wonderful vitality which ran through all the pages that he wrote … the vitality of a man who sought with passion. And precisely through this vitality in seeking, Heidrich embodied one of the most beautiful types of the German character.” See Rintelen, ibid., 31. 143 See Rampley, “Max Dvořák: Art History and the Crisis of Modernity,” 223. 144 Mark Antliff, “Fascism, Modernism and Modernity,” Art Bulletin 34, no. 1 (March 2002): 148–9. On the complex relationship between fascism and modernity in general, see Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (Basingstoke and New york: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 145 Beate Söntgen, “Wilhelm Worringer (1881–1965),” in Klassiker der Kunstgeschichte, vol. 2, ed. Ulrich Pfisterer (Munich: Beck, 2008), 25. 146 “die seelische Kraft erreicht hat, die ihn auch das scheinbar Materiellste als Leistung des Geistes erkennen läßt.” Rintelen, in Wölfflin, Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich, 30. 147 Hedicke, Methodenlehre der Kunstgeschichte, 152, and Wölfflin in Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich, 11. See also Tietze, in Wölfflin, Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich, 41, who wrote that the third volume “powerfully surpassed both of its predecessors in its masterful balance.” 148 Max Dvořák, “On El Greco and Mannerism,” in The History of Art as the History of Ideas, trans. Hardy, 108. 149 Ibid., 102. 150 Max Dvořák, Geschichte der italienischen Kunst im Zeitalter der Renaissance: Akademische Vorlesungen, ed. Johannes Wilde and Karl Maria Swoboda, 2 vols (Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1927–28). 151 As noted earlier, this text was published in English as The Sense of Form in Art, which sublimates the national thrust of its contents. The title translates more accurately as Italy and the German Sense of Form. 152 On the friendship between Kandinsky and Einstein, see Fleckner, Carl Einstein und sein Jahrhundert, 91. In this chapter, Fleckner provides the most thorough account of Einstein’s personal and critical relationship with Kandinsky to date. 153 Fleckner, The Invention of the 20th Century, 136. 154 Einstein, Werke 5. Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, 228. 155 Ibid., 207–8.

PART I

Wilhelm Worringer

1 Illustration and Advertising: Wilhelm Worringer’s Die altdeutsche Buchillustration Kathleen Chapman

In the introduction to The Passion of Christ (1923), a series of woodcuts by the late Gothic printmaker Urs Graf, Wilhelm Worringer declares, “every genuine woodcut in its purest form is, in fact, a bit of a poster [Plakat].”1 That Worringer equates the woodcut—a manually carved and printed image of relatively limited circulation—with the poster—a mechanically printed product of industrial capitalism for and about mass consumption—may seem somewhat jarring, particularly since he presents the poster effectively as the source rather than the result of a long print tradition. By positing the poster-like qualities of late Gothic woodcuts in this fashion, in other words by inverting the conventional historical trajectory in which the medieval artisanal precedes the modern mass-produced, Worringer upends notions of chronological progress while replacing established conceptions of art and its value with a new prioritization of modern modes of mass production. That the art historian Worringer would consider images produced by modern consumer culture in relation to art historical works was, in itself, not at all unusual. In fact, art history, as a discipline that is centrally concerned with the visual, provided the foundation for much of the theorizing about mass culture that emerged in the early twentieth century in Germany.2 However, most theories were guided by assumptions that art is superior aesthetically, intellectually, socially, and “spiritually” to the products of mass culture, and in this light, Worringer’s stance works to undo such hierarchization. In the traditional scholarly forum of the monograph, Worringer acknowledges the importance of advertising for thinking about the tradition of printmaking, and the relevance of using insights gained from modern modes of reproduction and mass distribution to rethink the multiple images of the past. But Worringer does not simply read backward, using the present to analyze the past. He also engages with German art history to reflect on the

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status and uses of the visual image in the rapidly changing world of the early twentieth century. Worringer thus presents a model of history that acknowledges the impact of the inescapably contemporary perspective of the historian. However, for Worringer, the identification of equivalences between old and new visual forms arises not only from the historian’s point of view, but also from the recurrence of specific traits that appear under particular conditions and at somewhat regular intervals. One of the tasks of the art historian, in Worringer’s view, is to make sense of these recurring traits, and to draw conclusions about the cultures in which they emerge and develop. Worringer follows this approach in his many publications, focusing primarily on German culture, as in, for example, Die altdeutsche Buchillustration (1912). In this extended study of late Gothic woodcut illustrations, Worringer focuses on the woodcut as a definitively German form of pictorial expression, and he weaves contemporary concerns about modernity and national identity into his account of the emergence and transformation of German woodcut illustrations during the late Middle Ages. As he constructs this history, he attempts to identify what is consistent in the German print tradition, situating it in both the historical past and within a contemporary environment marked by increasing nationalism and burgeoning fears about the effects of modernity on German culture and society. Worringer’s analysis of woodcut illustrations highlights the affinities between illustration and posters; further, it reveals the links among Gothic illustrations, commercial posters, and the most prominent form of experimental art being produced in Germany before World War I— Expressionism. The conceptual thread that binds together these seemingly vastly different phenomena is Worringer’s understanding of abstraction. Abstraction, for him, is the foundation of woodcut both as medium and illustration as genre, and it forms the basis of German national character as well. Having identified abstraction as the trait that characterizes art produced by the German people, Worringer concludes that it guides the production of all forms of German visual culture.3 Worringer’s approach to art history thus adheres to the Hegelian tradition of Geistesgeschichte, which assumes that a unifying, supra-individual “spirit” guides all cultural and social manifestations of a particular age or people.4 Further, his conclusions about a specifically German propensity for abstraction also draw on Alois Riegl’s conception of Kunstwollen, or artistic volition, that defines a particular nation or era.5 Accordingly, Worringer’s understanding of abstraction as a fundamentally German trait conceives of Germans as a collective body rather than as a group of spontaneously creative individuals, and in Die altdeutsche Buchillustration, he evaluates the significance of individual artists according to the extent to which they demonstrate their inclination toward

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the abstract; in other words, according to their German-ness. Worringer was not alone in his identification of abstraction as the unifying factor in German cultural production. Similarly holist conceptions of German character and culture shaped many early twentieth-century theories of art and the emerging forms of mass culture, including Expressionism and poster design.

Illustration and Abstraction Much of Worringer’s work is structured around antithetical terms, and he presents, for example, the Gothic and the Renaissance, and the north and the south of Europe as opposites. Most important in Worringer’s work, however, is the opposition of abstraction to empathy. Worringer introduced these terms in Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style, which appeared in 1907 as his dissertation and in 1908 as a widely read book, and he elaborated on them in Form Problems of the Gothic, which appeared in 1911. In Die altdeutsche Buchillustration, Worringer builds on the basic antithesis he outlines in these earlier works, extending his analysis of the opposition between empathy and abstraction as a means of understanding what he sees as the fundamental differences between figurative art and expressive art; and he develops further the assertions about the regional or national character of abstraction and figuration that he explores in Form Problems of the Gothic.6 For Worringer, German, or Nordic, art tends toward the abstract. It avoids the mimetic not because its artists are less skilled than the “Roman”—Italian and French—artists with whom he contrasts them but because Germans are more inclined toward the spiritual than the sensuous, and their art, accordingly, is more expressive of the ineffable than it is representational of the material world. In his explorations of these antitheses in Die altdeutsche Buchillustration, Worringer shifts from the analysis of sculptural ornament and architecture that had comprised the two earlier works, and instead, he identifies late Gothic book illustration as the paradigmatic example of German art. Illustration, which, more often than not, is figurative, may seem to be a curious choice for making points about abstraction. yet, for Worringer, the dependence of illustration on words, its task of making visible what is purely textual, is key. It is, therefore, typical of the German urge to abstraction: The German’s art always tends toward the illustrative, toward the dominance of spiritual significance over the purely representational. Insofar as his art is meant not to depict but to express, it is predisposed to illustration. Because what differentiates illustrative art from fine art is its dependence on a purely spiritual, immaterial element, the text, the written or printed word. This dependence grants all illustration its fundamental character.7

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Here, Worringer is careful to distinguish illustration from other pictorial forms, particularly those that are mimetic. While illustrations contain imagery that is meant to be recognizable to viewers, the words they accompany act as a buffer between the reality of the text and the reality of the external world.8 In dialogue with textual realities, illustrations can create worlds that remain beyond the reach of the material world and, thus, safely within the realm of the conceptual and the spiritual. Worringer presents illustration as an ideal synthesis of the literary and the visual, a fusion that sublates the physical sensation of the pleasures of looking into a realm of higher meaning. The strength of illustration is its power to help the reader/viewer transcend the impermanence of the material world by means of the visual. In fact, for Worringer, illustration is so intimately defined by its relationship with the text it accompanies that any overtly mimetic acknowledgment of the external world violates the very nature of illustration: The most elementary requirement that results from this inner relationship of dependency [between illustration and text] is the following: the illustration may not—by means of sensual illusion—wrest the reader from the spiritual experience to which the printed or written word compels him; it cannot drag him from the world of fantasy back into the world of the corporeal-real.9

The ideal illustration is able to work with a text to create an alternative world that is superior to, and untainted by, material reality. Illustration thus reaffirms German superiority in the realm of the conceptual while simultaneously providing the reader/viewer with an escape from the anxiety-inducing sensations of the physical world. Contrastingly, if an illustration strays too closely toward the illusionistic, it violates its fundamental nature and fails as illustration. This, Worringer asserts, is the case with southern European approaches to illustration, the product of a Kunstwollen driven by an empathetic relationship with the world: “We search in vain for great illustrators among the Romans. They have only great illuminators.”10 Illustration must, therefore, strike a careful balance if it is to avoid becoming illumination, which is, for Worringer, far more illusionistic and more typical of medieval luxury book production than more cheaply printed books. The illustration must be realistic enough to evoke, in partnership with the text it accompanies, a world plausible enough for the reader/viewer to “enter” it; but it must, at the same time, carefully avoid appearing too much like the physical world that already exists. In other words, the illustration must appeal more strongly to the intellect than to the senses. In declaring that all German art is illustrative, Worringer reasserts that abstraction rather than empathy defines German art. His conclusion that Germans are driven by a desire to express the spiritual that is stronger than any urge to render the material world accurately draws on the commonplace that the Germans, with their predilection for inwardness and their desire to

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find higher spiritual meaning in all aspects of life, are ultimately not producers of great visual arts and that, instead, they excel at immaterial forms such as literature and music.11 yet Worringer also finds that Germans made worthy contributions to the visual arts, and he presents the woodcut illustration as an example. For him, German art makes visible a more profound truth than anything revealed in purely mimetic art, and it testifies to what he sees as a characteristically German desire to find a more spiritual alternative to the material realm. Worringer conceives of his conclusions about abstraction as Stilpsychologie, or “psychology of style,” and, as he argues in Abstraktion und Einfühlung, a history of the psychologies of style is a history of perspectives on the world and, as such, can explain how a particular sense of the world, a worldview, can give rise to specific types of form-making.12 By describing the psychology that fosters specific types of art, Worringer intends to reveal the irreducible unity of form and content in art. As he outlines in this early study, the abstract and figurative approaches to art-making emerge from the relationship between a collective body and the external world. Groups with an empathetic, or affirmative, attitude toward the sensuous world produce figurative art that imitates the material world. But for groups overwhelmed by sensations of the material world, expressive abstraction is a way to manage what they perceive as the “extended, disconnected, world of phenomena.”13 Thus, pre-modern, or “primitive” man seeks to order the chaos of the physical world in the regular linearity of ornament.14 Similarly, the German transcends the arbitrariness of matter in illustration. For both, visual form becomes a strategy, a structured way of organizing sensations into an aesthetically pleasing and spiritually challenging, even satisfying, mastery of fleeting stimuli. In their shared will to abstraction, primitive man and the German reach for a reality that is constant, a realm that surpasses the transience of the physical.15 In Die altdeutsche Buchillustration, Worringer argues that the German propensity for abstraction was expressed most clearly in illustration, and the medium most suited to illustration was the woodcut. Among the artists included in this survey is Urs Graf, whose work Worringer also uses in the 1923 monograph to develop his ideas about illustration and the woodcut. He writes: The prints [by Graf] that do justice to the woodcut as medium—which one could also think of as a new sense of fidelity to the woodcut—grant to the flat surface an essence that is simultaneously material and ideal. The surface is not simply there; rather, it speaks, and it speaks, in fact, as the primary artistic means of creating effects. This is a reclamation of the elemental character of the woodcut. This is because its fundamental nature is graphic, not painterly, and it exists, accordingly and above all, in the weighty significance of the contrast between lines and planes. The painterly is as fundamentally foreign to the woodcut as are the intimate and the detailed.16

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For Worringer, the woodcut is able to achieve a level of spirituality due to its inherently graphic nature. The prints that he prizes do nothing to hide the fact that they are images stamped onto a flat surface; there is nothing illusionistic about them. The woodcut treats the surface not as something merely to be covered over with tricks of perspective, but as an element that has its own expressive potential. For Worringer, this focus on flatness and linearity enables the woodcut to retain its expressive force— rather than presenting a copy of the material world, the woodcut asserts its capacity for giving visual form to the purely conceptual and, therefore, to the spiritual. Focusing on Plate 4 from the Passion series (Figure 1.1), Worringer argues that the surface of the print takes on a level of expressiveness that is almost tactile in its forcefulness: With Urs Graf, there are linear strokes of such a degree of juiciness—one thinks of the lines of the roofs in Plate 4—that it is as if the surface, like an overripe fruit, has broken out from its own fleshly abundance into line. This is the effect of these lines, which, in tearing open the surface, set free its urgently surging fullness of life.17

The surface of the woodcut seems here to act as both a barrier and a conduit between unseen, vital forces and the world of forms; the lines, which simultaneously cover and tear open the surface, shape and grant access to these forces. Graf’s woodcut is, thus, more compelling, more true to the forces of life than any figurative painting (perhaps even a still life of over-ripe fruit) could be; and, for Worringer, it stands, therefore, as an ideal example of illustration. In Die altdeutsche Buchillustration, Worringer presents many such exemplary woodcuts, tracing the development of the woodcut illustration from being a mere derivative of illumination to a highly expressive graphic form. At the pinnacle—and almost at the end—of this development, he places what he views as the finest example of illustration, Albrecht Dürer’s Apocalypse (1496–98), a series of woodcuts based on the Book of Revelation (for example, “The Opening of the Fifth and Sixth Seals”) (Figure 1.2). Dürer is a key figure for Worringer, poised as he is between the expressive German Gothic tradition and the “Roman” mimeticism of the Italian Renaissance.18 He admires the Apocalypse for its elegant synthesis of Gothic and Renaissance elements, a melding that nevertheless enables Gothic—and therefore, more illustrative—qualities to dominate:19 Decisive for its value as illustration is the fact that, in this intermingling, the Gothic element has greater weight. Indeed, the world of forms is a new one; the body, with its tensed innervation, speaks with its joints and organs as never before; and the physical is elaborated with an unprecedented plasticity. But all of this is secondary and subordinates itself to what is more important—the

1.1 Urs Graf, Saint Mary Magdalen Washing Christ’s Feet (1507), woodcut, 28.8 × 21.3 × 1 cm. Plate 4 of Hans Wechtlin (attributed to), Der text des Passions oder Leydens Christi auß den vier Evangelisten zusammen in ein Sinn bracht mit schönen Figuren. Printer: Johann Knobloch the Elder. Editor: Johann Ringmann

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unique expressiveness of the lines. All of the expressive capability of abstract linearity seems again to be concentrated in this great artist’s hand. The sense of these images lies in their vehement linear expression and only secondarily in the content of what they represent. We need only to turn a plate on its head so that all possible ways of comprehending the content fail—yet the entire dazzling, visionary, fantastic effect and the storm-laden atmosphere of the apocalypse rush immediately toward us, bursting out from the lines and from the battle between light and darkness. Storm-like forces thunder through the linearity, and form appears to emerge almost accidentally in the madly excited leaping of the lines. Never has anyone wrested such forceful, spiritual violence of expression and suggestive power from lines as has this great Gothic artist.20

While Worringer identifies the surface as the most expressive element in Graf’s work, he points to line as the most eloquent feature in Dürer’s woodcuts. And while Dürer’s use of line enables him to render the plasticity of the physical world in great figurative detail, he does not become trapped in mimeticism. It is crucial for Worringer that, despite the palpable physicality of the human body in these prints—in other words, despite their mimetic proximity to the material, sensuous world and seemingly dangerous closeness to falling away from the illustrative—these woodcuts nevertheless retain their abstract expressiveness. The sensual appeal of the physical bodies that they depict is far less powerful than the force of the contrasts between light and dark that Dürer’s lines convey. Worringer finds that these prints present the elemental powers of the gathering storm of the Apocalypse so effectively that we do not even need to look at them the right way up to experience the overwhelming forces conveyed by the images. The figurative is inconsequential in relation to the power of the simple yet evocative contrast between lightness and darkness that Dürer’s placement of lines on the surface of the page creates. Clearly, Worringer is unafraid to position himself as a viewer who can be moved by the expressive powers of what he deems to be good illustration. He abandons the dispassionate, analytical tone of the scholar and models the experience of entering the realm conjured by these woodcuts. In his elaborate descriptions of the effects that the successful illustration can produce, Worringer testifies to the ability of these prints to transport the viewer to a world of fantasy and sensation that has no direct relationship with immediate reality. For him, this primacy of the immaterial and spiritual over the sensual is what makes Graf and Dürer great German artists, while the illustrative capabilities of the woodcut make it a fundamentally German art form.

1.2 Albrecht Dürer, The Opening of the Fifth and Sixth Seals (1498), woodcut. From The Revelation of Saint John (Rev. 6: 9–15), B.65. Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF), Paris

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Woodcuts as art and Kultur Worringer’s attention to the woodcut is not unusual for his day. Fostered by historicist and increasingly anti-positivist attitudes, widespread interest in the woodcut spread across Europe, reflecting a growing desire for aesthetic forms that seemed to be closer to pre-industrial folk traditions than mechanically produced imagery and academically inclined painting and prints were.21 While France led the way in formal innovation and the acknowledgment of the importance of Japanese woodblock prints for Europe’s renewed interest in the woodcut, Germany became the country that identified most closely historically and ideologically with the woodcut.22 In fact, for many German critics, artists, and art historians, the woodcut became the favored example of the specifically German contribution to the history of art, and their fervent embrace of the woodcut made it into an icon of cultural nationalism. Leading critics argued from holist perspectives, understanding the woodcut as the medium that most fully expressed German essence, which they defined—in terms similar to Worringer’s—as a predilection for the spiritual and a resistance to the fleeting sensations of the material world.23 They therefore regarded the woodcut as evidence of German Kultur (culture). Originally formulated by the politically powerless yet increasingly self-aware eighteenth-century German bourgeoisie, “culture” was thought to be the product of an organic, spiritually and intellectually cultivated community. Culture was distinguished from Zivilisation (civilization), which was seen as the superficial, overly rationalized outcome of a materialist and decadent aristocracy. As the bourgeoisie became more powerful in Germany, this binary shifted from functioning as a model of the internal divisions within German society to serving as a means of distinguishing Germany as a nation from other modern, industrialized nations—primarily France, England, and the United States. Germany’s putative predilection for expressive art that attempted to express the spiritual thus became evidence of its Kultur, while, for example, France’s tradition of figurative art that mimetically reproduced the material world was held to prove that it was capable only of a superficial Zivilisation.24 Used to support nationalist arguments from across Germany’s political and social spectrum, this theory of an essential distinction between nations defined by culture and those defined by civilization also permeated art history, advertising, and Expressionism. In fact, much of early Expressionist art and literature was based on such beliefs about essential German-ness, and Expressionist artists identified with the notion that German character was essentially more spiritual and inwardlooking, and less rational than that of their European counterparts.25 Like Worringer, the Expressionists also embraced the idea that German art, in its inherent pull away from the mimetic, shared an affinity with primitive art. Many of these artists experimented with the woodcut, finding in this medium

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a means of establishing continuities between the art-making practices of the German past and the experimental approaches they pursued in the present.26 Expressionists were drawn to the medieval woodcut not only because of its religious and spiritual overtones, but also due to the formal properties of the medium. The linearity, flatness, and bold simplicity of the imagery of old woodcuts provided these artists with a primitivizing formal language that they could adapt and update in their efforts to create direct expressions of their inner strivings and the spiritual essences of the world. Both of the important early Expressionist artists’ groups, the Brücke and the Blaue Reiter, used woodcuts in the materials they produced to promote their ideals. For example, members of the Brücke designed woodcut posters to promote their exhibitions, and the Blaue Reiter reproduced some of the same woodcuts included in Worringer’s Die altdeutsche Buchillustration to complement the programmatic essays published in their 1912 almanac.27 The woodcut thus enabled the Expressionists to present their formal experiments as deeply embedded in German national heritage, a strategy that aligned them, despite their bohemian identities, with the widespread nationalist fervor of the prewar years.28 Because Expressionism was very much a product of exchanges between artists based in Germany and those centered in Paris, the choice of these artists to use a traditional folk form to address the German public was in many ways a necessary one.29 In the years immediately before World War I, appeals to German cultural tradition were used in many quarters, most prominently as a tool in the cultural political arsenal of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Cultural heritage became a key element in efforts to bolster German national identity, which many feared was under attack by the forces of modernity. Nationalist reactions to internationalizing and urbanizing pressures were articulated forcefully in relation to the visual arts, and public denunciations of the supposedly degrading influence of French modern art on German artists became increasingly strident. Many of the German museum directors, dealers, and gallery owners who enthusiastically had promoted modern French art were subject to increasingly hostile criticisms, and French Impressionism became a favored target of denunciation.30 Such attacks occurred against the backdrop of a generalized anxiety about effects of the rise of capitalism. Many Germans seemed to find themselves in an alienating world characterized by a ceaseless flood of fleeting, disorientating sensations generated by rapidly expanding cities, shifting social structures, industrialization, and internationalism—all of which, they believed, found expression in Impressionists’ paintings.31 Worringer’s identification of an enduring disposition toward expressing the spiritual as the essence of German art can be understood as a reaction to this so-called age of Impressionism, as an attempt to find some sense of stability in an unstable world.32 But while Worringer by no means advocated the type of cultural chauvinism that the

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Kaiser and his supporters promoted, he was troubled by the potential for damage to German culture that the overstimulation of urban living and the widespread materialism of industrial capitalism could cause. Hence, Worringer did not remain aloof from writing about contemporary developments. In a 1911 essay, he argued that the primitivizing impulses evident in contemporary German art were a response to the unsettling forces of modern life, an attempt to find solace in abstract forms of expression: “what arises in us today beneath the surface is ultimately a reaction not only to Impressionism, but also to the entire preceding development in which we find ourselves since the European Renaissance.”33 Worringer argues here that the centrality of the empathetic, or mimetic, style that has dominated Europe since the Renaissance is weakening in preparation for the return of abstraction as the dominant style. The renewed interest in the woodcut and the flattened, abstract style of commercial poster design provide him with evidence of such a return.

Abstraction in Advertising and Art Indeed, the centrality of the concepts of abstraction and national identity in early twentieth-century advertising theories in Germany could serve as evidence supporting Worringer’s thesis that an era of abstraction was returning. In the first decades of the twentieth century, as advertising developed into a distinct profession in Germany, advocates of advertising turned to notions of essential German-ness as they attempted to overcome the stigma that the poorly designed and misleading strategies of early newspaper ads had left. Posters featured prominently in this campaign to improve the standing of the profession since they were the most frequently encountered form of advertising in public space. Hoping to encourage broad public acceptance of advertising, many early professionals highlighted the aesthetic value and educational benefits of the “artistic” poster, or Kunstplakat, that had developed in the late nineteenth century.34 They downplayed the value of advertising as the potential to improve profits in favor of touting its ability to elevate public taste. Advocates thus promoted posters as a “gallery of the streets,” where people from all walks of life could encounter well-designed, aesthetically pleasing images. Instead of being assaulted by random, poorly composed placards that distracted and unsettled, the urban public would be united in the appreciation of pleasing, high-quality posters that adhered to rigorous aesthetic standards. Enthusiastic critics argued that posters that adhered to some agreed-upon high aesthetic standard—which was based on expectations for fine art—could help teach all German people to appreciate art.35 Accordingly, posters could also help the Germans find their way back

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to their inherent need for intellectual and spiritual stimulation, which seem to have been lost or forgotten in the rush to modernity. As theories of effective advertising developed further, such pedagogically oriented arguments began to be replaced by more practical concerns. The formation of the German Werkbund in 1907 created a platform from which advocates with increasingly specialized expertise could outline their proposals for improved advertising that was, at the same time, essentially German. The overall project of the Werkbund was devised to help Germans become accustomed to modern industrial processes of production and consumption. It promoted design and manufacturing techniques that its members hoped could eliminate not only the sense of alienation between workers and the products of their labor, but also the alienation between consumers and the increasingly confusing flood of commodities that they encountered.36 The Werkbund thus proposed a unified approach to style—ultimately, a German style—that would help consumers negotiate the overwhelming number of products of various styles that they encountered.37 This could be achieved in advertising, according to Werkbund member Hans Weidenmüller, who had his own advertising agency, by encouraging individual artists who designed posters and other advertising imagery to subordinate their individual artistic visions to an overall vision of the businesses they served. Thus, by helping individual enterprises create distinct identities, advertisers helped contribute to a simplification and unification of style. Appealing to artists’ sense of Kultur, Weidenmüller argued that their choice to promote the enterprise over their own artistic goals constituted a “thorough spiritualization of commercial advertising.”38 In this way, Weidenmüller asserts, capitalism and its commercial enterprises can become part of the spiritual expression of German-ness. The Werkbund was not, however, the only significant source of new ideas about how to help advertising appeal to Germany’s collective sense of Kultur. An increasing number of critics began writing about what they considered to be effective posters in the many periodicals devoted to art, applied arts, and literature.39 Many of these critics continued to emphasize the aesthetic qualities of what they considered to be good advertising, while others combined aesthetics with more practical concerns such as consideration of placement in relation to other advertisements and in relation to the overall cityscape, or the matter of how frequently to change designs. What is striking in both types of discussion—the aesthetic and the practical—is that both frequently raise the issue of abstraction as a crucial ingredient in any effective advertisement. The formal guidelines for good poster design outlined in such critical analyses closely resemble the formal requirements Worringer presents as defining late Gothic book illustration. For example, in a typical article, which appeared one year after the publication of Die altdeutsche Buchillustration,

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Paul Mahlberg states that the among the most fundamental criteria of poster design are the emphasis on line and plane and the avoidance of realistic figuration, despite the fact that the poster must also work carefully with color in order to catch the eye: Relinquishment of the realistic image—poster-like stylization enters in its place, that is, forceful abstraction down to what is most essential, and the abandonment of whatever is unimportant to clear expression. Flat colors must cover the surface in broad shapes so that colored figures fill up the entire surface decoratively. In this way everything painterly … is excluded from the very outset. The poster is absolutely planar, and in order to achieve this, the poster requires, above all, abstraction based on line.40

Mahlberg’s formal criteria for the poster emphasize its non-painterly qualities, yielding a “poster-like stylization.” Fundamental to this stylization is the reduction of form into lines that render only the most basic contours of whatever is being depicted. Color is also a key component of the poster, but it is more important for creating an overall decorative effect and for attracting a viewer’s attention than for communicating the essential message of the poster to the viewer. Like Worringer, Mahlberg argues that this type of abstraction, this linearity and planarity, is typical of German art: “German art has always been fundamentally linear and not at all oriented to the color of the painterly. Since we probably haven’t changed, it is likely that the only modern artistic development that will suit us will arrive at abstraction by means of line. The poster fulfills this requirement.”41 For Mahlberg, given the German tradition of simplified, linear art forms, the poster can easily be seen as a quintessentially German visual form. Thus, the poster, as “modern artistic development,” does not signal a break with the German past and artistic tradition; instead, it reaffirms German heritage in an updated form. Mahlberg is seemingly untroubled by the fact that the poster is meant to be selling some particular commodity, and the poster’s status as a commercial form does not seem to affect his willingness to incorporate it into German aesthetic tradition. Just as the basic formal properties of good illustration make it usable for any type of text, the formal qualities of good poster design make it useful for selling any type of product. Ultimately, Mahlberg is most interested in the poster for the work it can do to help the modern urban dweller master his hectic environment:42 Because, aesthetically, the poster can be universally applied to any of the phenomena of the day, its content is theoretically limitless. From its form, which departs radically from aesthetic convention, we can learn how to master appearances artistically. Through repeated, intensive contact with the poster, the artistic way of seeing can become a function of seeing in general.43

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The simplification of forms, which enables the poster to convey a “theoretically limitless” number of ideas, helps viewers organize and calibrate multiple sensory stimuli into usable information. Mahlberg thus finds in the poster a way to train the residents of Germany’s modern cities to gain control over an environment dominated by fleeting phenomena and deceptive appearances. As an advertisement, the poster essentially trains viewers to configure disparate sensations into a set of consistent consumer choices; yet the commercial poster, at least according to critics like Mahlberg, shares a great deal with how Worringer conceives of primitive ornament and woodcut illustration. Writing much later, in the 1920s, Edwin Redslob looks to old German woodcuts as a source of inspiration and renewal for advertising graphics: A shift to the woodcut seems to be a good antidote to the occasional laxity and the exhaustion [in advertising design] that has become noticeable lately. In the woodcut there is an originality and a joyfulness, a synthesis of art and handicraft that develops, without intellectual assistance and fully from within itself, a garden in which wealth, character, and beauty bloom. We should not believe, only because other peoples are less naturally inclined to the woodcut, that this medium has no future. Rather, we should recognize that precisely here is the opportunity for German artists to reach international prestige, through the formal expressive language of the woodcut.44

Redslob, an art historian who had been appointed in 1920 to be the Weimar Republic’s federal commissioner of the arts, argues strongly in favor of using the woodcut in German advertising. Highlighting the originality and robustness of the medium’s synthesis of art and craft, Redslob asserts that the use of the traditional medium of the woodcut (or at least the look of the old woodcut) in modern advertising can be profitable both financially and aesthetically. Here and throughout the article, he also affirms the woodcut as a specifically German form of aesthetic expression. But rather than deploying this national cultural argument to buttress German identity against outside pressures, as cultural officials had tended to do before the war, Redslob argues that the woodcut can be used as an effective means of projecting German identity outwards. In other words, using the very German medium of woodcut in posters and other forms of advertising can help to sell what are specifically German products internationally. National specificity thus builds international validity, and tradition helps advertisers negotiate the intricacies of the very modern, international market.45 Redslob’s argument for using the woodcut in advertising returns us to Worringer’s declaration that every woodcut is, to some extent, a poster. The woodcut seems to be destined for use in poster design because these two forms share the same formal qualities, the same tendency toward abstraction.

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In advocating a return to the woodcut for use in advertising, Redslob seems to affirm Worringer’s understanding of art history as a series of alternations between abstraction and empathy. As Worringer argues in Die altdeutsche Buchillustration: The history of art is endlessly enormous if we choose to look at it as facts and personalities. However, when we observe it on the basis of its most basic problems, it becomes small. Then we realize that the entire course of art history is actually only the variation of two themes in innumerable tonalities: expressive art and figurative art.46

Despite the fact that the history of art seems to be densely populated with countless facts, and names, Worringer distills from all these details two fundamental “psychologies of style” that persist over time—abstraction and empathy, which give rise to expressive art and figurative art, respectively. And these two types of art move through periods of dominance and decline. For Worringer, then, history is not a progressive development, but a series of alternations between the same two themes, which appear in slightly varied forms.47 Worringer’s assertion that the late Gothic woodcut illustration was already a poster points to such repetition. The history of art is revealed to be a closed system in which visual representation shifts between poles of “empathy,” or figuration, and abstraction. Because Worringer views a propensity toward abstraction or figuration as a nationally, regionally, or even racially based tendency, his model of history is also a struggle for power between “races” more inclined to abstraction— for example, the Germans—and those more inclined toward mimeticism—for instance, the “Romans.”48 Linked as they are to the constants of abstraction and empathy, such identities also remain constant, transhistorical, so Worringer can identify a consistent German identity over time, even if retreats into the background during periods of empathy such as the European Renaissance. Worringer’s identification of an equivalence between modern posters and late Gothic woodcuts allows him to cite evidence of a persistent German will to abstraction, and it also opens up the possibility that an age marked by abstraction, in other words, the German type of Kunstwollen, has returned.

Return to Abstraction While Worringer’s model of history and his understanding of art were not widely shared among his fellow art historians, his writings found wide acclaim in the very cultural realms that could be cited as evidence of a return to abstraction. Many artists and art critics, particularly the advocates of Expressionism, discovered in Worringer’s writings a new way to understand their own work and their present world in relation to the past.49 For example,

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Franz Marc, in a letter to his fellow Blue Rider member August Macke, cites the affirmation for his approach to making art in Worringer’s writings, saying: “We Germans are—and will continue to be—born graphic artists, illustrators also as painters. Worringer says this very nicely in his introduction to Old German Book Illustration.”50 Marc accepts and identifies with Worringer’s understanding of illustration as abstraction, declaring that, as a German, he could be nothing but an illustrator, even as a practicing painter. With his conception of the will to abstraction, Worringer supplied an explanatory model for what drove the German experimental artists of his time—the Expressionists—to create art as they did. While in the years before World War I, many Expressionists upheld the bourgeois notion of the artist as freely creative individual, they simultaneously sought to legitimate their individualized approaches to aesthetic experimentation through appeals to shared, timeless essences, whether that was a transhistorical German will to abstraction or a more generalized urge to get beyond the illusions of the material world and reach the spiritual. Although as early as 1917, it had become standard critical practice to present Worringer as the foremost theorist of Expressionism, subsequent scholars have consistently demonstrated that it was impossible that Worringer had any contact with Expressionist art while he wrote his dissertation, and that his initial publications, therefore, were not at all about Expressionism. Later, Worringer recognized that there were indeed affinities between his art historical theories and the art of Expressionist artists. Of course, more important than any direct connections to the work by Expressionist artists is Worringer’s articulation of a stance toward the world that resonated clearly with a general Expressionist preference for abstractions that point to a more spiritual realm beyond the mundanities of the physical world. Initially, in Abstraktion und Einfühlung, Worringer found this will to abstraction in many cultures across time. Subsequently, however, he begins to link abstraction and expressive art to German-ness in Formprobleme der Gotik, and he solidifies this stance in Die altdeutsche Buchillustration. Worringer thus devised a model that could appeal to Germans trying to make sense of the overwhelming barrage of images that they confronted in the increasingly urbanized everyday. According to this model, advertisements and Expressionist and other experimental forms of visual art were not to be seen as visual blight or as violations of German cultural heritage, but as a continuation of that heritage, as new manifestations of the Germans’ will to abstraction. By narrowing his conception of a will to abstraction as being specifically German, Worringer follows the same trajectory that Expressionist art did. When Expressionism initially began circulating as a term around 1911, it was used to refer to international anti-Impressionist art that was characterized by a bold, non-realistic use of color, simplified shapes, and a decorative flatness, particularly painting by the Fauves. By 1914, however, Expressionism was

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used almost entirely to refer to German art. While Expressionism became increasingly closely linked to German-ness as the war approached, many of the Expressionists themselves focused more centrally on their own identities as Germans, and many of them entered the war with great enthusiasm, hoping that a triumphant Germany would usher in a new, better world. Like German art and art history, German advertising also followed the trajectory toward increasingly defensive nationalism. Thus, the abstractions celebrated by poster theorists in the years leading up to the war were able to be mobilized to generate propaganda for the war effort before and during World War I. Theories of how to appeal to Germans in order to persuade them to buy specific mass-produced goods or to attend particular cultural events were adapted for use in posters that would galvanize Germans to support the war efforts. After the war, however, many theorists of advertising, disillusioned by the catastrophic result of such martial enthusiasm, worried less about appealing to a sense of German-ness as a means to promote sales, and they began looking elsewhere for models of how to devise effective advertising. The concern with appealing to a specifically German Kunstwollen receded in the face of theories that advocated appealing to consumers as individuals. As a result, the United States, with its burgeoning advertising industry and the seemingly scientific studies that formed the basis of American advertising strategies, became the primary source for ideas of how most effectively to generate sales. Worringer’s fantasy of a return to an age of abstraction marked by the German desire to transcend the material world seems, thus, to have been short-lived. In the chaotic economic environment of Germany of the 1920s, as the government struggled to stabilize the country in the face of the growing influence of international capitalism, individual needs and identity were understood increasingly as arising from the individual as consumer. Advertisers’ efforts to appeal to vast collectives receded for a short while, yet the ideas on which those strategies were based did not vanish, a fact that the National Socialists were able to exploit far too effectively.

notes 1 Wilhelm Worringer, introduction to Urs Graf: Die Holzschnitte zur Passion (Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1923), 16. This and all translations from this text are mine. This series of woodcuts by the Swiss printmaker Graf appeared around 1506 (although the woodcuts themselves are likely from 1503) as illustrations to the humanist Matthias Ringmann’s account of Christ’s passion, which was published in Strasburg. Ringmann’s text was printed in both a Latin and a German version, and Worringer cites Strasburg publication records showing numerous reprints, leading him to conclude that its popularity can be attributed to Graf’s images (6).

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2 Frederic J. Schwartz, Blind Spots: Critical Theory and the History of Art in TwentiethCentury Germany (New Haven: yale University Press, 2005), 1. 3 Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann argues that such thinking is typical of the art historical approach of Kunstgeographie, or the geography of art, which explained “distinctions between artistic styles based on geographical differences” and which systematically invoked notions of race to bolster its assertions of fundamental cultural differences. Toward a Geography of Art (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 58. DaCosta Kaufmann finds the roots of Kunstgeographie in the late eighteenth century: he traces the development of the concept of a spirit of a people, or a Volksgeist, to the nineteenth century, when nation-states were forming and Hegelian notions of Geist, or spirit, informed much of the thinking about nations, cultures, and the people who formed them. This nationalist impetus also informed the early stages of art history (54). 4 For the importance of Geistesgeschichte for late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury art history, see Branko Mitrovic, “Humanist Art History and Its Enemies: Erwin Panofsky on the Individualism-Holism Debate,” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 78, no. 2 (2009): 57–76. 5 Worringer draws from both Alois Riegl’s theory of Kunstwollen and Theodor Lipps’s understanding of empathy as the basis for his conception of the national character of abstraction and empathy, expressive art and representational art. See Geoffrey Waite, “Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy: Remarks on Its Reception and on the Rhetoric of Its Criticism,” in Invisible Cathedrals: The Expressionist Art History of Wilhelm Worringer, ed. Neil H. Donahue (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 13–40. 6 Worringer is careful to distance himself from “Chamberlain-like racial romanticism,” citing the theories of the British Germanophile Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He asserts that his own use of “Germanic” and “Nordic” is not a declaration of German racial superiority, but serves instead as shorthand for the populations producing work that diverged from Roman-inflected styles, Formprobleme der Gotik, 2nd ed. (Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1912), 29. 7 Wilhelm Worringer, Die altdeutsche Buchillustration, 3rd ed. (Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1921), 5. This and all translations from this text are mine. 8 Worringer does not address the possibilities for “misinterpretation” that might arise when an illustration is detached from the text it is meant to accompany. 9 Worringer, Die altdeutsche Buchillustration, 5. 10 Ibid., 6. 11 For a wide-ranging discussion of the relationship between German art and German national identity, see Hans Belting, Identität im Zweifel. Ansichten der deutschen Kunst (Cologne: DuMont, 1999), esp. 7–63. 12 Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraktion und Einfühlung: Ein Beitrag zur Stilpsychologie (Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1908), 13–14. 13 Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style, trans. Michael Bullock (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1997), 16. See also Juliet Koss, “On the Limits of Empathy,” Art Bulletin, 88, no. 1 (March 2006): 139–57.

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14 “Primitive” for Worringer signifies any society untouched—due to historical or geographical distance or because of outright refusal—by Western rationality. The term does not imply a belief in Western superiority to non-Western Others; rather, he uses it to designate a relationship to the natural world that can be as easily Western as non-Western, and as much a prehistorical as a contemporary phenomenon. He also acknowledges primitivism as a comprehensible strategy for encountering the world. See his “Entwicklungsgeschichtliches zur modernsten Kunst,” in Im Kampf um die Kunst. Die Antwort auf den “Protest deutscher Künstler” mit Beiträgen deutscher Künstler, Galerieleiter, Sammler und Schritftsteller (Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1911), 92–9. For analysis of Worringer’s discussion of primitivism, see Jill Lloyd, German Expressionism: Primitivism and Modernity (New Haven and London: yale University Press, 1991), 57–9. For the many dimensions of primitivism in German Expressionism, see David Pan, Primitive Renaissance: Rethinking German Expressionism (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2001). 15 Worringer’s use of the term “German” shifts over time. In Abstraktion und Einfühlung, the word scarcely appears, while in Formprobleme it refers primarily to German-speaking artists and writers of the Renaissance. In Altdeutsche Buchillustration, “German” seems to include all German-speakers from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century. Worringer thus moves to an increasingly expansive nationalist perspective. 16 Worringer, Urs Graf, 15–16. 17 Ibid., 16. 18 Worringer was not alone in his admiration for Dürer. For the reception of Dürer in the early twentieth century, particularly among Expressionists, see Christian Weikop, “Brücke und Canonical Association,” in Brücke: The Birth of Expressionism 1905–1913, ed. Reinhold Heller (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009), 103–27. 19 Worringer, Die altdeutsche Buchillustration, 117. 20 Ibid., 117–18. 21 Richard S. Field, “The Woodcut Revival in Context,” in The Artistic Revival of the Woodcut in France 1850–1900, ed. Jacquelynn Baas and R.S. Field (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1984), 22–9. 22 Other nations seem to have identified the woodcut with Germany, despite the importance of the Japanese prints and their own woodcut traditions, ibid. 26. For the modernist woodcut in France, see Stephen Coppel, “The Fauve Woodcut,” Print Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1999): 3–33. For the ideological status of the woodcut in early twentieth-century Germany, see Robin Reisenfeld, “Cultural Nationalism, Brücke and the German Woodcut: The Formation of a Collective Identity,” Art History 20, no. 2 (June 1997): 289–312. 23 See, for example, Max Osborn, Der Holzschnitt (Bielefeld and Leipzig: Velhagen & Klassing, 1905), 1. 24 For further analysis of the enduring force of the Kultur-Zivilisation opposition in German cultural discourse, see Wolf Lepenies, The Seduction of Culture in German History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), esp. 9–26.

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25 I use the term “Expressionist” from a twenty-first-century perspective. The artists we now understand as “German Expressionists” did not refer to themselves in any programmatic way as Expressionists before World War I. While the precise date when the term began to be used to identify exclusively German art is debatable, these artists did not think of themselves as Expressionists in any consistent way, and certainly not before the outbreak of WWI. See Marit Werenskiold, The Concept of Expressionism: Origin and Metamorphoses (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1984). 26 For example, recounting how he came to the woodcut, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner recalled a trip to the Germanisches Museum, where he viewed for the first time early German woodcuts and incunabula, and he cited this experience as the inspiration for his embrace of the woodcut. Peter Parshall and Rainer Schoch, “Early Woodcuts and the Reception of the Primitive,” in Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public, ed. Parshall and Schoch (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2005), 7. 27 Ann Stieglitz, “The Reproduction of Agony: Toward a Reception-History of Grünewald’s Isenheim Altar after the First World War,” Oxford Art Journal 12, no. 2 (1989), 89. 28 For nationalist cultural politics in Wilhelmine Germany, see Mark Jarzombek, “The ‘Kunstgewerbe,’ the ‘Werkbund,’ and the Aesthetics of Culture in Wilhelmine Germany,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 53, no. 1 (March 1994): 7–19. For the impact of such cultural political thought on the arts, see Robert Jensen, Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 78–80. 29 While members of the Blaue Reiter were very open about their avid interest in French art, Brücke artists, especially Kirchner, were more reticent about the impact that French art had on their work. 30 For the battle between National Gallery director Hugo Tschudi and Kaiser Wilhelm, see Barbara Paul, Hugo von Tschudi und die moderne französische Kunst im Deutschen Kaiserreich. Berliner Schriften zur Kunst, vol. 4 (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1993). 31 Carl Vinnen’s 1911 Protest deutscher Künstler, a denunciation of a perceived Francophilia among prominent German arts professionals that had resulted in the overestimation of modern French art at the expense of German artists, was a prominent expression of such anxieties. For Vinnen’s protest and its context, see Ron Manheim, Im Kampf um die Kunst. De discussie von 1911 over contemporaire kunst in Duitsland (Hamburg: Sauter & Lachmann, 1987). 32 For early twentieth-century theories about an assumed age of Impressionism, see Frederic Schwartz, The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass Culture before the First World War (New Haven: yale University Press, 1996), 92–5. 33 “Entwicklungsgeschichtliches zur modernsten Kunst” (1911), 95; translation in Magdalena Bushart, “Changing Times, Changing Styles: Wilhelm Worringer and the Art of His Epoch,” in Donahue, Invisible Cathedrals, 79. 34 The Kunstplakat or das künstlerische Plakat developed in Germany in response to the enthusiastic response of many in Germany to French color lithographic posters of the late nineteenth century. Artistic posters initially primarily

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promoted cultural events, but as more artists began to design exclusively for poster commissions and the overall visual impact of posters began to improve, businesses began to use creatively designed, aesthetically challenging posters to promote manufactured goods such as cars, cigarettes, clothing, and processed foods. For an overview of the development of the poster in relation to aesthetic discussions of advertising, see Martin Henatsch, Die Entstehung des Plakates. Eine rezeptionsästhetische Untersuchung (Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 1994). 35 As Jean-Louis Sponsel, director of the Grünes Gewölbe and the Historical Museum in Dresden (1908–23) and one of the first theorists of the poster in Germany, declared, “In its new form, the poster is perhaps the most powerful agent for instilling in the people the sensitivity to and need for art. In any case, the modern artistic poster has made artistic matters a topic of discussion among all classes.” Sponsel, Das moderne Plakat (Dresden: Kühtmann, 1897), 14. 36 For the definitive study of the strategies of the Werkbund, see Schwartz, The Werkbund. 37 For a discussion of the nationalist thought underlying the Werkbund, see Jarzombek, “The ‘Kunstgewerbe,” 7–19. 38 Hans Weidenmüller, “Die Durchgeistigung der geschäftlichen Werbearbeit,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Werkbundes (1913): 70–74. 39 Some of the many examples include Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, Das Plakat, Die Kunst für Alle, Westermanns Monatshefte, and Der Kunstwart. 40 Paul Mahlberg, “Vom Plakat als Erzieher des Kunstsinns,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration 32 (April–September 1913), 200. This and all translations from this text are mine. 41 Ibid., 203. 42 While the formal qualities of the poster and their contribution to the poster’s essential stylized abstraction that Mahlberg presents are typical of critical writing about the poster before World War I, his emphasis on the pedagogical potential of the poster rather than its effectiveness as a marketing tool is somewhat unusual for 1913. By then, as advertising became increasingly professionalized, the concern with the impact of the poster on sales of a particular product or event was beginning to edge out more aesthetically and pedagogically oriented analyses. However, as the more practical discussions found validation in the increasing number of professional journals, discussions like Mahlberg’s continued to find an audience in the more aesthetically oriented—and non-specialist-oriented—periodicals, such as Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration. For a history of the professionalization of advertising in Germany, see Dirk Reinhart, Von der Reklame zum Marketing: Geschichte der Wirtschaftswerbung in Deutschland (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993). 43 Mahlberg, “Vom Plakat als Erzieher des Kunstsinns,” 203. 44 Edwin Redslob, “Der Holzschnitt in seiner Bedeutung für die Gebrauchsgraphik,” Gebrauchsgraphik 1, no. 4 (1924), 10. Translation mine. 45 Redslob’s concern with repairing Germany’s international standing after its loss in World War I seems to have precluded any mention of the reception of advertisements for German products in formerly enemy countries, for example, France and England.

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46 Worringer, Die altdeutsche Buchillustration, 8. 47 As Michael Jennings declares, “We find in Worringer, then, a kind of history at a standstill, or history with a repetition compulsion.” Jennings, “Against Expressionism: Materialism and Social Theory in Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy,” in Donahue, Invisible Cathedrals, 100. 48 “Race” remains a rather fuzzy concept in Worringer’s writing, and while his conception of race is not grounded in biologism, it nevertheless relies on an essentializing understanding of Geist. 49 Bushart, “Changing Times, Changing Styles,” 70. 50 Letter from Marc to Macke, June 12, 1914, in August Macke, August Macke, Franz Marc. Briefwechsel (Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1964), 184. Translation mine.

2 Introduction to Old German Book Illustration (1912)* Wilhelm Worringer

The German is not born with a naïve sensuality of the eye, but must instead acquire it. He is too strongly interested in what is essential to record things with impartial sight. And if he is an artist, then he tends to express what things are, instead of representing them. He does not have the calm, collected sight of the Roman, which lingers over objects and out of which a purely sensual figurative art develops; instead the German approaches things with a spiritual interest that can only spark a vehement, unsensual desire for expression. He is also a shaper of things, but a shaper in the spiritual sense, not in the sensual sense. In other words, his art always tends toward the illustrative, toward the dominance of spiritual significance over the purely representational. In so far as his art is meant not to depict but to express, it is predisposed to illustration—because what differentiates illustrative art from high art is its dependence on a purely spiritual, immaterial element: the text, the written or printed word. This dependence grants all illustration its fundamental character. We can only speak of true illustration in cases in which allowances are made for this dependence, consciously or unconsciously. The most elementary requirement that results from this inner relationship of dependency [between illustration and text] is the following: the illustration may not—by means of sensual illusion—wrest the reader from the spiritual experience to which the printed or written word compels him; it cannot drag him from the world of fantasy back into the world of the corporeal-real. Where composition arises from the sensuous pleasure of representation, as with the Romans, illusion is unavoidable: the depiction of natural corporeality appeals to our own corporeal nature, and we are drawn against our wills into the sphere of sensuous experience. We search in vain for great illustrators among the Romans. They have only great illuminators. *

Wilhelm Worringer, introduction to Die altdeutsche Buchillustration (Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1912), 5–22.

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But it is here that the German benefits from his lack of sensuality. With his unsensual spiritual desire for expression, with his need to express things instead of representing them, with this quasi-literary quality in his art, he is, in short, a born illustrator. There is also a spiritual power of illusion, and he appeals to this with his unsensual expressive art [Ausdruckskunst]. This is not to say that he has an especially fine sense for the latent demands of the illustrative artwork; no, his entire artistic gift is developed from the start so that it is in fact only suited to illustration. As a natural matter of course, the unsensual character of his art entails the upholding of that elementary demand of all illustration not to remove the reader from the spiritual realm of experience. Thus it is not an overstatement to say that German art is only great and faultless when it appears according to its true character, that is, as illustrative artwork. This is its true domain. In all other areas it is overshadowed by the accomplishments of other countries, or it is condemned to be derivative. In the realm of the illustrative, graphic arts, however, German art has been exemplary. There is potent, irrefutable proof of this fact: German art, which otherwise always experienced external influences, has only once influenced these other cultures—that is, through the graphic art of Dürer. A German, fighting painstakingly through all the problems of vision and representation, effortlessly brought the classical style of illustration to the world. At the time, the entirety of European draftsmanship could not avoid the compelling necessity of his illustrative style. And that caused some distress. The Italian Renaissance had put in the place of medieval expressive art—that is, art that in and of itself was illustrative—a figurative art. In contrast to the unsensual, symbolic formal language of the Middle Ages, sensory elements of vision had permeated art, giving it a wholly new character with the illusory effects of the physical. With that, every possibility for a pure pictorial art was provided for, but every advancement in the world of pure pictorial art had to be paid for by the forfeit of illustrative power. That price seems low to us now, because to us the picture is everything while the illustrated book is worth nothing. We only sense what we lost in the Renaissance when the question of monumental painting comes to the fore. Monumental painting and book illustration appear to us to be two different worlds, but their problem is the same. And just as all illustrative power slipped from our hands with the new means of sensual figurative art secured by the Renaissance, so too did we lose all power [to create] monumental painting. This is demonstrated in that today, in both cases, the problem is not solved but rather mostly is avoided—avoided through direct, external reversion to a bygone, alien, expressive art. For modern book illumination as well as for modern monumental painting, the danger of archaism is nearly unavoidable, for in both cases art is forced into an abstract expressive language that it has long since forgotten. In the book, it is the world of the written or printed word which permits no corporeal illusion and also which demands of illustration a spiritual, symbolic character; in monumental

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painting, it is the abstract world of expression, that of architectonic principles, which sets the tone and which demands of every pictorial complement that it speak the same abstract, unsensual language of expression. Of course, apart from the above-mentioned archaic gimmicks, generally sins are committed against this internal principle of linguistic unity in both cases. Thus, in books we often see scaled-down pictures that avoid every problem of real illustration and at best have a right to exist as superficial book decoration; and thus we often find in the frames of architectural artwork frescos that are merely enlarged pictures and for which, therefore, the problem of monumental painting has been emphasized only in the superficial, dimensional sense, not in an internal, formal sense. Analogous to book decoration, then, this is merely playful architectural decoration, sensual elements and effects that tear us out of the sphere of the higher, abstract realms of expression. To one for whom the abstract language of architecture is too unaccommodating, too alien [menschenfern], they may possess a conciliatory quality; but to one who is filled with devotion to that silent, absolute music of proportions and relationships, every addition of direct, sensual effects is an irritation. We can thank the topicality of the problem of monumental painting for opening our eyes to an analogous claim on behalf of the illustrative work of art. The picture, that gift of the Renaissance, was the same catastrophe for both. Lively figurative values were only able to develop at the cost of those abstract expressive values that were, for monumental painting as well as for illustration, the conditio sine qua non of their existence. The German is, as has been mentioned, a born expressive artist. Even if the foundation of his ability was taken away by the Renaissance, even if he struggled through the centuries to be a figurative artist, this subterranean power did not suffocate. It waited for the password, as it were, to remember its true self. The password was spoken in that moment in which the problem of monumental painting once more became current. Only a German heard it, only a German understood it, and Hodler’s forceful frescos are just as unable to remove themselves from the world as Dürer’s forceful illustrative art was. It is impossible to miss the insights that lie within the replication of cases in the history of this development. For Dürer the way was easier. He was still directly anchored in medieval expressive art, and thus he effortlessly produced his classic graphic style. Hodler, on the other hand, was, as a child of modernity, completely prejudiced towards modern figurative art, and a long, difficult process of emancipation was necessary in order for him to distill his monumental expressive values from the values of figuration. Within the grand vitality of his style lie all the battles and triumphs that he experienced. If Hodler teaches us to better understand Dürer, that is a vital discovery, and there is no reason for us to be ashamed of it. The history of art is endlessly enormous if we choose to look at it as facts and personalities. However, when

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we observe it on the basis of its most basic problems, it becomes small. Then we realize that the entire course of art history is actually only the variation of two themes in innumerable tonalities: expressive art and figurative art. The moment we write about book illustration, the former [i.e., expressive art] is of course of primary importance to our evaluation, and every judgment of illustration is based on the assumption that illustration can only be a subdomain of expressive art and not of figurative art. This standpoint may be one-sided, but it is stipulated by our topic. German book illustration has a prehistory of many hundreds of years: manuscript illustration. Our understanding of the style of the first German book illustration is derived not from book illustration itself, because internally it has hardly anything to do with the new technology of the printing trade. It receives its form not through that new technology, but in spite of it. Just as Gutenberg, with his new letterpress, was only concerned with achieving the ideal of the old handwritten codex, so too the first book illustrations produced by the technology of the printing trade sought to evoke the illusion of the old colored pen drawings. In short, the beginnings of true book illustration are merely offshoots of the old, checkered manuscript illustration. Thus we must first familiarize ourselves with its history. It first must be said that its history is one of conflict between expressive and figurative art. The German book illumination of the Middle Ages was not able to develop independently: the idea of book illumination itself was an import from a foreign, dominant culture—that is, classical antiquity—and the ancient world’s magnificent figurative values were conveyed to northern barbarians, provoking the shy retreat of their clumsy abstract, expressive art. If we imagine Germanic art as it was before any contact with foreign elements of style, we see an art practice that lacks any tendency towards the imitation of nature and expresses itself only in ornamental shapes. The carrier of artistic expression was not some kind of comprehensible represented object, but rather abstract line in all the possibilities of its movement. This “simultaneously primeval and gloomy, chaotic tangle of lines” (Semper) had no content in our sense of the word; it possessed only expression.1 This art was expression itself, expression in its purest form. Whether one should depict things directly or through signs was a question that did not yet exist for them: it was still art without the object. With the Roman invasion and the Christianization that followed, this abstract, purely ornamental expressive art came into close contact with the art of antiquity. The Church and the cloisters imported late antique Christian illuminated manuscripts, and the Nordic barbarians stood directly before a foreign, incomprehensible art world. Opposites rarely clash more strongly in art than they did in this case. On the one side, the rudimentary beginnings of a purely expressive art, unbroken by any intent to replicate nature; on the other side, the last and most refined offshoots of a pure representational art, which

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had arrived at the extreme, most refined possibilities of figuration—that is, at the painterly impressionistic. On one side, a content-less, object-less chaos of lines, a quasi-unarticulated need for expression; on the other side, a final instance of painterly, figurative illusionism. For the moment, we cannot speak of an internal conflict between the two extremes. The late antique models which were brought before the Germanic tribes were beyond comparing with their own artistic volition [Kunstwollen].2 It never occurs to the German to see a difference of degrees where there is a difference of species. Only the naïve art historian, who cannot free himself from his own cultural prejudices, would believe that the Nordic barbarian, in the face of this consummate figurative art, would have become aware of his own backwardness. Rather, the instinctively felt incommensurability of these two conceptions of art permitted only one possibility for connection, that is, the superficial connection that we call copying. If this had only been a matter of a difference of degrees in artistic ability, they might have tried to blur that distinction through their own study of nature and, following the model, kept their eyes open to nature and the possibilities of representing it. But they were far removed from that point. How could the German have developed an understanding for this refined figurative art from his own purely abstract art world? The fact that he copied these ancient models has nothing to do with his own artistic understanding; it is rather an external creative necessity that leads to this copyist’s work. It was the compulsion towards education, artificially and forcibly organized by Charlemagne, that put the Germanic tribes to a task which stood completely outside of their own inborn artistic volition. The illuminated manuscripts belonged to the Church’s apparatus of luxury; they are the finest blossoming of Christian late antique culture—reason enough to provoke in Charlemagne the desire to decorate his powerful barbaric state, which was hungry for education and culturally ambitious. The tragedy of the Carolingian culture is that it seeks, without any transition, to force things into being that can only come about through peaceful organic development; and nothing is as misguided as these convulsive attempts to stamp a culture from nothing, through the superficial imitation of antiquity, and to speak of it as a true renaissance. This is how things stood with the illuminated manuscripts of the Carolingian period. They are not attempts at emulation arising from artistic comprehension and admiration, but rather attempts at imitation and external cultural ambition. They are dead copies without their own life. The scriptoria established in the imperial palaces and in the great cloisters are nothing but institutes of convulsive artistic propagation. An era of copyists on a large scale begins. This is the first chapter of the history of German illustration, the first chapter of the German process of grappling with native expressive art and imported figurative art.

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Until the late Ottonian period, nothing changed in the internal character of German illustration. There are only external changes, brought about by external moments like the infiltration of new models, for we must not forget that the cultural circle of Christian antiquity was not a single unity, but contained Latin, Greek, and Oriental elements combined. Models from Syrian cloisters crossed paths with Roman, Byzantine with Irish-Anglo-Saxon. In short, the history of this artistic epoch is a story of external influence, not one of internal developmental necessities. And yet this first German illustration gradually acquires its own style. It is a style which admittedly is not the result of a conscious search for a style, but rather develops out of negative moments. It is in and of itself the result of the work of the uncomprehending copyist. The earliest Carolingian miniatures still attempt to reproduce the misunderstood qualities of the original. They are the closest to the ancient model, have the most painterly figurative style, and display the antique pictorial style the most strongly. They cling literally to their original and achieve a weak reflection of the painterly and spatial, illusory effects of their models. The development is such that gradually and increasingly, all of those illusionistic figurative values fall through the copyists’ uncomprehending hands. Although most of their models are not late antique originals but copies from later centuries, the copying of copies continues; and in this way, from copy to copy, the original painterly effect of the original slowly erodes, for these painterly values were the least comprehensible to the Nordic barbarian. They are the first victims of the Nordic misunderstanding, and the result is an unconscious, unintentional reduction of the painterly value of appearance to a linear-schematic formula. This was a process of coarsening the model, but from the point of view of illustration, it was an unintentional improvement. As the painterly mannerisms were slowly severed and were simplified into linear-schematic formulas, the pictorial style of antiquity was automatically transformed into the style of the medieval book. Out of representations of things, the hands of the copyists had made schematic signs for things. In so doing, they unconsciously worked against the existent style of illustration and produced the only possible basis for a more independent development in the high Middle Ages: that is, the basis of linear expressive values. The expressive will of the North, linear in its most internal nature, was compelled to relate to this linear-schematic copyist’s idiom which had gradually developed autonomy such that it became independent from the original. That is, it was produced less from the direct observation of an original and more often freely from a type of pattern book, distilled from the entire original material of the individual schools in which, more or less, a type of grammatical basis for a schematic formal language was collected. However, with respect to these questions we rely on conjecture and calculations of probability; a secure knowledge of the operation of such a medieval school of writing and miniatures eludes us.

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At any rate, for the psychologist of style the decisive point lies in the fact that within these miniatures, any direct figurative relationship to nature is absent and, with it, any danger of sensual illusory effects. By not depicting things descriptively, but rather employing conventional signs for things, the medieval miniaturist automatically satisfies the most basic requirements of an illustrative style, which demands that the spiritual character of experience be preserved. This slow splintering of what was originally a spatially effective pictorial style into a planar-decorative book style is paralleled by another development, which leads to a remarkable result: the more a depiction relinquishes naturalness in a physiological sense, the more expressive it becomes in a psychological sense. This occurs in the following manner: the originals, which were produced out of artistic joy in figuration, fall into the hands of Nordic barbarians, who know only artistic joy in expression. Without conscious intention, purely through the mechanical process of the copyists’ work, which eliminates the misunderstood and interprets what remains on its own terms, a possibility is automatically provided for connecting to that unsensual expressive art of the north, which up to this point was only able to be applied in an ornamental capacity. Because these representations become linear ornaments in the process described above, it is unavoidable that the ornamental expressive ability, which had previously been active without objects, encroaches on this representational ornamentation. Solid objects are more or less substituted for that unarticulated expressive drive, and the expressive power of that linear language—which to this point had evaporated, so to speak—flows into the channels of schematic representation, replacing everything that it had lost through the copyists’ lack of comprehension in terms of physiological vitality with psychologically expressive vitality. Thus we have before us the result: out of the pictorial style comes a book style; out of the sensual-illusionistic figurative art comes an illusionless spiritual-expressive art. Thus the groundwork for all further development was provided. That further development, which gains momentum during the Stauffer period,3 is characterized by new tasks for book illustration put forth by the awakening of a national German literature. Up to this point, developments took place among the spiritual and courtly upper classes. The illustrated codices served either the liturgical needs of the Church or the courts’ needs for luxury and pageantry. Apart from holy manuscripts, only a limited number of secular materials preserved from antiquity were under consideration, including several in which the worldly and the religious were closely linked, for example in the Psychomachia of Prudentius. In short, educational tendencies of a religious flavor had dominated to this point. But now a worldly literature of a national hue emerges which, according to its true nature, develops outside of the confines of the great conservative

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powers of Church and court. The monopoly of the cloister in the production of luxury manuscripts is broken by a broader secular circle’s demand for illustration; the new secular content is illustrated by secular hands. There are thus two things which, luckily, are absent in this new development and the lack of which shapes its fate: the old hands and—what was more decisive— the old models. This provided the initial possibility of refreshing the entire formal language. A break with the past thus does not occur. The old glides imperceptibly into the new. We have seen that an originally painterly character had been coarsened and ossified by the hands of the copyists into a psychologically more expressive drawing; now out of this ossification of drawing, a new fresh calligraphy emerges quietly and unnoticed. In its soft, idealized line it reflects the overly delicate, unhealthy sensitivity that characterizes this true puberty of the new European. Everything rigid or violently expressive disappears. Everything is transposed into a minor key. Just as it is evident in the figures themselves, so too is something immature, childlike, and precious evident in the style, and that remains the ideal in the artistic styles of the High Middle Ages. The strong influx of Byzantine stylistic elements around this time strengthens the precious and sought-after idealized character of this art still further, its feminine impulse towards tenderness often degenerating into stiltedness. We cannot measure the amiable calligraphy of this new secular manuscript illustration by its relation to nature—for it does not emanate from visual perception, but from the conventional language of signs of the past, which it manipulates in a completely different, independent manner, determined by the new content and a lack of examples. The new figurative subjects naturally demand new inventions. Thus it is perfectly understandable that in this way the medieval draftsman, left to his own devices for the first time, works in the manner of a child. That is, he does not work from the observation of nature when his examples abandon him, but rather from his own deliberation. He does not ask himself in individual cases how things look. Rather, he asks himself what things are, and he fixates on these qualities of existence instead of on qualities of appearance. In this way he remains based in the foundations of early medieval art; he does not represent things and thereby provoke illusory effects, but rather substitutes signs for things, signs he reads from the pages of books just as he reads the written word. The unity of experience remains intact. The stylistic changes related here benefit from technical changes which are based in the same external demands. With the rise of a secular national literature, the previously narrow circle of manuscript connoisseurs is of course broken open. With this largely abrupt increase in demand, the solidity of the existing technology naturally suffers. This growing demand can no longer be met if one continues to work in the old, laborious, and costly miniature technique of gouache. For this reason, gouache is first replaced by

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the technique of pen and ink. But this entails nothing new in the technical sense. Every painstakingly executed gouache of earlier times had, as a more or less invisible foundation, an underdrawing in pen and ink, whose freshness and sketch-like vitality generally was buried under the subsequent application of paint. Now this technical aid has become an independent technique. That is, one forgoes the expensive and time-consuming execution of gouache and makes do with the underdrawing, which is less solemn and grand, but in exchange can more easily follow the innovative spirit of the new secular illustrators and, above all, reduces the price of a single codex and thus raises the possibilities of circulation. In order not to fall completely behind the magnificent color of the grand codex, one fills the meager outline drawing with cursory, summary watercolors or works with different colored inks. In short, the new technique has the character of a faute de mieux; even today, the ideal of manuscript painting remains illustration with aristocratic gouache. What the technique lacks in majesty, it gains in liveliness and agility, and through this it then becomes a popular means of illustration. Thus, in place of the schematic tradition of the copyists, a new calligraphic tradition sets in; this is important to us because it is here that the formal language is created whose last offshoots we have before us in the first book illustrations. However, if we compare the style of the book illustrations of the fifteenth century, the first to be made with mechanical means, with that of contemporary manuscript miniatures—manuscript production and book production proceed alongside one another for some time—we see artistic products of completely different types, in which nothing recalls the primitive style of illustration of the thirteenth-century calligrapher. We must orient ourselves to the historical reasons for this absolute stylistic opposition between the contemporaneous book illustration and manuscript illustration of the fifteenth century. For the seemingly obvious lay view that it is the unwieldiness of the new technology that makes the difference between the refined pictorial style of the miniatures and the coarse childlike drawing style of the first contour-cut [Formschnitt] illustrations is completely unfounded. Instead, the differences can be explained on another basis altogether which has nothing to do with technology. That is, it can be explained based on the fact that these book illustrations are linked to an earlier stage of development in manuscript illustration, one which better representatives of manuscripts themselves had long since grown out of. To be precise, if we follow the history of thirteenth-century manuscript illustration further, we see that in the middle of the fourteenth century a drastic change takes place. This change can be characterized more or less as a transition from the old graphic [zeichnerisch] calligraphy to a painterly realism. In this respect, French miniature painting sets the example. The gilt and tapestry backgrounds disappear here first; they had been incorporated into

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European book painting around the year 1000 as the final effect of a planar, ornamental book style which separated itself from any illusion of reality. Now, in their place, spatial depth, architectural and landscape backgrounds of relative naturalism appear. At the same time, colored pen drawing is replaced by brush painting, that is, outlines are no longer drawn with a pen but with a brush, and the internal modeling that was previously defined graphically is now also executed with soft brushwork. This step from colored pen drawing to painterly, modeled brush painting is the greatest novelty of this development, one which changed the miniature style in its entirety. This new technique is naturally only a means to new ends. We see that this is the triumph of a new realism, a demand of a new age that is impossible to ignore, one which unfolds on a stage least appropriate to such an experiment: the arena of manuscript illustration. The new realism infiltrates the ideal world of the book and only gradually crosses over to the sole venue to which it is truly suited: panel painting, which, with the permeation of this authentic pictorial style, finally takes on an independent character. If we consider, for example, a work such as the Book of Hours of the Duke of Berry, produced at the beginning of the fifteenth century, we become conscious that, in this case, any inherent character of the illustrative artwork has been abolished. Instead of illustration we have wonderfully executed pictures full of the effects of depth and bodily illusion; this is nothing other than panel painting on a small scale. In Germany the same development runs its course, but with a delay of a few decades. While in French painting the decisive changes occur in the second half of the fourteenth century, in Germany the crisis is postponed until the first half of the fifteenth century—that is, during the period in which the technology of the printing trade appears. Around 1450, a miniature style is achieved which lacks nothing in terms of pictorial illusory effects and figural and scenic realism. Thus manuscript painting, which originated in a painterly figurative art, put aside the path of linear expressive art and returned to its starting point: painterly figurative art. It was a senseless development, from false beginnings to a false ending. In effect, it touches truth only in passing. It is a lucky developmental coincidence—if we may speak of coincidence in these matters at all—that threads lead out of this thirteenth-century, transitional phase of manuscript illustration, which had temporarily formulated a true illustrative style; these threads are separate from the official development and lead via side routes to the book illustration of the fifteenth century. Once more it is a negative moment that produces this fortunate turn of events. In certain circles of manuscript illustration, a developmental inhibition appears which preserves the thirteenth-century—or, to use the better-known term, Gothic—style of illustration until it can be picked up by the technology of the printing trade, and thus by book illustration.

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This partial developmental inhibition within manuscript illustration is brought about by the popularization of this art form. Just as the circle of those who demanded illustrated codices expanded with the advent of national literature, over time manuscript illustration, too, outgrows its status as a luxury or privilege of the higher clerical and secular classes into a commodity for the broader, educated mass. It would be impossible for the same form to satisfy both of these demands. And thus it comes to a very natural division in production. Alongside luxury production, a mass production develops, its last restraints removed with the emergence of cheap paper, which replaces costly parchment. This separation of luxury and mass production naturally results in different stylistic characteristics. The consumer of the luxury product quickly forgets to make factual demands of illustration. He wants only splendidly decorated and costly codices. Because in this case the need for decoration outweighs the demand for pure illustration, it provides the impetus for a developmental direction which leads, or better yet misleads, miniature painting into an entirely pictorial style [Bildstil]. Miniature panel paintings are beautiful, expensive ornaments for picture manuscripts, but they are not illustrations. An offshoot of mass production is its differentiation from a disoriented luxury production. The producers of mass commodities separate themselves from the producers of luxury products, the craftsperson separates himself from the artist, and these new craftspeople-illustrators are protected from any kind of disorientation by both their lesser skill and by the very specific demands of their wider public. This broad public made only factual demands of illustration, and the objectivity of the craftspeople addressed them. We realize that one thing is true of the entire history of illustration: it can only achieve its own, natural style when it has to answer to a broad and earnest need. Need we even mention that the strongest spiritual excitement around the middle of the millennium was reserved for the classic style of illustration, and that the same excitement was reserved with the same necessity for the use of the printing trade technology? Thus while luxury production, unbound from factual interests, takes the path to the miniature, mass production remains at the point that had already been definitive for illustration in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Permanent workshops appear in which all of the secular and clerical popular literature of the time is published. Kautzsch gives us an image of the operations of such a manuscript factory in the course of a study of the workshop of Diebolt Lauber in the Alsatian imperial city of Hagenau. There we find an interesting publisher’s brochure, which lists for us the most common literature of the time; this interests us doubly because in part this is the same material that is taken up by later book illustration. Alongside didactic religious literature and a few scientific books, the epics figure prominently: Iwein, Parzival, Titurel, Tristan, Wigalois, Pastor Amis, William of Austria, William of Orleans, Flore and Blancheflur, as well as Wolfdietrich, the Trojan War, the Gesta Romanorum,

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the King of France, and finally the great moralizing poems: Der wälsche Gast, Freidank, Lucidarius, Schachzabel, Morolf, Aesop, The Seven Wise Masters, Belial, Seelentrost, The Twenty-Four Elders. But it is not only books that are written and illustrated in these workshops, but also an even more practical commodity, namely individual sheets for popular daily use. There were images of the saints, which one either pasted into a prayer book or affixed to a wall at home, as well as letters of indulgence, calendar pages, and single pages relating to the story of the Passion, the Ten Commandments, the seven sacraments, etc. Alongside these was the main product for secular use: playing cards. All of this executed in that primitive thirteenth-century outline drawing with subsequent summary coloring. No other style was permitted by the popular goal, by this attention to a public as yet ignorant of all problems of figuration, a public whose demands for ideas had to be met, as opposed to a demand for perception.4 The factory-type production of these single sheets lay in the hands of the so-called letter or card painters (Letter, or Brief = breve, any short piece of writing). It is decisive for the style of later book illustration that it was from this class of miniatures, lower on the artistic scale but most in demand by a large public, that the notion of mechanical reproduction emanated, the idea to which the book woodcut owes its existence. The schematic, pattern-like production of these single sheets lent itself to facilitating manual work with mechanical means. No special invention was necessary for this. The idea of block printing—that is, a technique in which appropriate templates are used to make mechanical impressions, whether in a soft mass or on some kind of cloth—was very old. Out of this diverse body of techniques, the common stamping of textiles was the direct predecessor of picture printing. In place of a piece of cloth one used a sheet of paper, and the technical principle of book printing appeared. Thus the transition from hand-painting to mechanical techniques of reproduction took place in a completely self-evident and simultaneously inconspicuous way among the ranks of the letter and card painters. Instead of painted single sheets, single-sheet woodcuts appear and, just as the previous outline was colored in afterwards, here too the contours of the woodcut are filled in with hand coloring. The letter painters have become letter printers who, given the nature of the technology, do not yet enjoy any independence. They consider this to be only a replacement, and for this reason they strive to give the printed pages— in spite of the new technology—the look of the hand-drawn. In terms of establishing the precise time at which this technical change took place, we must rely on calculations of probability. Around 1428, at any rate, a letter printer is named in a document, but that proves nothing. In any case, the process was older than the name. The beginnings of the new technique lie certainly in the end of the fourteenth century. The documents provide no clear picture of whether these first letter printers carved their own wood blocks or

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had the help of a carpenter. But the likelihood is that initially designer and carver were the same person, and only later, towards the end of the fifteenth century, did a division of labor take place. A large number of these first single-image prints produced with woodcuts have survived from the first half of the century; they are the direct predecessors of the book woodcut. The invention of the printed book, and with it the utilization of the woodcut for book illustration, thus precedes the single-image print by a half-century. And we may testify to a specific development within this near prehistory of book illustration among the preserved single-page prints of the fifteenth century: the older examples are more finely executed than the later examples. One explanation presents itself, that it was the better letter printers who turned to the new technology first, and who, in complete awareness of the difficulty of working with such a brittle and unyielding technique as woodcut, and of achieving the lightness and calligraphic grace of the older pen drawing, tried especially hard to blur the differences between these types and achieve the same old beauty with this new means. In these earliest single-sheet prints one sees no hard, rough line, nothing woodcut-like; everything is soft and rolling in the style of the older calligraphy of letter painting. But gradually this soft, hand-drawn character of early block printing changes. The technique becomes generalized; the bulk of the letter painters catches up with the isolated innovators; the stimulus of competition with hand-painted images bit by bit drops away; and without anyone having searched consciously for a style for the new technique, it automatically undergoes an appropriate roughening. Notwithstanding the lingering presence of the old calligraphic formal language, a stronger projection of the stiff, rough movement of the woodcut knife is unavoidable in the context of increasing mass production. Because the inhibitions mentioned above have fallen away, this technique gradually grows into its own style. Through this coarsening of thirteenth-century calligraphy into something more appropriate to the woodcut, a particular style of woodcut slowly takes shape which spreads even more quickly because angularity, a hard-line quality, brittleness, and stiffness in general belong to the stylistic will [Stilwillen] of the fifteenth century (Figure 2.1). This preference of the time for a hard, angular, broken style of line is a peculiar phenomenon which mocks any attempt at explanation based on the artistic material, and demands instead an interpretation based on the psychology of form. Such an interpretation tells us that here we are dealing with a strange mixture of Gothic and modern elements.5 The hard, violent realism that reveals itself in the renunciation of any soft, idealized calligraphy is modern; but this realism remains anchored to the Gothic because it does not emanate from nature, which would have exhibited in it all the natural mildness of organic life. Instead, it remains concerned with the individual expression of line which, as it were, takes on a more bitter, raw language; it thus expresses its realistic tendencies only in this shift in tone.

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2.1 Pyramus and Thisbe (c. 1474), hand-colored woodcut, 80 × 110 mm. Leaf [c]5v, f. [xv]. From Giovanni Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris, printed by Johannes Zainer at Ulm

Therefore, it is purely expressive realism, not a figurative realism, with which we are confronted here. After all, what is more unrealistic in the directly realistic sense than the fragmented chaos of drapery folds on a fourteenthcentury figure! This is the old Gothic in its unrealistic expressive life, carrying on its old existence here in the minor key demanded by the sensibilities of the time. And the woodcut appears to us, as mentioned already, as the most Nordic of all art, because its entire technique offered the most points of contact for this modified, unrealistic, Nordic expressive art. After Nordic art everywhere became disoriented by the Roman issue of figuration, it [woodcut] remains the natural refuge of autochthonic expressive art, in contrast to etching, which is essentially international in character and therefore never was truly native to the North. In accordance with this international character, etching immediately concerned itself with the problem of figuration, and we will see that it is etching that finally derails the style of the woodcut from the path determined for it by technique and popular artistic volition, thereby hindering the woodcut’s inherent illustrative impact. Translated by Heather Mathews, with Kathleen Chapman

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notes 1 Gottfried Semper, Die vier Elemente der Baukunst: Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Baukunde (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1851). [Ed.] 2 Alois Riegl’s Kunstwollen, the driving force behind stylistic evolution in art, is translated here as “artistic volition.” [Transl.] 3 Thirteenth century. [Transl.] 4 Worringer’s terms for these two concepts are Anschauungsbedürfnisse and Vorstellungsbedürfnisse. [Transl.] 5 By “modern,” Worringer does not refer to contemporary twentieth-century art, but rather the period stretching from the Renaissance through the late nineteenth century. [Ed.]

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Part II

Fritz Burger

3 expressionism and empathy: Fritz Burger’s theory of art Elena Filippi

There is thus no doubt that this kind of art-historical interpretation, from Hegel and Riegl to Worringer and Burger, is extremely valuable, since it shows us … what intellectual forces were at work at the time and what ideas underlay artistic creation. (H. Tietze, 1913)1

Introduction When Fritz Burger died in World War I in 1916, a mere three years had elapsed since he first began to develop a theoretical position in art history and art theory that would lead to him being described as a “scientific Expressionist” who had “evolve[d] into an Expressionist artist.”2 In this essay, I will attempt to offer a more detailed explanation of the meaning of this apt characterization by briefly reconstructing his personal and scholarly trajectory (I was able to examine Burger’s manuscripts, which are now in his family’s possession), and recapitulating his main theses. In the following I will argue that the link between his role as a scholar who sought to grasp Expressionism as an art form and as an artist who explored the pictorial language of Expressionism himself3 resides in a highly specific notion of empathy that allows us to reconstruct Burger’s specific declension of Expressionism as art history and situate it in the context of his time.4

Burger and renaissance Italy: Between expressionism and empathy Fritz Burger was born on September 10, 1877 in Munich to an upper-class family, his ancestors having owned a family bank. The young Fritz studied art history in Heidelberg with Henry Thode, who introduced him to the

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study of Italian art history and encouraged him to work on Renaissance Venetian art.5 As a student in Heidelberg, he met Clara von Duhn, the daughter of archeology professor Friedrich von Duhn, in whose villa on a hill overlooking the Neckar he had rented a room. Clara was only 16 when she gave birth to the couple’s first son. Because of the ensuing scandal, the young couple fled, first to England, where they were able to marry. The Burger family then lived for a while in Freiburg im Breisgau, later moving to Florence and finally to Munich in 1906. At Ludwig Maximilian University, Burger was very impressed with and heavily influenced by the method of Heinrich Wölfflin, who would later move from Berlin to Munich in 1912, becoming Burger’s colleague.6 The ambitious and up-and-coming Burger, who had already published a monograph on Tuscan art and studies of Michelangelo thanks to his time in Florence, wished to cement his reputation as an art historian by authoring a standard work and obtaining a professorship (Privatdozentur).7 He originally planned to write a book on the entire history of Venetian art, to be titled “Die Kunst und die Kultur Venedigs in der Renaissancezeit” [The Art and Culture of Venice in the Renaissance]. This was also the subject of his lecture course in the winter semester of 1907–08. From his previously unpublished correspondence with his father-in-law, Friedrich von Duhn, we can see how he narrowed down this original project,8 ultimately publishing in 1909 his monograph Die Villen des Andrea Palladio [The Villas of Andrea Palladio], subtitled Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Renaissancearchitektur [On the History of Renaissance Architecture].9 Duhn responds to a letter from Burger announcing his intentions with this word of warning: It’s exactly the same topic that Thode worked on for so many years! … That topic was the reason he moved to Lake Garda, so that he could always be in Venice at a moment’s notice and constantly live in the whole Venetian atmosphere. And he told me himself about the years he spent in the archives in Venice and elsewhere working on the topic.10

A passage from the foreword to the book Die Villen des Andrea Palladio reveals Burger’s original plan: “My desire to delve more deeply into the character of the art and culture of Venice also brought me closer to Palladio.”11 Between the lines, Burger concedes that he originally regarded working on Palladio as a compromise solution. Later, however, he could honestly say that “his art gave me more than I expected.” Burger’s approach to Palladio’s villas is frequently critical, and this at a time when Palladio was almost universally celebrated as a genius of clarity, harmony, and proportion. Even in this early sample of his work, Burger displays an expressionist disposition that would only find solid ground on which to develop in the following years with his turn to the contemporary art

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of the early twentieth century, and thanks to his acquaintance with Wassily Kandinsky and his friendship with Franz Marc. Burger came to Palladio from an interest in the art of Central Italy. He was always in search of the totality, and in focusing on Tuscan and Roman art, he was driven by a desire to bring out its underlying intention or Kunstwollen, the “will to form” that animated its various artistic manifestations— painting, sculpture, architecture. That is why, from the very beginning, his interest turned to funerary monuments, in which sculpture and architecture collaborate to reach the theatrical goal of producing chiaroscuro and hence ultimately “painterly” effects. This naturally led him to Michelangelo, who was at once painter, architect, and sculptor. The statics of volumes and proportions, the distinguishing feature of sculpture, draws on Michelangelo’s painting as well as his architecture and, according to Burger, also illuminates the Tuscan master’s other artistic expressions. In his attempt to achieve the same thing with the art of the Veneto—in the context of his original plan to treat it encyclopedically—Burger went looking for a similar unifying thread. But there was no artist in the Veneto whose work made it possible to compare and confront the forms of painting, sculpture, and architecture within a single Kunstwollen, as in the case of Michelangelo. Burger thus came ultimately to Palladio, who did not actually hold a strong appeal for him, unlike Tintoretto among the Venetians, a master he appreciated very deeply. Through Palladio, Burger sought to understand Venetian art as “a totality.” In his view, Palladio was a “sculptor” who became an architect. This becomes clear from his letter to von Duhn from London of October 19, 1908. For Burger, it was an intuitive sense of color and hence a painterly impulse that underlay all of Palladio’s work, and it was also what Burger regarded as at bottom the distinguishing feature of all Venetian art. In Burger’s eyes, Palladio appears as the embodiment of the essence of Venetian art and, therefore, provided much more than he had expected: an answer to the questions he had brought to the study of the art and culture of the Veneto as a whole. In Burger’s view: Venice lacked that high architectural tradition, rooted in the rigorous discipline of constructive logic, which led to such a well-developed artistic instinct for formal rhythm and proportion in Rome and Florence … . Venetian art felt the lack of this training bitterly; it cost Titian himself a heavy struggle till he grasped the functional importance of space and form, which the Florentine artist imbibed with his mother’s milk as an obvious birthright, as clearly as that of color.12

This is precisely what Burger sees as Palladio’s originality and contribution: to have been the “silent interpreter of the culture,” from which he was able to draw a new visual language that was committed to antiquity but also offered the Venetian patrician a proper stage on which to play the glittering god who dwells in a soberly designed temple.13 Not long before, Hugo von

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Hofmannsthal had declared before the Villa Rotonda: “It is neither house nor temple but both at once. … This house appears to have been built for such pleasures that it almost seems designed for the gods, not mortal men.”14 But Palladio is not content merely to meet his patrons’ needs. “On the contrary,” writes Burger, “his creation points to an artistic struggle, and underneath all his classicism there is actually a personal life.”15 With respect to the classical par excellence, Burger reinforces in himself what he already suspects, and then clearly articulates in the final chapter of Die Villen: In order to properly appreciate the historical significance of his works, one must be careful not to see them through the lens of our popular ideas about classicism. There is always a tendency to regard “classicists” as lacking a feeling heart; but this man’s artistic development shows that he too was a warrior in the realm of art.16

Thus, at bottom Palladio is not a classicist, and he is seen through the eyes of the Expressionists, with a highly charged and imaginative prose that bears a striking resemblance to Hofmannsthal’s description of the Villa Rotonda cited above. The Austrian poet and writer had sought to interpret the much-lauded villa as the expression of a mood of intoxication, as the physical trace of a passion. This is precisely how Burger understands the solitary white structures, which are “scattered across the countryside like luminous pearls.”17 Burger borrowed this approach to architecture from Wölfflin, whose influence on the Palladio book can be seen in its extensive use of methodical approaches developed by the older professor in his 1886 dissertation Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur [Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture]. Wölfflin published a favorable review of the Palladio book in 1910 in the Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, one of the most highly respected journals of the time in any field.18 At issue is the newly formulated concept of empathy, which Wölfflin developed into a kind of empathic physiognomy. With it, his intention was to legitimate art history as a science based on an a priori that he found in the human body. Wölfflin wrote in the Prolegomena: Even though a house has little in common with a human form, we see the windows as organs that are similar to our eyes. … The portion above the windows becomes a forehead. … Thus we cannot help but feel that the Finance Ministry in Munich has a furrowed brow, whereas the Palazzo Strozzi … does not look disapproving but simply grave and distinguished.19

Burger’s description and artistic assessment of the Palladian villas is full of observations like these; here I will let a single quotation stand for them all: “Palladio had learned to see buildings as living organisms.”20 For Burger, the dome of the Villa Rotonda near Vicenza hides bashfully in the folds of its roof, while the Villa Trissino in Meledo seems to embrace the visitor and wishes to

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play with him or her. One villa’s hips are too wide, while another has skinny legs, etc. Once again, an empathic identification with the artwork based on the a priori of the human body is achieved, very much in Wölfflin’s sense. In this way, Burger avoids restricting art history either to the external technical description of the work or to the historical recitation of facts and events, while also withdrawing it from the arbitrariness of personal taste, since the a priori of the human body lays claim to universal validity. Burger was eager to found a Kunstwissenschaft, or science of art. As Karl Heinz Herke wrote retrospectively, “transcendental” was one of his favorite words.21 In using it, he was searching for a fundamental feature of formal perception common to all human beings. He initially understood this in a purely Kantian sense; later, he was more inclined to restrict it to something common to the perception of all human beings of a particular historical period. In this sense, the general concept is relativized and historicized: “Initially, Burger uses his favorite word, ‘transcendental,’ in the Kantian sense of conceptual forms that are already present in our mind before any experience (a priori). But he often uses it for the forms of perception or intuition common to all men of a particular period, for historical styles.”22 The goal, then, is to empathize with the humanity of a particular period, to the extent this is possible. The prospects for success are greater if the era in question is one’s own. And in the last years of his life, Burger carried this restriction to an extreme, limiting the scope of possible empathy to his intimate circle of friends and, ultimately, to himself alone as both artist and critic at once.

1911: the turn to the modernists Burger’s scholarly production seems to be divided into two different phases, based on the subject being considered: first, until about 1910, the Renaissance; and then, beginning in 1911, modernism. In 1925–26, his wife Clara wrote a text looking back on her husband’s career in which she asserts that his turn to the modernists as well as his friendship with Kandinsky and Marc had begun in 1911. An undated photograph shows Burger with the other two artists on vacation in summer, apparently on the island of Sylt.23 Indeed, it is precisely in 1911 that Burger began to tackle new projects.24 In 1913, he published a large work on modern painting, having paved the way for it in 1912 with a little book intended as a visitor’s guide to the Schack Galerie in Munich. In the foreword of that guide, which will be taken up again later in this essay, Burger presents important elements of his theory of art for the first time. The impression of a sudden shift in Burger’s interests should not blind us to the existence of a certain continuity. Michelangelo is and remains a focal point for Burger, even in the monograph entitled Cézanne und Hodler; indeed, Michelangelo is one of the artists mentioned most frequently there. Like an

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anatomist, Burger had looked in Palladio’s villas for signs of former life, since “now owls and bats are nesting in the ruined vaults, while on the floor the silkworm is performing its quiet labor for the master of the house, who is enjoying the fruits of his property far away in the comfortable rooms of the big city.”25 In the case of Michelangelo, however, the act of artistic creation was glaringly obvious, so that the art historian could empathize more with the form-giving process than the form. And it is precisely this distinction that now becomes active in Burger’s turn to contemporary art. Indeed, this is the expressionistic hallmark of his work in the theory of art, for in the expressio of the Expressionists, two moments are implicitly contained: the act of creation and the product. For Burger, the latter is merely the trace of the former. Based on these premises, he organized a kunstwissenschaftliches Praktikum, or practicum in the science of art, for art history students at the University of Munich. It offered practical exercises in painting, drawing, and sculpture, not with the goal of developing artistic skill (as at an art school) but with that of mastering the creative process, and thus penetrating directly to the essence of artistic production. In the last years of his life, Burger became a painter himself (and occasionally also a sculptor), so that as a critic he would be able to empathize even more fully with artistic practice. In 1910, Munich really was as Thomas Mann describes it at the beginning of his novella Gladius Dei: a hub of intellectual and artistic activity. In 1909, the Munich Secession of 1892 was succeeded by the Neue Künstlervereinigung (New Artists’ Association or NKV), whose president, Wassily Kandinsky, would later become a friend and correspondent of Burger. The artists who belonged to it (including Adolf Erbslöh, Alexei von Jawlensky, Alexander Kanoldt, Alfred Kubin, Gabriele Münter, Marianne von Werefkin, the sculptor Moissey Kogan, and the dancer Alexander Sacharoff) were searching for a visual language that would be able not only to reproduce impressions from the external world, but also to render the artist’s inner universe. Franz Marc joined the group in 1911, while Paul Klee and August Macke followed the association’s development as sympathetic onlookers. Thus, the writer Hermann Buddensieg wrote in memory of his student days: In Munich, there were two highly respected professors, Heinrich Wölfflin and Fritz Burger. At that time, Wölfflin—a proper and dignified Swiss who cut a solid, commanding, and distinctly aristocratic figure—was teaching on the architecture of Munich. Fritz Burger lived in a completely different way, so that the two men were almost like the diastole and systole of a single heart. He gave his lectures, with slides, in the university’s largest auditorium, which was usually filled to overflowing. Fritz Burger spoke freely about the modernist painting of the day, whose leading figures were Kandinsky, Marc, and Macke and which was almost revolutionary in its impact. Burger spoke thrillingly, without notes, as if channeling in words the dynamism and expressiveness of these painters. He didn’t just talk about the painters; inspired by them, he interpreted their works from within their innermost spirit.26

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In 1912, Burger began to organize class trips to Murnau for his students, where he showed them Kandinsky’s studio. For the NKV’s third group exhibition, Kandinsky produced an extremely informal watercolor entitled Komposition V. The tensions it occasioned caused a new schism, with the Russian painter, Münter, Kubin, and Marc splitting off to form a new creative direction that held its first exhibition in Munich at the Galerie Thannhauser under the title Der Blaue Reiter. Heinrich Thannhauser, the gallery’s owner, was in turn a good friend of Hugo von Tschudi, General Director of the Bavarian Museums since 1909. Tschudi’s acquisition of modern artworks was fiercely opposed by the traditionalists, but applauded by the new artists movement and described and discussed with art-historical fervor by Fritz Burger, who nonetheless had to keep his distance from the controversy because of his still uncertain position at the university.

1912: a theory of art criticism Burger’s courses were coming to include more and more museum and gallery visits. In 1909, a permanent exhibition of nineteenth-century artworks from the collection of the patron Adolf Friedrich Graf von Schack (1815–94) opened in Munich. Burger had already written a brief text for the opening of the new Schack Galerie in 1909;27 in 1912, he published a sort of guide to the collection. Reprinted several times, it was initially intended exclusively for university students and the educated public, but its third edition was addressed to all of the gallery’s visitors.28 It is the first complete document of a turn toward the art of the previous century, in which Burger discovers the seeds of the coming aesthetic of contemporary art, for example in the paintings of Alfred Böcklin, as he seeks to show. Above all, however, in the book’s introduction Burger develops a theory of artistic creation that would set the direction for all of his later work. Thanks to its location, this terse, compressed, and difficult but systematically remarkable text had ample opportunity to be read by a wider public; at the same time, it was clearly the wrong venue for such a challenging essay and, probably at the publisher’s request, the third edition was partially revised. By this time, Burger was already in the army and did not have the time to do a substantive revision of the text. Nevertheless, it is interesting to compare the two editions of the introductory essay entitled “Prinzipielles über die künstlerische Kritik” [Principles of Art Criticism] with an eye to gaining a thorough understanding of the first one. Here I wish to focus primarily on Burger’s brief—as befits a museum guide—discussion of the nature of art criticism, its epistemological position between the sciences, and hence the meaning of such a science. Burger’s search for a method peculiar to the science of art fell during a troubled time, when the general question of meaning had become urgent and

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unavoidable for the younger generation. It is no accident that in his obituary for the author (at the beginning of the third and already posthumous edition), August L. Mayer noted: “In the brief section on art criticism, Burger defined the essence of his philosophical approach to art more clearly than anyone else.”29 Burger opens the text of the first edition of the introduction with a series of terse and pithy statements: Art is neither a matter of faith nor a question of taste but a question of cognition. For all human thinking is form-giving, and all form-giving a simultaneous joining and separating. Feeling and imagination would not be able to express themselves without this capacity to think and give form, and artistic imagination itself is only a thinking about the relationships between imagined sensuous details.30

For Burger, then, art is above all a “question” of cognition. The unavoidable problem of traditional art history up to that point was this: it could lay claim to objectivity, but only provided it left out artistic creation as such—art’s proprium—and examined the biographies of the artists, the external history of the artworks, and their technical execution. But these are all secondary phenomena that have nothing to do with art as such, for what is considered in this kind of (art) history is only the product of artistic creation, not that creation itself. At the threshold of modernity, then, the following question was in the air: how can the artist’s performative act be made transparent without sacrificing the rigor of a science? In what follows, I will briefly explain how this happened before the outbreak of World War I in the writings, teaching, and artistic experiences of Fritz Burger. In this methodical process, whose core is the notion of empathy,31 it will be possible to clearly recognize the key phases of a development that starts from art history and leads to the founding of a theory of art. According to Burger, the theory of art differs from faith on the one hand, whose contents cannot be questioned, and taste on the other, whose questions cannot readily be answered and hence are always in doubt. The theory of art belongs to the possible knowledge to be won by human cognition in its questioning. But every mode of thought is a process of form-giving, and this means essentially “joining and separating,” instituting signs that give rise to a reality. Every reality is determined by the signs that define it. Were it not for the existence of this more primary and more fundamental formative ability, there would also be no such thing as imagination. The latter is only possible as an activity because the very first activity, which makes everything else possible, is a formative thinking of this kind. This thinking gives rise to the joining and separating of boundaries that generate relationships between sensuous details. The latter as such only appear within the activity of formative thinking and the myriad relations it creates.

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Now all thinking is form-giving, and art is thinking that knows, a thinking aware of itself as such; but not all thinking is an art form. The difference lies in the language, as explained in the following passage of Burger’s introduction: “The language in which this thinking is expressed is not immediately familiar to the non-artist. For the artist says something about sensuous constellations of appearances, whereas those who have not been trained to think artistically primarily recognize only isolated appearances.”32 The language of artistic thinking has its own “mood.” While the language of non-artistic thinking describes constellations of conventional signs, artistic language says something about sensuous constellations of appearances, and hence of signs that do not appear separately and in isolation from one another (unlike conventional signs, which only become more expressive by being combined) but only appear in their constellation, in their condition of being simultaneously joined and separated. As we recall, this language, as the language of art, speaks neither absolute truths that must be believed nor subjective and personal truths like those of taste. Artistic thinking is exclusively accessible neither to an esoteric circle of believers nor to the specific individual in his or her isolated and taste-based relationship to the world. Rather, it is accessible to anyone who is trained in it. Those who are trained in this kind of thinking are capable of cognizing such constellations of appearances; those who are not do not grasp the form-giving activity of art, and instead focus largely on isolated appearances, cognizing only the individual signs, as if they were the conventional signs of non-artistic language. It is a question of training, which is essentially accessible to everyone. As mentioned above, for Burger, art is above all a question. Its language says only “something.” One must rest content with this something. One must adopt a questioning attitude and immerse oneself in this weak sign without insisting on gaining a clear and definitive picture of the truth of the formative act. A truth of this kind remains perpetually open. These introductory remarks, to which I will limit myself here, already contain the basis for treating the problems of painting as they are viewed in Burger’s monograph entitled Cézanne und Hodler.

1913–1914: theoretical Writings and major Publications Published in 1913, reprinted a number of times in the following decade, and lightly revised by Walter Dexel, Cézanne und Hodler constitutes Burger’s seminal contribution to the study of modernist painting, which he was prevented from elaborating further by his premature death. The text, which exerted a powerful influence primarily on artists in Germany but on those in other countries as well, was lauded by the Rheinische Hochschulzeitung in the

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following terms: “Perhaps not since Lessing’s Laokoon has there been a work this profound about the problems of painting!”33 Cézanne und Hodler seeks to provide an introduction to the problems of contemporary art. The text, which contains many brilliant analyses of paintings and follows Expressionism in attaching greater importance to the artistic than to a traditional notion of scholarship, is symptomatic of the turn toward a metaphysical irrationalism that seized large numbers of German intellectuals and artists after 1900. Together with Worringer, Heidrich, and Rintelen, Burger shows himself here as the exponent of an expressionist brand of art history writing.34 This book clearly reveals the breadth of his interests, which extend to a number of different periods and cultures. As a universalist, Burger was in search of an interpretive key that would be valid for all art forms: already at this time, he was planning an encyclopedic project whose first results appeared in the Handbuch der Kunstwissenschaft [Manual of Art Criticism] in 1913, the same year Cézanne und Hodler was published. After his death, the project was continued by Albert E. Brinckmann, eventually reaching 32 volumes. Burger also seeks to deal with the art for whose analysis adequate artcritical methods had not yet been developed: If the study of art is really to be what it should be, there can be no temporal limits to the material it treats. It must have the courage to do its work even where it is deprived of the voluminous toolkit of historical research, without fear of making mistakes.35

In Cézanne und Hodler, Burger anticipates certain elements of an unfinished treatise that was to bear the ambitious title, “Systematik der Kunstwissenschaft” [The Methodology of Art Criticism].36 Burger views art as a kind of visual or pictorial thinking that exists alongside the conceptual. Hence he feels that art criticism is to be situated between these two types of thinking, since it participates in both. Thus, art critics must be artists as well as philosophers; and if they aspire to practice an “expressive science,” they must have as much pictorial expressiveness at their disposal as they do intellectual rigor: “In art one must be able to think with the artist.”37 For Burger, then, the distinguishing feature of modern art is the open alliance between philosophy and art: “Both turn away from the empiricism of the natural sciences toward a worldview and conception of life permeated by mystical ideas.”38 The innovative central idea of this book is, as Burger writes, “that we art historians should not always merely ask how historical knowledge can be harnessed for insight into the present, but what insight the present affords us for the assessment of the past. … ‘The task is to view the object according to the necessity of its own nature.’”39 The book begins by investigating the dialogue between form and color, that is, “The Style Problem in Art.”

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Since “all human creation is a dialogue or interaction with nature,” the artwork too is the expression of a “theory of the essence of nature.”40 Hence Burger discusses the “Development of the Concept of Nature” from the Renaissance to the present. His basic idea is that in their pictures, Cézanne, Hodler, and the painters of his own generation who came after them make visible “the essential connections between details and the supra-individual will that creates and governs them.”41 Burger presents Impressionism and the Renaissance as negative antitheses to Expressionist art, because in his view they destroyed the cosmic imaginative unity of medieval art. Burger treats the two diametrically opposed artists, Cézanne and Hodler, as expressions of objective and supra-individual imperatives that correspond to the philosophical approaches of Spinoza and Hegel. On this basis, he recognizes in the art-historical changes they ushered in (which he explicates with the help of examples and comparisons from more than 50 artists) an analogy to the Kantian philosophical revolution: an objective understanding of the laws of the creative consciousness. Characteristic of Burger’s approach to modernist art is the way he describes the painting of his friend Franz Marc in the section of Cézanne und Hodler devoted to him: His animals, which rest on the ground, are also intended as nature, whose essence is manifest in both, childlike, faithful, simple, and mysterious. It is impossible to tell the stag’s antlers apart from the branches. The doe in visionary white [is] like a dream image in the dazzling dark. It doesn’t really rest on the ground but grows out of the similarly shaped silhouettes of the ground as an outlined patch of color. For the sake of this sensuous similarity, traditional anatomical, perspectival, and static correctness must be sacrificed in order to depict this peaceful, idyllic coexistence of related entities.42

In 1917, the first volume of the Handbuch der Kunstwissenschaft, focusing on Die Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts [The Art of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries], was posthumously published by Brinckmann with the title Einführung in die moderne Kunst [Introduction to Modern Art]. Burger had already written the introductory text to the entire series in 1913.43 Here he vigorously opposes the academic inclination to put labels on art and against the Eurocentric tendency in art history.44 This demand that rigid forms be broken up and made fluid seems to me to be a further hallmark of his expressionist art history. Thus, for example, he was able to claim: But the origins of modern art can only be discovered when one does not just expand the concept of art history to include the familiar European material but practices a real world history of art. In my view, this is also the basic mistake of the well-observed introduction to Meier-Graefe’s book on nineteenth-century painting. It continues to present the Renaissance as the privileged ancestor of modern art, barely mentioning so-called Nordic thought and ignoring

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Oriental thought completely, despite the fact that the latter was in part the basis for the former, and the former was the most important foundation for modernism. Recent art is an affair of the Nordic peoples. The Gothic style and modernism bind Romanesque France more closely to Germanic Germany than to Romanesque Italy. This is why a clearly defined psychological basis for artistic judgment cannot be developed here through questions of race and nationality alone.45

Passages like these put Burger beyond the pale for the National Socialists, who denounced him as a degenerate art historian. But back to the main thread of this overview of Burger’s special idea of art criticism. His Einführung in die moderne Kunst occupies the same intellectual universe as the monograph Cézanne und Hodler; indeed, it was written in the same year. However, while the monograph was able to reflect the author’s views untempered by any external considerations, the Einführung stood under certain constraints, intended as it was for a series that aimed at clarity, comprehensiveness, and periodization. Its scope is thus expanded to include sculpture, architecture, and design and takes the form of a contextualization based on decade groupings and countries. That said, here, as so often in Burger’s writings, the foreword is treated as the vehicle for a programmatic statement about art criticism that transcends the limits of the work itself. Burger was determined to show that modern art was the product of a concerted and collective effort on the part of various and not just European peoples. Here too, the role of Cézanne and Hodler and a number of other artists, including Hans von Marées, Böcklin, and the contemporaries Marc and Nolde, is particularly emphasized. The credit is theirs if “what stands at the entrance to the new artistic era is no longer the question of appearance. The artist asks what things, the world, and life are for us.”46 If this is the case, then—according to Burger—we must embrace this question and the attempt to answer it by putting ourselves in the place of the artists as they discover what things, the world, and life are for them. And this in turn means nothing other than empathizing with the artists. In his afterword to the posthumously published work, Brinckmann reproduces and discusses a painting, also by Burger, entitled Es werde Licht [Let There Be Light].47 In what follows, I will discuss the close connection between Burger’s activity as a painter and his approach to art criticism.

1915–1916: the expressionist as empathic art historian [1913 …] Shortly thereafter, the artist in Burger seems to have triumphed over the art historian. Burger becomes an expressionist artist (who himself paints expressionist pictures) and a man of the present in his overall outlook, and begins to approach art history from the perspective of the living Expressionist movement and his own subjective present-oriented struggles. This is where

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the art historian, artist, and journalistic writer part company. Burger’s writings begin to turn their back on art history as a specialized professional field. The art historian loses the authority to pass judgment on his works.48

This assessment by Robert Hedicke from 1924 is correct in reporting an expressionist turn in Burger’s development. In my view, however, it is incorrect in another respect: Burger became an artist from an inner urge to understand artistic creation and hence in his capacity as an art historian. After carrying out his turn toward contemporary art in 1911 and bringing to maturity a theory of art of his own, as briefly depicted here, Burger implicitly developed two additional notions of empathy that go far beyond Wölfflin.49 From the citations from his published work (especially Cézanne und Hodler, 1913, and the dense introduction to Die deutschen Meister, 1912) and his teaching activity, it is clear that Burger viewed art criticism as a kind of entering into the artist’s art, as if it were the task of the critic to draw close to the artist almost to the point of identifying with him or her. And yet if art criticism is to be Kunstwissenschaft, a science of art, the scientific claim to objectivity is violated by the individualism and arbitrariness of such an act of identification. In the last years of his life, Burger sought to address this issue by becoming an artist who critically interpreted his own work, so that Burger the critic could actually see the world through the eyes of Burger the artist. It was still a matter of empathy, since the two roles remained clearly separated. Burger increasingly saw the role of the scholar or scientist in precisely this act of identification with artistic creation, so that he or she no longer speaks merely about art but rather from a deeply felt inner experience of it. Also, as mentioned above, as a professor in Munich he had established a practicum in the science of art for his students, in which they were supposed to become familiar with practical artistic production so that as art critics they would have insight into the artist’s activity. In Burger’s letters and diaries from the front in 1915, there are lengthy passages containing serious exercises in the criticism of his own paintings (most of them oil paintings formerly owned by the Kurpfälzisches Museum Heidelberg and now in private hands). Burger’s artistic production is actually influenced less by Kandinsky and Marc than by Nolde, Heinrich Campendonck, and Jawlensky.50 It primarily consists of visionary scenes with a biblical and soteriological background, as in the 1916 tetralogy Erwachen der Seele [The Soul’s Awakening]; Paradies (Der Baum der Erkenntnis) [Paradise (The Tree of Knowledge)]; Sintflut [The Flood]; and Es werde Licht (Figure 3.1). The latter bears an undeniable formal resemblance to Franz Marc’s Tierschicksale [Fate of the Animals] from 1913 at the Kunstmuseum Basel (Figure 3.2). In the end, these images should not be regarded primarily as artworks but as an extreme attempt in art criticism to empathize with artistic production

3.1 Fritz Burger, Es werde Licht / Let There Be Light (1916), pastel on board, 52 × 90 cm. Private Collection, Heidelberg

3.2 Franz Marc, Tierschicksale / Fate of the Animals (1913), pastel on board, 195 × 263.5 cm. Kunstmuseum Basel

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3.3 Fritz Burger, Self-Portrait (1915), pastel on board, 30 × 48 cm. Private Collection, Munich

by turning artist and critic into a single person. In this way, the original strategy of empathizing with the artwork, which is based on Wölfflin’s notion of empathy,51 is expanded to include an additional case: the critic’s empathy with him- or herself as artist. The only one of Fritz Burger’s paintings that is reproduced with any frequency is his self-portrait from 1915, which shows him before the coast of the island of Sylt (Figure 3.3).

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He wrote about it in a letter to his wife: The structure of the body and face resemble Dürer’s self-portrait at the Pinakothek, a strictly frontal view, the figure in a very light blue jacket, open wide to reveal his bare neck and also his bare chest, showing only a narrow strip of a yellow leather shirt. The head in glowing, sunny colors, bright on the left, in heavy shadow, very light on the right; the whole figure standing out against a cautious and very lightly painted background. The light green sea bathing the stretch of coastal dunes, whitish streaks of cloud against a delicate purple sky; the blue of the jacket heightens the emotion of the blue eyes, and the relatively sharp chromatic contrasts—a bit à la Hodler—subside in the background.52

With respect to the phenomenon of the (painter-)critic Burger, we may summarize as follows: Burger’s entire production is informed by an analogy between the artist and the critic. In the first phase, until 1911, this takes the following form: the artist imitates nature. The latter is initially construed as visible external nature. The critic in turn should be able to reconstruct or recapitulate this activity, and thus attempts to acquire the rudiments of an imitatio naturae, which in Burger’s view is accomplished by the practicum in the science of art. In a second phase, after 1911, nature is primarily (but not exclusively) understood as inner, psychological nature. Artists are now expected to explore their inner being and give expression to their own nature through form. Critics in turn should be able to experience the same thing so that they can identify with artists who work in this way, and hence investigate the operation of this form-giving process in which an intuition is drawn from deep within one’s nature and given form in the external world. This drives Burger to discover his own inner psychological landscape, and to discover how that landscape can be transposed onto the canvas. He investigates himself in his self-portrait, but also his inner hopes and visions in the painting trilogy. In a letter to his wife of Easter 1916, he mentions Gustav Meyrink’s book Der Golem (1915), from which he has learned that “each of us has a kind of ‘I-community’ within himself.”53 He experiences his own “I-community” as extremely conflicted: “I feel the artist and the scholar within me and experience their conflict.”54 In this connection, he mentions the works of his new trilogy (Paradies, Sintflut, Erwachen der Seele), which play with opposites (good and evil, salvation and damnation, waking and sleep). Then comes a key assertion, which Burger again backs up with Meyrink: “For years I mindlessly parroted and followed the misguided maxim that the painter has to study external nature in order to be able to create artistically; only now, that inner contemplation has begun to dawn within me … .”55 This passage allows us to see Burger’s entire scholarly career from a unified perspective. He felt that the study of external nature was not enough to make one an artist. Nor, however, was it sufficient to focus exclusively on the

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3.4 Fritz Burger, Waldlichtung / Forest Clearing (1916), pastel on board, 30 × 48 cm. Private Collection, Heidelberg

alternative, on deeply felt, inward contemplation, since it was only through the study of nature that such contemplation was able to obtain a specific form. Artists like Michelangelo had the extraordinary ability to bring both of these aspects into harmony and to recognize their own “I” in nature, as if, to borrow Burger’s phrase, they had “imbibed [it] with [their] mother’s milk.”56 In this respect, Palladio seemed cold and lacking in inwardness. His project was externally dictated by the affectedness of the Venetian approach: a respect for standards that are only indirectly derived from nature and do not harmonize nature with inwardness. Burger therefore regarded Palladio as an epigone and already as a Mannerist. Thus, the problem that led Burger to turn to contemporary art and later to become an artist himself was how to combine the study of nature with deeply felt, inward contemplation. This also explains why Albrecht Dürer is a latent but constant presence in Burger’s late writings. Dürer is the author of the famous saying, “for truly, art is rooted in nature,”57 as well as the beautiful phrase, “inwardly full of figures.”58 Precisely in the need to bring these two extremes together, Dürer himself displayed the signs of a lifelong struggle for true art. This tension between an inner, usually hidden disposition and the external world of nature exists in the artist as well as in the viewer, including the “professional” viewer: the art critic. This gives rise to the two abovementioned moments of empathy in Burger’s work in the following way: (a) empathy with artistic creation, with the form-giving process rather than

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the form; and (b) the unification of artist and critic in a single person, who then empathizes with him- or herself (the critic with the artist). However, there is also a third dramatic phase of empathy in Burger’s work. We have only a single example of it in a little pastel painting (30 × 48 cm) owned by the Burger family (Figure 3.4). Shaken by the news of Franz Marc’s death, in spring 1916 Burger rode to the forest clearing where his friend had been struck by enemy fire during a combat mission, and he produced a painting of the site. In the pages on Marc in his monograph Cézanne und Hodler, Burger speaks passionately of Marc’s depictions of animals in the woods as a way of seeing the world through the nature of the animals in question and lending it the mood of those animals (often deer). Here we have a forest clearing with no animals, where Marc died suddenly. The picture depicts the setting as seen through the eyes of the dying painter, and adopts his approach of painting the scene through the creature’s own eyes, an approach that is decisive for forging its unity as a setting.59 In the foreground are two trees painted red with a reddish patch between them. The background is empty except for a roughly sketched little house. A line of trees encloses the background and draws the viewer’s gaze into the image and to the left, where, however, it is blocked by the thick tree in the foreground. The conifer in the right foreground seems to be vibrating and giving off sharp rays. Underneath, between the two trees and the reddish patch, a white strip is visible. It is not a path, as one might suppose, since it runs into one of the trees. It looks like a white veil discolored by the red patch. Everything in the painting is trembling with agitation. At work here is a kind of absolute empathy in which all separation is eliminated, including that between man and artist within the same person. The painter here is Burger the man, who empathizes with his friend as well as with his friend’s art, the hallmark of which is in turn empathy—and this without everything sinking into a nebulous vagueness. The style is Burger’s (not Marc’s), and the site of Marc’s death is probably depicted faithfully.60 Burger’s case is admittedly extreme, and it only breaks ground for a tendency that, in the end, reaches a certain completion with him. In Burger, we can see a development that, in the turbulence of the war years and the dejected atmosphere associated with them, tends to be carried too far. Visible to the last, however, is the rigorous discipline of a desired identity between creation and description. It is the model of a development that leads from a mutual “otherness” of art and art history to the dawning of a desired identity in difference.

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Critical Reception Fritz Burger’s premature death did not necessarily mean that the reception of his writings and views was interrupted. Burger was very popular with his students, as is perhaps best attested by a letter from one of those students to the editor of the Berliner Tageblatt shortly after the professor’s passing: We would pour into his lecture hall, almost trampling each other underfoot in our excitement, and listen rapt as if to a revelation. We felt that this was what universities were for: here were words that could not be written down or printed. This was soul. Whether it was Michelangelo or Cézanne, wherever he discovered something true and inimitable, his speech would rise to become a hymn of praise. Extremely flexible and melodious, his voice glowed to the point of ecstasy, slicing like polished steel as he cut down the epigones “with their classicistic poses.” The man who did so much quiet, serious work could be moved to the point of blazing exuberance by the sight of a black-and-white sheet by Van Gogh. Then he would improvise as only a brilliant artist can.61

This enthusiastic reminiscence of Burger evokes the two souls that dwelled within his breast, the sober meticulousness of the scholar or scientist and the passion of the empathizing art lover. A close student of Burger’s, Oskar Lang, claims that “perhaps more than anyone before him in the history of art,” he “placed the emphasis not on the word ‘history’ but on the word ‘art,’ which earned him bitter hostility from the future scholars but won him the hearts of the artists.”62 Burger is thus Expressionism’s representative in art history.63 As an Expressionist artist, he is still wholly a scholar, if scholarship means not just establishing demonstrable facts and personalities but also delving into the creative act itself. Burger’s writings were still being read and reprinted in the 1920s. The continuation of his encyclopedic project by his colleague Brinckmann kept the memory of his other works alive until 1933, when Alfred Rosenberg denounced his writing as degenerate scholarship in a footnote to his book Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts [The Myth of the Twentieth Century]. The Nazi regime then banned the reprinting of Burger’s writings and helped to ensure that the critic and his work would be forgotten.64 By the end of World War II, art history had moved on to other questions and methods, and a rediscovery of Burger was not on the agenda.65 Recently, however, a new and productive research perspective has emerged, with a number of researchers in Germany and Italy taking a renewed interest in his writings, especially his methodological work.66 Translated by James Gussen

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notes 1 Hans Tietze, Die Methode der Kunstgeschichte: Ein Versuch (Leipzig: Seemann, 1913), 442. 2 Udo Kultermann, The History of Art History (New york: Abaris, 1993), 204–6. 3 Elena Filippi, “Burger e la lotta fra teoria e pratica dell’arte,” in Fritz Burger, Le ville di Andrea Palladio: Contributo alla storia dell’evoluzione dell’architettura rinascimentale, ed. Elena Filippi and Lionello Puppi, trans. E. Filippi (Turin: Allemandi, 2004), 10–12. 4 No affinity or connection is intended here with Worringer’s dichotomy between abstraction and empathy, in which empathy is seen as entering into reality and enjoying it, abstraction as a way to master fear by banishing reality. For more on the various modes of empathy and the history of this aesthetic concept between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, see Robin Curtis and Gertrud Koch, eds., Einfühlung: zu Geschichte und Gegenwart eines ästhetischen Konzepts (Munich: Fink, 2009); and Frank Büttner, “Das Paradigma ‘Einfühlung’ bei Robert Vischer, Heinrich Wölfflin und Wilhelm Worringer. Die problematische Karriere einer kunsttheoretischen Fragestellung,” in 200 Jahre Kunstgeschichte in München: Positionen, Perspektiven, Polemik: 1780–1980, ed. Christian Drude and Hubertus Kohle (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2003), 82–93. Also still worth recommending is Norbert Schneider, Geschichte der Ästhetik von der Aufklärung bis zur Postmoderne: eine paradigmatische Einführung, 5th ed. (Ditzingen: Reclam, 2011), 134–40. 5 Elena Filippi, Fritz Burger (1877–1916). Arte come critica—critica come arte. Tendenze e ragioni della disciplina storico-artistica agli inizi del XX secolo (Rome: Aracne, 2006), 49–53. 6 For more on the context of the time at the University of Munich and the cultural life of the capital, see Drude and Kohle, 200 Jahre Kunstgeschichte in München. 7 Fritz Burger, Geschichte des florentinischen Grabmals von den ältesten Zeiten bis Michelangelo (Strasbourg: Heitz, 1904), 423 pp. This heavy tome is based on his dissertation, “Die Entstehung und Entwicklung des Trecentograbmals in Mittelitalien” (Heidelberg, 1903). The value of Burger’s research in this area was acknowledged by Panofsky among others: Erwin Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture: Four Lectures on Its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini, ed. H.W. Janson (London: Phaidon, 1992 [1964]). See also Fritz Burger, Francesco Laurana: eine Studie zur italienischen Quattrocentosculptur (Strasbourg: Heitz, 1907), and Fritz Burger, Studien zu Michelangelo (Strasbourg: Heitz, 1907). 8 See Elena Filippi, “La genesi del volume di Fritz Burger sulle ville di Andrea Palladio. Documenti, resoconti di viaggio, ricadute storiografiche,” in Odeo Olimpico. Memorie dell’Accademia Olimpica di Vicenza 26 (2004–06): 184–225; and Elena Filippi, “Fritz Burger auf den Spuren Palladios. im Lichte unveröffentlichter Dokumente,” Scholion 5 (2008): 124–6. Burger’s voluminous correspondence, which is among his papers in Heidelberg, is still unpublished. I have published and/or partially translated excerpts from some of his letters in my scholarly publications.

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9 Fritz Burger, Die Villen des Andrea Palladio: Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Renaissancearchitektur (Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1909); published in Italian as Le ville di Andrea Palladio. Contributo alla storia dell’evoluzione dell’architettura rinascimentale (see note 3). 10 Friedrich von Duhn, letter to Fritz Burger, Burger Papers, Heidelberg. Thode was the owner of the Villa Cargnacco in Gardone overlooking Lake Garda, the same villa that later came into the possession of the Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio after World War I and became famous as the “Vittoriale.” 11 Burger, foreword to Die Villen des Andrea Palladio. 12 Ibid., 2 ff. 13 Ibid., 3 ff. 14 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Sommerreise” [1903], in Prosa II, ed. H. Steiner, Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1951), 72. 15 Burger, Die Villen des Andrea Palladio, 124. 16 Ibid., 123. 17 Ibid., 14. 18 Heinrich Wölfflin, review of Die Villen des Andrea Palladio, by Fritz Burger, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 33 (1910) 266–7. It was only later that Wölfflin voiced reservations about Burger’s “palpable lack of scholarly discipline.” The remark is quoted in Liane Burkhardt, “‘… bei aller Wissenschaftlichkeit lebendig … .’ Zu einzelnen Positionen des Kunsthistorikers Fritz Burger,” Kunstchronik 51, no. 4 (1998): 171. 19 Heinrich Wölfflin, “Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture” [1886], in Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893, trans. and ed. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou (Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994), 176. 20 Burger, Die Villen des Andrea Palladio, 45. 21 Karl Heinz Herke, “Kunstwissenschaft oder Kunstgeschichte? Ein Gedenkblatt für Fritz Burger” [Kösel, 1919], reprinted in Herke, Vom Expressionismus zur Schönheit: Versuche über Entwicklung und Wesen der modernen Kunst (Wiesbaden: Grünewald, 1923), 53–67. 22 Ibid., 56. 23 According to information provided by Clara Burger, her son Erich, and her daughter Lili. 24 See Filippi, Fritz Burger (1877–1916), 170 and note 3. 25 Burger, Die Villen des Andrea Palladio, 14 ff. 26 Quoted in Hermann Buddensieg, Fritz Burger und die freie deutsche Jugendbewegung, typescript, Burger Papers, Heidelberg. 27 Fritz Burger, “Zur Eröffnung der neuen Schackgalerie,” Die Tat 1, no. 11 (1909/10): 673–4.

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28 Fritz Burger, Die Schack-Galerie München, 1st and 2nd eds. (Munich: Delphin, 1912). The third edition was published as Die deutschen Meister in der Schackgalerie München von Genelli bis Böcklin (Munich: Delphin, 1916). 29 August L. Mayer, Obituary (July 1916) in Burger, Die deutschen Meister in der Schackgalerie, 1. Burger died in May 1916, after writing the foreword to the third edition on the battlefield. 30 Burger, Die Schackgalerie München, 1st ed., 11. 31 According to Hermann Glockner, “Robert Vischer was the first to use the term ‘empathy’ [Einfühlung].” See Glockner, Friedrich Theodor Vischer und das neunzehnte Jahrhundert (Berlin: Junker & Dünnhaupt, 1931), 228, and 237. For a general overview and bibliography, see Andrea Pinotti, Empatia. Storia di un’idea da Platone al postumano (Rome: Laterza, 2011). The aesthetics of empathy, which formed part of a psychological theory that regards the viewer’s participation and projection as an important component, indeed as the actual engine of artistic expression, had its heyday in the late nineteenth century. Theodor Lipps, Robert Vischer, Johannes Volkelt, and others devoted a large part of their psychological labors to showing that humanity interprets reality in this manner in a wide variety of areas. 32 Burger, Die Schackgalerie München, 1st ed., 11. 33 Rheinische Hochschulzeitung (June 9, 1913): 73. 34 Eduard Hüttinger, Porträts und Profile: zur Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte (St. Gallen: Erker, 1992), 65. 35 Fritz Burger, Cézanne und Hodler: Einführung in die Probleme der Malerei der Gegenwart (Munich: Delphin, 1913), 7. Translated for this volume by James Gussen. 36 For more on this book, see Elena Filippi’s brief article “Cézanne und Hodler (1913),” in Hauptwerke der Kunstgeschichtsschreibung, ed. Paul von Naredi-Rainer with Johann Konrad Eberlein and Götz Pochat (Stuttgart: Kröner, 2010), 67–70. 37 Burger, Cézanne and Hodler, 9. 38 Fritz Burger, “Über die junge Kunst der Gegenwart und die Wissenschaft,” in Freideutsche Jugend. Zur Jahrhundertfeier auf dem Hohen Meißner 1913 (Jena: Diederichs, 1913), 52. 39 Burger, Cézanne und Hodler, 6 and 16. 40 Ibid., 9. 41 Ibid., 41. 42 Ibid., 162. 43 Fritz Burger, Einführung in die moderne Kunst, Die Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1, Handbuch der Kunstwissenschaft (Berlin: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1917), iv-vii. 44 Kultermann, The History of Art History, 206. 45 Burger, Einführung in die moderne Kunst, vii.

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46 Ibid., 134. 47 For a more detailed discussion of this work and its context, see Filippi, Fritz Burger (1877–1916), 228–48. 48 Quoted in Robert Hedicke, Methodenlehre der Kunstgeschichte: Ein Handbuch für Studierende (Strasbourg: Heitz, 1924), 153 ff. 49 This explains the older colleague’s reservations (see note 18). 50 See Filippi, Fritz Burger (1877–1916), 231–43. 51 For a recent discussion of this topic, see Elena Filippi, “Von der Geschichte der Kunst zu einer Kunstwissenschaft. Die Entwicklung einer Disziplin um die Jahrhundertwende durch den Begriff ‘Einfühlung,’” in Entwicklung. Nachidealistische Perspektiven [4th Gideon Spicker Symposium], ed. Harald Schwaetzer and Thomas Schmaus (Regensburg: Roderer, 2013), 233–47. 52 Fritz Burger, Briefe an Clara Burger 1914–1916, unpublished transcript by Hansdieter Erbsmehl, 1986, Burger Papers, Heidelberg, 183. 53 Ibid., 330. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., 333. 56 See most recently Elena Filippi, “Un ponte crollato fra il Medioevo e i Moderni. Michelangelo nella teoria artistica di Fritz Burger,” in Michelangelo Buonarroti. Leben, Werk und Wirkung—Positionen und Perspektiven der Forschung / Michelangelo Buonarroti. Vita, Opere, Ricezione—Approdi e prospettive della ricerca contemporanea, ed. Grazia Dolores Folliero-Metz and Susanne Gramatzki, Mittelalter und Renaissance in der Romania 6 (Frankfurt a. M. and New york: Lang, 2013), 492. 57 Cited and translated in Christopher P. Heuer, “Dürer’s Folds,” RES 59/60 (Spring/Autumn 2011): 261. [Ed.] 58 Cited and translated in Erwin Panofsky, The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 252–3. [Ed.] 59 See Nicola Curcio, “Fritz Burger e l’empatia,” in Filippi, Fritz Burger (1877–1916), 279 ff. 60 Erich Franz, “Sehen als Einfühlung. Voraussetzungen für Klee, Marc und Winter in der Münchner Kunst und Kunsttheorie um 1900,” in Triebkräfte der Erde, ed. Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy, exh. cat., Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Fritz Winter Stiftung, Munich (Cologne: Wienand, 2005), 91–107. 61 Berliner Tageblatt, evening edition (May 31, 1916) undated photocopy, Burger Papers, Heidelberg. 62 Oskar Lang, “Fritz Burger †,” Die Rheinlande 16, no. 10/11 (1916): 372. 63 A.E. Brinckmann, “Nachwort” to Burger, Einführung in die moderne Kunst, 135. See also Kultermann, The History of Art History, 206; and Matthias MüllerLentrodt, “‘Subjektivieren mit höchster Kraft’—Carl Einstein und Fritz Burger. Über die ‘expressionistische’ Wende in der Kunstgeschichte,” in Die visuelle Wende der Moderne: Carl Einsteins Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Klaus H. Kiefer (Munich: Fink, 2003), 66–77.

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64 See Alfred Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts: Eine Wertung der seelischgeistigen Gestaltungskämpfe unserer Zeit, II (Munich: Hoheneichen, 1933), 302. [The footnote referring to Burger is omitted in the English translation: Alfred Rosenberg, The Myth of the Twentieth Century: An Evaluation of the SpiritualIntellectual Confrontations of Our Age, trans. Vivian Bird (Torrance, CA: Noontide, 1982); if it were included there, it would appear on p. 184.] 65 Although prominent art historians—including James Ackermann and Erich Forssman—have repeatedly acknowledged the originality of Burger’s Palladio monograph, in this area the Anglo-Saxon view of Palladio has prevailed. It should at any rate be noted and emphasized that a number of art and architecture historians of the Veneto region—including Giangiorgio Zorzi, Sergio Bettini, and Lionello Puppi—have been influenced by Burger. 66 Rolf Hauck was the first to present a dissertation on Burger: “Fritz Burger (1877–1916). Kunsthistoriker und Wegbereiter der Moderne am Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts,” PhD diss., Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich, 2005. The full manuscript is viewable online at http://edoc.ub.uni-muenchen.de/ archive/00003176/01/ Hauck_Rolf.pdf. Since E. Filippi published a translation and commentary of Fritz Burger’s Palladio monograph in Italy (2001–04), a certain interest in his ideas has sprung up there in the context of architecture studies as well as among the general public, not least on the occasion of the symposium commemorating the 500th anniversary of Palladio’s birth. See Elena Filippi, “La via teutonica a Palladio, Fritz Burger (1909) e la sua incidenza sugli studi veneti del Novecento,” in Palladio. 1508–2008. Il simposio del cinquecentenario, Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, ed. Franco Barbieri, Donata Battilotti, et al. (Venice: Marsilio, 2008), 44–8. Filippi, Fritz Burger (1877–1916) is the first critical monograph of the scholar, a result of the author’s study of the papers in the possession of the Burger family in Heidelberg. The full text of this monograph is viewable online at http://www.aracneeditrice.it/pdf/9788854806016.pdf.

4 From Cézanne and Hodler: Introduction to the Problems of Contemporary Painting (1913)* Fritz Burger

Foreword There are great upheavals taking place in the realm of modern art and culture, forcing each of us to think seriously about this new will of our time. Since the emergence of so-called Impressionism, art has developed in such a surprisingly different direction than we felt it was legitimate to expect, and our formerly scientific age seems in part to be going over to the enemy camp of mysticism. Here and there, art exhibitions confront an astonished public with the strangest and most baffling creations, and the anxious question of the worth of the past, the will of the present, and the fate of the future is on everyone’s lips. This book attempts to offer some answers to the questions that occupy our time. The obstacles were great, if not surmountable. I hope, then, that the reader will forgive me for offending against the dictates of good writing by leading him only gradually to the actual subject matter of the book by way of the thorny path of a discussion of first principles. The fact is that, without this discussion, an earnest and effective treatment of this difficult topic would not have been possible. Besides, the book’s intention is less to bring enjoyment than to inspire the reader to work; hence it does not wish to be a monograph in the historical sense but an introduction—on a specific pedagogical basis—to the art of the present, which is essentially organized around Cézanne and Hodler, the two poles of artistic life. I try as much as possible to avoid presenting the reader with readymade judgments; instead, I try to prompt him to arrive at such judgments himself by making comparisons. In this way, forced to collaborate, he will get some practice in the viewing of modern artworks and become *

Fritz Burger, Cézanne und Hodler: Einführung in die Probleme der Malerei der Gegenwart, 1st ed. (Munich: Delphin Verlag, 1913), 7–19; 32–6; 63–6; 206–10.

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more familiar with their character. I have been guided in this endeavor by the conviction that we art historians should not always merely ask how historical knowledge can be harnessed for insight into the present, but what insight the present affords us for the assessment of the past. I will therefore be speaking less about the history of art than about art itself. Admittedly, this approach goes against the principles of historical scholarship. For art historians, a work is usually considered scholarly when it takes as its subject an artist or period from which we can take the “historical distance” necessary for an objective scholarly treatment. To this, however, it might be objected that the average art-historical monograph tends most quickly to become outdated precisely where it thinks it is most objective: in its artistic assessment of its artist. Our debt to history is so immense—it is only too understandable that we believe it is the only reliable source of truth. We know of a thousand artistic personalities and wish to impress them upon our memories and organize their styles and the styles of their times— the times according to classes (good and bad) and then the individual artistic achievements within those times—without first having learned to love them for their own sake, as only artists sometimes can and do. We have all been trained more historically than artistically, and it is a mistake to believe that art-historical education and insight necessarily have anything to do with each other. We are usually content to register the artworks and place them in certain categories defined by prominent figures, periods, or styles, and then on the basis of these so-called historical relationships seek to form value judgments which have little or nothing to do with the artworks themselves. Strangely enough, we tend to regard this order of artworks, which in itself is very important, as objective and scientific and mistake an essentially library-oriented or cultural-historical method and approach for an artistic one. We demand “historical justice” and forget that in this arena we judges have no laws by which to judge. I cannot stress enough this self-deception of art history, which is now increasingly disappearing. “The historian who has to evaluate a style,” Heinrich Wölfflin wrote 25 years ago, “has no organon for his definition of character but is directed only by an instinctive presentiment.”1 If the science of art [Kunstwissenschaft] is really to be what it should be, there can be no temporal limits to the material it treats. It must have the courage to do its work even where it is deprived of the voluminous toolkit of historical research, without fear of making mistakes. Even comparisons that seek to highlight the so-called evolution of art within individual periods do not necessarily bring us closer to what we call art, because we construct a development toward an ideal style according to which we evaluate, without grasping the reality of the artworks, which is necessarily negated by every comparison. Of course, judging by means of comparisons does not mean judging the artworks being compared, but rather illustrating the idea that forms the basis of the comparison. If I nevertheless do so much comparing in

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this book, I do so not for the sake of historical, biological connections but on the contrary without any regard for them whatsoever. And yet one must not accuse me of historical injustice. A great artistic achievement can never “gain” or “suffer” by being compared—unless one has ceased to believe altogether in the possibility of an objective cognition of the artwork. The only thing that can be changed is the subjective impression, and even this is only the case for those who are incapable of grasping the sensuous reality of the artwork. Hence the only thing that such comparisons put in danger is artistic enjoyment, not scientific judgment. Any author who has to deal with a readership whose level of education is uneven will not be able to dispense with such comparisons as illustrations and aids for the understanding. Naturally, it is not my intention to do “historical” justice to the material being compared. My intention in focusing on Hodler and Cézanne is only to explain what art means for them and their circle; I do not claim that they are the be-all and end-all of art itself. The members of the younger generation of artists commit the forgivable sin of insisting that they are the representatives of the one true and authentic art. I will content myself here with pointing out that their creative approach is art as well, but I will not pretend that it will not one day be their turn to depart. For now, however, what is at issue is life and not death, and it is a vigorous, wonderfully rich life that confronts us, which in its diversity enables us to glean new aspects, new charms and insights, from the art of the past as well. There is no doubt that the father of this movement is the older school of modern Impressionism, whose exponents not infrequently turn away from it in disgust. But it is the way of the world that the young do not always walk in the paths their fathers held sacred. Hence the older generation should not hamper the Sturm und Drang period of the young by placing the same obstacles before it that were once strewn in its own path. Those obstacles will impede their progress but will only increase their energy. There are indications that art is able to express itself no less powerfully and successfully today than 50 years ago, when the Impressionists began to lead us onto uncharted artistic terrain. Perhaps the nineteenth century was merely a prelude for what the twentieth has in store. Thus, everyone must ask himself whether his convictions will permit him to ignore the art of the present, or whether on the contrary its achievements can be incorporated into new artistic and historical insights. In this book, I hope to go some of the way toward answering these questions.

Problems of modern Painting Art is accessible to only a very small number of people.2—Cézanne Even what is most unnatural is nature.3—Goethe

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All human creation is a dialogue or interaction with nature. The concept of nature is both narrow and broad. The vast majority of people mean by nature what the eye thinks it sees, and this belief in the eye’s infallibility is as unshakable as a religious dogma. But this dogmatic belief in the veracity of all seeing is often strongest precisely where cognition, guided by the desire for absolute truth and with pride in its own great value, develops that certainty and conviction which make us unable to live in any other world but the one we ourselves have constructed. The Homunculus’s lines in Faust II should be cited more often: I’m tracking down a pair Of sages whom I want to question next; I listened: Nature! Nature! Went the text. These I should like to fasten on as teachers; They’re bound to know the way of earthly creatures; I think I see a chance at last to learn Which is the wisest way for me to turn.4

Every age thinks it knows what “nature” looks like. And on the basis of this “knowledge” it forms its judgments. yet the next generation has always been the rascal that laughed the proud present off its pedestal. This is something the nineteenth century knows a thing or two about. This “knowledge” of nature, however, is certainly not refined by reading art history books. Reading books does not impart the capacity for cognition, for the cognition of art is not just a question of principles; it is also a question of our capacity for cognition. One can converse about the former; the latter, however, cannot be conveyed or acquired through books alone, for in art one must be able to think with the artist in order to comprehend artist and art, that is, in order to grasp what they mean by nature and what they say about it with the creative act. This ability to think with the artist, that is, to understand with one’s eyes, is the necessary precondition for all artistic experience and requires knowledge of the basic principles of creativity as well as the ability to create in one’s own right, for great artists are always philosophers as well, who have their own cognition of the world. “Art,” according to Kant, “is at once the only true and eternal organ and document of philosophy.”5 The subject of their philosophy is nature. By visible nature, artists and non-artists usually mean the infinite collection of objects that underlies their sensory representational repertoire. However, they forget that precisely because it is something “cognized,” the object of their cognition has been formed; that all cognition is also a creative act; and that what we call mood and emotion are only a shift of focus within our sensory representational repertoire. The layman usually thinks of the object, while the artist thinks of its form. What is overlooked, however, is that the “nature” of the object is given to us through its formation, that is, through an act of cognition in which both its form and its essence are grounded. Through

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this creative act, object and artist, “imagination and reality” become one. We must therefore seek to understand not the artist in the object but his thinking through its formation. To carry patriotic, sentimental enthusiasms into the realm of art is not only foolish but also contrary to the nature of aesthetic experience.6 One is not going to come close to Dürer’s artistic achievements so long as one seeks only what is “German” about them. Just as one would never base a scholarly critical discussion of the achievements of Malbranche [sic] or Boutroux on what is “French” about them, so one should never do this when making artistic observations where objective insights are at stake. It is apparently impossible to eradicate the Romantic delusion that art is the metaphysical product of a mood, of intuitions expressed in a semi-dreamlike state. It should instead be viewed as the result of extremely earnest labor, which in turn takes work to appreciate, not just moods and feelings. We must recognize that what we today call the “historically” or nationally conditioned element of the artwork is what is transitory about it, while what is lasting lies entirely within the realm of art itself. In that realm, all artists are brothers. Who looks for what is English in Hamlet, German in Faust, or Dutch in Rembrandt in order to grasp their meaning? Seeking to preserve one’s own national or personal distinctiveness in the face of humanity’s progress means depriving oneself of one’s freedom. Anyone who has to go in search of his personality is destined to lose it, for in the end, the value of all personal creative activity lies in the impersonal product of one’s labor. This is why Hegel writes that “the true freedom of the individual is enlargement, highest community the highest freedom.”7 In the intellectual arena, it goes without saying that all personal thought is developed and refined through international contact with the best of the present and past. In the realm of art, this is generally regarded as heresy. Inherent in every artwork is a twofold cognition; every patch of color has two different meanings. It is part of what we call the image (one speaks of the Bildbedeutung, or the artwork qua image), and it is also the appearance of an identifiable object. The image as image comprises the sensory cognition; it is what is real in the artwork, the artwork’s reality, which chiefly the person with practical artistic training is able to cognize. The object, by contrast, which the non-artist regards as the absolute dimension of the artwork, is its relative aspect. Thus, one popularly refers to the “conception” of the object, by which one means its content as an object of creative formation (of the sensory cognition). Like the artist, the viewer knows only a range of such possible conceptions of the object defined by cultural conventions; the only intellectual, sensory, or ethical attributes he considers to be valid are those which he associates, as valuable and essential, with his representation of the object. There is no more a limit to this interpretation of the representational element in artworks than there is to the types of sensory impressions. The eternal “die and become” is also valid for art, because nature can only

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appear to us in our perception as something known and seen by us. The fact that we regard our perception as the truth is an unforgivable error, which all the art writing in the world has not yet been able to eradicate. Before we call for truth in art, we should be clear what truth means for art. The viewer tends to regard it as a matter of course that the represented object remains within the bounds of the interpretive possibilities he is familiar with and of the possible appearances he sanctions, forgetting that this visual perceptual and representational repertoire is not a purely personal acquisition but predominantly inherited from contemporary artists. The only people who have a genuinely “personal” view of nature are those who have either never seen art or are themselves artistically creative. The art lover has effectively acquired, through the art of his time, a collection of specific visual representations of constellations of appearances. These are what make up his dubious qualifications as a judge in this area. The object “jug” must always remain a jug within the artwork according to the principles of his perception. Under certain conditions, it may seem plausible to him that, as a patch of color within the organism of the image, this jug should acquire a new meaning that has nothing to do with the familiar properties of a jug. We are willing to abandon our own positions enough to concede that we need not receive a literal impression of the object, but we still insist that whatever happens we must still be able to grasp and identify the object as a jug. At least in this respect, Rembrandt was our teacher, since he taught us not to confuse the clarity of the object with artistic clarity, for the clarity of the object is usually an impediment to that of the image, that is, to the clarity of the visual constellations, or conversely: the clarity of the object is not a sign of artistic clarity, that is, of the clarity of the visual constellation. Nevertheless, the identifiability of the object remains the fundamental requirement of the customary artistic judgment, although the ultimate consequence of the metamorphosis of the representational aspect that is conceded only conditionally here would be the artist’s unconditional freedom vis-à-vis the conceptual interpretation of that aspect. Admittedly, this complete emancipation from representation would amount to a revolution in our artistic view, because it is without historical parallel. It is not so far-fetched, however, to think that with the altered meaning of the object in the visual organism of the image, its customary interpretation might be altered as well. It would be like the taking of a last time-honored bastion in the realm of art, the ultimate consequence of the slogan l’art pour l’art. The object as such would only be regarded as the artist’s personal creation, as his visible will. The image would consist of nothing but relationships among the boundaries of patches of color. It would only be possible to comprehend the visual meaning of the image and the interpretation of the object through the artwork itself. This would represent the complete fulfillment of what Fiedler says about nature in the artwork: “The artist captures an aspect of the

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world that can only be captured by his means and arrives at a consciousness of reality that can never be reached by thought.”8 With this, art has a new realm open before it, a new avenue for what has for centuries occupied art and science alike: the immanence and identity of “content” and “form.” The artwork would not just be the recreation of nature, but would, as it were, produce creatures of its own. In fact, however, this is not something new; it is age-old. As it approaches a new summit, modern art looks down upon its modest beginnings and discovers in their crystalline clarity the truth it had for so long forgotten for the sake of the fetish it called beauty. Unlike the epigones of the Renaissance, we do not mourn for distant, unattainable beauty, but seek the bitter spirit of truth and its icy breath, which the dreamers flee and the thinkers seek (Figure 4.1).9 The problem of artistic style resides exclusively in the sensory unification of the represented objects. In life, a tree and a person are two entirely separate entities; in art they become related because through the analogy between their appearances they make visible the same creative will. The establishment of sensory relationships among multiple objects for the purpose of creating an image occasions an expansion or contraction of our familiar notion of the object10 in terms of its content as well as its scale, and hence a metamorphosis that the non-artist usually describes as arbitrary or perverse, without understanding its genesis or its nature. Because with respect to their appearance, from the layman’s naïve-realistic perspective, the tree and the person undergo the same set of “changes”11 — they become visible manifestations of the cognizing will of the creator; they become the same. Artworks are theories about the world. It depends on the idea whether the latter is seen in microcosm or macrocosm. In this case, however, idea does not mean ideal. In their cognition, clear-eyed seers aspire to the truth as something absolute. But that does not mean that in its result this ideal aspiration grasps an “ideal.” If all human thought is a judgment about nature, then art too is a judgment about nature. Only this cognition given in the artwork is real—not “nature.” Generally speaking, the fundamental flaw of all art criticism is that the creative act itself is seen as a primarily manual process, that the realization of the representation is regarded as dependent on “technique.” An image may be childlike in its simplicity and yet be more unified than an artwork which impresses us with the abundance of its representational techniques or in its details, with its wealth of perceptions. Ultimately, technique plays the same role in artistic life as the technique of writing and speaking does in writing and speaking. Hans von Marées’s life’s work is not diminished in its absolute quality by the technical shortcomings of his works, and for all his technical skill Munkacsy never rose above the level of mediocrity. All the speaking or writing technique in the world is useless if one has not developed the capacity for thought.

4.1 Ferdinand Hodler, Bewunderung / Admiration (c. 1903), oil on canvas, 133 × 71.5 cm. Kunstmuseum Bern

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It is often the artists themselves who place the emphasis on the “artistic” in their judgments in order to be able to rely on external proficiency. To be admired, one does not so much demand the demonstration of competent craftsmanship as that of technical prowess. One speaks of “good solid artwork” even when there is nothing particularly solid about how a picture has been painted. We are willing to tolerate the surprising or unfamiliar only when it is clear to us that the artwork cost a great deal of effort. That even the artist can be a philistine who values hard work instead of cognition is regrettable. This is to say nothing against hard work. It is just that “cognition” and “creation” cannot be separated, but rather cognition is creation (= sensuous constellation). There is no doubt that the result of the creative process can take on a different content for us depending on our mood and our interest. Nor does the creation contain all the creator’s cognition about the sensory material; but it does contain a cognition about a constellation of that material based on the relations among the appearances as well as the objects. Thus, the artwork presents us with a theory about imagined relationships of sensory material, whether the latter is conceived as real or as merely a poetic or fantastic appearance, that is, regardless of the artist’s subjective intention. This is in no way to disparage either truth in the artwork or the appeal of what we call fantasy or “natural truth.” By “natural truth,” however, we generally mean the plausibility of the sensory appearances rather than the similarities within the multiplicity of things through which we comprehend them as “nature,” that is, as a unity. Unity in diversity means grasping what opposing entities have in common. However, one should not look for the typical within the “singular,” but rather see the “singular” itself as a manifestation of the typical. The “typical” is not what is essential within the appearance, which then constitutes its beauty, but the essence of everything “singular.” The nature and extent of this “essence” are conditioned by the complex of representations that we wish to combine into a creative form in an artwork or scientific treatise. In the desire for unification, there also lies the notion of unity in diversity as the goal of cognition in the creative act. The singular is necessarily immanent in the typical; both are eternal, for the variation of appearance, which gives rise to the singular, can only be grasped as variation through the perception of an underlying idea. Contingency, Hegel teaches, contains necessity and conformity to law as its essence. To comprehend this underlying idea within the singular without abandoning the latter, to make visible the similarity of the different, the relationships of the bounded, is ultimately the task of art as well as science, a seemingly simple goal and yet so lofty and so difficult. What we call a period style is only one of the many possible forms in which this problem has been solved. Here too, what is primarily at issue is an ordering of our representations of nature. This unity through which we organize sensuous representations in the artwork is the necessary condition

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of all our cognition. “The synthetic unity of consciousness is therefore an objective condition of all cognition, not merely something I myself need in order to cognize an object but rather something under which every intuition must stand in order to become an object for me, since in any other way, and without this synthesis, the manifold would not be united in one consciousness.”12 Moreover, what we call the general is only another singularity organized by our imagination. According to Hegel, the general is what on the one hand negates itself to produce specificity and particularity but then in turn negates this particularity. However, since art does this using other means than language, it represents nature, that is, it attempts to grasp the unity of everything living. This comprehension is thus not mere conceptual understanding. Sensory unity is ultimately the idea of the artwork. We usually seek to grasp the ethical content in the relationships among the objects depicted by the artwork, but in doing so we are only evaluating the sensory material. The “material,” however—the representational aspect of the artwork (action, figures, choice of colors and forms)—only comprises the material dimension of the world view; only in the constellation of the appearances is it possible to grasp the basis of the artist’s judgment or, in philosophical terms, its form. In the former, art is generally accessible as long as the objects and their artistic relationships are interpreted in a manner consistent with the conventions of the general public; it will therefore always contain the latter’s world view, but only in this sense. It lies in the nature of the phenomenon that new valuations in the material arena so easily meet with resistance and ridicule precisely because the vast majority of people, in keeping with the naïve realism of their view, see their world view (which they consider to be natural and true) in the interpretation of the appearance of the represented objects, and fail to realize that everything conventional is relative. Through these conventional sensory representations, the non-artist therefore cognizes only his familiar realm of content and color; he only receives a general sensory impression, without being able to account for the relationships among the individual appearances. Negative criticisms usually address only the material aspect of the artistic judgment, not the latter itself—the garment, not the spirit. Art as a manifestation and cognition of what is living can only be a matter of taste for those for whom “life” is merely enjoyment, a view that is still prevalent today as a legacy of earlier times. ***

These are also the views that have given contemporary art its characteristic stamp. Turned into the symbol of a psychological expression, color has become an individual that has its own language and speaks of the wonders of its nature. Of course, earlier eras sought to do this and did this as well. But the art of those eras usually came to what we call art from religious narratives. The symbolism of color was limited by the content of those narratives.

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Modern art came to the animation of color from the creative principles of Impressionism, which had a purely optical basis. It was not bound by any considerations related to content or illustration. Art was free, and the question is now whether, with these tendencies, it has the strength to remain so, for the animation and individualization of color necessarily leads to an emphasis on its boundary. This suggested the idea—and posed the danger—of using the representational dimension of the artwork, the animated and acting human figure (hence non-artistic means) to create the psyche within the image, like many artists of the Renaissance, or of losing oneself in allegories. In fact, modern art has not steered entirely clear of this pitfall. I will come back to this subject later. But all the young artists who have followed this will of the age may be seen as grouped around two figures: Hodler and Cézanne! Not that they may all be regarded as students or imitators of one of these two masters. But the changes that have taken place in the art of the last 15 years—the turn toward two seemingly quite different but not dissimilar movements and the world views manifest in them—find their most characteristic expression in the art of Hodler and Cézanne. Hodler and Cézanne are rarely spoken of together, and yet despite the outward differences between them, they are closely related. The kinship of their essence can be seen in the fact that in Germany, contemporary art is following in the paths of these two giants as after the apostles of a new doctrine, and seeking, partly consciously, partly unconsciously, to appropriate what are ultimately related creative principles. In the case of the German Hodler, the passionate longing for the sensuous embodiment of the psychological is more powerfully manifest but also more one-sided than in the case of the more elegant Frenchman, for whom the logic of the image, the formative act, is always more important than the form. For both of them, however, every individual in nature is only a creature of that suprapersonal creative will that expresses itself everywhere in the distinctiveness of its appearances and the relationships among them. It is just that Cézanne comes to what is called psyche more from the sensuous, whereas Hodler arrives at the unifying phenomenal motif of the image from the expressive movement of the human figure and its psychological determination. In Hodler’s art, therefore, the human figure is the central focus and the landscape is less important. But Hodler’s figures are not just moving or acting human beings but the personified will and soul of the landscape, and the latter not merely a spatial entity but nature as a creative force that determines everything singular—outside, in the rigorous lineaments of space, and inside, in the agitated souls of the figures. It is one will that governs both. Hodler seeks to make this visible through the intimate sensory connection between figure and space. It might be objected that the Renaissance also sought to do and did this, so that it cannot constitute a fundamental difference between the art of that era and contemporary art. But the facial expressions and action of the figures of the

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Renaissance illustrated the will and fate of the characters in a human narrative. For Hodler, however, even the action of the individuals is only an expression of that suprapersonal will that links person and space. Hence for Hodler, every action becomes an affect, in which, however, the passive element predominates over the active. The total unity of content and form in his images can be seen in the fact that the spatial is not a decorative afterthought, a separate entity with which man is in dialogue and whose life and activity concern him, oppressing or delighting him. “Nature” is not outside him in a spatial sense; he does not move within it—rather, it lives in him. It is a spiritual force; he only hears its voice, obeys its will, like the medieval saints who carry the deity in their breast and hearken to its commandments. And this will is also obeyed by the space outside. Through the similarity between the mutually determining boundaries of the patches of color, Hodler obtains the unity of the image. For him, then, the figurative as a patch of color is—a motif, which is repeated throughout the image. Through this sensuous kinship of the heterogeneous details, Hodler seeks to make visible precisely this supra-individual will of nature, the natura naturans compared to which every individual phenomenon is natura naturata. As for Spinoza, figure and space are merely modes of a single essence. In general, it is Spinozian and to some extent Hegelian ideas that we encounter here in art in sensory form. As for Spinoza, everything finite is conditioned by other finite things, but in everything the invisible will of the creator is the sole foundation of its essence: “Every finite thing is a mode of the divine essence, e.g. man exists in like measure in both attributes, as mind and as body, and each of his particular functions belongs also in like measure to both attributes, as idea and as motion.”13 For Hodler, the idea, the facial expression, and the appearance of the figure are one and the same. The transcendent is will become form. In generating the boundary, this will is also the boundless, the eternal itself. Thus, Hodler can neither depict a freely acting personality or a human story in his paintings; nor can he, like the Renaissance, concern himself with the problem of the aesthetically pleasing construction of the human figure or rest content with a decorative combination of figure and space; for him, the story lies just as much in the appearance of the figure as in its actions. Only a superficial rationalism can take exception to the representations that are inconsistent with traditional sensory or anatomical notions, for here the transcendent idea of the image, which manifests itself in the same way in appearance and expressive movement, seeks to turn everything singular into a determined creature whose essence lies in its formation, not in its form (as an object). Here the idea is precisely not an ideal, but the sensuous formation of an idea that is suprasensuous vis-à-vis the object. Hence Hodler can neither allow himself to be bound by what is dynamically possible in the creative act nor can he adhere to anatomically correctness. Otherwise, he would only have been able to make this supra-individual life visible through the autonomous action and facial expression of the figure, not through its appearance itself

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4.2 Paul Cézanne, Bathers (Five Men) (1892–94), oil on canvas, 27 × 41 cm. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

in all of its parts. The instances of “bad drawing” are only an obstacle to the comprehension of Hodler’s works for those who in nature seek the optical “facts” familiar to them. For Hodler, the outward form is not a physical substance but a force that operates everywhere in the same way. This force, however, is neither something mechanical nor something purely transcendent, spiritual, but substance in Spinoza’s sense of the term. The soul of all being resides in the boundary of every figure. Its life is characterized through the boundary and its eternal variability, its endless expansion and contraction. … … What Hodler prefers to demonstrate through the appearance of the human figure, Cézanne primarily seeks to comprehend in the landscape, which for him is the space of the cosmos (Figure 4.2). Where Hodler cast space as colorful “form,” Cézanne casts it more as formative colored light. He still has his roots in Impressionism. Hence for Cézanne this representation of the personal does not remain attached to the human being. For Simmel, the mysticism of the worldly doctrine of metempsychosis and Christianity’s sublime doctrine of man’s eternal life after death appear as a doctrine of immortality encompassing the universe, expressed in the metamorphosis of sensory appearance. Cézanne too grasps the mystery and essence of the world in the metamorphosis of sensory appearance. For Cézanne, as for Hodler, even man is only a metamorphosis of

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this kind. Just as Impressionism had earlier grasped the world as a boundless appearance of the movement of light and had grasped that movement as the state of the world, microcosmically, so here the state of the world is grasped macrocosmically in the eternal metamorphoses of the boundaries of the colorful physical world. This perpetual transformation is the latter’s state. Simmel: “With respect to religion immortality tends to have another sense. Here it mostly is regarded as a possession—the soul wants bliss or the vision of God or perhaps only a further existence; or, in a starker ethical sublimation, it wants a quality with respect to itself: it wants to be saved, or justified, or purified. But all of that does not matter in connection with the present sense of immortality, as that situation in which the soul experiences nothing more; in which its sense thus no longer attaches to a content existing, in some sense or other, outside itself.”14 Hodler sought to represent the soul of nature and in nature’s will the law. This is why even the form of the human figure is determined from within and communicates itself from there to the entire space, which is thus a sensory manifestation of this suprapersonal will, whose central point is the soul of man in its tragic determination. Cézanne dispenses with this tragic content, Hodler’s slightly sentimental and dramatic view of life, the remnant of Renaissance ideas in his art. Here man appears without any particular psychological content and completely recedes not just as acting but also as thinking and feeling individual—vis-à-vis the will of the world. In keeping with his more anthropocentric conception of nature’s will, Hodler tends to heighten it, making it epic, great, heroic. For Cézanne, the human figure is not the focus of interest in this way. It is no more perfect a creature than the animal or inorganic matter. Everything is a creature of the law of existence, which gives it life by endowing it with form. Man himself, like everything else, is a mystery of the cosmic process, compared to which, willless and insensate, he appears as an imperfect being in the sense of antiquity; no sharp boundary, but shifting, changing, ungainly curvatures of the physical in the rigorous sensory unity of colored light. In his art, Cézanne comes very close to the Christian doctrine of the vanity and imperfection of all being visà-vis the divine power. But it would be a mistake to suggest that in his works, “imperfection” at the level of objects and representations is confronted with the patterned sensory constellation, that is, with the unity of appearance; or that what expresses itself in that “imperfection” is exclusively the will of a power that stands above the representational. Rather, all one can say is that the appearance of the figure, determined by the (colorful) creative motif of the whole, is a result of that creative motif. The appearance of the figurative does not determine the formal continuity, as it still does for Hodler in the manner of the Renaissance; it is subordinated to that continuity for the sake of the idiosyncrasy, as an expression of its essence. Thus, Cézanne can never depict mere nudes or mere poses, because what interests him is the formation of this suprapersonal, superhuman element … in man as well as in “nature.” …

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***

The science of art [Kunstwissenschaft] would take the place of art history, and art history would be forced into the background, just as, for example, the history of chemistry is eclipsed by practical chemistry or the science of chemistry. An art scholar would have to be an artist as well, and the study of art would require practical artistic activity, something that is already beginning to be demanded. No longer a form of entertainment or general education, Kunstwissenschaft would assume an entirely different role at universities than it has today; as a scientific discipline centered on art, it would take its place as an equal alongside philosophy and act in its own right, by other means and as called for by the circumstances. Today, all education has a voluntaristic orientation and seems intent upon cultivating and developing the student’s abilities to the greatest possible extent, rather than on transmitting knowledge and facts. We hear about “Arbeitsuniversitäten” [working universities] in contrast to the “Vorlesungsuniversitäten” [lecture-oriented universities] where the individual, as a passive listener, has relatively little opportunity to become active. Now a new force is rising up out of the realm of art itself, the science of art, which encompasses all of the human spirit’s products, every science. The past investigated the world. The present knows that the world can only be comprehended in the forms of our own nature. The science of art investigates the nature of this comprehension in the various different forms of human cognition. In this way, a scientific treatise and the artistic organization of a shape become one and the same: a creation of our ordering cognition. A new and uncharted realm is opening up before us, that of human cognitions. In Kunstwissenschaft, man does not view the world as a creation but as the world of his own and his fellows’ creatures. Cézanne and Hodler, like the younger generation of artists, embrace these same fundamental views. The boundaries between “art” and science seem to be blurring: art forms the unified world-image of its cognition in a sensory medium, like science; and science, as an expression of man’s cognition, is a product of his ordering representation—like art. However, this will no more entail abolishing the art academies than it will mean eliminating art history. On the contrary, great artists will become the young’s appointed teachers in a whole new way, and in the connection or noble collaboration of an albeit differently organized academy and university we see a new future rise up before us. Considered from the perspective of pure creation, all the art of the past is once again an unexplored realm, full of an infinite profusion of wonders and mysteries, which would only gain, not lose, in greatness and worth. Of course, art will then play a very different role in life than it does in our current age and culture, and the question arises whether, among its tasks in the service of humanity, it would also come into its own as art. The early nineteenth century brought us an international organization of humanity’s intellectual forces; this was then followed in

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the mid-nineteenth century by the organization of practical labor. Are we presently witnessing the international organization of artistic forces and achievements through their integration in the service of human culture, so that painting will now be practiced not for the sake of painting but for that of cognition, just as today we make music in order to understand Bach and Beethoven? This would have nothing to do with aesthetics in the traditional sense or with “intellectualism.” It would mean systematic, practical work whose reward is cognition and experience. One would no longer assimilate facts but rather, by creating, progress toward ever higher forms of cognition; one would no longer seek to comprehend the artist within the artwork but his soul in the sensory medium, entirely for one’s own sake, and through what one has comprehended transform comprehension into experience, in order, by creating, to become one with the nature of the creation. Of course, there is no going back to primordial nature, and every socialist manifesto of this kind is based on a misunderstanding, for our culture too is a product of nature, and that “free” nature has its cruel, terrible features as well. Werther’s Sorrows will always be timely: the loving essence of nature always provokes a powerful longing, and its monstrous destructiveness sometimes fills us with astonishment and sometimes with horror, and yet the essence we feel in the alien essence is our own. What drives us onward, forever hating, forever loving, is that eros in us that, in art, as if in a mirror, constantly shows us the nature of our essence and reawakens in us that irrepressible longing for life’s original state and unity. Our culture is thus the source of both good and evil, our drama the irreconcilable antagonism of concept and life. Where this antagonism becomes most intense, we attempt to bring about reconciliation in art, for art is “form” like the concept, and yet it contains the abundance of purest life. The further removed we become from that so-called primitive state of nature, the more we learn to love it, and what appears to the savage as a trivial possession placed at his side by God’s hand becomes a high ideal for us. However, as we use what we do not possess, we learn to recognize that possession in all its greatness, we strangers in the land of childhood. Also, scientific progress may have now become fate for our culture. For precisely this reason, our culture possesses a wealth of new ideas for tragic and dramatic tensions. The new art refuses to countenance any opposition between this world and the next, between man and “nature,” or man and “animal,” or any opposition between the sexes. Life means being disparate, being separated even within the community of similar beings by the difference between the sexes. As Ziegler says, however, the difference between the sexes reveals the separation of individuals in all its painful reality. This is why, in Tristan und Isolde, Richard Wagner depicts the consubstantiality that love demands as coming about with the self’s destruction in death. In the abolition of the individual’s boundaries lies the archetypal tragic phenomenon of all life, in which pain and love become one. Modern art is, as it were, sexless.

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The attempt to abolish the differences between the sexes is a hallmark of the mystical longing for the realization of the unity or oneness of the world. In late Greek antiquity, that yearning found expression in the cult of hermaphrodite beings, and we encounter similar ideas in Michelangelo’s hermaphroditic figurative ideal (many of Michelangelo’s male figures possess female traits, and vice versa). The boundaries between the sexes are blurred in order to make way for an ideal humanity beyond all sexuality, an ideal that comprises the absolute dimension of human nature and in it, eternity. In the “eroico furore,” or “heroic frenzy,” Michelangelo sees the power of the law in us that drives us on toward the cognition and experience of the unity and unspoiled quality of nature. He does not view it, however, as the essence of life, but as the means toward experience, the means in which the world’s disharmony, the boundaries between the sexes, between this world and the next, between the senses and the intellect, disappear of their own accord. As a son of the Renaissance, Michelangelo collapsed beneath the weight of this idea. The modern age is experiencing similar shocks and convulsions as it attempts to forge a path beyond the ideas of the Renaissance toward the world view of the Middle Ages. But it banishes sensory pleasure from art not for the sake of religious or ethical ideals but for that of all-encompassing cognition. Directed onto this path by the natural sciences, it seeks neither the type of the genus nor that of the deity but the absolute, the all-uniting primordial essence in things from which animals are not further removed than man, toward which both man and animals strive as toward an invisible vital pole. Phosphorescent colors, luminous wonders, the eye of eternity, not the eye of the figure! (Nolde, Jawlensky, Marc) (Figure 4.3). In the animal’s gaze, in the thought of the child, in the action of the savage, the modern age sees a fragment of that wondrous lost primordial essence to which the latter are nearer than noble humanity. We feel the decline of our forces through culture and marvel at the miracle of elemental animal force that knows no duality or division in its rugged greatness and possesses that paradisaical unity that both soul and senses seek. We and everything! Man and animal— The tree, the flower that reaches for the light, frozen Mountains, storm-tossed seas, This whole earthly round and sun and moon And the circle dance of all the stars in the firmament— We are all only one love!

writes Hans von Gumpenberg. Finitude a dream! What drives modern art and science onward is precisely that love of the cosmos, of the whole, that is probably more powerful today than ever before. But the age-old opposition still exists for the modern era: some seek the miracle of eternity purely in creative formation, like Cézanne, Hodler, and

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4.3 Franz Marc, Die grossen blauen Pferde / The Large Blue Horses (1911), oil on canvas, 105 × 181 cm. Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Picasso, the vast majority of their followers, however, in created form. Art is beginning to illustrate using a sensuous symbolism. It may be that here art’s limits are being transgressed; this is a characteristic modern feature of every branch of human knowledge, a symptom of our era’s powerful need for unity. Who today will set himself up as judge and say where the boundary is that must be respected in this realm of mysticism, given that negating boundaries is precisely what mysticism does? And ultimately, death is destiny. But the memento mori has always been a memento vivere as well; and even if this were not the case, we would still be able to take consolation in F. Schlegel’s prophetic statement: you will live like few others, and you will die of eternity.15

Translated by James Gussen

notes 1 Heinrich Wölfflin, “Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture” [1886], in Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893, ed. and trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou (Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994), 184. [Transl.]

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2 Paul Cézanne, letter to Émile Bernard of May 12, 1904, in Conversations with Cézanne, ed. Michael Doran, trans. Julie Lawrence Cochran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 30. [Transl.] 3 “Nature [A Fragment by Georg Christoph Tobler],” in Goethe, Scientific Studies, ed. and trans. Douglas Miller (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 3. [Transl.] 4 Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, ed. Cyrus Hamlin, trans. Walter Arndt (New york: Norton, 2001), 222. [Transl.] 5 This quote is actually from Schelling: F.W.J. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, trans. Peter Heath (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1978), 231. [Transl.] 6 A typical example is a book by Theod. Alt that is already discredited by its title: Die Herabwertung der deutschen Kunst durch den französischen lmpressionismus [The Debasing of German Art by French Impressionism]. In any event, this book is already outdated, since German and French art have both moved on beyond “French Impressionism” to other things. 7 G.W.F. Hegel, The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, trans. H.S. Harris and Walter Cert (Albany: State University of New york Press, 1977), 145; translation modified. [Transl.] 8 Conrad Fiedler, Der Ursprung der künsterlischen Thätigkeit (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1887), 111. [Ed.] 9 The painting by Hodler illustrated here is represented as Figure 1 in the original text. Burger refers to it as Truth, but it is known as Admiration [Bewunderung]. [Ed.] 10 From the perspective of Kunstwissenschaft, one would have to speak of “an expansion or contraction compared to the observer’s visual representation.” 11 From a scientific perspective, one cannot speak of “changing” the object but only of its sensory organization. 12 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 249. [Transl.] 13 Wilhelm Windelband, A History of Philosophy, trans. James H. Tufts (New york: Macmillan, 1923 [1893]), 420. [Transl.] 14 Georg Simmel, The View of Life: Four Metaphysical Essays, trans. John A.y. Andrews and Donald N. Levine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 74. [Transl.] 15 This quote actually seems to come from a letter to Schlegel by Novalis: Novalis, letter to Friedrich Schlegel of August 1973, in Novalis, Schriften, vol. 4, ed. Richard Samuel with Hans-Joachim Mähl and Gerhard Schulz (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1975), 124. [Transl.]

PART III

Ernst Heidrich

5 ernst heidrich as an “expressionist” art historian? A Look at Vlaemische Malerei and other Volumes Written for the Jena arts Publisher eugen diederichs Eveliina Juntunen

Ernst Heidrich was one of the leading art historians in the German-language sphere at the start of the twentieth century.1 His early death leaves room for speculation even today as to what his subsequent path as an academic might have looked like, given that he played a key role in establishing art history as an independent discipline with a firmly humanistic approach. Like so many men of his generation, however, he was killed in 1914 in the First World War. That his view of German art around 1500 was informed by the intellectual attitudes of those born between 1880 and 1890 is something that filters into both the content and the language of his writings. yet Heidrich belongs among the “forgotten” art historians of the early twentieth century, something that may be linked to the fact that the ‘‘re-experiencing” he advocated was for a long time considered unscientific. Heidrich’s method of looking at art nonetheless points ahead to elements of modern-day reflections on methodology, for example those by Georges Didi-Huberman, which is why his “rediscovery” may supply an important component in the current debate on art-historical methods. Although Heidrich was only 34 when he died, he left behind a sizeable number of publications that we do not have room to explore here.2 Suggesting themselves as a promising source of insights into the intellectual attitudes characterizing his generation, however, are the volumes that Heidrich contributed to the series Die Kunst in Bildern [Art in Pictures] for the Jena publisher Eugen Diederichs. These books had established the young academic’s name in art-historical circles at an early date, and it is these that receive the most attention in the obituaries paying tribute to his achievements in the field.3 Concentrating upon the volumes published in Jena also brings to light another aspect of Heidrich’s writings, one directly bound up with

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the programmatic aim that Diederichs associated with the series Die Kunst in Bildern, and indeed with his publishing program as a whole. We shall be taking a brief look at this latter and at Diederichs’s own person and values with the aim of understanding more clearly both the editorial concept behind the series and the readership for which it was intended. In this way it will become apparent how very much Heidrich’s texts take up the thinking and ideas of his time. The following study will therefore fall into three different parts. We shall start with a brief outline of Heidrich’s academic studies and his proximity to the philosopher and theoretician of science Wilhelm Dilthey, who was teaching in Berlin. Dilthey’s works provided one of the building-blocks of the art historian’s own innovative approach. Secondly, we shall examine Heidrich and Dilthey’s relationship with the publisher Eugen Diederichs and the latter’s position within the Lebensreform movement, and thereby discuss some of the contemporary ideas that shaped the thinking of both academics. In a third and final step, we shall analyze the content and language of the volumes that Heidrich wrote for Diederichs, with a particular focus upon Vlaemische Malerei [Flemish Painting]. What thereby becomes clear is that Heidrich’s achievement in the field of art history—the paradigm shift from a purely analytical and theoretical study of style and form to a more holistic contemplation of art, as still taught and practiced (albeit in a different form) in art history today—was arguably only possible against the backdrop of his personal career and the prevailing conditions of his day. Ernst Heidrich was born in 1880 in Nakel (today Nakło, Poland).4 Before turning to art history, he had already studied history, first in Leipzig and then with the historian Max Lenz in Berlin, and had thus laid the foundations for his own approach, which broadened its sights beyond the narrow formalistic bounds of the art history of the day to include the full socio-historical context.5 In Berlin, Heidrich was a member of the circle around Wilhelm Dilthey,6 who made a distinction in his Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life) between what he called the human sciences [Geisteswissenschaften] and the natural sciences and, in terms of the philosophy of science, granted the human sciences their own, distinct way of cognition. In contrast to Heinrich Wölfflin, who wanted to place art history on an equal footing with the natural sciences by insisting on a methodology founded on objectivity, Heidrich—who studied directly under Wölfflin—encouraged the viewer to re-experience the artwork, which he embedded in its historical context. He was concerned with demonstrating, from the point of view of cultural history, how historical conditions shaped the works of art of their time, but also with highlighting artistic achievements and values that transcended time.7 Heidrich’s endeavor to draw closer the content of an artwork that transcended its own epoch was indebted to Dilthey’s concept of man as a being shaped first and foremost by history and culture. From this Dilthey developed

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the category of lived experience [Erlebnis] that is central to his philosophy and which shapes the human perception of reality. According to Dilthey, each person’s perception forms the foundation of their individual reality, which is in turn the starting point of all artistic creation and thought. Understanding is thereby based on re-experiencing [Nacherleben] the existence of another as it expresses itself in writing, language, gestures, facial expressions and art. Only through a process of actively empathizing with the writings or artworks produced by another can the viewer arrive at an understanding of these cultural products—and not via analytical observation that measures such works against exterior yardsticks.8 Dilthey believed that the creations of the human mind treated within the human sciences served to lend a universally valid form to the expressions of human life. Dilthey’s credo substantially influenced Heidrich’s conception of the fine arts as part of the living cultural whole, which he sought to fathom deductively through the examination of individual works.9 With this in mind, Hans Tietze characterized Heidrich as the representative of a “genetic art history” whose synthetic overall view qualified it to act as prima inter pares within the human sciences.10 Inspired by the theories of Dilthey’s philosophy of life, Heidrich practiced art history as a human science. The focus of his work thereby fell primarily upon applying his new method within and to his own writings, rather than upon its theoretical verbalization and reflection.11 This new approach by Heidrich was one of the reasons that prompted Diederichs to engage the young art historian as author for several volumes of his series Die Kunst in Bildern.12 A key deciding factor in his choice was Heidrich’s intellectual kinship with Dilthey and hence with other progressive authors, likewise close to Dilthey, whose works were also being published by Diederichs in Jena.13 It was evidently highly important to Diederichs that his new series should reference the ideas of Dilthey’s philosophy of life. This emerges clearly from an advertisement, in which Diederichs promises “a new form of art history” and—in a heading printed in bold typeface at the top of the announcement—explicitly proclaims: “The editors are recruited from the pupils of the philosopher of aesthetics Wilhelm Dilthey.”14 With his strong personal interest in the ideas of the Lebensreform movement, which found its way into his professional activity, his publishing program, the design of his books and his choice of authors, Diederichs was an influential personality, and in this respect a typical representative of a series of German intellectuals whose life and work were shaped by their progressive and modern ideas (in a similar fashion to Ferdinand Avenarius and, even more so, Rudolf Steiner).15 Diederichs’s conception of himself was reflected in his activity as a “companion, communicator and organizer of civic reform movements.”16 From his position as a publisher, he considered opinion leadership around 1900 to lie above all with the medium of the book, since it was able to have a direct impact upon a large public.17 It was his ambition to offer his readers,

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through the works issuing from his stable, material of an intellectual bent.18 For over 15 years, moreover, he also held the post of deputy director of the Jena Kunstverein. The Kunstverein had helped the Brücke artists’ association—the impetus for whose foundation likewise lay in the sense of new possibilities at the dawn of the twentieth century—to greater prominence and widespread recognition.19 Diederichs’s social and intellectual sphere in Jena was thus permeated with the reform ideals of the years around 1900 and can be considered typical of the intellectual milieu in large parts of the German Empire.20 The “educational mandate” that Diederichs assumed for himself is reflected not just in the titles he published, but also in their artistic design—an area to which he devoted great attention and considerable financial expense. The particular value that he attached to design was closely bound up with his desire that the printed book should take account of the relationship between form and content. Following on from William Morris and the supporters of the Arts and Crafts movement, who promoted the idea of the unified work of art and the permeation of all areas of life by art, the German centers of Jugendstil had likewise embraced this goal as the main aim of their activity.21 Under the aegis of Diederichs, many of these artists had a hand in revolutionizing book design in Germany.22 Diederichs used the innovative design of his books as a vehicle of “publicity par excellence; it became the paradigm of the publisher’s intention, the link between author and reader.”23 The modern-looking exterior of Diederichs’s publications, including those by Heidrich, thus corresponded in concept to the fresh new look cast by their young authors on the subjects they treated (Figure 5.1). The introductions to the three volumes of Die Kunst in Bildern written by Heidrich are all characterized, it may be said, by the same concern. In order to facilitate a new appreciation of his subject, namely art around 1500, the author strives in his writings to make the works under discussion accessible to his readers at an emotional and aesthetic level. Heidrich also makes the aspect important to Diederichs—the examination of art in the light of the sociohistorical conditions prevailing in its day—an integral component of his texts. These aim to convey to the non-specialist public, through their empathetic approach to each artwork, an understanding of the particular form of its exterior appearance in its historical context. Friedrich Rintelen stressed in his obituary that the benefit of the books Heidrich wrote for Diederichs consisted not in the fact that they uncovered new sources or contained new attributions (something for which books by other colleagues had been vilified). Rather they reflected—in Rintelen’s view—the latest development within the discipline, by referencing the central category of “re-experiencing” from Dilthey’s concept of the human sciences.24 In general, Diederichs’s series was greeted with the highest praise, in particular from art historians, for the quality of its observations and the presentation of the works in a broader cultural context.25

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5.1 Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke, front cover of the book jacket designed for Ernst Heidrich’s Vlaemische Malerei (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1913)

In the introduction to the first volume, Die alt-deutsche Malerei26 [Early German Painting], the educational aim of Diederichs’s Kunst in Bildern series still remains firmly in the foreground. This focus noticeably weakens in the subsequent volumes, however, and in Vlaemische Malerei gives way to a primarily art-historical discussion, albeit one that avoids scholarly footnotes and bibliographic references.27 In his texts, Heidrich takes up the contemporary interest in German art of the period around 1500 as emblematic of a national

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identity, an interest that had already resonated in the Dürer monograph of 1905 by his teacher, Wölfflin, and in Heidrich’s own doctoral dissertation and Habilitationsschrift.28 The subject of the first volume, Die alt-deutsche Malerei, was thus a programmatic choice by Diederichs,29 since the question of national identity, of the definition of “German” (something Heidrich explores in his volume), is also found in academic publications, in the reception of and discussion surrounding contemporary art, and in the movements that can be grouped under the overall heading of Lebensreform.30 Dilthey’s idea of extracting elements that have unlimited validity from cultural products offered a suitable foundation upon which to investigate historical works for their “German” essence. In his introduction, Heidrich pursues two major themes. Firstly, he stresses the significance of the German artists of the period around 1500 for Germany’s own history of art, and secondly he seeks to characterize the essence of German art as particularly imbued with feeling and spiritual expression.31 For all its “archaisms, which shall not be glossed over,” the art that Heidrich wishes to bring back to life for his contemporaries “is a piece of our national culture, one of the best and richest in content.”32 Over the following pages, the author outlines the reasons for the descent of this epoch into obscurity, as its forms and subject matter grew increasingly alien. Heidrich then launches into a lengthier discussion which is strongly hallmarked by a nationalistic undertone and an emphasis upon vitality, vigor and (emotional) animation: “[there] arises a vivid feeling of nation and of the continuity and lasting character of its formation. Historical awareness becomes the foundation of all understanding and creation … and all the treasures of our national past thereby start to re-ascend.”33 In this passage, Heidrich reveals himself to be a child of the “Expressionist” generation on two counts,34 insofar as he emphasizes firstly the idea of “national” and secondly the “vivid feeling” that the contemplation of art is to generate and steer—a notion that implies subjectivity and emotionality and which thus also corresponded to the artistic goals of the Expressionists.35 Heidrich always strove in his writings to penetrate “the inner forces at play, each time in a new artistic manner, in the different epochs,” as his colleague Rintelen wrote in his obituary.36 Phrases such as the “inner glow of the spirit” and “a surfeit of interiority, of thinking and feeling”37—terms in which Heidrich not merely described the achievement of German painting around 1500 but held it up more broadly as an ethical ideal—are clearly indebted conceptually and semantically to the art and especially the literature of the early twentieth century.38 In summary, it can be said that Heidrich’s first volume for Die Kunst in Bildern reflects the author’s contemporary society and the artistic ideas of his day in multiple respects. These resurface, on the one hand, in Heidrich’s scholarly exploration of German art around 1500.39 But they can also be recognized in Heidrich’s methodology, in which he takes account

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of the historical relativity of the works, and in his didactic desire to present the art of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries as an ethical yardstick and vehicle of emotional expression, and thus to lend it new life—two approaches directly derived from the discussions taking place in contemporary German society as outlined above. Last but not least, his introduction testifies to the fact that altdeutsche art was becoming a rallying point for growing nationalist sentiments and a focus for the “spiritual renewal” being demanded by the intellectual elite—civic classes, academics and artists in equal measure.40 We have already noted that Heidrich’s perception of German art around 1500 finds many parallels in the reception of the latter by the artists of Expressionism. We shall now look more closely at some of these parallels. Heidrich’s recognition of the spiritual power of expression and sensibility of late Gothic and early Renaissance German art must have struck an immediate chord with the Expressionists. Despite their common regard for these earlier masters, Heidrich was not among the group of art historians who played a leading role in promoting Expressionist art in Germany.41 He nevertheless follows his description of German art around 1500 as “a piece of our national culture, one of the best and richest in content,” by proclaiming that “the artistic spirit, too, of the present day will be able to take ever new refreshment for its own sensibility from these creations of a … naïve visual imagination, as ingenuous as it is magnificent.”42 He thereby warmly encouraged contemporary artists to study the works of these much earlier German masters in particular terms of their creativity and feeling. Whether the Brücke painters possessed any of Heidrich’s books, and most especially the volume on Alt-Deutsche Malerei, is something we shall sadly never know.43 The works of these contemporary artists nevertheless show them processing much of what Heidrich vaunted as the merits of German art around 1500. The Expressionist artists thereby drew in particular upon the tradition of printmaking.44 From a deep-seated sense of dissatisfaction with the status and achievements of contemporary German art,45 this generation of artists saw, notably in Old Master woodcuts, a valid point of departure for their own efforts to renew art. In their self-portraits, they present themselves “as the true pupils of Dürer and German artistic tradition.”46 Art historians and artists were interested in the same phenomena, prizing expression and character over form and clarity. The Jena professor of art history, Botho Graef, one of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s most important champions,47 remarked that “the artist is conscious of his profound affinity with early German art.”48 Kirchner correspondingly described Dürer as an “inexhaustible” source who “is often so ‘modern’ in his stroke that one is simply struck dumb.”49 In AltNiederländische Malerei [Early Netherlandish Painting], his second title for the Kunst in Bildern series, published one year after the first, Heidrich glorifies Dürer in a similar fashion as a “spiritual leader and […] prince of the whole art of the North.”50 Although artist and art historian see Dürer as a leading

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figure from different perspectives, they both appreciate the same things about his art: its spiritual force and expressive power.51 Returning to Alt-Deutsche Malerei, Heidrich concludes his introduction with a sober look at the broader European context: Everywhere else in Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century […] there appeared a new delight in creativity and a new fullness of life—Germany had no part in it. Netherlandish painting of the fifteenth and sixteenth century can be appreciated for the fact that it contains the seeds of the great national development in the age of Rubens and Rembrandt. The history of German painting around 1500 remembers only what existed—and what was lost.52

Analysis of Alt-Deutsche Malerei at the level of both content and method shows that Heidrich regularly makes clear reference to his own day in the language and vocabulary he uses. Significantly, in 1916 the volume was issued in an abridged field edition for soldiers fighting in the war.53 Heidrich’s portrayal is informed by the wish to make late Gothic and early Renaissance art accessible not just on account of its artistic merits, but above all for its ethical value and emotional content. This in itself is evidence that the art historian was clearly indebted to the fundamental ideas of reformist thinking around 1900, which also formed an important point of reference for the Expressionist generation of artists.54 Although Heidrich seems to have rejected the stylistic elements of contemporary art inspired by primitive art, he implicitly recommended the “Early German” masters as true forerunners of a German art aiming at the expression of interiority and emotion. Heidrich’s third and unwittingly final volume, Vlaemische Malerei, appeared—after a more substantial gap of three years following the second—on the eve of the First World War. Here, he adopts an approach analogous to that of the two previous volumes.55 yet what is different and noteworthy is that Heidrich interprets historical circumstances and events in the spirit of his own pre-war era, as emerges from his evaluation of the past and the language he employs. In so doing, he establishes a direct link between his text and the world of the contemporary reader. Heidrich’s text can be roughly divided into three parts: first, an introductory overview of the evolution and chief protagonists of sixteenth-century Flemish painting; second, the main section on Peter Paul Rubens, whose work Heidrich stylizes as the culmination of Flemish painting; and third, shorter passages devoted to various genres of painting and their representatives. Heidrich’s discussion of Rubens runs to approximately 30 (out of altogether 80) pages and accounts for 90 (of altogether 200) illustrations, and thereby represents the most detailed treatment—by some margin—of any artist in the volume. As in his volume on early Netherlandish painters, in the introductory text to Vlaemische Malerei, Heidrich demonstrates his ability to span wide distances in time and space as part of his art historical argument, insofar as

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he traces the development and various manifestations of Flemish art across a large period. Not only does he thereby establish regular links with the two preceding volumes, but he also looks ahead to aspects that probably would have been discussed in depth in his next volume in the series. This planned fourth volume—Holländische Malerei [Dutch Painting]—was to be the last in a set which Diederichs proposed to issue under the overall title of Die Deutsche Kunst [German Art]. The text of the third volume, which constantly looks back and forward in time, makes it clear that Heidrich understood the four-volume set as one large complex, as a coherent overall exposition within which he continuously sought to explain similarities and differences in structure, content and evolution. A leitmotif of this third volume can be found in Heidrich’s remarks on the difficult political and social situation in the Low Countries, which reveal how much he was steeped in the mood of his day. The author argues that it was as a result of these struggles that Flemish art was able to occupy a prominent position in seventeenth-century Europe. According to Heidrich, the 80 years of war that ravaged the (northern) Netherlands between 1568 and 1648 were a key factor in precipitating the emergence of the two Netherlandish nations. Heidrich does not emphasize the suffering and damage caused by warfare; instead, he sees in war a medium leading to liberation and the rise of the nation.56 He describes such a development as “inconceivable” without certain “preconditions …, namely … the violent transformation of ecclesiastical and social relations.”57 Heidrich’s appreciation of radical change that can only be achieved with force can be discerned in his writings in several places, and may be seen in parallel with the enthusiasm with which broad sectors of the population of the German Empire greeted the First World War.58 This attitude also emerges in the author’s description of the Low Countries around 1600: “This was the situation from which the art of Rubens arose, from the rubble of his native city. … in the art of Rubens, all destruction is solely a new means to attain freedom.”59 Heidrich presents war as the catalyst without which the renewal of the Netherlandish nations would not have been possible. With his emphatic diction and a vocabulary that speaks of “feeling”, of “glowing with life” and of “impressions sensible to the eye,”60 Heidrich reinforces the connection between his own text and the reader, who would have been familiar with such language from contemporary literature.61 Another leitmotif of the introductory text is the concept of nation in the sense of a cultural nation.62 As we have seen in the passages cited above, Heidrich closely associates the idea of nation with war and liberation from social bonds. He perceived war as a necessary purification. Only after such a dramatic cleansing could an authentic Flemish art start to unfold and carry art in the Low Countries to its zenith. In introducing the idea of distinctive national characteristics and the factors shaping them, the author again takes up the thinking of the turn of the century. Contemporary artists, too, were

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examining the cultural roots underpinning a German cultural nation that did not necessarily correspond in shape to the political bounds of the German Empire. In this respect, Heidrich is guided in his scholarly introduction by interests very similar to those of wide sections of the academic, political and social elite, who were reflecting during this period upon the question of the nature and origin of a German culture (a question underlying, for example, the Ideen von 1914).63 At another level that is intimately bound up with his humanistic perspective, Heidrich addresses the artists and their works. He starts with a discussion of the first generation of sixteenth-century artists and their reasons for turning to Italian Renaissance art. Although these “Romanists” were admittedly not yet able to draw any artistic gain from their study of the Italian masters, Heidrich sees the achievement of Willem Key and Frans Floris as lying above all in the fact that they ushered in artistic emancipation.64 Their drive to assert themselves expressed itself as an “energetic striving for education,” and it was on this basis that Netherlandish art was finally able to blossom and become the expression of an independent nation.65 The reformation of artistic life by this first generation of Romanists resulted in the artists becoming “the spiritual leaders and the heroes of the nation.”66 With this choice of words, Heidrich makes reference to his belief in art as the means of shaping a cultural nation, and in the artist as a national leader.67 Hence Heidrich pays tribute to the artists of the sixteenth century as “the ‘bringers of light’ and ‘emancipators’ of Netherlandish painting,”68 and more precisely of Netherlandish art as a whole. The key role that Heidrich credits to these artists can be seen as analogous to the goal of renewal during the final years of the German Empire embraced by the Lebensreform movement, and by new artistic groups and prominent intellectuals like Diederichs and Herwarth Walden.69 Heidrich’s view of the socio-historical background to Netherlandish art thus exhibits analogies that, whether intentionally or not, make it conceivable that the reform achieved in the sixteenth century by the bearers of that era’s spirit on the basis of a war that upset the status quo might exemplify an option for action in Heidrich’s present day. A second aspect that Heidrich addresses in his text concerns the artistic composition of the works; only after the Romanists had worked their way through the formal, academic problems of art could color and light establish themselves, at the start of the seventeenth century, as creative means determining the appearance of the picture as a whole. With this, art finally found its way back to itself and its original forms of expression: “The sovereignty of ‘things’ over the artistic spirit has ceased—he [the painter] presents the network of appearance of the world as he pictures it to himself.”70 Heidrich thus emphasizes the subjectivity of the individual artist, who becomes the factor determining the final image. He thereby implies categories such as “impression,” ”feeling,” and “experience”—key concepts also being employed by his artist contemporaries.71 Closely connected to this relative

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“emancipation” from narrow constraints on form and content is Heidrich’s observation of “an application of paint of a kind … in which the individual brushstrokes stand still … . In this, the artist’s new consciousness of his subjective power over the object of his representation finds expression.”72 The author sees in this development the supreme internalization and spiritualization of painting, of which Rubens is the embodiment. The liberation from old norms and ways of seeing that Heidrich observes, too, in artistic technique exhibits parallels with the renunciation of traditional values and forms by the Expressionist generation of artists. In his introduction to Vlaemische Malerei, Heidrich weaves a detailed cultural-historical tapestry in which he picks out the major influences shaping the two Netherlandish nations. In his portrayal of the past, his discussion is permeated with artistic issues and topics related to political and contemporary social developments. The fact that Heidrich is looking back from a contemporary standpoint and through an “Expressionist-tinted” lens can be seen not only in his assessment of historical events, but also in the way in which he evaluates the artistic achievement of the main figure in this volume—Rubens. We shall conclude this essay by illustrating this last point more clearly with the example of a lengthier passage from Heidrich’s text. Rubens’s artistic means of composition, increasingly seen for their own intrinsic value, are a central theme in Heidrich’s presentation of the painter’s mature oeuvre. In many of his discussions of individual works, Heidrich noticeably concentrates upon formal and painterly elements, which he describes and appreciates in abstract terms as artistic values independent of the subject portrayed. In characterizing the achievements of the Flemish artist, the author highlights not ingenious pictorial inventions but categories such as composition and palette, which transcend their epoch and so offer direct points of entry for contemporary viewers to “re-experience” these earlier works. An example of this focus can be seen in Heidrichs’s description of Rubens’s Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints (Figure 5.2). In the best art-historical manner, he presents the two preparatory oil sketches side by side (plates 92 and 93, albeit in reverse chronological order) and, without discussing individual details at length himself, invites the reader to follow the artistic evolution of the motif: “The comparison […] demonstrates how the artist consistently attempted to achieve one effect in particular: one single, upward-rising movement.”73 The saints portrayed in the altarpiece receive not a single mention. In his emphasis upon the “clear expansiveness and wonderful lightness” of the composition, and its “pleasantly rising melody,” Heidrich explicitly opposes the prejudice against the baroque as a heavy style.74 He is not concerned with elucidating questions of content or interpretation, but instead concentrates—as this example shows—on an appreciation, stated in general terms, of artistic design elements such as composition, color and light.75

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5.2 Peter Paul Rubens, Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints (c. 1627–28), oil sketch, 564 × 408 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The proximity of Heidrich’s thinking to that of his contemporaries also emerges, in a very similar fashion, from his focus upon two other artistic categories, which he appreciates for their worth and cites as evidence of the quality of Rubens’s painting. The author regularly notes the lifelike character of Rubens’s figures and the naturalness of his pictures. He also displays a particular delicacy towards his readership, for example in his discussion of the portrait of Helena Fourment in a fur wrap, Het Pelsken (see Figure 6.3).

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As a pointedly erotic declaration of love to the artist’s young second wife, who only barely conceals her nakedness with a heavy fur wrap after a bath, the painting contains references to Venus and Helen of Troy, as well as to Bathsheba and Susanna from the Old Testament.76 Heidrich devotes not a single word to these levels of reference, to the picture’s forerunners or to the [technical] handling of paint. Instead, he once again seeks to distill more general aspects of Rubens’s art from the individual motif, and in the portrait recognizes the artist’s “conception of female beauty.”77 He correspondingly attempts to sum up in words the fundamental properties of the work: That which is individual, transitory and contingent about the figure comes to possess unity and ideality. The one indivisible life force pulsating in the body is perceived and, on a surface that is lit from within and glows with life, that life is transfigured, becoming an impression of force and beauty sensible to the eye.78

Heidrich thus draws upon a diction and imagery employed in contemporary art and literature. He finds the connection between humans and nature—a frequent theme of “Expressionist” art—in Rubens’s landscapes. Heidrich introduces these works as the artistic expression of the oneness for which Lebensreform supporters also yearned: “Anyone who enters into the life of nature through his or her sensibility belongs to these landscapes by Rubens.”79 For Heidrich, Rubens has moreover translated this connection between humans and nature into his pictures using (abstract) painterly means: “Rubens’s landscapes exhibit a free and poetic, lofty intermingling of tones, where the lines, forms and colors are emphasized and culminate in a powerful harmony of life.”80 In a ringing conclusion, Heidrich professes the unity of humans and nature, and a heightened feeling for life which he sees exemplified in the Pitti Palace’s Peasants Returning from the Fields: “The most straightforward reality is transfigured into an image of the life-creating power of the universe, which reverberates with the harmonious song of the spheres”81 (see Figure 6.4). The pastoral idyll becomes stylized into a symbol of eternal harmony, with no mention or explanation of the motif. Analysis of such passages from Heidrich’s Vlaemische Malerei makes clear that the author embraced the educational aim postulated by Diederichs for his Kunst in Bildern series, and translated it into both the content and the language of his text. In particular, his positive take on the necessity of destroying the old to make way for a renewal of society and the arts reflects aspirations and ideals of the period shortly before the First World War, and echoes hopes associated with war. Rubens became, for Heidrich, the embodiment of renewal made possible by war: “Flemish painting is the painting of Rubens …: whatever this brilliant individual touched, he filled with new life.”82 Just as Rubens re-animated the dry, academic figures of the sixteenth century and lent his figures vitality through his painting, so the new generation of artists

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was also striving in the broader sense to revitalize art through their work. Rubens was thus able to serve as a kind of model for contemporary artists endeavoring to bring about change, although I do not wish to imply here that this was Heidrich’s declared aim. It is nevertheless certain, however, that Heidrich’s view and assessment of historical events and artworks was shaped by the virulent ideas and hopes of the pre-war years. The “expressionist” label that has been affixed to Heidrich does not immediately illuminate all the facets that distinguish the art historian’s writings. Alongside linguistic images and turns of phrase of “Expressionist” origin and the concept of the cathartic power of war, these other aspects include first and foremost his humanistic approach to his subject, and his emphasis upon re-experiencing as a way of rediscovering the art of earlier epochs. Our analysis of his volumes for Diederichs has been able to show that Heidrich was more concerned with facilitating this “re-experiencing” in the Diltheyan sense than in situating the works in question in their historicalscientific setting. Our look at the circumstances and conditions in which these popular art volumes arose has likewise revealed Heidrich’s proximity to the contemporary ideas of the Lebensreform movement in Germany, within which publisher Eugen Diederichs was active. The entire concept of the Kunst in Bildern series, including its visual appearance, was correspondingly oriented towards informing and educating the reader. Heidrich’s texts bear the stamp of this contemporary perspective: he never places the emphasis upon scholarly, academic details but writes texts that can be understood by all and which are peppered with contemporary catchphrases. The volumes thus offer viewers the possibility of engaging with the art of earlier epochs at the level of their own sensibility. Heidrich’s portrayal of the regenerative power of war in the Low Countries in the sixteenth century is likewise colored by the mood of his day and finds a parallel in the enthusiasm for war felt by many artists and intellectuals.83 With regard to the history of art-historical methodology, Heidrich’s achievement as an art historian may be said to lie in the fact that he proceeded beyond the pure analysis of style and form and broadened his view to include the [general] historical and cultural context of art. Out of the social reformist ideas around 1900, his friendships with Dilthey and Diederichs, and his own further education in the fields of history and art history, Heidrich helped pioneer a modern way of looking at art. It is true that the idea of viewing works in the context of their day is today sooner associated with Max Dvořák. Our current picture of the discipline of art history, however, should once again take account of Heidrich, as a forerunner who saw, in the “re-experiencing” of the artwork, the basis upon which to appreciate the art of earlier epochs and to make it come alive in the present. Heidrich’s colleagues appreciated the modernity of his approach even during his own lifetime. Today the reflections of Georges Didi-Huberman, who addresses the “history of a phenomenology

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of seeing and feeling,”84 are based on a similar notion (largely outlawed by art historians in the twentieth century) of the emotional impact made upon the viewer by the work itself. New at the start of the twentieth century, this same category may underpin a methodological reorientation of art history in the twenty-first.85 Translated by Karen Williams

notes 1 Cf. Joseph Gantner, “Der Unterricht in der Kunstgeschichte an der Universität Basel,” in Kunstwissenschaft an Schweizer Hochschulen 1 (1972/73): 21. 2 See Nikolaus Meier, “Ernst Heidrich (1880–1914). Zur Grundlegung der Kunstwissenschaft,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 25 (1980): 19–50. 3 Cf. Hans Tietze, Die Methode der Kunstgeschichte (Leipzig: Seemann, 1913), 421, and the obituaries published by Heinrich Wölfflin, Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich (Basel: Schwabe, 1915). The Kunst in Bildern series was aimed at a wide public and was eagerly anticipated and embraced. Demand was large for the first few volumes, at least; see Eugen Diederichs’s advert in the Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel 168 (August 27, 1909): 9772. 4 These biographical details are based on the entry by Peter Betthausen in Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: 210 Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten, ed. Peter Betthausen, Peter H. Feist and Christiane Fork (2nd ed., Stuttgart: Metzler 2007), 161–3; cf. also Meier, “Heidrich,” 19. 5 Heidrich’s particular interest in German art around 1500 might have been influenced by Lenz’s specialist field, to which he devoted his own Habilitationsschrift. Cf. Meier, “Heidrich,” 22. 6 Circumstantial evidence, including the fact that both worked for Diederichs, suggests that Heidrich was well acquainted with Dilthey. By his own admission, the publisher selected the authors for Die Kunst in Bildern from the “circle of Dilthey students.” See Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel, 165 (July 20, 1909): 8519; Irmgard Heidler, Der Verleger Eugen Diederichs und seine Welt (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998), 265; and Meier, “Heidrich,” 30–32. 7 This dual nature of art, oscillating between its historical constitution and its constantly new reception by viewers, represents the key starting-point for Georges Didi-Huberman’s reflections. Didi-Huberman focuses in his writings on the dialectic of the artwork in the field of tension between its reality as a historical artifact and its existence in the perception of the viewer. Cf. Georges Didi-Huberman, Ce que nous voyons, ce qui nous regard (Paris: Minuit, 1999), and Fra Angelico. Dissemblance and Figuration (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995). 8 See Ernst Heidrich, “Besprechung [Review] von Hans Jantzen, Das Niederländische Architekturbild,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 8 (1913): 117–31.

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9 Meier, “Heidrich,” 33–4. 10 Tietze, Methode, 45–6. 11 This is underlined by Meier, “Heidrich,” 31. A lengthier reflection upon methodology can be found in the two lectures published posthumously along with his review of Jantzen. Ernst Heidrich, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Methode der Kunstgeschichte (Basel: Schwabe, 1917), esp. 86–8 and 108–9. Heidrich’s interest in furthering the cultural education of the general populace led him to introduce art-history courses at the Volkshochschule in Basel. Cf. Edgar Bonjour, Die Universität Basel von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (1460–1960) (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1960), 701. 12 Alongside “intellectual kinship,” academic expertise and commercial considerations will have also played a role. Cf. Heidler, Diederichs, 742–6. 13 Andreas Meyer, “Der Verlagsgründer und seine Rolle als ‘Kulturverleger’ 1896–1930,” in Versammlungsort moderner Geister: Der Eugen Diederichs Verlag— Aufbruch ins Jahrhundert der Extreme, ed. Gangolf Hübinger (Munich: Eugen Diederichs, 1996), 48. Heidrich reviewed, for example, Herman Nohl’s Die Weltanschauung in der Malerei (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1908) in the Zentralblatt für kunstwissenschaftliche Literatur und Bibliographie 1 (1909): 287–9. 14 Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel, 165 (July 20, 1909): 8519. 15 On Lebensreform, see Kai Buchholz et al., eds, Die Lebensreform: Entwürfe zur Neugestaltung von Leben und Kunst um 1900, exh. cat., 2 vols (Darmstadt: Mathildenhöhe, 2001), esp. the essay by Justus Ulbricht, “Feste der Jugend und der Kunst. Eugen Diederichs und der Sera-Kreis,” 419–24. 16 Meyer, “Kulturverleger,” 27. 17 Cf. letter from Eugen Diederichs to Ferdinand Avenarius of September 1, 1896 in Heidler, Diederichs, 46. 18 Cf. Heidler, Diederichs, 266 and Meyer, “Kulturverleger,” 26–89. 19 Cf. Volker Wahl, Jena als Kunststadt: Begegnungen mit der modernen Kunst in der thüringischen Universitätsstadt zwischen 1900 und 1933 (Leipzig: Seemann, 1988), and Ulf Diederichs, “Jena und Weimar als verlegerisches Programm. Über die Anfänge des Eugen Diederichs Verlages in Jena,” in Zwischen Konvention und Avantgarde: Doppelstadt Jena—Weimar, ed. Jürgen John and Volker Wahl (Weimar: Böhlau, 1995), 51–80. On the influence of the Lebensreform movement on artists: Renate Foitzik-Kirchgraber, Lebensreform und Künstlergruppierungen um 1900 (PhD diss., University of Basel 2003); Ulrich Pfarr, “Zwischen Ekstase und Alltag. Zur Rezeption der Lebensreform in der künstlerischen Praxis der Brücke,” in Buchholz, Die Lebensreform, 251–6; and Sigrid Walther, “Die Lebensreform und der Blaue Reiter,” ibid., 257–60. 20 Minor cities thereby also played an important role, as demonstrated in the example of Jena by Meike Werner in Moderne in der Provinz: Kulturelle Experimente im Fin de Siècle Jena (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003). 21 As in the earlier case of Morris, the artists and groupings in Germany were also driven by a socio-ethical desire to make art accessible to wide sections of the public and to exert a positive influence upon daily life; the best-known and most influential of these movements was the Bauhaus.

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22 See Irmgard Heidler, “Künstlerische Buchgestaltung im Eugen Diederichs Verlag,” in Hübinger, Versammlungsort, 167–220. 23 Ibid., 167. Diederichs also used large-scale advertising with the aim of appealing to a wide readership. 24 Obituary by Friedrich Rintelen in Wölfflin, Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich, 25. 25 See the collection of obituaries on Heidrich in Wölfflin, Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich. 26 Today more commonly written Die Altdeutsche Malerei. Heidrich himself uses altdeutsche without a hyphen in his text, and the 1916 “field edition” likewise gives the title as Altdeutsche Malerei (see note 53). [Transl.] 27 Wölfflin, in Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich, 10. See also Meier, “Heidrich,” 25–6. 28 Heinrich Wölfflin, Die Kunst Albrecht Dürers (Munich: Bruckmann, 1905). Ernst Heidrich, Geschichte des Dürerschen Marienbildes (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1906) and Ernst Heidrich, Dürer und die Reformation (Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1909). Also Wölfflin, in Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich, 10. An in-depth study on the reception of Dürer not only around 1900 can be found in Anja Grebe, Dürer. Die Geschichte seines Ruhms (Petersberg: Imhof, 2013). 29 In 1911 Diederichs published the manifesto Ein Protest deutscher Künstler, which was aimed at the perceived invasion of French art. 30 See the two volumes of the exhibition catalogue Die Lebensreform, eds. Buchholz et al. 31 On contemporary artistic thinking see, for example, Janina Dahlmanns, “Chronik der ‘Brücke’,” in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Berlin, exh. cat., ed. Magdalena Moeller (Berlin: Brücke-Museum, 2008), 230–37; Reinhold Heller, “‘Brücke’ zwischen Tradition und Moderne,” in “Unmittelbar und unverfälscht”— Aquarelle, Zeichnungen und Druckgraphik der “Brücke”, exh. cat. (Rüsselsheim: Opelvillen, 2003), 19–34; and Günther Gercken, “‘Nirgends lernt man einen Künstler besser kennen als in seiner Graphik’—die Stellung der Druckgraphik in Kirchners Werk,” in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Erstes Sehen: Das Werk im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett, exh. cat., ed. Anita Beloubek-Hammer (Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, 2004), 20–25. 32 Ernst Heidrich, Die Alt-Deutsche Malerei (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1909), 1. 33 Ibid., 2. 34 On the language and imagery used in Expressionist literature, with numerous examples, see Thomas Anz, Literatur des Expressionismus (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2010); Frank Krause, Literarischer Expressionismus (Paderborn: Fink, 2008); and on theoretical and literary texts Otto Best, ed., Theorie des Expressionismus (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2004). 35 We might recall in this context the “quarter-of-an-hour nude,” an exercise invented by the Brücke artists in which they had to try to capture the essence of the nude in an animated drawing within a 15-minute time limit. Cf. also the writings of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Davoser Tagebuch. Eine Darstellung des Malers und eine Sammlung seiner Schriften, ed. L. Grisebach (Cologne: Dumont, 1968).

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36 Rintelen in Wölfflin, Zur Erinnerung an Ernst Heidrich, 25. 37 Heidrich, Die Alt-Deutsche Malerei, 13 and 16 respectively. 38 Cf. Anz, Expressionismus; Krause, Expressionismus. 39 While it is true that the subject of the first volume was chosen by the publisher, the fact that Heidrich was already an established specialist in the field shows that he had a large interest in the latest debates and areas of research. 40 Jena had its own groups of intellectuals with reformist ideas, Diederichs among them. Cf. the essays in Hübinger, Versammlungsort. Also: Wahl, Jena; John/Wahl, Konvention; Ulbricht, “Feste der Jugend.” 41 For example Rosa Schapire and Gustav Schiefler in Hamburg, and Botho Graef in Jena. No personal writings such as correspondence or diary entries, in which Heidrich might record such an interest, are currently known. 42 Heidrich, Die Alt-Deutsche Malerei, 1; author’s italics. 43 Karlheinz Gabler, E.L. Kirchner. Dokumente, vol. 2 of E.L. Kirchner, exh. cat. (Aschaffenburg: Museum der Stadt, 1980), 353–61; Hanna Strzoda, Die Ateliers Ernst Ludwig Kirchners (Petersberg: Imhof, 2006). 44 Cf. Dahlmanns, “Chronik,” 230–37; Heller, “Brücke,” 19–34; and Gercken, “Druckgraphik,” 20–25. A thorough coverage of this topic is to be found in Robin Reisenfeld, Cultural Identity and Artistic Practice: The Revival of the German Woodcut (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1993). 45 Cf. Heller, “Brücke,” 23–7. 46 Ibid., 25. 47 Sharon Jordan, “Philosophers, Artists, and Saints: Ernst L. Kirchner and Paintings of Male Friendship, 1914–1917,” PhD diss., City University of New york, 2009. 48 Botho Graef, “E.L. Kirchner,” in Das Kunstblatt 23, special issue on E.L. Kirchner (1923): 65–77. 49 Letter of April 22, 1924 to Gustav Schiefler, cited from Wolfgang Henze et al., Ernst Ludwig Kirchner—Gustav Schiefler: Briefwechsel 1910–1935/1938 (Stuttgart: Belser, 1990), 290. Kirchner is referring to the deluxe edition, obtained for him by Schiefler, of Friedrich Lippmann, Die Dürer-Zeichnungen, 5 vols (Berlin: Grote 1883–1905). Cf. Gabler, Dokumente, 358. Kirchner’s comments in the letter of April 22, 1924, in Kirchner/Schiefler Briefwechsel, 290. Cf. Heidrich on Dürer‘s drawing in Heidrich, Marienbild, 6. 50 Ernst Heidrich, Alt-Niederländische Malerei (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1910), 6. See also letter of November 15, 1923, in Kirchner/Schiefler Briefwechsel, 262. 51 Heidrich, Die Alt-Deutsche Malerei, 36, 48, 50. Kirchner expresses his affinity with Dürer in a letter to his brother of August 12, 1937: “And what I […] produced, what’s been hanging for the past 30 years [in the homes of] appreciative collectors who are schooled in early art, in Dürer etc., [is] admired und esteemed.” 52 Heidrich, Die Alt-Deutsche Malerei, 51.

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53 Altdeutsche Meister: Eine Auswahl fürs Feld aus dem Werke “Altdeutsche Malerei” von Ernst Heidrich, gefallen in Flandern 1914 (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1916). This underlines the fact that art, too, was conscripted for “national” service. 54 Cf. Foizik-Kirchgraber, Künstlergruppen. An art that calls forth an emotional response and is directed at the viewer’s feelings is the subject of the theoretical treatise by Wassily Kandinsky, Über das Geistige in der Kunst (1912), ed. N. Kandinsky (Berne: Benteli 2004). Kandinsky speaks of wanting to “set the soul vibrating”; cf. Kandinsky, Das Geistige, 65. The artists of Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter maintained links and collaborated, for example, on The Blaue Reiter Almanac and in exhibitions. 55 The second volume, Alt-Niederländische Malerei, leads out of the first and into the third in terms of content. Alongside an overview of current scholarship, Heidrich demarcates Early Netherlandish from Early German painting and prepares the ground for the discussion of Flemish painting. 56 This book could only have been written in such a style before the outbreak of the First World War, after which the reality of war and its horrors rapidly became apparent. On the enthusiasm for war shown by various social groups, see Horst Schichtel, “Kommunikationsweisen und Erwartungen der ‘bewegten Jugend’ am Vorabend des ersten Weltkrieges,” in Der Erste Weltkrieg als Kommunikationsereignis, ed. Siegfried Quandt (Giessen: Justus-LiebigUniversität, 1993), 31–44; Thomas Rohkrämer, “August 1914—Kriegsmentalität und ihre Voraussetzungen,” in Der Erste Weltkrieg: Wirkung, Wahrnehmung, Analyse, ed. Wolfgang Michalka (Munich: Piper, 1994), 759–77; and Jost Düffler, “Kriegserwartung und Kriegsbild in Deutschland vor 1914,” ibid., 778–98. 57 Heidrich, Vlaemische Malerei, 11 [cited here and below from the translation by Kenneth McKerrow in this volume, unless otherwise noted. Transl.]. In Zur Sammlung der Geister of 1913 (published by Diederichs) the Jena Professor of Philosophy Rudolf Eucken declared an “intellectual state of war,” and in 1914 invoked “the moral forces of war” in his publication Die sittlichen Kräfte des Krieges. See Peter Hoeres, “Krieg der Philosophen.” Die deutsche und die britische Philosophie im Ersten Weltkrieg (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004); Kurt Flasch, Die geistige Mobilmachung: Die deutschen Intellektuellen und der Erste Weltkrieg (Berlin: Fest, 2000); and Stephan Fuchs, “Vom Segen des Krieges.” Katholische Gebildete im Ersten Weltkrieg. Eine Studie zur Kriegsdeutung im akademischen Katholizismus (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004). 58 On the enthusiasm for war among the intellectual elite, cf. Wolfgang J. Mommsen, “Die deutschen kulturellen Eliten im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Kultur und Krieg: Die Rolle der Intellektuellen, Künstler und Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg, ed. Wolfgang J. Mommsen (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996), 7. The notion of the glorification of life through a sacrificial death is the central motif of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which premiered in May 1913. Many artists went enthusiastically off to war, including Franz Marc, Otto Dix, George Grosz and Max Beckmann. Cf. Hans Jürgen Papies, “‘Ich habe diesen Krieg längst in mir gehabt.’ Selbstzeugnisse bildender Künstler,” in Die letzten Tage der Menschheit. Bilder des Ersten Weltkrieges, exh. cat. (Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 1994), 85–106; and Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, “War, Apocalypse and the ‘Purification of the World,’” in The Romantic Spirit in German Art 1790–1990, exh. cat., ed. K. Hartley (Edinburgh: Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 1994),

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197–205. See also Thomas Mann, “Gedanken im Kriege” (1914), in Politische Reden und Schriften (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1968), 9: “How could the soldier in the artist not praise God for the collapse of a peacetime world that he was sick of […]. What we felt was purification, liberation and an enormous hope.” 59 Heidrich, Vlaemische Malerei, 11. 60 Paraphrased for this English translation from Heidrich, Vlaemische Malerei, 62; see also the discussion on Rubens’s Het Pelsken below. 61 See the anthology by Best, Expressionismus. 62 The concept of the cultural nation (Kulturnation) was central to the Ideen von 1914, a nationalistic, ideological strand of thinking in Germany at the start of WW1, and was closely bound up with the much-discussed idea of a German Sonderweg (special path). See Mommsen, Kultur und Krieg; Flasch, Mobilmachung; and Steffen Bruendel, Volksgemeinschaft oder Volksstaat: Die “Ideen von 1914” und die Neuordnung Deutschlands im Ersten Weltkrieg (Berlin: Akademie, 2003). Another concept invoked in this same discussion was völkisch (from das Volk, the people), a term with “populist”, “national” and “racial” connotations. See Uwe Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich: Sprache—Rasse—Religion (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 2001); and Uwe Puschner and G. Ulrich Großmann, eds., Völkisch und National: Zur Aktualität alter Denkmuster im 21. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 2009). See also note 66. 63 Mommsen, Kultur und Krieg; Flasch, Mobilmachung; Bruendel, Volksgemeinschaft. 64 Emancipation from the rigid specifications of the academies, of social life, etc. was precisely what contemporary young artists were striving for, including within the framework of the Lebensreform movement. Heidrich’s appraisal differs distinctly from that of Max Dvořák, “Über die geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen des niederländischen Romanismus” [1920], in Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte: Studien zur abendländischen Kunstentwicklung (Munich: R. Piper, 1924), 205–15. 65 Heidrich, Vlaemische Malerei, 4. 66 Ibid. Here it becomes very clear that Heidrich means a cultural nation, that is, a community united by language, traditions, religions and other cultural values. 67 Dürer served as a model for this conception of artistic leadership. See Anja Grebe, “‘Dürer als Führer.’ Zur Instrumentalisierung Albrecht Dürers in völkischen Kreisen,” in Puschner/Großmann, Völkisch, 379–99. For the prominence and interpretation of Dürer prints in the publications of the day, see Thomas Noll, “Sinnbild und Erzählung. Zur Ikonographie des Krieges in den Zeitschriften Illustrationen 1914 bis 1918,” in Die letzten Tage, 259–72. 68 Heidrich, Vlaemische Malerei, 4. 69 Perceiving themselves in the same role and confronted with the same challenge were the young literati and artists who were given a forum and encouragement by influential intellectuals such as Walden, publisher of Der Sturm, and Ferdinand Avenarius, founder of Der Kunstwart. Cf. Noll, “Sinnbild.”

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70 Heidrich, Vlaemische Malerei, 17 [trans. KW]. In Über das Geistige in der Kunst, Kandinsky wrote of “the point of departure from which painting, with the help of the means at its disposal, will become art in the abstract sense, and will eventually achieve purely pictorial composition. The means at its disposal to achieve this form of composition are as follows: 1. Color. 2. Form.” [On the Spiritual in Art (1912), trans. Peter Vergo; in Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, ed. Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo (New york and Paris: Da Capo Press, 1994), 162.] 71 Kandinsky, Über das Geistige in der Kunst, 65–8; Anita Beloubek-Hammer, “Kirchners ‘Ekstatisches Zeichnen,’” in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Erstes Sehen, 14–19. 72 Heidrich, Vlaemische Malerei, 17 [trans. KW]. 73 Heidrich, Vlaemische Malerei, 56. 74 Ibid. 75 Heidrich thus neglected the meaning, and implied that this achievement of form was the painter’s goal. 76 Diana Ecker and Zita A. Pataki, “Phantasie im Pelz—Bemerkungen zu Rubens’ Het Pelsken,” in Rubens im Blick: Ausgewählte Werke unter Re-vision, ed. Eveliina Juntunen (Stuttgart: IbidemVerlag, 2007), 109–36. 77 Heidrich, Vlaemische Malerei, 62. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid., 65. 80 Ibid., 64. 81 Ibid., 65. 82 Ibid., 35 [trans. KW]; author’s italics. 83 See note 58. 84 Hubert Locher, ed., Kunstgeschichte im 20. Jahrhundert: Eine kommentierte Anthologie (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 2007), 204. 85 Ibid.

6 From Flemish Painting (1913)* Ernst Heidrich

A time of dire struggle and upheaval in which all conditions and forms were completely redefined, including those of artistic life, both separates and connects the two great periods of Netherlandish painting said to be “creative” in a deeper sense. The developments of the sixteenth century included the demise of the world to which the art of Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden belonged, that [still] medieval world of the Burgundian monarchy, the one and universal Church, late-Gothic altarpieces and the art of portraiture. This period of downfall also saw the rise of the forms of exterior appearance, intellectual life and artistic production that the age of Rubens and Rembrandt chose to freely express the infinite richness of their worldview. Much was irrevocably lost over the course of this century of great iconoclasm. It would be too easy to identify the significance of the whole development of the Netherlandish “Renaissance” in the continuously progressing downfall of creative ability in late-Gothic Netherlandish painting, and to assert that this led to the loss of everything that the fifteenth century had possessed. The objective seriousness and sensual freshness of perspective, skill in drawing and beauty of color—now everywhere eclipsed by an inner vacuousness and mere mannerism; this can be observed in the genre of great history painting, in which an Italianizing hybrid style impertinently imposes itself. However, behind all destruction, there remains the positive cultural work that was accomplished during this century, itself characterized by a thorough “reformation,” which extended even to artistic life. In every respect, this reformation laid the foundation for the entire further development of both intrinsically related [stammverwandten] nations. Only one side of a development that exerted itself powerfully in all areas comes to light in Netherlandish Romanism, and this may lead some to condemn it as a false path that successfully tempted the *

Ernst Heidrich, Vlaemische Malerei (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1913), 1–13; 55–65.

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Romanists; although the mere mention of the work of an artist such as Rubens should be sufficient to deflate any such judgment. But even without any such mention, considering the state of things at that time, it was necessary to engage with the powers that dominated the age—both those that dominated the Italian Renaissance and the global Spanish monarchy—if the national spirit was to achieve true freedom and self-determination, which represented a truly different situation, one that formed a clear and accepted goal and was the ultimate result of these struggles. No particularly clever and lengthy demonstrations are necessary to account for the circumstance that late-Gothic Netherlandish painting too, in the age of Massys and Mabuse, turned to the art of the Italian Renaissance. The mere impression was decisive—the impression that Italian art already possessed to the greatest degree that which [Netherlandish artists] were searching for, and which they needed to complete their own development; this meant that the importance of deeper distinctions in artistic temperament was eclipsed by the general value of the artistic accomplishments of the foreign manner of painting. The paths that led northern artists to Italy were very different in each case. An artist such as Massys was inclined toward Leonardo, the painter of feminine grace and beauty, while one such as Dürer felt himself attracted to the austere, masculine art of Mantegna and Pollaiolo, while only feeling inclined toward Leonardo’s theoretical efforts. Regardless of the nature of the relationship to Italian painting and the decisive motivating factors, everywhere the same process of personal self-determination can be observed, which itself led to the attempt to assimilate the foreign forms of thought; everywhere also, the will to move one’s own development forward and the conviction that this was [actually] happening was decisive. The discovery of a new world, the recognition of previously unknown connections and general principles, the development of new representational and expressive possibilities, and concomitantly, the acquisition of new and powerful means by which to artistically dominate and re-poeticize reality—and finally, the awareness that artistic spirit enjoyed unconditional superiority over any material it might employ. It was basically in this sense that the first Romanists understood their “subjection” to the art of the Italian Renaissance. Despite all poverty of perception and inner immaturity, rightly attributed at least to the true “Mannerists” of the sixteenth century, these qualities cannot change the impression of the lively flow of time underlying them. This flux saw both personality and nation breaking out into the free expanse of modern consciousness, the final overcoming of intellectual and spiritual attachment to the Middle Ages. Sixteenth-century Netherlandish Romanism is also a living part of the history of Netherlandish painting: perhaps one of the most unfortunate, but definitely one of the most important. At issue is not only conscious study, [which was] completely new to the Netherlandish painting of the outgoing Middle Ages and which the

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Romanists applied to certain general formal problems, principally the representation of the human figure. After the downfall of the medieval world order—and this comprises the Renaissance’s significance for world history— the Renaissance’s concept of culture came to form the foundation of Western culture’s new collective consciousness, which extended beyond all divisions among nations and religious denominations. Once the individual spirit was finally emancipated, a thoroughly modern ideal of humanity was freely and consciously instituted, replacing the historically determined, authoritarian yoke placed by the cultural power of the Church on the Romanist-Germanic nations that were striving upward with all the vigor of youth. To contribute to the ever more perfect realization and the continuously progressive deepening of this ideal of humanity was regarded as the ultimate purpose of the collective cultural work performed by everyone. The demand that new life be breathed into ancient humanity can only make the program designed for this movement appear more significant and rich, perceptible and comprehensible. What previously had been the affair of the Italian nation now became a concern shared by all nations: to discover the foundations on which all of Western culture’s intellectual achievements rest, have invariably rested and will continue to rest, and to incorporate these foundations into the general consciousness in order to achieve complete freedom. It could now well seem that the general rebirth (Renaissance) of ancient times represented a tyrant of a new order and the violation of the particular spirit of the German nations. The Netherlandish Romanism of the sixteenth century would seem to support this view: its creations are, all in all, without value in themselves— their importance derives exclusively from the circumstance that these artists worked not for themselves, but rather for the future, for the realization of the ideal of a new, more liberated art. They could hardly have thought otherwise than that it was only possible to find their path with the help of imitation— more or less external, constrained—of the foreign art. Their goal, however, lay not exclusively in imitation, but Netherlandish painters learned to think large and freely, like those in ancient times and the Italy of the Renaissance. Certainly, it was not possible for the Romanists to feel and act “nationally” in the sense applicable to the seventeenth century—the nations were only just in the act of becoming, and were involved in the most violent restructuring of their very selves. It is certain also that the opposition between the lively and creative painting of the seventeenth century and the constrained, calculating and superficially imitative art of the Romanists, that is, of the national style as opposed to the international manner, will remain decisive in the [viewer’s] immediate impression [of these two directions]. However, it becomes clear enough in the case of the Netherlandish Romanism of the sixteenth century that the movement that seemed suited like no other to destroy the nation’s feeling of identity actually gave rise for the first time to a clear and decisive self-consciousness. It gave these artists their own foothold

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and filled them with pride, which they openly exhibited. They were proud that they had dared to compete with the art of the Italian High Renaissance on its own territory, and no one emphasized more strongly than they that, despite everything, Netherlandish painting had its own meaning unto itself and could hold its own alongside Italian art. Of course, it was self-evident to all those artists, including those of such stature as Rubens and Rembrandt, that the beginnings of the new painting, with which they felt themselves bound in the closest form of community, lay in High Renaissance Italy, the greatness of which appeared to be due to the rehabilitation of classical antiquity. It was consistent with the essential conception of the free and independently creative personality that they sought their models where they believed they would find their closest spiritual and artistic relatives. However, strong national pride, which constitutes the actual motive force behind this seemingly non-national movement, can perhaps be seen nowhere better than in the universalizing perspective that Karel van Mander, one of the three “academics” of Haarlem, conferred on his great work of history, which was modeled on Vasari’s example. In that work, the Netherlandish-German masters, from the van Eyck brothers to painters who were contemporaries of van Mander, form the third major and distinct group of artists, in addition to the mythical figures of antiquity and Vasari’s heroes. At that time, and in accordance with the actual conditions then prevailing, the separation into nations was not complete; van Mander’s conception of history was, therefore, much more based on the internally coherent development undergone by the countries forming the Netherlandish-German cultural group during the late Gothic period, as distinct from the cultural group of the Renaissance. However, even in this form, still indeterminate in many respects and with shortcomings in its execution, this first draft of a general history of art—if not organized according to nations, at least according to national groups— appears more true and comprehensive in the sense of a universal conception of history than Vasari and his Italian successors could ever have aimed for or achieved. It is this image of history, inserted into the gravely colossal edifice of the great compendium of painters, that crossed over into the new era of the seventeenth century as the final legacy of Romanist eclecticism. Although somewhat contradictory, the painting of the Burgundian Netherlands was carried toward its inner dissolution—not by inner weakness, but rather by the monstrous drive to expand that gripped the entire nation. Insofar as this was the case, the pioneers of the Romanist ideal of art came to occupy the premier position in the developmental process of the new national painting. Despite all their shortcomings—since they were a very earth-bound and fallible people, and were incomplete as artists—in the eyes of the time, they became the spiritual leaders and heroes of the nation. These admirers and imitators of the foreign art represented the living pride of the nation to other countries: its drive to attain equal stature and full equality

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among the foreign powers, its energetic striving for education, and its appeal to actively collaborate in the general cultural of the time. They were the “bringers of light” and “emancipators” of Netherlandish painting. Over the course of these struggles for its inner renewal, the nation itself became something different than what it had been. It was only because of the inner transformation occasioned by its contact with the spirit of the Renaissance, and over the course of the religious and political struggles of the same period, that the spiritual and, one is tempted to say, the physical physiognomies of both nations became apparent in the form in which we are generally used to regarding them, and that only tentatively became visible during the age of old Netherlandish painting: namely, that broad, coarse and lively manner that culminates so magnificently in the art of Rubens and Frans Hals. To return to our point of departure: the reformation of artistic life brought to completion by the Romanists, with all its great force, necessarily belongs to the spiritual liberation of the two nations, which yet remained bound to one another. Finally, it is not the least of the Romanists’ accomplishments that [in their time] painting began to take an active part in the inner transformation of life in general—whether accompanying that transformation in step, bringing up the rear, or taking the vanguard. And so, it finally happened with triumphant force that the creative assets of both nations, which at the end of the war stood divorced, rose anew; over the efforts of many decades to achieve new content and new forms, and to assimilate and overcome even the most contradictory things, those assets had been enriched and clarified at their core, rather than exhausted. Though one of the most spectacular and liberated products of the German spirit, it was not only the art of Rubens for which the reception of the Italian Renaissance was a necessary condition precedent. Only one artist more deeply comprehended, or more purely solved, the problem raised by the sixteenth-century Mannerists, which they themselves only half understood and whose attempts to solve it were limited to the purely formal: namely, the permeation of their own art to the core by the spiritual content and formal culture of the Italian Renaissance that occurred in order to achieve a more rich education, and more complete independence, of the artistic spirit. That artist was Rembrandt. In general, it is true that Flemish and Dutch national painting of the seventeenth century, the great independence of its development notwithstanding, is still properly categorized in that age of Western painting that begins with the likes of Leonardo and Titian, Raphael and Michelangelo—from the first appearance of the Romanists to the present, Flemish and Dutch painting has been intimately bound up with Italian painting. However, to a large extent it is also true, particularly of the great, leading personalities, that their work takes up from the place where artists such as Leonardo and Titian, Tintoretto and Caravaggio, stood before them—in the same manner that, in the general history of the philosophical spirit, a figure such as Spinoza takes up from

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one such as Giordano Bruno. Seen from the general perspective of historical development, it is the humanity of the Renaissance that culminates in the figures of Rubens and Rembrandt, though this is true of each in a very different way. The process of this culmination was characterized by the most unique disassociation and recombination of tonalities, and the internalization— which was likely begun as early as the Italian Renaissance—of the original conception; this latter development must be regarded as absolutely essential even for the Renaissance itself, but it appears completely new during the time of Rubens and Rembrandt, due to its [increased] strength. From that time forward, the universality of education, and the height of humanity which characterize this ideal of “Humanity,” served only to increase the proportion of that which is human, writ large, and to increase the inner wealth of the personality. The most difficult question of how the cultural conception of the Renaissance, which was essentially formal in nature, could be reconciled with the far greater extent to which content played a rich and deep role in the life of the personality within the German Reformation has never been more purely solved than in the art of the late Rembrandt. The renewal of biblical and classical antiquity—the two main opposing poles between which the spiritual world of the sixteenth century oscillated—flow together to form a unity that is revealed to have only one common significance: a humanity filled with the deepest interiority, in harmonious balance. Even here, in the history of the artistic spirit, one will likely find that the great Dutch artists of the seventeenth century formally continued and brought to culmination the artistic ideas of the Renaissance in a more complete and original way, and one that was more true to the original intention, than happened even in Italy. Their art thus appears as nothing less than the most liberated and most properly unique expression of the individual spirit of each nation, and as the factor that brought both to a higher consciousness of themselves. The free recognition and continuation of the valuable cultural work done by the Renaissance ultimately resulted in the inner triumph of both nations. … The old opposition between late Gothic and Renaissance continued to exert its effect beyond the century of Romanism, yet this opposition began to take on a new guise. Also, the spirit of the older Netherlandish painting of the Burgundian period continues to live, uninterrupted, in the national Flemish and Dutch painting of the seventeenth century, only at a higher level of consciousness and general culture. What began to distinguish itself in earlier times as a thoroughly unique global feeling for the individual and the whole appeared during the seventeenth century as a clearly complete worldview encompassing both personality and nation. Not that this one particular manifestation of this spirit, which is always the same yet always in flux, would be “more true” than others. It is not possible to articulate certain aspects of the “Netherlandish” essence more truly, deeply and movingly than in the works of a painter such as Jan van Eyck. yet, how much freer and

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human does seventeenth-century painting appear? And how much clearer and established is the image of the world that it brought forth, after both nations had emerged from the century of the great wars of liberation! The existence of a clearly ordered series of image-tasks, each equal to the other, which allows the painter to create within each a microcosm—a circumscribed but nevertheless self-sufficient whole—is complemented by a deeper freedom of the artistic spirit, achieved because individuals and the nation had absorbed, recognized and been in awe of antiquity’s and the Italian Renaissance’s conception of the human and the image, yet saw themselves as distinct. To cite only the most important analogy regarding life in general: in as much as the spiritual freedom of the more recent centuries rests on the simple fact of the schism within the Church and the coexistence of different denominations, this is fully canceled out by the circumstance that each demanded not only equal status with the others, but also insisted that it alone was universally valid. The Church, the state itself—in a sense unknown to the Middle Ages—carries and determines the free acclamation of the personality, as well as the world in which it lives, and without which it could not exist. Knowledge of self and of things confers on humans a new power that they never possessed before, and it is this consciousness of the absolute sovereignty of the individual spirit—experienced clearly and enjoyed consciously for the first time—that forms the basis of all the creations of the Baroque period, including Netherlandish painting. … Everywhere the personality attempted to master the new ideas of the age, those of the Italian Renaissance as much as the German Reformation, and attempted to take possession of both artistic and religious life in a completely new, free and independent way. Everywhere the break that would eventually lead to war was prepared by the powerful and ascendant self-conception of the nations and by the continuously growing opposition to Spanish tyranny. However, a closer look immediately reveals how much more South Netherlandish painting, with its natural inclination and talent (qualities which it already possessed in great measure during the fifteenth century), is related to Italian art. One sees too, how much better and completely South Netherlandish painting is able to adopt the unique intentions and beauty of this art. The panel by Willem Key, the first in our series of illustrations,1 is also related to the line of South Netherlandish Romanism, from which the art of Rubens developed. This relation consists in the tasteful and seemingly effortless, if also essentially exterior, balancing of Key’s own conception of the image with the foreign formal language; and further, in its attractive and “beautiful,” if essentially empty, overall effect. But it was the war that first heralded the decision. We will explore later how, even during the war, Antwerp painting began to consolidate into the forms that were decisive for its later blossoming during the age of Rubens, and which differentiate it from seventeenth-century Dutch painting. These also include the preconditions without which this development would be inconceivable, namely the violent

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divorce of the [two] inherently related [peoples], the violent transformation of ecclesiastical and social relations, and the victory of Spain. Everyone knows of the dreadful number of victims that finally forced the southern Netherlands to recognize Spanish dominion. However, this process was also characterized by a combination of free acceptance by a part of the population and violent subjugation of the other. In particular, Antwerp, which had accepted the Lutheran Reformation while still part of the Netherlands, resisted until the very end: it was most affected by the fury of the war, and the extermination of the Protestant faith went hand in hand with the destruction of the economic blossoming of what was once a western European metropolis. This was the situation from which the art of Rubens arose, from the rubble of his native city. The victory of the Counter-Reformation, the victory of the foreign power, Spain, the violent separation of the southern provinces from the northern ones—in the art of Rubens, all destruction is solely a new means to attain freedom. In this art, if anywhere, the “Germanic” character of Flemish painting comes to the fore at its most pure and powerful; the assimilation of the nation into the Romanist cultural sphere meant that the nation could finally breathe a sigh of relief within an infinite expanse. … Rubens[:] the last and greatest of the Romanists, the person who marked the inception of national Flemish painting in the seventeenth century and appeared to radiate all the liveliness unfolding in that time. It remains a major feature of artistic development in this period that artistic fantasy appeared to go farther, increasingly freely and powerfully, while attempting to attain new content and new forms of painterly thinking; all this in order to finally achieve—in one last, dramatic intensification—the sovereignty of artistic spirit visible in the work of Rubens. … ***

The importance of Rubens’s long and intense involvement with this series of paintings [the Medici Cycle] for tracing the development of his artistic perspectives cannot be overestimated.2 It is truly here, in these court history paintings, that the feeling for life that informs the work of Rubens’s last decade began. Their unique tonality first appears here, along with the ability to unite elements that appear highly heterogeneous in a lively, artistic perspective, which prepared the way for the unrestricted diversity that is one of the most significant characteristics of Rubens’s later art. Behold how artistic fantasy now moves completely unconstrained in all conceivable spheres of subject matter! Although the universality that appears as part of his natural, personal talent has its origins in much earlier times, it is only after his work on the Medici Cycle that the feeling of the artistic spirit’s absolute freedom developed, observable in all pictorial content, genres and forms. In this moment, the art of Titian attained a wholly new meaning for Rubens: only now could he truly understand it.

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This influence is apparent as early as the large altar in the Church of St. Augustine [Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints] (see Figure 5.2),3 which seems like a rich and brilliant reformulation of the composition Titian employed in the Pesaro Madonna altar painting. Even in this work, we sense that a progressive organic development gradually led the artist to this result. We can see how Rubens reproduced the combination of figures and large architectural elements in the altar paintings of the Jesuit church, namely those of St. Roch and St. Bavo.4 Even as early as the latter work, in which the groups are placed in two stories, one atop the other, the unity of movement was closely connected to the beautiful lightness of the entire composition. When one now considers that in the intervening period, Rubens had employed compositional ideas such as those in the Arrival of Maria de Medici at Marseille, the composition used in the Church of St. Augustine’s altar appears as a continuation of the artistic strivings of the previous years and, in a sense, to complete them. The entire richness of the means used in the Baroque to produce great effect unfolds within this work, yet everything that could appear heavy, violent and oppressive has gone, leaving only the free and joyful harmony of the whole. The comparison of both sketches [for the St. Augustine altarpiece] demonstrates how the artist consistently attempted to achieve one effect in particular: one single, upward-rising movement that dominates the entire composition. None of the earlier altar compositions painted by the artist have this clear expansiveness and wonderful lightness (although this one features more figures than any other) and in no other altar do we hear this pleasantly rising melody. … Likely the most important outcome of the diplomatic journeys Rubens made in this decade was that he was again exposed to the art of Titian at this stage of his artistic development. … Not only did Rubens freely reinterpret Titian’s paintings based on the copies he had made, such as The Feast of Venus with dancing putti in the Vienna gallery, but some of his most significant works, such as The [Little] Fur, seem inspired by Titian’s example.5 The art of Titian is present as a productive force in everything that Rubens produced in the final decade of his life, yet in a manner that precludes any discussion of dependency. Rubens achieved full consciousness of the inner congeniality he shared with Titian’s artistic personality and, for Rubens, this insight into the essence of that foreign art was tantamount to recognizing his own essence and his own artistic intentions. … His art now appears incomparably freer, lighter and more natural—the first great wave of the authentic Baroque spirit crested in an artist such as Rubens, just as it did everywhere in all areas of life, toward the end of the third decade of the seventeenth century. A new phase began, including a new phase of Netherlandish Baroque painting. … Of the altars painted in Rubens’s later period, two mark the beginning of the last decade of his production: the Last Supper (Figure 6.1) and St. Ildefonso.

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6.1 Peter Paul Rubens, The Last Supper (1630–32), oil on canvas, 304 × 250 cm. Pinacoteca de Brera, Milan

How characteristic is it then of the conception of the scene in the artist’s Last Supper that there is hardly a better analogy among his works than The Arrest of Samson? In both paintings, the scene is illuminated by a turbulent dusk light and the powerful figures move with forceful urgency; in one, the subject is the Binding of the Giant, while in the other it is the Transfiguration of Christ. We know that Rubens was deeply moved by the decisive opposition between the serious posture and freely interpreted scale of Christ on one hand and the turbulence of his disciples on the other.

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We know too that he was deeply fascinated by the clarity with which Leonardo had kept both separate. Rubens himself forewent this distinction, and any effort to identify the ethical significance of the event depicted would be in vain; true to his whole nature and to the intellectual and artistic needs of the time, he seeks to capture only the sensible and felt aspects of the scenes. yet now he seeks to employ all resources available to him to produce the grave and passionately inflamed mood that has overcome everyone, and from which the Transfiguration of Christ emerges, bright and luminous, constituting the common base tonality of the whole. Previously, we recalled the scene of the Arrest of Samson, which itself may call to the viewer’s mind Rubens’s lion-hunting paintings; it is obvious that this aspect of Leonardo’s art, which Rubens took as his point of departure, is more closely related to our Flemish baroque painter than to any others who found their highest vehicle of expression in the form of Christ. It is also self-evident that both the constellation of figures from which Rubens developed the composition of the Last Supper and the compositional concept itself would be inconceivable without the art of Caravaggio, whose influence on Rubens’s development is prominent for the last time around the period that he painted the Last Supper. yet even in this work, the fire that dwells in these forms, and the beauty which is as magical as it is liberating, are wholly Rubens’s own. … The liberated, softly luminous manner of painting and the free way the movements of the figures and those of the light-filled space flow into one another balance out the brutal effect of the tightly packed masses of figures. Rubens painted the Saint Ildefonso altarpiece around the same time as the Last Supper, and both are characterized by equally beautiful light effects that rise to the heights of magnificence.6 An explanation is hardly necessary—the historical character of this work and its subject matter appear to be all that is necessary for an artistic and human interpretation of the Madonna so free and rich that it never fails to captivate the modern viewer as well. The High Altar of the Church of St. Augustine was produced a few years earlier. The heightened ease with which Rubens now unfolds a majestic richness on both the main panel and on the wings (which bear donor images of the Archduke and Infanta) makes the [Ildefonso] altar appear that much more endearing and human. In this free and liberated composition, a few figures are interpreted with such freedom and completeness of depiction that viewers feel consistently as if they could never look at these forms long enough, despite the unity of the whole. It is as though life offered its treasures to the 50-year-old Rubens more easily and voluntarily than ever before; his sentiment of the inner good and limitless largesse of personality coalesces with the sensible beauty of the painting to form a harmony of inner liberating power. In this last decade [of Rubens’s life] too, an extraordinary number of altars were produced by his workshop. The impression they produce, however, is not so much one of overly packed fullness, as it was in the time when Rubens

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6.2 Peter Paul Rubens, Massacre of the Innocents (1637), oil on wood, 198.5 × 302.2 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesammlungen, Munich

collaborated with van Dyck, but rather one of limitless lightness, a quality with which the artist implemented the compositional ideas that arose within him. … Finally, there is the last and most beautiful of these paintings executed by Rubens’s own hand, namely the scene of the Massacre of the Innocents (Figure 6.2). Here we see a great mass of gore and disgust of all kinds, yet represented with magnificent colors, lending the scene a sort of transfiguring appeal, and executed with the type of pathos that is a full exhalation of the passions, in which it is not that which is innerly broken about the soul, but rather the increased, enflamed unity of all the soul’s powers that so captivatingly enraptures the viewer. It is simply not possible to come to terms with this conception of the tragic aspects of life. It will always captivate even those who are accustomed and compelled to view things differently, if they would but give their sensibility free reign. In this way, it silences every objection. It is not enough to say merely that this conception is drawn from the spiritual world of post-Counter-Reformation Catholicism, though this does form the ground from which it grew and without which it could not be conceived, since the way Rubens conceived this scene is directly rooted in his specific historical experience. But in this case as elsewhere, that which is non-historical, timeless and universally human determines the value of the artistic creation; moreover,

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Rubens’s elementary worldview, as expressed in these, his greatest and most poetic tragedies, validates their truth and timelessness. The deep feeling of a clash between humanity and fate, all the ceaseless babble of reality, is drowned out by the full feeling for life which, perpetually welling up as a unity, cannot be destroyed. This inner experience, which as such appears inviolable, confers on Rubens’s art its power, enthusiasm and inner sanctity. … The mythological paintings from the last part of Rubens’s life focus on the figure of Helena Fourment. These paintings are foreshadowed by The [Little] Fur, which acts as an exemplar for the conception of female beauty as Rubens then understood it (Figure 6.3). The significance of this and other related works is that in them, life itself overcomes the Italianizing concept of “form.” The artist’s older mythological paintings also have their own particular attraction, namely the handling of the skin tones. The manner in which he painted the figures and sought to render the female body at that time, while schematic and hard as glass, is also sophisticated and reminiscent of enamel. In his later years, schematic suggestion yielded fully to the observation of reality, with its richness of tones and softness of fabric. In the formation and motion of the figure, all traces of the statuesque disappear and, in these paintings, it becomes impossible to judge the “beauty” of these figures from black and white illustrations. That which is individual, transitory and contingent about the figure comes to possess unity and ideality. The one indivisible life force pulsating in the body is perceived and, on a surface that is lit from within and glows with life, that life is transfigured, becoming an impression of force and beauty sensible to the eye. The free play of atmospheric tones has a role in this too. Rubens’s later mythological paintings exhibit the freest application of what we found in the early [Perseus Freeing] Andromeda [c. 1622]: the figure appears to be surrounded by air, with those cool bluish and greenish tones that are everywhere mixed with subdued warm tones so that, in both cases, this indissoluble mixture allows the inner unity of the human figure, together with the surrounding nature, to accede to a vision that goes beyond the mere illustration of reality. This results in completely different types of paintings, such as the Judgment of Paris [c. 1636]. In addition to this light, expansive structure, which is only one of Rubens’s mature modes of working, stands another, which can be observed in the second Andromeda painting in the Berliner Galerie [c. 1638], painted during Rubens’s later years. This painting is the counterpart of Rubens’s representation of St. Sebastian [c. 1618] in the same collection. The same movement, which fades into pained pathos, is observable, and the conception of the body [in both paintings] is also characterized by an interior relation. yet when standing in front of the paintings, these similarities disappear—one would hardly think of similarities in light of the opposition between the heavy and severe modeling in the earlier case, and the magically illuminated beauty of the figure in the other.

6.3 Peter Paul Rubens, Helena Fourment in a Fur Wrap (Little Fur) (1636–38), oil on canvas, 176 × 83 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

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How different is this melting glance and the liberating gesture of the dolefully raised arm [in the Andromeda]. Nature itself, which earlier remained in dull bondage like the person chained to her, now appears to chime in with an emotion that seeks dissolution in the freedom of infinity. This same expression—an ecstatic gaze—appears in the contemporaneous painting St. Cecilia [1639–40], which is also a representation of Helena Fourment, who in both cases constitutes the exemplar for the artist’s work. How little emphasis is placed on the object—of delight in one case, and of pain in the other! The indeterminately sweeping perception goes far beyond being bound to the illustration of a concept. The putti make the figure seem closer than the world of sacred stories depicted in The Garden of Love [1633–34]. This is the time in which “free” subject matter flows into the art of Rubens. The yoking of artistic fantasy to a particular subject matter, which had been established in the age of Romanism, lost all relevance. It was still necessary to draw borders between the individual pictorial genres as they were in the sixteenth century, yet not in order to restrict the creative personality, but rather to give it the freedom to penetrate the world of sensible and spiritual experience from various points. We have already made reference to the theme of the society picture, which in Rubens’s hands received new life. What sociability! These are the same noble circles in which the artist moved and for which his work was intended—and how unfettered does this life seem now, full of lust for life, full of charm and a beauty that is majestic, lyrical and at the same time of an earthy sensuality. It is an aristocratic culture that liberates and augments individuals’ feeling for life rather than restricting it. The most important cultural function of Rubens’s art is to enunciate the life character [Lebensstimmung] of that “noble” society, which is none other than that of the Renaissance, to spur it on in ever new ways and to preserve it for consciousness in an idealized form. The ideal of “humanity” involves the notion of openness to all sources of life. In addition to paintings such as the Judgment of Paris, there is the earthy and gay burlesque in the painting of Susanna and the Elders [1636–40]—how different are the accents compared to the early work of the artist. And in addition to the conversation à la mode of the Garden of Love, there is the jubilant and boisterous Farmer Dance [Dance of the Villagers, c. 1636]. These paintings in the Prado and Louvre are bacchanals of a wholly new variety, with a passion that seems to drive the figures as if in a frenzy. The power of the freely blustering motion that Rubens is able to produce in the mythological paintings of this period (of which his final hunting paintings are a dazzling example, much different from the earlier works) is now communicated to these figures born of the earth and, as the chain of dancing figures races through the landscape, the ground itself seems to undulate. What can be seen in a work such as this is again the life of elementary natural forces, in a new symbolic form. No one but Rubens has painted similar pictures of

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6.4 Peter Paul Rubens, Peasants Returning from the Fields (c. 1640), oil on canvas, 121 × 194 cm. Palazzo Pitti, Florence

farmers and, since the border with the mythological genre has been erased, the heroization of genre painting constitutes the significance of this last turn in Rubens’s figurative history painting. It seems that when Rubens’s art turned to landscape—precisely when it was free to express itself in any way—this was due to an inner necessity. … Rubens’s [late] landscapes exhibit a free and poetic, lofty intermingling of tones, where the lines, forms and colors are emphasized and culminate in a powerful harmony of life. The earlier landscapes are, if not simpler, then more unitary or straightforward, and they have something of the fragrance of great distance about them. This produces feelings of yearning in the viewer, who feels irresistibly pulled into a free infinity of life that has now been made sensible. Even the grandiose painting The Great Flood in the Vienna Gallery,7 which was painted around the cusp of the second to the third decade, with its superabundance of figures and streams of movement that confront the viewer, is characteristic of the old conception visible in the great altars produced during the period of his collaboration with Anton van Dyck. Although formally similar, the heroic landscape of the Pitti Palace [Ulysses and Nausicaa on the Island of the Phaeacians, c. 1627] could not be more different: how lightly does this one powerful movement rise, and how greatly does one’s gaze lose itself in the wonderfully effulgent depth! Rubens’s later landscapes are also filled with a great richness of

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individual forms. The eye perpetually believes that it finds new worlds in this universe, which is expanding into infinity, but each form meshes so easily with the others that nothing hems the freedom that is characteristic of the view of the whole. In terms of color, the artist employed the warm tones that we mentioned, which play into the damp and fresh coolness of nature; and it is at least a related circumstance that Rubens appears to have been especially attracted to light phenomena of an unusual and magnificent sort. Sunsets of the greatest beauty, the appearance of the rainbow—the limitedness of the physical world disappears amidst the perception of the cosmic relationships that brilliantly encircle the earth. Any person who enters into the life of nature through his sensibility belongs to these landscapes by Rubens—whether this is through the combination of an external association with the feeling of a contest between light and dark, which together produce one’s mental image of the tournament that enlivens the castle landscape in the Louvre [Tournament in Front of Castle Steen, 1635– 37], or in [the feeling] that Nature appears to be ensouled in a “sentimental” sense by the human figure, as in the pastoral landscape with the rainbow [Landscape with Rainbow, 1630–35]. Perhaps the most beautiful and perfect harmony is in the pastoral landscape in the Pitti Palace (Figure 6.4). The most straightforward reality is transfigured into an image of the lifecreating power of the universe, which reverberates with the harmonious song of the spheres. Of the artist’s great history paintings, only one element has remained in these landscapes: the vastness of feeling. Translated by Kenneth McKerrow

notes 1 The first image reproduced in the original text was Willem Key’s Lamentation of Christ (mid-sixteenth century), in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. [Ed.] 2 In this last section, Heidrich makes references to multiple paintings by Rubens that were illustrated in the original text but cannot all be reproduced in this volume. To facilitate identification, dates (if not provided by Heidrich) and/ or titles are noted in brackets. If more information seems necessary in order to identify a specific image, this has been included in the notes. For example, Heidrich refers here to the famous Medici Cycle, a series of 24 paintings made between 1622 and 1625, which had been commissioned by Marie de’ Medici for her private residence, the Luxembourg Palace. [Ed.] 3 This altar painting for the Church of St. Augustine in Antwerp was completed in 1628. In the original text, the preparatory oil sketches are used as illustrations, one of which is reproduced here. [Ed.] 4 The Conversion of St. Bavo (1623) and St. Roch, both in St. Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium. [Ed.]

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5 Rubens painted The Worship of Venus circa 1635 after Titian’s work of the same name from 1518–19. [Ed.] 6 Rubens painted the St. Ildefonso triptych for the church of St. Jacques-surCoudenberg in Brussels. The central panel is The Holy Virgin Appears to Saint Ildefonso. [Ed.] 7 Landscape with Philemon and Baucis (1620). [Ed.]

PART IV

Max Dvořák

7 Inventing “mannerist expressionism”: max dvořák and the history of art as history of the spirit Hans Aurenhammer

Vienna, november/december 1920: max dvořák gives lectures on tintoretto In his Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte (translated as The History of Art History), Udo Kultermann describes the writings of Max Dvořák (1874–1921) as “the scholarly parallel to Expressionist art.”1 Regine Prange has also noted: “Analogously to the self-interpretation of Expressionism, Dvořák’s art history moved away from looking at external form in order to search for content and expression instead.”2 Dvořák’s text on Jacopo Tintoretto included in the present anthology is exemplary of both the concepts for which this major exponent of the so-called Vienna school of art history has been known.3 On the one hand, his methodology revolved around the history of spirit; on the other hand, he rehabilitated Mannerism, which Dvořák was the first to regard not as corruption of the Renaissance but rather as an autonomous era that anticipated modernism in many respects. Without a doubt, this text, which is filled with pathos-laden exuberance and evokes a spiritualistic worldview, conveys an attitude that seems, at least at first glance, expressionistic. In a peculiar way, this attitude dovetailed with a speculative system of scholarly ideas whose dialectic Dvořák evolved through many turns. The tension between an updating reference to contemporary art, on the one hand, and an attempt to interpret the evolution of art in the past in terms of the philosophy of history, on the other, makes reading Dvořák’s writings, which are complex and often contain contradictory arguments, difficult but nonetheless fascinating. This very tension was the driving force behind Dvořák’s thinking and his constant revision, which will be outlined below using the example of his Tintoretto text.

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We should begin with a few notes about the author as well as the text’s literary genre and the historical context in which it was written. Dvořák did not intend for the text to be published, and it is merely an excerpt from a much longer manuscript. It represents five hours of “Die Entwicklung der Barockkunst,” a lecture course offered at the University of Vienna in the winter semester of 1920–21, which began with a discussion of the Church of the Gesù and of Michelangelo’s late work. The discussion of Tintoretto that followed took place on November 29 and on December 1, 3, 6, and 10, 1920;4 later Dvořák spoke of the Florentine Mannerists, Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola) and Federico Barocci. This was to be his final lecture course, and it was already overshadowed by serious health problems. He was unable to finish it. On February 4, 1921, he still managed to give an enthusiastic lecture on Bernini, but four days later, on February 8, Dvořák died, aged only 46.5 Written just two months before his death, Dvořák’s text on Tintoretto thus appears, from a later perspective, to have the character of an intellectual last will and testament. It was published posthumously in 1928 in the edition of Dvořák’s complete writings edited by his students Johannes Wilde and Karl Maria Swoboda as part of Geschichte der italienischen Kunst im Zeitalter der Renaissance [History of Italian Art in the Age of the Renaissance],6 which brought together Dvořák’s final three lecture courses on Italian art, from Giotto to the High Baroque.7 The publication was based on the autograph manuscript, which—like all of Dvořák’s lectures8—was written out in full sentences ready for publication. One reason for this careful preparation was probably Dvořák’s uncertainty, since, as a Czech, German was a foreign language for him. However, as we can reconstruct from word-by-word notes of his lectures—one example of which survives for the sections on Tintoretto9—he did not always stick closely to his script when lecturing but rather paraphrased it, though retaining his style, which was marked by long periods and involutions and a tendency to nominalization. Those who heard Dvořák’s lectures report he was a compelling speaker. At the time he lectured on Tintoretto in 1920, Dvořák, who was born in the town of Roudnice nad Labem (German: Raudnitz), near Prague, had been lecturing at the University of Vienna for more than 20 years. He completed his study of history, which he had begun in Prague, there in 1897. His interests had quickly shifted to art history, and from 1898 he worked at the University of Vienna as the assistant of his teacher, Franz Wickhoff. He was appointed associate professor, as Alois Riegl’s successor, in the department of art history in 1905 and in 1909 took over for Wickhoff as full professor. The catastrophe of the First World War and the disintegration of AustriaHungary in late 1918 must have been an especially dramatic turning point for Dvořák in particular. Dvořák found himself between the fronts of the monarchy’s national conflicts: attacked as Czech by the German nationalists

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when appointed in Vienna, he was regarded as suspect by his colleagues in Prague, owing to his good relationships in Vienna. It is reasonable to assume that Dvořák was pro-Habsburg by inclination, as suggested in part by his contacts with Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the successor to the throne. The archduke was protector of the state institution for the preservation of historic buildings and monuments,10 which Dvořák served as general curator from 1905.11 Dvořák, as the son of the librarian to the Lobkowitz princes, had grown up in their castle in Roudnice and thus had contacts with other members of the high aristocracy as well. Dvořák retained Austrian citizenship after the proclamation of the Czechoslovak Republic. In 1919 he rejected an appointment in Prague, thus choosing Vienna and the new Republic of Austria, with all its political and economic problems. At the same time, Dvořák always professed his Czech origins. It seems almost symptomatic of the division in his personal situation, which was aggravated by political developments, that the village in Moravia where Dvořák died, Hrušovany nad Jevišovkou, was located only two hours by train from Vienna but had been located beyond the new Austrian–Czech border since 1919. It is obvious that Dvořák saw his contemporary situation, which he perceived as excruciating, reflected like a puzzle picture in the world of the sixteenth century, which he sketched with sinister colors: “an apparent chaos, similar to that with which we are confronted today,” he announced in 1920 in his famous lecture “Über Greco und den Manierismus” (translated as “On El Greco and Mannerism”).12 The dawn of a “new, spiritual, antimaterialistic age,”13 for which he hoped with the idealistic pathos so characteristic of him, thus seems like an immediate reaction to the period of profound upheaval that followed the First World War. But, as we will see, the preconditions for Dvořák’s spiritualistic worldview and his new concept of Mannerism reached much further back, even into the period prior to 1914.

tintoretto as Painter of the spiritual around 1920: ernst Bloch, max dvořák, emil Waldmann, and the legacy of henry thode In his Tintoretto text, Dvořák described paintings one after another as they were projected as slides onto the wall of the lecture hall—that is to say, he did not use the presentation technique of a double projection of two slides side by side, which had been introduced several decades earlier.14 His analyses of the paintings—and this is true of Dvořák’s lectures in general—are not limited to their specific appearance. He alternated close-up views focused on single works with a panoramic perspective of the entire history of Western art from late antiquity by way of the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and ultimately the modern era.

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His thesis is announced at the very beginning: Tintoretto was an exponent of Mannerism. The latter, he then argues with rhetorical skill, is an art in which “spiritual moments” obtain “prevalence” over material ones. In the process, Tintoretto increasingly employed the artistic means he had inherited from the Renaissance not to depict or idealize nature but rather to express subjectively his spiritual worldview. Dvořák’s analyses work with the dichotomy of bright and dark, which enables him to switch quickly between mere form and metaphorical significance. He describes chiaroscuro as the “battle between light and darkness,” in which— for example, in The Presentation of the Virgin (Venice, Madonna dell’Orto)—the light that appears in the nocturnal darkness augurs nothing less than a “new future for mankind.” Dvořák’s ekphrases develop a Manichaean-sounding dualistic view of the world that opposes everyday reality with a spiritual, “unreal world.” In this view, Tintoretto’s development followed an accelerando of spiritualization, in which light becomes a “magical and supernatural light,” and the spiritual is completely victorious over matter. His paintings became depictions of mystical visions. In the end, Dvořák offers us a “view into eternity” in the form of Paradise (Palazzo Ducale) before using the two paintings in San Giorgio Maggiore to present once again an allegory of his bipolar image of the world. The Gathering of the Manna—an “allegory of earthly existence, with its toil and occupations”—is contrasted with The Last Supper, in which transcendence penetrates “a world of shadows” and leads “to the one true light”15 (see Figures 8.5 and 8.6). Not coincidentally, Dvořák’s analysis here establishes a grand arc back to the work with which he had begun his lecture course on the Baroque: Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola’s Church of the Gesù, which for him was the return to the early Christian concept—abandoned in the High Renaissance—of a space oriented toward the altar as the “purely spiritual center.”16 He argues that the center of Andrea Palladio’s San Giorgio Maggiore is also the high altar, framed by Tintoretto’s two paintings: the site of the very mystery of transubstantiation that is suggestively illustrated in Tintoretto’s Last Supper, in which “clouds of smoke turn into winged figures.”17 For Dvořák, the Mannerist Tintoretto thus appears to be one “culmination” of a history considered “from the position of purely spiritual immersion”18—or of “the spiritual in art,” to paraphrase the title of Wassily Kandinsky’s treatise of 1912. But was such an “expressionist” reading of Tintoretto so unique around 1920? To answer that question, I will compare Dvořák’s lecture to two texts by very different authors (also in terms of their intellectual level) who were not, of course, familiar with Dvořák’s then still unpublished lectures: first, Ernst Bloch’s first philosophical work, Der Geist der Utopie (translated as The Spirit of Utopia), published in 1918, which Dvořák is hardly likely to have read; and, second, Emil Waldmann’s popular monograph on Tintoretto, published in 1921, after Dvořák’s death.

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In his text, which boldly combines aesthetics, Marxist social theory, and religious apocalypticism, Bloch mentions Tintoretto only once, and not in his “Art Historical Excursus,” which is indebted above all to Wilhelm Worringer but also to Riegl, but rather in the chapter on the philosophy of music, to which Bloch attributes a more powerful utopian potential than he does to the visual arts. Of all works, it is precisely The Last Supper in San Giorgio, with its light-filled angelic clouds, which Dvořák regarded as the finale of Tintoretto’s spiritual evolution, that serves Bloch as an illustration of the transcendent character of rhythm in certain passages by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Richard Wagner, and Gustav Mahler. It does not simply reduplicate the “mere flow” of worldly time, but instead we sense a secret, spiritual “tempo […] of advance or ascent: […] There usually the second music sounds, that different way of sounding, the mysterious breath, music’s mysterious atmosphere, spontaneously vibrating and led with the other side like the air in Tintoretto’s Last Supper.”19 Like Dvořák, Bloch understood Tintoretto’s visionary painting to be code for the spiritual transcendence of this world. For Waldmann, too, “spirituality” and the new role of “expression” are crucial to Tintoretto’s art, as he never tires of emphasizing in his book. Tintoretto was no “trite realist” but rather an “idealist,” who elevates “everything to the sphere of unreality.” Waldmann’s descriptions of the paintings of the Venetian artist as a “mystical experience,” as a “fantastic vision,”20 are, of course, strongly reminiscent of Dvořák’s lectures. The obvious relationship between Bloch, Waldmann, and Dvořák can be explained by the history of Tintoretto’s reception. For a long time it was shaped by Jacob Burckhardt’s verdict rejecting the painter’s works for their extreme realism as “coarse and tasteless.”21 As late as 1920, Dvořák was explicitly defending The Last Supper in San Trovaso against the cultural historian in Basel, who had seen the holy scene as “degraded to the most ordinary banquet.”22 In reaction to Burckhardt’s critique, Henry Thode had emphasized in his Tintoretto monograph of 1901—the very first book in German on the artist—precisely the religious and mystical subject matter of his art.23 The bombast of his sermon-like descriptions makes Thode’s book all but unreadable today, for example, when he passes from The Last Supper in San Giorgio to Parsifal by Richard Wagner—his wife’s father. Thode’s book, which was published as part of a series of popular books, was, however, very influential on the general reevaluation of Tintoretto.24 The connection to Wagner’s music had apparently made just as strong an impression on Bloch as Thode’s characterization of Tintoretto’s compositions as “musical rhythm.”25 And Dvořák, too, who as a young scholar had rejected Thode’s work,26 was in his later, emphatic evocation of Tintoretto much closer to Thode than he would have perhaps liked to admit.

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Nevertheless, Dvořák cannot be reduced to a specifically German-language, expressionistically charged discourse on the “mystic” Tintoretto around 1920. The comparison to Waldmann makes that clear. The director of the Kunsthalle Bremen—following the model of the art critic Julius Meier-Graefe27—looked at the art of the past from the perspective of a contemporary aesthetic.28 Waldmann’s descriptions refer above all to French painting of the nineteenth century, from Eugène Delacroix to the Impressionists to Paul Cézanne. Dvořák, too, was influenced by a modernist perspective all his life, as we will see, and around 1920 he was even less conservative in this respect than Waldmann. But Dvořák was primarily concerned with defining the historical position of Tintoretto’s art. Thode regarded Tintoretto as the culmination of the Renaissance.29 Waldmann described his art—much as Dvořák, though more diffusely—as a rejection of the norms of the High Renaissance, but he ignored the question of historical developments. He was only interested in the great personalities. For that reason, he described Tintoretto’s singularity by comparing him to Rembrandt and employing a commonplace of national psychology (saying he was “the most introspective of the Italians”).30 Dvořák’s crucial operation, however, began with the reconstruction of Tintoretto’s significance for European art history from the perspective of the philosophy of history: for him, Tintoretto became the protagonist of a radically reappraised era of Mannerism —something that did not play a role for either Thode or Waldmann.

max dvořák in 1917: mannerism as the expressionism of the sixteenth century Dvořák arrived at this new conception only late. In 1912 he was still criticizing an author for, “like our grandfathers,” labeling Tintoretto disparagingly as a Mannerist.31 Not until a lecture in 1917 did Dvořák conceive of the art between the High Renaissance and Baroque as an autonomous period with positive aesthetic qualities that could be understood as the expression of a spiritual attitude. Three artists in particular provided evidence for this new understanding of Mannerism: the late Michelangelo and Tintoretto, but above all the even more radical El Greco.32 This central figure of identification for modern artists—one need only think of the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) almanac or his reception by the Austrian Expressionist painters Oskar Kokoschka and Max Oppenheimer33—was, astonishingly, discovered by Dvořák only now. Dvořák’s new concept of Mannerism became known primarily thanks to the aforementioned lecture “Über Greco und den Manierismus”, which was held on October 29, 1920—i.e., just before the Tintoretto lectures—and published in the successful Dvořák anthology Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte (translated as Art History as the History of Ideas) in 1923.34

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Dvořák’s Mannerism underwent a radical “reevaluation of values.” The very thing that had previously been seen as a shortcoming—its epigonic quality, in which only the “manner” of the artistic role models of the High Renaissance was copied, not nature itself—was now considered an advantage. Because Mannerism was emancipating itself from the imitation of nature, it opened up new leeway for subjective invention. Dvořák spoke of an “antinaturalistic view of lines and forms, of color reproduction and lighting, of movement and rhythm.”35 Artistic means became “an independent expression of the spiritual content.”36 Dvořák himself referred explicitly to the parallels with “contemporary art” when he described Tintoretto’s Temptation of Saint Anthony drawings as spontaneous notations of subjective nightmares. Their Mannerist style required, “since similar goals have become a living force of artistic life today, hardly any additional interpretation or apology.”37 Already in 1917 Dvořák had defined El Greco’s work as “expressive art.”38 It almost seems as if that term was interchangeable with the term “Mannerism” for the era. Indeed, Dvořák spoke of “El Greco’s Expressionism”39 and of the expressionism of the “sixteenth century” in general.”40 Both terms were combined in an unfinished manuscript from around 1917–18, in which he referred to the late Michelangelo and Tintoretto as exponents of the “antinaturalistic direction of Mannerist Expressionism,” which El Greco then adopted.41 (We will see that Dvořák’s concept of Mannerism contains possibilities other than expression as well.) Dvořák’s late conversion to El Greco was presumably the crucial trigger for the Expressionist reevaluation of Mannerism. It is no coincidence that it was first formulated in 1917, in the context of a discussion of El Greco’s role in Spanish painting; the manuscript just cited was also concerned with El Greco.42 This influential concept of Mannerism would not have been possible, however, without the earlier process in Dvořák’s thinking in which he repeatedly revised in decisive ways his interpretation of the art of the sixteenth century—including that of Tintoretto. It is not possible to follow this process in his published writings, however, but only in numerous unpublished lectures and notes.43 It will be outlined in the following sections.

Prerequisites I: From the Baroque to modernity and the crisis of evolutionary Paradigms of art history (1900 to c. 1914) Dvořák’s reflections on the Mannerist Tintoretto form part of a lecture course, “Die Entwicklung der Barockkunst” (The Evolution of Baroque art), and were published in a book on the Italian Renaissance. This confusion of terms for eras is no coincidence. Mannerism was, namely, merely Dvořák’s final answer to two questions that had already occupied him for two decades: How did the

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art of the Renaissance evolve into the Baroque, and to what extent did the art of the sixteenth century become a prerequisite for the modern era? In asking these questions, Dvořák was following his teachers Wickhoff and Riegl and the doctrine of the Viennese school, which had replaced aesthetic normativity with an evolutionary perspective. In his early years, Dvořák too was interested in reconstructing an unbroken historical continuity of European art, in which each individual era had its own necessity. In this teleological model of history, there were neither caesuras nor styles representing decline. Everything was part of a universal evolution whose goal—and at the same time the point of departure for its retrospective assessment—was the modern era. In his early major work Das Rätsel der Kunst der Brüder Van Eyck [The Enigma of the Art of the Van Eyck Brothers, 1903], Dvořák tried to prove that even the apparently revolutionary naturalism of fifteenth-century Netherlandish painting derived seamlessly from medieval art.44 In his university lectures from 1904–05 onward, he was primarily interested in periods of transition that had been stigmatized as eras of decline. The first of these was the threshold between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages,45 which had already occupied Wickhoff (Die Wiener Genesis [translated as Roman Art], 1895) and Riegl (Die Spätrömische Kunstindustrie [translated as Late Roman Art Industry], 1901) so intensely; but the second was the Baroque, which had only been rehabilitated by art historians since around 1890.46 Unlike Wölfflin,47 Dvořák did not regard the High Renaissance as a culmination but only as one stage in the evolution to the Baroque. He placed its beginning—unlike what we are accustomed to today—already around 1520–30 and included the Venetian painters as well. In 1906 Dvořák called Tintoretto “the point of departure of the evolution that has led to Velázquez and Rembrandt and the art of our day.”48 At the time Dvořák meant by that Impressionism, in which the evolution toward naturalism of all art since antiquity had reached an end. Significantly, Dvořák’s view of Tintoretto corresponded, as he himself emphasized, to the preferences of modern artists. One need only think of J.M.W. Turner, Édouard Manet, and Cézanne, who revered Tintoretto,49 or of the Impressionism exhibition at the Vienna Secession in 1903, which presented him as a historical precursor.50 From 1900 onward Dvořák worked on a (never realized) monograph on Tintoretto.51 As late as 1921, in a lecture he recalled with nostalgia the play of wandering sunlight on the Crucifixion of the Scuola di San Rocco, before which he spent weeks excerpting the files of the brotherhood.52 In 1914 he had to admit that his project had failed—and hence also the historical model of the formalist Vienna School, which was based on an immanent evolution of art.53 First, the concept of the constant progress of naturalistic depiction was simply too onesided to do justice to Tintoretto. Dvořák now saw Tintoretto’s true achievement in the freedom of poetic imagination, in the new figures of the old Christian

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themes in “powerful ideal compositions.”54 Second, the earlier, Impressionist perspective had been made obsolete by the latest developments in modern art. Not only Tintoretto but also the Italian art of the cinquecento in general was subjected to a radical reevaluation by Dvořák from the time of his lecture course of 1912–13 on the Baroque. He now saw it as a subjective and idealist alternative position to the naturalism of the quattrocento, which he compared to the materialistic, religiously indifferent nineteenth century.55 Artistic form, Dvořák argued in 1914 in a lecture on Tintoretto, had become “expression, language, which had to follow ideas.”56 Dvořák spoke of an “intensification of expressive means to the point of visionary expression, to the superhuman and supernatural,”57 and thereby appeared to anticipate already our text of 1920 (while at the same time recalling Thode). Even after 1912, Dvořák continued to ascribe Tintoretto’s “great narrative ideal style” to the Baroque period,58 although it now anticipated a modern era that was clearly regarded as idealistic.

Prerequisites II: the turn to the history of spirit under the sign of an antinaturalistic and Idealistic modernity (c. 1912–1917) In a lecture course in 1913, Dvořák offered an astonishingly optimistic diagnosis of European civilization. The positivist faith in progress and the primacy of the natural sciences and technology that had shaped the nineteenth century had been overcome just as naturalism and Impressionism had in art. In his view, a “profound transformation of spiritual culture” can be ascertained: “Increasingly the sciences make evident the need for deeper synthesis, on the one hand, and a new philosophical permeation of all the sciences, on the other, and even in questions of technology and material culture we can observe a great reaction to the one-sided utilitarianism of recent decades.”59 Here Dvořák was joining in the neo-idealistic discourse of his time, which was in general determined by the critique of the “materialist” nineteenth century and of naturalism, as Kandinsky’s Über das Geistige in der Kunst (1911; translated as Concerning the Spiritual in Art) can demonstrate. But Dvořák recognized the opposition of material and spiritual spheres that shaped his era in the history of art as well. It was, in his view, the scene of the eternal “struggle between matter and spirit, between soul and body, between earthly existence and eternity.”60 Painting and sculpture, he argued, revealed a “dualism” in the alternation between “observation of nature and abstraction, truth and style, which has accompanied the entire evolution of fine art from its origin to the present day.”61 From 1912 onward, Dvořák began to revise his previous methodological premises—a process he would not manage to complete by his death in 1921. Here we can only name a few of the inspirations he picked up. He clearly

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took his lead from the paradigm shift in German cultural studies that was associated with the catchword Geistesgeschichte (history of the spirit or history of ideas), which represented emancipation from the natural sciences but also from positivistic historicism. Dvořák himself mentioned Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, and above all Wilhelm Dilthey as the “philosophers of history who supplemented the critique of pure reason with the critique of historical reason.”62 The reception of Wilhelm Worringer’s Abstraktion und Einfühlung (1908; translated as Abstraction and Empathy) is unmistakable;63 that book was more important for Dvořák than might be suggested by his later pointed criticism of Worringer’s ahistorical concepts of Volk and race in Formprobleme der Gotik (1911; translated as Form in Gothic).64 Just how influential Worringer’s antithetical concepts were in general at the time is demonstrated by the theorist of Expressionism Paul Fechter, who as early as 1914 saw the entire history of art as marked by an alternation between “style and naturalism,” by means of which a more metaphysically or more secularly oriented worldview could be expressed.65 This recalls Dvořák’s contemporaneous dualistic model, but its simplistic reduction lacks the latter’s historical complexity. The revision of Dvořák’s thinking was now crucially motivated as well by his experience with contemporary, now Post-Impressionist art. A mediating role was played by Hans Tietze, Dvořák’s younger colleague and friend. Tietze knew, among others, the Austrian Expressionist Oskar Kokoschka (who in 1909 had portrayed him along with his wife, Erica Tietze-Conrat),66 and had reviewed the Blaue Reiter almanac positively in 1911–12.67 But Dvořák refrained from making any specific judgments of contemporary artists in his lecture courses. In 1913 he observed, using only general concepts that again recall Worringer: “What all the new directions in painting have in common is that they go beyond simple observation of nature with artistic abstraction and construction—style in the proper meaning of the word.”68 Perhaps Dvořák was not then thinking so much of the Blaue Reiter or, to mention Austrian artists, of Kokoschka or Egon Schiele, but of a return to a classical, “formal idealism,” as he described the art of the cinquecento at the time. In a lecture in 1912, he observed in contemporary painting the “effort for grand style and formal design,” but of all people he identified as its leading figures Anselm von Feuerbach and Hans von Marées, who were already dead.69 In architecture, too, Dvořák endorsed in 1912 not the “materialist” functionalism of engineering buildings but rather the neoclassical monumental buildings of German architects such as Bruno Schmitz and Alfred Messel.70 In contrast to his earlier writings, Dvořák now seemed to transcend the pure immanence of form. He saw the idealism of sixteenth-century art as based in a “far-reaching transformation in spiritual life,” above all in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.71 As the example of Ernst Heidrich shows, moving away from an abstract history of the problem of form in the tradition of Riegl

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and calling for a “more experienced perception of art and its connection to life” was on the agenda of art history at the time.72 Nevertheless, Dvořák’s turn to Geistesgeschichte should not be misunderstood. His continuing concerns—as his remarks about Tintoretto reveal as well—were neither the iconography of works of art nor concrete connections to contemporaneous cultural history and mentality. Until the end he remained in essence a formalist; he merely wished to shed light on the spirit, the “meaning” in the sense of a worldview, directly through analysis of artistic form. This notion of a Wesensform (essential form)—of a visible, external form that supposedly expresses directly the inner “spirit,” the essence of the work of art—probably represents the most profound relationship between Dvořák’s art history and the theories of contemporary Expressionist artists.73

Tertium Datur: mannerism as a subjective art of expression beyond naturalism and aestheticism (c. 1917–1921) “Idealismus und Realismus in der Kunst der Neuzeit” [Idealism and Realism in the Art of the Modern Period, 1915–16], “Über das Verhältnis der Kunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts zu den gleichzeitigen geistigen Strömungen” [On the Relationship of the Art of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries to Contemporaneous Spiritual Currents, 1916–17]. The very titles of the lecture courses Dvořák gave during the First World War reveal that he continued to use the methodological concepts he had been developing since 1912: the history of spirit and the dualistic historical model.74 However, Dvořák’s bipolar model of contrasting matter and spirit grew increasingly sophisticated from 1917 onward. The opposition of idealism versus naturalism that had shaped his interpretation of the cinquecento previously was replaced by a ternary system that allowed for a third possibility of equal legitimacy. But this very correction to his terminological system created the prerequisite that permitted an understanding of Mannerism as an era independent of the Renaissance. Dvořák now spoke of three artistic alternatives.75 There is, first, the faithful mimetic representation of natural reality and, second, an idealization that does not simply depict nature but abstracts its inner laws and leads them to formal perfection. In addition, as a third possibility beyond “naturalism” and “objective idealism,” he proposed a subjectivist “art of expression” that draws not from nature but solely from the “artist’s inner life.”76 It was advocated—as we have already heard—by Expressionist Mannerists such as Tintoretto and El Greco. Dvořák wrote of the latter around 1917: “He had found a different source of artistic truth than that contained in external verisimilitude or in playing with the natural, regular structure of composition. What he creates and demands is inner truth, which is contained not in the object but in the subject.”77

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It is no coincidence that Dvořák’s triadic scheme recalls the three types of “philosophical worldview” developed by Dilthey, the guiding intellectual force of Geistesgeschichte: naturalism, objective idealism, and idealism of freedom. The philosophical “idealism of freedom,” which is characterized by “independence of the spirit from nature and its transcendence” and by the “supremacy of personality over the course of the world,” is the “subjective idealism” that Dvořák attributed to Mannerist art.78 Already in Die Weltanschauung der Malerei of 1908, Hermann Nohl had attempted to apply Dilthey’s “typical philosophical ideas of reality” to the “three primal experiences of artistic perception,” and distinguished between idealistic painting, naturalistic painting, and a painting of “personal ideality.”79 For Dvořák, too, who had read Nohl,80 artistic form represented an “embodiment” of a worldview, being “the spiritual relationship to the world.”81 Dvořák now saw Mannerism—whose self-reflective artistic components he ignored—as a reaction to the “formal idealism” of the early sixteenth century, which had led to an elite “cult of beauty,” which completely missed the existential questions of life.82 “The Sistine Madonna by no means exhausted that which was most important to the majority of Europeans at the time.”83 By contrast, as Dvořák emphasized in late writings that allude to the Bolshevist revolution of 1917,84 the Mannerist “revolution”85 was the expression of a spiritual need of the masses that led to the “ultimate collapse of the Renaissance.”86 In a sense, it represented a return to the Middle Ages, to an art “before the age of art”: Mannerism, namely, even called into question the autonomy of art, for example, when the late Michelangelo recognized that art was a misleading path. With Mannerism as the anti-Renaissance, the circle closed. By splitting the idealistic pole into an objective and aestheticizing side and a subjective and expressive one, Dvořák altered his categories for sixteenth-century art for the last time. Mannerism now took on the spiritual qualities that prior to 1914 Dvořák had still attributed to the High Renaissance. Conversely, the latter is now assigned such negative attributes as “neo-classical and materialistic anthropocentricity.”87 The true breakthrough to modernism is now equated with Mannerism. Whereas prior to the First World War Dvořák had still been mobilizing form and style—that is, the aesthetic that Dvořák was now characterizing as “idealistic abstraction”—against the splintering and alienation of the contemporary world, now art had lost its “pre-eminent position” altogether for him.88 Sándor Radnóti has rightly pointed out that this anti-aesthetic turn—even more so than the expressionist tone—is the real basis for the modernity of Dvořák’s concept of Mannerism.89 “If it addressed nothing other than luxury needs, the devil could take all of art, as far as I am concerned,” remarked Dvořák in a late note.90 It is not clear how Dvořák wanted to connect his new triadic system of concepts to the dualism of material and spirit that he asserted to the very end.

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Methodological contradictions emerged here that he was no longer able to resolve himself. That is true of his view of history in general. On the one hand, he attempted to part ways with the evolutionary paradigm of the Vienna school by emphasizing the caesuras, the understandable but not historically explicable, incomparable distinctiveness of artistic phenomena.91 On the other hand, he did not abandon the perspective of universal history when he proposed a “world-historical genealogy of the goals of the antinaturalistic art of El Greco” that extended back to prehistorical beginnings and early Christian and pre-Carolingian art.92

max dvořák, an expressionist art historian? Udo Kultermann, who was quoted at the beginning of this essay, believed that Dvořák could certainly be qualified “as an expressionist historiographer.”93 Now, as my discussion was intended to show, Dvořák’s intense participation in modern art is beyond doubt. As an art historian, he interpreted the art of the past by bringing it up to date, always setting out from the standpoint of advanced art. He initially regarded Tintoretto as an “ancestor” of Impressionism, but he then became an idealistic narrator and ultimately the expressionist visionary of spiritual worlds. His intellectual concepts also reveal clear affinities to the theories of the Expressionists. We should not forget that the works of Oskar Kokoschka had been judged by Ludwig Erik Tesar in Vienna, as early as 1909–10, on the very paradigm of the “conflict of idealistic perception versus materialist perception” that Dvořák would only make the principle of his reconstruction of art history several years later.94 Nevertheless, Dvořák’s achievement as a scholar should not simply be reduced to an art historical apology for Expressionism. For all his sensitivity to the transformations of the modern era, Dvořák always remained a historian of art concerned with critical distance and distinctions. Even in his notes on El Greco, which are particularly close to their times, he characteristically articulated his skepticism with regard to one-sided partisanship. Bartolomé Murillo, Velázquez, and El Greco had, according to Dvořák, become in succession the “battle cry of modern artistic life,” but each of these artists had to be understood “from the lofty vantage point of historical observation” as the representative of a specific historical level of artistic evolution.95 This overarching perspective of universal history ultimately also enabled Dvořák to develop a pluralistic understanding of historical Mannerism that embraced not only expressionist phenomena but also both the “purest idealistic abstraction” and the “extreme realism” of Pieter Brueghel.96 What was crucial was not expression but rather the artistic freedom of “choosing the degree of realism.”97

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As a university professor, Dvořák never published explicitly on modern art. The only exception was his very last text, which was written at the same time as the Tintoretto lectures and published in 1921 as the foreword to collotypes based on Oskar Kokoschka’s cycle of drawings Das Konzert: Variationen über ein Thema [The Concert: Variations on a Theme]98 (see Figure 9.1). Dvořák had apparently since met Kokoschka, who was also present at the lecture “Greco und den Manierismus” on October 29, 1920.99 The proximity to the Expressionist artist is thus evident, but here too Dvořák combined aesthetic sympathy with historical reflection. The art historian compared Kokoschka’s variations, which depict the changing emotions of a woman listening to music,100 to Claude Monet’s series of haystacks, and in the process developed a new variation on the theme that had been occupying him since 1912: the crisis of modern art after Impressionism and the opposition between the materialism of the nineteenth century and the hoped-for idealism of the future.101 But is this really an expressionist manifesto at all? After all, Dvořák already sensed in Kokoschka a turn from abstraction to a new “ideal style,” reestablishing the balance with nature and leaving Expressionism behind. In an earlier version of the text, he even compared him to the “typical ideal forms” of the High Renaissance, which in his late reflections on the sixteenth century he rejected as materialistic and self-referential.102 The radical subjectivism and antinaturalism that Dvořák demonstrated in Mannerism during this same period was thus for him merely a moment of crisis, of transition. Interestingly, Dvořák did indeed anticipate here Kokoschka’s further development, which always held on to figuration. “Ideal forms” in Dvořák’s sense could, however, in essence already be found in Kokoschka’s painting Die Macht der Musik [The Power of Music; Eindhoven, Stedelijk Museum], which was also produced in 1920. Here the theme is the spiritual effect of art, not splintered into many individual psychological studies, as in Das Konzert, but rather designed as a single large allegory with human figures. Similarly, Mannerism, whose positive qualities he had only just rehabilitated, remained for Dvořák a historically limited phenomenon. After he had treated this era—and in particular Tintoretto—in his lecture, he concluded in December 1920 that Mannerism had “rightly” been perceived as a “danger” because of its lack of restraint on subjectivism, and therefore had to be overcome by the Baroque.103 Translated by Steven Lindberg

notes 1 Udo Kultermann, Die Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte: Der Weg einer Wissenschaft, 3rd ed. (Munich: Prestel, 1990), 159; translated as The History of Art History (New york: Abaris, 1993), 168 (translation modified).

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2 Regine Prange, Die Geburt der Kunstgeschichte: Philosophische Ästhetik und empirische Wissenschaft (Cologne: Deubner, 2004), 214–15. 3 Two obituaries written by his students are essential: Dagobert Frey, “Max Dvořáks Stellung in der Kunstgeschichte,” Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 1 [o.s. 15] (1921–22): 1–21; and Otto Benesch, “Max Dvořák: Ein Versuch zur Geschichte der historischen Geisteswissenschaften,” Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 44 (1924): 159–97. Here is a selection of later analyses of Dvořák’s oeuvre (with additional bibliographical references): Jaromir Neumann, “Das Werk Max Dvořáks und die Gegenwart,” Acta Historiae Artium 8 (1962): 177–213; Sándor Radnóti, “Die Historisierung des Kunstbegriffs: Max Dvořák,” Acta Historiae Artium 26 (1980): 125–42; Ján Bakoš, “Die epistemologische Wende eines Kunsthistorikers,” L’art et les révolutions: Actes du XXVIIe congrès internationale d’histoire de l’art (Strasbourg: Société alsacienne pour le développement de l’histoire de l’art, 1992), 53–72; Mitchell Schwarzer, “Cosmopolitan Difference in Max Dvořák’s Art Historiography,” Art Bulletin 74 (1992): 669–78; Norbert Schmitz, Kunst und Wissenschaft im Zeichen der Moderne: Exemplarische Studien zum Verhältnis von klassischer Avantgarde und zeitgenössischer Kunstgeschichte in Deutschland: Hölzel, Wölfflin, Kandinsky, Dvořák (Alfter: VDG, 1993), 255–324; Riccardo Marchi, “Max Dvořák e la storia dell’arte come parte della Geistesgeschichte,” in Max Dvořák, Idealismo e naturalismo nella scultura e nella pittura gotica (Milan: Angeli, 2003), 107–97; Matthew Rampley, “Max Dvořák: Art History and the Crisis of Modernity,” Art History 26 (2003): 214–37; Edwin Lachnit, Die Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte und die Kunst ihrer Zeit: Zum Verhältnis von Methode und Forschungsgegenstand am Beginn der Moderne (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005), 91–8; Ján Bakoš, “Max Dvořák: A Neglected Re-Visionist,” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 53 (2004): 55–71; Hans Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák,” in Klassiker der Kunstgeschichte, vol. 1, Von Winckelmann bis Warburg, ed. Ulrich Pfisterer (Munich: Beck, 2007), 214–26; Hans Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák (1874–1921): Von der historischen Quellenkritik zur Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte,” in Österreichische Historiker: Lebensläufe und Karrieren, 1900–1945, vol. 2, ed. Karel Hruza (Vienna: Böhlau, 2012), 169–200. 4 Data from the typescript of the lecture prepared by Karola Bielohlawek, University of Vienna, Institute for Art History, Archives. 5 On this and all subsequent details on Dvořák’s biography, with additional bibliographic references, see, most recently, Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák (1874–1921)” (see note 3), esp. 171–85. 6 Max Dvořák, Geschichte der italienischen Kunst im Zeitalter der Renaissance: Akademische Vorlesungen, ed. Johannes Wilde and Karl Maria Swoboda, vol. 2, Das 16. Jahrhundert (Munich: Piper, 1928), 144–64. The first volume of Dvořák’s collected writings was an anthology of late essays: Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte: Studien zur abendländischen Kunstentwicklung (Munich: Piper, 1924); translated by John Hardy as The History of Art as the History of Ideas (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984). It was followed by the book edition of Das Rätsel der Kunst der Brüder Van Eyck (Munich: Piper, 1925); originally published in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 24 (1903): 161–317. Geschichte der italienischen Kunst im Zeitalter der Renaissance was followed by the final volume of the series, again edited by Wilde and Swoboda: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kunstgeschichte (Munich: Piper, 1929).

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7 Max Dvořák, “Italienische Kunst der Renaissance,” winter semester 1918–19; “Die Kunst der Hochrenaissance,” winter semester 1919–20; “Die Entwicklung der Barockkunst,” winter semester 1920–21. 8 They survive complete at the University of Vienna, Institute for Art History, Archives; all of Dvořák’s manuscripts quoted in this essay are deposited there. 9 Cf. note 4. 10 K.k. Zentralkommission für Erforschung und Erhaltung der Kunst- und historischen Denkmale (from 1911 to 1913 Staatsdenkmalamt). 11 For more detail on this, see, most recently, Sandro Scarrocchia, “Denkmalpflege und Moderne: Die Lehre Max Dvořáks,” in Max Dvořák, Schriften, Vorlesungen und Vorträge zur Denkmalpflege, 1905–1921, ed. Sandro Scarrocchia (Vienna: Böhlau, 2012). (This volume also includes Hans Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák: Denkmalpflege als praktische Realisierung der Kunstgeschichte in der Moderne,” 14–16). Italian edition: Sandro Scarrocchia, Max Dvořák: Conservazione e moderno in Austria, 1905–1921 (Milan: Angeli, 2009). 12 Max Dvořák, “Über Greco und den Manierismus,” in K unstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte (see note 6), 270; translated by John Hardy as “On El Greco and Mannerism,” in Dvořák, The History of Art as the History of Ideas (see note 6), 104. 13 Dvořák, “Über Greco und den Manierismus,” 276; Dvořák, “On El Greco and Mannerism,” 108. 14 See Ingeborg Reichle, “Medienbrüche,” Kritische Berichte 1 (2002): 40–56; and Lena Bader, Martin Gaier, and Falk Wolf, eds., Vergleichendes Sehen (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2010). 15 Dvořák, Das 16. Jahrhundert (see note 6), 152, 151, 149, 153, 163, 164. 16 Ibid., 99. 17 Ibid., 164. 18 Ibid. 19 Ernst Bloch, Geist der Utopie (Munich: Duncker & Humblot, 1918), 197; the passage is unchanged in the second edition of 1923 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985), 165; translated by Anthony A. Nassar as The Spirit of Utopia, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 128. 20 Emil Waldmann, Tintoretto (Berlin: Cassirer, 1921), 73, 70, 71, 7. 21 Jacob Burckhardt, Der Cicerone: Eine Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Italiens (Leipzig: Kröner, 1925; orig. pub. 1855), 929–32, 937–40; translated by A. H. Clough as The Cicerone (London: Laurie, 1908), 206–8, 212–14, esp. 207. On the history of his reception in general, see Anna Laura Lepschy, Tintoretto Observed: A Documentary Survey of Critical Reactions from the 16th to the 20th Century (Ravenna: Longo, 1983). 22 Burckhardt, Cicerone (see note 21), 207. 23 Henry Thode, Tintoretto (Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klasing, 1901).

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24 See, for example, Werner Weisbach, Impressionismus: Ein Problem der Malerei in der Antike und Neuzeit (Berlin: Grote, 1910), 69–81, who emphasizes in Tintoretto’s work the “deepening of the spiritual content” and the “increasing of mystical effects.” 25 Thode, Tintoretto (see note 23), 133. 26 In an early, handwritten note on Thode, Dvořák speaks of “misinterpreting the facts.” 27 See Julius Meier-Graefe, Entwicklungsgeschichte der modernen Kunst, 3rd ed., 3 vols (Munich: Piper, 1920; orig. pub. Stuttgart: Hoffmann, 1904), but Tintoretto is mentioned here only in passing on page 56, vol. 1. 28 Kai Artinger, “Loyal bis in den Untergang: Professor Dr. Emil Waldmann (1880–1945): Kunsthistoriker, Museumsleiter, Hochschuldozent,” in Ruth Heftrig, Olaf Peters, and Barbara Schellewald, eds., Kunstgeschichte im “Dritten Reich”: Theorien, Methoden, Praktiken (Berlin: Akademie, 2008), 134–55. 29 Henry Thode, “Tintoretto: Kritische Studien über des Meisters Werke,” Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 23 (1900): 430. 30 Waldmann, Tintoretto (see note 20), 74. 31 Max Dvořák, review of Das Kolorit in der venezianischen Malerei, by Maria Grunewald, Kunstgeschichtliche Anzeigen (1912): 15. 32 Max Dvořák, “Über das Verhältnis der Kunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts zu den gleichzeitigen geistigen Strömungen II,” summer semester 1917, manuscript. 33 See Veronika Schroeder, El Greco im frühen deutschen Expressionismus: Von der Kunstgeschichte als Stilgeschichte zur Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1998), and Beat Wismer and Michael Scholz-Hänsel, eds., El Greco und die Moderne, exh. cat., Museum Kunst-Palast, Düsseldorf (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012). 34 Dvořák, “Über Greco und den Manierismus” (see note 12). On this, see Peter K. Klein, “El Greco’s ‘Burial of the Count of Orgaz’ and the Concept of Mannerism of the Vienna School; or, Max Dvořák and the Occult,” in Nikos Hadjinicolau, ed., El Greco of Crete (Iraklion: Municipality of Iraklion, 1995), 507–32. On the concept of Mannerism in general, see Edwin Lachnit, “Zur Geschichte des Manierismusbegriffs,” in Werner Hofmann, ed., Zauber der Medusa: Europäische Manierismen, exh. cat., Wiener Künstlerhaus (Vienna: Löcker, 1987), 32–42; Werner Hofmann, Die Moderne im Rückspiegel: Hauptwege der Kunstgeschichte (Munich: Beck, 1998), 94–113; Horst Bredekamp, “Der Manierismus: Zur Problematik einer kunsthistorischen Erfindung,” in Wolfgang Braungart, ed., Manier und Manierismus (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000), 109–30; Hans Aurenhammer, “Ernst Gombrich, Giulio Romano und die Neue Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte” (forthcoming). 35 Max Dvořák, “Greco, Velazquez, Murillo” (fragment), manuscript, 55. Undated but written around 1917–18. 36 Dvořák, Das 16. Jahrhundert (see note 6), 159.

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37 Dvořák, “Greco, Velazquez, Murillo” (see note 35), 60. This series of oil sketches in the British Museum, London (acc. nos. 1907–7–17–42 to 74) is now universally attributed to Tintoretto’s son Domenico. 38 Max Dvořák, “Über das Verhältnis der Kunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts II” (see note 32), 86. 39 Ibid., 91. 40 Dvořák, “Greco, Velazquez, Murillo” (see note 35), 198. 41 Ibid., 205. 42 Dvořák, “Greco, Velazquez, Murillo” (see note 35). 43 I am currently working on a complete account of Dvořák’s intellectual biography, based primarily on unpublished material. On the evolution of Dvořák’s reception of Tintoretto and extensive documentation thereof, see also Hans Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák, Tintoretto und die Moderne: Kunstgeschichte ‘vom Standpunkt unserer Kunstentwicklung’ betrachtet,” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 49 (1996): 9–39, 289–94. 44 Max Dvořák, Das Rätsel der Kunst der Brüder Van Eyck (see note 6). 45 See Hans Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák und die Revision der MittelalterKunstgeschichte,” in Wojciech Bałus and Joanna Wolanska, eds., Die Etablierung und Entwicklung des Faches Kunstgeschichte in Deutschland, Polen und Mitteleuropa (Warsaw: Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2010), 291–314; and Hans Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák and the History of Medieval Art,” Journal of Art Historiography 2 (June 2010), http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_152487_en.pdf. 46 See Heinrich Wölfflin, Renaissance und Barock: Eine Untersuchung über Wesen und Entstehung des Barockstils in Italien (Munich: Ackermann, 1888); translated by Kathrin Simon as Renaissance and Baroque (London: Collins, 1964); August Schmarsow, Barock und Rokoko: Das Malerische in der Architektur: eine kritische Auseinandersetzung (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1897); Alois Riegl, Die Entstehung der Barockkunst in Rom, ed. Anton Burda and Max Dvořák (Vienna: Schroll, 1908; publication of Riegl’s lecture courses of 1898–99 and 1901–02); translated by Andrew Hopkins and Arnold Witte as The Origins of Baroque Art in Rome (Los Angeles: Getty, 2010). 47 Heinrich Wölfflin, Die klassische Kunst: Eine Einführung in die italienische Renaissance (Munich: Bruckmann, 1899); translated by Peter and Linda Murray as Classic Art: An Introduction to the Italian Renaissance (London: Phaidon, 1952). 48 See Max Dvořák, “Geschichte der barocken Kunst,” 1905–6, 624, manuscript. See also, Dvořák, “Geschichte der italienischen Barockkunst,” winter semester 1909–10, manuscript. 49 Lepschy, Tintoretto Observed (see note 21), 97–109. 50 Entwicklung des Impressionismus in Malerei und Plastik, exh. cat., Vereinigung bildender Künstler Österreichs (Vienna: Wiener Secession, 1903), 23, no. 1. Cf. Aurenhammer, “Dvořák, Tintoretto und die Moderne” (see note 43), 14. 51 See Franz Wickhoff, “Gutachten zu Max Dvořák,” July 8, 1905. University of Vienna, Archives.

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52 Dvořák, Das 16. Jahrhundert (see note 6), 151. The spot of light in Tintoretto’s paintings becomes the point of departure for the far-reaching reflections in Wojciech Bałus, “Max Dvořák betrachtet Tintoretto; oder, Über den Manierismus,” ars 44 (2011): 26–43. 53 Max Dvořák, “Tintoretto,” lecture on January 15, 1914, manuscript, 11. 54 Ibid., 60. 55 Max Dvořák, “Geschichte der italienischen Barockkunst,” winter semester 1912–13, manuscript. 56 Dvořák, “Tintoretto” (see note 53), 45. 57 Ibid., 83. 58 Ibid., 77. 59 Max Dvořák, “Geschichte der abendländischen Kunst im Mittelalter I,” winter semester 1913–14, manuscript, 10 and 12–13. 60 Ibid., 248. 61 Ibid., 208. 62 Max Dvořák, “Idealismus und Realismus in der Kunst der Neuzeit,” winter semester 1915–16, manuscript, 12–13. On the “turn to the humanities” in studies in art in general, see Jost Hermand, Literaturwissenschaft und Kunstwissenschaft: Methodische Wechselbeziehungen seit 1900 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1965), 6–42; Christoph König and Eberhard Lämmert, eds., Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 1910–1925 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1993). 63 On Worringer, see Neil H. Donahue, ed., Invisible Cathedrals: The Expressionist Art History of Wilhelm Worringer (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995); Hannes Böhringer and Beate Söntgen, eds., Wilhelm Worringers Kunstgeschichte (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2002); Claudia Öhlschläger, Abstraktionsdrang: Wilhelm Worringer und der Geist der Moderne (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2005); and Norberto Gramaccini and Johannes Rössler, eds., Hundert Jahre “Abstraktion und Einfühlung”: Konstellationen um Wilhelm Worringer (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2012). 64 Max Dvořák, “Geschichte der abendländischen Kunst im Mittelalter II,” winter semester 1917–18, manuscript, 32–3; published as Max Dvořák, “Idealismus und Naturalismus in der gotischen Skulptur und Malerei,” in Dvořák, Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte (see note 6), 47–8; translated by Randolph J. Klawiter as Idealism and Naturalism in Gothic Art (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967), 56–58. Cf. Aurenhammer, “Dvořák und die Revision der Mittelalter-Kunstgeschichte” and “Dvořák and the History of Medieval Art” (see note 45). 65 Paul Fechter, Der Expressionismus (Munich: Piper, 1914). On this, see Magdalena Bushart, Der Geist der Gotik und die expressionistische Kunst: Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttheorie, 1911–1925 (Munich: Schreiber, 1990). Cf. also the reception of Worringer (and Riegl) in Hermann Bahr, Expressionismus (Munich: Delphin, 1916). 66 New york, Museum of Modern Art.

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67 Hans Tietze, “Der Blaue Reiter,” Die Kunst für Alle 27 (1911–12), reprinted in, Tietze, Lebendige Kunstwissenschaft: Texte, 1910–1954, ed. Almut Krapf-Weiler et al. (Vienna: Schlebrügge, 2007), 38–44. 68 Dvořák, “Geschichte der abendländischen Kunst im Mittelalter I” (see note 59), 11. 69 Max Dvořák, “Die letzte Renaissance. Vortrag, gehalten am 22. Februar 1912 im Österreichischen Museum für Kunst und Industrie. Nach dem Originalmanuskript herausgegeben von Hans H. Aurenhammer,” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 50 (1997): 20. That an art historian in 1913 would offer this assessment is only astonishing at first glance if one recalls the similar neo-classical preferences of Wilhelm Worringer. On that, cf. Magdalena Bushart, Der Geist der Gotik (see note 65), 20–22. Just how undecided—or, better concerned to recognize even polar opposites—Dvořák’s reaction to contemporary art was is evident in his remarks at the conclusion of his lecture “Entwicklung der modernen Landschaftsmalerei” (Evolution of modern landscape painting), winter semester 1914–15, manuscript. In it, Dvořák called the new currents that followed the crisis of Impressionism the “neo-Impressionism even anti-Impressionism” of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, whom he certainly described with Expressionist criteria (ibid., 366–7: “who, on the one hand, sublimate even more the act of psychological perception and lend expression to its leaping, disconnected moving”). On the other hand, he recognized a new, completely different art that refers only to “simply ideas of things rooted in the depth of psychological life and consciousness” (ibid., 367) and cut off the reference to artistic tradition. In the lecture, he deviated slightly from his manuscript and explicitly mentioned Pablo Picasso and the new “weight on the cubic-elemental” palpable in all art. It is reasonable to assume that Dvořák wanted to see Cubism as a modernist reissue of “formal idealism.” See Max Dvořák, Idealismus und Realismus in der Kunst der Neuzeit: Entwicklung der modernen Landschaftsmalerei, ed. Norbert Schmitz (Alfter: VDG, 1993), 69–70 (an edition of an original transcript of the lecture of 1914–15). 70 Ibid. Cf. Hans Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák und die moderne Architektur: Bemerkungen zum Vortrag ‘Die letzte Renaissance,’” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 50 (1997): 23–40; Jindřich Vybíral, “The Vienna School of Art History and (Viennese) Modern Architecture,” Journal of Art Historiography 1 (2009), http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_139133_en.pdf. 71 Max Dvořák, “Tizian und Tintoretto,” summer semester 1914, manuscript, 131. 72 Ernst Heidrich, review of Das niederländische Architekturbild, by Hans Jantzen, Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 8 (1913): 117–31. 73 On this central idea, see especially Regine Prange, “Die erzwungene Unmittelbarkeit: Panofsky und der Expressionismus,” Idea 10 (1991): 221–52. On the subsequent life of this notion, see Karl Mannheim, “Beiträge zur Theorie der WeltanschauungsInterpretation,” Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 1 [o.s. 15] (1921–22): 236–74, esp. 263 (“Weltanschauungssinn”), and Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts: Papers in and on Art History (Garden City, Ny: Doubleday, 1955), 28 (“intrinsic meaning”). 74 On the ambivalent intensification of the dualistic concept when faced with the catastrophe of world war, as a backward-looking utopia in “Idealismus und Naturalismus in der gotischen Malerei und Skulptur” (see note 64) in 1918 and as political propaganda in the Goya essay published in a war almanac in 1916, see Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák (1874–1921)” (see note 3), 181–3.

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75 Dvořák, “Über das Verhältnis der Kunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts” (see note 32), 78–91; Dvořák, “Greco, Velazquez, Murillo” (see note 35), 62–5. 76 Dvořák, “Über das Verhältnis der Kunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts” (see note 32), 84–6. 77 Dvořák, “Greco, Velazquez, Murillo” (see note 35), 69–70. 78 Wilhelm Dilthey, “Die Typen der Weltanschauung und ihre Ausbildung in den philosophischen Systemen,” in Dilthey, Weltanschauung, Philosophie und Religion (Berlin: Reichl, 1911); Dilthey, Das Wesen der Philosophie, ed. Manfred Riedel (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1984; orig. pub. 1907), 108–14; translated by Stephen A. Emery and William T. Emery as The Essence of Philosophy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954), 62–4. 79 Hermann Nohl, Die Weltanschauung der Malerei (Jena: Diederichs, 1908), quoted in Nohl, Stil und Weltanschauung (Jena: Diederichs, 1920), 22–3. 80 Note in an undated notebook, written after 1913. 81 Max Dvořák, “Pieter Bruegel d. Ä.,” in Dvořák, Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte (see note 6), 250; Max Dvořák, “Pieter Bruegel the Elder,” in Dvořák, The History of Art as the History of Ideas (see note 6), 90, 91 (translation modified). 82 Dvořák, “Pieter Bruegel d. Ä.” (see note 81), 220–22, Dvořák, “Pieter Bruegel the Elder” (see note 81), 71; Dvořák, Das 16. Jahrhundert (see note 6), 108, 190–91; Dvořák, “Über Greco und den Manierismus” (see note 12), 264–6; Dvořák, “On El Greco and Mannerism” (see note 12), 101. 83 Dvořák, Das 16. Jahrhundert (see note 6), 191. 84 Dvořák, “Über Greco und den Manierismus” (see note 12), 269; Dvořák, “On El Greco and Mannerism” (see note 12), 103; Dvořák, Das 16. Jahrhundert (see note 6), 109. 85 Dvořák, “Greco, Velazquez, Murillo” (see note 35), 87. 86 Ibid. 87 Dvořák, “Pieter Bruegel d. Ä.” (see note 81), 234; Dvořák, “Pieter Bruegel the Elder” (see note 81), 80 (translation modified). 88 Dvořák, “Pieter Bruegel d. Ä.” (see note 81), 221; Dvořák, “Pieter Bruegel the Elder” (see note 81), 71. 89 Radnóti, “Die Historisierung des Kunstbegriffs” (see note 3), 133–5. 90 Max Dvořák, manuscript notebook, ca. 1920. 91 For example, Dvořák, “Idealismus und Realismus in der Kunst der Neuzeit” (see note 62), 44, 46. 92 Dvořák, “Greco, Velazquez, Murillo” (see note 35), 73. 93 Kultermann, Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte (see note 1), 159; Kultermann, The History of Art History (see note 1), 168. 94 Ludwig Erik Tesar, “Die Kunstschau: Einiges über die Probleme der Kunst von heute,” Kunstrevue 39 (1909): 87–92, quoted in Robert Fuchs, Apologie und Diffamierung des “österreichischen Expressionismus”: Begriffs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte der österreichischen Malerei 1908 bis 1938 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1991), 60.

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95 Dvořák, “Greco, Velazquez, Murillo” (see note 35), 1–3. 96 Dvořák, Das 16. Jahrhundert (see note 6), 198. 97 Dvořák, “Pieter Bruegel d. Ä.” (see note 81), 222; Dvořák, “Pieter Bruegel the Elder” (see note 81), 72. 98 Max Dvořák, foreword to Oskar Kokoschka: Variationen über ein Thema (Vienna: Lanyi, 1921). [This text is translated in the current volume. Ed.] 99 Károly Kókai, “Briefe von Johannes Wilde aus Wien, Juni 1920 bis Februar 1921,” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 59 (2011): 219–33. 100 Kokoschka was portraying here Kamilla, the wife of Dvořák’s assistant Karl Maria Swoboda, who was later deported as a Jew to Theresienstadt in 1943 and murdered there. Swoboda had known Kokoschka since at least 1912. On the context, see Reinhold Graf Bethusy-Huc, ed., Oskar Kokoschka, Das Konzert: Variationen über ein Thema; Hommage à Kamilla Swoboda (Salzburg: Galerie Welz, 1988). 101 See Fuchs, Apologie und Diffamierung (see note 94), 128–32, 147, 149–50; Edwin Lachnit, “Ansätze methodischer Evolution in der Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte,” in L’art et les révolutions: XXVIIe congrès internationale d’histoire de l’art, Actes 5 (Strasbourg: Société alsacienne pour le développement de l’histoire de l’art, 1992), 43–52; Hans Aurenhammer, “Max Dvořák über Oskar Kokoschka: eine handschriftliche Fassung des Vorworts zu ‘Variationen über ein Thema’ (1920/21), in Patrick Werkner, ed., Oskar Kokoschka: Aktuelle Perspektiven (Vienna: Hochschule für angewandte Kunst, 1998), 34–40. 102 Aurenhammer, “Dvořák über Oskar Kokoschka” (see note 101), 38. 103 Dvořák, Das 16. Jahrhundert (see note 6), 199.

8 “tintoretto” (1920)* Max Dvořák

The artists of Michelangelo’s circle were merely secondary branches along the mighty lineage of the master’s art. Only one of his followers was his equal in genius; he came from an opposing artistic environment and nevertheless became, in his large pictorial compositions, Michelangelo’s true heir: Tintoretto. This was not true from the beginning, for his early works were produced under the influence of Titian and were entirely Venetian. That changed suddenly in 1548, the year in which Tintoretto painted his Miracle of St. Mark1 (Figure 8.1). The first journalist, Pietro Arentino, composed a none too friendly critique of this painting. It was the opening salvo of a long, drawn-out literary feud defined by the watchwords Raphael, the Antique, and Titian on the one hand, and Michelangelo and Tintoretto on the other—a contrast which seems at first incomprehensible. The painting depicts the liberation of a slave by Saint Mark. The slave, as a Christian, was to be martyred, but the saint appears and shatters the instruments of his execution. Much in the painting recalls Venetian art of the time, not merely in its magnificent color but also in the individual figures, which are painted with sensual, lively clarity, as if the artist had taken his models from the piazza. But the composition was shockingly new for Venice. Merely the movement which fills each of the figures was new: they are twisted, bend forwards or backwards in order to suggest the strongest possible impression of depth. The same is true for the entire composition. This, too, is dominated by maximum movement: across the foreground, in the curve which flows downward from the floating saint, over the bystanders between the columns and the woman who stands at *

Max Dvořák, “Tintoretto”, akademische Vorlesung, Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte (1920). In Max Dvořák, Geschichte der italienischen Kunst im Zeitalter der Renaissance. Akademische Vorlesungen, ed. Johannes Wilde and Karl M. Swoboda, vol. 2 (Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1927–28), 144–164. Reprinted in Studien zur Kunstgeschichte, ed. Irma Emmrich (Leipzig: Reclam, 1989), 137–159.

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8.1 Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto, The Miracle of the Slave (1548), oil on canvas, 416 × 544 cm. Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice

its base, to the head of the prone slave, climbing again over the form of the executioner displaying the broken hammer, further to the rising praetor. This movement is simultaneously apparent as it emerges from out of the deep space of the picture and into it once more: from the far boundary of the façade, to the overlapping figures in the foreground, then arcing back into the depths again. This organization is in direct contrast to the serene expansion of the composition in Titian’s spaces. It recalls instead Michelangelo’s Crucifixion of Saint Peter,2 with its rising curve which completely fills the scene with the cubic volumes of the various forms and frames it on either end with overlapping, protruding figures. The intellectual conception also resembles that of the frescos in the Capella Paolina. The action is without a unified, rational center, but rather disintegrates into three scenes—these, too, are dramatically motivated. On the left, the crowd observes with amazement the slave lying on the ground, even as the executioner’s assistants are still struggling over him; on the right, an agitated conversation is underway between the commander of the legion and the praetor; and in the center the slave and the saint are set opposite one another in a vertical much like that evoked between Christ and

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Paul in Michelangelo’s Conversion of Saint Paul. The saint is physically there and yet not visible to everyone: this is the embodiment of the miracle which takes place. A contrast to Michelangelo’s work lies in the fact that the viewer has taken the place of the protagonist (the speaker), who condenses all of this activity into an impression of the fantastic and marvelous. Saint Mark Freeing the Slave is the first mighty creation of Mannerism in Venice. It is inspired by Michelangelo’s late style, but what was the end in Michelangelo’s case is only the beginning for Tintoretto. He completed this picture in his thirtieth year; he continued to paint for another 46 years, and his work encompassed an exceedingly large number of paintings, of which we can only discuss the most important. We divide his development into three segments: the first, still purely Venetian, lasted until the Miracle of St. Mark; the second ranges until the beginning of the 1470s; and the third includes the rest of his life. If one follows this long period of artistic production it becomes apparent that, on the whole, Tintoretto worked for different patrons than Titian. He worked not for princes and kings, and initially not for the republic—not until late in life does he receive larger state commissions—but rather for guilds, and especially for the confraternities that figured prominently in Venice. The purpose of these brotherhoods was, on the one hand, participation in collective religious exercises, and on the other mutual charitable support. They were organized in various ways: according to occupation, regional affiliation, and class; but there were also those whose members came from different classes and professions, which one might refer to as large clubs founded on a religious basis. Many of these had been in existence since the thirteenth century. Some, like the Scuola di San Marco, enjoyed considerable prestige by the fifteenth century, but their true heyday does not begin until the sixteenth century. It would not be wrong to draw a connection between the confraternities and the new deepening of religious life [i.e., during the Counter-Reformation], which in Venice came less from above than it did from below, and which took hold of broad strata of society. Their external feature was numerous donations of artworks. Thus Tintoretto began, to a certain extent, as the favorite painter of the common people. What he painted at their behest corresponded to the character and goals of their associations, and only occasionally consisted of mythological or allegorical content. As a rule, ancient biblical stories and legends had been the primary task of painting in the age of Giotto and his successors, but these had been repressed in the Renaissance and High Renaissance, especially by the leading artists, in favor of prestigious devotional pictures. Now [this type of religious painting] once again brought honor to a great artist, above all in scenes from the life of Christ and Mary, most frequently the Last Supper, which is hardly surprising if we consider the increased significance of the Eucharist in precisely the second half of the century as an expression of a mystical connection to God.

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8.2 Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto, The Last Supper (1566), oil on canvas, 221 × 413 cm. S. Trovaso, Venice

Among the earliest of these representations is the painting in San Trovaso (Figure 8.2) which, judging by the color scheme and the individual figure types, was produced not too long after the Miracle of Saint Mark. In Burckhardt’s Cicerone we read that the holy act has been degraded here to an ordinary banquet.3 Indeed, the hall in which this cena is held is certainly not regal, but rather a considerably poor Italian dwelling with humble furnishings; likewise, with the exception of Christ, we see no idealized figures, but rather simple people in meager clothing. Let us consider the composition. The traditional alignment, in which one long side of the table is parallel to the background, which Titian had preserved in his depiction of the story in 1564,4 has been discarded here. The table is positioned at a diagonal, while Christ and the apostles sit in a circle around it. The figures of the apostles, highly agitated and shown in diverse poses, combined with the secondary figures, the painterly rendering of the architecture, and the diffuse lighting, create the impression of a genre scene captured in a moment in time by the painter as if his duty had in fact been to depict a common Venetian convivium in the midst of a lively dispute. But the painting is infinitely more than a simple genre scene. Christ sits quietly in the center, pushed back somewhat, and caught by the light. Beneath him, posed slightly obliquely in the vertical counterpose so beloved at the time, Judas is a figure of great expressive power. He has heard the words foretelling his treason, has leapt up in panic, knocking over his chair, but in the same moment he regains his composure and reaches for the still half-full wine glass and bottle in order to hide his own agitation. There is something else about this figure, whose face we do not see but

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whose role in the drama we may guess at: in his bent-over, rotated position, Judas appears as the murderer who oscillates between springing upon his victim now or slinking away like a beaten dog. Thus through the opposition of these two figures, the deepening of the psychological moment allows the simple scene to develop the grandeur of a tragic act. In the observations above, we repeatedly remarked upon efforts to deepen the spiritual content of pictorial representations. Tintoretto thus embarks upon a new path, in which he deepens the psychological motivation not only through the heads of individual characters, as Leonardo did at the end of the fifteenth century, but also by anchoring the entire process in psychological [psychischen] motives. Neither was he without predecessors in this; half a century earlier the Germans, especially Dürer, had embarked upon a similar path. We need only to remember how Dürer, in his scenes of the Passion, depicts Christ as purely human, a seeker of truth, set in opposition to the blind masses; one can also see a resemblance in the way in which Dürer developed the evangelical scenes out of a realistic depiction of life.5 This correspondence between the German and the Venetian is certainly no coincidence, but rather rests upon the relationship between the spiritual situations in Germany on the eve of the Reformation and in Italy at the beginning of the Counter-Reformation. In the first context, the German artist immerses himself in the spiritual form of Christ, whom he recognizes as an example for the men whom he hopes will save his people from religious hardships. In the second context, one of the greatest painters of Italy experiences the events of the last days of the Savior in all their human drama, as no one has done since the Middle Ages; he opens new sources of religious sentiment for his time, which was in dire need of them. Only someone who does not comprehend the deeper meaning of the representation would speak of a “degradation” of the story. From the body of Christ, in its transfixed spiritual awareness of the traitor, a sudden, breathtaking, and solemn stillness rushes forth over the depiction. It is made all the stronger by its contrast to the animated everyday life which otherwise prevails, as if something godly or miraculous had entered the room. All forms of realistic depiction, formal solutions, and effects of coloration which art has retained as a legacy of earlier developments take on a new meaning: there is no longer any independent content, but rather only the effective presence of a higher spirituality and the expression of supermaterial events which infuse that presence with its remarkable qualities. In this sense, Tintoretto draws near to another northerner, Rembrandt, with whom he also shares the device and application of chiaroscuro. For the earlier Netherlanders it was the source of naturalistic observation; for Leonardo it was a means to heighten the relief of forms; for Correggio it was a method of enhancing spatial illusion; Titian used it as an impressionistic-coloristic element. Now, for Tintoretto, chiaroscuro manifests itself as a poetic and fantastic means of expressing the spiritual depth of the depiction—as it would later in the work of Rembrandt.

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The difference between the two artists was that, in the case of Rembrandt, only the subjective interest in the purely human stood in the foreground, in the deep, psychic secrets and spiritual beauties of earthly life, while for the Italian, the objectively thrilling action was equally important. Tintoretto’s style develops further in this direction, as is demonstrated by Presentation of the Blessed Virgin in the Madonna dell’Orto in the 1550s, a painting with largerthan-life figures whose beauty no reproduction can do justice. It is composed using diagonals which lead into the space and converge at the figure of the high priest. On the left side, the triangle is bounded by the peculiar, bulky temple building; under its side entrance, three figures stand, one woman clearly identified as Eastern [Orientalin]. Along the building, the poor sit on the steps: the Lazzaroni, whom one could still see in front of Italian churches 20 years ago. This half of the depiction lies completely in shadow; one can barely differentiate between individual forms, as if the artist sought to characterize the sinister side of life, the misery and lost life of the darkness. The other half is lit, and we see more pleasant scenes: three mothers with their children, one who seems to protect Mary, a second who points Mary out to her daughter, a third who plays with her child. These three women are balanced at the top of the composition by three men, among them the towering figure of the high priest. Between the men and the women stands the little Madonna, who solemnly climbs the stairs and is equally solemnly received by that giant. Behind her the heavens have brightened: there a new future for mankind has been revealed, which the peculiar old man to the left, who is pulled from the dark background by sharp highlights and who so strongly resembles Michelangelo’s late figures, seems to sense. A new influence of Michelangelo is not only apparent in this figure; we also see strangely elongated figures like those depicted by Michelangelo in his last working period, and whose source, as in the Gothic, lay in the effort to overcome that which is bound by mass through the greatest possible development of height. This is associated with a new relationship to the observation of nature. While the figures have not lost any of their lively properties, their realism is, like the mastery of the body in Michelangelo’s late work, more an element of fantasy than an attempt to remain true to sensory perception and to illustrate it exhaustively. As in fairy tales or myths, impressions from life are transferred onto a supernatural and unreal world through which they gain a new meaning. In the 1560s, the primary works are two colossal paintings which lead one to believe that Tintoretto sought to test his ability in the representation of sweeping, epic scenes: the Marriage at Cana in the Church of the Salute (1561) and the Crucifixion of Christ in the Scuola di San Rocco (1565). Tintoretto depicts the marriage in a deeply elongated hall like those found in the piano signorile of all Venetian palaces. Something is conspicuous here, where we would least expect it: a strong emphasis of the perspectival construction, which played no role in the paintings that directly preceded this one.

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This painting of Tintoretto’s signals the return to a depth of space, which is also traced by the rendering of the banquet as it stretches into the background. But this perspectival construction is not there for its own sake, as it was in the Quattrocento; it is not separated from the figural composition but rather forms its boundary, and is meant to serve other goals. In all of its parts, the space is animated by figures which offer the viewer the spectacle of a cheerful celebration, an impression which is heightened by the varied play of light. If one lingers over this image of life, his thoughts begin to range from its purely painterly effects. One notices the two groups at the front left side of the table, whose figures indicate through gestures that something strange has occurred. One searches further along the rows of heads on either side of the table; like rows of columns in a basilica, they lead the eye back into the depths of the picture and meet at Christ, who sits alone at the opposite head of the table. Above his head is the point at which all perspectival lines converge. There, too, lies the spiritual center: the miracle worker, who causes everything to happen but does so without direct interference, and who is not made into a spectacle within the picture, but to whom instead the viewer must work his way through the starkly receding space. This is the principle of the basilica, which was simultaneously revived in architecture by [Jacopo] Vignola! And now, the great Crucifixion of 1565 (Figure 8.3). The Scuola di San Rocco was among the wealthiest and most highly regarded Venetian confraternities. In the first half of the sixteenth century, the Scuola built a beautiful residence near the Frari Church. In the second half of the century, the building was decorated with paintings, almost all of which were executed by Tintoretto. Initially he was commissioned to paint individual works, paintings for the meeting room on the second floor; these were followed by the decoration of the ground floor hall. Later, Tintoretto painted constantly for the brotherhood, of which he became a member; it was during this period that he painted the large upper hall, a project which extended until the artist’s death. Because everything has been preserved undisturbed, in situ, the Scuola house functions as the largest gallery of Tintoretto’s works and the most important monument of Italian painting in the second half of the Cinquecento. The Crucifixion, which fills the entirety of the hall’s longest wall above its built-in cabinetry, is a large panorama of the type occasionally depicted by the Netherlandish artists of the sixteenth century. The difference is that in the Netherlandish cases, the figures are more or less strewn across a landscape, whereas Tintoretto’s work presents an emotional crowd which surrounds the place of execution in an ellipse. The crucifixion scene itself is broken into several episodes. At the right, one thief is nailed to his cross; on the left, the cross with the other thief is erected. With its forceful energy and its striking vitality, this tableau in particular enjoyed great admiration in the Baroque; for example, Rubens emulated it in his Elevation of the Cross in Antwerp Cathedral. Thus this realistic scene, which is only a single episode here, becomes the focal point

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8.3 Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto, The Crucifixion (1565), oil on canvas, 536 × 1224 cm. Scuola Grande di S. Rocco, Venice

and the source of the strongest emotion in the seventeenth century. Tintoretto represses the independent meaning of every realistic detail for the sake of the overall effect. He does so first and foremost through lighting. I worked for weeks in the hall in which the painting is housed, scouring the account books of the brotherhood in order to gather information relevant to Tintoretto’s case, and thus had the opportunity to study the painting at various times of day. In the morning it was as if dead; in the afternoon, however, around four o’clock, when the sun shone diagonally through the window on the opposite wall, it began to glow—for it was composed with this sole source of light in mind. From the window a broad beam of light falls onto the dim, dreary scene,

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illuminating a large triangle on the floor and gilding the craggy cliffs in the left background. This battle between light and darkness has nothing to do with composition; neither does it serve naturalistic illustration. Rather, it stands above the inconstancy of human desires as a world of its own, as another realm of fantasy, which can never be depleted by human acts. This is joined by an additional factor: the focal point of the composition made up of Christ’s cross and the group gathered around the collapsed Madonna. This center is sequestered away from the remaining lively commotion. The group with the Madonna is separated by gaps on both sides from the neighboring clusters of figures and is pushed completely into the foreground, so that it,

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together with the crucifix, stands closest to the viewer. The cross rises up, far above the other figures, to the upper edge of the picture. But this separation is not an isolation; through multiple, barely visible, and yet forceful means the viewer is referred again and again to these two central points. The group is not freely placed within the space, like the other scene which narrates the story, but is strictly composed. It forms a closed triangle, similar to the way in which Michelangelo occasionally integrated figures into a block. No action, no desire, no event, but rather only emotion distinguishes the faithful. Above them rises the crucifix in frontal view and total symmetry. This is the depiction of that moment in which the work of raising the cross is completed and the actual martyrdom begins. Christ thirsts, and the sponge is passed up to him, and yet this is not, strangely, the suffering Christ: he appears with a beautiful body, arms outstretched, hiding the wood of the cross, against a gleaming, bright half-circle. He is not the dying man, but instead the God who releases himself from the cross, who looks down to those suffering at his feet as if wanting to enfold them and all of those who will follow him in a loving embrace. The fact that Christian art developed so differently from ancient art is not least to be attributed to the origin of their pictorial imaginations, which differed from the very beginning. In antiquity it was primarily the gods that were ever more artfully depicted; the main task of Christian art consisted of the pictorial narration of different events which, in order to preserve their vitality, had to be constantly anchored in the observation of life or in fantasy, as was done in the Gothic, by Giotto, by German artists active around 1500, and by Tintoretto (later, too, by Rembrandt). In Tintoretto, the old themes found a creator who not only enriched them with new observations or idealized figures, but also fashioned them artistically in a completely new way; in this new style, he elevated earlier Venetian painting, with its chiaroscuro fantasies and the Mannerist overemphasis on spiritual moments, to a visionary, painterly adaptation filled with spiritual significance. In the years that follow, his powers of imagination overflowed with this biblical poetry in the richest abundance. I want to mention only a few examples, first Christ Before Pilate in the same hall on the opposite wall, with its movingly beautiful figure of Christ, lit in the surrounding dark by a ray of light that falls between the columns; the figure is so regal, so entirely sublime in appearance that the accusers linger shyly in the background, the guards retreat, and Pilate himself turns away as if ashamed, as if he does not dare to look the accused in the eyes. Or the Annunciation in the lower hall of the Scuola. The Madonna resides in a ruin, in which a marble floor and a bed of state in the background seem to indicate the fleeting nature of earthly splendor, while Saint Joseph works in front of the structure. Then the message streams into the space, brought not only by the angel but also his retinue: a rainbow of innumerable small angelic figures and a flood of light. Here Tintoretto’s work resembles that of Grünewald and

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Altdorfer; but what was intimate, contemplative, and idyllic in the work of the German artists is, in Tintoretto’s painting, triumphant and sweeping, as if the entirety of heaven were floating down to these poor people who found refuge in a ruin. These biblical fantasies become ever more audacious. In the Birth of Christ in the upper hall, one sees strange architecture: a hay loft like those which can sometimes still be found in the lagoon [the Veneto], which the painter opens on the diagonal so that one can see into the lower room and into the attic at the same time; the shepherds down below in a peasant scene conceived and painted completely differently than the contemporary pictures of Brueghel, and yet certainly no less wonderful; and the holy family above, with two worshipping women, in a scene of deepest interiority. Through the destroyed trusses a magical and supernatural light streams into the space and transforms it into an enchanted realm. Or the Adoration of the Magi: a true orgy of light and dark which, although a large painting, is painted with the boldness and burning enthusiasm of an initial sketch. It is a night scene like Rembrandt’s Night Watch; we see outside in the distance the entourage appear like pale figures made of fog in the first light of breaking day, but the ruinlike hall, closed off by a curtain, still lies in darkness. Lights flicker around, fill the space with ghostly movement and light the figures only to the extent that one can see that every gaze is turned in silent reverence to the child Jesus, who, bathed in light, raises his hand in blessing. Also very important are the three landscapes located in the same hall: a Flight into Egypt, Magdalene in the Desert, and Saint Mary of Egypt. In the first, there is a sense of leaving the pleasant countryside and entering the desert, where the first respite is quickly sought. The second is an allegory for the majestic enormity of the loneliness in which man loses himself. And the third, perhaps the most beautiful, is like a magical garden full of mysterious, exotic beauty and poetry. It is striking that these landscapes contain no Venetian motifs, neither those which are actually visible in the city of lagoons nor those which were hitherto typically seen in painting. These are landscapes of pure fantasy, but in a different sense than the ideal landscapes of the school of Raphael. Those were based on an attempt to unify the depiction of the landscape and the notion of a classical ideal. Tintoretto fashions the landscape into an expression of spiritual content which is independent of any objective or even historical norm and exemplarity. The power of the natural elements combined with the depiction of significant events is demonstrated by three representations of the legend of Saint Mark made for the Scuola di San Marco and painted for the same room in which the Miracle of St. Mark Freeing the Slave hung. The earliest of these depicts the rescue of a Saracen from drowning.6 This is a storm at sea more violent than any ever painted! A huge ship has sunk; one sees only the crow’s nest, on which some of the shipwrecked sailors cling, protruding from the waves; others try to save themselves in a boat, but it too has already begun to sink. Then the saint appears in order to wrench the youth from the surging

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elements: it is a spectral scene, dimly lit, with sulfur-yellow lights bursting against the deep green of the sky and sea. The second painting depicts the abduction of the corpse of Saint Mark. Heaven has come to the aid of the saint: a storm is brewing, lightning vibrates; the sudden onset of the storm throws down the camel driver and a man who tries to hold on to the torn drapery; rain patters against the square, which recalls the Piazza San Marco and the church which once adjoined it before being dismantled by Napoleon. Everyone flees; the piazza will soon be completely empty; the corpse can be hoisted onto the camel without interference. Under the first arcade we see something like veils flapping, formless and yet, upon closer observation, taking shape—a ghostly apparition, as if it were the spirit of the saint that performed the miracle. The contrast between body and soul is clearer still in the third and latest of the paintings, which shows the discovery of the body of Saint Mark. We see a weakly lit Renaissance hall, stretching into the depths; deep in the background, two men shine lights into an open crypt, while in the foreground a man holds up a torch. They have come to seek the corpse of the saint, but how will they know in which of the many sarcophagi it lies hidden? Then the miracle occurs: that which they seek appears—Mark, not dead but supernaturally alive—and shows the seekers where they will find his earthly remains. The ghost of the saint performs miracles: to the right, a demon is expelled in the form of smoke from the mouth of a possessed man, and farther back we see a blind man whose sight will no doubt be restored in the next instant. Thus in Tintoretto’s art the irrational and the intuitive continue to gain prevalence. Another Crucifixion in San Cassiano was made at the end of the 1560s (1568). Here the moment after the crucifixion is depicted. Golgotha is deserted, the emotional drama is over, the three crucified men—the crosses are placed on a diagonal—have been left to their fates. The soldiers have withdrawn, we see only their heads and halberds; two men are busy securing the inscription to Christ’s cross. His mother with her faithful friend and companion has settled down opposite Christ and gazes at him, and Christ returns her gaze. Their taking leave of one another forever causes one to forget everything else that is painted here; only a deeply moving compassion remains. The fact that such pictures have caused the Mannerists to be accused of a lack of independence and originality is incomprehensible and merely proves how little we have occupied ourselves with their creations. In contrast to the representational and formal narrowness of the Renaissance, in Mannerism, artistic imagination is elevated such that it causes everything made in the preceding 100 years to seem like a humble preview. If one searches for the source of this richness, there can be no doubt that it originated on the one hand in the defeat of the imitation of nature and the study of models and, on the other hand, in the surmounting of formal ideals—that is, the struggle for bodily forms which were the highest paradigms of natural authenticity,

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such as those used by Michelangelo as the foundation of his Last Judgment. It is highly instructive to compare Tintoretto’s Last Judgment in Santa Maria dell’Orto, made at the beginning of the 1560s, with its archetype in the Sistine Chapel. Here we have no scene of judgment, no summary of the individual stages of the last days in a single, terrible moment, but rather three clearly separated situations, only two of which, unfortunately, are visible in the illustrations, since the upper part of the painting was never photographed. These three processes can be read one after the other like a chronicle; they do not unfold along the picture plane next to or above one another, but rather develop from out of the depth of the space. In the center, the Deluge erupts in the far distance, tearing down everything in its path and spreading misery. In the midst of this end of the world, the second act begins: the raising of the dead and the battle between heaven and hell for their souls. The action plays out in the picture’s foremost vertical plane. Where the first section was characterized by an earthly event, here the scene is translated into a supernatural form. Below we see those who have arisen, a thick ball of figures, a gruesome mass in which we are shown how skeletons are gradually transformed into living bodies. From out of this throbbing, writhing pile the ghouls of hell take their victims, loading them onto Charon’s barge, which will steer into the flowing waters of annihilation; on the other side, to the left, the just rise up into heaven, where their souls are weighed and united with the blessed, who have been loosed from all earthly existence and float upon clouds. The higher it rises, the lighter the mass becomes, and the more this existence transcends reality; in the infinite worlds above, Christ hovers with Mary and John, surrounded by apostles and martyrs, and also a woman with three children, symbol of charity. Poetic and painterly fantasy weaves the world of never-ending life out of light and clouds, with the godhead and all-conquering eternal love towering above it as in a dream. If one sought to place a similar image next to this one, one would have to return to the fantasies of the Neoplatonists of the third and fourth centuries, most notably to that of Plotinus. But what was philosophical speculation for him has been turned here into a powerful visual design. Certainly Tintoretto had no notion of Neoplatonist philosophy or literature; but just as antiquity’s objective study of nature was constantly revisited and expanded by western Christian art as one of its sources, so too a second source was the notion of the spiritualization of those mysteries of existence which exceeded the limitations of sensory perception. It is possible to identify in this orientation a similar, constantly self-renewing sequence of development, much like that of the artistic objectification of the conception of the world [Weltbild], which has long since been exhaustively researched. Tintoretto’s career is not only characterized by macrocosmic fantasies such as these; he also penetrated the mysteries of religious tradition more deeply, as another painting, the Last Supper in San Polo shows us.7 It is separated by

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some two decades from the depiction of the same subject in San Trovaso, and how different it is from the latter! Here Tintoretto has strayed much further from the traditional scheme—beginning with the choice of the moment he depicts. We are presented not with the prediction of the betrayal, but with the introduction of the sacrament in the sharing of the bread. Christ has leapt up in passionate ecstasy and passes the morsels to two apostles; the way in which he stands with his wide-outstretched arms [shows] he is no longer the man who faces his own death, but rather the founder of a religion who is gladly willing to sacrifice himself for humanity and who, before his death, in sudden inspiration, forms a new spiritual society. The deed immediately reproduces itself: the apostle seated across from Christ hands bread to a beggar who lies helpless on the ground. Overshadowed by this meaningful inaugural act of a religion based on the transfiguration of the comprehensible into the incomprehensible, everything else fades into the background. Only two figures are of any significance, and they frame the main scene in contrapposto. On the left, a servant, neither seeing nor anticipating what is happening here, is busy setting the table; on the right, a man who has just entered and observes the incident thoughtfully and devoutly. They are representative of those who wander far from the divine mysteries and of those who grasp the deeper meaning of life. The mystical character of the painting is also determined by its coloration: on the small strip of horizon that one sees at the top right, a glowing light struggles against a darkened sky; and in the foreground the colors twinkle in the twilight of the church like medieval stained glass. Tintoretto abandoned this type of coloristic effect entirely in the final phase of his career. The primary work of that period is the decoration of the great upper hall of the Scuola di San Rocco, which Tintoretto, now a member of the brotherhood, had assumed direction of in 1575. The contract has been preserved: in it, the master pledges, like Michelangelo during the construction of St. Peter’s, for the salvation of his soul, to paint three paintings a year for a small yearly pension. Whereas in the last 20 years of his life he had left most of his contracts to his students, he executed these paintings entirely by himself. He was also permitted to design the overall scheme: in a typological contrast, scenes from the Old Testament, primarily from the story of Moses, were depicted opposite scenes from the life of Christ. In typical Venetian style, the ceiling is covered in rich wood carving in which large square spaces and various smaller spaces have been reserved for paintings. In the small frames, Tintoretto restricts himself to a few figures; in the larger ones he creates expansive history paintings. The Vision of Ezekiel serves as an example of the first category. The prophet raises the lid of the sarcophagus but sees not the contents of a coffin, not a realistic image, but rather an intimate ghostly vision: the dying, corpses that have not yet begun to decay. Skeletons, bones and staring skulls. He is torn out of this feverish dream by another vision: God drifts down from on high, surrounded by supernatural

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light, an apparition that seems to turn on its own axis, human-like but then again not, a rotating power whose aura reaches the prophet and envelopes him, while like a cyclone it throws the hunched man backward. This is an opportunity to speak about the way in which Tintoretto composed his figures in this period. It is striking that in his later works we seldom find figures that are depicted in normal positions or movements, and that, where this does occur, they are only tangential figures. The others appear dislocated, bent in powerful twists towards the front or back, often contradictorily both in the same figure. A great escalation in movement had already characterized the work of Michelangelo’s middle period, as well as all that art which was dependent on his work, including Tintoretto’s. But this escalation takes on a new character in Tintoretto’s work. In that of Michelangelo and his imitators, the goal was to emphasize natural movement until it reached the supernormal and superhuman, whereas with Tintoretto the starting point is not a motif taken from natural movement but one that arises out of an artistic intent and necessity independent of it [natural movement], an expression to which the animated body must conform entirely. At first one might believe that, as is the case with other Mannerists, we are dealing with the heightening of spatial effects through the figures. This certainly was a factor in the middle period of Tintoretto’s career, but in the late works this explanation is not sufficient, because one also finds the strangely posed figures in places in which there is no real endeavor to create spatial effects. There is no doubt that movement has been released from all naturalistic functions and has become an independent expression of spiritual content. Thus it emerges in this painting solely out of a conception of the visionary appearance of God on the one hand and, on the other, from witnessing the elementary effect that apparition has on the prophet. This animation, anchored as it is not in the environment but rather in fantasy, also characterizes the larger depictions, for example, The Brazen Serpent. Moses, the miracle worker, is the only relatively peaceful figure; the rest is a conglomerate of figures in a paroxysm of convulsing movement: below, a gruesome mass of twitching bodies suffering under the serpent’s bite, an image of humanity given over to annihilation because of its sins; above, God, surrounded by angels or, more accurately, a cloud speeding off in which the spirits of revenge reside; and, between these two masses, the wood of the cross which brings salvation. As is the case for the depiction of bodies, the entire composition is also based on the purely spiritual, as a mural from this room, the Ascension of Christ, demonstrates (Figure 8.4). One should recall how this or a similar theme was dealt with in earlier art: the apostles gathered in the foreground, gazing upward, with Christ (or Mary) floating above them into the heavens. Here, the apostles have receded into the background, one does not even see all of them. They are strewn across the landscape and seem to have been barely breathed onto the canvas; that which

8.4 Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto, The Ascension of Christ (1578–81), oil on canvas, 529 × 485 cm. Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice (Sala Superiore)

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was once the primary object of the depiction has become a pale shadow. Only one stands apart from the others, and this one, the primary figure below, does not look upwards to Christ. He has busied himself with his Gospel, considers what he should write about the ascension of Christ—and now he sees the scene not as something real, not as something of the sensory present, but as an image of fantasy. This dreamlike quality is depicted: the shadow-like apostles on the earth and far from any measurable reality of Christ, who floats away surrounded by clouds and angels. It is obvious why the glowing, color-rich hues of the older works have disappeared. Looking back, we can trace Tintoretto’s significance to his ingenious and consequential progression, undeterred by external success, along the path which Michelangelo had embarked upon in his later work. This path led from the primacy of nature and form to the primacy of the spirit and feeling. In Michelangelo’s work, as was appropriate to his temperament, this new orientation all but fulfilled itself as a break with the past, while in the case of Tintoretto it was achieved step by step. Michelangelo was ready from the first moment to sacrifice every achievement previously made in art for the sake of this new orientation, as the early Christian artists had done. Even as an old man he possessed the soul of a revolutionary. Tintoretto, on the other hand, gradually conquered everything that the art of the time possessed in terms of its tools of expression: artful composition, chiaroscuro, the rendering of atmospheric effects, the representation of the body, the representation of space and color. All of this forfeited its existing significance; it was no longer a means of depicting or idealizing nature, but rather had to serve a new fantastic art whose source was, first and foremost, psychological experience. Nowhere does this come to the fore so clearly as in the drawings of Tintoretto’s late career, of which a large number have been preserved in a sketchbook in London. To what end did Tintoretto draw these scenes of Walpurgisnacht?8 The question is by no means superficial. All drawing in the Renaissance served an external, a given, or at least a required goal: they were studies for a painting or plastic work, studies from nature or compositional motifs and drafts which the artist would use either in a specific project or sometime later. But we can hardly assume that the 14 sketched attempts at Saint Anthony should be understood as preparation for a particular painting. The feverish haste with which the drawings were jotted down shows clearly that they are the record of ideas, nightmarish images of an eerie world which had filled the artist at one time. The process is very familiar from contemporary art, but in the sixteenth century it was new, as new as that psychological self-observation in the writings of the great mystics of this time, with which it has the greatest affinity. At the same time, these very drawings show us that all of Tintoretto’s work was based on supernatural foundations, on the struggle to express that which moved the artist internally. And yet he remained thoroughly Italian and a person

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of the sixteenth century. In contrast to the artists of the present, visions such as these are channeled by Tintoretto again and again into compositions whose spiritual content is not purely subjective. Rather the pictures allude to the universal conditions and problems of a spiritual intensification of life commonly expressed in the religious worldview [of the time]. Finally, I would like to address three monumental assertions among the last works of Tintoretto: Paradise in the Doge’s Palace, which he worked on from 1588, and the two large pictures in San Giorgio Maggiore from the year of his death. Paradise decorates the narrow wall of the Great Council Hall, which until that point had been covered with a fresco by Guariento from 1368. Tintoretto replaced it with a painting on canvas, probably the largest in the world, with a surface of over 500 square meters. Present-day visitors rarely notice it. With its gigantic circumference and its innumerable figures, it is too tedious for the hurried tourist, and even the art historian has difficulty befriending it. Velasquez on the other hand wrote about the work in expressions of highest admiration. To a certain degree, the task was similar to that which faced Michelangelo in the Last Judgment: a magnificent room whose ceiling and three walls were decorated with paintings was to receive a gigantic painting for its front wall, which would be the dominant one. What might be a suitable illustration to crown this monument to the splendor of Serenissima? Surely not the Last Judgment, but perhaps Paradise, in which eternal rewards await those men who accomplish great things. The problem of conceiving of an image which could command the entire space from this position was difficult to solve. In the Trecento, when everything was given over to an imaginary scale, this was not a concern, since the scale could be enlarged ad infinitum; but now, in the Cinquecento, whose art no longer permitted an expansion of scale so far abstracted from real appearance—and in a place in which the action of figures, sensual brilliance, and composition already had demanded the outer limits of the achievable in the rest of the decoration—the task seemed to exceed human capabilities. Tintoretto achieved the seemingly impossible by encompassing the epic depiction not within a confined event, but instead within infinity itself, an immeasurable room completely filled with figures so that the eye cannot detect even the smallest void. It is not simply the addition of figures, but rather the representation of a uniform movement and transcendental order which separates eternal celestial activity from every kind of earthly bondage. The focal point is comprised of the figures of Christ and of Mary, who kneels before him, and around this center point concentrically arranged rings of clouds are depicted; these are made up of different forms and we are set right in the middle of their movement. They do not circle along the vertical plane, but rather extend diagonally into the space, so that the movement stretches unimpeded into the depths. At the same time, radial paths stretch from the center outwards; everywhere among the animated masses there

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is a relationship established with the source of this eternal life in heavenly space. The fact that all of this does not appear dead and schematic is due to the light. In order to bring it into its full effect, the artist forgoes any variety in color, replacing it with a single warm tone based on the combined effects of a warm red and a deep blue, united by dark shadows. Light breaks through this veil—not the natural light of day but a magical white light that comes from the center, from the circle of light around Christ and the Madonna. In the foreground it is interrupted by the figures, but it floods the infinite reaches of the painting’s depths unhindered. It is the idea of infinity that has been brought into view here. With this view into eternity, the entire history of mankind is woven together from thousands of characters and historical figures and from the inexhaustible fullness of ever-changing movements. It is not so important to know to which concrete precursors the great illusionistic painting of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries attached itself in particular cases: its source lay in just such a conception of the immeasurable, the all-encompassing. The two marvelous paintings in San Giorgio Maggiore are like an afterword to this glimpse into eternity (Figures 8.5 and 8.6). They decorate the choir of the church, which is an addition by Palladio and one of the most important examples of Venice’s new church architecture. In contrast to the designs of the Renaissance, the church’s plan, like that of Il Gesù, transforms the spiritual center of the building into its artistic center as well; the two paintings were designed for this focal point. They seem at first glance to be fundamentally different from each other; the first even seems to lack the idealized style of his later period altogether: a segment of landscape seen from above, over which different scenes and figures are spread. It is called the Miracle of the Manna [sic], and the kernels that are strewn across the ground, which a few figures collect and hold in their hands, point to this subject matter. But the rest of the depiction goes beyond this subject and presents us with various occupations of everyday life: we see a shoemaker at work; in the center a seamstress; at the water’s edge, women doing their washing; further overhead women spinning, a smith, a donkey driver, and a man reading. The daily life that Tintoretto symbolized in the Last Supper in San Polo in the form of the servant has been expanded within this verdant landscape into an encyclopedic image. What does this allegory of earthly existence, with its toil and occupations, signify here in the space of the altar? The answer is provided by the figures in the foreground. First we see Moses, a figure that resembles that of Christ; next to him stands a man who draws his attention to the miracle with a powerful twisting motion, but Moses or Christ listens to him calmly, his gesture and his expression seem to say: “the daily bread is not the most important thing; one must turn one’s gaze elsewhere.” The woman in the left background shows us where. She does not hold kernels of manna in her hand but a palm branch; and with her right hand on her breast, she gazes dumbfounded out of the picture, as if she were looking at the painting that hangs on the opposite wall.

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8.5 Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto, The Gathering of the Manna (1592–94), oil on canvas, 377 × 576 cm. San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice

There, the daylight is contrasted with a night scene; the green tone, which allows everything to be seen so clearly and yet is also so deceptive, is replaced by a world of shadows, dark, but leading to the one true light. In this painting, his last, Tintoretto paints the Last Supper once more (Figure 8.6). The composition recalls somewhat the Marriage at Cana, but the drastic limitation of space that was so characteristic in that work has disappeared here. The room seems to be filled by clouds of smoke which dissolve any boundaries, and in its upper sections it is only barely lit by a lamp. In a wide circle around the banquet table, the servants quietly perform their tasks, while in their midst a miracle occurs. Christ passes the morsel to his neighbor with both hands in thoughtful solemnity. It is not the ecstatic foundation of a religion that is depicted here, but rather the sacrament itself, the transformation of the comprehensible into the incomprehensible, and this event does not stir the participating apostles to action but evokes miraculous experiences in them. A second light emerges from the figure of Christ, triumphantly saturating the darkness; and above their heads it begins to rain, the clouds of smoke turn into winged figures, and what takes place in the hearts and minds of the apostles—their emotion and piety, the experience of the miracle of transubstantiation, the unspeakable, the mystery—gains pictorial expression. No other ending to this long artistic life could have been more sublime. If one wishes to learn to observe the development of art not from the perspective of

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8.6 Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto, The Last Supper (1591–92), oil on canvas, 364 × 568 cm. San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice

the imitation of nature and from problems of form, but rather also from the position of purely spiritual immersion, one will no doubt count this painting among art’s highest culminations. Translated by Heather Mathews

notes 1 The Miracle of the Slave is also known as Miracle of St. Mark, or Saint Mark Freeing the Slave. Dvořák uses these titles interchangeably. [Ed.] 2 Michelangelo Buonarroti’s The Crucifixion of Saint Peter and The Conversion of St. Paul (1542–50) were commissioned by Pope Paul III for the Cappella Paolina, Vatican Palace, Vatican City, Rome. [Ed.] 3 Jacob Burckhardt, Der Cicerone: Eine Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Italiens [Cicerone: An Art Guide to Painting in Italy] (Heidelberg: Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, 1855). [Ed.] 4 Dvořák refers to the The Last Supper in the Monastery of San Lorenzo, El Escorial (1557/64), attributed to the workshop of Titian. [Ed.] 5 Dvořák presumably refers here to Albrecht Dürer’s Large Passion Series, published as a book in 1511. [Ed.]

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6 St. Mark Rescuing a Saracen from Shipwreck, The Removal of the Body of St. Mark from Alexandria, and Finding of the Body of St. Mark, all painted between 1562 and 1566. [Ed.] 7 Tintoretto, The Last Supper (1574–75), San Polo, Venice. [Ed.] 8 Dvořák refers here to a series of sketches housed in the British Museum, London (acc. nos. 1907–7–17–42 to 74). As Hans Aurenhammer notes in his essay in this volume, these sketches are now considered to be the works of Tintoretto’s son, Domenico Tintoretto (cf. Aurenhammer, “Inventing ‘Mannerist Expressionism,’” n. 37). [Ed.]

9 Foreword to Oskar Kokoschka: Variations on a Theme (1921)* Max Dvořák

Nearly half a century ago, one of the leading masters of Impressionism painted a series of pictures for which one could have used a collective title similar to that of the drawings presented on the following pages. I speak of the famous haystacks of Monet. The subject of this naturalistic ode was the way a bit of nature changes, through the influence of the seasons and times of day, as an optical impression in its illumination and atmospheric ambience. Kokoschka’s cycle presents, in ten variations, the head of a young woman (Figure 9.1)—or better, presents ten different pictorial conceptions to which he was inspired by that head, and through which the individual appearance that was the point of departure only quietly reverberates, sometimes more strongly, sometimes more weakly, like a song that one hears from a distance. The two series are separated by a world, a cataclysm in the concept of art that could hardly be greater. Here we are dealing not with art alone, but with an entire Weltanschauung. Monet’s haystacks belong to the age of scientific pantheism. Its roots reach back a long way, but it was only in the previous [nineteenth] century that it was victorious in displacing the religious worldview. Consciously or unconsciously, humankind was ever more ruled by the conviction that the key to all riddles of existence, and the acquisition of its most valuable essentials, lay in the study of nature. One sought the meaning of life in the spectre of a progress based on natural development; in its alleged intellectually recognizable regularity, they saw the highest forms of truth. And so, nature became a revelation, the all-powerful, the mother of life and the embodiment of beauty and exaltation, the true God of humankind. *

Max Dvořák, foreword to Oskar Kokoschka: Variationen über ein Thema (Vienna: Lanyi, 1921). Reprinted in Oskar Kokoschka. Das Konzert: Variationen über ein Thema. Hommage à Kamilla Swoboda, ed. Reinhold Graf Bethusy-Huc (Salzburg: Galerie Welz, 1988), 29–32.

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9.1 Oskar Kokoschka, Das Konzert II / The Concert II from the series Das Konzert (1920, published 1921 by Paul Cassirer), lithograph, 84.5 × 61.4 cm (sheet). The Museum of Modern Art, New york

Not only science bowed down before this God; so too did its sister, art, whose training at that time consisted mainly of deepening the methods of the artistic observation of nature and of its reproduction, to the extreme limits of the painterly immortalization of a temporally limited, sensual perception. The artistic vision of nature took on the sensitivity of a photographic apparatus and, through this, lost its soul. The more an

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artist was absorbed in the task of imitating nature, the more he distanced himself from that wellspring of art that is hidden deep within the psyche of humans, and that enables their spirits to fly beyond all natural, sensory limits into the eternal. The art of the previous century fell apart because of this soullessness. Together with the entire 500-year-old naturalistic heritage whose final possessor it was, this art was blown away by a storm, as its general intellectual precondition, scientific belief/superstition, was shattered, and as doubts arose everywhere as to whether the insight of rational causality was really able to penetrate to the deepest essence of life. At that point the entire proud temple of divine nature collapsed like a house of cards—and this occurred in art as well, because artists also began to ask themselves whether nature was more divine than the human soul, and whether it was justifiable to reduce the soul to a mere echo of natural impressions; whereas, in truth, IT is something divine, the most exalted thing a human possesses, a power through which he can raise himself over his transitory surroundings into an everlasting spiritual world. As mountain streams flood the valley after the snows melt, so too did this insight erupt in recent decades as a turbulent revolution, on every track and various paths yet always with the same goal. For the first time since the Middle Ages, the authority of nature over art was smashed into ruins so that sensory experience metamorphosed unceasingly into the expression of the spiritual experience of existence nearly to the point of subjective caprice—this replaced the previous subjugation of the creator by his creation. How else could it have transpired, after everything that scientific pantheism promised to humanity, and on which the world order was based, was revealed to be a sham? One part after another of the Tower of Babel collapsed, and those who looked and felt more deeply were left with only a great yearning for gods who could be discovered with something other than the microscope or photography or the artistic reproduction of an image on the retina! Is it not understandable that this yearning immediately broke through all boundaries and bonds? A thousand times over, in individual explosions, it did away with the entire overabundance of old naturalistic, representational subject matter and problems, and with a single blow sought to conquer the new, inner truth, just as the late classical philosophers at times linked their new understanding of existence to the dethroned deities of the fields and the forests and of daily existence. But who could doubt that the unfettered subjectivism and panpsychism sooner or later would lead to new, all-powerful gods— gods who lived not in haystacks like the idol Atheos, but rather gods who brought humanity, through a current, spiritual rebirth, to a new conceptual understanding of the world, independent of all temporal and spatial limits! All of this lies between Monet’s pictures and Kokoschka’s drawings, to which we now can turn once again. They were made in the summer of 1920

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in a period of uninterrupted work lasting a few weeks. The master drew the same woman ten times—the human being has become the most important theme for variations: as in classical Greece and the Middle Ages, it is, once more, the most costly art object—seen anew ten times and ten times allowed to appear anew in his consciousness. Their appearance, ever novel, is based not on the renewed discovery of material form or on changes in appearance under influences of differing light or atmosphere, but rather on the inexhaustible and uninterrupted, flowing movement of the spiritual animation—the most significant in the representation of the human being—which is at the heart of these Variations. In them, Kokoschka pursues a spiritually transitory and fluctuating quality with feverish tension, as the artists of the Florentine Renaissance once sought to establish the laws of physical movement in series of studies of the human body. For them, the psychological was only an accessory, an explanation for the ignorant observer; in Kokoschka’s studies of the spirit [Geistesstudien], on the other hand, the bodily is only a reflection of the spiritual, and for that reason it is a dependent and variable expression of the life force that is based on spiritual movements and is, itself, all-determining. There is something else to consider still. From drawing to drawing, the style of the representation develops further. In the first pages, the emphasis is still on what is personal and characteristic, but this disappears entirely from the later drawings. The woman, who began to occupy the artist as a complex of individually active, spiritual attributes and features, begins gradually to transform herself under the spell of a passive, supra-individual spiritual experience. She listens to words or sounds and under the influence of this external spiritual world, which flows into her, she loses all aspects of the personal and is replaced through an ideal type in which suprapersonal spiritual powers—existence’s greatest wonders and the most ennobling that are available to humankind—are embodied in an objective universality. This internal transformation also changes the external character of the drawings which, in the first pages as in Kokoschka’s earlier works, are analytically sharp and passionately inspired, and which in the progression of the work matured into something quiet and synthetic. It is as in the drawings of Michelangelo and Titian, as Italian art began to convert the Quattrocento’s accomplishments in the representation of the body into a typical, ideal form. Thus Kokoschka’s Variations stand simultaneously between two periods; they represent a turning point, a fruit of the previous revolutionary moment, but at the same time they are a step towards a future realm of a new German idealism that will be founded not on the world of the senses but will take its ideal forms from the spheres of the spirits and will write above its gates the words of Delacroix: “Facts do not count, for they decay. Only their idea remains, and it exists, in reality, only as an idea.” Translated by Heather Mathews

PART V

Heinrich Wölfflin

10 heinrich Wölfflin and the german sense of Form Michela Passini and Francesco Peri

What does form express? Central to Heinrich Wölfflin’s writings, and to pictorial Expressionism as an aesthetic option, this question is at the heart of what became the discipline of art history and its modern methods. Wölfflin was one of the godfathers of scholarly art history, or Kunstwissenschaft, and a protagonist of early twentieth-century German culture: the intellectual and artistic context of his thought was also that of the establishment of a new academic discourse in search of legitimation. Expression, expressivity and expressionism are common notions in the theoretical and historical study of art; however, who or what is expressed or expresses, to whom, for whom and how are frequently confused and elided. The notion of visual form aids in this confusion since, in form, signifier and signifying system are easily telescoped. Form can be an autonomous object of study, as it was for allegedly “formalist” Wölfflin, but at the same time it is always the form of something else, the visible counterpart and the manifestation of powers and intentions that lie beneath the surface. Add to this that visual art is not built on basic, arbitrary units—as is language—but always already refers, exists on several levels, each endowed with a specific temporality and historical pace, so that the notion of form is poised to play both a clarifying and an obfuscating role in the history of art. The “history of forms” of a Focillon or Wittkower is one aspect of this legacy, as is “formalism” understood as an art historical method based on the inherent meaningfulness of the visible. In this sense, Wölfflin’s descendants include Roger Fry, Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried, as well as Ernst Gombrich and Ernst Cassirer. His notion of form, however autonomous, was inseparable from the concept of “expression.” At the same time, Wölfflin was certainly not an “expressionist” art historian in the sense of Fritz Burger or Wilhelm Worringer; nor does there seem to have been any direct dialogue between Wölfflin and the artistic avant-garde. What

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Wölfflin and the “Expressionists” share is the belief that form is in and of itself expressive, and that it may be a correlate or epiphenomenon of something else. Of what, though, and how? The following will attempt to shed some light on the intricacies of Wölfflin’s concept of expression to make it available for comparison and differential historical analysis.

Form as expression Born in Winterthur, Switzerland, in 1864, the son of a philologist, Heinrich Wölfflin studied art history and philosophy in Basel, Berlin and Munich. He was 22 when he defended his groundbreaking Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur (1886) in which architecture was the privileged field for the study of form, as it would be two years later in Renaissance and Baroque (1888). In both, Wölfflin builds his system on the differences yielded by visual comparison—art history’s translation of visibility into the language-friendly codes of binary oppositions. Wölfflin’s attempt to systematize the study of art does not solely rely on comparison and description, however. Jacob Burckhardt’s example was central in this sense, though Wölfflin emptied art’s forms of their cultural aspects when he strove to systematize their evolution. In 1889 Wölfflin met Adolf von Hildebrand, whose Problem of Form (1893) would be as determinant to Wölfflin as Conrad Fiedler’s notion of reine Sichtbarkeit [pure visibility]. Wölfflin’s next major works, Classic Art (1899) and Principles of Art History (1915), identify a change in and of form with a shift in perception. This tenet would determine the rest of his research, writing and teaching, most famously in Basel, where he held Burckhardt’s chair as of 1893, then in Berlin as of 1901, Munich after 1912 and, finally, Zurich from 1924 until his death in 1945. Wölfflin’s books were often extensions of his lectures and travels. The classes he taught in Basel and his contemporaneous trips to Italy, for instance, were the basis of his 1899 Classic Art. In it, Wölfflin provides an internal analysis of the art of the Renaissance and its classical apogee. This major work forms a diptych with Wölfflin’s equally momentous 1905 Die Kunst Albrecht Dürers [The Art of Albrecht Dürer], in which the visionary Nurnberg master embodied an anguish about form and an obsession for Italy as the “solution” to a national weariness that were Wölfflin’s own. Some of these ideas were further carried out and developed in Die Kunst der Renaissance: Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl [The Art of the Renaissance: Italy and the German Sense of Form] of 1931, in which Wölfflin provides a national reading of formal principles: linear and painterly, plane and recession, closed and open forms, multiplicity and unity, clearness and unclearness correspond to the opposition between Italian and German outlooks. These formal principles, laid out as early as 1915 in the Principles

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of Art History, are reified into a veritable system throughout his writings, through to the Gedanken zur Kunstgeschichte [Thoughts on Art History] of 1941 and the posthumous Kleine Schriften [Shorter Writings], composed of articles spanning from 1886 to 1933. The notion of form is determinant in Wölfflin’s art historical system and most clearly set out in his Principles of Art History. In it Wölfflin presents the general traits of artistic evolution conceived not as a succession of isolated cases but as an integrated structure of recurring historical tendencies. These tendencies, objectified by Wölfflin into categories like classic and baroque, constitute a spiral of styles that follow upon one another as a series of solutions to the problems inherent in each historical situation. These categories, however, are not the reflection of a historical context, but rather overarching frames of mind that encompass specific historical contingencies. In other words, these categories are meta-historical, and in order to understand historical epochs it is essential to analyze their successive evolutionary stages, their intrinsic structure. As a result art history is first and foremost concerned with internal analysis: art’s evolution is relatively autonomous. Wölfflin’s approach relies first and foremost on description, achieved by means of comparison between works of art. Stylistic analysis enables us to see through the interplay of ephemeral historical events and isolate general laws of development whose knowledge, in turn, helps us give a concrete and determinate meaning to seemingly identical forms. If his approach seems positivistic in its reliance on factual observation, objective description and systematic analysis, Wölfflin’s method, Joan Hart has argued, is also indebted to a certain school of Neo-Kantian theory,1 especially in its universalism and pursuit of general principles. For Hart this dual heritage results in a paradox: on the one hand Wölfflin relies on specific occurrences, and on the other it aims at general truths, oscillating between respect for historical facticity and the attempt to transcend it. This opposition recedes, however, in the light of Wölfflin’s Hegelian articulation of synchronic and diachronic movements: whatever the scale of analysis—whether a specific detail, the work as a whole, the “school” to which it belongs or the national spirit that it embodies are in focus—every level of meaning is implied and envisioned in its temporal unfolding. The mediation of concrete history and ideal categories is guaranteed by the logical, psychological and historical structure of “expression,” where the synthesis of universal and particular takes place. The importance of “expression” to Wölfflin’s life work can hardly be overestimated, but the mechanics of this notion are somewhat more complex and evasive than one may be tempted to assume at first. A subtler and more differentiated reading of this ambitious and fascinating chapter of German historiography, therefore, requires a substantial elucidation of this delicate point.

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Ausdruck and art history At the end of the nineteenth century, when the 22-year-old scholar made his debut, the issue of artistic “expression” had been a preoccupation of European aesthetics for generations, to the point that its contours had turned slightly hazy and its critical edge a little blunt. Over the last 300 years the word itself had acquired different overtones that are not easy to summarize: a work might be “expressive” in that it aptly conveyed a notion or idea (as in post-council Catholic art); inspired certain feelings (as piety, fear or commotion); or lively portrayed the likeness of characters in their emotional determinacy (surprise, sorrow, defiance and so on). Throughout the late eighteenth century and the whole of the nineteenth, however, the concept of “expression” increasingly shifted towards meaning a confessional projection of the self, the manifestation of one’s inner life in art. This, at any rate, is the fundamentally subjectivist concept of Ausdruck (expression) that Wölfflin’s generation inherited from its Romantic and post-Romantic forefathers. Expression came into play when psychological or emotional content was conveyed by an artist’s individual output in such a way that it could be easily and spontaneously reenacted and brought back to life by a viewer or interpreter. This traditional view of expression, in both its more vulgar and refined versions, survived well into the twentieth century, when it was shared by such diverse personalities as Benedetto Croce, Max Scheler and the young Rudolf Arnheim, among others.2 In ideal cases, meaning could be “read off” a particular work of art the way we read a face or react to a gesture. This is “expression” in its most literal, physical sense, not too far removed from what Darwin may have meant by this term in his 1872 treatise on emotions.3 A work of art was, so to speak, the transparent receptacle of a conscious or unconscious intention, the material trace of an outward movement of the soul. This is obviously simplistic, but it allows us to sketch a preliminary model that we shall identify as Ausdruck1, where emphasis is on the subject and the link between form and content is direct, immediate, rigid and clear. None of this can be found in Wölfflin, however liberal his use of the word itself. Quite on the contrary, as it will be our task to prove, his notion of “expression” is (1) trans-individual, (2) multilayered and (3) opaque. For the sake of clarity we will label this option as Ausdruck2. How does this model relate to the concept of “expression” that rings in “Expressionism”? What is its role in Wölfflin’s scholarly praxis? To what extent can we legitimately speak of an “expressionist” art history? The closest Wölfflin ever got to a statement of intent on Ausdruck was his 1933 “Principles of Art History: A Revision” (included in this volume), a short but exceptionally dense meditation for which the following paragraphs will provide a summary, a context and a critical exegesis. Ironically enough, the Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture (1886), Wölfflin’s precocious dissertation, followed tradition. Not only were formal

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features declared to possess an inherent, stable, one-to-one relationship with specific expressive contents, but the dynamics of Ausdruck, the expressive potential of art, were explained by analogy to the body. We perceive architectural forms as expressive because we are spatial beings in the first place, and we have a tendency to project our inner experience onto inanimate bodies. Wölfflin himself characterized this model as “physiognomic”: architecture affects us the way a pose or a gesture might.4 This is why the expression of a building is closely related to the impression it makes on us: they are two faces of the same coin. No matter how strong the influence of then fashionable theories of “empathy”5 [Einfühlung], however, Wölfflin’s later work would betray a constant and strenuous effort to move as far away as possible from these early views, and thus from the theoretical implications of Ausdruck1. This evolution can be followed clearly in Renaissance and Baroque (1888), the essay on Roman triumphal arches (1893), and Classic Art (1898). Finally, Principles of Art History (1915), a turning point in Wölfflin’s career, was built on entirely different presuppositions. It should be noted, however, that as early as the Prolegomena, “expression” was for Wölfflin not simply a matter of what artists manifested or objectified in their works. Ausdruck was a property of works themselves. The point, in other words, was not so much what creative personalities had wished to communicate “through” art, but what buildings as such, as matter and space, conveyed by means of their formal organization. This objectivistic shift in emphasis was to remain a constant feature of Wölfflin’s scholarship: when “science” came into play, subjectivity and its urges would always be treated as negligible. Authors as individuals grew increasingly marginal in Wölfflin’s world, as the often misconstrued ambition of a new “art history without names” implies. An issue worth looking into, therefore, would be: what is expression really about in Wölfflin’s approach, who or what is the subject of expression? This was no trivial question in an age in which heroic monographs were the standard form of Renaissance studies. Wölfflin’s lifelong preoccupation was defining the authentic and specific object of a “scholarly” art history, yet he was less austere than some wish to believe. He readily admitted approaches based on Ausdruck1 in its different incarnations, but he regarded them as pre-scientific, in that they failed to address the real problems at stake. Art history could not be reduced to a history of expression in the narrow and traditionally accepted use of the word. In Principles of Art History, Wölfflin asserts that “a survey which takes the history of art essentially as the history of expression runs the risk of disastrous one-sidedness.”6 Worse still, he writes, “by attributing everything to expression alone, we make the false assumption that for every state of mind the same expressional methods were always available.”7 In 1933, as he assessed his popular Principles of Art History, he restated the problem: “pursued in a one-sided manner, this approach runs the risk of allowing the specificity of art to atrophy, if it even deals with visual

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imagery in the first place.”8 Art was both more than just “expression” (Ausdruck1) and more than a simple mirror of nature. Authentic art historical problems, as a consequence, could neither be addressed from the point of view of individuals nor treated as abstract questions of good or bad rendering. As “scholarly” art historians, Wölfflin argued, “we infer a series of forms of beholding that do not appear to be directly dependent on one specific will to expression.”9 The actual object of research is the “third thing” that lies between the hand and reality, the eye and nature: the organon of representation, the history of optical and technical possibilities, the incessant metamorphosis of visuality and formal imagination. Style has a life of its own, a sovereign historical pattern that unfolds, as it were, behind the backs of individuals, who have little or no control over the means by which they may “express” themselves in a given place or time. Wölfflin posits a history of style as the counterpart to a naïve history of expression, that is, but one in which style itself is a form of expression. Better yet, it is “expression” in the fullest sense of the word. To be sure, Wölfflin is not always fully consistent in his use of the term “expression.” He oscillates between the general meaning which we labeled as Ausdruck1 (mostly evoked for critical purposes) and a more complex, less common-sense interpretation of the notion that we will now briefly try to characterize. Let us begin with the German word itself: Ausdruck, an obvious etymologic calque for the Latin expressio, is a dead metaphor suggestive of the sphere of signets and print. Sich ausdrücken, to “ex-press” oneself, means leaving an outward trace, an imprint, the visible sign of something that is not immediately perceptible by the senses. One’s inner life could be one such instance, but certainly not the only possible one. The problem of expression in art, therefore, may grow to encompass all the forces, determinants and factors that contribute to the mix by leaving a mark on the surface of the work. This is Ausdruck2, as Wölfflin interpreted the word. From this point of view, a particular work of art may be expressive of different things: a certain stage of the history of style, for example. Style, in turn, is “expression of the temper of an age and a nation as well as expression of the individual temperament.”10 To summarize, then, an object of art is simultaneously the expression of comparatively independent variables, each of which possesses a different historicity and a different rhythm. It is the product of the superimposition of the slow, almost imperceptible evolution of national characters, the quicker but still grandiose pace of ages and the whimsical, accidental choices of the individual. It is clear, however, that from a broadly historical point of view, the artist’s share is small. He is subjected to visual and formal constraints that he cannot perceive as such (there is only one way to paint as far as each artist knows), and to parameters he cannot control. Art history [Kunstgeschichte], therefore, cannot be reduced to a history of artists [Künstlergeschichte], but needs to take into account a number of layers that transcend individual expression as such: “to the personal style must be added the style of the school,

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the country, and the race.”11 Better yet, art history as a science is precisely the history of these non-intentional levels in their intrinsic rationality.12 This is why we spoke of a trans- or meta-individual and multilayered concept of Ausdruck in which subjectivity is dethroned and the role of personality becomes marginal. The empirical artist tends to be represented as the agent of laws and regularities that he cannot influence, let alone control. The exact nature of these laws and their relationship to individual talent and initiative—a typically German theme since Hegel at least—will have to be discussed elsewhere. Suffice it to say that expression, in Wölfflin’s eyes, has more than one subject at a time. It is a choral phenomenon, not somebody’s expression in particular but the visible testimony of superimposed temporalities and entities. Times, races, countries, schools and individual temperaments all “express” themselves in art: style is their “organ of expression.”13 Each historical situation, therefore, is a unique combination of visual and technical problems and possibilities. We do not see the same way at all times, just as we do not think the same thoughts. Formal features and artistic means do not possess a stable, univocal meaning; they are not independent fragments of expression, but only take on an expressive character when used for a certain purpose, when they enter a constellation. Open form or pictorial style do not mean anything as such; they may suggest “intimacy” or “anguish” only according to a context. This is why Wölfflin, turning his early positions on their axis, calls them “inexpressive” [ausdruckslos], and rejects a physiognomic interpretation of art much in the way Gombrich would later speak of a “physiognomic fallacy.”14 His notion of representational forms as empty schemata comes surprisingly close to a late twentieth-century sensibility of the independence of the signifier and signified. A modern scholar’s point of view is not the same as that of an artist from the past: the stylistic and technical peculiarities that the first sees as contingency and historical convention necessarily appear to the latter as a binding matter of fact. In and of itself, artistic expression is opaque; there is no immediate correlation, no absolute symbolic sympathy between forms and contents. This is where art history comes in. We may spontaneously enjoy a painting and try to explain its features in terms of individual intention and personality. This is legitimate, but it is not the way to do justice to the painting’s richness. To pursue a scholarly history of art is to disentangle a complex polyphony of “expressions.” Wölfflin has often been credited with the invention of a lecturing technique that improved on his predecessor Hermann Grimm’s early experiments with projectors. He would show his audience two pictures simultaneously instead of just one, so that differences and similarities between works might be more easily pointed out. This taste for comparison and contrast registered in the typographic structure of his books, but it was more than just a rhetorical device: it was the adequate visual correlate of Wölfflin’s theoretical concerns. Varying a given parameter while others remained constant—for example by juxtaposing

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drawings of the same age but from different countries, or paintings of different periods by artists of the same nationality—was the only way to detach one plan from another, to put things in a perspective, to isolate the independent components and different expressive priorities that merge in each single work of art. It was an artificial procedure, to be sure, but it was the scholar’s privilege and duty to adopt this “unnatural” point of view. He was not meant to identify with the artist’s original impulse, but to rise above it, to proceed from the parts to the whole. Wölfflin himself once wrote that isolated works of art always have something “disturbing”15 about them: they are not self-explanatory; they do not speak to the viewer in and of themselves. Until they are restored to a historical continuum—that is, placed in a context where each formal feature may be accounted for in terms of contrastive analysis—we will have a hard time “making sense” of what we see. What does that particular use of space, or that capricious rendition of hands, express: an individual sense of form, the visual conventions of an age, the inescapable voice of ancestral blood? This is for historians to decide.

the subject of expression Even though certain aspects of “expressionist” thought and art criticism, from Wassily Kandinsky to Ernst Bloch, at times insisted on the subtle interplay of the individual and trans-individual (age, nation, community, society), expressionism may be described en gros as a subjectively inflected interpretation of the dialectic of form and content. If there is such a thing as an expressionist model for understanding the relationship between form and meaning, one might summarize it as follows: matter is inherently meaningful, and by transforming or deforming this form, the artist expresses his most inner self or his emotional state. The artistic traces of his subjectivity would be, in this case, immediately and intuitively comprehensible by the viewer. According to this model of reading form, and contrary to Wölfflin’s later writings, form is transparent and style is not historically mediated. Suspended between the heat of the primal cry and the icy constraints of impersonal form, expression as thus understood is born of a perpetual clash, in a space untainted by time, history or tradition. This is, among other reasons, why a technique such as woodcut could appeal to both the primitivizing and essentialist currents of German Expressionism, while harkening back to an ostensibly ethnic, if putative, national identity reaching back to a pantheon of Germanic forefathers led by Dürer. Hence, if form is above all expressive of a collectivity for Wölfflin, and of a subjectivity for some of Expressionism’s figureheads, both share a belief in the possibility of conveying meaning via form and materiality. In this sense Expressionism shares with “formalism” a belief in the power of form per se: form that signifies something beyond itself, but whose means of signification are the properties of form itself.

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Insofar as Wölfflin shifts the balance from the subjective to the objective, from individual performances to their absolute presuppositions, placing style and its organic laws above expression in the popular sense of the word, his relationship with expressionist culture in general may turn out to be rather complex. From another point of view, one might say that Wölfflin is trying to untangle the concepts of “expression” and “subjectivity” that early twentiethcentury art theory almost invariably tended to see as one. They cease to imply each other. This does not mean, however, that subjectivity plays no role whatsoever in Wölfflin’s scholarly work. Its presence is discreet, but constant. Interestingly, we find it on the scholar’s side rather than the artist’s. The multilayered notion of expression we analyzed above, for example, is more deeply rooted in personal biography and individual perceptions than one might assume at first. Let us take the concept of style as an expression, among other things, of national character, and follow the genesis of this figure from the inner life and struggles of a young Swiss historian trying to come to terms with his condition as a cultural “in-betweener.” In his earliest piece of scholarship, the 1886 Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture, the problem of a nation’s unique sense of form was already quite clear, and the notion of a general and deep fracture between northern and southern European cultures had already been introduced. The Prolegomena was a thesis in philosophy. It was not until that same year, after his first stay in Italy, that Wölfflin, under the spell of the Italian Renaissance, chose to devote his life to art history. His Italian journeys would regularly follow upon each other during the years in which he was working on his doctoral dissertation, Renaissance and Baroque (1888). His diaries, notes and letters dating from this early phase speak of an idealized vision of Italy—the land of classic form and artistic accomplishment—and of a young scholar on a quest for the soothing formal purity he could not find in the North. “A few simple colors, thick and quiet lines, everything drawn with a sure and vigorous hand,” he writes in November 1886. “One suddenly feels himself at peace.”16 With Classic Art a new theme was soon to surface. After prolonged research on Italian art, Wölfflin was beginning to look at the object of his studies from a different point of view. What interested him now was understanding what “age after age […] people from the North” had been looking for in Italy,17 as he wrote in a personal note: “what Italy means to us.”18 The opening words of Classic Art are eloquent in the way they immediately take into account the distance that separated the German public of the time, attracted by the “primitive,” from the Italian Cinquecento: “The word ‘classic’ has, for us, a rather chilly sound.”19 Readers would be now in doubt as to whether “we” should be read as “we Germans” or “we twentieth-century people.” Probably both, but the legitimacy of the first reading is once again proved by Wölfflin’s personal notes. For example, we know, among other things, that after Classic Art had gone to print, Wölfflin was planning to explore the tension between

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North and South in a novel in which he would tell the story of a German artist and his journey to the other side of the Alps.20 Wölfflin’s essay on Dürer (1905), his first large-scale work devoted to German art, was a first attempt at answering the question of “what Italy meant to Germans.” Wölfflin knew very well that the age in which he lived was frantically “looking around in search of what might be called genuinely ‘German.’” He was aware, that is, of the ambiguities of Dürer’s case: an artist who had become “a symbol of national art as a whole” but who had unmistakably yielded to the seductions of Italian art: We like to call Dürer the most German of German artists and we delight in the idea of him sitting in his house at the Tiergärtner Gate in Nuremberg, sedately working away as his fathers had done, content on his native soil and convinced that art needed only to be heartfelt and true but that external beauty was unimportant. This idea was introduced by the Romantics. But it is a mistaken one. If ever anybody looked longingly beyond the borders of his country for a strange, immense vision of beauty, it was Dürer.21

In this passage Wölfflin distanced himself from a historiographic tradition that made Dürer a national symbol at the price of fatal simplifications. At the time Dürer was the focus of an embattled debate on contemporary German art and its legitimate models. In 1904, for instance, Ferdinand Avenarius’s journal Der Kunstwart, had published Julius Langbehn’s essay “Dürer als Führer” [Dürer as a Spiritual Leader],22 a follow-up to his violently nationalistic bestseller Rembrandt als Erzieher [Rembrandt as an Educator] (1890).23 In 1902, in Dresden, Avenarius himself had founded a Dürerbund (Dürer league), a cultural and artistic association devoted to the promotion of Heimatschutz (the protection of German landscape and historical heritage), the defense of the specificity of genuinely national culture and art, and the rediscovery of pre-industrial modes of production. By 1912 the association had attracted around 300,000 subscribers, and it would play a fundamental role in shaping the taste of the German middle class in the early decades of the twentieth century.24 Langbehn’s target in “Dürer als Führer” was the Francophile leanings of turn-of-the-century German art and criticism. Together with his disciple and collaborator Benedikt Momme Nissen, he invoked the teachings of the Nürnberg master as a remedy to a brand of “modernity” that he perceived as intrinsically un-German, and hailed Hans Thoma as the new Dürer. Thoma, the director of the Karlsruhe Kunsthalle and a teacher in the art academy of the same city, was working just then on a new edition of Dürer’s treatise Unterweisung der Messung [Instruction in Measurement with Compass and Rule], which he hoped would be adopted as a textbook in German art schools.25 His response to Langbehn and Momme Nissen’s “Dürer als Führer” was also published in 1904 in the Kunstwart in the form of a letter:

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That something so obvious as hailing Dürer as our spiritual leader should appear as a bold feat of courage in today’s Germany is so ridiculous that we should laugh about it—if it wasn’t so tragic! Let anybody salute Manet, Monet, Pissarro or Degas as spiritual leaders, and even the German parliament will gladly approve.26

In 1905 a close friend of Thoma, art historian Henry Thode, contributed in much the same vein to the raging debate on contemporary German art and its relationship with French “modernity” in a series of lectures devoted to “neudeutsche Malerei.” Again, Dürer was set forth as the one true model for genuinely national art. Also from 1905, Wölfflin’s Dürer, with its emphasis on the artist’s Italian influences, was clearly a statement within a debate that did not just involve the appraisal of an old master, but also the problem of contemporary German art. At the same time, however, Wölfflin’s earlier sense of admiration for Italy was going through a crisis. In the years devoted to the Dürer monograph (1902–05), his ideas on the relationship between North and South changed considerably. While Italy had once been the center of his research, and the Italian Renaissance the supreme artistic model, Germany now seemed to have taken the place of Italy in his interests and in his personal aesthetic topography. The notes he took while working on the Dürer volume register an increasing disaffection, a sort of rebellion against the never-ending fascination that Italy exerted on him. “Learning to grasp the German nature,” he wrote in August of 1903, “I would like to shrug Italy off my back at last. Emphasize differences. We obey different intentions.”27 In November 1903 he wrote to his friend Elisabeth Wackernagel:28 “I am very sober-minded and I’m working on a book about the poison of Italian seduction.”29 That same month, while traveling through Florence on his way to Rome, he noted: “the result will be the opposite from Goethe: the denial of Italy. As far as I’m concerned, if something good will come of it, this positive outcome will concern our country and perhaps our time. A landscape by [Leopold] Kalckreuth or [Arthur] Volkmann is more interesting to me than an old Italian master.”30 The period between 1898 and 1905, then, those years that run between Classic Art and Wölfflin’s work on Dürer, proved a crucial phase. In the space of a few years, Wölfflin’s rejection of his earlier notion of an Italian ideal allowed him to find a new relationship to German art. The vicissitudes of world politics precipitated a further crisis. Like many other art historians and artists, when Italy entered the war in 1915, Wölfflin was forced to part ways with his former adoptive homeland. The conflict, on the other hand, affected his relationship to Germany in ways that are hard to determine; while it accentuated his diffidence for certain chauvinistic components of German culture,31 it strengthened his ties to the German community.32 It also solidified his drift away from the example of Italian art and towards a new German ideal. “My process of growth [Bildung]: through southern form to northern

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infinity,”33 as he described his scholarly path in a personal note. From now on his efforts would be devoted to defining the specific character of German art. After the war, in 1922, Wölfflin published in Logos one of the texts we reproduce here: “Italy and the German Sense of Form,” whose title anticipated the full-length study of 1931, Die Kunst der Renaissance: Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl. (The title of the English edition, The Sense of Form in Art: A Comparative Psychological Study, does not seem to do justice to the aspect we are pursuing here, the contrast between Germanic and Italian characters.)34 Building on the theories he had expounded in Principles of Art History, Wölfflin now advanced a systematic description of the two alternative ways in which form could be understood, the two poles of European art over the entire course of its development. In the essay, Wölfflin writes: “During the Renaissance, Italy created an art that we experience as specifically Italian simply because it, among all that Italy has produced, is the most incomparable.”35 The chief preoccupation of this text, and the subsequent book, can be summarized as follows: if the Renaissance is an essentially Italian style, what is the style that brings the German sense of art to its fullest expression? Unlike Wilhelm Worringer, Wölfflin would never go so far as to oppose the Gothic as an essentially German style to the Italian Renaissance, a restraint of fundamental importance when it comes to assessing his role within an “expressionist art history.” Instead, by leaving the door open to the regularity of Renaissance forms, thus openly going against the major trends of contemporary historiography, Wölfflin defended the possibility of a northern classicism for the German art that a growing number of interpreters tended to see as fundamentally Gothic, irrational and anticlassical. The 1922 essay was the product of a newfound balance in how Wölfflin treated the problem of the relationship between Italy and Germany, between classic southern form and “northern infinity,” a dialectic that involved the entire cultural life of the time, and not merely the art of the past. The painful experience of the radical otherness of Italy resolved into a new awareness of the role that classic art as a counterpart had played in the construction of German culture and art, as seen in his introduction to the 1926 version of the Dürer book: “Anyone who rejects as un-German this demand for a final, secure perfection fails to understand an ever recurring tendency in the history of German ideas.”36 Wölfflin’s personal documents, notes written to himself and others that were never intended for publication, cast an unexpected light on the scholar’s meditation on national character as it developed in the published works. The notes Wölfflin took throughout his career in the form of diaries or occasional remarks, a running commentary on his public oeuvre, show how intensely a Swiss intellectual who studied and taught in Germany, but had founded his Bildung on frequent journeys to Italy and devoted most of his efforts to understanding Italian art, could personally experience the contrast between two nations that to him were not just shapes on a map, but different and irreconcilable ways to

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live and to feel. While the category of subjectivity, if seen as an artist’s individual personality as it expresses itself in his work, does not seem to play a significant role in Wölfflin’s discourse, the same category, seen as a scholar’s subjectivity as it finds a way into his writing, proves extremely relevant in reconstructing the genesis of some key themes of Wölfflin’s system. One of these is certainly the contrast between two “national characters,” German and Italian, that runs though Wölfflin’s entire scholarly production, and would become increasingly significant in the years after World War I. In their unique ways, both Italy and Germany were, for Wölfflin, spiritual homelands.

notes All translations are by the authors unless otherwise noted. 1 Joan Hart, “Une vision fictive: la trajectoire intellectuelle de Wölfflin,” in Relire Wölfflin, ed. Matthias Waschek (Paris: Ecole du Louvre, 1995), 61–94, 90. 2 These are only a few examples, chosen from different domains. Croce’s treatise on the philosophy of art, published in 1902, bore the telling title of Aesthetic as Science of Expression. Here art was equated with pure expression, to the detriment of “abstract” categories like form, genres, style or techniques, which Croce dismissed as aesthetically irrelevant. Max Scheler, a German philosopher and anthropologist, was one of the last full-scale theorists of empathy and expression, explored to an almost unprecedented detail in The Nature of Sympathy (1923). And in some of his early writings, strongly influenced by Gestalt theory, Rudolf Arnheim, one of the most influential students of the psychology of visual perception, also maintained a view of expression as an immediately and inherently comprehensible manifestation that required no keys or further interpretations. 3 Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, in The Works of Charles Darwin, vol. 23 (London: W. Pickering, 1989). 4 The word “physiognomy,” literally “judgment of a man’s nature or character,” refers to an ancient Greek tradition and practice that had a European revival in eighteenth-century psychiatry, anthropometry, psychology and, of course, art theory, with authors like Johann Gaspar Spurzheim, Franz Joseph Gall or Johann Kaspar Lavater. The general assumption was that inner dispositions such as temperaments, moral inclinations, passions, feelings and emotions were bound to find an immediate and faithful counterpart in the outer appearance of a subject’s countenance, and could be “read off” a face with scientific exactitude (the body as a mirror of the soul). Some of the implications of this particular concept of expression are still traceable in today’s art history. 5 Wölfflin’s earliest works drew many of their central categories from the psychological theories of authors such as Theodor Lipps or Friedrich Theodor Vischer, working on the problem of the perception of other people’s inner life (we “feel” the pain of a crying woman, we don’t “deduce” it from her tears) and the projection of such models on inanimate matter (a “proud” column, a “sorrowful” ruin, etc.).

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6 Heinrich Wölfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Das Problem der Stilentwicklung in der neueren Kunst (Munich: Bruckmann, 1915); translated by M.D. Hottinger as Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art (London, G. Bell & Sons, 1932; repr. New york: Dover, 1950), 226. 7 Ibid., 13. 8 Heinrich Wölfflin, “Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Eine Revision” (1933), reprinted in Gedanken zur Kunstgeschichte: Gedrucktes und Ungedrucktes (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1941), 18. [All passages from this essay are cited from the translation by Kathleen Chapman in this volume. Ed.] 9 Ibid., 19. 10 Wölfflin, Principles of Art History, 10. 11 Ibid., 6. 12 Here and there Wölfflin even seems to go as far as to characterize the peculiarities of individual expression as an element of disturbance, considering that we do not have a direct access to the principles of stylistic change in the form of pure laws, but can only infer them from a number of particular cases. 13 Wölfflin, Principles of Art History, 232. 14 Ibid., 227: “they can therefore have no expressional content in themselves”; cf. Ernst Gombrich, “On Physiognomic Perception,” in Ernst Gombrich, Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art (London and New york: Phaidon, 1962). 15 Heinrich Wölfflin, “Das Erklären von Kunstwerken,” in Wölfflin, Kleine Schriften (1886–1933), ed. Joseph Gantner (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1946), 167. 16 Heinrich Wölfflin, letter to his parents, no date [December 1886], in Wölfflin, Autobiographie, Tagebücher und Briefe, ed. Joseph Gantner (Basel: Schwabe, 1982), 38. 17 Wölfflin, note dating from the end of April 1897, ibid., 125. 18 Wölfflin, note dating from the last months of 1900, ibid., 146. 19 Heinrich Wölfflin, Classic Art: An Introduction to the Renaissance, trans. Peter and Linda Murray (London: Phaidon, 1952), xv. 20 Notes dating from September 1900, in Wölfflin, Autobiographie, Tagebücher und Briefe, 145. The novel was never written. 21 Heinrich Wölfflin, The Art of Albrecht Dürer, trans. Alastair and Heide Grieve (New york: Phaidon, 1971), 10. 22 Julius Langbehn and Benedikt Momme Nissen, “Dürer als Führer,” Der Kunstwart (1904), later reprinted as Dürer als Führer: vom Rembrandtdeutschen und seinem Gehilfen (Munich: Josef Müller, 1928). 23 See Kateřina Horníčková, “The Rembrandt Battle: the Search for National Art in Weimar Germany,” Umění 52, no. 5 (2004): 427–34. 24 On Avenarius and the Dürerbund see Gerhard Kratzsch, Kunstwart und Dürerbund: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Gebildeten im Zeitalter des Imperialismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969).

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25 Albrecht Dürer, Unterweisung der Messung, ed. Hans Thoma (Munich: Süddeutsche Monatshefte, 1908). 26 Langbehn and Momme Nissen, “Dürer als Führer” (1928), 5. 27 Wölfflin, note dating from August 1903, in Wölfflin, Autobiographie, Tagebücher und Briefe, 186. 28 Elisabeth Wackernagel (1859–1931) was historian Rudolf Wackernagel’s wife. 29 Wölfflin, letter to Elisabeth Wackernagel, November 24, 1903, in Wölfflin, Autobiographie, Tagebücher und Briefe, 193. 30 Wölfflin, note dating from November 21, 1903, ibid. In Wölfflin’s works, Goethe appears as one of the most representative figures of the endless longing of the Germans for the south. In 1926, Wölfflin delivered a speech on Goethe’s Italian Journey entitled “Goethes italienische Reise,” in Wölfflin, Gedanken zur Kunstgeschichte. 31 “What’s wrong with them, why are all the oldest artists and professors running to line up under the flag? […] And the war speeches scholars are reading! This is the unity we heard so much about: everybody has lost his mind.” Wölfflin, letter to Lotte Warburg, summer 1914, in Wölfflin, Autobiographie, Tagebücher und Briefe, 288; “In the upcoming semester the local university is going to host wartime lectures. Of course I must contribute. I find it so hard. Judging from the way mediocrity is shamefacedly raising its head, trying to put the ‘German spirit’ in the place of a sense for quality that we have developed at the price of great labors, the future doesn’t look that bright.” Wölfflin, letter to Else Lüders, December 18, 1914, ibid., 292. 32 “Gratitude for the great German people as a whole. That it was a protagonist of the war, this is painful, but I don’t want to forsake it,” Wölfflin, note, February 29, 1924, ibid., 368. 33 Wölfflin, note dating from December 30, 1917, ibid., 316. 34 Heinrich Wölfflin, Die Kunst der Renaissance: Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl (Munich: Bruckmann, 1931); translated by Alice Muehsam and Norma Shatan as The Sense of Form in Art: A Comparative Psychological Study (New york: Chelsea, 1958). As noted earlier, a more correct translation would be The Art of the Renaissance: Italy and the German Sense of Form. 35 Heinrich Wölfflin, “Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl,” Logos: Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie der Kultur 10 (1921–22); reprinted in Wölfflin, Gedanken zur Kunstgeschichte, 119. [All passages from this essay are cited from the translation by Kathleen Chapman that appears in this volume. Ed.] 36 Wölfflin, The Art of Albrecht Dürer, 18.

11 “Italy and the german sense of Form” (1921–1922)* Heinrich Wölfflin

Speaking about a national sense of form is just as alluring as it is difficult. Of course, one finds in every people [Volk] certain enduring formal qualities, a particular way of ordering things, a particular approach to interpreting the life of things. And given that it is already difficult enough to understand a people as a uniform whole, how are we to go about dealing with the difficulty that everything—even the so-called spirit of the people [Volksgeist]—is in constant flux? As soon as we seek to grasp what truly endures, we run the risk of ending up with something overly general and colorless. We must, therefore, decide to recognize periods of marked nationality in contrast to periods of less clearly emphasized nationality. What is most characteristic is, in the end, that which is unique to a people and which is to be found nowhere else. During the Renaissance, Italy created an art that we experience as specifically Italian simply because it, among all that Italy has produced, is the most incomparable. The Italian Baroque is doubtless also a national creation, but here already other countries rival it. We can say that this language is also spoken outside and elsewhere, albeit with different tonality. But if we ask where the specificity of the Baroque of the Italians lies (for example, in distinction from the German Baroque), we would arrive at terms that characterize the essence of the Italian Renaissance, where these terms simply found a much more clearly defined realization. Indeed, we would easily determine after further investigation that the entire Italian Middle Ages stands under a similar prefiguration. But what interests us above all now is to come to terms with our own character [Art]. We learn the most from comparison, and so we always try to set the starkest contrasts between North and South against each other. What *

Heinrich Wölfflin, “Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl,” Logos: Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie der Kultur 10 (1921–22): 251–60. Reprinted in Gedanken zur Kunstgeschichte: Gedrucktes und Ungedrucktes (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1941), 119–26.

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is German drawing? What is German ornament? Architectural history should no longer be simply divided up into chronologically successive styles, but should rather pursue the national sense of form that asserts itself through all metamorphoses and changes. Granted, these are grand themes, and if we, too, were to restrict ourselves here and basically focus the question on our relationship with the architecture of the Italian Renaissance, we will only be able to clarify our ideas in suggestive form. However, the problem is not resolved by the identification of oppositions. What is remarkable is that, despite all the differences of national disposition in the North, there is also always a receptivity to “the other”; the reverse is not true in the South. It is easy to dismiss this receptivity as weakness and to condemn every foreign import as a disturbance of national life, but this explanation is one-sided. After all, there must have been certain needs that could be most easily satisfied from the outside. It may be that sometimes the foreign really did suppress or even strangle the national—and issues of the general historical constellation also play a role here —but a completely negative critique will never suffice. Within the struggles of our art with the “Italy” problem lies a forceful will [Wollen] that demands a positive interpretation. 1. Whoever travels to the South is always first struck by the simplicity of the Italian world of forms. What noble, quiet lines those are! How simple and easily comprehensible the planes and cubes! The first Italian church with a free-standing campanile—there is nothing simpler than this body. The first Italian columned hall—how clearly expressed is every form: the columns, the arch, the spatial dimensions of the hall. Wherever a pair of buildings stands together, one perceives immediately that they are individual, purely plastic entities. If the traveler thinks back to the North, his imagination will conjure up quite different pictures. The forms are more diverse, complex, and they are woven together. Towers and doors, gables and bay windows—they form a compact whole from which it is difficult to distinguish individual elements. As overall architectonic images, the elements combine to form “painterly” groupings. Things have more the character of something that has grown than of something tectonically conjoined. The prevailing impression is not one of repose and completeness, but one of movement and active force. With such comparisons it immediately becomes clear that every impression of simplicity in Italy derives from very different origins. Not only is the outline simpler, but plastic tangibility itself seems to be much simpler. Above all else, however, is completeness in itself, as well as the tranquility of form. What we label with the easily misunderstood expression “the difference between plastic and painterly perception” is nothing but, on the one hand, that very clear appearance of form as the Italians shape it, where surface

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operates purely as surface and volume operates purely as volume, and, on the other hand, the Northern form-giving, which constantly plays with the charm of movement and where a secret life binds form to form. We encounter this “painterly” effect as we picture line itself as more mobile, as we disrupt the surface, as we find the grouped, the coincident, the intertwined—but this is a habit of seeing that occurs at every opportunity and that requires no special grace on the part of the object. It is on the fertile ground of such a “painterly” sensibility that the Nordic preference for the play of lines of the looped ornament developed, just like the delight in bare tree branches that the old German painters so often offer. This explains why German architecture always possesses a richness of contour in the handling of surfaces and in the grouping of masses that surpasses Italian architecture, even in its Baroque form. In the end, it is the same difference that distinguishes a drawing by Raphael from a drawing by Dürer or Grünewald. In the former, the smoothly flowing, “pure” line, in the latter, a multiplicity of mobile signs. How simple the forms that are arranged into such an Italian head, and how manifold the form-world of a Northern portrait! The entirety of Italian art rests on the notion of the isolated figure, and whoever thinks of Italian pictures immediately recalls figures, individual figures. If one were to perform a cross-check, how difficult it would be to isolate single figures in German pictures! How intertwined one form is in another, how bounteous the quantity of active lines in such a panel! And there is nothing different in the case of sculpture: the German figure is always somehow integrated into a general form-context, and it thereby eludes our grasp. There is nothing analogous in the South to the monstrously complicated form-complexes of Northern altar shrines. Alongside this “painterly” appearance of movement there is, however, yet another type of movement that is an equally potent differentiator between Northern and Southern styles: the movement of function, the movement of the tension of proportions, etc. Northern drawing is more passionate. Line has more impact. The outline of a tendril in German ornament is more forceful, and form and composition have nothing in common with Italian languor and ease, even when they strive for similar effects. The functions that are performed easily and as a matter of course in the South occur with notably stronger exertion of force and will in the North. The vigor of the upwardstriving forms in particular is incomparable. And if the tension is not in the individual form, it can be found in the proportions of the whole. In the South, the system of proportions is primarily balanced on a tone of calm, or at least on a lesser degree of tension (the flat pediment is a partial expression of this), and everything appears to be wrought from the same form. In the North, one perceives urgent, driving forces everywhere, and while the extreme verticality of the Gothic cannot be equated with Northern art as a whole, it is nevertheless evident that only in the North can this style have its home.

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The Italian sense of form demands the structured and clearly differentiated, while the imagination of the North adheres more closely to a notion of vegetal growth, where there are no interruptions and no partial forms can be separated from the whole context. A unifying thread runs from bottom to top. Even though Italian composition is not lacking in unity, it is actually a different type of unity—an arrangement of independent parts. Here, the organization is more thorough; the overall construction is riddled with joins. Form after form has developed to complete independence. What is characteristic of the Southern pediment is not only the tendency to flatness, but also that the form is separable. In other words, it can stand alone as something entirely independent from the rest of the building. This is not the case for the Northern gabled house. The triangular portion of the gable emerges from the walls without any dividing ground line, and even where a division is made, it is nothing more than an external marking; and, in spite of it, one senses the cohesiveness of the forces that flow upward from below toward the peak. By contrast, the Southern vaulted ceiling is always more or less a piece that can be removed without interfering with the fundamental substance of the building. It is like a hat or a lid placed on the base. In the North, one would rarely be able to make this comparison. There, everything hangs together. It does not matter if it is a medieval or a rococo vault—no cut can be made between the wall and the roof without slicing through living fibers. In both the South and in the North, there are rows of columns. However, while the Italian columns attain their special beauty when they appear to be completely free and independent, and when it seems that they might have the possibility of an aesthetic existence in and of themselves, the case is just the opposite for columns in the North. Here there is livelier formation, which begins wherever the connection with the wall is so tightly maintained that we are never tempted to imagine the individual parts in isolation. These uniquely Northern supports are, therefore, not clearly differentiated forms but are virtually integrated into the walls, like pilasters. It is tempting to remain under the spell of this universal, dark world of drives, which discharges from its womb all manner of shapes—without ever releasing any one of them completely. In addition to the nearly independent form there are others, those that seem to be caught in the deepest dreams. Italian art honors its highest values with the terminology of “pure” proportions. These are the enduring relationships that carry within themselves the character of the essential. New in every instance and in keeping with their respective tasks, they are all, nevertheless, bound by one and the same law of absolute beauty. Whether surface, body, or room, we always sense the determinative proportions. Beauty lies in the relationships, which, having heavenly origins, bring us closer to moments of divinity. In the North, proportions do not play the same role. To be sure, art cannot do without certain “relationships,” but for us, the essential does not reside in

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the enduring form but in what happens. This is immediately obvious for the Northern Gothic, but we know that a secret Gothic persists throughout all the centuries of German art. In the same way, we see the ideal of self-sufficient wholeness shining brightly really only during the Renaissance in Italy, but it has never vanished from the consciousness of that nation. These conditions give rise to differing attitudes toward the concept of legitimacy, of rules. The Germans hide this attitude; the Romans (not only the Italians) reveal it. For us, a strong emphasis on rules easily interferes with the impression of liveliness; for them, rules can virtually become the precondition for greater impact. We are more likely to seek the direct expression of stimulation, the passionate eruption, where nothing is lost if stones and cinders are swept up in it. The Italians tend more toward form in which nothing can be changed, the safeguard of necessity. German approaches to building tolerate a dose of chance; the organically grown does not permit itself to be subsumed under pure rules. The Italians are born specialists of tectonics, and the asymmetry and free rhythms of the North must strike them as whimsy and formlessness. There is no doubt that our world of forms is the richer one. The greatest limitation of the South is that art remains bound to human relationships. Unlike the North, the South is decidedly anthropocentric, and it lacks universal spiritualization [Allbeseelung] as well as any possibility of vicariously experiencing forms. The Italian column may be built according to different stylistic tonalities, but it is always fundamentally the same form. The imagination of the North, however, revels in the absolute freedom of creation and is able, therefore, to leave all human comparisons behind. There are short shafts and tall shafts, shafts that are free-standing and shafts that are packed closely together—everything up to and including those concentrated rays of force in medieval architecture, which, spilling into the ribs of the vault, have actually never come to an end. Even in the most monumental expressions of their architecture the Italian conception remains bound to human existence. This is an extremely heightened existence, above and beyond earthly measurements, but it is conceptualized in the sense of human existence. It is here that the powerful impact of the Italian monumental structure lies. We have here, like nowhere else in the world, the impression of what is great in humankind, a hint of greater possible human dignity. German church halls may supersede Italian ones in their strength of spiritual forces, but what they offer is not that greater sense of life itself, but that which lies beyond life. The Southern church is the divine made sensual; the Northern church lifts the soul to an intuition of the divine. This is also why in Italy there cannot be a purely sacred architecture in the same sense as there is for us. The Italian Renaissance retains—and this is to be asserted with all caution—something worldly in the construction of its churches [Kirchenbau] since the difference between secular and sacred buildings is not a difference in kind.

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2. What we have clarified here in terms of opposing natures provides examples that do not exhaust the phenomenon, but that at least leave no doubt as to the profundity of the differences between these two natures. One might be led to believe that a mixture of the tastes would be impossible and that one must stand on either one side or the other, but this is not the case. We bump up against the remarkable fact that, from time to time, even if not always, the North has, nevertheless, been thoroughly capable of adopting Southern values of beauty; indeed, it has been able to seek its proper ideals in the South. Which times those were will remain unexamined here, but it is not so long ago that the last wave of Italianism subsided. We contemporaries freely confess to different opinions, and there is regret about the numerous imitations of the Italian Renaissance in German cityscapes. This criticism runs roughly as follows: the noble calm and effortlessness of the Italians comes across as cold in the long run. We want to see the tension in form, the effort, the process of becoming. Buildings composed in the Italian manner appear as too open [hemmungslos] and, therefore, as uninteresting. The process of coming into form [Prozeß der Formwerdung] as we imagine it is much darker, more mysterious. We absolutely do not believe in a perfection that can be realized in the world; anything that presents itself as such loses its charm after a while. It has occurred to more than one individual standing beneath the dome of St. Peter’s in Rome that the value of Northern cathedral architecture is not that it is an art of harmonious existence, but that it is an art of passionate excitement. Even in smaller, mundane projects executed in the Northern manner we sense more warmth, more individual character, more unmediated communicativeness [Unmittelbar-Sprechendes]. In the end, architecture here and there means very different things. With only slight exaggeration we can say that tectonically conceived space, which the individual perceives as the resonance of his personality, is the actual theme of Italian art and, in this, all desires can be satisfied. This is not true of the North. The Northern analogy would be in the individual who disappears in space, who loses himself in the universe. We can think of the example of the open landscape or even of the domestic chamber. Dürer’s engraving of St. Jerome is typical of what we mean here: no room in the Italian sense, space that a person fills with his sense of life and by which he is confirmed in his own vitality (Figure 11.1). Instead, here things grow as a corporeal presence over one’s head, and the Northern character becomes even clearer when we imagine some twilight in all of this, so that shadows settle into the room and objects assume weird, alien shapes that enter into mysterious liaisons with each other. Rembrandt also painted such scenarios, and no matter how great the distance is between these contexts, from such pictures it is always possible to draw conclusions about the real soul of Northern architecture.

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11.1 Albrecht Dürer, St. Jerome in His Study (1514), engraving, 24.7 × 18.8 cm. Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Corte di Mamiano, Italy

3. If all of this is so, how can we then explain the fact of “Italianism” in the North as being anything but a renunciation of its own essence? There appears to be no way out: if a German admires Italian values, he renounces his god and practices idol worship. But what if we did not regard Italy as “Italian”? If we were to extract from Italian art that which we ourselves in fact had added?

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It is obvious then that Southern beauty, as seen against the backdrop of the Northern sense of form, has an entirely different impact. Whoever is at home in a world of the interwoven, the irrational, the mysterious will have an impression of pure line and clear form that the Italian can scarcely comprehend. In the North, the tranquility of Southern architecture functions as an ideality; it is like entering into a state of peace after incessant restlessness—something very unlike its reception at home. And if we add to this that beauty of wellproportioned space and completely realized and graceful form—for example, in a noble hall of columns—we experience it as something miraculous, as a deliverance from airless, oppressive conditions. The entire individual feels transformed and lifted to a state of unknown freedom. Of course, these are effects that do not arise solely from contrasts. The delight in the complete form and the benefit of “pure” proportion comprise the essence of art for the Italians. A very different spirit must emerge when these things are not available as natural products of art per se, and appear instead as something heavenly in an otherwise very differently configured world of form. The “purity” of form has a very specific sense for us: we perceive it not only as desirable, but also as something that cannot actually exist in the real world, and this is why, when it does appear for brief moments, it seems to be so rare and other-worldly. The romantic magic of the Italians for the Northerner is that the paradisiacal appears to be something self-evident. And it seems that only a few steps are needed to partake of the paradisiacal life. Everything seems so simple that a person thinks he needs only to unbind his feet from their accustomed chains to be able to enter immediately into a realm of “noble simplicity” and “quiet grandeur.” We can only touch on this here, but the longing to emerge from multiplicity into unity; from the convoluted into the clear, the open, the visible; from the endlessly conditional into the unconditional; from the coincidental into the necessary—these are expressions of the same drive that has awakened time and again in the North, seeking fulfillment in the South. What Dürer yearned for his entire life—the purity and perfection of form—is in the root of the same idealism that drove Schinkel into the arms of antiquity. So to speak here of degeneration is completely ahistorical. The yearning is genuine, and we only deceive ourselves when we believe that Italy can offer us in its art a finished form that can satisfy our desire. Since we, who come from the North and are filled with the Northern figure, perceive Italian beauty primarily as a type of salvation, we have allowed ourselves to be deceived; we have sought redemption in imitation. But with direct imitation we only end up on the wrong track. We must differentiate between those elements that we can assimilate and those that we cannot. Those enduring works produced by classicism only come to life in relation to Northern tradition and would otherwise have been nothing other than a specific type of coordinated sensibility of architecture and landscape. (The Monopteros in the “English

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Garden” in Munich is certainly a form imported from the South, but the way it grows from the hill and the way it, as something formed, harmonizes with the unformed—the bushes and trees—is not Southern.) If now, however, classicism is returning yet again, it will look different. We will recognize that the “pure” can only emerge from the “impure” if we are to consider it credible. The fully shaped, free form will only be able to be shown in the context of Northern self-consciousness, and beauty will only be able to be seen as something eternally becoming rather than as something complete from the outset. While we will have the need to rest in the lap of necessity, the formed must ultimately have its roots in the irrational and the infinite. The antique and Italy will never cease to be a joy, but we must seek our highest beauty not beyond the mountains, but in the heavens above us: Non ultra montes, sed supra montes. Translated by Kathleen Chapman

12 “Principles of Art History: a revision” (1933)* Heinrich Wölfflin

Historical considerations of art will always initially be disposed to make a history of expression out of the history of art. This happens whenever we discover the personality of the individual artist in his work; it happens whenever we see significant changes of form and representation as a direct reaction to those spiritual movements which, rooted multiply, comprise in their totality the world view, or world feeling, that defines an era. Who would contest the right to primacy of such an interpretation? And who would deny the indispensability of this type of overview of the entire culture? But pursued in a one-sided manner, this approach runs the risk of allowing the specificity of art to atrophy, if it even deals with visual imagery in the first place. As the art of the eye, visual art has its own premises and its own fundamental laws. A different “mood” in art will not be expressed uniformly and naturally in the way that a change of temper is reflected by the expression on the human face—the expressive apparatus is not the same in every epoch. And, further, if art has been compared to a mirror that reflects the changing picture of the “world,” that comparison is deceptive twice over: the creative work of art does not lend itself well to being likened to a mirror image; and if we were to grant the expression validity, we would need to remain aware that the mirror in and of itself has always been of a different structure. This becomes immediately clear when we compare art in its primitive stages with a more highly developed art. In the former we find a sense of constraint that—while imperceptible to its contemporaries—suggests to us not so much a poverty of pictorial means as a still undeveloped conception of pictures. If we ascend to later, let’s say classical epochs, we suddenly find what seems to be a complete freedom of image formation alongside a *

Heinrich Wölfflin, “Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Eine Revision,” Logos: Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie der Kultur 22 (1933): 210–18. Reprinted in Gedanken zur Kunstgeschichte: Gedrucktes und Ungedrucktes (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1941), 18–24.

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greater wealth of pictorial means. But even this freedom is limited, and in the postclassical, or so-called painterly epochs, a multitude of new, never before imagined possibilities emerges. The entire form of the picture is so thoroughly transformed that we yet again infer a reconfiguration of the inner eye and, further—if not on the same basis—we infer a series of forms of beholding that do not appear to be directly dependent on one specific will to expression. But should we not reach the same conclusions if we examine a cross-section of a limited timeframe? It is striking that, at a given stage, even heterogeneous qualities meet in the fundamentals of pictorial form, and that materials with nothing in common in terms of tone are subordinated to the same schema. And if there is nothing surprising in this, we must still consider that such interrelatedness extends to characteristics of specific peoples, where, even in light of deeply rooted differences in disposition, contemporary commonalities of representation can be found. Dutch landscape painters of the seventeenth century, regardless of their differences in temperament, create in accordance with the same general pictorial form, and this pictorial form is the same in genre paintings and in portraits. Even a head by Holbein—without denying his national character— will somehow always be associated in principle with a drawing by some contemporary Italian, for example, Michelangelo, simply because both belong to the sixteenth century. Here we encounter the deepest level of principles (hence the term fundamental principles [Grundbegriffe]) upon which pictorial representation in its most general form rests. What are these principles? For the difference between the art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries I have tried to summarize them in five pairs: linear (plastic)—painterly, planar—recessional, closed form— open form (tectonic—a-tectonic), multiple unity—unified unity, absolute clearness—relative clearness. To what extent these principles are exhaustive and whether they are all of equal rank will understandably be left unaddressed here. This is based not on an isolated historical case, but on theory. I consider it to be unjustified to demand that such principles always be derived from a single basic axiom. A form of beholding can have roots in various causes. But when I speak of a form of beholding, when I speak of a form of seeing and the development of vision, these are probably careless expressions, but they are analogous to when we speak of the “eye” of the artist and of the “vision” of the artist, when we actually mean the manner in which things take shape in his imagination. Whether people have always seen the same way (as has been argued) I do not know, and I believe it is improbable. What is certain is that in art we can observe a graduated sequence of different types of representation, and that this includes not only the visual arts but the tectonic arts as well. At this point we must also note that architectonic styles do not come under consideration here according to

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their morphological side (for example, the Gothic as the style of verticality, the pointed arch, ribbed vaulting, etc.), nor does the issue of the material in painting and sculpture, to which shifting ideals of beauty also belong. Somewhat picturesquely I have characterized forms of representation as a vessel in which a specific content can be collected, and even as a network of threads into which artists have woven their colorful pictures: such comparisons are good for the purposes of identifying the purely schematic aspects of these concepts of form and for preventing them from collapsing into the usual, more richly expressive concept of “style.” However, I would avoid using such comparisons now since they mechanize the concept of form too intensely and they can lead to the incorrect conclusion that form and content can be separated clearly into two distinct elements. However, every form of beholding presupposes a beheld, and we can ask to what extent one conditions the other. There is ancient art in which the form of the representation as such makes itself noticeable to every viewer (the “rigidity” of primitive art), but it is only at the higher stages that form appears to orient itself as a matter of course toward the demands of content, which means that only the historian can see the “optical” boxes into which every era is forced. But within such limits there is already the tendency—and it is only a tendency—toward a certain type of composition, the tendency toward a specific beauty and interpretation of nature. To quote myself, “Within every new style of beholding a new content of the world crystallizes.” “Not only do we see differently, but we also see what is different.”1 Why then do we not simply subsume this all under the heading “expression”? Why complicate viewing by granting to visual art its own life and life principles? If a plastic-architectonic era has a different habitus than a painterly era, why then do we still speak of an “immanent” development in the visual arts? We do this in order to do justice to their specific character as pictorial representation. If it [this development] coincides with the general intellectual history, this is not due (or perhaps it is only partially due) to a relationship of cause and effect. What remains essential is their own particular development from a common root. We must distinguish between developments in a set direction and developments that are to be understood as transformations into something of a generally different kind. To the former belong, for example, the ascent toward “classical” form in the Italian Renaissance, up to the point where maximum objective clarity and explicitness are attained, and where everything decisive in the individual parts is differentiated and the whole coheres into a figure with the character of organic necessity, etc. Here we can readily acknowledge the internal dimension of the development. It would make no sense [to believe] that a specific nuance of a classical person, which preceded art, would correspond to every stage of development. Matters are different for

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transformations of form as they become visible in, for example, the difference between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The five pairs of terms listed above include such intense sensual-spiritual oppositions that it does not seem possible to grasp them in any way but as expressive forms. And yet any closer examination reveals that these are schemata that can be used in various ways according to mood and that, despite having some degree of legitimacy, have little to do with what is commonly identified in art history as expression. A few examples: The “open” form belongs to the characteristic attributes of the seventeenth-century picture. This is inseparable from the essence of the new landscape picture in particular. But this term was certainly the last thing that someone like Ruysdael considered in his compositions; it was simply something self-evident for him. Admittedly, we are not saying here that the motif of the open form must remain without expression. Indeed, we can argue that it is precisely the new sense of space, the sensation of the infinite that produced these pictorial forms. However, this is contradicted by the fact that, during the same era, the painters of interiors offer just the opposite—the atmosphere of homeliness and resolution that rests on the same foundation of the “open” form. What is decisive in Ruysdael must therefore lie in the particularities of handling, not in generality, and we find ourselves compelled to use extreme caution whenever we want to put the expressive content of that generality into words. Another case: When Frans Hals or Velasquez replaces the rigid drawing of Holbein with a buoyant, vibrating approach, we would like to believe that the new style was introduced by a new conception of mankind, which saw the essential in movement rather than solely in consistent form. But we must also free ourselves of an overly specific explanation. Greater, more far-reaching changes occurred, and the jug on the table, the still life—instances where we cannot speak of movement in the literal sense—were painted in the same way. Similarly, whether we are dealing with a history painting or an ecclesiastical image, we can perceive the “tectonic” style of the sixteenth century as being fairly consistent with a certain weighty solemnity. yet when, for example, Massys paints a portrait-like genre picture like The Money Changer and His Wife, he follows the same maxims of symmetry and stable balance, although, at the same time, not without regard for an impression of solemnity. What we would like to demonstrate is: that which can be expressed in our schematic terms must be defined in a very general way. Of course, these terms have a spiritual aspect, and if, on the one hand, they can be classified as relatively inexpressive (for the individual artist), they are, on the other, decidedly expressive of the total physiognomy of an era; and they are— whether conditioning or conditioned—intertwined with extra-pictorial intellectual history. A special psychological vocabulary would be required alone to characterize them. In the end, this is a matter of products of an artistic labor, which can only be fully understood by the “eye.” What words would be

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adequate to analyze even approximately the experience of a world envisioned in a painterly way (as opposed to one seen in a plastic way)? If we take up the second question—how the development of these modes of vision can be conceptualized—this much is clear from the outset: that the progress in these five pairs of terms that we have introduced is rational. The sequence cannot be reversed. A hidden regularity comes only after an overt regularity; the partial and the unclear can only be taken up as pictorial principles on the basis of an earlier, absolute clarity; the individualized, plastic apprehension of the material world must be older than the perception of the unified painterly image, the painterly appearance, the painterly movement of light, etc. Furthermore, it is clear that this development does not mean there is some process that hums along mechanically, something that occurs of its own accord and in all circumstances. It will happen differently everywhere, and it will also often be incomplete. After all, “the spirit moves” [der Geist muß wehn]. This is, no doubt, a vague expression. However, having understood the process as a sensual-spiritual one, we have already produced a relationship with the entire person. It remains a fact that this is a matter of things that are linked fundamentally with artistic practice (the effect of one picture on another). However, even if, as in cases of great artists like Titian, stylistic development presents itself as organic growth, the man Titian nevertheless stands behind all of these developments, and the new painterly style of his era would be unthinkable without so and so many earlier stages having first been completed. But this all was certainly not due to an isolated development of the eye. And the same applies to the case of architectonic stylistic developments. In its late phases, the Baroque produces increasingly striking combinations of space. However, although these combinations are bound to a specific internal history of form and could not have been realized without certain preliminary stages, we do not speak here in terms of an isolated, independent process of unwinding and revealing: a new creative spirit was ignited by the new possibilities for form that emerged. However, developments like those that we have in mind here only appear in their proper light and in their characteristic significance when we have seen how they repeat themselves in parallel under changing circumstances in greater and lesser detail. We encounter similar stylistic developments in the late Gothic and in the Baroque, although the morphological system is very different. It has been stated repeatedly that every style will have its own Baroque in due course. The requirement is that visual imagination has to have been able to occupy itself with a consistent world of form for a long enough period of time. Such developments sometimes possess an independence that isolates the individual art from its sister arts. For pictorially strong peoples, the arts will always have the tendency to resemble one another again quickly, but there will

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always necessarily be differences that remain due to their particular nature. Architecture is denied the possibilities of painting, and in architecture, even the external development of the term “picture” finds only a distant analogy. But we cannot consider as generally binding even that which we identify as an era’s form of beholding, which we have distilled from that era’s highest achievements. There is no universal lens for everything, and insofar as older forms of beholding are sustained in more or less pure form, or to the extent that they are newly directed toward certain subject matter, we will always at some later point need to reckon with the multiplicity of possibilities that exist side by side. Earlier we characterized the development of forms of beholding as psychologically plausible, that is, as rational. But how has it been possible for this individual life of art to coincide with the course of general intellectual history? Now, indeed, art in the fullest sense of the word has not entered into our considerations—the decisive part, the material world, has not come into play. Accordingly, to this belongs not only the question of in what types of (morphological) forms an era builds, but also how the individual perceives himself and how he relates rationally and emotionally to the things of the world. The problem can, therefore, be reduced to whether our visual history can really be considered a history unto itself. And obviously, that is only provisionally the case. Following their sensual-spiritual nature, those internal processes have always integrated themselves into the broader general developments of every era. These are not willfully separate processes. Bound to the material, they have always regulated themselves according to the demands of time and race. Greek antiquity also experienced its painterly period, but it maintained its plastic-isolating attitude to some extent throughout. Without a doubt, the Italian Baroque can be seen as a painterly style, but the term “painterly” never achieved the same elaboration here as it did in the North. As far as the development of pictorial representation in general is concerned, its “rationality” is none other than that which forms the basis of the development of the spiritual and emotional life of European peoples in general. At the risk of banality, permit me to repeat a sentence from my Principles: “Men have at all times seen what they wanted to see.”2 Staying with the preceding example, the painterly style only appeared when its moment had arrived, that is, when it was understood. But we also should not demand too much of the parallel between the history of vision and general intellectual history, and end up comparing incommensurables. Art retains its specificity. However, it is precisely in this that art has been creative in the highest sense: that ever-new forms of perception emerge on the basis of pure viewing. A cultural history that accounts for the intermittent leadership role of the fine arts remains still to be written.

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By chance, I happen upon the following notation in a notebook among the posthumous papers of Jacob Burckhardt: “On the whole the relationship of art to the general culture must be understood as simply loose and flimsy; art has its own life and its own history.” I do not know what special sense Burckhardt wanted to give this sentence, but it is remarkable to discover that he made such a statement, particularly since he, more than anyone else, was willing and able to understand art as a part of general history. Translated by Kathleen Chapman

notes 1 “Man sieht nicht nur anders, sondern man sieht auch Anderes.” Note on translation: I have decided to maintain the parallelism of the original, and I have, therefore, used “what is different” rather than the more accurate “the other.” [Transl.] 2 The translation of the quotation that Wölfflin cites here is from the standard translation of the Grundbegriffe, Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art, trans. M.D. Hottinger (New york: Dover Publications, 1950), 17. [Transl.]

PART VI

Carl Einstein

13 carl einstein and expressionism: the case of ernst ludwig kirchner1 Charles W. Haxthausen

Carl Einstein was no friend of the art identified by the “Expressionist” label. He would surely have had a caustic response to his inclusion in an anthology identified with that term, which he once dismissed as a “cheap and empty word.”2 yet it is a word he nevertheless occasionally used, mostly for gleefully snide dismissals of the art associated with it. “German Expressionism is painting done by stunted and overrated Fauves,” “poster art with junk metaphysics,” is how he described it to the French.3 For German readers he dubbed it “a debased variety of French arts and crafts.”4 What then, one may ask, is Einstein doing in a collection of essays devoted to expressionist art history? As Kimberly Smith rightly acknowledges in her introduction to this book, “Expressionism” was—and remains—a slippery term. In the visual arts, during the second decade of the twentieth century and as late as the mid-1920s, the term was often applied to the full range of contemporary experimental art in Europe, not just in Germany.5 yet even within Germany a common denominator is elusive: what is the commonality between the artists of Die Brücke and those of Der Blaue Reiter, or for that matter within the Blaue Reiter itself? The critic Wilhelm Hausenstein, a passionate early believer in the unity of Expressionism, had by 1920 painfully realized that there was no common denominator: “What is Expressionism, who is an Expressionist? One could just as well maintain that no one is an Expressionist as claim that all are, or a few: because it is not certain what Expressionism is.”6 So, not surprisingly, “expressionist” art history, like “Expressionist” art, is anything but a homogeneous category. Even Wilhelm Worringer, arguably the art historian most closely identified with expressionism, was ultimately disillusioned with Expressionist art; the expressionist spirit, he argued, was most authentically embodied in contemporary art criticism and scholarship.7 Despite Carl Einstein’s jeering

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commentary on “Expressionism,” he nevertheless shared certain traits with some of the art historians in this volume and with the Expressionist art of this complex period. Probably the most obvious link between Einstein and Expressionist art was his advocacy of African sculpture, in his groundbreaking Negerplastik of 1915.8 To be sure, the artists of both Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter had “discovered” African art before Einstein, but Negerplastik, as the first book on African sculpture to treat it primarily as art, was an important milestone in the process of its legitimation and integration into the canon of world art.9 For Einstein, the virtues of African sculpture were not merely formal. Sounding a common theme in expressionist art and criticism, he argued that the character of its forms was inseparable from African religion. In principle, art was “always symbolic and closely linked to the religious dimension,” he wrote in “Antike und Moderne” (Antiquity and Modernity).10 In this text, with his critique of rationalism, invocations of “das Geistige,” and sympathetic attitude toward a religious worldview, Einstein seems at least partly in sympathy with the thinking of Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky.11 Given such views, it is readily understandable that in January 1912 Einstein reached out to Kandinsky, sending him a manuscript for the planned Blaue Reiter almanac that he was co-editing with Marc.12 Marc found the text “very interesting, really full of riches” (his emphasis), but decided against publication for the first volume, wanting first to become better acquainted with Einstein.13 The planned second volume of Der Blaue Reiter never materialized. Like Kandinsky, Marc, and certain other expressionist artists and critics such as Worringer, Hausenstein, and Adolf Behne, Einstein was inspired by a belief in the new art’s wider transformative power. This comes through clearly in a 1913 catalog essay: “A compelling art is expected to transcend personal optical experience,” he declared; it must be “strong enough to transform, to organize people and things in accord with the vision of its truth; for the picture is the painter’s instrument for reshaping human beings according to the truth of his visual intuition.”14 To be sure, as he wrote this Einstein was thinking not of the German Expressionists, but of Cubism and above all Pablo Picasso—by this time he had already begun to develop a critical view of German avantgarde art.15 yet his faith in the power of art to transform human subjectivity has more in common with the utopian aspirations of the Expressionists, above all Kandinsky and Marc, than with the views of the Parisian artists he most admired. For Einstein, however, this goal was not to be achieved by generating “soul vibrations” (Kandinsky) or by means of empathy (as with Marc), but by altering human perception. “Art transforms all of seeing,” he wrote, “the artist determines how we form our mental images of the world. It is therefore the task of art to organize those images.”16 In this view of art’s cognitive agency Einstein was influenced by the Neo-Kantian art theorist Conrad Fiedler, a trait he shared with Fritz Burger.17

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There is yet another link between Einstein and Expressionism. It is, given his negative judgment on Expressionist art, a surprising one: his rapturous admiration for the art of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Although most would consider Kirchner an Expressionist artist by virtually any definition of the term, he was as contemptuous of the label as was Einstein, dismissing it as a mere “catchword,” “fundamentally incorrect and disagreeable.”18 Commenting on some favorable reviews of a Berlin exhibition of his graphic work, he complained: “Unfortunately they still regard me as a representative of Expressionism: that will not do, since, God knows, I am everything else, only not an Expressionist.”19 Probably because it is so anomalous within his corpus, so difficult to reconcile with what we take to be his theoretical and critical stance, Einstein’s writing on Kirchner has been largely ignored in the Einstein literature, as it has been in Kirchner scholarship. Uwe Fleckner has been the sole author who has had anything extensive or substantive to say about it, devoting some ten pages to “Der Fall Kirchner” in his monograph on Einstein.20 yet Fleckner largely confined himself to laying out most of the few known facts and paraphrasing Einstein’s discussion; he did not have the benefit of a small but illuminating body of correspondence, much of which was then still unpublished; and he was apparently unaware of a published notice by Kirchner himself regarding Einstein’s book. In this essay I shall take a closer look at Einstein’s writing on Kirchner, which was limited to the account that appears in the three editions of Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts.21 I also want to examine Kirchner’s evolving response to Einstein’s book, and, in a more speculative mode, to propose the possibility that Kirchner’s reading of it may have been a factor in the emergence of his “new style,” the abrupt, much debated change in his art that occurred around 1927. If there is any truth to this, we would have an instance of an “expressionist” art historian influencing the practice of an “Expressionist” artist, yet influencing him to become something other than an “Expressionist,” a label Kirchner had in any case always rejected. ***

By the time Einstein began to publish extensively on modern art in the 1920s, he had become quite hostile to Expressionism.22 His most extensive critique appears in Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, in his chapter “Die Deutschen,” the longest in the book.23 The art of most of these painters, he charged, suffered from an excessive surrender to subjective vision at the cost of form. Objects were no more than “signs of emotion,” “signal(s) of human feeling,” conceived purely in terms of the picture surface. This meant that painting was reduced to “decoration,” flat “coloristic-ornamental sensation.” The Expressionists failed to see that “the vitality of optical experience is determined by the ‘depth’ of

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spatial experience and by its integration and compelling rendering as form.”24 After a general introduction, Einstein proceeds to tick off the failures of most of the major figures commonly identified with the expressionist label: Franz Marc, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Kokoschka, Emil Nolde, the artists of Die Brücke.25 His verdict on Die Brücke, whom he mockingly dubs the “Palau academy,”26 is especially harsh: These painters were united by revolt; men who felt a kinship in rejection; there was an impetus, yet hardly a goal of new form. … What a difference, compared with the heroism of van Gogh, what smallness next to the passionately conservative citizen of Aix! … Where would one find here the spatial boldness of a Picasso, the probing delicacy of a Braque? Instead we find a vulgar threat of poster art, ornament, and arts and crafts … . They begin and end in eclecticism, cloaked in literary bombast, in profound banality.27

He continues in this negative vein for three pages, savaging the Brücke painters for their linear cliché, their mechanistic, all too familiar complementary colors … . This painting lacked the bold initiative of a new seeing that questioned the normal experience of space … . With the Brücke folks what we get is petit bourgeois contentment that peddles outdoor bathing as a flaming paradise. Thus the rapid acceptance by the bourgeois of a painting lacking in all discovery … . This is the reason why such a movement, which was devoid of movement, died out quickly and deservedly.28

After this brutal introduction to the group, Einstein summarily disposes of the Brücke artists Erich Heckel, Otto Müller, Max Pechstein, and Karl SchmidtRottluff, one by one, in just over two pages.29 Then Einstein turns to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. After more than 20 pages recounting the failures of the new German art, the abrupt shift of tone is startling. He takes pleasure, he writes, in lauding “the stylish power of this often ravishing artist.” Hailing Kirchner as “the nimble, passionate one” among the Brücke, Einstein praises him for his “delicately vibrant color,” the “personal touch in his drawing.”30 Kirchner receives almost three pages of unstinting praise, even for his later, notably weaker Swiss pictures—among the Germans only Klee received such unreservedly positive treatment.31 Indeed, Einstein’s discussion of Kirchner stands as one of the most glowing accounts of any artist in this long, dense survey of European modernism. Nothing in his previous writing, most of it mockingly contemptuous of Expressionism, prepares us for this stunningly positive assessment of Kirchner.32 In the three long chapters on French painting with which Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts begins, Einstein established firm criteria for modern painting’s task: “to push beyond color as a goal to the shaping of space.”33 In an earlier theoretical essay, he had written that “through art we have the capacity to shape

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and to alter” our experience of space, and he saw the four major Cubists— Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and Fernand Léger—as decisively meeting that challenge.34 Einstein charged Kirchner’s Brücke colleagues with failing to realize “a new conception of space,” yet he had little to say about Kirchner’s treatment of it.35 This might suggest that Einstein’s enthusiastic assessment of Kirchner flowed from a genuine aesthetic response that trumped his own theoretical position. I will argue, however, that his admiration for Kirchner is not incompatible with Einstein’s championing of Cubism. ***

Einstein’s contract with Propyläen Verlag (a division of the Ullstein publishing house) for Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts is dated March 13, 1922.36 Although it stipulated that the completed manuscript was to be submitted by July of that year, Einstein seems to have taken his time gathering the necessary material. The first evidence that he had contacted Kirchner dates from the following November, when Helene Spengler, a Davos acquaintance, reported that he had been approached by Einstein: Kirchner received an offer from a Jewish art critic Einstein, who says he wants to write on him, he should send him some material. you should have seen how proudly Kirchner said, I don’t need that, fortunately I have other people who know me better and will write about me.37

Kirchner revealed the reason for his unreceptiveness a few days later to Gustav Schiefler, in a note with a nasty whiff of anti-Semitism: Has perhaps a certain Einstein, a writer, been to see you? He recently asked me for photos. But I rejected his request, because this Jew has constantly inveighed against German painting, yet now wants to make money by writing a book about it. Naturally such a type will get his illustrations wherever he finds them.38

Kirchner overcame his initial reluctance. We know this from a letter he wrote to Schiefler in May 1925 concerning the contract with Ullstein Verlag. Kirchner’s contracts usually stipulated that he would grant reproduction rights only upon payment of fees and his prior approval of the text.39 Since he had apparently heard nothing more of Einstein’s project, he asked Schiefler for his advice on canceling his contract: I have a legal question. Three years ago I signed a contract concerning reproductions with Ullstein and Einstein. Since they did not act on this contract and the circumstances have changed in the meantime, I declared the contract void and left it up to the gentlemen to draw up a new one or an amended contract adapted to the new circumstances.

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Was I acting within my rights? Or must I, if the others do not agree, fulfill the old contract? Ullstein is acting as if I had not terminated the contract and is proceeding according to the terms of the old contract.40

Whether Kirchner wound up honoring the old contract or signing a new one we do not know. We do know the reason for the long delay: Einstein did not submit his completed manuscript to the publisher until late March 1925, nearly three years after the initial deadline.41 When the book finally appeared the following year it became the most richly illustrated volume on twentieth-century art yet, with 43 color plates and 378 halftone illustrations, including a total of 33 works by Brücke artists. But there was not a single reproduction of a work by Kirchner. This curious omission Einstein explained by the sole footnote in the book’s 550 pages: “The reproduction of works by Kirchner is regrettably not possible, since the artist was willing to grant permission only under a condition that would have compromised any independent judgment, namely that the text be submitted to him for censorship.”42 I expect that most readers of this footnote would understand it as, until recently, I did: that as a matter of principle Einstein had refused to agree to such a condition, thereby forfeiting the possibility of illustrating Kirchner’s art in his book.43 Given Kirchner’s well-documented paranoia and his authorship of six articles on himself under a French pseudonym, one might reasonably assume that he was trying to control what Einstein would write about him, and that was probably the case. yet now, following the recent publication of the collected Kirchner correspondence, we can finally reconstruct this affair in greater detail—and the story is more complicated.44 We now know that, contrary to the impression conveyed by his footnote, Einstein did in fact submit an advance copy of the text to Kirchner for his approval, in May 1925, only a few weeks after Kirchner’s attempt to cancel the contract with Ullstein. At the time Kirchner wrote Will Grohmann that he had now “bitten into the sour apple of the Einstein book. Certainly he writes very appreciatively about me, but in a totally incomprehensible German. This, too, shall pass.”45 yet the next time Einstein comes up, some five months later in a diary entry, Kirchner writes that he has “rejected” (abgelehnt) his text—meaning, obviously, that he has not approved it and will therefore not grant reproduction rights. Not, however, because of what Einstein wrote about him: “Even if he writes about me with the greatest flattery I could not tolerate his diatribe against Die Brücke. That is the reason.”46 When the book finally appeared, in April 1926, Kirchner wrote to Grohmann from Davos, asking him to purchase a copy for him. “I need to see whether my text has remained the same. Because of his mean-spirited treatment of Die Brücke I refused him the reproductions. It is really sad that something like this comes out in Germany … .” He expressed his hope that

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Grohmann would give Einstein’s book a scathing review in Der Cicerone—“he truly deserves it.”47 Since Kirchner referred to “my text” I take this to mean that he wanted to see whether Einstein, perhaps in retaliation, had revised his positive assessment of his art. When the book arrived, Kirchner discovered the notorious footnote, and vented his pique to Grohmann over Einstein’s “nasty, untruthful assertion … . He did in fact submit the text to me and I did not approve the reproductions only because Einstein would not alter his nasty remarks on Die Brücke.”48 Two weeks later he was still fuming: “it is shameless of Einstein to put me in a bad light in such a mean fashion with this footnote, out of rage over my refusal of reproduction rights.”49 Kirchner was so incensed that he drafted a short notice and asked Grohmann for his assistance in getting it published in Der Cicerone. In mid-May Kirchner’s notice appeared in the book review section. It has, to the best of my knowledge, never been noted in either the Einstein or the Kirchner literature, and deserves to be quoted virtually in full: In Carl Einstein’s Art of the 20th Century a footnote appears in the section on Ernst Ludwig Kirchner that gives cause for misunderstanding. The explanation for the absence of illustrations is as follows: I had signed a contract with Einstein according to which I would give him illustrations for his work on the condition that he would submit a draft of his text to me for the purpose of correcting possible errors, etc. This Einstein did. Thereupon I requested that he revise the pamphlet that he had produced in his familiar way (see page 126 of the book) because it was completely false and unobjective [unsachlich]. Since Einstein rejected this request, I refused to grant him permission for the illustrations, for I cannot support any work that agitates in such an uncivil manner against modern German art. I did not demand that he make any changes to his text on my own work. The way in which certain German authors and artists living in Paris direct abuse at the new German art moved me to draw up the aforementioned contract with Mr. Einstein, as he approached me regarding illustrations for his book … . For whoever is familiar with Einstein’s rude pamphlets against modern German art in the “Querschnitt,” etc., could not have any confidence in his knowledge of it. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.50

So Kirchner had corrected Einstein’s misrepresentation of the facts and fashioned himself as a magnanimous defender of “modern German art”— even as that “pamphleteer” Einstein had written glowingly of his own work. yet, even after his notice had appeared in Cicerone Kirchner was still not satisfied: now the target of his ire was the magazine’s editors, who, he complained to Grohmann, had shortened and “smoothed out” his text without his permission.51 By the fall, after Kirchner got around to reading the rest of Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, his assessment changed dramatically; the offending footnote

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was seemingly forgiven and forgotten. “I have finally read Einstein’s book,” he wrote to Grohmann, “and it is, by the way, apart from the hostile attitude toward German art, quite objective [sachlich]. The man knows more than most historians … . It would be great … if we had such an expert critic for German art. But our people lack objectivity, seriousness, and perseverance, so they merely babble and propagate fashions instead of art.”52 Some ten months later he was moved to expand on this judgment to Schiefler, now even mitigating his position on Einstein’s treatment of the Germans: The reason that art today has such a hard time of it in Germany is, in my opinion, that there are still so few people there who deal with it objectively and thoroughly; none of the critics over there has a clue about technique and form … . To learn something from the artist—for that the gentlemen are too smug, the only one today whose book on modern art is objective [sachlich] in this respect is Einstein, whose Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts is first-rate. Regrettably this man knows only the French well and the Germans hardly at all, even if what he says about the Germans is mostly right. His uncompromising judgment is exemplary. We have no other German who could write like that, and that is really bad.53

A few weeks thereafter Kirchner wrote to Paul Westheim, editor of Das Kunstblatt, noting with obvious satisfaction that in the second edition of Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts there would now be illustrations of his work: “I am pleased that we could come to an agreement, for the book is good, because it is objective and uncompromising in its judgment.”54 This time Kirchner evidently did not ask for revisions in the text as a condition, for Einstein had essentially changed nothing in the harsh account that had so offended Kirchner in the first edition. What he wrote to Westheim suggests that he had reconciled himself to it: Too bad that E[instein] is often so coarse, but perhaps if he were otherwise he would not be genuine. In spite of its incompleteness and all other shortcomings it is the only German book that has been written with a real understanding of the techniques of art. He understands what he is writing about, that is something we urgently need in Germany.55

Clearly Kirchner had changed his mind about Einstein. His glowing, unqualified praise for Kirchner’s art, including his recent Swiss pictures, in the most substantial book on twentieth-century art to have appeared—a book in which even such artists as Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Matisse did not escape Einstein’s stringent critique—must have been especially welcome at a time when Kirchner was complaining bitterly about his reception, the “general rejection [allgemeine Ablehnung] of my work in Germany,” which left him “quite devastated.”56 Moreover, unlike Kirchner’s advocates Grohmann and Schiefler, Einstein offered a judgment arrived at in complete freedom, uncompromised by the artist’s obsessively controlling

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editorial—and authorial—interventions.57 To be sure, Kirchner never says any of this directly: when he praises Einstein to Grohmann, Schiefler, and Westheim (who was close to Einstein),58 it is not about himself; it is about Einstein’s Sachlichkeit, his knowledge of “technique and form,” his “uncompromising judgment.” yet, as an artist excessively preoccupied with his place within the development of modern art he could hardly have been indifferent to the implications of his own high standing in the canon of such a rigorous critic.59 ***

We have already noted that Einstein’s text on Kirchner is exceptional in Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts: of the more than three dozen painters discussed at length in the book, he is one of the few who comes away completely unscathed by Einstein’s often brutal critical assessment. There is, however, one aspect of Einstein’s Kirchner text that sets it apart from all others in Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts: it is the only one in which he discusses drawings at length; indeed, roughly half of the Kirchner text concerns his drawings, and thereafter Einstein devotes more than 200 words to his woodcuts—another exception in the book. Only in the final two paragraphs does he turn to Kirchner’s paintings, lauding them for the same qualities of freedom, spontaneity, and energy—for their “quickly rendered basic shapes,” combined into “vital, excited organisms.” Einstein’s focus on Kirchner’s drawings as well as his enthusiastic assessment of them may have been inspired by a recently published article that appeared in the short-lived journal Genius, under the name of “Louis de Marsalle.”60The real author, however, was Kirchner himself.61 Einstein’s emphasis on the drawings would have been warranted by what “Marsalle” writes about them: “Kirchner’s drawings are perhaps the purest, most beautiful of his works. They are unconscious and without deliberation, a mirror of the sensations of a person of our time.”62 Given the extraordinary freedom of these sketches from life (Figures 13.1 and 13.2),63 one can easily understand how Einstein could praise them as products of a spontaneous, direct apprehension of the visual world: “a Kirchner drawing … does not offer an impression, subsequently stylized, rather the motif appears to him unmediated [unmittelbar], in a form that is free and personal.” His is a “pure, natural eye, passionately driving the hand at the very instant of perception, but it is a hand that does not falsify or embellish the forces of imagination.”64 Einstein’s pithy, evocative formulations echo remarks made by “Marsalle” in the Genius article: what is distinctive about Kirchner, we read there, is not traceable to “individual, repetitive forms … . For him, to draw is to absorb [aufnehmen]”; “there his sensation is directly recorded” [Seine Sensation wird da unmittelbar niedergeschrieben].65

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13.1 E.L. Kirchner, Hackney Carriage in the Street, Leipziger Straße II (1914), graphite on paper, 20.6 × 16.6 cm. Brücke-Museum, Berlin

As is customary in Einstein’s art criticism, he does not name works, but one can easily see how his response seems inspired by the drawings in the Genius article, all of which appear to date from the years 1911–15: “Kirchner’s line clings tautly to the surface, landscapes emerge from a few, emphatic curves, each flowing from his invention rather than pedantic description.” Or this: “Often he loves passionately to dissolve things and human forms, putting into his signs a network of curves, formed as though in a daydream, so as to

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13.2 E.L. Kirchner, Fehmarn Coast (1913), chalk on paper, 50.3 × 32.3 cm. Graphische Sammlung, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main

weave thing-like signs into their most distinctive lineaments.” And he finds an articulation of space as well: “[It] is formed out of the kinships and graded contrasts of lines, sometimes overshooting the curve of the shore or hanging from the jagged foliage of trees.”66 How, then, did Kirchner differ from his compatriots, who, according to Einstein, sacrificed form to the expression of subjective emotion? In the latter part of his text Einstein makes a few passing comparisons. Kirchner’s

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development was “freer, more brilliant than that of his colleagues. He quickly escapes the ornamental, pathos-laden forms that became a danger for the others.” In its “exciting dynamism” Kirchner’s art appears to be “more of the moment, optically bolder than the idylls of his … ‘Brücke’ colleagues”; they rarely matched the subtlety of his colors. But beyond these qualitative differences there is a more fundamental difference: Kirchner’s invention is always grounded in, always driven by, a response to his motif. For his young German contemporaries, on the other hand, the source of “visual excitement is centered less in the motif, more strongly in him who sees; the external motor is reduced to a minimum.” Rebelling against German Impressionism, which was weighted toward a descriptive painting slavishly tied to the object, they now stressed the primacy of subjectivity. yet they went too far in the direction of an emotion-laden solipsism.67 The Erfindung, or invention (a term Einstein uses repeatedly), was centered in the painter’s inner processes to the point that the weight shifted so far toward the “subjective event” that “reality vanishes in subjective vision.”68 Kirchner’s emotion, by contrast, is generated by his response to the object; ““even as he registers an impression Kirchner is already inventing” (in Einstein’s idiosyncratic German: “Kirchner erfindet im impressiven Zustand”—the word impressiv connotes that connection with the external sensory world). His originality lay in the fact that “he forms freely, in passionate, immediate sensation, completely avoiding schematic formulas” that characterize the “decorative” art of his Brücke colleagues. So does Einstein’s praise of Kirchner constitute an inconsistency on his part? If we read his text on Kirchner alongside the chapter on Cubism in Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, it is, I believe, possible to see a thread that links these two accounts, even though Einstein makes no such connections himself. Whatever the differences between the Cubists and Kirchner, in both cases Einstein describes the image as the product of a direct subjective encounter with the object, unmediated by previous images, unfettered by visual memory. This unmediated intuition is the source of what Einstein sees as art’s ultimate power, its potential to “transform all of seeing.”69 Cubism represents “the direct experiences of the human subject,” a direct, unmediated seeing, a corrective to normal vision which, as he wrote elsewhere, “is burdened by the memory of all previously seen art.”70 Cubism gives pictorial form to phenomenological experience, our own unfolding subjective process of vision as we apprehend and mentally construct the volume of objects in moving toward and around them in space. With Kirchner, Einstein seems to be saying, what we get in the drawings is the unmediated instantaneous first impression. In fact, Kirchner aptly characterized his drawings as “aus der Ekstase des ersten Sehens geboren,” born from the ecstasy of first sight.71 The important point is that it is spontaneous, that it represents a direct seeing, a new seeing, unfiltered through memory images or artistic conventions.

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Einstein mentions only one Kirchner work by title, the 1914 painting Tingeltangel, but it is clear from his descriptions that it is the contemporaneous work of the Berlin years that inspired most of his commentary. He refers to the paintings of the later Davos period at the very end of his text, but the terms he chose in celebrating Kirchner’s achievement so rhapsodically were hardly apt descriptors for the kind of painting Kirchner was doing at the time he read Einstein. This was his so-called “tapestry style,” marked by architectonic yet highly decorative compositions, without the “exciting dynamism” and the resistance to decoration that Einstein celebrated in his Berlin style.72 “There is no cheap ornamental schema,” Einstein wrote; Kirchner’s “expansive fantasy works in sharp incisions, sweeping curves, and astonishing bodies.” Might Kirchner have found it hard to square his current production with the qualities Einstein singled out for such praise in his book? Nothing in his diaries or correspondence indicates such a response. And yet, strikingly, a drastic change in Kirchner’s style coincided with his reading of Einstein’s book and his expressed admiration for it. ***

In March 1927, in the interval between the letters in which he praised Einstein, first to Grohmann and then to Schiefler, Kirchner announced to the former that he was again preparing a new phase of his art: It seems that my work is moving forward in spite of everything, yet people are fighting against my current work as they did ten years ago against what I was doing then, which today they recognize. But I am again preparing a new Kirchner. After all, art is about constant transformation and growing old in a familiar pattern is craft not art. (my emphasis)73

A “new Kirchner” did indeed emerge shortly thereafter. The work of the years 1927–35 has been variously labeled “abstract,” “monumental,” or “the new style,” and has in recent years become the object of increasing scholarly attention. The factors influencing this dramatic, even abrupt, stylistic change have been much debated, variously attributed to Kirchner’s response to the contemporary work of Picasso, Paul Klee, Purism, and/or other contemporary trends as well as to the formal challenges of his own ultimately aborted mural project for the Folkwang Museum in Essen.74 Absent from all these accounts has been any consideration of the possible impact of Kirchner’s reading of Einstein on this development. Let us recall: Kirchner regarded Einstein’s “first-rate” book as “the only German book that has been written with a real understanding of the techniques of art.” It was a book, moreover, in which Cubism was presented as the most significant art of the era.75 In what follows I want to propose that at the very least Einstein’s narrative of twentieth-century art should also be considered as one more possible factor in shaping a distinctive feature of Kirchner’s new style.

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13.3 E.L. Kirchner, Head of a Man: Self-Portrait (1926), color woodcut, 19 × 14 cm. Kirchner Museum, Davos

A comparison of two color woodcut self-portraits from 1926 and 1929 (Figures 13.3 and 13.4) illustrates Kirchner’s move to a more abstract formal language toward the end of the decade. In the earlier print we are presented with a three-quarter view of the artist; the nose is flattened somewhat, as though tending toward a profile view, yet one can still see both nostrils. In the 1929 self-portrait, titled Melancholy of the Mountains, the face takes on a decidedly cubist aspect,

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13.4 E.L. Kirchner, Melancholy of the Mountains (1929), color woodcut, 50 × 35 cm. Graphische Sammlung, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main

and there is now a clear sense of multiple viewpoints—what Kirchner referred to as a “profil-enface” representation.76 It is emphasized by the pattern of light and dark and reinforced structurally by the sharply hewn faceting of the head into discrete planes, emphasized by the sharp linear divisions and contrasting patterns of parallel lines. In this combination of faceting with multiple viewpoints the 1929 self-portrait is reminiscent of Picasso’s Analytical Cubism of around 1909, as in his Woman with Pears

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13.5 Pablo Picasso, Woman with Pears (1909), oil on canvas, 92.1 × 70.8 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New york, Ny

(Figure 13.5), with which Kirchner would have been quite familiar since it was illustrated in the first edition of Einstein’s Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, which he owned.77 In the Picasso, too, we see the nose in profile as seen from the left side of the face (the viewer’s right), even as we are presented with a view of the right side of the face that could only be perceived from another angle.

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13.6 E.L. Kirchner, Woman Rider (1931–32), oil on canvas, 200 × 150 cm. Kirchner Museum, Davos

The multiple viewpoint was central to Einstein’s interpretation of Cubism. He defined “the meaning of Cubism” as a “deformation of our experience of three dimensions, generated by our movements, into three-dimensional form.” In his account, Cubism gives pictorial form to the succession of images formed as we move around an object, adapting them to the demands of the picture surface:

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the object is formed out of the experience of different viewpoints or images experienced through movement, which with the aid of memory are combined into a whole … . Because the painter starts from an autonomous planar picture and its selfsufficient formal order and not from a dominant motif, he sets in place of reproduced things and their series of organic and utilitarian properties a juxtaposition that is conceived in planar terms, which preserves our threedimensional image of movement; i.e., the mental images that result from the temporally discrete movements around the object that are condensed into a juxtaposition that preserves the function, while this “simultané” processes these different contrasting views into a free two-dimensional sequence of forms.78

This was fundamental to Einstein’s interpretation of Cubism, and we find this feature in Kirchner’s “new style.”79 Not only do we regularly encounter the multiple viewpoint in Kirchner’s art of these years;80 he also repeatedly referred to it in various texts of the period. For example, in remarks on his 1928 painting Nude Women in a Forest Meadow (Nackte Frauen auf Waldwiese; G924), he comments: “Multiple views seen by the observer going around the figure are united into one form: the breasts are on top of one another because they are seen from above and from the side.”81 For the truly strange painting Woman Rider (Reiterin; Figure 13.6), “The different views, which come about from moving around the figure, are united into a single form.”82 Kirchner also emphasized this aspect in his manuscript “Die Arbeit E.L. Kirchners,” which probably dates from 1927 or later.83 Stating one of the “fundamental laws” of his practice, he elaborates: “One considers a picture to be what one can see from one point in space with a single view. That is a major limitation. This is how I do it: I move and collect the sequence of images within myself to an inner image. This I paint” [my emphasis].84 In other words, Kirchner makes it clear that he is capturing not only the movement of the objects themselves, but is incorporating his own changing relationship to them as he moves through space. The painting incorporates those multiple views.85 It is a formulation that recalls Einstein’s characterization of Cubism. Now, to be sure, the multiple viewpoint was not entirely new to Kirchner’s art. We can also find it in a number of his Berlin-period paintings. There is even an earlier instance of the “profil-enface” treatment, albeit more piecemeal than structural, in Kirchner’s 1914 portrait of Oskar Schlemmer (Figure 13.7).86 The contours of the head, eyes, and mouth are rendered frontally, while the nose is flattened, seen in profile, and the two ears are also not foreshortened but rendered as they would appear if one were looking at the head in profile. Writing in the late 1920s of his Berlin style, Kirchner claimed that he developed this treatment “from the seeing of movement … . I myself am moving and in this way a one-sided perspectival angle is eliminated and the nose often sits differently on the face than in the usual foreshortened view.”87

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13.7 E.L. Kirchner, Oskar Schlemmer (1914), oil on canvas, 70 × 60 cm. Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt

yet the most striking examples of the multiple viewpoint during the Berlin years can be found among Kirchner’s brilliant paintings of urban life from 1914, in which he explored various pictorial devices for representing and evoking the flux and vitality of the city.88 It appears as early as 1912, but it reached its peak in the great paintings of 1914, such as Potsdamer Platz and Circus Rider, his two largest paintings of that year, and Belle-Alliance Platz (Figure 13.8).89

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13.8 E.L. Kirchner, Belle-Alliance Platz, Berlin (1914), oil on canvas, 96 × 85 cm. Staatliche Museen, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie Berlin

Belle-Alliance-Platz—today called Mehringplatz—is in the form of a rondel, or circular park, graced by a Corinthian column crowned by a winged victory commemorating the Battle of Waterloo, in which the Prussians were allied with the British in the defeat of Napoleon. Located at the south end of Friedrichstraße, this public plaza is entirely level terrain (Figure 13.9), but Kirchner has tilted the ground plane upwards, emphasizing the circular shape of the rondel. He has also incorporated a number of different viewpoints—we gaze up into the vaulting of the arcade on the right, while we look at the arcade on the opposite side of the street from a slightly elevated viewpoint. Then we soar sharply upward to look down at the circular plaza, even as the

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13.9 The Halle Gate and Belle-Alliance Platz, Berlin (c. 1890–1905), photomechanical print. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

exaggerated perspective of the buildings on the far side of the square suggests that we are seeing them from a position at street level.90 Kirchner’s elevated viewpoint achieves two things here: by tilting the plaza upward he creates a dynamic circular movement within the painting, but he also creates in his viewers an experience of vicarious movements of their own bodies in space. yet Kirchner’s use of the multiple viewpoint here and in his other Berlin scenes differs fundamentally from his use of it in his works of the late 1920s and early 1930s. In these later paintings Kirchner represents a single figure or form from two or more viewpoints. In the Berlin pictures, by contrast, he introduced multiple viewpoints of an overall motif, but the component forms are not fragmented through those multiple viewpoints; rather it is our perception of space that is fragmented into a juxtaposition of discrete areas seen from different vantage points—one part of the square is seen from one angle, a second from another, and so forth. yet the spatial leaps do not correspond to the movements of a normal person; they are an artificial pictorial device to create a sense of movement. This device may have been stimulated by Kirchner’s exposure to Cubism, but what he does in his “new style” is in fact much closer to the way Einstein described cubist space.

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That Kirchner’s interest in Einstein persisted is evident from a 1929 letter to a Swiss friend: “In Berlin I found a new magazine, Documents, from Paris, with Carl Einstein, between us a rather notorious German Jew, at the tête. Very interesting new Picassos, grumbling about Klee, etc., etc.”91 Since the letter dates from July, Einstein clearly saw the first issue of the journal, from April of that year, with Einstein’s article on Picasso’s pictures of 1928.92 One wonders if the strange heads reproduced there might have inspired some of the more bizarre turns in Kirchner’s new morphology.93 Nevertheless it is odd that, only two years after praising Einstein as the best German art critic, he has here regressed to the crude anti-Semitic tone of 1922, characterizing him merely as a “rather notorious German Jew.” While no letters between the two have come to light, we do have direct documentary evidence that Kirchner was in communication with Einstein regarding the third edition of Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. In October 1931 he sent his patron Carl Hagemann a carbon copy of a brief chronological outline of his career. It was “the manuscript for the Einstein volume” (at the back of the book Einstein included a brief chronology of each artist’s career followed by a list of reproduced works). Kirchner concluded it with a reference to his most recent work, in a formulation with an Einsteinian flavor: “Since 1926 further development by applying laws of seeing never before used in art.”94 yet this chronology, he informed Hagemann, “is not being printed, because I don’t have any reproductions in [the book].”95 It is not clear why the illustrations are again absent, this time without an explanatory footnote. It is noteworthy, however, that the text, which was essentially identical in the 1926 and 1928 editions, has now been altered—but not to introduce a discussion of the most recent Davos works, which Kirchner might have reasonably expected. No, Einstein has cut out the final one-and-a-half paragraphs, about 180 words, now omitting all mention of Kirchner’s post-war development in Switzerland. He breaks it off after this line, carried over like the rest of the text from the previous editions: “Thanks to its dynamic character Kirchner’s work appears more of the moment than the idylls of his former Brücke comrades.”96 In keeping with Kirchner’s usual conditions, did Einstein perhaps submit this truncated text to him, and Kirchner then refused reproduction rights upon discovering the changes? We can only speculate. One thing is clear, however: the very qualities Einstein had most valued in Kirchner’s art—his spontaneity, “his rapidly rendered basic shapes,” combined into “vital excited organisms”—had been definitively purged from his new painting style. It would be ironic if Kirchner’s reading of Einstein had something to do with that change.

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notes 1 An early version of this paper was presented in May 2012 at a symposium at Northwestern University in honor of Rainer Rumold. I wish to thank him, Joyce Cheng, Peter Fenves, and Sebastian Zeidler for a productive discussion on that occasion, and Sherwin Simmons for many helpful comments on later versions of the manuscript. I also wish to thank Kimberly Smith for her helpful suggestions during the preparation of the manuscript. 2 Carl Einstein, Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Propyläen-Verlag, 1926), 110. Hereafter cited as K20 (1926). 3 Carl Einstein, “De l’Allemagne” (1921), in Carl Einstein, Werke Band 2. 1919– 1928, Berliner Ausgabe, ed. Hermann Haarmann and Klaus Siebenhaar (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1996), 201–2. 4 Carl Einstein, “Rudolf Schlichter” (1920), ibid., 57. 5 On this early broad use of the term, see my article “A Critical Illusion: ‘Expressionism’ in the Writings of Wilhelm Hausenstein,” in The Ideological Crisis of Expressionism: The Literary and Artistic War Colony in Belgium, 1914–1918, ed. Rainer Rumold and O.K. Werckmeister (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1990), 170–72. 6 Wilhelm Hausenstein, “Die Kunst in diesem Augenblick,” Der neue Merkur 3, Sonderheft “Werden,” 119. 7 See, for example, Worringer’s “funeral oration” for Expressionism: “Künstlerische Zeitfragen” (1921), in his Fragen und Gegenfragen: Schriften zum Kunstproblem (Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1957), 121–4. 8 I do not mean to suggest that the so-called “primitivist” interest in African sculpture was peculiar to artists associated with “expressionism”; it was, of course, a broader European phenomenon during this time. On the discovery and early reception of African art, see the indispensable article by Jean-Louis Paudrat, “From Africa,” in “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, ed. William S. Rubin (New york: Museum of Modern Art, 1984), 1: 125–75, especially 137–53. 9 The almanac Der Blaue Reiter, published in May 1912, included illustrations of two African sculptures, from Cameroon and Benin, as well as several Oceanic sculptures. Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, eds., Der Blaue Reiter: Dokumentarische Neuausgabe (Munich: Piper, 1965), 55, 109. On the Brücke’s early reception of African sculpture, see Jill Lloyd, German Expressionism: Primitivism and Modernity (New Haven: yale University Press, 1991), 21–50. On Kirchner in particular, see Hanna Strzoda, Die Ateliers Ernst Ludwig Kirchners: Eine Studie zur Rezeption “primitiver” europäischer und außereuropäischer Kulturen (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2006) and Lucius Grisebach, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner und die Kunst Kameruns (Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 2008). By 1921 Einstein was sharply critical of the expressionists’ engagement with African art. They were “content to cook up an exoticism of ecstatic negroes.” Einstein, “De l’Allemagne,” 202. 10 Carl Einstein, “Antike und Moderne,” in Carl Einstein, Werke Band 4. Texte aus dem Nachlaß, Berliner Ausgabe, ed. Hermann Haarmann and Klaus Siebenhaar (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1992), 144. The text was never published.

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On the importance of religion in Einstein’s early writing, see Klaus H. Kiefer, Diskurswandel im Werk Carl Einsteins: ein Beitrag zur Theorie und Geschichte der europäischen Avantgarde (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994), 74–88. 11 See, in particular, Kandinsky’s Über das Geistige in der Kunst (Berne: Benteli Verlag, 1965). The book appeared in December 1911. 12 Uwe Fleckner gives a detailed account of this episode in his Carl Einstein und sein Jahrhundert: Fragmente einer intellektuellen Biographie (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006), 87–91. 13 Marc, in a letter to Kandinsky, early February 1912, in Wassily Kandinsky / Franz Marc: Briefwechsel, ed. Klaus Lankheit (Munich: Piper, 1983), 133. Fleckner (Einstein und sein Jahrhundert, 90–91) argues that “Antike and Moderne” was the text that Einstein submitted. 14 Carl Einstein, untitled foreword, Erste Ausstellung (Berlin: Neue Galerie, 1913), in Carl Einstein, Werke Band 1. 1907–1918, Berliner Ausgabe, ed. Hermann Haarmann and Klaus Siebenhaar (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1994), 174. 15 See, for example, his “Bemerkungen zum heutigen Kunstbetrieb” (1912) and “Ausstellung der Sezession in Berlin” (1913), ibid., 139–40, 176–9. 16 Carl Einstein, “Anmerkungen” (1914), ibid., 214; translated as “Totality,” October, no. 107 (Winter 2004): 116. Revised translation here. 17 See Kimberly Smith, “Introduction.” On Einstein and Conrad Fiedler, see Kiefer, Diskurswandel, 118–21. 18 Letter to Eberhard Grisebach on December 1, 1917, in Eberhard Grisebach, ed., Maler des Expressionismus im Briefwechsel mit Eberhard Grisebach (Hamburg: C. Wegner, 1962), 76. 19 Letter of November 11, 1924, to Will Grohmann, who was then preparing the first monograph on Kirchner. In Lieber Freund: Künstler schreiben an Will Grohmann, ed. Karl Gutbrod (Cologne: DuMont, 1968), 35. See also the earlier letter of August 22, 1924, where Kirchner makes the same disclaimer, ibid., 34. And two years later (December 21, 1926) he noted in his diary, with a mixture of exasperation and relief, that Curt Glaser, one of the first influential critics to appreciate Kirchner’s true stature, had finally begun to argue against the designation of his art as “Expressionist.” Lothar Grisebach, ed., Ernst Ludwig Kirchners Davoser Tagebuch: eine Darstellung des Malers und eine Sammlung seiner Schriften, 2nd rev ed. (Ostfildern: Hatje, 1997), 149. Kirchner consistently rejected any association of his art with the “Expressionist” label. In a letter to Wilhelm Barth, director of the Kunsthalle Basel, August 29, 1921, he protested his inclusion in a planned exhibition of German “Expressionists.” Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Der gesamte Briefwechsel: “die absolute Wahrheit, so wie ich sie fühle,” ed. Hans Delfs, 4 vols (Zürich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2010), no. 969, 1:504. Kirchner made the same disclaimer in a letter to Nele van de Velde, February 1, 1923, in E.L Kirchner, Briefe and Nele und Henry van de Velde (Munich: Piper, 1961), 50. 20 Fleckner, Carl Einstein und sein Jahrhundert, 194–204. Kiefer, Diskurswandel, 302, devotes a single sentence to Kirchner in his discussion of the book. Among the 17 essays in a conference volume devoted to Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, only one author gives Kirchner more than passing mention, and only a few lines at that: Liliane Meffre, “Les rapports du texte et de l’image dans les trois éditions

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du ‘L’art du xxe siècle’ de Carl Einstein,” in Die visuelle Wende der Moderne: Carl Einsteins Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Klaus H. Kiefer (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2003), 253. In her monograph on Einstein’s book, Johanna Dahm does not address his writing on Kirchner or Expressionism, except for Der Blaue Reiter. Johanna Dahm, Der Blick des Hermaphroditen: Carl Einstein und die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004). In the Kirchner literature, Frank Whitford has been alone in giving a brief summation of Einstein’s treatment of Kirchner, in his “Kirchner und das Kunsturteil,” in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1880–1938, ed. Lucius Grisebach and Annette Meyer zu Eissen (Berlin: Nationalgalerie Berlin, 1979), 40. 21 Kirchner did appear in the anthology that Einstein edited with Paul Westheim, Europa Almanach: Malerei, Literatur, Musik, Architektur, Plastik, Bühne, Film, Mode (Potsdam: Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, 1925), 66–74. He was represented by a reprinting of the essay “Über die Schweizer Arbeiten von E.L. Kirchner,” which he published under the pseudonym “Louis de Marsalle,” illustrated by seven works from his Swiss period. On this pseudonym, see below, note 61. 22 See his “De l’Allemagne” from 1921, cited in note 3. 23 Ironically, “Expressionism” was part of the working title entered in Einstein’s contract for Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts: “Die jüngste Kunst’ (Expressionismus)” (The newest art [Expressionism]). At the bottom of the first page of each of the 16-page signatures is “Einstein, Expressionismus.” yet the word “Expressionismus” and its cognates appear fewer than a dozen times in the text of the book. The contract is reprinted in Carl Einstein, Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, 3rd ed. (1931), ed. Uwe Fleckner and Thomas W. Gaehtgens (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1996), 819–20. In Germany, during the teens and even into the twenties, it had been common to use “expressionism” as a designator for all of the avant-garde. On this see Haxthausen, “A Critical Illusion,” 170–72. 24 Einstein, K20 (1926), 106, 111, 120. 25 Ibid., 101–23, 128–40, 144–9. 26 Einstein, Werke 2, 59. The carved housebeams of the Palau Islands, on view in the ethnographic collections in Dresden, had been an important source for the Brücke artists Kirchner and Erich Heckel before the war. See Lloyd, German Expressionism, 26–32. Another Brücke member, Max Pechstein, visited the Palau Islands in 1914 (ibid., 199–211). That Einstein refers to the “Palauakademie” suggests that he had not only Pechstein, but the entire group in mind. 27 Einstein, K20 (1926), 119. 28 Ibid., 120–21. 29 Before the war Einstein had written positively about Pechstein. See his reviews “Ausstellung der Sezession in Berlin” and “Herbstausstellung am Kudamm,” both from 1913, in Einstein, Werke 1, 171, 177–8. 30 Einstein, K20 (1926), 123. 31 Ibid., 140–43. On Einstein’s writing on Klee, see my “Die erheblichste Persönlichkeit unter den deutschen Künstlern’: Einstein über Klee,” in Kiefer, Die visuelle Wende der Moderne, 131–46; Dahm, Der Blick des Hermaphroditen, 139–50; Andreas Michel, “Sehen als Entdecken: Paul Klee im Werke Einsteins

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und Heideggers,” in Carl Einstein im Exil: Kunst und Politik in den 1930er Jahren, ed. Marianne Kröger and Hubert Roland (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2007), 187–200; and Sebastian Zeidler, “Form as Revolt: Carl Einstein’s Philosophy of the Real and the Work of Paul Klee,” Res 57/8 (Spring/Autumn 2010): 229–63. 32 In his 1913 review of the Berlin Secession, his only previous reference to Kirchner, Einstein had criticized him and Erich Heckel for confusing the “dazzlingly primitive with the elemental.” Einstein, Werke 1, 177. On what Einstein may have meant by this terse remark, see Kiefer, Diskurswandel, 152–3. 33 K20 (1926), 31, 32. 34 Einstein, “Totality,” 117. Picasso, Braque, Gris, and Léger are the four Cubists Einstein singles out for treatment in K20 (1926), 69–86. 35 Einstein, K20 (1926), 120. In his 1921 article “De l’Allemagne,” Einstein was more pointed, describing the Expressionists as naive in their approach to problems of space, about which they had no inkling. Einstein, Werke 2, 201. 36 See Einstein, K20 (1931), 819–20. 37 Letter of November 22, 1922 to her son-in-law, the Jena philosopher Eberhard Grisebach, in Grisebach, Maler des Expressionismus, 141. Two years earlier Grisebach had written an essay on Kirchner: “Über das graphische Werk von E.L. Kirchner,” in Grafik von E.L. Kirchner, exh. cat. (Frankfurt: Galerie Ludwig Schames, 1920), 23–41. Eberhard Grisebach was probably one of the authors Kirchner had in mind when he referred to “other people.” 38 Letter of November 29, 1922, in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Gustav Schiefler, Briefwechsel 1910–1935/1938, ed. Wolfgang Henze (Stuttgart and Zurich: Belser, 1990), no. 184, p. 210. 39 Kirchner’s correspondence contains many references to contracts, reproduction, fees, and complaints about such matters. See for example his letter of May 11, 1923 to the critic Hans Hildebrandt in Kirchner, Gesamter Briefwechsel, 2: no. 1100, p. 601. 40 Letter of May 2, 1925, Kirchner and Schiefler, Briefwechsel, no. 300, p. 357. 41 See the publisher’s letter of March 28, 1925 acknowledging receipt of the manuscript in Einstein, K20 (1931), 825. 42 Einstein, K20 (1926), 126: “Die Wiedergabe von Werken Kirchners ist leider nicht möglich, da die Genehmigung des Künstlers nur unter jedes freie Urteil unterbindenden Bedingung zu erlangen war, dass ihm der Text zur Zensur vorgelegt würde.” 43 This is also how the few Einstein scholars who have discussed the incident have interpreted it. See Fleckner, Einstein und sein Jahrhundert, 196–7, and Meffre, “Les rapports du texte et de l’image,” 253. The few Kirchner scholars who have dealt with it have interpreted it similarly—for example, Lucius Grisebach, “Ernst Ludwig Kirchner als ‘stilbewusster’ Künstler: Ein Ansatz zur Beurteilung seines ‘abstrakten’ Spätstils,” in Grisebach and Meyer zu Eissen, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1880–1938, 34, 37 n.13; Norbert Wolf, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1880–1938: On the Edge of the Abyss of Time (Cologne and London: Taschen, 2003), 18.

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44 Kirchner, Der gesamte Briefwechsel (see note 19). Despite the title, these four volumes do not contain all of Kirchner’s known letters. Previously published ones are merely listed and summarized, with the corresponding bibliographic reference. 45 Kirchner to Grohmann, 25 May 1925, ibid., 2: no. 1484, p. 886. “Jetzt bin ich bei dem sauren Apfel des Einsteinschen Buches, der ja sehr anerkennend schreibt, aber in einem ganz unverständlichen Deutsch. Auch das wird vorübergehen.” 46 October 27, 1925, Davoser Tagebuch, 106. From this it is evident that Einstein had sent Kirchner not just the text on him, but the entire section on Die Brücke. 47 Kirchner to Grohmann, April 9, 1926, Kirchner, Gesamter Briefwechsel, 2: no. 1686, p. 1035. 48 Letter of April 16, 1926, ibid., 2: no. 1692, p. 1040. 49 Kirchner to Grohmann, May 1, 1926, ibid., 2: no. 1697, p. 1042. 50 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, “Erklärung,” Der Cicerone 28, no. 10 (1926): 335. With the reference to Der Querschnitt, the journal published by the dealer Alfred Flechtheim, Kirchner must have had in mind two articles from 1922, in which Einstein made snidely dismissive remarks about contemporary German art. See his “Skating Rink” and “Die Antipoden,” Einstein, Werke 2, 206–8, 214–15. 51 Kirchner to Grohmann, July 2, 1926, Kirchner, Gesamter Briefwechsel, 2: no. 1731, p. 1072. See also his letter to the publisher of Cicerone, ibid., 2: no. 1713, p. 1054. 52 Kirchner to Grohmann, October 5, 1926, ibid., 2: no. 1770, p. 1102. 53 Kirchner to Schiefler, August 15, 1927, Kirchner and Schiefler, Briefwechsel, no. 400, pp. 484–5. 54 Kirchner to Westheim, September 2, 1927, Kirchner, Gesamter Briefwechsel, 1: no. 1884, p. 1168. No correspondence between Einstein and Kirchner on this agreement has come to light. For the illustrations, see Carl Einstein, Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Propyläen-Verlag, 1928), 380–87 and plate xx. It is noteworthy that those nine reproductions bear little relation to Einstein’s text. There are no drawings or woodcuts, the media he discusses at greatest length, and the one work he cites by title, the 1914 painting Tingeltangel (Gordon/G390), is not illustrated. See the catalog raisonné in Donald Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968). 55 Kirchner to Westheim, September 2, 1927, Kirchner, Gesamter Briefwechsel, 1: no. 1884, p. 1168. 56 Entry of December 21, 1926, Davoser Tagebuch, 148. See also his earlier responses in the entries for November 20 and 29, and December 9, about the reception of his November 1926 exhibition of recent paintings and sculpture at the Galerie Paul Cassirer. Ibid., 142, 145. 57 On his interventions in Grohmann’s monograph, Das Werk Ernst Ludwig Kirchners, see editor’s note 137 in Kirchner, Davoser Tagebuch, 304. 58 Besides publishing in Westheim’s magazine Das Kunstblatt, Einstein collaborated with him on the Europa Almanach (see note 21).

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59 As Lucius Grisebach has written, “Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was always an artist who was very concerned with the assessment of his art and the role that he played as an artist in the eyes of critics and in art history.” Grisebach, “Kirchner als stilbewusster Künstler,” 34. 60 Louis de Marsalle, “Zeichnungen von E.L. Kirchner,” Genius 2 (1920): 216–34; Kirchner and Schiefler, Briefwechsel, no. 291, p. 348. Reprinted, with only selected illustrations, in Kirchner, Davoser Tagebuch, 220–25. It might seem that a more likely source for Einstein would have been Will Grohmann’s KirchnerZeichnungen; 100 Tafeln und zahlreiche Holzschnitte im Text (Dresden: E. Arnold, 1925), yet Einstein submitted his completed manuscript for Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts to the Propyläen Verlag within days after Grohmann’s book appeared. See the publisher’s letter of March 28, 1925 acknowledging receipt of the manuscript in Einstein, K20 (1931), 825. Kirchner’s correspondence indicates that Grohmann’s book did not appear until the third week of March, for on the 18th he complained to Grohmann that he still had not received the book. See Kirchner, Gesamter Briefwechsel, 2: no. 1427, p. 848. His letter from March 22 to Gustav Schiefler confirms that the book had by then appeared. Kirchner and Schiefler, Briefwechsel, no. 291, p. 348. 61 This was the first of six articles—they appeared between 1920 and 1933—that Kirchner published on his own art under this French pseudonym. The texts of the first five of these articles are reprinted in Davoser Tagebuch. Besides the article on Kirchner‘s drawings, these are: “Über Kirchners Graphik” (1921), 226–9; “Über die Schweizer Arbeiten von E.L. Kirchner” (1921), 230–32; “Über die plastischen Arbeiten von E.L. Kirchner” (1925), 254–6; foreword to the catalog, Ausstellung von E.L. Kirchners Graphik (1927), 261–2. The sixth and final essay, untitled, appeared in the catalog of the major Kirchner retrospective in Bern. “[Untitled],” in Ausstellung Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, ed. Max Huggler, exh. cat. (Bern: Kunsthalle Bern, 1933), 14–16. On “Louis de Marsalle,” see Christian Weikop, “Ernst Ludwig Kirchner as His Own Critic: The Artist’s Statements as Stratagems of Self-Promotion,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 48, no. 4 (October 2012): 406–20. 62 Marsalle, “Zeichnungen,” in Davoser Tagebuch, 224. 63 Both of these drawings were among the 21 illustrated in the 1921 Genius article. 64 Einstein, K20 (1926), 123–4. 65 Marsalle, “Zeichnungen,” 221. 66 Einstein, K20 (1926), 124. 67 Ibid., 101–3. 68 Ibid., 106, 107. 69 Carl Einstein, “Totality,” 116. Revised translation. 70 Ibid. 71 Davoser Tagebuch (February 18, 1926), 128. 72 Gordon, Kirchner, 126–30. 73 Letter of March 1, 1927, Kirchner, Gesamter Briefwechsel, 2: no. 1830, p. 1140.

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74 The still indispensable first study of this period is Max Huggler, “Ernst Ludwig Kirchners monumentaler Stil,” Städel-Jahrbuch 4 (1973): 217–48. It was followed by an important article by Lucius Grisebach, “Kirchner als stilbewusster Künstler” (see note 43). The most thorough investigation of Kirchner’s “new style” is Hyun Ae Lee, “Aber ich stelle doch nochmals einen neuen Kirchner auf”: Ernst Ludwig Kirchners Davoser Spätwerk (Münster and New york: Waxmann, 2008). For an excellent overview of the scholarly literature on this phase, see Wolfgang Henze, “El ‘nuevo estilo’ de Kirchner (1925–1935): Un capítulo en la historiografía artistica y un capítulo en la historia del arte,” in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1880–1938 (Madrid: Fundación Mapfre, 2012). I am grateful to Dr. Henze for kindly providing me with the original German text of his article. 75 This would change in the third (1931) edition, when Einstein introduced a chapter on Surrealism, “Die romantische Generation,” seeing in that movement the next phase of the project initiated by Cubism. Already in the 1928 edition, for which he rewrote and greatly expanded the Picasso section, that painter was now viewed under the aspect of surrealist ideas. 76 For example, in the commentaries to the paintings in his Bern retrospective: Huggler, Ausstellung Kirchner, nos. 86, 88, 104. Huggler recorded the commentaries in Kirchner’s house at Wildboden in conversation with the artist. See Huggler, “Kirchners monumentaler Stil,” 245 n5. 77 As noted above, Grohmann sent him a copy. Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts is listed in the catalog of the auction sale of Kirchner’s library, Galerie Jürg Stuker, held in Bern, March 15, 1951. The catalog is reprinted in Karlheinz Gabler, ed., Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Dokumente: Fotos, Schriften, Briefe (Aschaffenburg: Museum der Stadt Aschaffenburg, 1980), no. 1627, p. 358. The entry does not include the publication date, but since Kirchner acquired a copy of the 1926 edition through Grohmann, it is to be assumed that the book in question is that edition. 78 Einstein, K20 (1926), 62, 64. 79 On Einstein’s distinctive take on the multiple viewpoint in Cubism, see my “Carl Einstein, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Cubism, and the Visual Brain,” Nonsite.Org 2 (June 12, 2011). 80 See, for example, Mother and Son (Mutter und Sohn), 1927–28, G884; Boy Slinging Dart (Bube mit Wurfpfeil), 1928, G914; Woman Walking the Street at Night (Frau geht über nächtliche Straße), 1928–29, G922; Rushing Dancer (Springende Tänzerin [Gret Palucca]), 1931, G960; and the color woodcut Head of Dr. Bauer, 1933, Dube 633. 81 Huggler, Ausstellung Kirchner, no. 80. 82 Ibid., no. 103. 83 E.W. Kornfeld, who published the manuscript, writes that Kirchner “probably put it on paper in 1925 or the summer of 1926,” without giving any reason for that dating. yet this cannot be correct, since Kirchner makes a reference to Kandinsky’s Punkt und Linie zu Fläche (Point and Line to Plane), which appeared only in mid-October 1926. Eberhard W. Kornfeld, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Nachzeichnung seines Lebens: Katalog der Sammlung von Werken von Ernst Ludwig Kirchner im Kirchner-Haus Davos (Bern/Fribourg: Verlag Kornfeld/Office du livre, 1979), 341. Will Grohmann wrote that Kandinsky’s book was published to coincide with the opening of the “jubilee exhibition” organized by the Galerie

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Arnold in Dresden to mark the artist’s sixtieth birthday. The exhibition opened on October 16, 1926. See Grohmann’s review, “Ausstellungen: Dresden,” Der Cicerone 18, no. 20 (October 1926): 682. 84 Kirchner, in Kornfeld, Kirchner, 344. “Es gilt als Bild, was man von einem Punkt mit einem Blick übersehen kann. Das ist eine grosse Beschränkung. Ich mache es so. Ich bewege mich und sammle die aufeinander folgenden Bilder in mir zu einem Innenbild. Dieses male ich.” See also the 1929 sketchbook note: “die Form, die man sieht, wenn man selbst in Bewegung ist und die von bewegten Gegenständen herkommt.” Gerd Pressler, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Die Skizzenbücher—“Ekstase des ersten Sehens (Davos: Kirchner Museum, 1996), 415. 85 Kornfeld, Kirchner, 339. 86 The point is made by Henze, “El ‘nuevo estilo,’” 83. 87 Kornfeld, Kirchner, 339. 88 On these paintings, see my article, “Framing Movement: Kirchner in Berlin, in Aleksandr Naymark, ed., Mostly Modern: Essays in Honor of Joseph Masheck (Stockbridge MA: Hard Press Editions, 2014), 104–17. 89 In a 1935 letter to his patron Carl Hagemann, Kirchner identified his 1912 painting, Innsbrucker Straße (G292) as one that “was much concerned with the problems of effects of depth in the plane. In that picture I attempted to offset the perspectival plasticity by means of a perspective with four viewpoints (Augenpunkte), in which I was aided by color.” The sketch included in the letter shows the four vantage points, which all lie on a horizontal axis passing through the middle of the painting, the ones on the far left and far right lying outside the frame. Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluff, Nolde, Nay: Briefe an den Sammler und Mäzen Carl Hagemann 1906–1940, ed. Hans Delfs, Mario-Andreas von Lüttichau, and Roland Scotti (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2004), xx and plate 15). In Staberhof Country Estate (Gut Staberhof; G322), a painting done on Fehmarn the following summer (1913), Kirchner took a more radical approach, introducing multiple viewpoints on a vertical axis. On Kirchner’s earliest responses to Cubism, see Eleanor Moseman, “Expressing Cubism: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s ‘Berlin Style’ and Its Affinities with the Painting of Bohumil Kubišta,” PhD diss. (Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, 2006); Eleanor Moseman, “At the Intersection: Kirchner, Kubišta, and Modern Morality,” Art Bulletin 93, no. 1 (March 2011): 79–100; and the article by Sherwin Simmons, “‘A By-way for Sure’: Cubism’s Reception and Impact on Die Brücke, 1910–14,” in Timothy Benson, ed. German Expressionism and France: From van Gogh to Kandinsky, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2014), 262–75. 90 In a second, probably earlier, version (Belle-Alliance Platz II; G372), Kirchner also presents a steeply tilted ground plane, but without the radically differing perspectives of the two arcades. 91 Letter to Andreas Walser, July 7, 1929, in Kirchner, Gesamter Briefwechsel, 2: no. 2198, p. 1338. 92 Carl Einstein, “Pablo Picasso: Deux tableaux de 1928,” Documents 1, no. 1 (April 1929): 35–8. His reference to “grumbling about Klee” [Schimpfen auf Klee] is curious. The one article on Klee (53–4), by Georges Limbour, was entirely laudatory.

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93 See, for example, Dance of the Masks (Maskentanz), 1928–29, G927; and Lovers (Liebespaar), 1930, G947. 94 Delfs et al., Briefe an Hagemann, no. 413. Einstein held that the highest goal of art was to alter, to renew human seeing. There are numerous references to this in Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Of the Cubists he writes that “these painters have undoubtedly expanded seeing [das Sehen erweitert] and restored to it powers that it possessed in the great ages of painting” (80). He criticizes the Brücke artists for their failure “neu zu sehen,” to achieve a new seeing (120). 95 Letter of October 29, 1931, Delfs et al., Briefe an Hagemann, no. 422. 96 Einstein, K20 (1931), 213.

14 “ernst ludwig kirchner,” from Art of the Twentieth Century (1926)* Carl Einstein

Kirchner—born in 1880 in Aschaffenburg—was the nimble, passionate one among his young “Brücke” colleagues, an artist who resists any schema. In Dresden, around 1900, Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff found their way to the studio of this ambitious man. In 1903 they joined together to form the “Brücke.” They drew and worked together in the studio or at the Moritzburg Lakes near Dresden. Probably the closest to Kirchner was the young Heckel, whose later painting gently ebbed away. In 1904 Kirchner discovered exotic works in the Dresden Museum and Indian mural painting in an English book, and showed both to his friends. Working hard, they achieved a modest impact. In 1909 Kirchner moved to Berlin; he left the “Brücke” in 1913; in 1918, seriously ill, he moved to Davos and since then he works in complete isolation in the mountains. From the beginning it is Kirchner who shows the strongest sensibility, a delicately vibrant color, a personal touch in his drawing. It is a pleasure to affirm the stylish power of this often ravishing artist. In his drawings Kirchner displays an easy naturalness found in hardly any other German. The striking thing about a Kirchner drawing is that he does not give us an impression, subsequently stylized; rather the motif appears to him unmediated, in a form that is free and personal; elements of play are inherent in his sensibility, which brims with spontaneous figures—this insures his originality. Even as he registers an impression Kirchner is already inventing, anyone doing it later is merely stylizing quotidian nature. Kirchner’s originality is grounded in his opticality; no sooner does he outline the first forms than the motif is internalized and dispensed with. A pure, natural eye, passionately driving the hand at the very instant of perception, but a hand that does not *

Carl Einstein, Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Propyläen-Verlag, 1926), 123–26. Reprinted in Werke Band 5, Berliner Ausgabe, ed. Uwe Fleckner and Thomas W. Gaehtgens (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1996), 812–14.

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falsify or embellish the forces of imagination; literature is thus avoided, indeed becomes impossible. He does not intensify reality but sets down signs of his own seeing, his own optic. With Kirchner’s drawings we do not compare the original stimulus with its figuration, there is no need of literature to boost a deficient opticality; the flow of line manifests an original optical imagination and incites a concentric assault on a single sense, the eye, without the embarrassment of resorting to the aid of thought, of literary connotation. This is no cheap ornamental schema; an expansive fantasy works in sharp incisions, sweeping curves, and astonishing bodies; Kirchner does not depict, he creates convincing equivalents of the imagination, of surprising freedom and joyous variety. Decisive for Kirchner’s drawing and for his originality is that he forms freely, in passionate, immediate sensation, completely avoiding schematic formulas. Among the Germans I know hardly anyone else whose drawing is so free and thus almost imponderable. These are signs of subjective excitement, so that titles of these sheets may be considered directives for seeing; not for the recognition of a motif, but so that the impression be more easily grasped and the more alien domains of personal signs become linked with our familiar mental representations of things. Thanks to their freedom Kirchner’s drawings contain considerably more integrated wholeness of form than all the sheets of his comrades. Kirchner is not stuck like most artists, who offer surrogates of nature, adapting or intensifying a form, since even in the first stage of the sketch he already achieves a unity of the freest, most personal signs. Kirchner’s line clings tautly to the surface; landscapes emerge from a few emphatic curves, each flowing from invention rather than pedantic description. Often he loves passionately to dissolve things and human forms, putting into his signs a web of curves, formed as though in a daydream, so as to weave thinglike signs into their most distinctive lineaments. Space is formed out of the kinships and graded contrasts of lines, sometimes overshooting the arc of the shore or hanging from the jagged foliage of trees, sitting in a little quadrangle of the wall, which in its brightness counters the more remote darkness. Perhaps in his woodcuts we find a richer, more imaginative attachment to the surface than in his drawings. In the drawings it is exciting to retrace the broadly contoured suggestions of space and surface indicated by the lines. On the whole Kirchner avoids the comforts and serviceability of descriptive painting and renders only what he senses as the great vibrant form of things. Form imposes limits and owes its effect to a concentric assault on the eye, the singular visual power into which all inner and perceptual capacities converge. Kirchner has been making woodcuts since 1900 and these works may have been an important stimulus for the artists in his circle. In these sheets we can follow the structure of his figures; a head, a form is not so much represented as shaped from centrifugal and centripetal rays of free-floating signs. One may perhaps be reminded of Van Gogh, who reshaped the impressionist technique of color patches into planar figures. Spots, currents of lines, incised black and

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white planes that are completely invented, yield a vigorous formal structure that is occasionally enclosed by a pulsating web. Here impressionist surface technique is reinterpreted structurally. Forms grow from the deliberate play of the free construction of planes that fills out the sheet. The relation between two figures is occasionally represented through a dynamically connective ornament. We also mention Kirchner’s color woodcuts, in which he achieves a wonderful interpenetration of colors. Concurrently with the woodcuts he carves sculptures from wood and stone; Kirchner strengthens the expressive formal power of his statues by polychroming them. One should also take note of Kirchner’s lithographs and etchings. We find Kirchner’s lively, stylish surfaces, their compelling vibrancy, also in his paintings. Here is a development that is freer, more brilliant than that of his contemporaries. He quickly escapes the ornamental, pathos-laden forms that became a danger for the others. He breaks form down into quickly rendered basic shapes, combining them into vital, excited organisms; this return to simple figurations is hardly threatened by a rhetorically hollow rigidity. Certainly, he shapes his figures as planes, yet contrasting directions suggest a battle of volumes. He goes further than his friends; he lets the room converge on the figure and loosens the given volume of houses and interior spaces in order to arrange them in planes according to color and image. He structures the canvas in strong rhythms. A picture like Tingeltangel1 may recall Seurat; yet the German follows his own path. The proportions are treated liberally, in accord with the feelingdriven conception. Kirchner’s work possesses an exciting dynamism that makes it appear to be more of the moment, optically bolder than the idylls of his former “Brücke” colleagues. He avoids the over-extension of all too subservient curves, interrupts the contour, plays different characteristic forms off against one another, a sharp triangle against a rounded line. Kirchner’s works are more arbitrary, and perhaps for that reason they possess more of nature than the works of the others. Hardly any of the “Brücke” painters has found such subtle colors as Kirchner. His yellow, his bright salmon pink charm us through their passionate elegance. The war came; Kirchner became ill and in 1918 moved to the mountains near Davos. There he began painting massive people and mountains; his color becomes heavier, and it seems that nature, alive and manifold, with its richer stock of forms, became fused with the artist’s fantasy. The painter now spins his inner strength outward, and this comes back reinforced into his art; he recognizes the limits of self-aggrandizing subjectivism, which recognizes nature only as a symptom or sign, and gradually learns the limitation of lyricism, which in the end appears only as a fragment of further connections; salvation in a more wide-ranging creation. Increasingly he masters the unity of the human subject and nature; he earnestly strives for a proper balance, a controlled unity of these two powers. Translated by Charles W. Haxthausen

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note 1 The painting Café Chantant (Tingeltangel), 1914, in Donald Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), cat.

390. [Transl.]

15 “kandinsky” (1926)* Carl Einstein

For his 60th birthday, October 5, 1926

Chronologically, Kandinsky belongs to the generation of the Munich and Berlin Secessions. His hurrying nature tossed him into the rank of those from 1905; he was a generation younger than his contemporaries. Blissfully set in motion, yet the obligatory constellation led to painful strife. Turmoil of the soul which wants to live for itself, which suddenly dares to question; and now bears witness to immediate, spiritual matters. Replacement of God, battle against solid objects emptied of divinity, against the business of still life. Painterly egoism, broken open vertically; centripetal inbreeding. Kandinsky smashed a few windows. His impact in Central Europe is substantial, especially in the east. Berlin, the city rather hostile to lyricism, denied him. Of the generation which blossomed between 1905 and 1910, certainly there will not remain that shadow which stained the everyday representatives of the painting industry. At least in art we hope—albeit doubtfully—for gradual selection, growing resistance against the cunning genius of loud mouths and art societies. This will last until the face of this generation held captive by inflation is washed clear. The past will oppress the revolutionaries, or the soft evening sky of the historical will allow an insurrection which was ready for sacrifice to be slipped as one into a hushed state of unity. Revolutionaries become grandfathers. Reactionaries molder into rotten fungoid trash. Dried up, patient asylum dwellers. *

Carl Einstein, “Kandinsky. Zum 60. Geburtstag. 5. Oktober 1926,” Das Kunstblatt 10 (1926): 372–3. Reprinted in Carl Einstein, Werke 2. 1919–1928, Berliner Ausgabe, ed. Hermann Haarmann and Klaus Siebenhaar (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1996), 313, 315.

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He dared to grow stronger through this process: evaluation instead of monographic exploitation. The enthusiastic trading of middlemen and an obsolete inflation comes to an end, and color is finally appraised as hard currency. Here perhaps we see clearly and without conflict [both] Kandinsky’s significance and his deficiencies. A person who fearlessly expressed his inner self; the sinking barrier exploded away, but so did that which was most important. The art remains above all very much like the person. Perhaps all this movement is swimming in the same pool, and the horizon sways scornfully because one is seasick. Kandinsky hoped for the alteration of humanity, for an apocalyptic fall, the metaphysical dimension, delivery of the absolute. Whether his pictures are enough when freed of such proclamations? A prophecy. That the world may ever be equal to such visions; or, they are old, already hoary, and the objects which draw near take their revenge on enraptured ecstasies. Kandinsky, a daring adventurer; he smashed a few windows, which today are being glazed anew. These panes of glass will clatter to pieces time and again. And time and again will the uprising turn away exhausted. The game of generational change, where the young quite often turn out to be the cautiously tired ones. We do not know which prophecy will win out in the end, that of repetition or that of change. It is a question of whether subject or object will be recounted. Probably. They condition each other; pans of a scale; interchange of weights, exchange of values. Kandinsky found those objects wanting which, today, again take their disenchanted revenge in parvenu, wheedling tangibility [Sachlichkeit].1 Translated by Kimberly A. Smith

note 1 “Kandinsky befand die Objekte zu leicht …” This is a biblical reference to Daniel 5:27. See Uwe Fleckner, Carl Einstein und seine Jahrhundert: Fragmente einer intellektuellen Biographie (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006), 434n29. Sachlichkeit is typically translated as “objectivity,” particularly in reference to Neue Sachlichkeit. However, the English “objectivity” implies a perspective of impartiality or rationalism, when the word Sachlichkeit equally points to the “thingliness” of the object, its obdurate materiality. This is the sense Einstein seems to be suggesting here. [Transl.]

16 “george grosz” (1926)* Carl Einstein

Complementary colors have been exhausted.1 There’s been enough commerce in sensitively squirted paint tubes to last the next five years. Ornamental idyll and hymnic cuboid have died from cheap rhythm and chronic meagerness. All of this contains too little for the eye and character of today. The unadventurous visual effect was too harmless to define the present moment decisively. Grosz began with simple line. With childlike, dreaming atavism. So very much wanted to be told, to be thrown out there. In order for these new fairy tales to be collected on paper, the line had to flow simply, sparingly. The technique was primitive, yet the collision of objects oscillated complexly. The young man attempts to push much out of himself in one shot; a world is supposed to stand in a single page. The simple outline allows for enough speed to capture the crossed total of manifold processes. The hurled lasso of childlike contours rolls out something complicated. Antagonistic, agitated condition of frenzied youth. Grosz’s simultaneity [Simultané] indicates a delicate sensibility, into which many things ran into sharp corners.2 The world lit up as a cross between a dubious café and an acrobatic circus. At that time, life was justified through a kind of Wedekind-ish demonic spirit.3 Man was a psychoanalytic rendezvous, indiscriminate and fatal, like the clock at the zoo. Experiences were taken in like an accidental traverse. Disorder was a favorable opportunity to still make a choice and put up resistance against boring order. Back then, one event pursued the next, like an escape from the expected, gliding as a strange dream sequence between remembrance and surprise.

*

Carl Einstein, “George Grosz,” in George Grosz, Ausstellungskatalog (Berlin: Kunstkammer Martin Wasservogel, 1926), 1–9. Reprinted in Carl Einstein, Werke 2. 1919–1928, Berliner Ausgabe, ed. Hermann Haarmann and Klaus Siebenhaar (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1996), 332–6.

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16.1 George Grosz, Café Scene (1914), pen and ink on paper. Private Collection

Grosz-ish simultaneity was grotesque, since it threw together opposites with passionate coldness. This simultaneity was the result of incredible sensitivity, which snatched up painful variety with a flying grasp. Loathing, fear, and strangeness—which threaten to overcome the draftsman—compelled cool observation. The medium of drawing already places one at a distance.

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Later such passionate distance will be evaluated morally or politically. From such distance springs up something grotesque: a formal value judgment. The violence of the war shot most artistic arbitrariness to pieces. This rupture split open a generation of poets who buried their pre-war literature almost unnoticed. War and hardship had forcibly simplified spiritual desires and conditions, and so an entire generation forgot its youth. The caesura of the war had been too heavy. The accomplishment of youth was covered up with lime in a mass grave. A few of these writers sought refuge from metaphorical arbitrariness in ethical dogmatism. They attempted to bring the war to a halt through moral axioms, much as one might want to stop a locomotive with a young dog. The explosive power of poetry was unmasked as a harmless footnote. In those days, Grosz asked what painting could fix about the content and pace of this era. Perhaps the spiritual strength of painting, which today is again somewhat disappointingly classified as handicraft, had been overvalued. An untested popular philosophy had been projected into the pictures with rather unrestrained terminology. Only drawing was able to hurry pictorially after quickly apprehended representations, and seize the rush of changing scenes in simple outline. Grosz’s early drawings are coursed through by subjects like a dream on the express train. Drawing was rather like a psychoanalytic process, where something complicated is deciphered through a simple method. Perhaps in these sheets, it is not that which is represented that fascinates so much as the alarming profusion of its relationships (Figure 16.1). Grosz simplified, then shattered the object in favor of simultaneous connection. He forced different temporal stages into the picture, and often one figure has the effect of being a dreamlike apparition of the form adjacent to it. The speed of the visions stretches out the process, staggering it in various pictorial layers. Grosz has colored several of these pictures moralistically. Occasionally the garish glare of the chamber of horrors and shooting gallery heightens the passionately hunted grotesqueness of these early sheets. The grotesque, a signal of estrangement and antagonism, a subjective judgment [which] emphasizes [some] parts of the form, suppresses others, and demonstrates the oppositional collision of the draftsman and that which he sees. The young Grosz stressed the unusual event above all. The particular dynamic of the forms were the deciding factor, achieved in succinct, forceful outline. Speed ruled. People made of lines and without space were whisked round at random: formal pessimism. Soon after, such stormy simultaneity was wedged into a fanfare of skyscrapers. New york enchanted. The romanticism of technology,

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16.2 George Grosz, Far in the South, Beautiful Spain (1919), watercolor and pen on paper, 38 × 30 cm. Private Collection

Chaplin, Jumbo,4 cowboys and Jack London flickered over canyons of streets, like bewitched mocking stars. He loved the pure artistry of looping the loop, and the verbal innocence of the clown.5 In the circus, a residue of clean craft had been saved. There the acrobats still freed themselves from gravity with strenuous effort and absolute mortal peril. It was more serious, more skillful than silent idealism. There [in the circus] a vague or incomplete performance would be paid for by death.

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From these artists, Grosz learned to see puritanically through the fraud of the present. Many of his sheets fascinate directly through [their] ethical clairvoyance. With lucid hate, Grosz put holes in the polished façades of his contemporaries. He showed Oskar and Fränzi without social allure, dressed and naked. Grosz drew the pathology of today’s mob (Figure 16.2). Drawn pessimism, occasionally glazed in transparent colors. Figures intersect as if lit up by an x-ray which flies helter-skelter. In one part of a contour, the defect becomes transparent. Simultaneity as a moral device to rivet the scene together; brain anatomy. One figure intersects another as its content or representation. Transparency of figures as a means of coupling opposites in one train: a poundcake between the brains of the club, the gramophone, and the woman’s thigh. One fellow crouches round with too much emphasis. In the corner, a couple of female parts and a parents’ grave. Wish fulfillment. The early Grosz mocked out of disappointed tenderness. He drew the pathology of society. At the beginning there was something of Freud. The best tradition of pictorial broadsheets was behind it. One thinks of scenes from the Passion like the Mockery of Christ, the Flagellation, or the Purification of the Temple. Today’s painter no longer sets Christ in vainly powerful contrast to the rabble, but rather to the suffering poor. Even the mockery of the old masters came from pain, from astonishment at human senselessness. Otherwise it would have been a joke. To be sure, the thunderous flight of the Resurrection is missing today. Many make do now with utopia and the gyp of evolution, which requires just as much faith. Hypothesis as the elevator to paradise. The old methods were more decisive. At that time, Grosz did away with the negative attitude of art towards the “real” [Wirklichen] or the object. Moral and political—he assembled a repertoire of current types. He completely abandoned the lyrical self-obsession which for many is only vanity, and is hidden or defended through doctrine. Observation was set in place of lyrical monologue. Because the misery of some of the fashionable stylization was that it pathetically impoverished our representations. Meanwhile, Grosz came for a time to collective Constructivism. The human in a series and the manufacture of types were featured. Clearly this was material for utopian lessons in perception. But soon he quit the realms of Pythagorean simplicity. The spherical heads began to mime and rolled out of the world of numbers into the political sphere. Constructivism had brought order to the hallucinatory tempest of youth. Grosz’s simultaneity develops scenic groups. Contemporary life slips into careful friezes. Growing observation extends the line more lithely. Dissonant colors storm over and across.

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Grosz uses disproportionate hues, garishly coloring the shamelessness of his types. A puritan, whose defects churn forth colorfully, corresponds to Rowlandson or the old, sermonizing sheets of pictures.6 Protestant sternness chastises with color, which crumples boggy rubbish with watery, glassy, or lashed patches. Or out of an illicit, concealing fog, a sinful gob breaks out between Prenzlau and Jüterbog. The colorful chemistry of vulgarity. The critique of society is developed out of artistic distance, until this reserve is itself restricted and then inflexibly established. Grosz draws in justified passion and epic observation. Humans and things express themselves, and one reinforces the particularity of the other. The surroundings are absorbed in a humane manner. He now has such selfassurance as a person that he no longer puts himself forth, but vanishes into the matter-of-factness of anonymity. Grosz distinguishes himself thoroughly from the weakened, from defective visual effects, from a smug subjectivity wrapped up or cemented through theorems. Grosz’s drawings are perhaps a lesson, but they are by no means a doctrine. Grosz endured the departure of lyricism excellently, while others were undone by the peripety of a generation. Instead of sketchy abbreviation, Grosz now prefers clear detail. Objectivity is always a kind of resigning, yet it also testifies to a more mature power to control existence and the present more insistently. The object is no longer the soccer ball of artistic arbitrariness, the picture no longer a means of annihilating the object. The balance between self and object swings more equally. Composure has been found to linger a while on the human figure. Grosz now paints portraits. Translated by Kimberly A. Smith

notes 1 I thank Anne Siems and Heather Mathews for assistance with some difficult turns of phrase in this translation. [Transl.] 2 Einstein also chose the term Simultané to describe the phenomenology of perception in his writings on Analytic Cubism. [Transl.] 3 Frank Wedekind (1864–1918), German playwright who is considered a forerunner of Expressionism. [Transl.] 4 Jumbo is the name of an African elephant that lived in London Zoo from 1865 to 1882, and also toured the United States with the Barnum Circus. [Transl.] 5 “Looping the loop” refers to an aerobatic maneuver performed in the popular airshows of the time. [Transl.] 6 Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827), British caricaturist. [Transl.]

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“Die Kunst des deutschen Mittelalters und wir.” Deutsches Altertum und Mittelalter 3, no. 7 (1913): 209–11. “Für Kandinsky.” Der Sturm 152/3 (March 1913): 288. “Ludwig Herterichs Darstellungen der Pieta.” Die Kunst für Alle 29, no. 3 (1913): 68–72. “Über die junge Kunst der Gegenwart und die Wissenschaft.” Freideutsche Jugend (1913): 51–7. Meisterwerke der Plastik Bayerns. Munich: Riehn & Reusch, 1914. “Reheré bei Montigny.” Frankfurter Zeitung 58 (August 27, 1914). “Carl Schwalbach-München.” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration 18, no. 5 (1915): 326–34. Einführung in die moderne Kunst. Die Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1, Handbuch der Kunstwissenschaft. Berlin: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1917. “Tragik des mystischen Bewußtseins.” Das Kunstblatt 1 (1917): 59 ff. “Vom Leben und der Seele.” Frankfurter Zeitung, Erstes Morgenblatt, 61 (August 12, 1917).

Secondary Sources (Burger) Burkhardt, Liane. “‘… bei aller Wissenschaftlichkeit, lebendig …’: zu einzelnen positionen des Kunsthistorikers Fritz Burger (1877–1916).” Kunstchronik 51, no. 4 (1998): 169–73. Ernst, Harro. “In memoriam Fritz Burger.” Neue Zeitung 10 (September 1952). Filippi, Elena. Fritz Burger (1877–1916): Arte come critica—critica come arts. Tendenze e ragioni della disciplina storico-artistica agli inizi del XX secolo. Rome: Aracne Editrice Universitaria, 2006. ———“Fritz Burger auf den Spuren Palladios: im Lichte unveröffentlichter Dokumente.” Scholion 5 (2008): 124–6. ———“La genesi del volume di Fritz Burger sulle ville di Andrea Palladio. Documenti, resoconti di viaggio, ricadute storiografiche.” Odeo Olimpico: Memorie dell’Accademia Olimpica di Vicenza 26 (2004–06): 184–225. ———“La via teutonica a Palladio, Fritz Burger (1909) e la sua incidenza sugli studi veneti del Novecento.” In Palladio: 1508–2008—il simposio del cinquecentenario, Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, edited by Franco Barbieri et al. Venice: Marsilio, 2008. ———“Un ponte crollato fra il Medioevo e i Moderni: Michelangelo nella teoria artistica di Fritz Burger.” In Michelangelo Buonarroti: Leben, Werk und Wirkung— Positionen und Perspektiven der Forschung/Michelangelo Buonarroti: Vita, Opere, Ricezione—Approdi e prospettive della ricerca contemporanea, edited by Grazia Dolores Folliero-Metz and Susanne Gramatzki. Frankfurt am Main and New york: Lang, 2013. Hamer, Lauren Grace. “Im Geist der Gegenwart: The Speculative Method of the Art Historian Fritz Burger.” Master’s thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, August 2009. Hauck, Rolf. “Fritz Burger (1877–1916). Kunsthistoriker und Wegbereiter der Moderne am Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts.” PhD diss., Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversität (LMU), Munich, 2005. Herke, Karl Heinz. “Kunstwissenschaft oder Kunstgeschichte? Ein Gedenkblatt für Fritz Burger.” Hochland 17, no. 1 (1919/20); reprinted in Vom Expressionismus zur Schönheit: Versuche über Entwicklung und Wesen der modernen Kunst. Wiesbaden: Grünewald, 1923.

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Howard, Deborah. “Four Centuries of Literature on Palladio (Commemorating the 400th Anniversary of the Architect’s Death).” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 39, no. 3 (October 1980): 224–41. Kräubig, Jens. Der Kunsthistoriker Fritz Burger, 1877–1916, exhibition catalogue. Heidelberg: Kurpfälzisches Museum, 1986. Lang, Oskar. “Fritz Burger †.” Die Rheinlande 16, no. 10/11 (1916): 372. Müller-Lentrodt, Matthias. “‘Subjektivieren mit höchster Kraft’—Carl Einstein und Fritz Burger: Über die expressionistische Wende in der Kunstgeschichte.” In Die visuelle Wende der Moderne: Carl Einsteins Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, edited by K.H. Kiefer. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2003. Poensgen, Georg. “Zum 50. Todestag von Fritz Burger.” Ruperto-Carola 28, no. 39 (June 1966). Wölfflin, Heinrich. “Review of Fritz Burger, Die Villen des Andrea Palladio.” Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 33 (1910): 266–7.

max dvořák “Die Illuminatoren des Johann von Neumarkt.” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 22 (1901): 35–126. “Das Rätsel der Kunst der Brüder Van Eyck.” In Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 24 (1903): 161–317. Republished as Das Rätsel der Kunst der Brüder Van Eyck. Munich: Piper, 1925. “Von Manes zu Švabinský.” Die graphischen Künste 27 (1904): 29–52. “Review of Das Kolorit in der venezianischen Malerei,” by Maria Grunewald. Kunstgeschichtliche Anzeigen (1912): 15. (Ed.) Die Schriften Franz Wickhoffs. Berlin: Meyer & Jessen, 1912. “Über die dringendsten methodischen Erfordernisse der Erziehung.” Die Geisteswissenschaften no. 34 (1913). Reprinted in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 27 (1974): 7–19. Vortrag gehalten an dezu Ehren des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft veranstalteten Festabend der Gesellschaft der Kunstfreunde in Wien. Berlin: Reimer, 1913. “Eine Illustrierte Kriegschronik vor hundert Jahren, oder der Krieg und die Kunst.” Kriegs-Almanach (1916): 12. “Sollen die deutschen Kunsthistoriker sich zu einer Fachgenossenschaft zusammenschließen?” Kunstchronik 2 (1917): 369–71. Katechismus der Denkmalpflege. Vienna: J. Bard, 1918. “Einrichtungen des Kunstschutzes in Österreich.” In Kunstschutz im Kriege: Berichte über den Zustand der Kunstdenkmäler auf den verschiedenen Kriegsschauplätzen und über diedeutschen und österreichischen Massnahmen zu ihrer Erhaltung, 2 vols, edited by Paul Clemen. Leipzig: Seemann, 1919. Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der barocken Deckenmalerei in Wien. Vienna: Hölzel, 1920. Foreword to Oskar Kokoschka: Variationen über ein Thema. Vienna: Richard Lanyi, 1921. Reprinted in Oskar Kokoschka. Das Konzert: Variationen über ein Thema. Hommage à Kamilla Swoboda, edited by Reinhold Graf Bethusy-Huc. Salzburg: Galerie Welz, 1988. “Ein Stillleben des Bueckelaer oder Betrachtungen über die Entstehung der neuzeitigen Kabinettmalerei.” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 36 (1923): 1–14.

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Betrachtungen über die Entstehung der neuzeitigen Kabinettmalerei: Sittenbild und Stilleben im Rahmen des niederländischen Romanismus. Vienna: Halm and Goldmann, 1923. Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte: Studien zur abendländischen Kunstentwicklung. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1924. [The History of Art as the History of Ideas, translated by John Hardy. London: Routledge, 1984. Chapter 2 appeared as Idealism and Naturalism in Gothic Art, translated by Randolph J. Klawiter. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967. Published in Italian as Idealismo e naturalismo nella scultura e nella pittura gotica, translated by Riccardo Marchi. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2003.] Das Rätsel der Kunst der Brüder van Eyck. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1925. Bauten und Bildwerke: Beiträge zur abendländischen Kunst des Mittelalters. Vienna: Krystall-Verlag, 1925. “Lebendige Kunst.” Innendekoration 37 (1926): 9. Geschichte der italienischen Kunst im Zeitalter der Renaissance: Akademische Vorlesungen, 2 vols., edited by Johannes Wilde and Karl Maria Swoboda. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1928. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kunstgeschichte, edited by Johannes Wilde and Karl Swoboda. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1929. Studien zur Kunstgeschichte, edited by Irma Emmrich. Leipzig: Reclam, 1989. Idealismus und Realismus in der Kunst der Neuzeit: Entwicklung der modernen Landschaftsmalerei, edited by Norbert Schmitz. Alfter: VDG, 1993. “Die letzte Renaissance. Vortrag, gehalten am 22. Februar 1912 im Österreichischen Museum für Kunst und Industrie: Nach dem Originalmanuskript herausgegeben von Hans H. Aurenhammer.” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 50 (1997): 20. Schriften, Vorlesungen und Vorträge zur Denkmalpflege, 1905–1921, edited by Sandro Scarrocchia. Vienna: Böhlau, 2012.

Secondary Sources (Dvořák) Aurenhammer, Hans. “Max Dvořák.” In Klassiker der Kunstgeschichte, vol. 1, Von Winckelmann bis Warburg, edited by Ulrich Pfisterer. Munich: Beck, 2007. ———“Max Dvořák (1874–1921): Von der historischen Quellenkritik zur Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte.” In Österreichische Historiker: Lebensläufe und Karrieren, 1900–1945, vol. 2, edited by Karel Hruza. Vienna: Böhlau, 2012. ———“Max Dvořák and the History of Medieval Art.” Translated by Judith Rosenthal. Journal of Art Historiography 2 (June 2010), http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/ media_152487_en.pdf. ———“Max Dvořák: Denkmalpflege als praktische Realisierung der Kunstgeschichte in der Moderne.” In Max Dvořák, Schriften, Vorlesungen und Vorträge zur Denkmalpflege, 1905–1921, edited by Sandro Scarrochia. Vienna: Böhlau, 2012. ———“Max Dvořák, Tintoretto und die Moderne: Kunstgeschichte ‘vom Standpunkt unserer Kunstentwicklung’ betrachtet.” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 49 (1996): 9–39. ———“Max Dvořák und die moderne Architektur. Bemerkungen zum Vortrag ‘Die letzte Renaissance’ (1912).” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 50 (1997): 23–39, 325–30. ———“Max Dvořák und die Revision der Mittelalter-Kunstgeschichte.” In Die Etablierung und Entwicklung des Faches Kunstgeschichte in Deutschland, Polen und Mitteleuropa, edited by Wojciech Bałus and Joanna Wolanska. Warsaw: Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2010.

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———“Max Dvořák über Oskar Kokoschka: eine handschriftliche Fassung des Vorworts zu ‘Variationen über ein Thema’ (1920/21).” In Oskar Kokoschka: Aktuelle Perspektiven, edited by Patrick Werkner. Vienna: Hochschule für angewandte Kunst, 1998. Bakoš, Ján. “Die epistemologische Wende eines Kunsthistorikers.” L’art et les revolutions: Actes du XXVIIe Congrés international d’histoire de l’art (1992): 53–72. ———“Max Dvořák: A Neglected Re-Visionist.” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 53 (2004): 55–71. Bałus, Wojciech. “Max Dvořák betrachtet Tintoretto; oder, Über den Manierismus.” ars 44 (2011): 26–43. Benesch, Otto. “Max Dvořák (1874–1921).” In Neue Österreichische Biographie ab 1815: Grosse Österreicher, vol. 10. Vienna: Amalthea-Verlag, 1957. ———“Max Dvořák: Ein Versuch zur Geschichte der historischen Geisteswissenschaften.” Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 44 (1924): 159–97. Blower, Jonathan. “Max Dvořák and Austrian Denkmalpflege at War.” Journal of Art Historiography 1 (2009), http://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/ media_139127_en.pdf. Busse, Hans. Kunst und Wissenschaft: Untersuchungen zur Ästhetik und Methodik der Kunstgeschichtswissenschaft bei Riegl, Wölfflin und Dvořák. Mittenwald: Mäander, 1981. Chadraba, R. “Max Dvořák a vídenská skola dejin umení.” In Kapitoly z ceského dejepisu umení II. Prague: Odeon, 1987. Emmrich, Irma. “Max Dvořák und die Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte.” In Max Dvořák, Studien zur Kunstgeschichte, edited by Irma Emmrich. Leipzig: Reclam, 1989. Frey, Dagobert. “Max Dvořáks Stellung in der Kunstgeschichte.” Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 1, no. 15 (1921–22): 1–21. Klein, Peter K. “El Greco’s Burial of the Count of Orgaz and the Concept of Mannerism of the Vienna School; or, Max Dvořák and the Occult.” In El Greco of Crete, edited by Nikos Hadjinicolau. Iraklion: Municipality of Iraklion, 1995. Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. “Geistesgeschichte and Art History.” Art Journal 30, no. 2 (Winter 1970–71): 148–53. Marchi, Riccardo. “Max Dvořák e la storia dell’arte come parte della Geistesgeschichte.” In Max Dvořák, Idealismo e naturalismo nella pittura e nella scultura gotica, edited and translated by Riccardo Marchi. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2003. Neumann, Jaromir. “Das Werk Max Dvořáks und die Gegenwart.” Acta Historiae Artium 8 (1962): 177–213. Rampley, Matthew. “Max Dvořák: Art History and the Crisis of Modernity.” Art History 26, no. 2 (April 2003): 214–37. Radnóti, Sándor. “Die Historisierung des Kunstbegriffs: Max Dvořák.” Acta Historiae Artium 26, nos. 1–2 (1980): 125–42. Rokyta, Hugo. “Max Dvořák und seine Schule in den Böhmischen Ländern.” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Denkmalepflege 28, no. 3 (1974): 81–9. Rosenauer, Artur. “Das Rätsel der Kunst der Brüder Van Eyck. Max Dvořák und seine Stellung zu Wickhoff und Riegl.” Wien und die Entwicklung der kunsthistorischen Methode 1: Akten des XXV. Internationalen Kongress für Kunstgeschichte (September 1983): 4–10. Scarrocchia, Sandro. “Denkmalpflege und Moderne: Die Lehre Max Dvořáks.” In Max Dvořák, Schriften, Vorlesungen und Vorträge zur Denkmalpflege, 1905–1921, edited by Sandro Scarrochia. Vienna: Böhlau, 2012.

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Schmitz, Norbert. “Max Dvořák: Das Spirituelle in der Kunstgeschichte.” In Kunst und Wissenschaft im Zeichen der Moderne: Exemplarische Studien zum Verhältnis von klassischer Avantgarde und zeitgenössischer Kunstgeschichte in Deutschland: Hölzel, Wölfflin, Kandinsky, Dvořák. Alfter: VDG, 1993. Schwarzer, Mitchell. “Cosmopolitan Difference in Max Dvořák’s Art Historiography.” Art Bulletin 74, no. 4 (December 1992): 669–678. Sedlmayr, Hans. “Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte: Das Vermächtnis Max Dvořáks.” Wort und Wahrheit 4 (1949): 264–277. Reprinted in Kunst und Wahrheit: zur Theorie und Methode der Kunstgeschichte. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1958. Swoboda, Karl. “Vortrag zum 30. Todestag von Max Dvořák.” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Denkmalpflege 28, no. 3 (1974): 76. Vanek, Mojmir. “L’Histoire de l’art comme histoire de la pensée (Max Dvořák) et la Vies des Formes (Henri Focillon): antagonisme ou complémentarité?” Revue de Littérature Comparée 57, no. 4 (1983): 417–41.

carl einstein (This list focuses on Einstein’s writings on art, but also includes collected volumes.) “Kubin der Zeichner.” Berliner Börsen-Courier 14 (September 1909): 4. “Arnold Waldschmidt.” Der Demokrat, nos. 22/25 (May 1910): 2–3. “Süddeutsche Ausstellungen.” Die Gegenwart 47 (1911): 791–2. “Sezession.” Die Gegenwart 48 (1911): 807–9. “Anmerkungen.” Die Aktion 2 (1912): 1093–4. “Anmerkungen zur neueren französischen Malerei.” Neue Blätter 1 (1912): 6. “Bemerkungen zum heutigen Kunstbetrieb.” Neue Blätter 6 (1912): 46–7. “Ausstellung der Sezession in Berlin.” Die Merkur 4 (1913): 436–7. “Die Radierungen Wilhelm Lehmbrucks.” Zeit im Bild 11 (1913): 1957–62. “Die Sammlung Henri Rouart.” Kunst und Künstler 11 (1913): 224–6. “Herbstausstellung am Kurfürstendam.” Die Aktion 3 (1913): 1186–9. “Maillol.” Zeit im Bild 11 (1913): 2489–97. Wilhelm Lehmbrucks graphisches Werk. Berlin: Cassirer, 1913. “Anmerkungen zur französischen Plastik und der Kunst des Jean Baptiste Carpeaux.” Kunst und Künstler 12 (1914): 487–95. “Kunst-Ausstellungen.” Die weißen Blätter 11–12 (1914): 1356–8. “Totalität.” Die Aktion 4 (1914), nos. 1–2: 277–9; nos. 3–4: 345–7; no. 5: 476–8. Revised version published in Anmerkungen. Berlin: Verlag der Wochenschrift “Die Aktion,” 1916. [“Totality.” Translated by Charles W. Haxthausen. October, no. 107 (Winter 2004): 115–21.] Negerplastik. Leipzig: Verlag der Weißen Bücher, 1915. [“African Sculpture.” Translated by Joachim Neugroschel. In Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art: A Documentary History, edited by Jack Flam with Miriam Deutch. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Also “Negro Sculpture.” Translated by Charles Haxthausen. In “Carl Einstein”, special issue, edited by Sebastian Zeidler. October 107 (Winter 2004): 122–38. Translated into French by Liliane Meffre as La sculpture nègre. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998.] Anmerkungen. Berlin: Verlag der Wochenschrift “Die Aktion,” 1916. “Gedenken des André Derain.” Die Aktion 7 (1917): 267–9. “An die Geistigen!” Die Pleite 1 (1919): 2. “Man schaffe den Besitz ab.” Die Pleite 3 (1919): 2.

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“Pleite glotzt euch an. Restlos.” Die Pleite 1 (1919): 2. “Zur primitiven Kunst.” In Die Gemeinschaft. Dokumente der geistigen Weltwende: Jahrbuch des Verlags Gustav Kiepenheuer, edited by Ludwig Rabiner. Potsdam: Kiepenheuer, 1919. [“On Primitive Art.” Translated by Charles W. Haxthausen. October 105 (Summer 2003): 124.] Der blutige Ernst: Satirische Wochenschrift, nos. 3–5 (1919; with George Grosz), no. 6 (1919). “Rudolf Schlichter.” Das Kunstblatt 4 (1920): 105–8. Afrikanische Plastik. Berlin: Wasmuth Verlag, 1921. [Translated into Italian as Scultura Africana: con uno studio critico. Rome: Edizioni di “Valori Plastici”, 1922; into French as La sculpture africaine, trans. Thérèse Burgard and Raymond Burgard. Paris: Crès, 1922.] Die schlimme Botschaft: Zwanzig Szenen. Berlin: Rowohlt, 1921. “L’Allemagne.” Action: Cahiers de philosophie et d’art 9 (1921): 31–2. “Die Pleite des deutschen Films.” Der Querschnitt durch 1922. Berlin: Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, 1922. “Ein Chinabuch.” Das Kunstblatt 6 (1922): 177–8. M. Kisling. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1922. “Peruanisches Bildgwebe der Sammlung Gans.” Das Kunstblatt 6 (1922): 323–5. Der frühere japanische Holzschnitt. Berlin: Wasmuth, 1923. “Gerettete Malerei, enttäuschte Pompiers.” Das Kunstblatt 7 (1923): 47–52. “Meier-Gräfe und die Kunst nach dem Kriege.” Das Kunstblatt 7 (1923): 185–7. “Otto Dix.” Das Kunstblatt 7 (1923): 97–102. “Zur primitiven Kunst.” Das Wort nos. 15–16 (April 1923): 2. “André Derain.” Der Spiegel (Berlin 1924): 125–30. Rudolf Belling: Skulpturen (with Paul Westheim). Potsdam: Kiepenheuer, 1924. Europa-Almanach: Malerei, Literatur, Musik, Architektur, Plastik, Bühne, Film, Mode, außerdem nicht unwichtige Nebenbemerkungen (with Paul Westheim). Potsdam: Kiepenheuer, 1925. “Fernand Léger.” In Fernand Léger, edited by Katherine S. Dreier. New york: Société Anonyme, 1925. “Georges Rouault.” Der Querschnitt 5 (1925): 244–8. “Das Berliner Volkerkunde-Museum: Anlässlich der Neuordnung.” Der Querschnitt 6 (1926): 588–92. Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1926; 2nd edn, 1928, 3rd edn, 1931. Reprinted as Werke Banke 5. Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Berliner Ausgabe. Edited by Uwe Fleckner and Thomas W. Gaehtgens. Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1996. “George Grosz.” In George Grosz. Berlin, Kunstkammer Martin Wasservogel, 1926. Exhibition catalog. “George Grosz.” In George Grosz. Berlin: Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Veröffentlichungen des Kunstarchivs, 1926. Exhibition catalog. “Juan Gris.” Der Querschnitt 6 (1926): 273–5. “Kandinsky. Zum 60. Geburtstag. 5. Oktober 1926.” Das Kunstblatt 10 (1926): 372–3. “Sculptures mélanésiennes.” L’Amour de l’art 8 (1926): 253–8. Südsee-Plastiken. Berlin: Galerie Flechtheim and Kunsthaus-Zürich, Kunstarchiv, 1926. Exhibition catalog. “Masks and Magic in the South Seas.” Art and Archaeology 1 (1927): 125–8. “A Collection of South Sea Art.” The Arts 11 (1927): 23–8. Leon Bakst. Berlin: Wasmuth, 1927. “Renoir.” In Renoir: Gemälde aus dem Besitze seiner Söhne und seine Skulpturen. Berlin: Galerie Flechtheim, 1927. Exhibition catalog.

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“Giorgio de Chirico.” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration 31 (1928): 259–66. “Picasso.” Neue Schweizer Rundschau 34–5 (1928): 266–73. “Absolu.” Documents 1 (1929): 169–70. “André Masson, étude ethnologique.” Documents 1 (1929): 93–105. “Aphorismes méthodiques.” Documents 1 (1929): 32–4. [“Methodological Aphorisms.” Translated by Charles W. Haxthausen. October, no. 107 (Winter 2004): 146–50.] “Gravures d’Hercules Seghers.” Documents 1 (1929): 202–8. [“The Etchings of Hercules Seghers.” Translated by Charles W. Haxthausen. October 107 (Winter 2004): 154–7.] “Notes sur le cubisme.” Documents 1 (1929): 146–59. [“Notes on Cubism.” Translated by Charles W. Haxthausen. October, no. 107 (Winter 2004): 158–68.] “Pablo Picasso. Quelques tableaux de 1928.” Documents 1 (1929): 35–47. “Quelques esquisses et dessins de Georges Seurat.” Documents 1 (1929): 183–7. “Saint Antoine de Padoue et l’enfant Jésus.” Documents 1 (1929): 229–30. “Tableaux récents de Georges Braque.” Documents 1 (1929): 289–96. “Barlach.” In Bronzen von Ernst Barlach. Berlin: Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, 1930. Exhibition catalog. “Cézanne-Ausstellung: In der Pariser Galerie Pigalle.” Die Kunstauktion 4 (1930): 8–9. “Dictionnaire critique: Rossignol.” Documents 2 (1930): 117–18. [“Critical Dictionary: ‘Nightingale’.” Translated by Charles W. Haxthausen. October 107 (2004): 151–4.] Entwurf einer Landschaft: Illustré de lithographies par G.-L. Roux. Paris: Galerie Simon, 1930. “Exposition de collages (Galerie Goemans).” Documents 2 (1930): 244. “Joan Miró.” Documents 2 (1930): 241–3. “Léger: oeuvres récentes.” Documents 2, no. 4 (1930): 190–97. “L’enfance néolithique.” Documents 2 (1930): 35–43. “Picasso.” Documents 2, no. 4 (1930): 155–7. “Picasso, Braque, Léger: Ausstellung Galerie Paul Rosenberg, Paris.” Die Kunstauktion 22 (1930): 3–4, 6. “Kleine Bilderfabrik.” Die Weltkunst 14 (1931): 2–3. “Henri Matisse.” Die Weltkunst 24 (1931): 4–5. “Anmerkung.” Cahiers d’Art 3–4 (1932): 141–4. “Picasso: Anläßlich der Ausstellung in der Galerie Georges Petit.” Die Weltkunst 24–5 (1932): 1–2. “Braque der Dichter.” Cahiers d’Art 1–2 (1933): 80–82. “Exhibition of Bronze Statuettes B.C.: Hittite, Etruscan, Egyptian, Greek.” In Bronze Statuettes B.C. New york: Stora Art Galleries, 1933. Exhibition catalog. Georges Braque. Translated into French by M.E. Zipruth. Paris: Editions de Chroniques du Jour, 1934. “Die Kolonne Durruti.” In Buenaventura Durruti, edited by Helmut Rüdiger. Barcelona: Deutscher Informationsdienst der CNT-FAI, 1936. “Die Front von Aragon.” Die Soziale Revolution: Frontzeitung 12 (May 1937): 1–2. Gesammelte Werke, ed. Ernst Nef. Wiesbaden: Limes Verlag, 1962. Die Fabrikation der Fiktionen. Edited by Sibylle Penkert. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1973. Werke. 1908–1918, Werke vol. 1. Edited by Rolf-Peter Baacke and Jens Kwasny. Berlin: Medusa, 1980. Werke. 1919–1928, Werke vol. 2. Edited by Marion Schmid, Henriette Beese, and Jens Kwasny. Berlin: Medusa, 1981. Werke. 1929–1940, Werke vol. 3. Edited by Marion Schmid and Liliane Meffre. Vienna and Berlin: Medusa, 1985. Werke Band 4. Texte aus dem Nachlass, Berliner Ausgabe. Edited by Hermann Haarmann and Klaus Sibenhaar. Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1992.

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Secondary Sources (Einstein) Cheng, Joyce. “Immanence Out of Sight: Formal Rigor and Ritual Function in Carl Einstein’s Negerplastik,” RES 55/56 (Spring/Autumn 2009): 87–102. Creighton, Nicola. “The Paralysis of ‘Fight or Flight’: Carl Einstein’s Georges Braque and Die Fabrikation der Fiktionen in the Context of Weimar Crisis Literature and Theory.” In Modern Times? German Literature and Arts Beyond Political Chronologies/ Kontinuitäten der Kultur: 1925–1955, edited by Gustav Frank, Rachel Palfreyman, and Stefan Scherer. Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2005. ———“The Revolution of the Word follows the Revolution of the Eye: Carl Einstein and Cubism in Image and Text.” In Reading Images and Seeing Words, edited by Alan English and Rosalind Silvester. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004. Creighton, Nicola and Andreas Kramer, eds. Carl Einstein and the European AvantGarde/Carl Einstein und das europäische Avantgarde. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012. Dahm, Johanna. Der Blick des Hermaphroditen: Carl Einstein und die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004. Didi-Huberman, Georges. “‘Picture = Rupture’: Visual Experience, Form and Symptom according to Carl Einstein.” Translated by C.F.B. Miller. Papers of Surrealism 7 (2007): 1–25. Diener, Hansjörg. Dichtung als Verwandlung: Eine Studie über das Verhältnis von Kunsttheorie und Dichtung im Werk Carl Einsteins. Zurich: LEU, 1987. Donahue, Neil H. “Analysis and Construction: The Aesthetics of Carl Einstein.” German Quarterly 61, no. 3 (Summer 1988): 419–36. Fleckner, Uwe. Carl Einstein und Sein Jahrhundert: Fragmente einer intellektuellen Biographie. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006. ———“The Death of the Work of Art: Carl Einstein and the Berlin Museum of Ethnology.” In Die Schau des Fremden: Ausstellungskonzepte zwischen Kunst, Kommerz und Wissenschaft, edited by Cordula Grewe. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2006. ———The Invention of the 20th Century: Carl Einstein and the Avant-Gardes. Translated by Judith Hayward. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2009. Exhibition catalog. ———“Der Kampf visueller Erfahrungen: Surrealistische Bildrhetorik und photographischer Essay in Carl Einsteins Zeitschrift Documents.” In Begierde im Blick: Surrealistische Photographie, edited by Uwe M. Schneede. Hamburg: Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2005. ———“‘Man endete als Emigrant …’ Carl Einstein in Exil.” In Katastrophen und Utopien: Exil und Innere Emigration (1933–1945), edited by Hermann Haarmann. Berlin: Bostelmann & Siebenhaar, 2002. ———“The Real Demolished by Trenchant Objectivity: Carl Einstein and the Critical World View of Dada and ‘Verism.’” In The Dada Seminars, edited by Leah Dickerman and Matthew S. Witkovsky. Washington: Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, 2005.

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———“Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler und Carl Einstein.” In Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler: Kunsthändler. Verleger. Schriftsteller, edited by Bettina Aldor, et al. Stuttgart: Hatje, 1986. ———, ed. “Lettres de Carl Einstein à Moise Kisling (1920–1924).” Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne 62 (1997): 74–123. Michel, Andreas. Europe and the Problem of the Other: The Critique of Modernity in the Writings of Carl Einstein and Victor Segalen. PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1991. ———“Formalism to Psychoanalysis: On the Politics of Primitivism in Carl Einstein.” In The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy, edited by Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, and Susanne Zantop. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. ———“‘Our European Arrogance’: Wilhelm Worringer and Carl Einstein on NonEuropean Art.” In Colors 1800/1900/2000: Signs of Ethnic Difference, edited by Birgit Tautz. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004. ———“Sehen als Entdecken: Paul Klee im Werke Einsteins und Heideggers.” In Carl Einstein im Exil: Kunst und Politik in den 1930er Jahren, edited by Marianne Kröger and Hubert Roland. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2007. Pan, David. Primitive Renaissance: Rethinking German Expressionism. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. Penkert, Sybille. Carl Einstein: Beiträge zu einer Monographie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969. Rumold, Rainer. “Painting as a Language: Why Not? Carl Einstein in Documents.” October 107 (2004): 75–94. ———“Seeing African Sculpture: Carl Einstein’s ‘ethnographie du blanc’.” In Europa Europa? The Avant-Garde, Modernism, and the Fate of a Continent, edited by Sascha Bru. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009. Quigley, David. Carl Einstein: A Defense of the Real. Vienna: Schlebrügge, 2007. ———“Carl Einstein: Reproducing the Real.” Afterall 23 (Spring 2010). Schubert, Dietrich. “Carl Einstein—porträtiert von Benno Elkan.” Pantheon 43 (1985): 144–54. Siebenhaar, Klaus. Carl Einstein: Prophet der Avant-Garde. Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1991. Sorge, Reto. “The Drawing as Total Artwork? Image Totality in Carl Einstein and Paul Klee.” Translated by Peter Winslow and Anke Finger. In The Aesthetics of the Total Artwork: On Borders and Fragments. Edited by Anke Finger and Danielle Follett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Strother, Z.S. “Looking for Africa in Carl Einstein’s Negerplastik.” African Arts 46, no. 4 (Winter 2013): 8–21. Thomas, R. Hinton. “Carl Einstein and Expressionism.” Essays in German Language, Culture and Society (1969): 136–48. Williams, Rhys. “Carl Einsteins Negerplastik and the Aesthetics of Expressionism.” In Expressionism in Focus: Proceedings of the First UEA Symposium on German Studies, edited by Richard Sheppard. Blairgowrie: Lochee, 1987. ———“Primitivism in the Works of Carl Einstein, Carl Sternheim and Gottfried Benn.” Journal of European Studies 13 (1983): 247–67. ———“Prosaic Intensities: The Short Prose of German Expressionism.” In A Companion to the Literature of German Expressionism, edited by Neil H. Donahue (London: Camden House, 2005). Zeidler, Sebastian. “Form as Revolt: Carl Einstein’s Philosophy of the Real and the Work of Paul Klee.” RES 57/8 (Spring/Autumn 2010): 229–63. ———“Introduction.” In “Carl Einstein”, special issue, edited by Sebastian Zeidler, October 107 (Winter 2004): 3–13.

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ernst heidrich Geschichte des Dürerschen Marienbildes. Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1906. “Zur Chronologie des Dürerschen Marienlebens.” Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 29 (1906): 227–41. Review of Hermann Nohl, Die Weltanschauung in der Malerei (1908). Zentralblatt für kunstwissenschaftliche Literatur und Bibliographie 1 (1909): 287–89. (Ed.) Albrecht Dürers schriftlicher Nachlass: Familienchronik, Gedenkbuch, Tagebuch der niederlandischen Reise, Briefe, Reime, Auswahl aus den theoretischen Schriften. Introduction by Heinrich Wölfflin. Berlin: Julius Bard, 1908. Dürer und die Reformation. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1909. Die alt-deutsche Malerei. Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1909. Altniederländische Malerei. Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1910. Cranach. Frankfurt am Main: Städelsches Kunstinstitut, 1911. Review of Hans Jantzen, Das niederländische Architekturbild (1910). Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 8 (1913): 117–31. Vlaemische Malerei. Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1913. Altdeutsche Meister: Eine Auswahl fürs Feld aus dem Werke “Altdeutsche Malerei” von Ernst Heidrich, gefallen in Flandern 1914. Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1916. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Methode der Kunstgeschichte. Foreword by Heinrich Wölfflin. Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1917.

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Wilhelm Worringer Abstraktion und Einfühlung: Ein Beitrag zur Stilpsychologie. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1908. [Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style. Translated by Michael Bullock. New york: International University Press, 1953; reprint Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1997. Translated into French by Dora Vallier as Abstraction et Einfühlung: contribution à la psychologie du style. Paris: Klincksieck, 1978.] “Die Ausstellung München 1908.” Masken 4 (1908): 19–24. Lukas Cranach. Munich and Leipzig: R. Piper Verlag, 1908. “Transzendenz und Immanenz in der Kunst.” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 3 (1908): 338–40. “Die Marées-Ausstellung der Münchner Sezession.” Der Cicerone 1 (1909): 664–66. “Die Marées-Ausstellung der Münchner Sezession.” Kunst und Künstler 7 (1909): 231–2. “Der Münchner Frühjahrsezession.” Kunst und Künstler 7 (1909): 369–71. “Die Pieà Rondanini.” Kunst und Künstler 7 (1909): 355–9. “Der Baugedanke der Gothik.” Neudeutsche Bauzeitung 7 (1911): 476–9. “Zum Problem der modernen Architektur.” Neudeutsche Bauzeitung 7 (1911): 496–500. “Entwicklungsgeschichtliches zur modernsten Kunst.” In Im Kampf um die Kunst: Die Antwort auf den “Protest deutscher Künstler” mit Beiträgen deutscher Künstler, Galerieleiter, Sammler und Schritftsteller. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1911. Formprobleme der Gotik. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1911. [Form Problems of the Gothic. Unattributed translation. New york: Stechert, 1920. Translated by Herbert Read as Form in Gothic. London: Putnam, 1927.] Die altdeutsche Buchillustration. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1912. “Entstehung und Gestaltungsprinzipien in der Ornamentik.” In Kongreß für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin, 7–9 Oktober 1913, Bericht, edited by Max Dessoir. Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1914. “Künstlerische Zukunftsfragen.” Kunst und Künstler 14 (1916): 259–64. “Nazarener.” Marsyas 1 (1917): 85–90. “Geleitwort.” Katalog Freie Secession. Berlin: Freie Secession, 1918. “Bemerkungen zum Kubismus.” In Das Kestnerbuch, edited by Paul Erich Küppers. Hanover: Heinrich Böhme, 1919. “Kritische Gedanken zur neuen Kunst.” Genius 1 (1919) 221–36. “Qualität und Gesinnung.” Genius 1 (1919): 3. “Natur und Expressionismus.” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration 45 (1919–20): 265. Künstlerische Zeitfragen. Munich: H. Bruckmann, 1921. “Dürers Apokalypse.” In Almanach 1904–24 des Verlags R. Piper & Co. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1923. Die Kölner Bibel: 27 Holzschnitte von 1479, introduction. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1923. Urs Graf: Die Holzschnitte zur Passion. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1923. Die Anfänge der Tafelmalerei. Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1924. Deutsche Jugend und östlicher Geist. Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 1924. “Griechisch-Römisches.” Der Piperbote 1 (1924): 2–4. “Heinrich Wölfflin: Bemerkungen zu seinem 60. Geburtstag.” Neue Schweizer Rundschau 17, no. 16 (1924). “Zur Frage der gotischen Monumentalität.” In Vom Geiste neuer Literatur-forschung: Festschrift für Oskar Walzel, edited by Julius Wahle and Victor Klemperer. WildparkPotsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1924. Buch und Leben des hochberühmten Fabeldichters Aesopi, Ulm 1475. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1925.

BIBLIOGRAPHy

337

“Carlo Carrà’s Pinie am Meer.” Wissen und Leben 18 (November 10, 1925): 1165–9. “Spätgotisches und expressionistisches Formsystem.” Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuch 2 (1925): 1–8. “Julius Meier-Graefe.” In Julius Meier-Graefe: Widmungen zu seinem 60. Geburtstag, edited by Gerhart Hauptmann. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1927. Ägyptische Kunst: Probleme ihrer Wertung. Munich: R. Piper, 1927. [Egyptian Art. Translated and preface by Bernard Rackham. London: Putnam 1928.] Otto Pankok, introduction. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1927. Griechentum und Gotik: Vom Weltreich des Hellenismus. Munich: R. Piper Verlag, 1928. “Griechtentum und Gotik.” Der Piperbote 6 (1929): 2–6. “The Greek Spirit and Gothic Art.” Formes 14 (1931): 63–6. “Käthe Kollwitz.” Bilderhefte des deutschen Ostens 10 (1931): 2. Über den Einfluß der angelsächsischen Buchmalerei auf die frühmittelalterliche Monumentalplastik des Kontinents. Vol. 1 of Schriften der Königsberger gelehrten Gesellschaft, Geisteswissenschaftliche Reihe. Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1931. Problematik der Gegenwartskunst. Munich: Piper, 1948. “Jean Fouquet und Piero della Francesca.” Das Kunstwerk 3, no. 1 (1949): 24–30. “Lächelt die Mona Lisa wirklich?” Thema: Zeitschrift für die Einheit der Kultur 2 (1949): 25–9. “Zum Umgang mit Kitsch.” Die neue Zeitung 35 (1951). “Kunstgeschichtliche Erkenntniskritik.” Die Kunst und das schöne Heim 50, no. 5 (1952): 168–72. Fragen und Gegenfragen: Schriften zum Kunstproblem. Munich: R. Piper, 1957. “Die Pietà Rondanini.” In Kunst und Künstler: Aus 32 Jahrgängen einer deutschen Kunstzeitschrift, edited by Günter Feist. Mainz: Kupferberg, 1971.

Secondary Sources (Worringer) Arnheim, Rudolf. “Wilhelm Worringer and Modern Art: Some Reflections on a 75th Anniversary.” Michigan Quarterly Review 20, no. 2 (1981): 67–71. ———“Wilhelm Worringer on Abstraction and Empathy.” In New Essays on the Psychology of Art. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986. Böhringer, Hannes, and Beate Söntgen, eds. Wilhelm Worringers Kunstgeschichte. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2002. Buttigieg, Joseph A. “Worringer Among the Modernists.” boundary 2 8, no. 1 (Autumn 1979): 359–66. Büttner, Frank. “Das Paradigma ‘Einfühlung’ bei Robert Vischer, Heinrich Wölfflin und Wilhelm Worringer: Die problematische Karriere einer kunsttheoretischen Fragestellung.” In 200 Jahre Kunstgeschichte in München: Positionen, Perspektiven, Polemik 1780–1980, edited by Christian Drude and Hubertus Kohle. Munich and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2003. Covre, Jolanda Nigro. “Wilhelm Worringer prima e dopo: da un equivoco a un tramonto.” Richerche di storia dell’arte 12 (1980): 65–76. Davenport, Nancy. “Modernism and Mysticism in Germany: Wilhelm Worringer and Pater Desiderius Lenz.” Religion and the Arts 14, nos. 1–2 (2010): 78–138. Donahue, Neil H., ed. Invisible Cathedrals: The Expressionist Art History of Wilhelm Worringer. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. Fidder, Erich, ed. Neue Beiträge deutscher Forschung: Wilhelm Worringer zum 60. Geburtstag. Königsberg: Kanter, 1943. Ginzburg, Carlo. “Style as Inclusion, Style as Exclusion.” In Picturing Science, Producing Art, edited by Carline Jones and Peter Galison. New york: Routledge, 1998.

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Gluck, Mary. “Interpreting Primitivism, Mass Culture and Modernism: The Making of Wilhelm Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy.” New German Critique 80, special issue on the Holocaust (Spring–Summer 2000): 149–69. Gramaccini, Norberto, and Johannes Rössler, eds. Hundert Jahre “Abstraktion und Einfühlung”: Konstellationen um Wilhelm Worringer. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2012. Holdheim, W. Wolfgang. “Wilhelm Worringer and the Polarity of Understanding.” boundary 2 8, no. 1 (Autumn 1979): 339–58. Howoldt, Jenns E. “Krise des Expressionismus: Anmerkungen zu vier Briefen Wilhelm Worringers an Carl Georg Heise.” Idea: Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunsthalle 8 (1989): 159–73. Ionescu, Vlad. “The Rigorous and the Vague: Aesthetics and Art History in Riegl, Wölfflin, and Worringer.” Journal of Art Historiography, no. 8 (December 2013), http://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/ionescu.pdf. Jones, Alun R. “T.E. Hulme, Wilhelm Worringer and the Urge to Abstraction.” British Journal of Aesthetics 1 (1960): 1–7. Koss, Juliet. “On the Limits of Empathy.” Art Bulletin 88, no. 1 (March 2006): 139–57. Lories, Danielle. “De l’Einfühlungsästhetik au malentendu de l’abstraction: Worringer.” Art & and Fact 18 (1999): 37–47. Michel, Andreas. “‘Our European Arrogance’: Wilhelm Worringer and Carl Einstein on Non-European Art.” In Colors 1800/1900/2000: Signs of Ethnic Difference, edited by Birgit Taut. Amsterdam and New york: Rodopi, 2004. Müller-Tamm, Jutta. Abstraktion als Einfühlung: Zur Denkfigur der Projektion in Psychophysiologie, Kulturtheorie, Ästhetik und Literatur der frühen Moderne. Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 2005. Nigro Covre, Jolanda. “Wilhelm Worringer prima e dopo: da un equivoco a un ‘tramonto.’” Richerche di storia dell'arte 12 (1980): 65–76. Öhlschläger, Claudia. Abstraktionsdrang: Wilhelm Worringer und der Geist der Moderne. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2005. Schulze, Ingrid. “Wilhelm Worringer und die bürgerliche Opposition gegen den großdeutschen Nationalismus auf dem Gebiet der Kunstgeschichtesschreibung.” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg 18 (1969): 65–85. Sheppard, Richard. “Georg Lukács, Wilhelm Worringer and German Expressionism.” Journal of European Studies 25 (1995): 241–82. Spanos, William V. “Modern Literary Criticism and the Spatialization of Time: An Existential Critique.” Journal of Aesthetic and Art Criticism 29 (Fall 1970–71): 89–104. Stieglitz, Ann. “The Reproduction of Agony: Toward a Reception History of Grünewald’s Isenheim Altar after the First World War.” Oxford Art Journal 12, no. 2 (1989): 87–103. Ulmer, Gregory L. “D.H. Lawrence, Wilhelm Worringer and the Aesthetics of Modernism.” D.H. Lawrence Review (1977): 165–81. Waite, Geoffrey. “Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy: Remarks on Its Reception and the Rhetoric of Its Criticism.” In The Turn of the Century: German Literature and Art, edited by Gerald Chapple and Hans H. Schulte. Bonn: Bouvier, 1981. Williams, Rhys W. “Wilhelm Worringer and the Historical Avant-Garde.” In AvantGarde/Neo-Avant-Garde, edited by Dietrich Scheunemann. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005. Zijlmans, Kitty, and Jos Hoogeveen. Kommunikation über Kunst: eine Fallstudie zur Entstehungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte des “Blauen Reiters” und von Wilhelm Worringers Abstraktion und Einfühlung. Leiden: Alpha, 1988.

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. abstraction in advertising 68–72 Dvořák 196, 198, 199 Einstein 18, 29 Expressionism, justification for 28 Kandinsky 37 Worringer 5, 6, 32, 58, 59, 61, 64, 68, 72–74, 84 Abstraction and Empathy (Worringer) 59 artists’ reception of 27 German essence 30 influence on Dvořák 196 influence on Einstein 18, 27 model of art history 4–5 spirituality 22–23 Stilpsychologie 61 will to abstraction 73 Admiration (Hodler) 130 Adoration of the Magi (Tintoretto) 219 advertising 57, 68–72, 74 aesthetic knowledge 7 African sculpture 16, 17–18, 23, 38, 274 African Sculpture (Einstein) 16 Andromeda II (Rubens) 179, 181 The Annunciation (Tintoretto) 218–19 Antliff, Mark 31 Apocalypse (Dürer) 62, 64, 65

“Arbeit E.L. Kirchners, Die” (Kirchner) 290 Arentino, Pietro 209 The Arrest of Samson (Rubens) 176–77 Art in Pictures series (Heidrich) 10, 34, 145–46 Dutch Painting 153 Early Netherlandish Painting 151–52 educational aim 148, 149 Flemish Painting see Flemish Painting (Heidrich) introductions 148 nationalism 150 Old German Painting 149, 150–51, 152 publisher’s choice of author 147 re-experiencing 148 The Art of Albrecht Dürer (Wölfflin) 238, 246 The Art of the Twentieth Century (Einstein) 16, 38, 294 Der Blaue Reiter 26–27 Cubism 18, 26, 284, 289–290 Expressionism 275–76 Kandinsky 37 Kirchner essay 277, 278, 279–281, 294 Kirchner’s involvement 277–78, 294 Kirchner’s reaction 278–281 Klee 26–27 Surrealism 26

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artistic impressions (Kunstanschauungen) 22 The Ascension of Christ (Tintoretto) 223, 224, 225 Aurenhammer, Hans 23, 35 Ausdruck (expression) 36, 240–44 Avenarius, Ferdinand 246 Baroque Dvořák 190, 193–94, 195 Heidrich 173, 175, 177 Wölfflin 14–15, 29, 253, 267, 268 Bathers (Cézanne) 135 Bebuquin (Einstein) 16 Behne, Adolf 12–13, 14 Beiträge zur Geschichte und Methode der Kunstgeschichte (Heidrich) 9 Belle-Alliance Platz, Berlin 292, 293 Belle-Alliance Platz, Berlin (Kirchner) 291–93, 292 Benesch, Otto 11, 29 Bildung (process of learning) 10, 247–48 Birth of Christ (Tintoretto) 219 Blaue Reiter Almanac 27, 32, 37, 67, 196, 274 Blaue Reiter, Der 26–27, 29, 37, 67, 105, 273, 274 Bloch, Ernst 190–91 Book of Hours 90 The Brazen Serpent (Tintoretto) 223 Brinckmann, A. 7–8, 108, 110, 117 Brown, Marshall 14–15 Brücke, Die awareness of expressionist writers 27, 274 belief in their work 29 Einstein’s opinion 38, 276–77, 278–79, 307 formation 305 Kunstverein association 148 woodcuts 67 Buddensieg, Hermann 104

Burckhardt, Jacob 191, 212, 238, 269 Burger, Fritz 3 aesthetic knowledge 7 art criticism 105–7, 111, 115 art theory 106–7 as artist 110–11, 112, 113, 113–16, 115 birth 99 Central Italy, interest in 101 Cézanne and Hodler see Cézanne and Hodler (Burger) cognition 106 creation 105 death 99 Dürer 115 empathy 103, 110, 111, 113–14, 115–16 Expressionism, promotion of 23–25 “For Kandinsky” 24 Forest Clearing 115, 116 form 30, 104, 106 form-giving process 104 German art 30 “I-community” 114 Impressionism 109, 123, 125, 133, 136 Introduction to Modern Art 7, 24–25, 30, 109–10 Italian Renaissance 133–34, 139 Kandinsky 24, 103 Kunstwissenschaft 103, 111 kunstwissenschaftliches Praktikum 104 language 107 lectures 104, 117 Let There Be Light 110, 111, 112 Manual of Art Criticism 108, 109 Marc 24–25, 103, 109, 111, 116 Michelangelo 101, 103–4, 115, 139 modernism 103–4, 104–5 nature study and inward contemplation 114–15 overview 6–8, 99–100 prism of the present 22

INDEx

reception 117 rediscovery 117 Schack Galerie guide 103, 105–7 Self-Portrait 113 thinking 106–7 transcendentalism 103 universalism 109–10 Venetian art 101 The Villas of Andrea Palladio 100–103 von Duhn correspondence 100, 101 Waldlichtung 115, 116 Wölfflin’s influence 102 Bushart, Magdalena 25 Café Scene (Grosz) 312 capitalism 31, 57, 67–68, 69, 74 Caravaggio 177 Carolingian miniatures 86–87 Carolingian period 85 Cézanne and Hodler (Burger) 7, 33, 107–10 art history 124 Bathers (Cézanne) 135 Bewunderung (Hodler) 130 boundaries 140 Cézanne and Hodler 133–36, 137 clarity 128 cognition 126–27, 129, 131, 138, 139 color 132–33 comparisons 124–25 cosmos, love of 139–140 creation 131 education 137 essence, primordial 138–39 figure and space 133–34 form and color 108–9 future of art 137–38 the general 132 German art 30, 133 idealism 129 identifiability of object 128–29 image and object 127–29 Impressionism 125, 133, 136

341

Kunstwissenschaft 137 Marc 109 metamorphoses 135–36 Michelangelo 139 nature 126–27, 129, 138 objectives 123–24, 125 perception 127–28, 132 period styles 131–32 philosophy and art 108 sensory relationships 129, 131–32 sensory unity 132 sexes, differences between 138–39 singular vs typical 131 technique 129, 131 truth 131 understanding the artist 126–27 universalism 127 will 136 Cézanne, Paul 109, 125, 133, 134–36, 135, 137 Chapman, Kathleen 32–33 Cheng, Joyce 19 chiaroscuro 101, 190, 213 Christ Before Pilate (Tintoretto) 218 Christian art 84–86, 218 the Church 84, 169, 173 Church of St. Augustine paintings (Rubens) 175, 177 Cicerone, Der (Burkhardt) 212, 279 civilization 66 clarity 128 Classic Art (Wölfflin) 14, 238, 241, 245 classicism 102, 248, 260–61 cognition 106, 126–27, 129, 131–32, 137, 138, 139 color Kirchner 276, 284, 307 Marc 24 modern art 132–33 Palladio 101 posters 70 Rubens 157, 178, 182, 183 Tintoretto 222

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The Concert: Variations on a Theme (Kokoschka) 200, 231–34, 232 confraternities, Venetian 211, 215 Conversion of Saint Paul (Michelangelo) 211 Counter-Reformation 174, 196, 211 creation Burger’s empathy 111, 115–16 Burger’s theory 105 and cognition 131, 137 and created product 104 and perception 147 Crucifixion of Christ, San Cassiano (Tintoretto) 220 Crucifixion of Christ, Scuola Grande di S. Rocco (Tintoretto) 194, 215–18, 216–17 Crucifixion of Saint Peter (Michelangelo) 210 Cubism Einstein’s opinion 18, 23, 26, 36, 277, 284, 289–290 influence on Kirchner 284, 286–290, 287, 289 Picasso 287–88, 288 culture 5, 19, 20, 66, 153–54, 169 see also German culture (Kultur) Delacroix, Eugène 234 Didi-Huberman, Georges 19, 158–59 Diederichs, Eugen Art in Pictures series see Art in Pictures series (Heidrich) book design 148 Dilthey 147 educational aim 147–48, 149, 157 Lebensreform movement 158 Dilthey, Wilhelm 9, 146–47, 150, 198 Dix, Otto 37 Donahue, Neil 4 Duhn, Clara von 100, 103 Duhn, Friedrich von 100–101 Dürer, Albrecht

Apocalypse 62, 64, 65 Burger 115 Dvořák 213 Heidrich 9, 33, 151–52 St. Jerome in His Study 258, 259 Wölfflin 238, 246–47, 258, 259, 260 Worringer 62, 64, 65, 82, 83 Dvořák, Max 3 abstraction 196, 198, 199 artistic alternatives 197–98 Baroque 190, 193–94, 195 birth 188 contemporary world 189 Czech–Austrian tensions 188–89 death 188 Dürer 213 El Greco essay 34–35 The Enigma of the Art of the Van Eyck Brothers 194 evolution of art 194 expressionism 187, 199–200 Expressionist art 23, 24, 25, 28 form 195, 196–97, 198 Geistesgeschichte 9, 10, 11–12, 195–97, 198 German culture 31 The History of Art as the History of the Spirit 10, 12, 192 History of Italian Art in the Age of the Renaissance 35, 188 the human soul 233 idealism 197–98 Impressionism 23, 25, 194, 199 Italian Renaissance 194, 198, 220, 225 lectures 188, 197 Mannerism 35, 187, 193–99, 200, 211, 220–21 Michelangelo 192, 193, 210, 211, 214, 221, 223, 225 Oskar Kokoschka: Variations on a Theme 25, 200, 231–34, 232 overview 10–12, 188–89

INDEx

past, interpreting the 23 scientific pantheism 231–33 spirituality 11–12, 23, 29, 31, 35, 193, 195–97, 198 Oskar Kokoschka 234 “Tintoretto” 190, 191, 213 “Tintoretto” see “Tintoretto” (Dvořák) Worringer›s influence 196 education 10, 85, 124, 137, 148, 172 Ehmcke, Fritz Helmuth 149 Eighty years War 153, 173–74 Einfühlung (empathy) 5–7, 13–14 Einstein, Carl 3, 38–39 abstraction 18, 29 African Sculpture 16 art and religion 274 The Art of the Twentieth Century see The Art of the Twentieth Century (Einstein) Bebuquin 16 Blaue Reiter Almanac 37, 274 Die Brücke 38, 276–77, 278–79, 307 Cubism 18, 23, 26, 29, 36, 277, 284, 289–290 Expressionist art links to 274 opinion of 23, 26–27, 273, 275–76 expressionist scholarship 16 form 17–18, 18–19, 306 German culture 30, 31 German modern art 36–37 Grosz 37–38, 311–16, 312, 314 Handbook of Art 16 Kandinsky 26–27, 37, 274, 309–10 on Kirchner 38, 275, 276, 281–85, 305–7 Kirchner, influence on 285–86, 294 Kirchner on 277, 278, 279–281, 294 Klee 27 Marc 26–27, 37, 274 modern painting’s task 276–77

343

Negro Sculpture 16, 17, 18, 19, 27, 274 overview 16–20 politics 18, 19 primitivism 16, 17, 18, 19, 27, 274 suicide 16 Surrealism 26, 36–37 “Totality” 18 transcendence 18–19 transformative power of art 274 World War I 313 Worringer’s influence 18, 27 El Greco 12, 34–35, 192, 193, 199 Elevation of the Cross (Rubens) 215 empathy Burger 110, 111, 113–14, 115–16 Dilthey 146 Wölfflin 13–14, 14–15, 102, 241 Worringer 5, 6, 59, 72 The Enigma of the Art of the Van Eyck Brothers (Dvořák) 194 “Ernst Ludwig Kirchner” (Einstein) 305–7 essence, primordial 138–39 essential form (Wesensform) 197 the Eucharist 211 evolution of art 194–95 experience, inner 22, 23, 111, 179, 241 expression 20 Heidrich 151 Wölfflin 36, 237, 239, 240–44, 245, 265 Worringer 82, 83, 84, 87 Expressionism Behne’s framing 12–13 defining 273 and expressionist scholarship 22–31 German-ness 66–67, 73–74, 151 power of form 244 qualities 21–22 visual and scholarly forms 2 woodcuts 66–67 Worringer’s influence 6 see also Blaue Reiter, Der; Brücke, Die

344

THE ExPRESSIONIST TURN IN ART HISTORy

“expressionist” 2–3 expressionist scholarship defining 273–74 and Expressionist art 21–31 connections 27–28 nationalism 30–31 overlooked art 28–29 past through prism of present 22–23 salvational theme 29–30 writing on 24–27 Expressionists’ awareness of 27 overlooked art 28–29 expressive vs figurative art 59, 61, 66, 72, 81, 82, 83–85, 90 Far in the South, Beautiful Spain (Grosz) 314 fascism 31 Fate of Animals (Marc) 111, 112 Faust II (Goethe) 126 Fechter, Paul 196 Fehmarn Coast (Kirchner) 283 Fiedler, Conrad 7, 17–18, 128–29, 274 figurative vs expressive art 59, 61, 66, 72, 81, 82, 83–85, 90 Filippi, Elena 33 Fleckner, Uwe 18, 27, 37, 275 Flemish Painting (Heidrich) 10, 34, 152–53 Burgundian period 170, 172 the Church 173 cover 149 culture 153–54, 169 Eighty years War 153, 173–74 freedom of expression 154–55 “Germanic” character 174 humanism 154 ideal of humanity 169, 172, 181 inner renewal 170–71 Key 173 late Gothic 167 Mannerism 168

nationalism 153–54, 169–170, 173 politics 153, 155 Reformation 174 Renaissance, influence of Italian 154, 168–69, 170, 171–72, 172–73 Romanism 167–174 Rubens 34, 155–57, 174 Andromeda II 179, 181 The Arrest of Samson 176–77 Caravaggio’s influence 177 Church of St. Augustine paintings 175 freedom 174–75, 177, 179, 181 The Great Flood 182 Helena Fourment in a Fur Wrap (Little Fur) 156–57, 179, 180 ideal of humanity 181 inner experience 178–79 landscapes 182–83 The Last Supper 175, 176, 176–77 life 179, 181 lightness 175, 177, 178 Massacre of the Innocents 178, 178 the Medici Cycle 174–75 mythological paintings 179, 181–82 nature 157 Peasants Returning from the Fields 157, 182 Perseus Freeing Andromeda 179 renewal of Flemish painting 157–58 St. Cecilia 181 St. Ildefonso altarpiece 177 St. Sebastian 179, 181 Titian’s influence 174–75 Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints 155, 156 sixteenth century changes 167–68 South Netherlandish 173–74 unity 172 war as catalyst 153 Flight into Egypt (Tintoretto) 219

INDEx

Floris, Frans 154 “For Kandinsky” (Burger) 24 Forest Clearing (Burger) 115, 116 form Burger 30, 104, 106 cultural expression 4–5, 13, 20–21 Dvořák 195, 196–97, 198 Einstein 17–18, 18–19, 306 emancipation 23 Heidrich 34, 179 and meaning 244 power of 244 and spirit 13, 14, 15 Wölfflin 13, 14, 15, 36, 237, 239, 244, 248, 264–65 see also “Italy and the German Sense of Form” (Wölfflin) Worringer 4–5, 61, 64 form-giving 104, 106–7, 114, 115, 126–27, 133, 134 Form Problems of the Gothic (Worringer) 2, 4, 6, 30, 59, 73, 196 Formpsychologie 13 Fourment, Helena 156–57, 179, 180, 181 The Gathering of the Manna (Tintoretto) 190, 227, 228 Geistesgeschichte (history of the spirit) 9–10, 11–12, 20, 28, 58, 196, 198 Geisteswissenschaften (human sciences) 9, 146, 147 “George Grosz” (Einstein) 311–16, 312, 314 German art abstraction 58, 59, 60, 61, 70 Dürerbund 246 expressionistic 15, 73–74 Gothic 30, 257 illustration 59–61, 73, 82 Old German Painting (Heidrich) 149–152 spirituality 60–61, 64, 66, 150, 213 vs Classical art 84–85

345

woodcuts see woodcuts see also “Italy and the German Sense of Form” (Wölfflin); Old German Book Illustration (Worringer) German character abstraction 58, 72 expressiveness 30 in Flemish painting 174 spirituality 30, 59, 60–61, 66, 81 unsensuality 81, 82 German culture (Kultur) 30–31 advertising 68–72 Heidrich 153–54 inwardness 22 political tool 67 and woodcuts 66 Worringer 58 German identity and nationalism 30–31, 151 advertising 74 Expressionists 73–74 Heidrich 149–150, 153–54 woodcuts 60–61, 66 Worringer 58, 59, 60, 72 German secular literature 87–88 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 125 Golem, Der (Meyrink) 114 Gothic 30, 36, 90, 110, 152, 218, 248, 255, 257 see also Flemish Painting (Heidrich); Old German Book Illustration (Worringer) Graef, Botho 151 Graf, Urs 57, 61, 62, 63 The Great Flood (Rubens) 182 El Greco 12, 34–35, 192, 193, 199 Grohmann, Will 278–79 Grosz, George 37–38, 311–16, 312, 314 Gumpenberg, Hans von 139 Hackney Carriage in the Street, Leipziger Straße II (Kirchner) 282 Halbertsma, Marlite 9

346

THE ExPRESSIONIST TURN IN ART HISTORy

Handbook of Art (Einstein) 16 Hart, Joan 239 Hausenstein, Wilhelm 273 Haxthausen, Charles 38 haystacks series (Monet) 25, 231 Head of a Man (Kirchner) 286, 286 Heckel, Erich 305 Hedicke, Robert 8, 9, 34, 110–11 Hegel, Georg 127, 131, 132 Heidrich, Ernst 3, 33–34, 145–47 academic studies 146–47 Art in Pictures series see Art in Pictures series (Heidrich); Flemish Painting (Heidrich) Baroque 173, 175, 177 Beiträge zur Geschichte und Methode der Kunstgeschichte 9 birth 146 death 145 Dürer 9, 33, 151–52 expressionism 151 Flemish Painting see Flemish Painting (Heidrich) form 34, 179 Geistesgeschichte 9–10 German culture 22, 30–31, 153–54 German identity and nationalism 149–150, 153–54 human science 146 inner forces 150 Italian Renaissance 154, 168–69, 170, 171–72, 172–73 Lebensreform movement 150, 154, 157, 158 Mannerism 168, 171 nationalism 149–150, 151 Old German Painting 10, 33–34, 149–151, 152 Old Netherlandish Painting 10, 151–52 overview 8–10 pre-war influences 152, 154, 157, 158 re-experiencing 148, 158–59

Rubens see Flemish Painting (Heidrich), Rubens spirituality 31, 151, 155 war as catalyst 153, 158 Wölfflin on 9, 30, 34 Helena Fourment in a Fur Wrap (Little Fur) (Rubens) 156–57, 175, 179, 180 Herke, Karl Heinz 103 High Middle Ages 88 Hildebrand, Adolf von 238 The History of Art as the History of the Spirit (Dvořák) 10, 12, 192 The History of Art History (Kultermann) 187 History of Italian Art in the Age of the Renaissance (Dvořák) 35, 188 history of the spirit (Geistesgeschichte) 9–10, 11–12, 20, 28, 58, 196, 198 Hodler, Ferdinand 83, 109, 130, 133–36, 137 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von 101–2 human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) 9, 146, 147 humanism 154, 158 “I-community” 114 ideal of humanity 169, 172, 181 idealism 25, 196, 197–98, 234 illustration see Old German Book Illustration (Worringer) immortality 135, 136 Impressionism 67 Behne 12 Burger 109, 123, 125, 133, 136 Dvořák 23, 25, 194, 199 Worringer 25 inner forces 150 inner renewal 170–71 Introduction to Modern Art (Burger) 7, 24–25, 30, 109–10 Invisible Cathedrals (Donahue) 4 “Italy and the German Sense of Form” (Wölfflin) 15, 36, 238, 248, 253

INDEx

Italian vs. German Baroque 253 “Italianism” in the North 259–261 mixture of North–South style 258 national sense and form 253 North–South comparisons 253–54 figure composition 255 human vs universal 257 legitimacy 257 movement of function 255 plastic vs painterly perceptions 254–55 proportions 256–57 receptivity to “the other” 254 secular vs sacred 257 separateness vs unity of form 256 process of coming into form 258 purity and perfection of form 260–61 St. Jerome in His Study (Dürer) 258, 259 Jarzombek, Mark 15 Jena Kunstverein 148 Johnston, William 11 Juntunen, Eveliina 34 “Kandinsky” (Einstein) 309–10 Kandinsky, Wassily 2 Burger 24, 103 Der Blaue Reiter 105 Einstein 26–27, 37, 274, 309–10 NKV 104, 105 spirituality 195 Worringer’s influence 27, 32 Kant, Immanuel 126, 132 Key, Willem 154, 173 Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig 2, 305–7 Belle-Alliance Platz, Berlin 291–93, 292 Cubist influence 287–89, 290 “Die Arbeit E.L. Kirchners” 290 Dürer 151 on Einstein 277, 278, 279–281, 294

347

Einstein on 38, 275, 276, 281–85, 305–7 Einstein’s influence 285–86, 294 Expressionism 275 Fehmarn Coast 283 Hackney Carriage in the Street, Leipziger Straße II 282 Head of a Man 286, 286 Melancholy of the Mountains 286–87, 287 multiple viewpoint 287, 287, 289, 290–93, 292 new style 285–87, 287, 289, 290, 294 Nude Women in a Forest Meadow 290 Oskar Schlemmer 290–91, 291 Ulstein Verlag contract 277–78 Woman Rider 289, 290 Klee, Paul 26, 27 Kokoschka, Oskar 11, 25, 28, 35, 196, 199, 200, 231–34, 232 Komposition V (Kandinsky) 105 Kultermann, Udo 1, 8, 187, 199 Kunstanschauungen (artistic impressions) 22 Kunstwissenschaft (science of art) 9, 103, 111, 124, 137 Kunstwollen 5, 19, 20, 39, 58, 85, 101 Kurz, Otto 28 Lang, Oskar 117 Langbehn, Julius 246–47 language 107 The Large Blue Horses (Marc) 140 Last Judgment (Michelangelo) 221, 226 Last Judgment (Tintoretto) 221 The Last Supper (Rubens) 175, 176, 176–77 The Last Supper, San Giorgio Maggiore (Tintoretto) 190, 191, 228–29, 229 The Last Supper, San Polo (Tintoretto) 221–22, 227 The Last Supper, San Trovaso (Tintoretto) 191, 212, 212–13

348

THE ExPRESSIONIST TURN IN ART HISTORy

Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life) 9, 146 Lebensreform movement 146, 147, 150, 154, 158 Let There Be Light (Burger) 110, 111, 112 Macke, August 27 Magdalene in the Desert (Tintoretto) 219 Mahlberg, Paul 70–71 Mannerism Dvořák 35, 187, 192–99, 200, 211, 220–21 Heidrich 168, 171 legitimizing Expressionism 28 Manual of Art Criticism (Burger and Brinckmann) 108, 109 manuscript illustration 22, 84, 85, 89–90, 91 Marc, Franz 23 Burger 24–25, 103, 109, 111, 116 death 116 Einstein 26–27, 37, 274 Fate of the Animals 112 The Large Blue Horses 140 NKV 104 Worringer’s influence 27, 32, 73 Marriage at Cana (Tintoretto) 214–15 mass culture 57 mass production 57, 91–92, 93 Massacre of the Innocents (Rubens) 178, 178 Mayer, August L. 106 Meier, Nikolaus 10, 15 Melancholy of the Mountains (Kirchner) 286–87, 287 metamorphoses 135–36 Meyrink, Gustav 114 Michelangelo Burger 101, 103–4, 115, 139 Dvořák 192, 193, 210, 211, 214, 221, 223, 225

Miracle of St. Mark (Tintoretto) 209–11, 210 Momme Nissen, Benedikt 246 Monet, Claude 25, 231 monumental painting 82–83 Müller-Lentrodt, Matthias 17 Müller-Tamm, Jutta 6 Murillo, Bartolomé 199 national differences 30, 82 see also “Italy and the German Sense of Form” (Wölfflin) nationalism 169–170, 172–73 see also German identity and nationalism Nazi regime 117 Negro Sculpture (Einstein) 16, 17, 18, 19, 27, 274 Neoplatonism 221 Neue Künstlervereinigung (NKV) 104–5 Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity) 37 Night Watch (Rembrandt) 219 Nohl, Hermann 198 Nude Women in a Forest Meadow (Kirchner) 290 objectivity 9, 37, 111, 146, 316 Old German Book Illustration (Worringer) 32–33 abstraction 58–59, 59–62, 64, 73, 84 Book of Hours 90 Carolingian miniatures 86–87 Carolingian period 85 Christian art 84–86 Dürer 62, 64, 82, 83 empathy 59, 60 expression 84 expressive vs figurative art 84–85 German art 59, 60–61, 84–85 German character 81, 82 German-ness 58–59, 82 German secular literature 87–88 Gothic style 90

INDEx

gouache 88–89 Graf 61, 62, 64 High Middle Ages 88 Hodler 83 manuscript illustration 84, 85, 89–90, 91 mass production 91–92 monumental painting 82–83 national differences in art 82 pen and ink drawings 89 playing cards 92 single sheets 92 themes of art 72, 83–84 woodcuts 58, 61–62, 92–94, 94 Old German Painting (Heidrich) 10, 33–34, 149–151, 152 Old Netherlandish Painting (Heidrich) 10, 151–52 “On New Art” (Behne) 12 On the Spiritual in Art (Kandinsky) 24 Oskar Kokoschka: Variations on a Theme (Dvořák) 25, 200, 231–34, 232 Oskar Schlemmer (Kirchner) 290–91, 291 overlooked art 28–29 Palladio, Andrea 100–103, 115, 227 Paradise (Tintoretto) 190, 226–27 Passini, Michela 36 The Passion of Christ (Graf) 57, 62, 63 Peasants Returning from the Fields (Rubens) 157, 182 perception 103, 127–28, 132, 147, 199 Peri, Francesco 36 Perseus Freeing Andromeda (Rubens) 179 personal response 22 Pesaro Madonna (Titian) 175 philosophy of life (Lebensphilosophie) 9, 146 Picasso, Pablo 274, 287–88, 288, 294 Plotinus 221 politics 18, 19, 31, 67, 153, 155, 247

349

posters 57, 68–71, 74 Prange, Regine 187 Presentation of the Blessed Virgin (Tintoretto) 214 primitivism 30, 38 Einstein 16, 17, 18, 19, 27, 274 Wölfflin 263–64, 265 Worringer 61, 66–67, 68, 89 “Principles of Art History: A Revision” (Wölfflin) Ausdruck 240 development 263–64 expression 241–42, 263 forms of beholding 265 Grundbegriffe 264 history 268–69 individualism 267 national and temporal relationships 264 “open” form 266 principles of pictorial representation 264 rational progress 267–68 recurring historical tendencies 239 transformation 265–66 vision of artist 264–65 vocabulary 266–67 Principles of Art History (Wölfflin) 13, 14, 15, 23, 36, 238, 241 prism of the present 22 Problem of Form (Hildebrand) 238 process of learning (Bildung) 10, 247–48 Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture (Wölfflin) 13, 102, 238, 240–41, 245 psychology 4–6, 13–14, 61, 93 psychology of style (Stilpsychologie) 13, 61 Radnóti, Sándor 198 re-experiencing 146, 147, 148, 158–59 Read, Herbert 14

350

THE ExPRESSIONIST TURN IN ART HISTORy

Redslob, Edwin 71–72 Reformation 172, 174, 196 “Remarks on the Historical Developments of Contemporary Art” (Worringer) 25 Rembrandt 128, 171, 172, 213–14, 219, 258 Renaissance and Baroque (Wölfflin) 14, 15, 241 Renaissance, German 9, 83, 151, 171–72 see also “Italy and the German Sense of Form” (Wölfflin) Renaissance, Italian Burger 133–34, 139 Dvořák 194, 198, 220, 225 Heidrich 154, 168–69, 170, 171–72, 172–73 Worringer 82 see also “Italy and the German Sense of Form” (Wölfflin) Riegl, Alois 5, 20, 39, 58, 194 Rintelen, Friedrich 34, 148, 150 Romanism 154, 167–174 Rosenberg, Alfred 117 Rubens, Peter Paul see Flemish Painting (Heidrich), Rubens Saint Mary of Egypt (Tintoretto) 219 Schiele, Egon 2 Schlegel, F. 140 Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl 27, 305 Schwartz, Frederic 13 science 9, 22, 146, 195 science of art (Kunstwissenschaft) 9, 103, 111, 124, 137 scientific pantheism 231–33 Scuola di San Rocco 214–18, 216–17, 218–19, 222–23, 224, 225 sexes, differences between 138–39 Simmel, Georg 135, 136 Smith, Kimberly 273 Söntgen, Beate 32

Sorrows (Werther) 138 Spanish Civil War 16 Spengler, Helene 277 Spinoza, Baruch 134, 135 The Spirit of Utopia (Bloch) 190–91 spirituality 28–29, 30, 31, 66 Dvořák 11–12, 23, 29, 31, 35, 193, 195–97, 198 Oskar Kokoschka 234 “Tintoretto” 190, 191, 213 Heidrich 31, 151, 155 Wölfflin 14, 15 Worringer 2, 6, 22, 32, 59, 60–61, 64, 81, 82, 87 St. Cecilia (Rubens) 181 St. Ildefonso altarpiece (Rubens) 177 St. Jerome in His Study (Dürer) 258, 259 St. Sebastian (Rubens) 179, 181 Stilpsychologie (psychology of style) 13, 61 subjectivity 36, 154, 241, 243, 245, 249, 284 Surrealism 26, 36 Swoboda, Karl Maria 188 Taine, Hippolyte 12 Thannhauser, Heinrich 105 Thode, Henry 99–100, 191, 192, 247 Thoma, Hans 246–47 Tietze, Hans 10, 20, 99, 147, 196 “Tintoretto” (Dvořák) 23, 35 Adoration of the Magi 219 The Annunciation 218–19 The Ascension of Christ 223, 224, 225 Birth of Christ 219 The Brazen Serpent 223 chiaroscuro 190, 213 Christ Before Pilate 218 Christian art, development of 218 coloristic effects 222 compared with Bloch and Waldmann 190–92

INDEx

contradictory goals 187 Crucifixion of Christ, San Cassiano 220 Crucifixion of Christ, Scuola Grande di S. Rocco 194, 215–18, 216–17 figure composition 223, 225 Flight to Egypt 219 The Gathering of the Manna 190, 227, 228 landscapes 219 Last Judgment 221 The Last Supper, San Giorgio Maggiore 190, 191, 228–29, 229 The Last Supper, San Polo 221–22, 227 The Last Supper, San Trovaso 191, 212, 212–13 lecture slides 189 lectures 188 Legend of Saint Mark paintings 219–220 light and dark 216–17 Magdalene in the Desert 219 Mannerism 187, 190, 220–21 Marriage at Cana 214–15 Michelangelo’s true heir 209 Miracle of St. Mark 209–11, 210 movement 209–10, 214, 223 Paradise 190, 226–27 patrons 211 perspective 214–15 phases of development 211 Presentation of the Blessed Virgin 214 psychology 213, 225 Saint Mary of Egypt 219 San Giorgio Maggiore paintings 190, 226–29, 228, 229 Scuola di San Marco paintings 219–220 Scuola di San Rocco paintings 214–18, 216–17, 218–19, 222–23, 224, 225 sketchbook 193, 225–26

351

spirituality 190, 221 The Vision of Ezekiel 222–23 Tintoretto, Jacopo 191–92 see also “Tintoretto” (Dvořák) Titian 101, 174–75, 209, 212, 213, 267 “Totality” (Einstein) 18 transcendence 18–19, 191, 198 transcendentalism 103, 134 transformative power of art 274 Tristan und Isolde (Wagner) 138 truth 107, 128, 129, 131, 197 Tschudi, Hugo von 105 United States 35–36, 74 unity 31, 131–32, 139, 157, 172, 264, 307 van Eyck, Jan 172 van Mander, Karel 170 Velázquez, Diego 199 Villa Rotonda (Palladio) 102 Villa Trissino (Palladio) 102–3 The Villas of Andrea Palladio (Burger) 100–103 Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints (Rubens) 155, 156 The Vision of Ezekiel (Tintoretto) 222–23 Wagner, Richard 138, 191 Waldmann, Emil 190, 191–92 war as catalyst 153, 158 Warnke, Martin 23 Weidenmüller, Hans 69 Weltanschauung 21, 231 Werkbund 69 Wesensform (essential form) 197 Wilde, Johannes 188 Wilhelm II, Kaiser 67 will 129, 133–34, 136, 242 Williams, Rhys 17 Wissenschaft (science) 12, 22 Wölfflin, Heinrich 3, 35–36 art and art history 22

352

THE ExPRESSIONIST TURN IN ART HISTORy

art history approach 239 The Art of Albrecht Dürer 238, 246 Ausdruck and art history 240–44 Baroque 14–15, 29, 253, 267, 268 Burger, influence on 102 Classic Art 14, 238, 241, 245 comparison and contrast 243–44 Dürer 238, 246–47, 258, 259, 260 empathy 13–14, 14–15, 102, 241 evaluating style 124 expression 265 Ausdruck and art history 240–44 form as 238–39 subject of 244–49 and subjectivity 245 Expressionist art 23 form 13, 14, 15, 20, 23, 36, 237–39, 244, 248, 264–65 see also “Italy and the German Sense of Form” (Wölfflin) German art 247–49 Heidrich 9, 30, 34 “Italy and the German Sense of Form” see “Italy and the German Sense of Form” (Wölfflin) lecture slides 243–44 lectures and travels 104, 238 natural science 146 overview 12–15 primitivism 263–64, 265 Principles of Art History 13, 14, 15, 23, 36, 238, 241 “Principles of Art History: A Revision” see “Principles of Art History: A Revision” (Wölfflin) principles of pictorial representation 238–39, 264 prism of the present 22 Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture 13, 102, 238, 240–41, 245 Renaissance and Baroque 14, 15, 241

review of The Villas of Andrea Palladio (Burger) 102 spirituality 14, 15 subjectivity 245, 249 Woman Rider (Kirchner) 289, 290 Woman with Pears (Picasso) 287–88, 288 Wood, Christopher 8, 11, 20 woodcuts 57 in advertising 71 as Art and Kultur 66–68 Dürer’s 62, 64, 65 emergence 92–93 Expressionists’ use of 66–67 expressiveness 62, 64, 93–94 German culture 66 and German nationalism 60–61, 66 German-ness 71, 94 Graf’s 61, 62, 63, 64 Kirchner’s 306–7 liens 93–94 as posters 57, 71 properties 67 Pyramus and Thisbe 94 spirituality 62, 64 style 93 World War I 6, 8–9, 27, 30, 74, 99, 145, 188, 247–48, 307, 313 World War II 16, 31, 117 Worringer, Wilhelm 3 abstraction 5, 6, 32, 58, 59, 61, 64, 68, 72–74, 84 Abstraction and Empathy see Abstraction and Empathy (Worringer) Dürer 62, 64, 65, 82, 83 Dvořák, influence on 196 empathy 5, 6, 59, 72 expression 82, 83, 84, 87 Expressionist art 25–26, 273 Expressionist artists, influence on 6, 27, 32, 72–74

INDEx

expressionist scholarship 2 form 4–5, 61, 64 Form Problems of the Gothic 2, 4, 6, 30, 59, 73, 196 German culture 58, 67–68, 72 German identity and nationalism 58, 59, 60, 72 Gothic German art 30 gothic Mensch 32 history of art 72 Impressionism 25 mass culture 57 model of history 57–58 modern life 67–68

353

Old German Book Illustration see Old German Book Illustration (Worringer) overview 4–6 past, interpreting the 22–23 primitivism 61, 66–67, 68, 89 psychology 4–6, 61 “Remarks on the Historical Developments of Contemporary Art” 25 spirituality 2, 6, 22, 32, 59, 60–61, 64, 81, 82, 87 Stilpsychologie 13 themes of art 72