DU1723 Historiography of art history

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2025
Extent and Intensity
2/0/0. 4 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
prof. PhDr. Jiří Kroupa, CSc. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
prof. PhDr. Jiří Kroupa, CSc.
Department of Art History – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: prof. PhDr. Jiří Kroupa, CSc.
Supplier department: Department of Art History – Faculty of Arts
Timetable
Mon 10:00–11:40 K31, except Mon 21. 4. to Sun 27. 4.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is offered to students of any study field.
Course objectives
"To know and define a discipline means first of all to know its history": the classic words of Auguste Comte will help us explain the content of the historiography course. Art history is still a relatively young discipline that is changing both methodologically and thematically. The aim is therefore to first: take the listener into the history of literature on architecture, sculpture and painting. Afterwards, it will be shown how a new, narrower discipline of art history was formed from this wider literature about art. And finally: how the methods and approaches of this new discipline changed from the end of the 19th century to 1945.
Learning outcomes
The student will be able after the lecture course
- to orientate him in the history of art history and read the original art historical literature;
- to acquire knowledge of various art historical approaches in history;
- to understand the historical transformation of seeing the artworks.
Syllabus
  • Introduction to the course
  • 1. The art of art history: literature on art and the systematic versus historical viewpoint.
  • 2. Transformations of art history: Lives of artists / Schools of art history / Methods of art history / Modalities of creation and creative strategies, mediators - meanings.
  • I. Literature on art
  • 3. Literature on architecture, sculpture and painting in antiquity: rhetoric, poetics and recipes, topography, ekphrasis, the history of art as a history of innovation (Pliny the Elder).
  • 4. Literature on architecture, sculpture and painting in the Middle Ages: liberal arts, regulations and recipes, topography.
  • 5. The new concept of "art" and Florentine humanism: "uomini famosi", mirabilia, from recipes to art theory (Cennino Cennini - Leone Bat. Alberti - Leonardo da Vinci).
  • II. The origin of art history and the emergence of a professional discipline
  • 6. The concept of artistic progress in the 16th century: Giorgio Vasari and his biographies: his predecessors; his successors, critics and followers.
  • 7. Biographies at the end of the 17th century between the Idea and the Academy: academic treatises; art criticism in Rome and Paris / Perspectives of art history (Giov. Pietro Bellori versus Giov. Batt. Passeri - Filippo Baldinucci contra Carlo Cesare Malvasia).
  • 8. The origin of art history in Italy and France in the 18th century: curieux, erudite and ciceroni / The first reviews of art history (Luigi Lanzi, Leopoldo Cicognara, Johann Dominik Fiorillo).
  • III. Creating art history "from below"
  • 9. Art history "begins twice": (a) Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Jean B. Séroux d'Agincourt - (b) Karl Friedrich von Rumohr, Gustav Fr. Waagen, Stendhal.
  • 10. Berlin School of Art History (Franz Kugler, Friedrich Eggers and Deutsches Kunstblatt, Wilhelm Lübke - Carl Schnaase, Heinrich Hotho and Hegel's aesthetics).
  • 11. Expertise as a prerequisite for the discipline of "art history": the controversy over Holbein in 1871; expertise and science (Giovanni Morelli, Wilhelm Bode, Gustav Dehio and his lists of monuments).
  • IV. Art history in the last quarter of the 19th century and its scientific method
  • 12. Determinism and positivism after the middle of the 19th century: Hippolyte Taine and the "milieu" - Anton Springer and historical science - Gottfries Semper and style, technique and material - Giovanni Morelli and the paradigm of indicia.
  • 13. Vienna School of Art History: Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg – Moritz Thausing; Alois Riegl – Franz Wickhoff; Max Dvořák – Julius von Schlosser; their counterpart: Josef Strzygowsky.
  • 14. Art and the interpretation of form: August Schmarsow (aesthetics), Bernard Berenson, Max Jacob Friedländer (connoisseurship), Wilhelm von Bode (museum) and Henri Focillon (life of forms).
  • V. History of art and the "universe of artistic creation" 15. The double root of style: Jacob Burckhardt and art history according to tasks, Heinrich Wölfflin and the basic concepts of art history, Adolph Goldschmidt and connoisseurship.
  • 16. The interwar period: Hans Tietze, Paul Frankl, Dagobert Frey; art criticism / Handbooks of art history and world art history (Handbuch, Kunsttopographie, Festschrift, Ikonographie).
  • VI. An attempt to change perspective: the interpretation of works of art
  • 17. Aby M. Warburg: expression, culture and the beginnings of the iconological method; iconography and iconology (Erwin Panofsky, Edgar Wind and Rudolf Wittkower).
  • 18. Structuralism and the Younger Vienna School of Art History: Hans Sedlmayr, Guido Kaschnitz-Weinberg.
Literature
    required literature
  • KROUPA, Jiří. Školy dějin umění : metodologie dějin umění. 2., přeprac. vyd. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2007, 253 s. ISBN 9788021042476. info
  • WITTLICH, Petr. Literatura k dějinám umění :vývojový přehled. 1. vyd. Praha: Karolinum, 1992, 118 s. ISBN 80-7066-558-0. info
    recommended literature
  • LOCHER, Hubert. Kunstgeschichte als historische Theorie der Kunst, 1750-1950. 2. korr. und um ein Nachw. e. München: Wilhelm Fink, 2010, 533 s. ISBN 9783770550838. info
  • KULTERMANN, Udo. Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte : der Weg einer Wissenschaft. München: Prestel-Verlag, 1990, 272 stran. ISBN 3791310569. info
    not specified
  • LOCHER, Hubert. Quellen zur Theorie und Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte. Eine kommentierte Anthologie I-IV. Darmstadt: WBG (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), 2007 - 2010
Teaching methods
Lectures; homework with an e-learning; reading.
Assessment methods
Written test
Language of instruction
Czech
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024, Spring 2026.
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