Matthew Rampley’s The Vienna School of Art History is the first book in over seventy-five years to study in depth and in context the practices of art history from 1847, the year the first teaching ...position in the discipline was created, to 1918, the collapse of Austria-Hungary. It traces the emergence of art history as a discipline, the establishment of norms of scholarly enquiry, and the involvement of art historians in wider debates about the cultural and political identity of the monarchy. While Rampley also examines the formation of art history elsewhere in Austria-Hungary, the so-called Vienna School plays the central role in the study. Located in the Habsburg imperial capital, Vienna art historians frequently became entangled in debates that were of importance to art historians elsewhere in the Empire, and the book pays particular attention to these areas of overlapping interest. The Vienna School was well known for its methodological innovations and this book analyzes its contributions in this area. Rampley focuses most fully, however, on the larger political and ideological context of the practice of art history, in particular the way in which art historical debates served as proxies for wider arguments over the political, social, and cultural life of the Habsburg Empire.
The surge of evolutionary and neurological analyses of art and
its effects raises questions of how art, culture, and the
biological sciences influence one another, and what we gain in
applying ...scientific methods to the interpretation of artwork. In
this insightful book, Matthew Rampley addresses these questions by
exploring key areas where Darwinism, neuroscience, and art history
intersect.
Taking a scientific approach to understanding art has led to
novel and provocative ideas about its origins, the basis of
aesthetic experience, and the nature of research into art and the
humanities. Rampley's inquiry examines models of artistic
development, the theories and development of aesthetic response,
and ideas about brain processes underlying creative work. He
considers the validity of the arguments put forward by advocates of
evolutionary and neuroscientific analysis, as well as its value as
a way of understanding art and culture. With the goal of bridging
the divide between science and culture, Rampley advocates for wider
recognition of the human motivations that drive inquiry of all
types, and he argues that our engagement with art can never be
encapsulated in a single notion of scientific knowledge.
Engaging and compelling, T he Seductions of Darwin is a
rewarding look at the identity and development of art history and
its complicated ties to the world of scientific thought.
The surge of evolutionary and neurological analyses of art and its effects raises questions of how art, culture, and the biological sciences influence one another, and what we gain in applying ...scientific methods to the interpretation of artwork. In this insightful book, Matthew Rampley addresses these questions by exploring key areas where Darwinism, neuroscience, and art history intersect.
Taking a scientific approach to understanding art has led to novel and provocative ideas about its origins, the basis of aesthetic experience, and the nature of research into art and the humanities. Rampley’s inquiry examines models of artistic development, the theories and development of aesthetic response, and ideas about brain processes underlying creative work. He considers the validity of the arguments put forward by advocates of evolutionary and neuroscientific analysis, as well as its value as a way of understanding art and culture. With the goal of bridging the divide between science and culture, Rampley advocates for wider recognition of the human motivations that drive inquiry of all types, and he argues that our engagement with art can never be encapsulated in a single notion of scientific knowledge.
Engaging and compelling, T he Seductions of Darwin is a rewarding look at the identity and development of art history and its complicated ties to the world of scientific thought.
This important critical study of the history of public art museums in Austria-Hungary explores their place in the wider history of European museums and collecting, their role as public institutions, ...and their involvement in the complex cultural politics of the Habsburg Empire .
Focusing on institutions in Vienna, Cracow, Prague, Zagreb, and Budapest, The Museum Age in Austria-Hungary traces the evolution of museum culture over the long nineteenth century, from the 1784 installation of imperial art collections in the Belvedere Palace (as a gallery open to the public) to the dissolution of Austria-Hungary after the First World War. Drawing on source materials from across the empire, the authors reveal how the rise of museums and display was connected to growing tensions between the efforts of Viennese authorities to promote a cosmopolitan and multinational social, political, and cultural identity, on the one hand, and, on the other, the rights of national groups and cultures to self-expression. They demonstrate the ways in which museum collecting policies, practices of display, and architecture engaged with these political agendas and how museums reflected and enabled shifting forms of civic identity, emerging forms of professional practice, the production of knowledge, and the changing composition of the public sphere.
Original in its approach and sweeping in scope, this fascinating study of the museum age of Austria-Hungary will be welcomed by students and scholars interested in the cultural and art history of Central Europe.
This important critical study of the history of public art
museums in Austria-Hungary explores their place in the wider
history of European museums and collecting, their role as public
institutions, ...and their involvement in the complex cultural
politics of the Habsburg Empire.
Focusing on institutions in Vienna, Cracow, Prague, Zagreb, and
Budapest, The Museum Age in Austria-Hungary traces the
evolution of museum culture over the long nineteenth century, from
the 1784 installation of imperial art collections in the Belvedere
Palace (as a gallery open to the public) to the dissolution of
Austria-Hungary after the First World War. Drawing on source
materials from across the empire, the authors reveal how the rise
of museums and display was connected to growing tensions between
the efforts of Viennese authorities to promote a cosmopolitan and
multinational social, political, and cultural identity, on the one
hand, and, on the other, the rights of national groups and cultures
to self-expression. They demonstrate the ways in which museum
collecting policies, practices of display, and architecture engaged
with these political agendas and how museums reflected and enabled
shifting forms of civic identity, emerging forms of professional
practice, the production of knowledge, and the changing composition
of the public sphere.
Original in its approach and sweeping in scope, this fascinating
study of the museum age of Austria-Hungary will be welcomed by
students and scholars interested in the cultural and art history of
Central Europe.
The development of art in Austria after 1918 remains little explored; the main focus of research continues to be fin‐de‐siècle Vienna. Where interwar Austrian modernism is studied at all, interest is ...mostly limited to the municipal housing sponsored by the Social Democratic council. The main concern of this essay is to examine the reasons for this inconsistency and comparative neglect. It explores the ways in which the historiography of Austrian post‐war modernism has been informed by wider historical assumptions, about the role of the First World War as a cultural‐political caesura, for instance, or by ambivalence about interwar Austrian history and its slide into fascism, or valorization of the avant‐garde. A comparison is also drawn with accounts of art in interwar Czechoslovakia, where modernist practices are much celebrated since they have assumed a legitimating function for Czech and Slovak culture in the present.
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