Alois Riegl's self-imposed task of founding the truly modem, properly scientific art history is positioned within Wilhelm von Humboldt's concept of university with its postulate of Bildung durch ...Wissenschaft and Wilhelm Dilthey's discussion and definition of Geisteswissenschaften. All the human sciences, according to Dilthey, have a common subject, the socio-historical reality of humanity in its entirety, that is, everything in which human spirit has objectified itself.1 However, each particular human science studies only a part of that reality. In its formation, it isolates a particular content of that socio-historical reality, and it studies it only relatively, only from a limited perspective.2 Each particular human science should therefore be aware of its connection to other human sciences, of its participation in the great project of Geisteswissenschaften, whose final aim is education and cultivation of human beings.3 The meaning of the human sciences and their theory is 'to assist us with what we have to do in the world, with what we are able to make of ourselves, and with what we can do with the world and it with us'.4Faced with these requirements, constructing his 'historical grammar of the visual arts' as the foundation of 'art history as a scientific discipline', Riegl announced that 'we will be dealing with (1) elements; (2) the developmental history thereof; (3) the factors that determined that development'.5 First he had to establish the proper object for art history as a specific, autonomous scientific discipline. After indicating the five elements - the purpose, the materials, the technique, the motif and the relation between form and surface - that need to be considered when evaluating a work of art, he concluded that the way a work of art is fashioned, the 'how', the relation between form and surface, is the most artistic of the elements and therefore the most specific to the art historical discipline.6 Since all works of art of a certain period are constituted and binded by certain common elements,7 it is the style of a particular period that art history should really concentrate on.
Alois Riegl’s first and foremost task in his Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts, the foundational text of ‘art history as a scientific discipline’, was the definition of its proper subject. The ...preoccupation of the scientific art history was thus defined as dealing with elements, the developmental history of thereof, and the factors that determined that development. The elements in question are ‘form and surface’ (Form und Fläche), or, more precisely, the relation between them which is developed in the course of time and which constitutes different styles, all directed by specific worldviews, different for different time periods and peoples. In the definition of the subject of art history, precisely this conjunction of a style and its prescribing worldview (Weltanschauung) is most significant. It is also the starting point for Riegl’s fellow and following art historians, Heinrich Wölfflin, Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky and Frederick Antal, among others. Riegl, therefore, should be credited with establishing the paradigm for the subsequent art-historical investigation.
Nikolaus Pevsner’s Pioneers of Modern Movement is considered the foundational text of two new historical fields, the history of modern architecture and the history of design. This contribution, ...nevertheless, discusses this text in the context of art-historical discipline. Pevsner himself namely understood his work as a complement to Kunstgeschichte: by defining the ‘Modern Movement’ in established art-historical terms and also by discussing not only architecture but attempting to define the style and the worldview expressed in it for the whole period and all of visual arts. Specifically, this contribution is interested in the place that Pevsner allocated to the design within his art-historical edifice, since inclusion of objects of everyday use within an art-historical study was not (and still is not) usual. For Pevsner, on the contrary, design (linked to architecture) turns out to be a key component of his narrative, even if not for aesthetic but rather for moral or social reasons.
Izidor Cankar (1886–1958), student of Max Dvořák at Vienna and the key figure in founding in 1919–20 the discipline of art history at University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, set himself a great task: to ...complete those researches of Riegl, Wickhoff, and Wölfflin, to sum up the marks of style into a system regardless of the historical evolution, to create in nuce some sort of a grammar of art formation . In his Introduction into Comprehending of the Visual Art. The Systematics of Style (1926) – which functions as the theoretical underpinning of even greater and unfortunately unfinished project of The History of Visual Art in Western Europe. The Evolution of Style (1927–51) – he thus offered three fundamental categories for close examination of works of art as visual organisms : the two extremes of the idealistic and naturalistic worldviews and the planar and painterly styles respectively, and their reconciliation, the intermediary position of realistic worldview and the plastic style. What exactly do these categories comprise, how are they to be used and what is the relation of this theoretical edifice to the art-historical work of the named Cankar's predecessors, is the topic of the present contribution.
When the Slovenian University of Ljubljana was established in 1919 - a most meaningful culturally-political gesture within the newly founded Kingdom of Serbians, Croatians and Slovenians - Izidor ...Cankar, by then already a well known personality in Slovenian cultural life, accepted the task to establish its department of art history. Cankar was therefore the first professor of art history, the founder of art-historical discipline in Slovenia, not only in terms of the organisation of studies but also - just as importantly, if not even more - in terms of their theoretical and methodological foundations. In 1926 his Uvod v umevanje likovne umetnosti. Sistematika stila (Introduction into Comprehending of the Visual Art. The Systematics of Style)2 and in 1927 the first instalment of the first volume of the concomitant survey of European art, Zgodovina likovne umetnosti v Zahodni Evropi. Razvoj stila (The History of Visual Art in Western Europe. The Evolution of Style),3 were published, originating of course in the very immediate, local needs for the professional terminology in Slovenian language,4 but also in Cankars own much wider, more global ambition, regarding the international art-historical context.
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