DU1723 Historiography of art history

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2024
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 15. 4.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is offered to students of any study field.
Course objectives
"Understanding your own discipline means knowing its history." The aim of this course is to introduce students to the history of literature about architecture, sculpture and painting. Students will be presented with various ways of how art works were discussed in the past, how was created a new discipline of art history and how were transformed the methods and approaches of this new discipline from antiquity to 1945. The main form of lectures is the work with literature in the seminary library of the Department of Art History.
The main themes are: Defining the history of art from narrative to scholarly discipline; New concept of Art and Renaissance humanism; The Origin of Art History in the Age of Enlightenment; Historical-critical historiography in the 19th century and positivism; Establishing Art History as a “science” and the Vienna School of Art History; The expansion of the history of art in the interwar period (empiricism - beginnings of iconology - structuralism).
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
  • Topics:
  • 1. "Art" of art history: historical perspective - systematic view.
  • 2. Paradigm, knowledge and scholarship in art historiography.
  • 3. Thinking about architecture, sculpture and painting in antiquity: rhetoric, practical manuals, topography, ekphrasis, history of art as a history of innovation (Pliny the Elder.).
  • 4. Thinking about architecture, sculpture and painting in the Middle Ages: liberal arts, regulations and recipes, topography.
  • 5. New concepts of "art" and Florentine humanism: biographies of "uomi famosi", ekphrasis, Mirabilia, from art criticism and theory recipients (Cennino Cennini - Leone Batt. Alberti Leonardo da Vinci).
  • 6. History of artistic creation and "artist biographies": a Renaissance concept of artistic progress; Vasari's predecessors; Giorgio Vasari and his followers and critics.
  • 7. Academic theory and criticism of the 17th century: "Idea", Pousinists and Rubensists, dogmatic tractates of architecture, Icones symbolicae.
  • 8. Origin of Art History in the Enlightenment in Italy and France: archeology of taste; connoisseurship in the period of "curiosité"; "ciceroni"; Accademia degli Arcadi (Scipione Maffei, Giovanni Bottari and others); Luigi Lanzi; philosophy of history and Jean Bapt. Séroux d'Agincourt; the character of the enlightenment of historiography.
  • 9. The history of art as a history of the Ideal: Johann Joachim Winckelmann and his circle; l'idéologie and Stendhal; Piranesi and North Italian erudites.
  • 10. History of art as a historical and critical discipline: Carl Friedrich von Rumohr - Gustav Friedrich Waagen.
  • 11. Berlin School of Art History (Franz Kugler, Friedrich Eggers and Deutsches Kunstblatt, Wilhelm Lübke - Carl Schnaase, Heinrich Hotho and Hegel's aesthetics. 12. Schools of connoisseurship in the 19th century: empirical connoiseurs; the Holbein dispute in 1871; connoisseurship and science (Giovanni Morelli, Wilhelm Bode, Gustav Dehio, and his inventories of monuments).
  • 13. Determinism and Positivism after middle of the 19th century: Hippolyte Taine and "milieu" - Anton Springer and historical science - Gottfried Semper and style, technique and material.
  • 14. Jacob Burckhardt: Artwork – “Aufgabe” - Culture.
  • 15. Theory of pure visibility an methodical schools of Art history (Heinrich Wölfflin, Henri Focillon, August Schmarsow).
  • 16. Connoisseurship at the Beginning of the 20th century (Adolph Goldschmidt, Bernard Berenson, Max Jacob Friedländer).
  • 17. Viennese School of Art History: Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg - Moritz Thausing; Alois Riegl - Franz Wickhoff; Max Dvorak - Julius von Schlosser; their counterpart: Josef Strzygowsky.
  • 18. New empirism in the Interwar period: Hans Tietze, Paul Frankl, Dagobert Frey; handbooks of art history (Handbuch, Kunsttopographie, Festschrift, Ikonographie); art criticism.
  • 19. Aby M. Warburg: expression, culture, and the beginnings of the iconological method.
  • 20. 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
  • Kunstgeschichte 1750-1900 : eine kommentierte Anthologie. Edited by Regine Prange. Darmstadt: WBG (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), 2007, 220 stran. ISBN 9783534174850. info
Teaching methods
Lectures; homework with an e-learning; reading.
Assessment methods
Written test + written (home) essay.
Language of instruction
Czech
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2025.
  • Enrolment Statistics (recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/phil/spring2024/DU1723