Moriz Thausing and the road towards objectivity in the history of art

Abstract

On the basis of their substantial publications and widely publicized polemics, Alois Riegl and Franz Wickhoff are justifiably considered the founding figures of the so-called Vienna School of Art History. The historical accident that specialized journals did not previously exist, and meetings and public discussions of the methodology of the history of art did not yet regularly take place, should not however obscure the fact that a coherent and outspoken tradition already existed. When Moriz Thausing held his inaugural lecture in 1873, he was delineating a course of study which linked the history of art to the other disciplines as he must have himself already have been teaching for nearly a decade. His discussion of the nature of art and the method of its historical study as distinct from related subjects and particularly philosophical aesthetics are worth recalling in the context of the origins of the academic study of the history of art.