Inside haptic Modernism: Alois Riegl and AngloAmerican art criticism and theory

Abstract

Introduced in 1902 in response to a polemical article by Strzygowski, the category of haptic formulated by Alois Riegl enjoyed a remarkable critical fortune, exquisitely interdisciplinary, throughout the 20th century and beyond. A critical fortune that, not infrequently, has taken the form of a complex and radical reinterpretation of the “optical device” postulated by Riegl, reflecting on the construction of space in Egyptian bas-relief. Since the 1990s, significant new interpretations have been made in the Film Studies field by authors such as Antonia Lant and Noël Burch and, in a more openly subversive, transcultural and gender-based key, by scholars such as Laura U. Marks, Jennifer M. Barker and Giuliana Bruno. Although the research converging in the Film Studies field still needs systematic recognition, this branch of studies is partially known. Otherwise, the adoptions and interpolations this notion has received in contemporary art criticism and historiography still constitute a widely unexplored field. Given this scenario, this contribution aims to trace how the notion of haptic has entered the lexicon of Anglo-American theory and criticism through the modernist period. It will try to record affinities, interpolations, and reinterpretations of the Rieglian model to stress this category’s theoretical malleability and vitality. Through the rediscovery of some forgotten sources, such as Louis Danz’s prodromic study on Picasso Guernica (1937) published in 1941, this study aims at analyzing critically how this notion has been experienced by authors such as Herbert Read and Clement Greenberg, showing how the different genealogies, one aesthesiological and the other psychophysiological (defined by Max Dessoir, Viktor Lowenfeld and Ludwig Münz) intertwined determined two alternative epistemic frameworks. Tracing essays and theories is intended to show how this category has become an eccentric critical tool to disorientate and dismantle the Modernist and Rieglian oculocentric discourses.