The subject of scientific art history according to Riegl … and his followers

Abstract

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.