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Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945) | |
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Swiss art historian and aesthetician, who attempted to formulate an objective set of criteria for the classifications of art history. Wölfflin's most famous works include Renaissance und Barock (1888, Renaissance and Baroque) and Die klassische Kunst (1898, Classic Art), and Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (1915, Principles of Art History). "Of all nations, Italy has given the classic type its clearest impress; that is the glory of her architecture as of her design. Even in the baroque she never went so far in depriving the parts of their independence as Germany. We could characterise the difference of imagination by a musical metaphor. Italian church bells always hold to definite tone-figures: when German bells ring it is merely a weft of harmonious sound." (Wölflin in Principles of Art History) Heinrich Wölfflin was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, into a wealthy and cultured family. His father, Eduard Wölfflin (1831-1903) was a classical scholar, who helped found and organize the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, for which he prepared the Archiv für Lateinische Lexikographie und Grammatik (15 vol., 1884-1909). Wölfflin studied art history and philosophy at the University of Basel from 1882 to 1886, where his teacher was the famous historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897), writer of The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). He spent two years in Italy, and published in 1888 his first major work, Renaissance und Barock. It was not until the publication of this study that the term "Baroque" was used neutrally in art history - earlier it had been a synonym for eccentric odd, or bizarre. In Wölfflin's time baroque art was not considered respectable outside Germany. However, Wölfflin applied the term to period which started about 1530 and ended in the 1630s, when later the term was used to describe the style that followed Mannerism and lasted, though with profound modifications, until well into the 18th century. Wölfflin made a clear historical distinction between Renaissance and Baroque, defining the later as "movement imported into mass." For Jacob Burckhardt, whose thought deeply influenced Wölfflin, the style meant degeneration. Prejudice against Baroque's artistic achievements continued almost until the World War II. After studies at the University of Berlin and Munich, Wölfflin received his Ph.D. in 1888. He then worked for five years at the University of Basel as a lecturer, before he was appointed Professor of Art History in Basel. It is noteworthy that Wölfflin, who later was called a champion of "formal analysis", wrote in the very last sentence of Die klassische Kunst (1899): "In no way do we ant to have pleaded for a formalistic appreciation of art. It certainly needs the light to make the diamond sparkle." From 1901 to 1912 he was Professor of Art History at the University of Berlin and then at Munich until 1924. During this period appeared his most acclaimed work, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe. As a lecturer Wölfflin was highly popular. He pioneered the use of twin projectors in teaching and his fame drew a number of students to work on doctoral theses on his direction. After 1924 Wölfflin continued his career in Switzerland at the University of Zurich. He was an editor of Jacob Burckhardt's work and published a psychological study on the Renaissance art, The Sense of Form (1931), in which he compared Italian and German art of the period. Wölfflin died in Zurich on July 19, 1945. Wölfflin once remarked that all pictures owe more to other pictures than they do to the nature. His stylistic analysis was born as a reaction to the anecdotal and biographical approach in art history, partly deriving from Vasari's Vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori Italiani (1550-68, The Lives of the Artists). When art history as a modern academic discipline was taking its fist steps, Wölfflin wanted to create for it a firm ground, "eine Naturgeschichte der Kunst", find facts and laws, universal forms of representation. In the introduction of Principles of Art History Wölfflin stated that each artist has his or her own personal style, but beyond this there is also a national style, and finally a period style, which rise and fall cyclically. "Not everything is possible at all times," Wölfflin wrote. "Vision itself has its history, and the revelation of these visual strata must be regarded as the primary task of art history." Wölfflin combined the "emphatic" notions of von Hildebrande with his search for the "basic principles" (Grundbegriffe) underlying the creation and appreciation of art. To analyze the differences between the classic - roughly the sixteenth century, Renaissance - style, and its opposite, the Baroque style (the seventeenth century), Wölfflin used five pairs of concepts. The first described the development from the linear to painterly, the dissolution of firm, plastic form with strongly stressed outlines into quivering and flickering, moving form. One of his examples dealt with the contrast between Dürer and Rembrandt, whose paintings were dominated by lights and shadows, whereas in Dürer's work the masses appeared with firm edges. Other four categories were plane and recession (the development from the vision of the surface to the vision of depth), closed and open form (pictures were not adjusted to the line of the frame but suggested that the representational area extended beyond the borders of the work), multiplicity and unity (change from the classic composition, in which single parts have a certain independence, to a feeling of unity), relative clearness and unclearness (the contrast between distinctness, in which light defines form in the detail, and an attempt to evade clearness, to make the totality of the picture seem unintentional). "What radically distinguishes Rembrandt from Dürer is the vibration of the picture as a whole, which persists even where they eye was not intended to perceive the individual form-signs. Certainly it powerfully supports the illusive effect if an independent activity in the building up of the picture is assigned to the spectator, if the separate brush-strokes coalesce only in the act of contemplation. But the picture which comes to birth is fundamentally disparate from the picture of the linear style. The presentment remains indeterminate, and is not meant to settle into those lines and planes which have a meaning for the tactile sense." (Wölflin in Principles of Art History) Wölfflin also applied his distinctions into sculpture and architecture, and for example in architecture clearness means representation in ultimate, enduring forms; baroque unclearness means making the forms look like something changing, becoming. All these opposed characteristics, except the striving for unity, are an expression of the development from strictness to freedom. According to Wölfflin, there is classic and baroque not only in more modern times, but in the Middle Ages and in the Antique. The art historian Arnold Hauser has noted in The Social History of Art (vol. 2, 1962), that Wölfflin's categories cannot be applied to such baroque artist as Poussin and Claude Lorrain, who were neither "painterly" or "unclear". He also criticizes Wölfflin's unhistorical approach, and his indifference to sociological explanations behind the change of style. "Wölfflin's categories of the baroque are, in fact, nothing but the application of the concepts of impressionism to the art of the seventeenth century..." For further reading: Die "Grundbegriffe" als Kunstbetrachtung bei Wölfflin und Dvorák by W. Böckelmann (1938); Schönheit und Grenzen der klassischen Form: Burchardt, Croce, Wölfflin: Drei Vörtrage by Joseph Gantner (1949); Philosophie der Kunstgeschichte by Arnold Hauser (1958); Heinrich Wölfflin als Literarhistoriker by Walter Rehm (1960); Stil-Symbol-Struktur. Studien zu Kategorien der Kunstgeschichte by L. Dittmann (1967); Kunst und Wissenschaft - Untersuchung zur Äesthetik and Methodik der Kunstgeschichtsschreibung bei Riegl, Wölfflin und Dvorák by H.B. Busse (1981); Heinrich Wölfflin: Biographie einer Kunsthistoria by Meinhold Lurz (1981); Thinkers of the Twentieth Century, ed. by Roland Turner (1987); Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873-1893 by Robert Vischer, Conrad Fiedler, Heinrich Wölfflin (1994) - For further information: - Heinrich Wölfflin - Biographie - Note: Wölfflin's birthdate is in some sources 24.6.1864, in this calendar 21.6.1864. Selected works:
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