The Expressionist Turn in Art History : A Critical Anthology

During the period in which Expressionist artists were active in central Europe, art historians were producing texts which were characterized as ‘expressionist’, yet the notion of an expressionist art history has yet to be fully explored in historiographic studies. This anthology offers a cross-section of noteworthy art history texts written 1912-1933 that have been described as expressionist, along with commentaries by an international group of scholars. Together they offer a productive lens through which to re-examine the practice and theory of early twentieth-century art history. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Acknowledgments Introduction Wilhelm Worringer Fritz Burger Ernst Heidrich Max Dvoák Heinrich Wölfflin Carl Einstein Expressionist Art and Art History Overview of Contents Notes PART I: WILHELM WORRINGER 1 Illustration and Advertising: Wilhelm Worringer’s Die altdeutsche Buchillustration Illustration and Abstraction Woodcuts as Art and Kultur Abstraction in Advertising and Art Return to Abstraction Notes 2 Introduction to Old German Book Illustration (1912) Notes PART II: FRITZ BURGER 3 Expressionism and Empathy: Fritz Burger’s Theory of Art Introduction Burger and Renaissance Italy: Between Expressionism and Empathy 1911: The Turn to the Modernists 1912: A Theory of Art Criticism 1913–1914: Theoretical Writings and Major Publications 1915–1916: The Expressionist as Empathic Art Historian Critical Reception Notes 4 From Cézanne and Hodler: Introduction to the Problems of Contemporary Painting (1913) Foreword Problems of Modern Painting Notes PART III: ERNST HEIDRICH 5 Ernst Heidrich as an “Expressionist” Art Historian A Look at Vlaemische Malerei and Other Volumes Written for the Jena Arts Publisher Eugen Diederichs Notes 6 From Flemish Painting (1913) Notes PART IV MAX DVOÁK 7 Inventing “Mannerist Expressionism”: Max Dvoák and the History of Art as History of the Spirit Vienna, November/December 1920: Max Dvorák Gives Lectures on Tintoretto Tintoretto as Painter of the Spiritual around 1920: Ernst Bloch, Max Dvorák, Emil Waldmann, and the Legacy of Henry Thode Max Dvorák in 1917: Mannerism as the Expressionism of the Sixteenth Century Prerequisites I: From the Baroque to Modernity and the Crisis of Evolutionary Paradigms of Art History (1900 to c. 1914) Prerequisites II: The Turn to the History of Spirit under the Sign of an Antinaturalistic and Idealistic Modernity (c. 1912–1917) Tertium Datur: Mannerism as a Subjective Art of Expression beyond Naturalism and Aestheticism (c. 1917–1921) Max Dvorák, an Expressionist Art Historian? Notes 8 “Tintoretto” (1920) Note 9 Foreword to Oskar Kokoschka: Variations on a Theme (1921) PART V: HEINRICH WÖLFFLIN 10 Heinrich Wölfflin and the German Sense of Form Form as Expression Ausdruck and Art History The Subject of Expression Notes 11 “Italy and the German Sense of Form” (1921–1922) 12 “Principles of Art History: A Revision” (1933) Notes PART VI: CARL EINSTEIN 13 Carl Einstein and Expressionism: The Case of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Notes 14 “Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,” from Art of the Twentieth Century (1926) Note 15 “Kandinsky” (1926) Note 16 “George Grosz” (1926) Notes Bibliography General Sources Fritz Burger Max Dvorák Carl Einstein Ernst Heidrich Heinrich Wölfflin Wilhelm Worringer Index During the period in which Expressionist artists were active in central Europe, art historians were producing texts which also began to be characterized evocatively as 'expressionist', yet the notion of an expressionist art history has yet to be fully explored in historiographic studies of the discipline. This anthology offers a cross-section of noteworthy art history texts that have been described as expressionist, along with critical commentaries by an international group of scholars. Written between 1912 and 1933, the primary sources have been selected from the published scholarship of both recognized and less-familiar figures in the field's Germanic tradition: Wilhelm Worringer, Fritz Burger, Ernst Heidrich, Max Dvorak, Heinrich Wölfflin, and Carl Einstein. Translated here for the first time, these examples of an expressionist turn in art history, along with their secondary analyses and the book's introduction, offer a productive lens through which to re-examine the practice and theory of art history in the early twentieth century