9/SM1 - Journal of Art Historiography

Stefan Muthesius
Towards an ‘exakte Kunstwissenschaft‘(?)
of the ‘Volkscharakter’, evident from the early work of Waagen onwards. 13 The more
strictly philosophical angle taken by Prange will reveal further trends for Berlin.
A multitude of continuities and innovations (Locher)
Hubert Locher’s is the longest and the most wide-ranging of the three major works
dealt with here. It covers aspects of art history from the eighteenth to the twentieth
century, but much of it is devoted to the crucial period dealt with in this report.
In Locher’s at first somewhat puzzling title: ‘The History of Art as a
historical Theory of Art’ the key word has to be ‘theory’. However, the book does
not come across as a work of theory, ordered by one stringent formula; instead it is a
discursive work in which theories are constantly mixed with more mundane
matters and contexts of many kinds. A better idea of the book’s slant is given by the
title of the introductory section: ‘Kunstgeschichte als Wissenschaft der Kunst’, art
history as the science / academic study of art. Here Locher addresses the central
issue of the years 1820-1880, already indicated in this report, the attempts to
establish the study of the history of art as a bona-fide Wissenschaft, based on the
principle of verifiability. In a key section, Locher homes in on the problems of
evaluation. He refers to two programmatic articles by Moriz Thausing and Anton
Springer of the 1870s and 1880s in which these two principal members of the brandnew
profession argue for the radical separation of art history from art criticism as
well as from any kind of involvements with the artists of the day, because their
judgments are always subjective and could never fit in with the art historians’ antinormativity.
Locher cites Thausing’s often repeated contention ‘I can think of the
best art history in which the word beautiful does not occur at all.’ Locher, however,
also stresses at this point that art historians do habitually make judgements of art
value, when sifting through what is or was important, or what was innovative, or
just to determine ‘authenticity’. On these occasions, Locher contends, a critical
discussion of the notion of ‘art’ does not occur; rather the term is taken for granted.
There is a continuing notion of a timeless ‘contents’ of art, comprising the present,
as well. 14 What has also never really been clarified, in respect of value judgments, is
the art historian’s frequent uneasiness vis-à-vis contemporary art. At this point
members of the profession contend that their judgements about past art are
legitimised by the historical distance. Yet Locher holds that ‘the commonplace of a
historical distance being the precondition for an objective judgment in actual fact
only serves as an excuse to shirk from providing a reason for making a judgment.’ 15
13
Bickendorf in Pfisterer, 53.
14
`Weiterhin geht man von einem überzeitlichen Inhalt der Kunst aus’. Cf. Anton Springer,
‘Kunstkenner und Kunsthistoriker’, Im Neuen Reich, vol. 11, no. 46 1881, 737-758, also in Anton
Springer, Bilder aus der neueren Kunstgeschichte, 2 nd ed. Bonn: A.Marcus 1886, 377-404. ‘Ich kann mir die
beste Kunstgeschichte denken, in der das Wort schön gar nicht vorkommt’; Moritz Thausing, ‘Die
Stellung der Kunstgeschichte als Wissenschaft’. …Antrittsvorlesung (inaugural lecture) …’ 1873, also
in Moritz Thausing, Wiener Kunstbriefe, Leipzig: Seemann 1884 1-20 (article newly published in Wiener
Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, XXXVI, 1983, 140-150), See also translation and comemntary by Karl Johns,
Journal of Art Historigraphy, 1 2009. Locher, 52-55.
15
‘Der Gemeinplatz einer notwendigen historischen Distanz als Vorraussetzung für ein objektives
Urteil is allerdings nur eine Ausrede, um sich von der Begründing einer Wertung zu drücken’. Locher,
55.
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