Geisteswissenschaft - Journal of Art Historiography

Riccardo Marchi Hans Tietze and art history as Geisteswissenschaft
However, Tietze connotes the study of content with a sense of great
topicality. In fact, he clearly states that his position is in tune on the one hand with
the process of intense ‘spiritualization [Durchgeistigung]’ of post-impressionist art
(229), 139 and on the other with the renewed significance that aesthetics – among
others with Croce – had been giving to expression. 140 (Croce had certainly been
important for his conception of art as a priori synthesis of intuition and expression,
of form and content, in showing Tietze a way to overcome what seemed like an
irresolvable dualism. 141 In addition, to complete this frame of references, even if
Tietze does not directly cite Dilthey in this context, here it is worth recalling,
because of the intense presence of the themes of his philosophy in the Methode, the
centrality that the concept of expression took on in the last hermeneutic phase of
Dilthey’s thought, where it is summoned in order to guarantee the possibility of
inter-subjective access to Erlebnis, in itself a purely inner experience.) 142
Tietze thus points out that the study of content must no longer be carried out
as it had been in the past. That is to say, content should not be considered ‘as
historical anecdote or poetic fable, ... but rather as expression of the spiritual [geistig]
need of an age or an individual, of the clear and obscure inner life, which must
govern the subject matter [Gegenstand] as well as the form.’ 143
In fact, for Tietze, art carries a rich content of ideas. He defines the work of
art as ‘expression of the artistic ideas of a period’, 144 and he intends to investigate the
evolution of these ideas with special intensity in the writings on aesthetics and art
theory as well, 145 because a ‘coherently evolutionary explanation ought to start with
the ideas that were dominant in the different periods’. 146
and its different contexts. This idea was developed by Croce in Problemi di estetica (1911), and was also
central for Tietze, who cites Croce’s text on this very subject (Tietze, Methode, 45).
139 I plan to return to this point (for which I am taking the liberty of referring to Marchi, ‘Tietze’, 189-
194) in more depth, with the necessary enlargements, in a study in preparation. [For my subsequent
publications in this area see note 37 of the 2011 introduction to this article.]
140 On aesthetics in general see Tietze, Methode, 229. For Croce see also p.114.
141 This is in fact the criticism that Croce had made against Wölfflin’s Klassische Kunst, where Wölfflin
had stated the need to exclude expressive elements from true art history. See Benedetto Croce, ‘La
teoria dell'arte come pura visibilità’ (1912), in Saggi filosofici, 5, Nuovi saggi di estetica, Bari: Laterza, 1969,
234-257. On Croce and his importance for overcoming the positivistic conception of the separation of
form and content see also Guido Morpurgo-Tagliabue, L'esthétique contemporaine, Milan: Marzorati,
1967, 75 ff.
142 See Bianco, Introduzione, 103 ff. Tietze’s insistence on the concept of expression is considerable. See
Tietze, Methode, 43 ff.; 234; 320.
143 Tietze, Methode, 229-230: ‘Nicht als historische Anekdote oder poetische Fabel, ... sondern als
Ausdruck des geistigen Bedürfnisses einer Zeit oder eines Einzelnen, des lichten und des dunkeln
Innenlebens, das dem Gegenstand so gut wie der Form das Gesetz geben muß.’
144 Tietze, Methode, 340: ‘Ausdruck der künstlerischen Zeitideen’.
145 Tietze, Methode, 111 ff.
146 Tietze, Methode, 20-21: ‘Eine folgerichtige entwicklungsgeschichtliche Darstellung müßte von den
Ideen ausgehen, die in den verschiedenen Zeitabschnitten geltend waren’.
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