From Vienna to Hamburg: Theories of Art in the 20th Century--Historiography, Religion, and Crisis

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course lays out the background to the historiographic complexities of studying visual culture and art history now in relation to the ways the dominant theories and methods of the discipline involved in the context of 20th-century history and ideologies. It is impossible in 9 sessions to cover the entire historiography of an ancient discipline. The course will therefore take a selective approach by focusing on the foundations of the art historical approaches in Germany in the Twentieth century that have proved most formative for the development of the discipline in Anglo-American contexts after the Second World War. This may be seen as a narrowing of focus, but it has the benefit of offering a coherent if highly complex and conflictive story to uncover: effectively the most philosophically intense moment in art history from 1900 to the 1950's, the relation of the discipline and its exiles to the rise, triumph and demise of the Third Reich, and the beginnings of its development in the post-War period.