Overview

This book is an account of the theory and practice of practitioners of the so-called ""second"" or ""younger"" Viennese school associated with Hans Sedlmayr and Otto Pcht and their short-lived journal, Kunstwissenschaftliche Forschungen. It demonstrates the strong dependence of these writers on the work of Gestalt psychology which was emerging at the time. Gestalt theory emerges as the master key to interpreting Sedlmayr and Pcht's ideas about art and history and how it affected their practices. This fresh interpretive apparatus casts light on the power and originality of Sedlmayr's and Pcht's theoretical and empirical writings, revealing a practice-based approach to history that is more attuned to the visuality of art. Verstegen demonstrates the existence of a genealogy of Vienna formalism coursing throughout most of the twentieth century, encompassing Johannes Wilde and his students at the Courtauld as well as Otto Demus in Byzantine studies. By bringing Gestalt theory to the surface, he dispels misunderstandings about the Vienna School theory and attains a deeper understanding of the promise that a Gestalt analytic holism a non-intuitionist account of the relational logic of sense is offered.

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9781474489768

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Reviews

"This book is highly beneficial not only for bringing together Verstegen's fresh insights that have remained dispersed in many articles, but also for its ambition to engage with theory out in the open, rather than relegating it to a series of tacit assumptions buried deep within a historical study. That transparency is key to any meaningful progress in art history.--Erhan Tamur ""Whither Strukturforschung?"" Verstegen shows that art historians owe much to the affiliates of the new Vienna School because they made a conscious effort to analyze form rather than privilege subject matter, an idea that became central to scholarship informed by the work of Erwin Panofsky and other iconologists. Recommended.--D. H. Cibelli, Nicholls State University ""Choice"""

This book is highly beneficial not only for bringing together Verstegen's fresh insights that have remained dispersed in many articles, but also for its ambition to engage with theory out in the open, rather than relegating it to a series of tacit assumptions buried deep within a historical study. That transparency is key to any meaningful progress in art history.--Erhan Tamur ""Whither Strukturforschung?"" Verstegen shows that art historians owe much to the affiliates of the new Vienna School because they made a conscious effort to analyze form rather than privilege subject matter, an idea that became central to scholarship informed by the work of Erwin Panofsky and other iconologists. Recommended.--D. H. Cibelli, Nicholls State University ""Choice""

Author Information

Ian Verstegen is Associate Director of Visual Studies at University of Pennsylvania. Trained in Italian Renaissance art history, he also writes on art theory and historiography. He is the author of Arnheim, Gestalt and Art: A Psychological Theory (2004) and Arnheim, Gestalt and Media: An Ontological Theory (2018).

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