The New Vienna School of Art History: Fulfilling the Promise of Analytic Holism

by Ian Verstegen

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 Pächt 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 Pächt’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 Pächt’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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474489775
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2025
Series:	Refractions
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	82.69(w) x 82.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ian Verstegen is Associate Director of Visual Studies at Universityof 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).

Table of Contents

List of Figures; Series Editor's Preface; Preface by Richard Woodfield; Acknowledgements; Glossary of Terms; Introduction: ‘In the Beginning was the Eye, not the Word’; The Challenge and the Payoff; The Players; The Corpus; Gestalt Theory: Basis of the Viennese Method; Doing Vienna School Art History; PART I – THEORY AND METHODOLOGY; Chapter 1 The Crisis of the Sciences, Art History, and the Vienna School; Gestalt Psychology; Holism and Politics; Sedlmayr’s Turn toward Iconology; Chapter 2 The Basics of Strukturforschung; Hamburg Iconology; Two Sciences of Art; Mental Set (Einstellung); Embedded Behaviour; Reflexivity and Progress; Chapter 3 Struktur, History and Determinism; Genius; Social Gestalten; Historical Chains; Historical Compulsion; PART II – CASE STUDIES; Chapter 4 Hans Sedlmayr’s Borromini; The Book; Sedlmayr’s Method; Gebilde – Borromini’s Works; Architektur – Borromini’s Theory; Dokument – Borromini’s Character; Chapter 5 Otto Pächt and ‘National’ Constants in Late-Gothic Painting; Design Principles: Technical and Aesthetic Space; Design Principles: Surface and Pattern; The Netherlandish Design Principle; The Dutch Design Principle; The French Design Principle; Schapiro’s Critique; Reconstituting Art Historical Constants; Whither Zeitgeist?; Chapter 6 Johannes Wilde on Michelangelo; The Image in Space; Wilde and his Historical Method; Function, Parts and Wholes; An Erudite Chapel?; Gestalt, Parts and Wholes; Chapter 7 Otto Demus, Byzantine Art and the Spatial Icon; Toward Byzantine Mosaic Decoration; The Icon in Space; Beyond Byzantine Mosaic Decoration?; Nonwestern Art and Gestalt Restructuring; Conclusion: The Vienna School Today; Notes; References; Index.

Editorial 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.

Whither Strukturforschung? - Erhan Tamur

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.

Choice - D. H. Cibelli