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Current Problems in the History of Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

André Chastel
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Perhaps nothing is more indicative of an advanced civilisation than informed interest in the arts. There have always been connoisseurs and persons of taste; more recent, however—it goes back only two or three generations—is the academic discipline which has brought the serious historian into a domain which had long been reserved for the enthusiast, the lover of virtu, and the artist. When Nietzsche noted Burckhardt's and Taine's success in combining the history of art with that of civilisations, he wondered whether this was a symptom of decadence. Little inclined to propose, easy tasks to modern man, he perceived a mortal danger in ‘pedantic’ simplifications and did not doubt that the need for ‘scientific’ explanations in matters of art would have as its counterpart a growing paralysis of the creative faculties. To the extent that this meant hypertrophy of memory, it would gradually enervate the fecundity of talent; was it even certain that it always favoured the development of sure and keen taste?

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , September 1953 , pp. 74 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © 1953 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 Les chefs d'œuvre des collections françaises retrouvés en Allemagne, Paris: Orangerie, July-August, 1946; Mostra delle opere d'arte recuperate in Germania, Rome: Palais de Venise, 1948; Seconda Mostra, ibid., 1950.

2 F. Hart, Florentine Art under Fire, Princeton, N.J., 1949.

3 H. La Farge, Lost Treasures of Europe, New York, 1946.

4 C. Norris, ‘The Disaster at Flakturm Friedrichshain; A Chronicle and List of Paintings', The Burlington Magazine, Dec. 1952; ‘Berliner Museen Berichte', N.F., II (1952).

5 The division and regrouping of European collections was conducted for the first time on a grand scale by the Republic and the Empire of France; it coincided with the completely new idea of a national museum. From 1794 to 1815 Paris had the most sumptuous museum which had ever existed. Cf. H. van der Tun, Les Vieux peintres des Pays-Bas et la critique artistique en France de la première moitié du XIXe siècle (Publications de la Faculté des Lettres de Lille, IX), Paris, 1948.

6 For example, Peintures méconnues des églises de Paris, Paris: Musée Galliéra, 1946.

7 R. Demangel, ‘Recherches sous-marines en Grèce', C.R. Acad. Inscr. et Belles Lettres, 1950, p. 322; A. Poiderard and J. Lauffray, Sidon, aménagements antiques du port de Saida, Beyrouth, 1951; J. Baradez, Forsatum Africae, Recherches Aériennes sur l'organisation des confins sahariens à l'époque romaine, Algiers, 1949; R. Bloch, in Annales, économies, sociétés, civilisations, July-Sept. 1952.

8 Martin Davies, The Earlier Italian Schools, London: National Gallery, 1951. On the exem plary value and certain dangers of this work, see R. Longhi, Paragone, No. 27, March, 1952.

9 All the same, precise norms ought to be established for exhibition catalogues; a good example is the catalogue published in connexion with the exhibition of Vitraux français du XIIème au XVIème siècles, Paris: Pavillion de Marsan, May-Oct., 1953.

10 An Exhibition of Cleaned Pictures (1936-47), London: The National Gallery, 1947. Preface by Philip Hendy.

11 La Mostra del Restauro, Vicenza, 1949, should be mentioned for its clarity in the exposition of principles.

12 P. B. Coremans, L'Agneau mystique au laboratoire, examen et traitement (‘Les Primitifs flamands', III, Contribution à l'étude, 2), Antwerp, 1953.

13 ‘It must be definitely acknowledged that the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci resist and elude radiographic examination.' M. Hours, ‘La peinture de Leonard vu au laboratoire', L'Amour de l'art, No. 67-69, Spring, 1953.

14 Histories of collectors of the last century have begun to appear: F. Steegmüller, The Two-Lives of J. J. Jarves, New Haven, Conn., 1951; also histories of the great dealers: S. N. Behrmann, Duveen, New York, 1951.

15 Cf. Coremans, Van Meegeren's faked Vermeers and de Hooghs, a Scientific Examination, London, 1950; and the attempt at discussion ofJ. Decoen, Back to the Truth: Vermeer-Van Meegeren, Two Genuine Vermeers, Amsterdam, 1951.

16 Magazine of Art, vol. 41, May, 1948: special issue on forgeries; O. Kurz, Fakers, London, 1948; H. Tietze, Copies, Imitations, Forgeries, London, 1950; exposition of ‘faux tableaux', Amsterdam, 1952; J. Rewald, ‘Modem Fakes and Modern Pictures', Art News, vol. 52, March 1953.

17 Max J. Friedländer, Art and Connoisseurship, London, 1952.

18 B. Berenson, Metodo e attribuzioni, Florence, 1947.

19 Lionello Venturi, ‘Studi radiografici sul Caravaggio', Atti Acad. Naz. Lincei, Scienze Morali, VIII, V (1952); R. Jullian and J. Bousquet, Revue des Arts, III (1953), No. 2; D. Mahon, The Burlington Magazine, June 1953 (from whom the above phrase is taken).

20 E. M. Upjohn, P. Swingert, J. G. Mahler, History of World Art, New York, 1949; H. Leicht, Kunstgeschichte der Welt, Basle, 1951, English ed. London, 1952; E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art, London, 1950, 2nd ed., 1952.

21 M. Zahar, L'Accord des œuvres d'art avec leurs justes procédés de reproduction en couleurs, Paris, privately printed, 1953.

22 E. R. Curtius, Die Tat, Zürich, July 5, 1952.

23 M. Merleau-Ponty, ‘Les language indirect et les Voix du silence', Les Temps Modernes, June, 1952.

24 Meyer Schapiro, ‘Style', in Anthropology Today, Chicago, 1953, pp. 287-312.

25 A. Hauser, The Social History of Art, London, 1951.

26 F. Antal, Florentine Painting and Its Social Background, London, 1948.

27 Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death, Princeton, 1951.

28 P. Francastel, Peinture et Société, Naissance et destruction d'un espa ce plastique: De la Renaissance au Cubisme, Lyon, 1951.

29 R. Lecotté, Le culte populaire de la Vierge et des saints dans le diocèse actuel de Meaux, Paris, 1951; H. R. Hahnloser, ‘Du culte de l'image au moyen age', in L'umanesimo e il demoniaco nell' arte, Rome, 1953.

30 B. Rowland, The Art and Architecture of India, Buddhist, Hindu and Jain (‘The Pelican History of Art’), London, 1953.

31 J. Auboyer, ‘Mudra et Hasta, ou le langage par gestes', Oriental Art, 1950.

32 J. Huizinga, Homo ludens, Amsterdam, 1939. French ed., Paris, 1931; J. Pieper, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, London, 1952.

33 G. Weise, ‘Considerazioni di storia dell' arte intorno al Barocco', in Rivista della Letteratura Moderna, 1952, pp. 5-14.

34 G. Briganti, in Paragone, No. I, Jan. 1950; No. 3, Mar. 1950; No. 13, Jan. 1951.

35 Carlo L. Ragghianti, L'arte e la critica, Florence, 1951.

36 R. Longhi, Proposti per una critica d'arte (lecture at the P.E.N. Club), 1951.

37 B. Berenson, Aesthetics and History, London, 1950; L'arco di Costantino, o della decadenza della forma, Florence, 1953.

38 P. Frankl, Das System der Kunstwissenschaft, Briinn and Leipzig, 1938; D. Frey, ‘Zur Wissenschaftlichen Lage der Kunstgeschichte', in Kunstgeschichtliche Grundfragen, Vienna, 1946.

39 H. Focillon, Piero della Francesca, Paris, 1951; L'an mil, Paris, 1952.

40 L. H. Heydenreich, Kunstchronik, Dec. 1952; G. Nicco-Fasola, Il Ponte, Jan. 1953; A. Chastel, Humanisme et Renaissance, XV (1953), I.

41 L. Grodecki, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1949, 2.

42 F. Kimball, Le style Louis XV, Paris, 1950.

43 C. Schweicher, Die Bildraumgestaltung, das Dekorative und das Ornamentale im Werke von Edouard Vuillard (Zürich Dissertation), Trier, 1949.

44 A. Whittier, European Architecture in the Twentieth Century, Vol. II, London, 1953, p. 221.

45 G. Kubler, Mexican Architecture in the XVIIth century, 2 vols.; New Haven (USA), 1948; Diego Angulo Iniguez, Historia del Arte Hispanoamericano, vol. I, Madrid, 1946, vol. II, 1950; P. Kelemer, Baroque and Rococo in Latin America, New York, 1951.

46 K. A. L. Cresswell, The Art Bulletin, XXXV (1953), I.

47 L. Olschki, Guillaume Boucher, a French Artist at the Court of the Khans, Baltimore, 1946; to be completed by J. Baltrusaitis, Reveils et Prodiges, forthcoming.

48 J. B. Ward Perkins, ‘The Italian Element in Late Roman and Early Medieval Architecture', in Proceedings of the British Academy, XXXIII, 1947.

49 P. Deschamps and M. Thibout, La peinture murale en France, I, Le haut Moyen-Age et l ‘époque romane, Paris, 1951.

50 M. Gomez-Moreno, 'El arte arabe español hasta los Almohades, Arte mozarabe' (Ars Hispaniae, III) Madrid, 1951.

51 A. Grabar, Martyrium, Recherches sur le culte des reliques et 1'art chrétien antique, 2 vol., Paris, 1943-46; ‘Christian Architecture, East and West', Archaeology, II, 1948.

52 ‘Le symbolisme cosmique dans l'architecture', Paris: Musée Guimet, July-Nov., 1953.

53 Sumner McKnight Crosby, L'abbaye royale de Saint Denis, Paris, 1953. The return to sym bolic interpretation goes so far as to become paradoxical in: J. Sedlmayr, Die Entstehung der Kathedrale, Zurich, 1950; more syncretic: G. Grabmann, Mittelalterliche Architektur als Deutungsträger, Berlin, 1951.

54 R. Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (Studies of the Warburg Institute, 19), London, 1949, 2nd ed., 1952.

55 B. Zevi, Saper veder l'architettura, Turin, 1951; Storia dell'architettura moderna, Ist ed., 1950, 2nd ed., 1952.

56 Walter and E. Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz, Frankfurt a.M., 5 vol., 1943-53.

57 L. Hautecœur, Histoire de l'architecture classique en France, IV books of 6 vol., in publication, Paris, 1943-52.

58 M. Salmi and D. Fava, I manoscritti della biblioteca Estense di Modena, Ist vol. published, Florence, 1950.

59 A. E. Popham and J. Wilde, The Italian Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century (The Italian Drawings at Windsor Castle), London, 1949; A. E. Popham and P. Pouncey, Italian Drawings in the British Museum in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century, London, 1950.

60 R. W. Kennedy, The Art Bulletin, XXXIII (1951); W. M. Ivins, Jr., Prints and Visual Communication, London, 1953.

61 Mary Pittaluga, Aquafortisti veneziani del Settecento, Florence, 1953; A. Hyatt Major, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, New York 1952. Attention should again be directed to the important results achieved by the critical publication of the drawings of Poussin by W. Friedländer, vol. II, London, 1949, and the engravings of Rembrandt by L. Münz, 2 vol., London, 1953.