A Monumental Step for Riegl and Schlosser in France (2014)

A monumental step for Riegl and Schlosser in France Review of: Alois Riegl, Christopher S. Wood, Emmanuel Alloa, L'industrie d'art romaine tardive, trans. Marielene Weber, Sophie Yersin Legrand, Paris: Editions Macula 2014, 476 pp., 23 col. plates, 126 ill. b/w, 44.00 euro, ISBN 978-2-86589- 075-0, ISSN 1159-4632Julius von Schlosser, Patricia Falguieres, Les Cabinets d'art et de merveilles de la Renaissance tardiv: Une contribution a l'histoire du collectionnisme, Paris: Editions Macula 2012, 372 pp., 115 ill. b/w, 31.00 euro, ISBN 978-2-86589-073-6, ISSN 1159-4632Alois Riegl and Julius Schlosser are well known names in the creation of an objective foundation for the history of art as an academic discipline. As the topics slowly emerged from archaeology and the program for historical training in the Institut fur Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung at the university in Vienna, there were almost no specialized periodicals, and with the help of photography, the most basic collections of materials were still emerging from a very simple and primal stage. There were no accepted terminologies or distinctions of particular aspects of art so that each individual forged ahead on the basis of their own experience in archaeology, history, literature and philosophy. From the crop of the earliest students, Riegl and Schlosser emerged as two of the most prolific in their early posts in the Vienna museums, and each in their own way gravitated back to the university. With the strong training in classical languages and predominantly florid styles of writing which did not change until the end of the monarchy, their intense reflections on fundamental academic problems have always provided something of an obstacle to readers. When my own grandmother (who heard some of their lectures and was acquainted with their students) would chide me for reading a translation, I already then had the wit to reply that I was reading Samuel Butler and not Homer. Since those early days of the historical auxiliary sciences and of a more pervasive sound classical education, translations have become far more important in the world, more as things might have been in the 10th century. These two books can only be welcomed.Since its first publication in 1901, Riegl's Spatromische Kunstindustrie has been considered profound but problematic, and always aroused contradictory responses.1 The 1927 edition was prepared by a young Otto Pacht in a smaller format for a more 'popular' consumption. Its introduction by Emil Reisch is distinct from the afterword by Pacht, and makes it clear that specialists were divided into those who were enthusiastic and others who were politely reticent. The new French edition is back to a slightly larger format, although only half the height and less than half the weight of the 1901 folio edition, but similar in the way it includes an introduction by Christopher S. Wood and an afterword by Emmanuel Alloa. There seem to always be more than one person eager to speak and not content with what others might say. 2014 provides an interesting comparison to 1927 in this regard.Alois Riegl will probably be remembered for having analyzed less prominent works of art in such a way as to bring them to life more vividly than ever before or since, and in this way to have provided the basis for a study of the history of art independent of other academic and pseudo-scientific disciplines. In grappling with a field including very few dated monuments, he analyzes the intrinsic development of ornament as a reliable guide to the progression of art which he seems to consider to be vaguely inevitable. Ornament and architecture are important to him since they do not include the human figure which he considers to distract from the actual subject of the visual arts - 'das eigentlich Bildkunstlerische.'* 2 Some archaeologists were surprised at the time to open a book about decorative arts and find a chapter about sculpture of equal length to the actual subject in the title. …