De-scribing the language of looking : Wölfflin and the history of aesthetic experientialism

Author

Jarzombek, Mark

Document type

Article (journal)

Language

English

Source

Assemblage. 1994, Num. 23, 28-69, 1 ill.

ISSN

0889-3012

Abstract (en)

Critique of aesthetic experientialism; surveys its origins in the formalism of Wölfflin, comments on its uniqueness in the context of modernism as a theory that sought to deny both historicity and its own status as theory, and discusses American formalism as a scientific discipline of the humanities. Draws attention to the numerous paradoxes surrounding the legitimacy of experience that experiential formalism outlines; and concludes that what was a strategic opening for Wölfflin became a dangerous historiographic void because the formalist-experientialist discourse disregarded the historical and theoretical bases of its own methodology and falsely legitimized itself in opposition to historicism, totalitarianism, and "dead" scholarship.

Subject (en)

• General works -- Study of art
• Aesthetics
• Wölfflin, Heinrich, 1864-1945
• Art historians
• 1900-2000
• Switzerland
• Formalism
• Modernism
• Experience

Subject (fr)

• Généralités -- Sciences de l'art
• Esthétique
• Wölfflin, Heinrich, 1864-1945
• Historiens de l'art
• 1900-2000
• Suisse
• Formalisme
• Modernisme
• Expérience

Origin

DatabaseBHA (Inist-CNRS/GRI)

Identifier19950401-00312672

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