Wölfflin’s Grundbegriffe as a psychological palimpsest?

Abstract

Review of Heinrich Wölfflin, Principles of Art History. One Hundredth Anniversary Edition, translated by Jonathan Blower and edited by Evonne Levy and Tristan Weddigen: The centenary of the publication of Heinrich Wölfflin’s Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Munich, 1915) has been celebrated by the Getty with a new translation of this seminal text of art history in English. The introductions by Evonne Levy and Tristan Weddigen illuminate the academic background of this work, but also shed an interesting and important light on how the circumstances under which Wölfflin composed his book – the onset of the First World War – had a profound impact on its content and approach. This shows that a contextual approach to the historiography of art can help to reveal its presumed ‘neutral’ methods as profoundly time-bound.

Keywords

• Heinrich Wölfflin
• Grundbegriffe/principles
• art history around 1900
• World War I
• translations