Journal of Art Historiography (Dec 2020)
From Strzygowski’s “Orient oder Rom” to Hans Sedlmayr’s “Closest Orient”
Abstract
The article presents a history of art historical studies at the University of Vienna in the first half of the twentieth century in terms of its approach to oriental topics. It takes as its starting point a 1937 letter of Hans Sedlmayr, then-director of the Institute of Art History, to Ernst Diez, previously a professor of oriental studies at the same university. In his letter, Sedlmayr rejected Diez’s request to teach at the University, where he had left in 1926, stating that an academic position for ‘oriental art’ was a utopia. He declared his emphasis as the study of Byzantine and Balkan art, which he characterized as ‘the part of the Orient closest to us’: ‘das uns am nächsten liegende gebiet des Orients’. Sedlmayr’s letter opens perspectives on the changing place of oriental studies at the Institute and hints at its changing geographies. This article works backwards from Sedlmayr’s letter to trace an alternative academic history of the renowned Vienna School that unfolds the controversy between the art historiographical geographies of the Orient and Rome.
