Journal of Art Historiography (Dec 2009)
The Vienna School of Art History and (Viennese) Modern Architecture
Abstract
The essay investigates the way Strzygowski, Dvořák and Tietze interpreted contemporary architecture, and also traces the basic premises of the Vienna School in their views. Viennese art historians, namely Dvořák and Tietze, shared a critical attitude toward historicism and eclecticism of he 19th century with their contemporaries. They regarded Otto Wagner as the most influential architect of the generation of 1900, but at the same time, they protested his belief that architectural form could be based solely on constructional reason and utility. They defined the notion that art emerges first from nonmaterial ideals. In opposition against architectural realism, based on the characteristics of technological society, they hold that architecture should be a product of imaginative subjectivity. Unlike advocates of empirical utilitarianism, finding their voice at the time, they stressed on importance of cultivating artistic tradition.
