‘World Art Histories and the Cold War’

Abstract

In the two decades after World War II there were a series of panoramic overviews about the development of art published in both sides of the Iron Curtain. These include Mikail V. Alpatov’s “Vseobshchaya istoriya iskusstv” (The general history of art, 1948–1949), Arnold Hauser’s “Sozialgeschichte der Kunst und Literatur” (The social history of art and literature, 1953), as well as, providing a counter-model to a certain degree, Ernst H. Gombrich’s “The Story of Art” (1950). The authors of these works were often art historians who had to leave their home countries due to the National Socialist terrors to continue their research in exile. In this paper the models concerning the development of art elaborated by these authors, as well as their telos, taking into account the contemporary background of their exile and the emerging conflicts between the two political blocks are discussed.

Keywords

• Mikail V. Alpatov (1902–1986)
• Arnold Hauser (1892–1978)
• Ernst H. Gombrich (1909–2001)
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• World Art History
• Cold War
• Sunday Circle
• Strukturforschung
• Hans Sedlmayr