Alois Riegl, ‘Lovers of art, ancient and modern’ , Translated with an introduction by Karl Johns

Abstract

This paper was originally given as a lecture to the Wiener Kunstfreunde and posthumously published as ‘Über antike und moderne Kunstfreunde Vortrag gehalten in der Gesellschaft der Wiener Kunstfreunde,’ Kunstgeschichtliches Jahrbuch der K. K. Zentral-Kommission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der kunst- und historischen Denkmale, Volume 1, 1907, Beiblatt für Denkmalpflege, column 1-14, reprinted in Alois Riegl, Gesammelte Aufsätze, Augsburg Vienna: Filser, 1929, 194-206. It defines ‘art lovers’ as collectors/consumers of old art and includes contemporary practicing artists as potential members of that group. The lecture examines the role of the art lover in history, extending from antiquity to the present day. A crux occurred at the end of the nineteenth century when the art of earlier periods is honoured as a temple constructed as an end in itself and not a model for further practice. The emergence Impressionism went hand in hand with the appearance of art lovers as admirers of earlier art on the basis of its age alone. This optical subjectivism is present in the art of the Roman imperial period as well as in modern art. This leads to the question of how optical subjectivism succeeds in arousing, indeed provoking, interest in ancient art. In its effect of conjuring a mood, the contemporary art lovers’ contemplation of earlier art coincides directly with the modern artistic goals of optical subjectivism.

Keywords

• the market
• forgeries
• copies
• connoisseurship
• Trimalchio
• optical subjectivism