Hegel's Art History and the Critique of Modernity

A study of Hegel's conception of art history, first published in 1999.

Beat Wyss (Author)

9780521592116, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 April 1999

306 pages, 65 b/w illus.
25.4 x 17.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.75 kg

"These are essential source books and, althouggh very different, are fine examples of perceptive and concrete analysis written in highly readable styles." The Art Book Jan 2002

In this 1999 study, Beat Wyss provides a critical analysis of Hegel's theories of art history. Analogous to his philosophy of history, Hegel viewed the history of art in dialectical terms: with its origins in the Ancient Near East, Western art culminated in Classical Greece, but began its decline already in the Hellenistic period. Yet, as Wyss posits, art refuses its programmed demise. He highlights the political dimension of this contradiction, showing the implication of theories which subordinate art to the will of absolute rule. Wyss follows his analysis of Hegel's theories with a discussion of the work of four modern successors - Nordau, Spengler, Sedlmayr and Lukacs - all of whom adapted Hegel's dialectical model, in an effort to demonstrate the central contradictions of twentieth-century aesthetics.

Part I. Hegel's Last Walk Through his Museum: 1. Morning: oriental symbolism
2. Noon
3. Evening: the West
4. The fourth chapter of the dialectics
Part II. An Unholy Alliance: 5. Degeneration
6. Decline
7. Loss of the centre
8. Decadence
Part III. Reason Outschemed: Epilogue.

Subject Areas: Philosophy: aesthetics [HPN], Theory of art [ABA]