From the 1880s till the outbreak of the First World War, Germany represented an attractive place for young Russian students of history and theory of art and architecture. The main Russian art historians of the first half of the 20th century shared a formative experience in Germany, particularly in Munich, where they became acquainted with the theories of Konrad Fiedler, Theodor Lipps, August Schmarsow, Cornelius Gurlitt, Adolf Hildebrand, Heinrich Wölfflin, and Paul Frankl. The aesthetic theories of the German “formalist school”, the treatises on Raumkunst, and the Einfühlungstheorie were quickly absorbed and endorsed by Aleksandr Gabričevskij, Aleksej Sidorov, Vladimir Favorskij, Igor Grabar, and Mikhail Aplatov: in the years following the Revolution, these scholars were particularly active in disseminating German texts and theories in Russia, and their scientific and cultural activity in the 20s and 30s is considered a fundamental scientific endeavour toward establishing modern iskusstvovedennie [the discipline of art history] in the Soviet Union. The essay explains just how rooted German theoretical studies were in the formation of Russian artistic, architectural, and in a wider sense aesthetic culture between the 1910s and 1930s: a repercussion that has often been neglected, but was simply latent. We cannot talk about a specific stylistic influence or about the migration of “taste” for a specific trend, for specific artistic or architectural stylemes. On the contrary, this influence can be better traced following a broader theoretical discourse that, in a paradigmatic way, affects the same foundations of artistic production: the notion of space in the figurative arts, or better yet, the problem of spatiality of artistic form [Raumkunst, prostranstvennost formy].
What is artistic form? Munich - Moscow 1900-1925
Skansi, Luka
2013-01-01
Abstract
From the 1880s till the outbreak of the First World War, Germany represented an attractive place for young Russian students of history and theory of art and architecture. The main Russian art historians of the first half of the 20th century shared a formative experience in Germany, particularly in Munich, where they became acquainted with the theories of Konrad Fiedler, Theodor Lipps, August Schmarsow, Cornelius Gurlitt, Adolf Hildebrand, Heinrich Wölfflin, and Paul Frankl. The aesthetic theories of the German “formalist school”, the treatises on Raumkunst, and the Einfühlungstheorie were quickly absorbed and endorsed by Aleksandr Gabričevskij, Aleksej Sidorov, Vladimir Favorskij, Igor Grabar, and Mikhail Aplatov: in the years following the Revolution, these scholars were particularly active in disseminating German texts and theories in Russia, and their scientific and cultural activity in the 20s and 30s is considered a fundamental scientific endeavour toward establishing modern iskusstvovedennie [the discipline of art history] in the Soviet Union. The essay explains just how rooted German theoretical studies were in the formation of Russian artistic, architectural, and in a wider sense aesthetic culture between the 1910s and 1930s: a repercussion that has often been neglected, but was simply latent. We cannot talk about a specific stylistic influence or about the migration of “taste” for a specific trend, for specific artistic or architectural stylemes. On the contrary, this influence can be better traced following a broader theoretical discourse that, in a paradigmatic way, affects the same foundations of artistic production: the notion of space in the figurative arts, or better yet, the problem of spatiality of artistic form [Raumkunst, prostranstvennost formy].I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
