Ornament and empathy in August Schmarsow's psychophysical history of art
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4278352 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Priyanka Basu (0000-0002-2160-6568, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 67-68 |
| Pages | 94-110 |
| Publication date | 2017-11-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0277-1322 • E-ISSN: 2445-0367 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/693100 |
| OpenAlex | W2768195945 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
This article uses Schmarsow’s essay to illuminate this group of linked problems in turn-of-the-century art theory, ethnology, and perceptual psychology, which were also long-standing issues in Schmarsow’s thought. It does so in its first part by means of sustained comparison of Schmarsow’s psychological approach with the earlier method of architect and theorist Gottfried Semper, whose 1860–63 Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts; or, Practical Aesthetics had provided the terms for these considerations of global minor arts.4 In effect, by updating Semper’s theories, Schmarsow reinscribed him into the field, which had since shifted due to the contributions of Alois Riegl, Wilhelm Worringer, and other art historians; numerous ethnologists and archaeologists responding to discoveries of prehistoric and “primitive” art; and early twentieth-century debates on abstract ornament centering on the Deutscher Werkbund. My approach reconnects various contributions to these problems from Semper to Schmarsow, allowing us to see them as part of a larger field of attempts to devise interpretive techniques that entangled modern art history with the adjacent fields of anthropology and archaeology
Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive psychology · Empathy · Psychoanalysis · Architecture and Art History Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
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