Stilfragen alois riegl biography
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Stilfragen
1893 book by Alois Riegl
Stilfragen: Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik is a book on the history of ornament by the Austrian art historianAlois Riegl. It was published in Berlin in 1893. The English translation renders the title as Problems of style: foundations for a history of ornament, although this has been criticized by some.[a] It has been called "the one great book ever written about the history of ornament."[1]
Riegl wrote the Stilfragen while employed as director of the textile department at what was then the Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (today the Museum für angewandte Kunst) in Vienna. His primary intention was to argue that it was possible to write a continuous history of ornament. This position is argued in explicit opposition to that of the "technical-materialist" school, according to which "all art forms were always the direct products of materials and techniques"[2] and that or
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Problems of Style: Foundations for a History of Ornament
Written at the height of the arts and crafts movement in fin-de-siecle Vienna, Alois Riegl’s Stilfragen represented a turning point in defining art and understanding the sources of its inspiration. Demonstrating an uninterrupted continunity in the history of ornament from the ancient Egyptian through the Islamic period, Riegl argued that the creative urge manifests itself in both “great art” and the most humble artifact, and that change is an inherent part of style. This new translation, which renders Riegl’s seminal work in contemporary, readable prose, allows for a fresh reexamination of his thought in light of current revisionist debate.
His discovery of infinite variation in the restatement of several decorative motifs—the palmette, rosette, tendril—led Riegl to believe that art fryst vatten completely independent from exterior conditions and is beyond individual volition. This th
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Alois Riegl, Collected Essays. Translated and edited by Karl Johns.
- Publisher : Ariadne Press (18 Dec. 2023)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 332 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1572412267
- ISBN-13 : 978-1572412262
- Dimensions : 13.97 x 2.24 x 21.59 cm
£29.96 from Amazon (UK) and $36.17 from Amazon (US)
Alois Riegl was an Austrian art historian, and is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History. He was one of the major figures in the establishment of art history as a self-sufficient academic discipline, and one of the most influential practitioners of formalism. In 1883 Riegl wrote his dissertation on the Romanesque Church of St. Jacob, Regensburg (manuscript lost). He joined the staff of the Austrian Museum of Decorative Arts (Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforchung) and began writing his Habilitation, Die Mittelalterliche Kalenderillustration, in 1889, which examined the Hellenistic tradition in medieval calendar manuscripts. In