Otto Pächt and Albert Kutal: Methodological Parallels*

406 ČLÁNKY ARTICLES UMĚNÍ ART 5 LXII 2014 JÁN BAKOŠ INSTITUTE OF ART HISTORY OF SLOVAK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, BRATISLAVA Otto Pächt and Albert Kutal: Methodological Parallels* The relevancy of the evolutionary approach significance’.4 As is evident, the statements by these two Brno and Vienna based professors of art history In 1971, on the 50th anniversary of the death of Max display a belief that Dvořák’s methodological approach, Dvořák, the sixth issue of Umění published a number stemming from an era when evolutionary art history of articles in his memory. One of these was a piece by had not yet been superseded by art history as the history an outstanding Czech medievalist and professor at the of Geist (the history of ideas or human mind), was still University in Brno, Albert Kutal. In it Kutal expressed highly relevant in the 1970s. Kutal focused primarily the belief that ‘generally, and on many in-depth research on Dvořák’s Das Rätsel der Kunst der Bruder Van Eyck, questions, Dvořák’s findings are unshaken and remain valid published in 1903, demonstrating the validity of the today’ and then added ‘this relevancy applies to all the stages evolutionary genealogical approach even in cases where it [Dvořák’s work] has undergone, not just the latter which the work was generally considered to be a ration- is generally the focal point today’. Kutal had the following ally inexplicable, mysterious, completely unprepared, to say about the research method Dvořák employed in transcendental historical leap by a genius. While Pächt the early stage of his work: ‘The essence of this method transported the relevancy of Dvořák’s work into an era was the genetic interpretation of an artistic event, where transitioning from a formalistic, evolutionary approach the individual plastic phenomenon is simply a link in an to a conception of art history based on the history of ideas evolutionary chain subordinated to the inexorable law of (or worldviews), which Dvořák formulated in full in his causality … This principle of evolutionary causality … was Idealismus und Naturalismus in der gotischen Skulptur und intended to ensure the objectivity of art history and free it Malerei (1918). Indeed, his article, ‘Über die dringendsten from the inadequacies and errors of the cultural historical Methodischen Erfordernisse der Erziehung zur kunstge- approach…’1 Three years later, in honour of the centenary schichtlichen Forschung’ tends to span both approaches. of the birth of Dvořák — successor to Alois Riegl at the There were two common incentives that led the two University of Vienna and the most important Czech art art historians to highlight the contemporary relevance of historian — the Austrian journal, Wiener Jahrbuch für Dvořák’s work on the pre-‘Geistesgeschichte’ evolutionary Kunstgeschichte, republished Dvořák’s study, ‘Über die art history: First, the desire to mount a defence in favour dringendsten Methodischen Erfordernisse der Erziehung of the autonomy of art history, in which the history of zur Kunstgeschichtlichen Forschung’, which had not been art was seen as the development of form, and where the included in the five published volumes of his selected evolutionary genealogical approach to investigation was works. Other than that the article had only been published considered to be a suitable method of art history, if it were initially in the weekly Die Geisteswissenschaften,2 and then to be a ‘scientific’ discipline. This attempt to emphasize in Czech in Pečírka’s selected works of Dvořák, Dějiny the continued relevance of this position was prompted umění jako dějiny ducha.3 In the foreword, dedicated to by pressure at the time for a heteronomous conception, the republication of Dvořák’s study, Otto Pächt stated primarily that of iconology, which had ambitions of that the article was of ‘the greatest relevance and strategic achieving dominance. However, there was also a trend UMĚNÍ ART 5 LXII 2014 ČLÁNKY ARTICLES 407 JÁN BAKOŠ OTTO PÄCHT AND ALBERT KUTAL (‘selbständige genetische Entwicklungsreihe’),8 which can interact whilst maintaining their own autonomy,9 art history has the status of being an autonomous academic discipline whose ‘true subject’ is artistic form or style (‘die künstlerische Form, der Stil’). The second motivation for Kutal’s and Pächt’s emphasis on the relevance of Dvořák’s evolutionary perspective was to show not only that the evolutionary genealogical research method was a justified and legitimate approach but also that it was indeed the fundamental method for conducting art history research, and one upon which the specificity and autonomy of art history was based. Following Riegl, the young Dvořák expressed it thus: ‘Every historical formulation is a link in a specific historical chain of evolution and is conditioned by previous formulations of the same material. This is the premise and the justification of modern exact scholarship’.10 An evolutionary genealogical approach therefore meant not only that art history was a history of form, that its historical transformation was autonomous and immanent, but also that 1. art historical evolution was continual and universal.11 Nevertheless, in his article, Dvořák softened his premise of a strictly linear development. He introduced the notion that a number of developmental paths might exist simultaneously, and 1 / Otto Pächt Photo: Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität Wien moreover, he relativised the idea of the universality of a global history of art. This was superseded by the notion of plurality, the simultaneous existence of mutually independent cultural circles (‘Kulturkreise’).12 He only ac- for the new social histories of art which had just started knowledged the notion of evolutionary continuity within to take hold in the early 1970s. It is in this sense that we individual cultural entities, considering the history of should understand Kutal’s emphasis on relevancy, which European art to be one such evolutionary entity. 2. He ‘applies to all the stages it [Dvořák’s work] has undergone, saw the continuity of development, its unceasing nature, not just the latter which is generally the focal point today’. as a consequence of the genetic dependence of works of Kutal clearly had in mind the affinity between iconology art and their immanent causal links. One work follows on and Dvořák’s conception of art history as the history of from another, developing or transforming the stimuli of ideas and, specifically, the interest displayed in it by Czech the previous, and in this sense they are causally linked. Marxist iconologists.5 Much like Kutal, but in a more tar- Not even works of genius or innovation can be considered geted and critical manner, Pächt explained the relevancy mysterious or inexplicably isolated instances, but rather of Dvořák’s study of 1913–1914 thus: ‘Written 60 years ago, are rationally deducible evolutionary chain-links. The this article has greater relevance and strategic significance identity of a particular piece of work lies in the position today at a time when, before we have even overcome the dan- it occupies and the role it performs within evolution. ger that iconology might monopolise interpretations of works This can be ascertained by placing the work of art in the of art,’ there is a risk that art history will be ‘subsumed evolutionary chain and identifying its developmental within sociology’.6 Pächt was doubtlessly thinking of the position and role. The aim of art history, then, is to seek clear distinction between art history and cultural history out developmental paths and reconstruct the evolutionary articulated by Dvořák in his article: ‘The history of art series. Riegl and the young Dvořák believed that precisely … has … its own autonomous position within the historical this approach, based on visually controllable empiri- disciplines… This is especially true of cultural history, which cism and the premise of immanent causality, justified has often been confused with art history.’7 According to categorising art historiography as rational and exact Dvořák, ‘Kunstgeschichte’ and ‘Kulturgeschichte’ are two scholarship. In 1931 Otto Pächt stated that: ‘For neither of distinct academic disciplines insofar as the cultural and them [Riegl and Dvořák] was there any guarantee that art historical processes (‘allgemeine Kulturvorgänge’) and the history would be cultivated as exact “scientific” discipline evolution of art (‘die Entwicklung der Kunst’) are distinct in unless its evolutionary continuity could be demonstrated’.13 nature (‘sind disparater Natur’). The relationship between Dvořák accepted the neo-Kantian ‘ideographic’ them may, moreover, be one of external influences (‘das concept of historical uniqueness and the consequences Verhältnis eines äusseren Anstosses’). Since cultural history thereof for art history knowledge in his ‘Über die and art history are ‘autonomous genetic series of evolution’ dringendsten Methodischen Erfordernisse der Erziehung 408 ČLÁNKY ARTICLES UMĚNÍ ART 5 LXII 2014 zur kunstgeschichtlichen Forschung’, recognising that in phenomena were expressed in terms of an internal art history knowledge involves an intuitive aspect and evolutionary relationship.23 When Dvořák could not a subjective understanding of historical uniqueness. sufficiently demonstrate the developmental continuity24 Nonetheless, he continued to consider the concept of (van Eyck’s naturalism had the same problem), then, Pächt a ‘history of style’ (‘die Stilgeschichtliche Betrachtung’) tells us, he decided to eliminate the leaps.25 Consequently,

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