Alois Riegl's Concept of Attentiveness
Forms of Respect: Alois Riegl's Concept of Attentiveness Margaret Olin Alois Riegl is known as a pioneer of formal analysis, but his theory of beholding contradicts formalistic preoccupations. The essay interprets this theory in the in- tellectual context of fin-de-si&cleVienna, arguing that Riegl regarded the relation- ship to the beholder not as the formal means, but as the ethical purpose of art, and defended the beholder's participation against the charge of "theatricality." Riegl's "formal" theory, too, was not hermetic, but responsive to the same intel- lectual challenge as the theory of beholding. A brief discussion of intellectual cur- rents in the later twentieth century reveals the strengths and limitations of Riegl's endeavor. The "artistic" is "a specific form of the relation between felt, went astray because their materialistic notion of art creator and contemplators, fixed in the artistic work."' The denied it all semantic, hence ideological, significance. For probable author of these lines, published in 1926, was the Bakhtin, the antidote to formalism was a literature that Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. Two years later, recognized the radical otherness of separate "voices." This Bakhtin wrote approvingly of a group of Western "for- "dialogism" has recently been embraced by theorists who malists" who, from his description, do not seem very see in it the hope of restoring referentiality and social sig- "formalistic." nificance to literature. It has also been attacked by those who see in it a false hope made possible by blindness to its The struggle against positivism and naturalism, trends own tropological basis.3 which took meaning away from art, was of great im- Riegl's work, however, has found few champions among portance to the European formal movement.
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