Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68) was not a philosopher. In fact, Winckelmann had a strong interest in distancing himself from academic philosophy as he knew it. As Goethe reports, Winckelmann “complained bitterly about the philosophers of his time and about their extensive influence.” Still less was Winckelmann a Kantian philosopher; the first edition of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason did not appear until 1781, thirteen years after the fifty-year-old Winckelmann was shockingly murdered in Trieste. Nevertheless, (...) many of Winckelmann’s ideas were philosophically rich and suggestive and interestingly relevant to the philosophical problems that were later to be addressed by Kant and his philosophical contemporaries. It is no wonder, then, that Winckelmann’s influence can be detected in the works of some of the most important philosophically oriented thinkers of Germany in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In addition to Kant himself, these thinkers included Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81), Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). (shrink)

According to some critics, the putative superficiality of Winckelmann's appropriation of the Greek legacy is just one instance of the emptiness that characterizes the appropriation of the Greeks by the Germans in general. Thus Eliza Maria Butler has spoken of the 'tyranny of Greece over Germany': 'If the Greeks are tyrants, the Germans are predestined slaves ... The Germans have imitated the Greeks more slavishly; they have been obsessed by them more utterly, and they have assimilated them less than (...) any other race.” Not coincidentally, the putative freedom or unfreedom of one's appropriation of the Greek ideal is one of the basic problems at issue in this chapter. In the following pages, I argue that Winckelmann not only understood this basic problem but also touched on its actual solution, albeit in an inadequate, aesthetic manner. I go on to suggest that Hegel articulated this solution in an adequate and properly philosophical manner. (shrink)

The taste for classical art that induced museums in the West to acquire masterpieces from ancient Greece and Rome for their collections was stimulated largely by the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. In the past decade, a number of articles have claimed that Winckelmann’s glorification of marble statues representing the white, male body promotes notions of white supremacy. The present article challenges this view by examining theories prevalent in the eighteenth century that affected Winckelmann’s views on race. (...) Through an examination of different types of classicism, the article also seeks to demonstrate that Winckelmann’s aesthetics were opposed to the eclectic use of ancient models typical of the fascist regimes of the twentieth century. (shrink)

There are three “scandals” that appear in most discussions of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768), the so-called father of modern Art History: his allegedly careerist conversion to Catholicism in 1754; his semi-secret homoerotic discourse while under Vatican employ in the early-to-mid 1760s; and his shocking murder in Trieste in 1768. Of the three, Winckelmann's sexuality has garnered the most attention in recent scholarship. A little-known story reported by Casanova during his second visit to Rome in 1761 has something to (...) do with that. In this essay, I argue that we make too much of sexuality these days and, in so doing, fail to register the far more radical religious activities in which Winckelmann was involved, most notably the creation and curation of the Vatican Museums, with their almost casual display of naked statues of pagan divinities. Winckelmann's “profanity,” not his sexuality, constitutes the revolutionary core of his life's work and enduring influence. The statues he discussed so passionately were not simply naked; they were pagan. (shrink)

The history of modern and contemporary art provides many examples of the "queering" of cultural and social norms. It has been tempting to consider this process of subversion and transgression, or "outlaw representation", as well as related performances of "camp" or other gay inflections of the dominant forms of representation, to be the most creative mode of queer cultural production. Whether or not this is true in the history of later nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, we can identify a historical process (...) in modern culture that has worked in the opposite direction--namely, the constitution of aesthetic ideals, cultural norms that claim validity within an entire society, which have been based on manifestly homoerotic prototypes and significances. There has been little subversion or camp in these configurations. Indeed, perhaps there has been a surfeit of idealizing configuration and normalizing representation. But as Johann Joachim Winckelmann's art history and Immanuel Kant's aesthetics might suggest, such idealization can be no less queer than camp inflections or outlaw representations. (shrink)

There is a good chance that “each critic becomes a Pygmalion” (as Leo Curran put it) when they bring the work of art to life in their narcissistic (and almost amorous) attention, unfolding its meaning so that they should be able to write their own interpretation. The starting point of the present text is the perfection of sculptural forms, and the author discusses “traditional” aesthetic concepts: the beautiful and the sublime along with the difference and interplay of the two qualities, (...) bearing in mind their variations and relations. The framework is provided by the occurrence of these two in the discourses on the self and taste in the eighteenth-century while the focus is on subjective criticism concerning the beautiful versus the sublime in the artistic and sensual experience of statues. Within the given framework, the author is planning to force Edmund Burke, stiffened by the experience of the sublime, and Winckelmann, softened by the sight of the Greek statues, into a dialogue on individual taste. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 24 Heft: 1 Seiten: 123-144.

We analyse in this article, from the point of view of an aesthetics of the effect, the sources of the so called "aesthetics of Goethe's time", according to the works of Lessing, Winckelmann and Herder. Our aim is to show that there are in those authors both an influence of the parameter of the effect, elicited by the work of art on the spectactor, and the pointing to a dimension, so to speak critical, idealistic and speculative of appreciation of (...) the artistic phenomenon.Este artigo investiga, sob a perspectiva de uma estética do efeito, as origens da assim chamada "estética da época de Goethe", segundo a obra de Lessing, Winckelmann e Herder. Pretende-se mostrar que há nestes autores tanto uma influência do parâmetro do efeito, suscitado pela obra de arte no espectador, quanto o apontamento para uma instância, por assim dizer crítica, idealista e especulativa de apreciação do fenômeno artístico. (shrink)

Este artigo investiga, sob a perspectiva de uma estética do efeito, as origens da assim chamada “estética da época de Goethe”, segundo a obra de Lessing, Winckelmann e Herder. Pretende-se mostrar que há nestes autores tanto uma influência do parâmetro do efeito, suscitado pela obra de arte no espectador, quanto o apontamento para uma instância, por assim dizer crítica, idealista e especulativa de apreciação do fenômeno artístico.

It is the aim of this work to examine the pivotal role of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) as a judge of classical sculpture and as a major contributor to German art criticism. John Harry North seeks to identify the key features of his treatment of classical beauty, particularly in his famous descriptions of large-scale classical sculpture. Five case studies are offered to demonstrate the academic classicism that formed the core of his philosophy of art. North aims to establish (...) class='Hi'>Winckelmann's place in the development of the German language. His prose contributed to a literary style that was suitable for the expression of an emotional response to visual experiences. His use of rhetoric in the assessment of classical art, however, make his judgements propagandist rather than analytical. The published works of Winckelmann, his draft essays and his collected private correspondence are advanced as criteria in the evaluation of his impact on the development of German classicism that culminated in the Weimar group of poets and writers. His Grecophile enthusiasm, however, led him to introduce stylistic categories in the development of classical marble sculpture that are no longer regarded as truly reflecting the evolution of Greco-Roman art. Thus his historicity and his classification of styles remain in doubt. Winckelmann proposed that the training of modern artists should concentrate on the observation and imitation of classical models instead of looking to nature as the source of inspiration. This plan succeeded to some extent in the generation that followed his untimely death. Throughout the succeeding century, artists and their sponsors did favour classical models and developed stylistic classicism in European freestanding sculpture, in painting and in architecture. (shrink)

In this book, Morrison discusses the process of aesthetic education, as defined by Johann Joachim Winckelmann on the basis of his status as arbiter of classical taste and as applied to his teaching of two pupils. Morrison identifies the key features of Winckelmann's treatment of classical beauty and elucidates how Winckelmann taught the appreciation of beauty. He argues that Winckelmann's practice of aesthetic education fell short of his aesthetic theory. Morrison concludes by looking at Goethe's aesthetic (...) self-education, which was strongly influenced by Winckelmann. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 24 Heft: 1 Seiten: 167-192.

Este texto se propone responder a la pregunta acerca de la relación entre estética y filosofía de la historia a partir del examen de las teorías estéticas de Winckelmann (mediados del s. XVIII) frente a las reflexiones acerca de la historia de Burckhardt (finales del s. XIX), atravesadas ambas por el significado que adquiere en cada una de ellas el concepto de lo clásico. La idea es mostrar cómo una historia del arte como la de Winckelmann, cuyo criterio (...) es el arte griego como canon, trae necesariamente consigo una filosofía de la historia que la sustenta y la hace posible; a la vez que una reflexión sobre la historia como La de Burckhardt, que se presenta a sí misma como una respuesta a la tradición neoclásica y romántica que la precede, refleja tras de sí un pensamiento estético propio. (shrink)

Este texto se propone responder a la pregunta acerca de la relación entre estética y filosofía de la historia a partir del examen de las teorías estéticas de Winckelmann (mediados del s. XVIII) frente a las reflexiones acerca de la historia de Burckhardt (finales del s. XIX), atravesadas ambas por el significado que adquiere en cada una de ellas el concepto de lo clásico. La idea es mostrar cómo una historia del arte como la de Winckelmann, cuyo criterio (...) es el arte griego como canon, trae necesariamente consigo una filosofía de la historia que la sustenta y la hace posible; a la vez que una reflexión sobre la historia como La de Burckhardt, que se presenta a sí misma como una respuesta a la tradición neoclásica y romántica que la precede, refleja tras de sí un pensamiento estético propio. (shrink)

The pioneering work of Johann Winckelmann (1717-1768) identified a homoerotic appreciation of male beauty in classical Greek sculpture, a fascination that had endured in Western art since the Greeks. Yet after Winckelmann, the value (even the possibility) of art's queer beauty was often denied. Several theorists, notably the philosopher Immanuel Kant, broke sexual attraction and aesthetic appreciation into separate or dueling domains. In turn, sexual desire and aesthetic pleasure had to be profoundly rethought by later writers. Whitney Davis (...) follows how such innovative thinkers as John Addington Symonds, Michel Foucault, and Richard Wollheim rejoined these two domains, reclaiming earlier insights about the mutual implication of sexuality and aesthetics. Addressing texts by Arthur Schopenhauer, Charles Darwin, Oscar Wilde, Vernon Lee, and Sigmund Freud, among many others, Davis criticizes modern approaches, such as Kantian idealism, Darwinism, psychoanalysis, and analytic aesthetics, for either reducing aesthetics to a question of sexuality or for removing sexuality from the aesthetic field altogether. Despite these schematic reductions, sexuality always returns to aesthetics, and aesthetic considerations always recur in sexuality. Davis particularly emphasizes the way in which philosophies of art since the late eighteenth century have responded to nonstandard sexuality, especially homoeroticism, and how theories of nonstandard sexuality have drawn on aesthetics in significant ways. Many imaginative and penetrating critics have wrestled productively, though often inconclusively and "against themselves," with the aesthetic making of sexual life and new forms of art made from reconstituted sexualities. Through a critique that confronts history, philosophy, science, psychology, and dominant theories of art and sexuality, Davis challenges privileged types of sexual and aesthetic creation imagined in modern culture-and assumed today. (shrink)

Este artigo visa introduzir o texto Descrição de Apolo em Belvedere, de Johann Joachim Winckelmann, escrito em 1755, em Roma. Tal introdução relaciona o pequeno texto traduzido à questão moderna do sublime.

RESUMO O ensaio busca apresentar como as caracterizações da alegoria, em Winckelmann, ultrapassam a mera tentativa de se compreender um modo de figurar, nos moldes de uma iconologia, configurando uma espécie de metodologia geral para a compreensão da História da arte dos antigos e para a própria apreensão do ideal das artes. Tal possibilidade é dada num ambiente de debates artísticos que antecede a distinção canônico-romântica entre símbolo e alegoria. ABSTRACT This essay aims to show how the central characteristics (...) that Winckelmann gave to the allegory surpass the very range of the modes of figuration and became an original method to understand arts in History and in its ideal. This way of thinking took place in an age that the distinction between allegory and symbol was not canonic and it is very distant from the core of this opposition that became clear in romantic thought. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 24 Heft: 1 Seiten: 211-218.

Im Zeichen neuer geschichts- und erzähltheoretischer Überlegungen gewinnt die mit Winckelmann beginnende Ästhetisierung der Geschichte eine Bedeutung, die seiner Wirkungsgeschichte erst abgerungen werden muß; denn sein erweiterter, für Herder und die romantische Literaturtheorie noch vorbildicher Geschichtsbegriff konnte sich gegen den Objektivitätsanspruch der historisch-kritischen Altertums- und Geschichtswissenschaft auch deshalb nicht behaupten, weil Winckelmanns Begründung der Kunstgeschichte in der Fiktionalisierung seiner Biographie verlorenging.

Winckelmann’s work inhabits an ambivalent place in the history of historiography. His Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764) is often referred to as the foundational document of art history, but almost never without the obligatory mention of its rather unhistorical dimension. The aim of the following discussion is to evaluate Winckelmann’s position in the history of eighteenth-century European historiography, especially with regard to the early phase of his career as a historian, i.e. the decisive period between his studies (...) in Halle and his stay in Nöthnitz (1738–1754). During these years, Winckelmann carefully excerpted historiographical literature and dealt intensively with the model of universal history, whose structural patterns deeply influenced his reflection on art historiography. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 24 Heft: 1 Seiten: 35-58.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001) 523-541 [Access article in PDF] Antiquarianism, the History of Objects, and the History of Art before Winckelmann Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann [Figures] To the Memory of Franklin LeVan Baumer. In light of postmodernist and poststructuralist trends in the humanities which have contested notions of originality and of authorship, it might seem surprising that one outstanding myth of the eighteenth century has (...) not yet been thoroughly challenged. This is the claim made by Johann Joachim Winckelmann in the foreword to the Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums, originally published in 1764, that he had created a new history of art which was distinct from a history of artists and also different from what had previously been written about antiquities (Altertümer): The history of the art of antiquity, which I have undertaken to write, is no mere account of the chronological order and change of art, but I take the word history in the wider sense, that it has in the Greek language, and my intention is to offer an attempt at a system.... But the essence of art is in every part the most eminent aim, in which the history of artists has little influence, and this [sort of history of artists], which has been compiled by others, is therefore not to be sought here... those who have treated antiquities, examine either only such where erudition was to be applied, or, if they speak of art, this happens in part with common eulogies, or their judgment is built on peculiar, false grounds. 1 [End Page 523]Wolf Lepenies once described this claim as one of the many foundational myths of the Enlightenment and presented instead some parallels between the writing of art history and natural history in the eighteenth century. 2 As interest in the historiography of art has revived, publications have continued to pour forth on Winckelmann. 3 Yet the critique suggested by Lepenies has largely not been followed. Winckelmann's claim to originality remains a starting or major turning point for most accounts of the history of the discipline of art history. 4 [End Page 524]It may be that Winckelmann's claim has remained largely unchallenged because his differentiation of his accomplishment from that of Gelehrsamkeit in particular coincides with and helps to support another distinction made at his time, that between "philosophy," or criticism, and erudition, the latter being at best necessary but inferior. 5 This distinction, which was fostered by the philosophes and their counterparts in other countries, has been frequently heard in scholarly debates, and it is echoed in current discussions where empirical scholarship is disparaged in favor of what is often now called Theory. 6 Thus while in the twentieth century the Enlightenment came in for heavy going starting with at least the critique of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, 7 this is one Enlightenment opinion which, despite the rise of critical theory among other trends in recent scholarship, has gained in fashion, especially in the English-speaking world.But the contrast between philosophy, or critique, and erudition makes a distinction that is ultimately untenable, even if it is also one that has continued to dominate many views of the history of eighteenth-century scholarship. The case at hand suggests that supposed innovations of the eighteenth century in the historiography of art, as in many other fields of study, are much more bound up with late humanism and encyclopedism than their promulgators might have wished to admit. Scholars of a number of disciplines have begun to revise interpretations of the role of the so-called antiquarians of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries--those who dealt with Altertümer. 8 Some recent studies of the historiography of art have pointed to some connections between the antiquarian tradition and that of the historiography of art. 9 These approaches, however, have primarily dealt with Italian and French writers and, moreover, have left Winckelmann's position largely untouched. 10 Winckelmann's situation in the [End Page 525] broader European historical and geographical context also remains... (shrink)