First published in 1959, this book is concerned with the methodology of art history, and so with questions about historical thinking; it enquires what scientific history of art can accomplish, what are its mean and limitations? It contains philosophical reflections on history and begins with chapters on the scope and limitations of a sociology of art, and the concept of ideology in the history of art. The chapter on the concept of "art history without names" occupies the central position in (...) the book — thoroughly discussing the basic philosophical outlook for the whole work. There are also further chapters on psychoanalysis, folk art and popular art. The chapter on the role of convention in the history of art points the way for further study. (shrink)

First published in 1959, this book is concerned with the methodology of art history, and so with questions about historical thinking; it enquires what scientific history of art can accomplish, what are its mean and limitations? It contains philosophical reflections on history and begins with chapters on the scope and limitations of a sociology of art, and the concept of ideology in the history of art. The chapter on the concept of "art history without names" occupies the central position in (...) the book — thoroughly discussing the basic philosophical outlook for the whole work. There are also further chapters on psychoanalysis, folk art and popular art. The chapter on the role of convention in the history of art points the way for further study. (shrink)

First published in 1959, this book is concerned with the methodology of art history, and so with questions about historical thinking; it enquires what scientific history of art can accomplish, what are its mean and limitations? It contains philosophical reflections on history and begins with chapters on the scope and limitations of a sociology of art, and the concept of ideology in the history of art. The chapter on the concept of "art history without names" occupies the central position in (...) the book -- thoroughly discussing the basic philosophical outlook for the whole work. There are also further chapters on psychoanalysis, folk art and popular art. The chapter on the role of convention in the history of art points the way for further study. (shrink)

EDITORIAL NOTE.—Arnold Hauser died in February 1978 shortly after returning to his native Hungary; he had lived nearly half of his 85 years in a kind of self-imposed exile. He is considered, by those who know his work, to be perhaps the greatest sociologist of art, though his last years were spent in comparative neglect and obscurity. We present here as a testament to the importance of both the critic and the discipline he helped shape a section from the translation (...) of his Sociology of Art . Hauser's work draws on the influences of his teachers, Simmel, Bergson, Lukács, Mannheim, Sombart, and Troeltsch. He developed in his immense Social History of Art the groundwork for a sociological analysis of art ranging from prehistoric cave painting to film. In his later works—The Philosophy of Art History , Mannerism: The Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origins of Modern Art , and The Sociology of Art—he continued to redefine his brilliant defense of art for society's sake. The theory of l'art pour l'art wants nothing to do with this contradiction and denies not only the moral and social usefulness of art but its every possible practical function as well. "Nobody would write poetry," says Eugenio Montale, "if the problem of literature consisted in making oneself understood." It has been doubted whether the capacity of making oneself understood, the unambiguous communication of feelings and experiences, even lies within the power of art. What Eduardo Hanslick asserts about music in Von musikalischen Schönen, namely, that its relation to everything which is nonmusical, everything which has emotional content, is vague and noncommittal, is to some extent true for all arts. Just as music expresses something which cannot be translated into any other form, so literature expresses something which is eminently literary, linguistic, something locked into words and syntactic structures. In the same way the untranslatable content of a painting, a pictorial idea, a vision, can only be seized and held onto in optical forms. The composer thinks in tones, the painter in lines and colors, the poet in words, tropes, and rhythms. Indubitable as this is, it is not the whole truth; side by side with the content which can only be expressed adequately in a particular form, there is an intrinsic value which can be translated into any form. Kenneth Northcott, translator of this essay, is professor of older German literature and of comparative literature at the University of Chicago. He is currently engaged in the translation of The Sociology of Art and in the study of late medieval satire in Germany and the works of Harold Pinter, in whose plays he also delights to act. (shrink)