Vortrag // Wojciech Bałus, Krakau: Schraube und Eidos. Versuch eines „Close Reading“ des Begriffs „Kunstwollen“ bei Riegl und Panofsky

In the organizer's words:

Both conceptions of the will to art reveal very different scientific temperaments in Riegl and Panofsky. While the former endeavored to describe art in its historical course as precisely as possible and thereby uncover the causes and mechanisms of its transformations, the latter was much more interested in exploring the essence of larger and smaller holistic units (styles, epochs and styles of individual artists). The will to art that Riegl had in mind was a "will" that was limited solely to art, i.e. de facto to form. Panofsky, on the other hand, already in his earliest works pursued the aim of going beyond pure questions of style and turning more to content and other cultural phenomena - which ultimately led to the creation of the iconological method - in order to find a common level on which one could research deeper connections between style and content. The former was fascinated by the passage of time and movement (the screw metaphor) and the latter by the core of stopped time(Eidos).

Prof. Dr. Wojciech Bałus: Professor at the Institute of Art History at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, studied art history and philosophy. Visiting professor at the universities of Kiel and Mainz. Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Arts (PAU) and Academia Europea, President of the Polish National Committee Corpus Vitrearum, member of AICA. Author of numerous studies on the history of architecture, painting and art theory of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Krakow between traditions and paths to modernity. Zur Geschichte der Architektur und der öffentlichen Grünanlagen im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart 2003), Gotik ohne Gott? Die Symbolik des Kirchengebäudes im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt/M 2016) and Art Historiography and Iconologies Between West and East, ed. with M. Kunińska (New York and London 2024).

Participation is free of charge.
Venue: Central Institute for Art History, Room 242, II. upper floor
The lecture will be broadcast in parallel via Zoom. Information on the lecture can be found here.