Untranslatable: Gottfried Kinkel, Kulturgeschichte, and British Art Historiography
-
Hans Christian Hönes
Abstract
In 1934, Edgar Wind claimed there was no English equivalent for the word “kulturwissenschaftlich” and the method it denoted: it was untranslatable. Although German art history had been widely read in England since Victorian times, certain methods, as well as the discipline itself, were only hesitantly received. This article focuses on a decisive moment in this entangled history—an attempt to establish in Britain both art history as an academic discipline and a cultural-historical approach to the subject. The key figure is the dashing art historian Gottfried Kinkel, a close friend of Jacob Burckhardt (and archenemy of Karl Marx), who fled Germany after the 1848 revolution. In 1853, he gave the firstever university lecture in art history in England, the manuscripts of which were recently discovered. Kinkel’s case is a prime example of both a socio-historical approach to art history in Victorian times and an exile’s only partially successful attempt to transmit his methodology to a new audience.
I would like to thank Geraldine Johnson, Oxford, and Aris Sarafianos, Ioannina, as well as the anonymous reviewers, for their valuable comments.
Photo Credits: 1–5, 7 author. — 6 The Trustees of the British Museum.
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Aufsätze
- Images et société à Reichenau, vers l’an mil : les peintures d’Oberzell et les manuscrits apparentés
- Liturgischer Alltag auf einer Großbaustelle des 13. Jahrhunderts: Zur Funktion einiger Konsolen in den Seitenschiffen des Bamberger Domes
- Francesco Salviati’s Lamentation for Venice and the Origins of the Disegno/Colorito Debate
- “C’est un bourgeois, mais non un bourgeois ordinaire”: The Contested Afterlife of Ingres’s Portrait of Louis-François Bertin
- Untranslatable: Gottfried Kinkel, Kulturgeschichte, and British Art Historiography
- Buchbesprechungen
- Rethinking the Arts during the French Revolution
- De la France des Expositions Universelles au Cambodge d’aujourd’hui : Une nouvelle perspective sur Angkor Vat
- Am Fluchtpunkt der Fotografie
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Aufsätze
- Images et société à Reichenau, vers l’an mil : les peintures d’Oberzell et les manuscrits apparentés
- Liturgischer Alltag auf einer Großbaustelle des 13. Jahrhunderts: Zur Funktion einiger Konsolen in den Seitenschiffen des Bamberger Domes
- Francesco Salviati’s Lamentation for Venice and the Origins of the Disegno/Colorito Debate
- “C’est un bourgeois, mais non un bourgeois ordinaire”: The Contested Afterlife of Ingres’s Portrait of Louis-François Bertin
- Untranslatable: Gottfried Kinkel, Kulturgeschichte, and British Art Historiography
- Buchbesprechungen
- Rethinking the Arts during the French Revolution
- De la France des Expositions Universelles au Cambodge d’aujourd’hui : Une nouvelle perspective sur Angkor Vat
- Am Fluchtpunkt der Fotografie
