Journal Article

'Wien oder Salzburg?': late Sedlmayr as a symptom and cure

Vaneyan, Stepan

2021

Overview

In Sedlmayr's case, such an approach promises some interesting and enlightening results if one applies his method of structural analysis of 'critical forms' to his own work. An interpreter should be involved in it not as a 'referee' but rather as a participant who knows that she/he can or will become an object of next interpretations.5 This also means that when she/he observes signs of unconscious processes (Freudian's 'primary' processes6), she/he has the right to see them as symptoms, speculate as to their reasons and even draw conclusions and make diagnoses The question is what exactly should be seen as the primary material for such hermeneutic 're-construction'? In this sense, decentralisation could be seen as either a conscious or unconscious strategy, and Salzburg was one of the escape points.12 It seems symptomatic that it is in Salzburg that the most controversial Schlosser's or maybe, after all, Dvorák's student - Hans Sedlmayr - 'rests in academic peace'. In turn, these four stages of art history are very similar to the four stages or levels of comprehending/interpreting a work of art, in Sedlmayr's version, in which the eschatological 'type' of meaning, implying disintegration and ruination, is also considered.26 However, significantly, disintegration is not the final stage: it is followed by new integration.

• Publisher: Journal of Art Historiography,Department of Art History, University of Birmingham
• Subject: Art history / dvořák / Exegesis & hermeneutics / Historiography / Nazi era / preservation of monuments / ruins / Sedlmayr, Hans (1896-1984) / sedlmayr’s last work / the new vienna school of art history