Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Grewe, Cordula

Titel

Portrait of the Artist as an Arabesque: Romantic Form and Social Practice in Wilhelm von Schadow's The Modern Vasari

Ist Teil von

• Intellectual history review, 2007-01, Vol.17 (2), p.99-134

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2007

Quelle

Taylor & Francis Journals Auto-Holdings Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In 1854, the German painter Wilhelm von Schadow published The Modern Vasari: Reminiscences of an Artistic Life, which mixes hagiography, historiography, art theory, and reflections on aesthetics, with comments on the social, political and economic conditions of modern art production. The choice of this Romantic form of writing was congenial to Schadow's purpose, as reflections on the relationship between word and image are crucial to his autobiographical art history. To this end, the essay first elucidates how Schadow's novel is indeed Romantic in the Schlegelian sense and was understood in this way by his contemporaries. It then proceeds to Schadow's conception of poesy and visual imagination, and examines the interaction of word and image in his notion of painting as language. A third step contrasts Schadow's art theory with artistic practices popular among Düsseldorf artists, notably the arabesque in Düsseldorf's print culture and the staging of 'living pictures.' Although Schadow considered these practices minor, he made them central to the plot and structure of The Modern Vasari. This cross-examination of Schadow's text reveals internal contradictions between his theory of painting, which argues from a traditional position of genre hierarchy, and the support he granted to lower and newer artistic practices out of consideration for economic necessity. (Author abstract)