Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of StyleWilhelm Worringer's landmark study in the interpretation of modern art, first published in 1908, has seldom been out of print. Its profound impact not only on art historians and theorists but also for generations of creative writers and intellectuals is almost unprecedented. Starting from the notion that beauty derives from our sense of being able to identify with an object, Worringer argues that representational art produces satisfaction from our "objectified delight in the self," reflecting a confidence in the world as it is--as in Renaissance art. By contrast, the urge to abstraction, as exemplified by Egyptian, Byzantine, primitive, or modern expressionist art, articulates a totally different response to the world: it expresses man's insecurity. Thus in historical periods of anxiety and uncertainty, man seeks to abstract objects from their unpredictable state and transform them into absolute, transcendental forms. Abstraction and Empathy also has a sociological dimension, in that the urge to create fixed, abstract, and geometric forms is a response to the modern experience of industrialization and the sense that individual identity is threatened by a hostile mass society. Hilton Kramer's introduction considers the influence of Worringer's thesis and places his book in historical context. |
Contents
Abstraction and Empathy | 3 |
Abstraction and Empathy | 71 |
Transcendence and Immanence in | 122 |
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Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style Wilhelm Worringer Limited preview - 1997 |
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absolute artistic volition abstract art abstract tendency Abstraction and Empathy acanthus activity aesthetic aesthetic experience animal Antique appearance architecture art history artistic creation beauty Byzantine art characterisation Classical art closed material individuality cognition concept crystalline cubic culture decorative Dipylon style drapery dread of space Early Christian Egyptian elements endeavour essay eternalisation expression external world fact factor feeling figures fundamental genesis geometric style Georg Simmel Gothic Gottfried Semper Greek art Greek ornament history of art human imitation impulse inorganic instinct laws linear Lipps matter ment modern motifs Mycenean natural model need for empathy Northern object organic Oriental outer world pantheism Paul Ernst phenomena phenomenon plant ornament possible precisely primitive psychic psychic needs religion Renaissance rendering representation Riegl Romanesque sculpture sensation Simmel Spatial Form spiritual Stilfragen stylisation T. E. Hulme tectonic things tion transcendental Trocadéro urge to abstraction urge to empathy Vitruvian scroll whole WILHELM WORRINGER world-picture Worringer Worringer's