Heinrich Schwarz (art historian)

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Heinrich Schwarz (born November 9, 1894 in Prague , Austria-Hungary ; died September 20, 1974 in New York City ) was an Austrian-American art historian. His writings on photography in the 19th century are now counted among the earliest discussions in art history with this medium.

Life

After high school in Vienna, Schwarz began studying art history, archeology and philosophy, which he could not continue until 1919, after the First World War and after serving in the artillery. He received his doctorate in 1921 with a dissertation on lithography in Vienna (temporarily under Max Dvořák ). Schwarz then worked in the print department of the Albertina in Vienna until 1927 , after which he took up a position as curator at the Austrian Gallery Belvedere . Here he was responsible for numerous exhibitions on 19th century art, including one on the Scottish painter and photographer David Octavius ​​Hill in 1929 .

As a result of Austria's annexation to the German Reich in 1938, Schwarz lost his job: According to the Nuremberg "Race Laws" , the Catholic Schwarz was considered a Jew. In the same year he emigrated to Sweden and in 1940 to the USA. There he worked first at the Albright Knox Museum in Buffalo, NY and from 1943 as a curator at the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1954 he moved to Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. From 1966 to 1968, Schwarz was visiting professor at Columbia University . He retired in 1972, two years before his death. His estate is now in the library of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

plant

Schwarz's years in Vienna are characterized by a wide range of publications in the context of his museum work, especially on painting and prints since the Renaissance. His study of romantic landscape painting, Salzburg and the Salzkammergut (1926) is one of his most popular writings.

However, Schwarz had a particular interest in photography. In his monograph on the photography pioneer and painter David Octavius ​​Hill, David Octavius ​​Hill - Der Meister der Photographie (1931), he campaigned for the art-historical recognition of photography, which was not yet a matter of course in those years. The genesis of photography preceding the book, in which Schwarz depicts the invention of the young visual medium (like lithography before it) as a breakthrough in a longer cultural development of the bourgeoisie, is aligned accordingly. With reference to realism in painting on the one hand and scientific objectification on the other, Schwarz interprets photography as an invention at the intersection of both fields, as a "new synthesis of artistic-technical production in which man's new attitude to the world is clearly manifested." The recognition of photography as art, so Schwarz, was therefore only questionable through Impressionism and Expressionism ; More recently, the artistic dimensions of the medium have become more conscious again through Surrealism and New Objectivity . The recording function of photography in no way contradicts its artistic value, because the artistic act is to be found in the draft, not only in its realization. Schwarz represents an understanding of art based on essentialist media specifics, according to which this implementation of the design should only take place in accordance with the "natural limits of the artificial medium".

Schwarz 'arguments relating to the history of photography and art have also been criticized as being comparatively conservative.

Fonts (selection)

  • The beginnings of lithography in Vienna . Vienna, 1921. (New edition Vienna: Böhlau, 1988.)
  • Salzburg and the Salzkammergut: an artistic discovery in one hundred pictures from the nineteenth century . Vienna: A. Schroll, 1926.
  • David Octavius ​​Hill: the master of photography . Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1931.
  • Art and photography: forerunners and influences: selected essays . Ed. by William E. Parker. Layton, UT: GM Smith / Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1985.
  • Techniques of seeing - before and after photography. Selected writings 1929-1966 . Edited and commented by Anselm Wagner. Salzburg: Fotohof, 2006.

literature

  • Schwarz, Heinrich , in: Ulrike Wendland: Biographical handbook of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism . Munich: Saur, 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 630-635

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Monika Faber: Verkehrschaos. A pioneer in opening up new territory in art history. In: Techniques of Seeing - Before and After Photography Selected Writings 1929 - 1966. Ed. commented by Anselm Wagner. Salzburg: Fotohof, 2006.
  2. ↑ See Heinrich Schwarz: David Octavius ​​Hill - The Master of Photography. Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1931, pp. 5-8.
  3. ↑ Ibid., P. 8.
  4. ↑ See ibid., P. 13.
  5. ↑ Ibid., P. 12f.
  6. ↑ Timm Starl: Heinrich Schwarz, who is that? Review to: Heinrich Schwarz: Techniques of seeing - before and after photography. Selected writings 1929 - 1966. Edited and commented by Anselm Wagner. Salzburg: Fotohof, 2006. http://timm-starl.at/download/Fotokritik_Text_2.pdf
personal data
SURNAME Schwarz, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Art historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH 20th September 1974
Place of death New York City