Matthew Rampley

Art, Evolution, Neuroscience

Seductions of Darwin

Essays looking at heritage practices and the construction of the past, along with how they can be used to build a national identity.

Contested Pasts, Contested Presents

Heritage, Ideology, and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe

"Analyzes the emergence and development of art history as a discipline in Austria-Hungary. Focuses on the ways in which ideas about art and its history became intertwined with political and social identity, and on the cultural politics that shaped the final years of the Habsburg Empire"--Provided by publisher.

Empire and the Politics of Scholarship, 1847-1918

The Vienna School of Art History

An introduction to the study of visual culture, this book offers a view of 'visual culture' that includes not only images, but also other visual media and forms of expression, from architecture to fashion, design and the human body. The book is organised around three broad themes, exploring key ideas and debates that have occurred during the last 20 or so years: *the meanings of the term 'visual culture' and of the various practices that form its basis*conceptual approaches to the contemporary analysis of visual culture*the cultural, social and historical contexts informing its production, distribution and consumption.Drawing on a wide range of examples from the last 100 years, the book adopts a cross-disciplinary perspective; it also explores, however, the limits of visual culture as an interdisciplinary field of study, engaging in current debates about the uses and value of the study of visual culture. It will therefore be of value both for readers new to the subject and also for those seeking fresh interventions into contemporary discussions within the field.Features*Accessibly written by a team of experts in the field*Illustrated throughout*Includes chapters on a wide range of visual forms, including architecture and urban design, film, crafts, fashion, design, fine art and the media.

Definitions, Concepts, Contexts

Exploring Visual Culture

Matthew Rampley’s The Vienna School of Art History is the first book in over seventy-five years to study in depth and in context the practices of art history from 1847, the year the first teaching position in the discipline was created, to 1918, the collapse of Austria-Hungary. It traces the emergence of art history as a discipline, the establishment of norms of scholarly inquiry, and the involvement of art historians in wider debates about the cultural and political identity of the monarchy. The so-called Vienna School plays the central role in the study, but Rampley also examines the formation of art history elsewhere in Austria-Hungary. Located in the Habsburg imperial capital, Vienna art historians frequently became entangled in debates that were of importance to art historians elsewhere in the Empire, and Rampley pays particular attention to these areas of overlapping interest. He also analyzes the methodological innovations for which the Vienna School was well known. Rampley focuses most fully, however, on the larger political and ideological context of the practice of art history—particularly the way in which art-historical debates served as proxies for wider arguments over the political, social, and cultural life of the Habsburg Empire.

Empire and the Politics of Scholarship, 1847–1918

Markian Prokopovych

Nóra Veszprémi

Liberalism, Nationalism and Design Reform in the Habsburg Empire is a study of museums of design and applied arts in Austria-Hungary from 1864 to 1914. The Museum for Art and Industry (now the Museum of Applied Arts) as well as its design school occupies a prominent place in the study. The book also gives equal attention to museums of design and applied arts in cities elsewhere in the Empire, such as Budapest Prague, Cracow, Brno and Zagreb. The book is shaped by two broad concerns: the role of liberalism as a political, cultural and economic ideology motivating the museums’ foundation, and their engagement with the politics of imperial, national and regional identity of the late Habsburg Empire. This book will be of interest for scholars of art history, museum studies, design history, and European history.

Museums of Design, Industry and the Applied Arts

Liberalism, Nationalism and Design Reform in the Habsburg Empire

The art historian Aby M. Warburg and the philosopher Walter Benjamin are widely respected as two of the most significant cultural theorists of the twentieth century. Their common interests in historiography, the function of collective memory, and the relation of modern society to earlier stages of human social existence, were important examples of the attempt to articulate, analyse and represent the experience of modernity. Drawing on a variety of discourses from aesthetics, art history, anthropology and psychology, they presented an account of modernity and human development that represented an important counter to the optimistic belief in progress prevalent amongst their contemporaries. Rarely, however, have the connections between these two thinkers been explored in depth. This volume consists of an exploration of the intellectual relation between them, considering their varying responses to the question of the meaning of modernity, and above all their common legacy for the present.

On Aby M. Warburg and Walter Benjamin

The Remembrance of Things Past

Thierry Lenain

Hubert Locher

This book undertakes a critical survey of art history across Europe, examining the recent conceptual and methodological concerns informing the discipline as well as the political, social and ideological factors that have shaped its development in specific national contexts.

Matthew Rampley

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