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Erwin Panofsky and Karl Mannheim: A Dialogue on InterpretationAuthor(s): Joan HartSource: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Spring, 1993), pp. 534-566Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343963 .
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Erwin
Panofsky
and
Karl Mannheim:
A
Dialogue
on
Interpretation
Joan
Hart
Erwin
Panofsky
is the
most influential
art
historian
of
the twentieth
century.
The basis
of
his fame is
the
theory
of
iconology
that
generated
a
reorientation in art history toward the search for meaning instead of the
categorization
of
characteristics
of
style.
Karl
Mannheim
was
instrumental
in
formulating
the new
subdiscipline
of
the
sociology
of
knowledge
that
found
its
most controversial
exposition
in
his
book
Ideology
and
Utopia
(1929).
The book has been celebrated and vilified but is
undeniably
a
crucial text
in
sociology. Panofsky
and Mannheim
may
never have
met,
but,
in
the
1920s,
at
a
crucial
period
in
the
development
of
their theories
for
interpreting
their
respective subjects,
they
read each
other's
work
and
made
significant
contributions
to
each
other's
increasingly
similar
theo-
I am
grateful
to Gerda
Panofsky
for her
generosity
in
granting
me
access to
the
Panofsky
Papers
in
the Archives of
American
Art,
Smithsonian
Institution,
where
I
exam-
ined
the
correspondence.
I
thank Richard
Murray,
then
director of
the
archives,
and
his
assistants
for
their
gracious help.
I
thank
Frau
Klaiber
at
Freiburg
Universitaits-Archiv
for
her
courtesy.
At
Hamburg University's
Art
Historical
Seminar,
Martin
Warnke,
Karen
Michels,
and
Ulrike
Wendland
gave
me unusual
access to their materials
concerning
all
aspects
of the
history
of
the
seminar.
My scholarly
debts
are
many.
I
am
grateful
for
advice
and
information
from Mirella Levi
D'Ancona,
Peter
Boerner,
Hugo
Buchthal,
Geoffrey
Giles,
E.
H.
Gombrich,
Charles
Haxthausen,
William
Heckscher,
Martin
Jay,
Robert
Nelson,
David
Pace,
Wolfgang Panofsky,
Linda
Seidel,
Joel
Snyder,
Susan
Stirling,
and students in the University of Chicago Workshop on the History and Theory of Art
History.
All
translations
from
German
are
mine unless otherwise
noted.
Critical
Inquiry
19
(Spring
1993)
?
1993
by
The
University
of
Chicago.
0093-1896/93/1903-0004$01.00.
All
rights
reserved.
534
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Critical
Inquiry
Spring
1993
535
ries
of
interpretation.
In
Germany
before the Third
Reich,
it
was not
unusual
for art
historians
and
social scientists
to
read each other's
essays
and books when the theories and practices of the cultural studies, par-
ticularly
philology,
were valued over
those
of
the natural
sciences.'
Philological
practice
was the
primary
but
not the
only
connection between
Panofsky
and Mannheim. Their
lives and
work
were
shaped by
the
partic-
ular
ecology
of
the German
university system
and, later,
by
the
environ-
ment of the
academies
to which
they escaped
during
the Third
Reich.
Even more decisive for their
careers were
the
cataclysmic
events
from
which
they sought refuge.
There were
connections and
divergences
between
the theories
of
interpretation Panofsky and Mannheim developed. Art historians remem-
ber
the anecdote with which
Panofsky
introduced his
theory
of
iconology
for
the
first time
in
1939:
a
man
greets
Panofsky
in
the street
by removing
his
hat.2
From this
brief
encounter,
Panofsky divulged
the whole of
his
interpretive
strategy
that became the
art historian's
most
important
tool
for
recovering
meaning
from the
art
of
the
past.
In
dissecting
this
decep-
tively simple
event,
Panofsky
revealed
the
tripartite,
hierarchical
but
cir-
cular
structure
of
iconological interpretation.
First,
we extract
the
basic
factual
and
formal
meaning
of
the two
gentlemen
and
the action
of
hat
removing, then we discern the expressional meaning that gives nuance to
the action-the
friendliness,
hostility,
or
neutrality
of
the hat remover-
and,
finally,
we delve
more
deeply
into
the
philosophical
meaning
of
the
event
by
examining
the
context of
the
greeting
in
terms
of
the hat
remover's
class,
nationality,
intellectual
traditions,
and
so
on. The
anec-
dote is a useful and
successful
heuristic device
because it
is
disarmingly
1.
See
Jeffrey
Herf,
Reactionary
Modernism:
Technology,
Culture,
and
Politics in
Weimar
and the Third Reich
(Cambridge,
1984).
In
his
chapter
Engineers
as
Ideologues
(pp.
152-
88), Herf demonstrates how this peculiarly German phenomenon of the deprecation of the
physical
sciences and the elevation of the
humanities was
prevalent
even
among
the
promi-
nent
engineers. They
thought
technology
should
be
in
the service of
the
Kulturnation,
the
cultural
sphere,
not the
capitalist
state.
The
classic discussion of
the
German
academic
system
in
the nineteenth
and
early
twentieth centuries
is
Fritz
Ringer,
The
Decline
of
the German
Mandarins: The
German Aca-
demic
Community,
1890-1933
(Cambridge,
Mass.,
1969).
In
chapter
1,
The
Social and
Institutional
Background,
Ringer
describes
the entrenchment
of the
classical
education
in
the
German
system
and its
entanglement
with
political
conservatism
and the social
struc-
ture. See
also
E. M.
Butler,
The
Tyranny
of
Greece
over
Germany
Cambridge,
Mass.,
1935).
2.
See
Erwin
Panofsky,
Studies
in
Iconology:
Humanistic
Themes n
the
Art
of
the
Renais-
sance (1939; New York, 1967), p. 3.
Joan
Hart
has a
Ph. D.
from
the
University
of
California,
Berkeley,
n
the
history
of
art. She is
currentlyworking
on
a
Ph. D. in
history
at
Indi-
ana
University
and
on
a book on
Erwin
Panofsky.
Her
book,
Heinrich
Wilfflin:
Antinomies
f
Experience
n
Art,
is
forthcoming.
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536
Joan
Hart
Panofsky
and
Mannheim
simple
and
becomes
increasingly complex
as
Panofsky
traces
the
history
of
the
gesture
and
considers the
personality
of the
greeter.
In 1923, sixteen years earlier, Karl Mannheim created a similar inci-
dent
to
explicate
his
three-tiered method
of
interpretation:
I
am
walking
down
the street with a
friend;
a
beggar
stands at
a
corner;
my
friend
gives
him
an alms. 3
Mannheim
created the distinctions between
factual,
expressional,
and
philosophical
(or
personal) meanings
that
Panofsky
bor-
rowed.
While
Panofsky's
theory
of
iconology,
as
derived
from
this anec-
dote,
became the dominant
paradigm
of
postwar
American
art
history,
Mannheim's
theory
has
languished
in
relative
obscurity.4
The differences between the two anecdotes reveal two
scholars
possessed of an identical interpretive strategy with divergent goals.
Mannheim's
example
survived the test
of
time better than
Panofsky's:
we
often see
beggars today,
but
we
rarely
see
men
tipping
their hats. The
sub-
jects
of the stories and the
interpretations
of
them illuminate the different
purposes
and obsessions of the
two
scholars.
Mannheim's
story
is about
injustice.
His
interpretation emphasized
the differences
in
social class
and
power
between the
beggar,
himself as
observer,
and
his
friend,
and
turned,
at
the third
level
of
interpretation,
on
the motivations and
person-
ality
of
his friend who
gave
alms. His friend's
motive
was
impure
and
hyp-
ocritical. His essential character was immoral, which he communicated in
his
body language
when
he
gave charity. Panofsky's example
involved men
of
a
higher
social status
with
no
grievance
or difference
between them.
Mannheim's
interpretation
focussed
on
social
differences
and
personality,
while
Panofsky's
revolved
around the
historical
meaning
of a
gesture
that
was
dependent
on culture and
period-the
hat
raising.
It was aresidue
of
mediaeval
chivalry:
armed men used
to remove their helmets to make
clear
their
peaceful
intentions and their
confidence
in
the
peaceful
inten-
tions
of
others.
Panofsky
stressed the
change
in
the
meaning
of
the
ges-
ture
over time and the fact that it was
meaningful only
in
a
particular
cultural
setting
with distinctive traditions that would be unfamiliar
to
an
Australian
bushman and an ancient Greek.5 Determination of the rela-
tive
meaning
of
gestures
and
objects,
and
changes
in
meaning
over
time,
resulting
from
cultural
developments,
were
the aims of
Panofsky's
inter-
pretive
art
history.
Mannheim's
theory
of
interpretation
arose
partly
from
3.
Karl
Mannheim,
On the
Interpretation
of
Weltanschauung,
From
Karl
Mannheim,
trans.
Paul
Kecskemeti,
ed.
Kurt
H.
Wolff
(New
York,
1971),
p.
20;
hereafter abbrevi-
ated
IW.
The German
original
is
Beitr~ige
zur
Theorie der
Weltanschauungs-
Interpretation,
Jahrbuch fir
Kunstgeschichte
1
(1921-22):
236-74;
actual
publication
in
1923.
4. See A. P.
Simonds,
Karl
Mannheim's
Sociology
of
Knowledge
Oxford, 1978).
Simonds
focussed on
the
German
period
of Mannheim's career and
the
specific
qualities
of his
early
theory
of
interpretation.
In
general,
however,
other
recent scholars
writing
on Mannheim
have
ignored
this
aspect
of his work.
5.
Panofsky,
Studies
in
Iconology,
p.
4.
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Critical
Inquiry
Spring
1993 537
his
interest
in
theories
of
art,
but
his
objective
was to
create
a
sociology
of
meaning
or
knowledge.
His
anecdote revealed
his
concern that
world-
views (discerned through personalities and social situations) served as a
summary
of
social
knowledge
and
his
awareness
of
the
practical
social
value
of
interpreting
human
interrelationships.
He focussed
on
the
human and
social
rather than the aesthetic treatment of
weltanschauung.
As
we shall
see,
Panofsky's
theory
of
interpretation
arose from a
rather
rarefied consideration of
Alois
Riegl's theory
of
art,
and his desire to
pur-
ify
it,
remove its
psychological aspects,
and
eliminate the
genetic fallacy
implicit
in
historical
interpretations
that are based on the
scientific
method. Mannheim's and
Panofsky's
theories
of
interpretation
were
very
similar, but their objectives were very different.
My goal
in
this
paper
is
twofold.
I
want
to
explore
the
interrela-
tionship
of
Panofsky's
and Mannheim's
theories
of
interpretation
prior
to
their
migration
from
Germany
in
1933. In
seeking
a
synoptic
view
of
the
context
in
which
these theories
evolved,
I
consider the
parallels
in
their
lives
that
enrich our
understanding
of
their
work.
My
second
objective
is
to consider the fate
of
their
early
theories
in
their new
environments
after
1933.
Background
In
the
1920s,
Panofsky
and
Mannheim were
unusually productive,
publishing
some of
their best
substantive and
theoretical work.
During
that decade
they
were both
interested
in
similar
approaches
to
the
study
of
cultural artifacts and
the
exchange began
that would
create
a
major
transformation
in
Panofsky's
approach,
and
probably
in
Mannheim's
also. A number of similarities in their lives united them. Both men were
non-Marxist,
Jewish,
bourgeois
intellectuals.
Panofsky
was born
in
1892
to
a
wealthy
German
family
of
bankers and
merchants.6
Mannheim was
6. This
according
to
the
Panofsky family
tree
provided
by Wolfgang
Panofsky
and
compiled
by
Adele Irene
Panofsky.
In a
letter
to
Walter
Schuchardt
(18
Apr.
1966),
Panofsky
remembers in
passing,
I
myself
come
from
a
family
which was
well
established
in
Hannover
for more than one hundred
years
when I was
born. So
I
remember
an enormous
number of
people
in
all
ways
of
life,
from the
Almighty
'Stadtdirektor' Tramm who was
a
personal
friend of
my
parents
and
my
uncle
(whose
bank,
Carl
Solling
and
Co.,
you
may
conceivably
remember)
to the
proprietor
of the
'uniibertreffliche'
Hotel Kasten in whose
beautiful
summer
place
in
Harzburg
I
spent
many
a summer when I
was a
boy. Panofsky's
mother's
name was
Solling.
The
Panofsky
family
bank was
in
Berlin. Both banks
probably
failed
in
the
post-World
War
I
period. Panofsky
listed his
father,
Arnold
Panofsky,
as
a
Rentner,
a
person
of
private
means,
in
the Matrikelbuchfor summer
semester 1914
at
Freiburg University (Freiburg
University
Archive).
He listed
his
address
as
Landhausst-
rasse
6
(in
the Wilmersdorf
section
of
Berlin),
which is one
street
over from
the
Bundesallee where he attended
the
Joachimsthal Gymnasium.
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538
Joan
Hart
Panofsky
and
Mannheim
born
in
1893 to
a
middle-class
Hungarian family.
Approximately
the
same
age, they
even attended some
of
the same
universities,
and
although I have found no evidence of any personal acquaintance
between
them,
there
may
have been.
Panofsky
received his Promotion
from
Freiburg University
in
1914
but
also attended Berlin
University
for five semesters and returned to Berlin
for
a
postdoctoral fellowship
after
1914.7
Mannheim was a
student
at
the
University
of
Budapest
from
1912
to 1918 but took courses
with
Georg
Simmel at Berlin
University,
and he attended
the universities
of
Heidelberg,
Freiburg,
and Paris from
1912
to 1914. Both attended courses
at
Freiburg
with the
philosopher
Heinrich Rickert.8
Mannheim spent the war years and beyond in Budapest, from 1915
to 1920.
Despite
the
war,
this was a
productive
time for
him,
especially
since he was
a
member
of
the
Sunday
Circle
of
young
intellectuals
in
Budapest,
a
pantheon
of
the
Hungarian intelligentsia.9
Many
of
them
would
scatter after World War
I or
after
the
establishment
of the
counterrevolutionary Horthy regime
in
1920,
and
again
after
1933.
Georg
Lukacs
was the most
promising philosopher
among
them,
although
Mannheim,
who
was five
years younger
than
Lukacs,
was
thought
to
be
close to
him in
intellectual
charisma. Art historians
Arnold
Hauser, Frederick Antal,
Lajos
Fiilep,
and Charles de
Tolnay
were mem-
bers
of
the
circle,
as
were
composers
Bela
BartOk
and Zoltan
Kodaly,
and
the
poet
Bela
Balazs.
With the
exception
of
the
younger
Mannheim,
most
of the
Sunday
Circle members
were at
least
thirty years
old,
well
educated,
and almost
exclusively
from the assimilated
Jewish
middle
7. These
studies,
along
with
Panofsky's
dissertation,
are
described
in
the
Freiburg
Uni-
versity
Dissertation
Catalog.
8.
See
Simonds,
Karl Mannheim's
Sociology
of
Knowledge,p.
4.
Panofsky
attended classes
at
Freiburg University only during
his first and last semesters,
according
to the
Freiburg
University
Library Catalog
filed
with
his
dissertation.
Panofsky's
Promotion
certificate
for
summer semester
1914,
dated
22
May
1914,
lists
two
of
Rickert's courses that
he
attended
in
this
last
semester:
System
der
Philosophie
and
Einfiihrung
in
die
Erkenntnistheorie
und
Metaphysik
(Universitfits-Archiv
Freiburg,
Exmatrikel
Philosophische
Fakultait,
1914).
Panofsky
also
mentions
in
a
letter
to Wilhelm
VSge
(12
Dec.
1947),
his mentor at
Freiburg,
that
he attended
Rickert's
courses.
European
students
readily
move from one
university
to another
to
study
with other
professors,
to
seek
out
interesting
courses
not
available at their
own
universities,
or
for
any
other
reason. There
are
many
other
possible
direct
means
by
which
Panofsky
and
Mannheim
might
have met.
Arnold
Hauser,
the
Hungarian
art
historian,
was
a
good
friend
of Mannheim and
may
have known
Panofsky. Panofsky
and Charles de
Tolnay,
also a Hun-
garian
art
historian,
were
good
friends at
Hamburg University
in
the
early
1930s.
Panofsky
was instrumental
in
helping Tolnay emigrate
to the United
States,
yet
they
had
a
falling
out
in the
1940s.
Tolnay
knew Mannheim. The German academic
community
was
rather
small
and the two
men could
easily
have met.
9.
See
Mary
Gluck,
Georg
Lukdcs
and His
Generation,
1900-1918
(Cambridge,
Mass.,
1985),
hereafter abbreviated
GLG,
and Lee
Congdon,
The
Young
Lukacs
(Chapel
Hill,
N.C.,
1983).
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Critical
Inquiry Spring
1993 539
class
(see
GLG,
p.
20).
The
1920s
are often described
as the
period
of the
Lost
Generation,
of
increased
pessimism,
disenchantment,
and
aliena-
tion in the wake of the war; for these intellectuals, however, the war and
its
immediate aftermath
presented
the
opportunity
for
a
major
cultural
and
philosophical
reorientation.
This
change
is also
evident
in
the work
of the
members
of
the
newly
constituted
Warburg
Cultural Sciences
Library
in
Hamburg during
the
1920s.'0
Hamburg University
was founded
in
1919,
directly
after
the
war,
and
Aby
Warburg's private
library
and
research center was
closely
affiliated
with the
university
from
the
beginning. By
1926,
the
library
was housed
in
an
independent
building
next to
Aby Warburg's
home
(where
the books were
previously
located),
presided
over
by
Fritz Saxl.
Panofsky began
teaching
at the
university
in
1920,
as a
lecturer and the
only
art historian
on
the
faculty.
The
philosopher
Ernst
Cassirer,
the
phi-
losopher
and art historian
Edgar
Wind,
and
many
historians
and art his-
torians
worked
at the
library.
The
collaborations
of
Panofsky
with Saxl
and
Cassirer
were
very
successful.
Panofsky
produced
a
number
of
purely
theoretical
papers
and
a
large
group
of
iconological
essays
and
books.
The
very
constitution of
Warburg's library promoted
an
inter-
disciplinary harmony among
the
scholars
who
used
it.
The
library,
now
in
London,
still has
the
old
organization,
with books
united
loosely by
subject
matter,
not
narrowly by
author
or
nation or
period.
Scholars
were invited
to
cross
disciplinary
boundaries
by
the mere
juxtaposition
of the books.
What united the
Hungarians
of
the
Sunday
Circle and the
Germans
of
the
Warburg library
was
a
mania
for
culture-not
society,
not
politics,
not
science,
but
Culture.'2
According
to
Mannheim,
culture subsumed all
manifestations
of
the human
spirit,
including
art,
religion,
science,
and
10.
In
German it
was
the
Kulturwissenschaftliche
Bibliothek
Warburg
KBW).
I
note
that
the
library
and
Warburg's
house survived
the
war,
but the initials KBW on
the
library
facade
were
removed.
See Gertrud
Bing,
Fritz
Saxl
(1890-1948),
in
Fritz
Saxl,
1890-
1948:
A
Volume
of
Memorial
Essays from
His
Friends in
England,
ed.
Donald
J.
Gordon
(Edinburgh,
1957),
pp.
1-46,
and
E.
H.
Gombrich,
Aby
Warburg:
An Intellectual
Biography,
2d ed.
(Chicago,
1986).
11. In
a
letter
to
me
dated 9
March
1992,
William Heckscher noted
that
Warburg
coined the
idea
of
Das Gesetz des
guten
Nachbarn
[the
law of the
good neighbor].
The
book
you sought
was
invariably missing
or
out
on
loan.
Warburg
wanted users to look
at the books flanking the empty space: They were bound to be the 'good neighbors' which
were
likely
to be
more
important
to
your
research than the book
you
were
originally
look-
ing
for.
12.
See Norbert
Elias,
The
History
of
Manners,
vol.
1
of The
Civilizing
Process,
trans.
Edmund
Jephcott
(New
York,
1978).
Elias
describes
the evolution of this
old German fixa-
tion
on
Kultur,
originally opposed
to French ideas of
civilization.
What
began
as
concepts
of
national
opposition
between France and
Germany
became
concepts
for
internal class
divi-
sions
between
the
merely
civilized
aristocracy
and the
cultured,
educated middle class
within
Germany.
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540
Joan
Hart
Panofsky
and
Mannheim
the state.
In
1918,
Mannheim
described the transformation
among
his
group
in a
lecture called
Soul
and
Culture :
'[we]
had
left behind the
positivism of the nineteenth century and had once again turned toward
metaphysical
idealism'
(quoted
in
GLG,
p.
12).
Culture was
an
objecti-
fication of that
idealism,
mediating
between
subjective
self-realization
and
the
cultural inheritance of the human race
in
all areas.
In
the
process
of
appropriating
this
culture,
the human
spirit,
history,
and
the self
produce
meaning.
The new
generation
believed it was involved
in
the
production
of a new
culture;
Mannheim
stated
in
Soul and Culture that the new
European
intellectual substitutes 'the
problem
of
transcendence
for
out-
worn
materialism,
the
universal
validity
of
principles
for
relativistic
impressionism, the pathos of normative ethics for an anarchic world
view '
(quoted
in
GLG,
p.
182).
Both Mannheim and
Panofsky
sought
transcendence,
universal
principles,
and normative ethics
in
the
1920s.
While
artists
and intellectuals
in
the
Weimar
years
experienced
an
efflorescence
of
culture,
it
is
important
to
recall at what
cost.'13
The cre-
ative
productivity
of
Panofsky
and Mannheim
in
the
1920s
must be seen
against
the
hardships they
had
already
suffered and those that
they
were
soon
to
experience.
Mannheim fled
Budapest
for
Germany
after the
short-lived
Hungarian
revolution
of 1919. He
spent
the
1920s
at
Heidelberg University
and the
early
1930s at Frankfurt
University.
The
high
inflation
in
Germany
caused
Panofsky
to lose his inheritance
throughout
the
1920s,
leaving Germany
in
1934
with
no
money.'14
Both
men must
have
watched the
growing
nationalist,
xenophobic,
conserva-
tive,
and anti-Semitic movements
in
Hungary
and
Germany
with
anxi-
ety. They
were
marginalized
as
intellectuals
and
Jews,
and
yet
their
ambiguous
position
seems to have mobilized their creative
energies.'5
But their
cultural
values were rooted
in
the
past,
and these
roots
were
the
most fruitful.
13.
The visual arts and music took
interesting
new
forms
during
the
Weimar
Republic,
while literature
was less
adventurous
in
Germany.
Dada, surrealism, Bauhaus,
and Neue
Sachlichkeit
all
developed
in
this
time.
14. In
a letter to
me dated 13 March
1992,
Wolfgang Panofsky reports
that
his
father
sold whatever
he
could
during
the
inflationary period, beginning
in
1923.
When
the
family
left
Germany, they
did
not have
even
the
small
amount
of cash
they
were
permitted
to
take.
See
H.
W.
Janson,
Erwin
Panofsky
(1892-1968),
in the American
Philosophical Society
Year-
book
1969,
pp.
151-60,
and a
series
of
essays
after
Panofsky's
death entitled
Erwin
Panofsky
in
Memoriam,
in Record
of
the Art Museum
of
Princeton
University
28
(1969),
esp.
William
Heckscher,
Erwin
Panofsky:
A
Curriculum
Vitae,
pp.
5-21.
15. See
George
L.
Mosse,
German
Jews
beyond
Judaism
(Bloomington,
Ind.,
1985).
Mosse
argues
that
in
the nineteenth
century
German
Jews
adopted
the
Enlightenment
ideal
of
Bildung
or
cultivation,
which allowed
them to
pursue
a
path independent
from
Judaism
that
transcended ethnic divisions.
Unfortunately,
this
path
led them
largely
to
ignore
the nationalistic
and
anti-Semitic
fervor at
the
end of the nineteenth
century.
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Critical
Inquiry Spring
1993 541
The
Dialogue
One of Mannheim's earliest publications, On the Interpretation of
Weltanschauung
appeared
in an art
historical
journal
in
1923.
In
it
he
cited
two
essays by
Panofsky,
The Problem of
Style
in
the
Fine
Arts
(1915)
and
The
Concept
of Artistic
Volition
(1920).
In
two
essays
of
1925
and
1932,
Panofsky
cited Mannheim's
essay
on
weltanschauung.16
He also recommended
that students
in his
courses read
it.17
In
Panofsky's
formulation of his
theory
of
art
in 1939
(the
introduction to Studies in
Iconology)
there
is an
unmistakable
similarity
to Mannheim's
essay,
begin-
ning
with the anecdote
of
the
meeting
of
gentlemen
in
the street that
leads
to the
interpretation
of the
meaning
of the
story using
a
tripartite,
hierar-
chical
schema.
Panofsky
elaborated
on
this
theory
of
iconology
in
his
final
theoretical
statement,
Art
History
as a
Humanistic
Discipline
(1940).
The
dialogue
consisted
in
Mannheim's
reflections
on
Panofsky's
two
early
essays
and
Panofsky's
gradual absorption
of Mannheim's
interpretive
the-
ory.
Panofsky's
early
theoretical
writings
are
interdependent
and each
essay
builds on the
previous
one,
as
if
he were
engaging
in a
monologue
with
himself,
as
well as
in
a
dialogue
primarily
with
Mannheim.
The
first
article Mannheim
cited,
The
Problem of
Style
in
the
Fine
Arts,
was the one with which
Panofsky began
his
publishing
career;
it was
a
belligerent
article
directed
against
Heinrich
W61fflin's
history
of
vision,
which
Panofsky
felt
was
opposed
to the
study
of
content.
It
was
also
his
first theoretical
essay. Panofsky
was
already
staking
out
his
territory,
although
it
took
him
some
time to
figure
out
what
theory
and
method
would
be most
fruitful
for the
history
of art.
In
1965,
he recalled
his
early
article
on
W1olfflin
and
said,
What
gives
me
some
satisfaction is
only
the
fact
that
even as
a mere
beginner,
in
1915, I
clearly
saw
the flaws in an
essential
separation
between 'form' and
'content.'' 18
He was
kinder to
16. All
four
of
these
essays
by
Panofsky
are
reprinted
in
Panofsky,
Aufsdtze
zu
Grundfragen
der
Kunstwissenschaft,
ed. Hariolf
Oberer
and
Egon
Verheyen
(Berlin, 1985).
The
original
German titles
are Das Problem des Stils
in der
bildenden
Kunst
(1915),
pp.
19-28;
Der
Begriff
des
Kunstwollens
(1920),
pp.
29-44;
Uber
das
Verhiltnis
der
Kunstgeschichte
zur Kunsttheorie:
Ein
Beitrag
zu der
Er6rterung
fiber
die
Miglichkeit
'kunstwissenschaftlicher
Grundbegriffe '
(1925),
pp.
49-76;
and
Zum
Problem
der
Beschreibung
und
Inhaltsdeutung
von
Werken
der
bildenden Kunst
(1932),
pp.
85-98.
17.
This
according
to
lecture
notes
by
Willi
Meyne
from
summer
semester
1928,
for
Panofsky
and Noack's
course
Ubungen fiber Methodenfragen
der
Kunstwissenschaft
in
the
Archiv
zur
Wissenschaftsemigration
in der
Kunstgeschichte,
Hamburg.
Of
the
assigned
or
recommended
books and articles for
this
course,
Mannheim's
was one of the
few
recent ones.
18.
Panofsky,
letter
to E.
H.
Gombrich,
15
Nov. 1965.
Panofsky
probably
read
or
heard
Heinrich
W6lfflin's
brief lecture to the
Royal
Prussian
Academy
of
Science of
1912
Das
Problem
des Stils
in der bildenden
Kunst,
Sitzungsberichte
der
K3niglich
preussischen
Akademie
der
Wissenschaften
31
[Jan.-June
1912]: 572-78),
which
was
published
prior
to
W6lfflin's
full
treatment
of his ideas on
art and vision
in
Kunstgeschichtliche
Grundbegriffe
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542
Joan
Hart
Panofsky
and Mannheim
Wolfflin
in
later
reflections
on
his contribution
to the
history
of
art,
realiz-
ing
that
Wolfflin's
concentration on the formal
aspects
of a work of art
was
useful and necessary although inadequate unless supplemented by other
perspectives.
However,
among
art historians
Alois
Riegl
exercised
an
incredible
influence on
Panofsky
until
1924
when he
published
Die deutschePlastik
des
elften
bis
dreizehntenJahrhunderts
German
Sculpture rom
theEleventh to
the
Thirteenth
Centuries]
in which he
practiced
a
Rieglian
formalism
not
actually
visible
in
most
of
the earlier
essays.
The
Concept
of
Artistic Voli-
tion
was devoted
entirely
to
Riegl's
concept
of Kunstwollen
[artistic
voli-
tion].
Panofsky's
intent
in
this article was to establish the
independence
of
the visual arts from all other objects in the world. To accomplish this goal,
he defined
Riegl's
artistic volition as the
unity
of all creative forces of an
immanent nature
in
art. His
overarching
interest
was
to create
an imma-
nent,
autonomous,
and transcendental
philosophy
of
art,
based
on
deduc-
tive
a
priori
categories.
His
primary
aim was to eliminate
psychological
factors
from Kunstwollen
in
three
areas:
the
artist's
intent,
collective
his-
tory,
and
the
spectator.
In
each of
these
domains,
Panofsky
found
a
vicious
circle at
work,
since
the
psychology
of
the
work of
art
was often
derived
from
the
psychology
of the artist
and vice
versa,
and this
circular
explanation was repeated with the collectivity and the spectator.'19To
avoid the
vicious
circle
in
explaining
artistic
phenomena, Panofsky
believed that documents relevant
to the artist's intention or the
psychol-
ogy
of
the
period
had to be examined
independent
of the work
of
art,
an
idea
he
later
termed the
correctives
to
interpretation-the
autonomous
checks to achieve
a valid
meaning.
The
idea was
to view the work of art
as
given
and then
interpret
it
from
historical,
grammatical, logical,
and
transcendental-philosophical
points
of
view.20
Panofsky
thought Riegl's categories
for
understanding
Kunstwollen
revealed a meaning immanent in artistic phenomena. Descriptive terms
became
transcendent,
ideal
concepts
of a Platonic
nature.21
Thus,
(1915);
trans.
M. D.
Hottinger,
under
the title
Principles
of
Art
History:
The Problem
of
the
Development of Style
in Later Art
(New
York,
1932).
19. It is
possible
that
Panofsky
recognized
this vicious
circle
in
W6lfflin's
theory
and
wanted to
discredit it
on
that
basis.
Most formalist
theories are
subject
to this
criticism,
because
they
define
their
subject narrowly.
W6lfflin
tried
to
compensate
for
the vicious
cir-
cle
by including
external
factors in his schema. This issue
is
discussed
in
my forthcoming
book,
Heinrich
Wdlfflin:
Antinomies
of Experience
in Art.
20.
These
categories
are
similar
to
those found
in
many
hermeneutic
models of
philological interpretation.
See
August
Bockh,
Encyclopddie
und
Methodologie
der
philologischen
Wissenschaften,
d. Ernst Bratuschek
(Leipzig,
1877),
intro.
and
chap.
1;
trans.
John
Paul
Pritchard,
under the title On
Interpretation
and
Criticism,
ed. Pritchard
(Norman,
Okla.,
1968).
21.
See
Silvia
Ferretti, Cassirer,
Panofsky,
and
Warburg:
Symbol,
Art,
and
History,
trans.
Richard Pierce
(New
Haven, Conn.,
1989).
Ferretti
usefully
describes
a
relationship
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Critical
Inquiry Spring
1993 543
Panofsky
believed that
Riegl's
contrasting
terms
for
Egyptian
and Hellen-
istic works
of
art,
such as
haptic
or tactile versus
optic,
and
objective
versus subjective, removed them from historical-genetic consideration
into
an
ideal,
a
priori sphere.22
The
sum
of all
descriptive
categories
of this
nature
could be
epitomized by
an axis
or scale of
polar concepts
that
could
completely
characterize
all
art,
since
every
work
would fall
somewhere
on
the
axis.
Ultimately, Panofsky's
goal
was to establish a
transcendental,
aes-
thetic
mode
of
looking
at art that
would not
supplant
but would
comple-
ment
previous
writings
in
art
history.
Assuming
the
concept
of
artistic
volition
to be
methodologically
justified,
the
'necessity'
which
it,
too,
determines
in
a
particular
historical
process
consists
not
in
determining
a
causally
dependent relationship
between individual
phenomena
which
succeed each other
in
time
but
in
discovering
in
them
(just
as
in
an
artistic
phenomenon)
a unified
sense.
He believed that
the
history
of
meaning
would
complement
Riegl's
theory
and
replace psychologizing
history
that confused
art
and
artist,
subject
and
object,
reality
and
idea
in
a
vicious
circle.23
In
creating
this transcendental
philosophy
of
art,
Panofsky ignored
Riegl's
own convictions about
his
theory
of art. While
Riegl
was
convinced
that art
should be
examined
independent
of
other cultural
enterprises
and
worldviews,
he was also a
strong supporter
of Adolf von Hildebrand's
perceptual psychological interpretation
of
art,
presented
in The
Problem
of
Form
in
the Fine Arts
(1893)-so
strong
a
supporter,
in
fact,
that he
believed
only
Hildebrand had come close to his
intent
of
constructing
a
pure positivist theory
of
Kunstwollen. 24
The
descriptive
terms of
Riegl's
and
Hildebrand's formal
oppositions-such
as
tactile,
optical,
and dis-
tant
and
near
views-were
closely
linked to the sensationist
psychology
popular
at the
end
of
the nineteenth
century.25
between
Platonism
and the three
Warburgians,
though
somewhat
convolutedly.
22.
See Alois
Riegl,
Spdtromische
Kunstindustrie
(Vienna, 1901).
This
is
the
principal
text
in which
Riegl
introduced the
concept
of
Kunstwollen
and
the
development
of art
in
the
ancient
world,
from tactile to
a
balance
of
tactile
and
optical
to
purely optical
art-
following
the
progression
from
Egyptian
to classical Greek to Hellenistic art.
23.
Panofsky,
The
Concept
of Artistic
Volition,
trans.
KennethJ.
Northcott
andJoel
Snyder,
Critical
Inquiry
8
(Autumn
1981):
30-31.
24.
Riegl,
Naturwerk
und Kunstwerk
II,
Gesammelte
Aufsiitze
(Augsburg-Wien,
1929), p.
64.
See Adolf von
Hildebrand,
Das Problem der Form in der
bildenden Kunst
(Strassburg,
1893).
For a
lengthier
description
of
the
interrelationship
of
Riegl
and
the
sculptor
Hildebrand,
see
Joan
Hart,
Some
Reflections on
W61lfflin
and the
Vienna
School,
in
Wien
und
die
Entwicklung
der
kunsthistorischen Methode,
Akten
des XXV.
Internationalen
Kongresses
ffir
Kunstgeschichte
(Vienna, 1984),
pp.
53-64.
25
Hermann
Helmholtz
was
widely
read
by
artists
and
art
historians
at the
end of
the
nineteenth
century;
see
Hermann
Helmholtz,
On
the Relation
of
Optics
to
Painting
(1876),
Popular
Lectureson
ScientificSubjects,
rans.
E.
Atkinson
(New
York,
1881),
chap.
3.
I
hesitate
to call Helmholtz's
theory
of
perception by any
name,
since
I
have seen so
many
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544
Joan
Hart
Panofsky
and Mannheim
Panofsky's primary
intent was to
depsychologize Riegl's
theory,
just
as Edmund
Husserl
and
Heinrich
Rickert
had
argued
against
those who
claimed that psychology was the foundation for philosophical inquiry.
Rickert
was one of
Panofsky's
(and Mannheim's)
philosophy
professors
at
Freiburg,
but it was
clearly
Husserl's
phenomenology
that had
the
great-
est
impact
on
Panofsky's thought.26
Husserl's
great
contribution
to
philos-
ophy
was to
refocus
attention
on
the content
of
consciousness,
what he
called
its
intentionality
(and
later
transcendental
subjectivity ).
Rather
than
reflecting
on
psychological
processes
or
acts,
we
actually
reflect on
the
content of those
processes.
When we
consider
Husserl's
philosophy,
we
think about the
content
of his
ideas;
we do not
attempt
to
replicate
a
set
of psychological acts or events that went on in his head. Earlier psycholo-
gizing philosophy
had been concerned with
understanding
the mental
acts
of consciousness.
When
Panofsky
referred to the
given
nature of
the
work of
art,
he
meant its
content,
just
as Husserl redirected attention
to
the
objects
of consciousness.
Husserl
thought
psychological
and historical
accounts were often
guilty
of the
genetic fallacy,
against
which
Panofsky
also
argued
in
his arti-
cle
on
Kunstwollen
and his later defense of that
article,
Uber
das
Verhiltnis
der
Kunstgeschichte
zur
Kunsttheorie
[ Concerning
the Rela-
tionship of Art History to Art Theory ]. Husserl meant by genetic allacy
the false
belief
that
the
empirical
circumstances
in
which a
judgment
occurs decide its truth or
falsity.27
He
argued against
psychological
and
historical methods and for
logical
and
transcendental ones.
For
Husserl,
as
for
Panofsky
at this
time,
the realm of
empirical
facts could never
lead
to
the realm
of
truth and essences.
However,
Panofsky
regarded
traditional historical documents to be
essential heuristic aids
in
the
interpretation
of
meaning.
The immanent
meaning
of
art revealed
in
Riegl's
artistic
volition
through
the
axes
of
a
priori
categories
such as
haptic
and
optic required
outside validation. He
believed that documents can
alter
our immanent
interpretation
of
a
work
offered. Sensationist seems
appropriate,
since his
theory
is
not
completely
nativist but
insistent on sensation as
a
basis. See Kurt
Danziger, Constructing
the
Subject:
Historical Ori-
gins of Psychological
Research
(Cambridge,
1990),
p.
29.
In
the first three
chapters,
Danziger
provides
an excellent
overview of
German
psychological
practice
in
the nineteenth
century.
26. Both Mannheim
and
Panofsky
referred
to
Husserl as a
primary
source
for
their
work. See Edmund
Husserl,
Logical
Investigations,
trans.
J.
N.
Findlay,
2
vols.
(1900;
Lon-
don,
1970).
This book
was
most influential
in
debunking
psychologism.
See
also Heinrich
Rickert,
Science
and
History:
A
Critique of
Positivist
Epistemology,
trans.
George
Reisman
(1921;
Princeton,
N.J.,
1962),
and Die
Philosophie
des
Lebens:
Darstellung
und
Kritik der
philosophischenModestromungen
unserer Zeit
(Tiibingen,
1920).
Georg
G.
Iggers,
The German
Conception
of
History:
The National Tradition
of
Historical
Thought
rom
Herder to the Present
(Middletown,
Conn.,
1968)
contains a valuable introduction
to Rickert's
thought.
27.
See
Husserl,
Philosophie
als
strenge
Wissenschaft,
Logos
1
(1910-11):
289-341.
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Critical
Inquiry Spring
1993
545
of art
by
providing
a
reconstruction
of a
lost
work or
part
of a
work,
or
an
exegetic
correction
demonstrating
alterations
in formal
aspects
of
the
work, or, more generally, any error in interpretation of a work. Panofsky's
essay
on artistic
volition was an
attempt
to balance the
historical
project
of
the art historian with the abstract and
absolute
meaning
of
a
work
of
art,
attained
by
considering
a
work's immanent
meaning.
The
seeds of his
later
theory
of
iconology
were
clearly
in
the
harmonizing
of
levels of
inter-
pretation,
although
his
main
objective
was to validate a
pure
aesthetic
meaning
in
art,
devoid
of
psychological
or
historical
genetic
errors.
Mannheim's
essay
On
the
Interpretation
of
Weltanschauung
1923)
must have
changed
Panofsky's
view
of his
theory
almost
immediately.
For
Mannheim, by misinterpreting Panofsky's interpretation of Kunstwollen
and
putting
it into
a
larger interpretive
theory, suggested
a
method for
deriving meaning
from
any
cultural
object,
which could be
used
by
the art
historian and
sociologist
as well as
the
literary
historian,
philosopher,
and
others. Mannheim
directed his
attention to the visual
arts.
The
question
he wished
to
answer
was,
Can I
give
a
methodological analysis
of
the
concept
of
Weltanschauung
and
determine its
logical
place
within
the
conceptual
framework
of the
historical cultural
disciplines?
( IW,
p.
8).
Weltanschauung
was
not
exactly
equivalent
to
Kunstwollen
but
a
global
outlook, nonrational, germinal, unformed, deeper, and prior to but
inherent
in
cultural
objectifications.
It should be
stated at the
outset that
Mannheim's
objective
in
this
essay
was a
totalizing
hermeneutic
interpre-
tation of the social world
and
art.
He
regarded
the
eclipse
of a
Hegelian
universal
history
as a
necessary
phase
in which
to
regain
scholarly
stan-
dards and
investigate
the
details,
but this
analytic period
led back
to
an
understanding
of the
global
historical
process,
a new
synoptical approach.
Furthermore,
this
global
outlook was
atheoretical and
nonrational.
Wilhelm
Dilthey
was
Mannheim's
forerunner
in
recognizing
that
theo-
retical philosophy is neither the creator nor the principle vehicle of the
Weltanschauung
of an
epoch;
in
reality,
it is
merely only
one of
the
chan-
nels
through
which
a
global
factor-to be
conceived
as
transcending
the
various cultural
fields,
its
emanations-manifests
itself
( IW,
p.
13).
Phi-
losophy
was
merely
one
among
many objectifications
of
weltanschauung.
Crucial for Mannheim
was
his
intuition that the
craving
for
theoretical
knowledge
is
inconsistent
with
the
direct
experience
already
wholly
pos-
sessed
of
weltanschauung.
However,
theorizing opens
up
new
possibilities.
Authentic
experience
demands
repatterning,
demands
theorizing;
the
very
basisof knowledge is the reciprocity of experience and rational operations.
Mannheim
provided
a
framework for
graduating
the
atheoretical
into the
theoretical,
for
manipulating
that unmediated and
authentic
experience
to achieve a
new
understanding:
Every
cultural
product
in
its
entirety
will
...
display
three
distinct
'strata
of
meaning':
(a)
its
objective
meaning,
(b)
its
expressive
meaning,
(c)
its
documentary
or
evidential
meaning
( IW,
p.
19).
To
illustrate his
theory,
Mannheim
described the
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546
Joan
Hart
Panofsky
and
Mannheim
street
encounter
and its
interpretation
that was the
exemplar
for
Panofsky's
interpretive
strategy
in
the introduction to Studies in
Iconology
(see IW, p. 20). The lower level objective meaning was the visual data
alone. At this level of
interpretation,
one
grasped
the
structural character-
istics
of
the visual
field,
without further
knowledge.
To
attain
the
expres-
sive
meaning
one must have understood the
gestures
of
the individuals
in
space
and
time;
in
art,
an
understanding
of the
artist's stream of
psychic
experience
and an
empathy
with it
led
to
expressive meaning.
Factual
his-
torical
research could also
illuminate
expressive meaning.
The
final,
doc-
umentary
meaning
was like Kunstwollen
in
its result:
this
search ... for
an
identical,
homologous pattern
underlying
a
vast
variety
of
totally
differ-
ent realizations of
meaning
( IW, p. 32). Mannheim associated the
synoptic,
documentary
meaning
with
Riegl's interpretation
of Roman
decorative arts
in
which
Riegl
found
a
pervasive
cultural characteristic
immanent
in
all
of
them.28
After
a
comprehensive
examination of the three levels
of
interpreta-
tion,
Mannheim declared
that
the
divisions
between
them
were
false
because
each
unit
of
meaning
is
already
encased
in
a
universe
of
interpre-
tation
(Auffassungsganzheit)
IW,
p.
44).
A
face is not
patched together
from a mosaic
of
features
but is whole
and
unique
on first
glance,
and
so
the
weltanschauung
is like a
gestalt.
The
theory
created to understand the
global
outlook is distinct
from the
unitary
nature
of it.
In
other
words,
the
objective, expressive,
and
documentary
meanings
are
given
simultane-
ously,
and it
requires
a
scientific
analysis
to
separate
them,
to
stabilize
them,
to
give
them
a
firm
outline.
The
simultaneity
and
circularity
of
the
part
and the
whole
in
the
cul-
tural sciences
is
the
paradox
implicit
in
giving
a theoretical
and
scientific
account
of
weltanschauung
or cultural
meaning.
Mannheim
selected
biog-
raphy
as
a model for
this
paradox,
as
Dilthey
had
before
him.
We derive
the
'spirit
of
the
epoch'
from its individual
documentary
manifestations-
and we
interpret
the individual
documentary
manifestations
on
the basis
of what we
know about
the
spirit
of the
epoch
( IW,
p.
49).29
This sounds
like the vicious
circle.
However,
Mannheim
suggested
that
we can use
scientific terms
to control
and
verify
the
unity
of cultural endeavors
in
a
given
period
by
creating
a
coordinate
system
of
concepts.
In
his
next arti-
cle of
1925,
Panofsky presented
Riegl's categories
as such a coordinate
system
while
expanding
his
theory.
Mannheim
surveyed
the failure of various authors to create
a thor-
28.
The
Riegl
text
is
Stilfragen:
Grundlegungen
zu
einer
Geschichte der Ornamentik
(Berlin,
1893).
29.
See Wilhelm
Dilthey,
Das
Erlebnis
und
die
Dichtung:
Lessing,
Goethe,
Novalis,
H'lderin
(Stuttgart,
1957).
This
collection
of
essays
has sometimes
been
interpreted
as
Dilthey's
proposal
to
replace
his
earlier
descriptive
psychological
foundation
by
an
individ-
ual
psychology
expressed through
individual creative artists
or
biographies
of
them.
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Critical
Inquiry
Spring
1993
547
ough synthesis
of
cultural
meaning-Dilthey
with
his three
types
of
weltanschauung,
Hermann
Nohl
who found a weak
correspondence
between Dilthey's three types and visual forms, and Riegl's project.
Mannheim criticized
Riegl
for
the
rigidity
of his
approach
because it
led to a strict
rationalizing
of
art forms at their lowest common denomi-
nator or
germinal
patterns.
Mannheim
believed
it was
impossible
to
achieve
a
synoptic
interpretation
incorporating
the wealth of
meaning
available
in
any given
culture
by
using
Riegl's
reductionist
and
unimagi-
native
theory.
He
did,
however,
offer two
hopeful
models
in
the work of
synthesiz-
ing
historians
Max
Dvoiak
and Max
Weber,
an
art historian and a
social
scientist. These two took a historical approach and analyzed individual
cultural
phenomena
in
detail to re-create the
essence
of
a
past
epoch
in
all
its
multiform
variety
( IW,
p.
55).
However,
this
hermeneutic method
for
finding meaning
of a
global
nature had the
problem
of
how to
express
the interrelatedness
of
different cultural fields.
Should the
unity
be
expressed by
means
of
causality,
correspondence,
function,
reci-
procity ?
According
to
Mannheim,
Dvoiak
favored
correspondence
and
parallelism,
while
Weber
proposed
a mutual
causal
dependence
with
one
cultural domain sometimes
explaining
another.
Partial determination of
historical
processes
was the result. For Mannheim, this
methodological
problem
was critical for
distinguishing
the cultural
sciences
from
the
natural
sciences.
When a
cultural
phenomenon
was
traced back to a
weltanschauung
instead
of
another
phenomenon,
the
result was an inter-
pretation
that
did not
posit
a
causal
relationship.s0
Meaning
could not
be
explained
causally
or
genetically,
it could
only
be
understood
or
inter-
preted.
Science
was
explanatory.
Thus,
Mannheim avoided the
genetic
fallacy against
which
Panofsky
argued,
and
distinguished
the
cultural
sphere
from the scientific one.
In
his article on
artistic
volition,
Panofsky
had
already suggested eschewing
causal
progression
in favor of a unified
sense.
Perhaps Panofsky
was
encouraged
by
Mannheim's
suggestion
of
a
coordinate
system
of
concepts
to understand and
verify
the
unity
of a
period,
for
he had
already suggested
such a
system using Riegl's
dichoto-
mies.
But,
gradually,
in later
essays,
he followed the
interpretive paths
of
Mannheim and
Weber.
Their
totalizing
interpretive
frameworks
derived
from the
nineteenth-century philological
method
of
hermeneutics.31
A
30. New Historicists should take note of this
prefiguring
of
their current concerns.
Shying away
from causal models in
philological methodology goes
back to the
eighteenth
century,
at
least.
31. Mannheim
pursued
a hermeneutic
approach
early
in his
German
period,
which
became more
like Max
Weber's
approach.
Weber
proposed
an
amalgam
of
hermeneutics
and
empiricism
in
his
early
theoretical
essays,
Roscher
and Knies: The
Logical
Problems
ofHis-
torical
Economics,
trans.
Guy
Oakes
(1903-6;
New
York,
1975),
p.
8. The
essays
are a cri-
tique
of economic
theory
from
this
new
perspective.
Later his
concept
of
the
ideal
type
was
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548
Joan
Hart
Panofsky
and
Mannheim
summary
of a hermeneutic
theory
of this
sort includes the
following
ideas:
The
goals
of
such
a
theory
are
meaning
and
understanding,
not
explana-
tion, and are attained through interpretation, which is usually a multi-
level
process;
the
theory
utilizes
a
circular method
of
explication;
it
is
empirical
in
that
objective
elements
are
compared
in an
attempt
to
verify
the
interpretation;
the
theory
assumes the
relativity
in
space
and time
of
the
interpreter
and
object
of
interpretation;
it
emphasizes
the
reconstruc-
tive
process
of
understanding
and, therefore,
the
subjectivity
of the inter-
preter.32
Panofsky gradually
implemented
Mannheim's
explication
of his
hermeneutic
method,
but its
full
adoption
and revision took sixteen
years.3
The
philology
of
the
past
crystallized
in
modern art
history
and
sociology.
Panofsky
footnoted Mannheim's
essay
in his
methodological
article
of
1925,
Concerning
the
Relationship
of Art
History
to Art
Theory.
He
agreed
with Mannheim that it made
sense to consider artistic
styles
as cor-
related,
not
causally
related. He
continued
to
stress the
immanent and
transcendental character
of Kunstwollen. But
pressed
by
his
critic,
Alexander
Dorner,
to
whom he
addressed the
essay,
he
responded by
taking
the
programmatic
statements of his Kunstwollen article further to
illuminate the
relationship
of
art
theory
to art
history.34
a
heuristic device that allowed
for
an overall structure of
hypotheses
that could then be
tested.
However,
the
process
of
understanding
was
hermeneutic.
Max
Dvoriak
seemed
rela-
tively
uninterested
in
methodological
considerations,
although
he
was concerned with the
social
history
of
medieval art
in
Idealismus
und
Naturalismus in der
gotischen
Skulptur
und
Malerei
(Munich, 1918).
32.
The
history
of
hermeneutics
is
cogently
presented
in
Richard
E.
Palmer,
Hermeneutics:
Interpretation
Theory
in
Schleiermacher,
Dilthey,
Heidegger,
and
Gadamer
(Evanston,
Ill.,
1969).
The best
nineteenth-century
source is
still
B6ckh,
On
Interpretation
and
Criticism.See
also David
Couzens
Hoy,
The
Critical Circle:
Literature,
History,
and Philo-
sophical
Hermeneutics
(Berkeley,
1978);
Jiirgen
Habermas,
Knowledge
and Human
Interests,
trans.
Jeremy
J. Shapiro
(Boston,
1971);
and
Hans-Georg
Gadamer,
Truth and
Method,
trans.
Joel
Weinsheimer and
Donald
G.
Marshall,
rev.
ed.
(1960;
New
York,
1989).
The lit-
erature
on
hermeneutics is
growing exponentially.
However,
it is
helpful
to
distinguish
between
philological
and
philosophical
hermeneutics.
For
the
purposes
of
this
paper,
I am
discussing philological
hermeneutics.
33. See
Simonds,
Mannheim's
Sociology
of
Knowledge
as a
Hermeneutic
Method,
Cultural
Hermeneutics
3
(May
1975):
81-104.
Simonds
correctly
identifies Mannheim's
method
as
hermeneutic but
prefers
to discuss
its
opposite-the
New
Criticism
of
I.
A.
Richards and others-rather than to
explore
Mannheim's
theory
in
detail.
34. Alexander Dorner
(1893-1957)
received
his
degree
in
art
history
at
Berlin
Uni-
versity
in
1919;
Adolph
Goldschmidt was
his
mentor,
as well
as
Panofsky's.
Dorner was a
lecturer when he wrote Die
Erkenntnis
des
Kunstwollens durch die
Kunstgeschichte,
Zeitschriftfiir
Aesthetik und
allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft
16
(1922):
216-22,
a
rebuttal to
Panofsky's essay.
In
1925,
Dorner became
director
of
the Landesmuseum
in
Hannover,
for
which he
acquired
modern
art.
Many
works of
art
in
the Entartete
Kunst
exhibition of
1937
came from
the
Hannover
collection.
Dorner
left
Germany
in 1936 for
the United
States
and became director
of
the museum at
the
Rhode Island
School
of
Design.
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Critical
Inquiry
Spring
1993
549
By
1925,
he
must
have
realized,
like
Mannheim,
the limitations
of
Riegl's
project,
for
he transformed
it
substantially.
In
his article on
Kunstwollen of 1920, he had offered two pages on how to reconcile tran-
scendental artistic volition
with the
historical
understanding
of
works
of
art,
but
the
whole
object
of
this later
article was to
argue
for
the reci-
procity
of
philosophy
and
history,
in
response
to the
critics
of
the earlier
essay.35
He reiterated
the
phenomenological
argument
but
with a
new
respect
for the
knowledge imparted
by
the
history
of art. The
claim
in
this article was
that art
theory
and
art
history
fulfilled
different
but
interrelated
projects:
in
art
theory, problems
were
formulated
by
means
of a
system
of basic
concepts
that
were
deduced from
an
Urproblem.
Art
history, consciously or not, oriented its solutions around these problems;
art
history
was
empirical
and
created
style
criteria
out of the
sensuous
qualities
of
works
of
art.
Finally,
art
history
was an
interpretive
science at
the
transcendental
level of
Kunstwollen. At
this
level,
art
theory
and
art
history
joined
to
create a
principle
of
formation
or
structure,
a
Gestaltung.
In
this
manner
Panofsky
described three
levels of
interpreta-
tion,
familiar
to us from
his
later,
less
philosophical
descriptions:
the
Urproblem
of
art
theory
with
its
conceptual
framework,
empirical
art
his-
tory,
and
interpretation
[Kunstwollen] through
the union of
art
history
and art
theory.
Panofsky adopted
Mannheim's
explication
of
Kunstwollen
as the uni-
fying,
synoptic,
and
formative
interpretation,
encompassing
theory
and
history.
In
this
essay
of
1925,
he
united
theory
and
practice,
integrating
what
had been
merely suggested
in
his earlier
article. The
three-level
divi-
sion of
the
interpretation
of art
recalls
Mannheim's three
interrelated
kinds
of
meaning,
although
there
is
still no
organic
correspondence
between
the levels.
The unusual
part
of
his
1925
theory
was the
sliding
scale or
axis of
antithetical
concepts
that he illustrated to show the
continuity
and divi-
sion of
art
theory
and art
history.
He
presented
a
table with
five
vertical
divisions
(table
1):
at the
far left
is the extreme
set of
antithetical
art the-
oretical
concepts
of
an
ontological
nature-fullness
opposed
form,
and
on
the far
right
is
the
extreme
set
of
antithetical
art historical
concepts
of
a
methodological
nature-space
and time. The
antitheses are
corre-
lated,
for
fullness and form
are the
a
priori hypotheses
for
the
essence
of
the
artistic
problem,
and
space
and
time
are the a
priori
conditions
of
its
solution.
Between
these two
poles
of
contrasting concepts
are
three
pairsof
opposites
within the
phenomenal
and
visual
sphere
that are
graded
in
value from
elementary
to
figurative
to
compositional,
a
three-part
hier-
archical
progression:
from
optic
versus
haptic,
to
depth
versus
plane,
35. The
argument
for
the
complementarity
of
history
and
philosophy
was
common
among
nineteenth-century philologists.
See the
introduction
to
B*ckh,
On
Interpretation
and
Criticism.
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550
Joan
Hart
Panofsky
and Mannheim
and,
finally,
to fusion
versus
independence.
These
contrasting
pairs
con-
form to
Riegl's contrasting
characterizations
of
Egyptian
versus Hellen-
istic art, or Wdlfflin's schema of Renaissance versus Baroque
art.36
These were the
basic
concepts
for the
science
or
philosophy
of
art and
art
history,
according
to
Panofsky.
He
united the
conceptual
and
experi-
ential
aspects
of artistic
interpretation.
These
concepts
seemed to
oper-
ate
as a heuristic
device
for
Panofsky,
to be
used
to
compare
the
abstract
with the
real,
or to
set
up
a dialectic
between
a
priori concepts
and real
works of
art.
Art
itself
possessed
these
dual
qualities:
it was conditioned
by
time
and
place
but also had an a
priori,
timeless,
lawful,
metahistorical
character.
There was a
reciprocal,
not
a
causal,
relationship
between art
history and art theory, which were united in interpretation.37 Following
Mannheim,
Panofsky
suggested
that
by
correlating
different
areas of
cul-
ture
one could attain a
synthetic
view of
a
single
or several cultures-
that
is,
theoretical
concepts
could
be
compared
with real
objects
to arrive
at
immanent
meaning.
In
this
essay
of
1925,
Panofsky
reached a
crossroad.
Kunstwollen was
no
longer purely
a
priori
and
transcendent,
although
he
continued
to
claim it was.
Rather,
Kunstwollen was
now
synonymous
with
interpreta-
tion,
which
united the theoretical and historical studies
of art. The Pan-
dora's box of
interpretation
was
open.
Why
did
Panofsky
move from a transcendental
philosophical
defense
of Kunstwollen
to a
half-hearted rebuttal
of
arguments against
it and an
increasing
integration
of
those
nasty empirical
facts of art
history?
His
own art historical
work
tells the
story.
Panofsky's
dissertation
was entitled
Diirer's
Theory
of
Art,
Particu-
larly
in Relation to the Art
Theory
of
the
Italians. 38
t was
published
in
1915,
after
it
was awarded the Grimm Prize
at
Berlin
University.
The
topic
was
not
conceived
by Panofsky
but
by
the
Grimm
Committee,
most
likely byHeinrich
Wolfflin.39
At the same
time,
Panofsky
published
the 1915 article
on
W61fflin,
an
article on Leon
Baptista
Alberti's
perspective
that was the
first to
interpret perspective
construction,
and an assortment of articles on
36. See
Riegl,
Spdtriimische
Kunstindustrie,
and
W6lfflin, Principles
of
Art
History
and
Renaissance and
Baroque,
trans. Katherine
Simon
(1888;
Ithaca,
N.Y.,
1966).
37.
This became a central
argument
in
Panofsky's
1940
essay
The
History
of Art as
a
Humanistic
Discipline,
in
Meaning
in the
Visual
Arts
(1955;
Chicago,
1982);
see
esp.
pp.
21-22.
38.
See
Panofsky, Diirers
Kunsttheorie,
vornehmlich n ihrem
Verhdltnis
zur
Kunsttheorie
der Italiener
(Berlin, 1915).
39.
In
a letter to
Jan
Bialostocki,
8
Nov.
1970,
Gerda
Panofsky
explained
the circum-
stances
of the award
of
the
Grimm Prize
(as
in
the brothers
Grimm)
to
Panofsky.
It came
from
the
Grimm
Stiftung
at Berlin
University,
in
honor
of
the best dissertation.
It
com-
memorated the
seven
professors
at
G6ttingen University
who
protested
the dissolution
of
the constitution
in
1837
by
the
new
King
of
Hannover.
The
topic
of 1911
was
probably
for-
mulated
by
W61lfflin,
who
left Berlin
University
in
1912.
W6lfflin
reviewed
Panofsky's
dis-
sertation
in
Monatsheftefiir
Kunstwissenschaft
8
(1915):
254-55.
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Critical
Inquiry
Spring
1993
551
medieval,
Renaissance,
and
Baroque
themes.40
The
newly
founded Ham-
burg University
recruited
Panofsky
in
1920,
through
Gustav Pauli who
was
director of Hamburg's Kunsthalle.4' In 1920, the year of his arrival in
Hamburg, Panofsky
began
a series of
studies
all
very
similar
in
method on
the
subjects
of
proportion,
perspective,
devoted
images,
and
the
concept
of
idea,
among
others.42
The
pattern
in
all these studies
was
to
isolate
one
motif
out of the
manifold
possibilities-motifs
like
proportional
schemas,
spatial
depictions,
classical
themes,
or a
concept
like idea-and
attempt
to
understand its
particular meaning
(as
opposed
to
focussing
solely
on
appearance)
in
a
given
time frame that would
provide
an idea of
the artistic
intention
realized
in
all artistic
creations
in
a
given
period.
By
comparing
these meanings across periods, one could chart historical developments.
Each
new
generation
of
artists utilized these motifs
in a new
way,
transform-
ing
the
meaning
to suit
a new worldview.
Panofsky
took
particular delight
in
finding
these often bizarre transformations.
In
most
of
these
studies,
he
used texts
contemporary
with the
images
to elucidate the
artistic
problem.
None of these
studies were based
purely
on
Riegl's
theory
of art
nor on
Panofsky's
1925
exposition
that
juxtaposed
theory
and
practice
with
only
a
tentative
union between them. There was
clearly
a
disjunction
between
Panofsky's
theory
and his
actual
method.
In 1931,
Panofsky
wrote his mentor, Wilhelm
Vige,
At the corner
where we attain the
meeting
of the tradition
of
words and the tradition of
images,
and with the simultaneous use
of a
method
of
historical
types
and
philological
methods a definite form of
iconological
knowledge
can be
40. See
Panofsky,
Das
perspektivische
Verfahren Leone
Battista
Albertis,
Kunstchronik,
6
Aug.
1915,
pp.
504-16. See the
bibliography
in
Panofsky's
Aufsdtze
zu
Grundfragen
der
Kunstwissenschaft
for a
listing
of
these
essays.
41. In a letter to
Magdalene
Pauli, wife of Gustav Pauli, 8 Mar. 1955,
Panofsky
stated
that he
and Dora intended to dedicate their book Pandora's Box to
Gustav Pauli: Denn
wir
haben nie
vergessen,
dass
er es
war,
dar einen damals
ganz
unbekanntenjungen
Mann nach
Hamburg
einlud,
ihn von
Anfang
bis
zu
Ende
in
Treue
und
Freundschaft
f6rderte. Pauli
tried
to convince
Panofsky
to
stay
in
Hamburg
after the
1933 law that excluded
Jews
from
the universities
was
enacted.
42.
These
are the
Panofsky
works,
cited
in
full: Die
Entwicklung
der
Propor-
tionslehre als Abbild der
Stilentwicklung, Monatshefte
ir
Kunstwissenschaft
14
(1921):
188-219;
Diirers
Stellung
zur
Antike
(Vienna,
1922)
(Panofsky
translated the first two
essays,
and
they
were
published
as The
History
of the
Theory
of
Human
Proportions
as a Reflec-
tion
of
the
History
of
Styles
and Albrecht Diirer and
Classical
Antiquity, Meaning
in
the
Visual
Arts,
pp.
55-107,
236-94);
with Fritz
Saxl,
Diirers
MelencoliaI : eine
quellen-
und
typengeschichtlicheUntersuchung (Leipzig,
1923);
Die
Perspektive
als
'symbolische Form,'
Vortrdge
der
Bibliothek
Warburg (Leipzig,
1924-25),
pp.
258-330;
'Imago
Pietatis':
ein
Beitrag
zur
Typengeschichte
des 'Schmerzensmannes' und
der 'Maria
Mediatrix, '
Festschriftfiir
Max
J.
Friedlinder
zum
60.
Geburtstage
(Leipzig,
1927),
pp.
261-308;
with
Saxl,
A
Late
Antique Religious
Symbol
in
Works
by
Holbein and
Titian,
Burlington Maga-
zine 49
(Oct. 1926):
177-81;
and Hercules am
Scheidewege
nd
andere
antike
Bildstoffe
n
der
neueren
Kunst
(Leipzig,
1930).
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552
Joan
Hart
Panofsky
and
Mannheim
won. 43
He
gave
equal
status to
images
and
words,
always
seeking meaning
in
the
transformations
of a motif over time
and
relating
it to a
synoptic
whole. Without doubt, Panofsky practiced iconology long before he
preached
it.
In
1932,
Panofsky
published
an article
in
Logos
entitled
Concerning
the Problem
of
Description
and
Interpretation
of
Meaning
in
Works
of
the Fine Arts.
The
basic
content
of
it,
more
lucidly
organized, appeared
in
1939
in
English
as
his introduction to Studies in
Iconology,
and
was
reprinted
with
minor
changes
in
1955 as
Iconography
and
Iconology:
An
Introduction to the
Study
of
Renaissance
Art. 44
The last
formulation
of
iconography
and
iconology
appeared
in 1940 in
The
History
of
Art
as a
Humanistic Discipline. In these three essays, the subject of inquiry was
the
interpretation
of works of
art.
Panofsky
described
three
interrelated
levels
of
interpretation:
a
description
of
forms derived
from
the
interpreter's
practical
experience
that was
to be corrected
against
the his-
tory
of
style;
a
secondary analysis
of
subject
matter that
required
knowl-
edge
of
literary
sources and was
corrected
by
a
history
of
types;
and an
iconological
synthesis
of the
content,
requiring synthetic
intuition or
knowledge
of
worldviews
and
corrected
by
a
history
of
cultural
symptoms
or
symbols.45
He
stressed that the
three levels
refer in
reality
to
aspects
of
one
phenomenon,
namely,
the work of art as a whole. So
that,
in actual
work,
the methods
of
approach
which
here
appear
as
three
unrelated
operations
of
research
merge
with
each
other
into
one
organic
and indi-
visible
process. 46
Mannheim
also stressed the
interlocking
unity
of
the
three
theoretical levels.
Not
only
were all
three
operations
unified,
but each
presupposed
a
knowledge
of the others.
Panofsky
used
this
example:
an art historian
finds
a
contract
for an
altarpiece,
finds records of
payment
for the
work,
and
an
altarpiece
in
situ
that
corresponds
to the
description
in the
con-
tract. The historian must
inquire
about the
authenticity
of all three
pieces
of
evidence.
In
order to validate each
one,
the
investigator
must
already
know what must be
checked,
such as the
date
of
the
script
used in the
con-
43.
Panofsky,
letter
to
Wilhelm
V6ge,
6
Jan.
1931. The letter
reads,
die
Ecke,
wo
das
Zusammentreffen
von
Worttradition
und
Bildiiberlieferung
uns
erreicht,
und durch die
gleichzeitige Anwendung
typengeschichtlicher
und
philologischer
Methoden
eine
bestimmte
Form
'ikonologischer'
Erkenntnisse
gewonnen
werden kann.
Panofsky
stated
that
V6ge
was
the
one who
invented this
approach
and
Panofsky
was a mere
follower.
I
thank Peter Boerner for his
help
with
my transcription.
44.
See
Panofsky,
Zum Problem der
Beschreibung
und
Inhaltsdeutung
von Werken
der
bildenden
Kunst,
Logos
21
(1932):
103-19;
repr.
in
Aufsiitze
zu
Grundfragen
der
Kunstwissenschaft,pp.
85-97. See
also
Panofsky, Iconography
and
Iconology:
An
Intro-
duction
to
the
Study
of
Renaissance
Art,
Meaning
in the Visual
Arts,
pp.
26-54.
45.
See
the
tables
that
Panofsky
constructed
for his
essays
of
1932 and 1939
(tables
2
and
3).
The
table
for
the
1932
essay
in
Logos
still
contains
the
philosophical verbiage
of the
earlier work: vitale
Daseinserfahrung, phainomensinn,
and Wesenssinn.
46.
Panofsky,
Studies in
Iconology,
pp.
16-17.
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Critical
Inquiry
Spring
1993 553
tract,
formal or
iconographical
oddities in the
altarpiece.
Thus,
the
beginning
of our
investigation always
seems to
presuppose
the end. We
cannot analyze what we do not understand. 47Historical interpretation is
a
circular
process-a methodological
circle,
not a
vicious one.
You
may
recall that
he asserted it was a vicious
circle
in the
essay
on
Kunstwollen
because
he
had not
yet
considered
independent
correctives
to
verify
the
interpretation.
Panofsky
cited
Mannheim in
the first
of
his
iconology papers
of
1932.
He credited
Mannheim as the source for his third level
of
interpretation,
the
documentary
meaning,
which
Mannheim had
derived
partially
from
Panofsky's
own
interpretation
of
Riegl's
Kunstwollen.48
Panofsky
adopted
far more from Mannheim's theory of interpretation than he credited to
him.
However,
Panofsky
codified Mannheim's
three
levels of
interpreta-
tion
in a far
more
systematic
manner,
suggesting
the
way
one
could
vali-
date an
interpretation
using
correctives
and
without
referring
to
causal
explanations. Using
Mannheim's
model,
Panofsky
was
able to shed the
overly
philosophical
and
obscure
verbiage
of his earlier
theory,
to make it
a useful
construct
(tables
1-3 reveal the
increasing
clarity
of his
theory).
Panofsky's
most
striking adaptation
from
Mannheim's
essay
was the
little
scene
of
the
street
encounter.
At last
Panofsky
characterized a
theory
that was consonant with his
actual
practice,
and he never
theorized
again.49
The
interpretive
theory
Panofsky
delineated
was,
like
Mannheim's,
that
of
hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics
was
that
part
of
philology
concerned with the
interpreta-
tion of texts.
Panofsky
often referred
to himself as a frustrated
philolo-
gist
or
philologist
after the
fact. 50 When Leo
Spitzer,
the renowned
philologist,
received his
copy
of
Panofsky's
Meaning
in
the Visual Arts
in
which the last two
of
the
three
iconology
articles
appeared,
he
sent
47.
Panofsky,
The
History
of
Art
as
a
Humanistic
Discipline,
Meaning
in the Visual
Arts,
p.
9.
48.
Mannheim remarked in a note
that
Panofsky's analysis
of
Riegl's
concept
of
the
'art
motive'
shows
a clear
understanding
of
what
is here
defined as
documentary
meaning
( IW,
p.
33).
49.
In
his
correspondence,
Panofsky
would
respond
to
questions
about
iconology,
but
he
increasingly
refused to be
concerned with theoretical
questions.
He
asserted to
all who
inquired
that,
with
advancing
age,
he
was unable to
concentrate on
such
problems.
50. One
among
many
such references
in
Panofsky's correspondence
is
in
a letter to
Dr. Erich
Hubala,
27
Jan.
1966:
The
only thing
which
slightly
disturbed a would-be
philol-
ogist
is the
spelling
'Perystil.'
This
letter
is also
interesting
for
Panofsky's
reminiscence
about
his life in
Berlin from
1900 to 1920. Hubala
sent
him an
article about the Berlin
Imperial
Castle,
and
Panofsky
recalled that
the
family
bank
of
Eugen Panofsky
was
located
in
a
big ugly building right opposite
the
Castle.
Panofsky
wrote to Booth
Tarkington
about
President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt,
the
very style
of his
speeches
and
writings,
as it hits the ear
of
an old
philologist,
seems to reveal
a
genuinely
humanistic
attitude
(Dr.
Panofsky
and
Mr.
Tarkington:
An
Exchange
of
Letters,
1938-1946,
ed. Richard M.
Ludwig,
[Princeton,
N.J.,
1974],
p.
58).
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Table 1
Panofsky's
First
Schematization
of
an
Interpretive
Strategy,
1925
Specific
oppositions
within the
phenomenal
and
particularly
the
visual
sphere
General
General
antithesis
antithesis
within
the
(1)
Opposition
(2)
Opposition
(3)
Opposition
within
the
ontological
of
elementary
of
figurative
of
composition
methodological
sphere
values values
values
sphere
Fullness
Optical
values
depth
values values of
Time
versus
(open
space)
versus
interlocking
versus
Form versus
planar
values
(fusion)
Space
haptic
values
versus
(body)
values of
juxtaposition
(separation)
Spezifische Gegensaitze
nnerhalb der
phainomenalen
und zwar
visuellen
Sphlire
Allgemeine
Allgemeine
Antithetik
Antithetik
innerhalb der
(1)
Gegensatz
(2)
Gegensatz
(3)
Gegensatz
innerhalb der
ontologischen
der
der der
methodologischen
Sph~ire
Elementarwerte
Figurationswerte
Kompositionswerte
Sphaire
Die Fulle
Die
optischen
Die Die Werte des
Die Zeit
steht
gegeniiber
Werte Tiefenwerte Ineinander
steht
gegeniiber
der
Form
(Freiraum)
stehen
(Verschmelzung)
dem Raum
stehen
gegeniiber
den
gegeniiber
den
gegeniiber
den
Flichenwerten
Werten des
haptischen
Nebeneinander
Werten
(Zerteilung)
(K6rper)
Source:
Uber
das
Verh~iltnis
der
Kunstgeschichte
zur
Kunsttheorie,
n
Aufsiitze
u
Grundfragen
der
Kunstwissenschaft,
.
51.
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556
Joan
Hart
Panofsky
and
Mannheim
foundational
science,
for the
cultural
studies,
then
the traditional
method
of
studying
the
contents
of
the
mind-hermeneutics-became
salient
again. Husserl was influential in establishing the ground for this develop-
ment,
devoting
half of
his
Logical Investigations
(1900)
to
refuting
psycho-
logism, although
he was
not
a
hermeneuticist.
Dilthey
and others were
convinced
by
his
arguments
against
psychologism.
Dilthey
realized that
psychology
itself has a
history
and
cannot
provide
a foundation for
history.57
As
Mannheim
noted,
Dilthey
was
extremely
influential
in
establishing
hermeneutics as the
foundation
for
studying
the
humanities,
beginning
with his
early,
monumental
biography
of
Schleiermacher,
an
early
hermeneuticist. Even
the
most
prominent
psychologist
in
Ger-
many-Wilhelm Wundt-added the historical-psychological method of
hermeneutic
understanding
to his methods for
overcoming
the
introspec-
tionist's dilemma: How
do
I
understand
my
own
thought processes?58
Wundt
admitted that
psychology
reached its
limit
for
explanation
or
understanding just
at the
point
when
it
was
most needed. Closer to Ham-
burg,
the
participants
in
the
Warburg
circle were
engaged
in
these issues.
Edgar
Wind,
the first doctoral
student of
Panofsky
and
Cassirer
at Ham-
burg
University,
wrote
a
number of
essays,
including
his
Habilitations-
schrift,
ustifying
hermeneutics
by
arguing
that the circle
of
understanding
was not vicious but a methodological necessity.59 Panofsky often
referred to Wind's work
in
his articles on
iconology.
Fritz
Saxl,
who
avoided
discussions of
theory,
must have
intuitively
agreed
with the
57. See
Dilthey,
Der
Aufbau
der
geschichtlichen
Welt
in
den
Geisteswissenschaften
1910),
Gesammelte
Schriften,
12
vols.
(Stuttgart,
1957-60),
7:
143-44,
200.
Dilthey
did not com-
pletely
eliminate
psychology
from
his
theory,
but
hermeneutics
became
the
means of under-
standing
and,
because
it is
a
theory
that has
no
unquestionable
ground,
it became the basis
for
rethinking
the nature of
cultural studies. Michael
Ermarth,
Wilhelm
Dilthey:
The
Critique
of
Historical Reason
(Chicago,
1978),
pp.
232-45,
is an
excellent source
for
understanding
this
change in
Dilthey's
construct.
Dilthey
was not alone in
being
influenced
by
Husserl. Max
Weber's
early
theoretical
writings
were also
influenced
by
Husserl. Even
in
Roscherand
Knies,
Weber offered
a
synthesis
of
hermeneutics and
empiricism,
while
rejecting psychologism
(the
view
that
all
critical
problems
in
philosophy
could be
resolved
by
psychology).
Mannheim
followed Weber's
approach,
and
sociology
has
probably
been more
affected
by
this solution than
any
of
the other social
sciences.
Panofsky's path
was not
unique.
58. Wilhelm
Wundt,
Logik,
3 vols.
(Stuttgart,
1906-8),
3:
8,
164-69.
See
Ermarth,
Wilhelm
Dilthey,
p.
212;
Ermarth
recognized
the
similarity
of
Wundt's late
theorizing
to
Dilthey's
hermeneutics.
59. See
Edgar
Wind,
Aesthetischer und
kunstwissenschaftlicher
Gegenstand:
ein
Beitrag
zur
Methodologie
der
Kunstgeschichte
(Ph.
D.
diss.,
Hamburg
University,
1924).
Part of the dissertation
appeared
as Zur
Systematik
der kiinstlerischen
Probleme,
Zeitschriftfiir
Aesthetikund
allgemeineKunstwissenschaft
18
(1925):
438-86. The dissertation
was
never
published
in
full,
due to
the inflation
in
Germany
at the
time,
but
a full version
can be found
in
the
Hamburg University Library.
Wind's
Habilitationsschrift
was Das
Experi-
ment und die
Metaphysik:
zur
Aufli'sung
der
kosmologischen
Antinomien
(Tiibingen,
1934).
According
to a
letter
from Wind
to
William
Heckscher,
3 Nov.
1968,
Wind
studied
with
Husserl and
Heidegger
in
Freiburg
before
1920.
(Access
to this
letter
was
granted by
the
kind
permission
of
Margaret
Wind.)
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Table
2
Panofsky's
Second Schematization of an
Interpretive Strategy,
1932
Object
of
Subjective
Sources
Objective
Correctives
Interpretation
of
Interpretation
of
Interpretation
1.
Phenomenon
sense
Vital experience
of History of formal configu-
(divide
into factual
existence rations (sum of
repre-
and
expressive
senses)
sentational possibilities)
2.
Meaning
sense
Literary knowledge
History
of
types (including
imaginative possibilities)
3.
Documentary
sense
Original
condition of
General
history
of
ideas
worldview
(including
ideological
possibilities)
Gegenstand
der
Subjektive Quelle
der
Objectives
Korrective der
Interpretation Interpretation
Interpretation
1.
Phainomensinn
(zu
Vitale Daseinserfahrung
Gestaltungsgeschichte
teilen
in
Sach-
und
(Inbegriff
des Darstel-
Ausdrucksinn)
lungsmiglichen)
2. Bedeutungssinn Literarisches Wissen Typengeschichte (Inbegriff
des
Vorstellungs-
m6glichen)
3. Dokumentsinn
Weltanschauliches
Allgemeine
Geistes-
(Wesenssinn)
Urverhalten
geschichte
(Inbegriff
des
weltanschaulich
Miglichen)
Source: Zum
Problem der
Beschreibung
und
Inhaltsdeutung
von
Werken der
bildenden
Kunst, in Aufsdtze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaft,p. 95.
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Table 3
Panofsky's
Final Schematization
of an
Interpretive
Strate
OBJECT
OF
ACT
OF
EQUIPMENT
FO
INTERPRETATION
INTERPRETATION
INTERPRETATION
I-Primary
or natural
subject
Pre-iconographical
description
(and Practical
experience
(familia
matter-(A)
factual,
pseudo-formal
analysis).
with
objects
and events).
(B) expressional-,
constituting
the world of
artistic motifs.
II-Secondary
or
conventional
sub-
Iconographical
analysis
in the
nar-
Knowledge
of
literary
source
ject
matter,
constituting
the
rower sense of
the word.
(familiarity
with
specific
world of images, stories and and concepts).
allegories.
III-Intrinsic
meaning
or
content,
Iconographical
interpretation
in a
Synthetic
intuition
(familia
constituting
the
world of
deeper
sense
(Iconographical
with the
essential
tenden
'symbolical'
values.
synthesis).
the
human
mind),
conditi
by personal
psychology
'Weltenschauung.'
Source:
Panofsky,
Studies in
Iconology:
Humanistic Themes
in the Art
of
the
Renaissance
(1939;
New
Y
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Critical
Inquiry
Spring
1993
559
method,
for
his collaborative
work
with
Panofsky
produced
iconological
interpretations.
Cassirer has often been viewed as a source
of
Panofsky's
thought, and he, too, perhaps after the others, pointed out that the rules
of
semantics,
not the laws
of
nature,
are the
general principles
of
historical
thought.
History
is included
in
the field of
hermeneutics,
not
in
that of
natural
science. 60
What
were Mannheim's and
Panofsky's
reasons for
adopting
this
phi-
lological
method? Consider the
ecology
of
the German
university system
in
the
1920s,
which
predisposed
them to this method. Both
sociology
and
art
history
were still
consolidating
their
professional
statuses and inde-
pendence.
Weber had
given
his
imprimatur
to a
quasi-hermeneutic
method. Panofsky could build on several theories in art history, each of
which had
potential,
but none
was a
totalizing interpretive
schema.
Thus,
at
this
stage
of
professionalization,
Mannheim and
Panofsky
could
still
make
their mark
by
creating
innovative theories.
Philology
was
the
most
valued and
privileged
discipline
in
Germany.
Unlike the
situation
in
America
or
England,
in
Germany
the
humanities
were
more
highly
esteemed than
the natural sciences.
Jeffrey
Herf has shown
in
Reactionary
Modernism that German academic
engineers throughout
the
Weimar
Republic
and until the end of the
Third
Reich
attempted
to
acquire
the
high
status of the
humanities,
not the natural
sciences,
by
using
its lan-
guage
and
ideas.6'
Thus,
by
developing
and
refining
the
philological
method
for use
in
their
disciplines,
Mannheim and
Panofsky
could
appro-
priate
its aura and
prestige.
This
adoption
would make these newer disci-
plines
more credible to
the
established
groups
in
academia.
The
cash value
for
selecting
this
strategy
was
very
high.
Mannheim
began
teaching
at
Heidelberg,
one of the most
prestigious
universities
in
Germany,
and
received
the
only
full
professorship
in
sociology
in Ger-
many
when he went
to Frankfurt
University
in
1930.62 He
was one of the
very
few Social Democrats
teaching
at a
university
in
Germany.
At Ham-
burg
University,
Panofsky
became a
full
professor
very rapidly
and
attracted
the most brilliant students
in
art
history.63
60. Ernst
Cassirer,
An
Essay
on
Man:
An
Introduction to a
Philosophy
of
Human Culture
(New
Haven, Conn.,
1944),
p.
195.
The
influence
may actually
be reversed.
Panofsky may
have influenced
Cassirer.
Freud's
psychoanalytic
method also
presumes
an
ongoing
and
open-ended dialogue
between the
analyst
and the
analysand,
a
method that Habermas celebrated
as
hermeneutic,
although
neither
Mannheim
nor
Panofsky recognized
it as such. See
Habermas,
Knowledge
and Human
Interests,
chap.
10.
61. See
Herf,
Reactionary
Modernism,
chap.
7.
62.
See
Simonds,
Karl Mannheim's
Sociology
of
Knowledge, pp.
4-5.
63. See
Panofsky,
Three
Decades of
Art
History
in the
United
States,
p.
336n.
Panofsky
joined
the
faculty
of
Hamburg University
in
1920
as
a
Privatdozent
(non-civil
ser-
vant,
unsalaried
position,
paid
through
student
fees)
and
became
a
professor
in
1926.
Soon
after
his
arrival at
Hamburg,
Panofsky
was in the
unusual
position
of
being
director of the
art historical seminar
(a
position
usually
held
by
a
professor),
by
which
means he
paid
him-
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560
Joan
Hart
Panofsky
and
Mannheim
The
seeming
unconsciousness of their
appropriation
of
hermeneutics
is
a
puzzle. Why
did neither
Mannheim nor
Panofsky simply
state
the
nature of their
theory
instead of
reinventing
the wheel? Weber had
been
very
self-conscious
in
creating
a
method that balanced the scientific
method
with
hermeneutics.
Despite
the
great prestige
of
philology
and
the cultural
studies,
there
was
a
lingering
doubt that
they
should
acquire
the
methods
of the natural
sciences. Both
Mannheim
and
Panofsky
wanted to avoid
using
the scientific
method.64
They
hoped
to eliminate
any
doubts about their
interpretive
strategy by
using
correctives
outside
the
object
of
interpretation
to validate it.
They
rejected
the scientific
grounding
that
earlier
theorists had
thought
was essential.
Perhaps
the
prestige
of
philology
was so
great
that
stating
that their method was
hermeneutics
would
have
been
unnecessary.
However,
neither Mannheim
nor
Panofsky
ever stated that their
theory
was
equivalent
to hermeneutics.
Panofsky
did not
synthesize
all
the elements of his
theory
until the
1930s,
and
the conflict between
maintaining
some
vestige
of
his earlier
Rieglian
project
and the new
theory
of Mannheim was
present
until
1932,
and
probably
longer,
when he was
no
longer
in
the
same
cultural matrix
or
tra-
dition,
but
in
Princeton.65
The
goal
of the theories
concerning
Kunstwollen and
weltanschauung
was
a
totalizing, harmonizing,
and
comprehensive
whole,
unified
in
mean-
ing.
These aims resembled God.
In
discussing
their
theories,
Mannheim
and
Panofsky
produced images
of an
organic,
self-contained universe
laden with
meaning.
That
both
men
adopted
hermeneutics to attain this
godlike
totalizing
whole is
not
surprising,
since hermeneutics
was
devel-
self,
as
lecturer,
a
salary.
From
1921
on,
he was
courted
by
other
universities,
and Gustav
Pauli and other friends
continually urged
the
Hamburg University
administration to
make
him
a
professor
before
they
lost him
(Hochschulwesen
Dozenten
und Personalakten IV
1204,
Staatsarchiv
Hamburg).
64.
I
am
referring only
to
Mannheim's
1923
On the
Interpretation
of
Weltan-
schauung
essay.
Later,
in
Ideology
and
Utopia,
Mannheim
attempted
to harmonize science
and the circle
of
understanding.
65.
Robert
Klein,
Thoughts
on
Iconography
(1963),
Form and
Meaning:
Essays
on the
Renaissance
and Modern
Art,
trans. Madeline
Jay
and Leon
Wieseltier
(Princeton,
N.J.,
1979),
pp.
143-60.
Klein's
essay
is
very interesting
and
very
critical
of the hierarchical
structure
of
Panofsky's iconology.
Klein
constantly
refers
to the hermeneutic nature
of
iconology.
He
concludes
his
essay
with three
central
paradoxes
in
iconology:
understand-
ing [Verstehen]results in objectification, objectification annuls understanding, and the
understanding
of
history
is itself historical.
(One
might
ask what kind
of
objectification?)
Panofsky
and Klein were
friends,
and
Panofsky
read
the
article
(in
1963
when it was first
published)
and commented
favorably
in
a
letter to
Klein.
However,
even in
this
response
he
never used
the
word
hermeneutics,
nd I
have
not
found the word
in
any
of his
letters
or writ-
ings
to date.
Panofsky
wrote
to
Klein,
I
feel
both
honored and
slightly
embarrassed
by
the
fact that
I seem
to
have reached
the
stage
of
being
commented
upon
instead
of
comment-
ing,
and have learned to
understand
myself
better
in
the
light
of
your
brilliant
and,
on
the
whole,
affirmative
exegesis
(17
Feb.
1964).
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562
Joan
Hart
Panofsky
and
Mannheim
The
Fate
of
Their
Theories
in Exile
The theory Panofsky elaborated became the mainstay of the growing
discipline
in
America
in
the
postwar period,
when Americans were
eager
to learn from their
prestigious European counterparts,
who had emi-
grated
to
escape persecution.
Art
history
in
the United States before the
emigration
in
the
1930s
was a small
field,
and the
prestigious
figures
in
it were often the
indepen-
dently wealthy
WASP
cliche,
with
the
notable
exception
of the
young
Meyer
Schapiro
at
Columbia.68
This is not to
say
that these were not schol-
arly
men,
only
to note how much the
demographics
of
the
discipline
has
changed.
Women,
though
often-then as now-interested students of art
history,
were
systematically
excluded
from
professorships, although
a
number
held
prestigious
museum
appointments. Foreigners
and
Jews,
on
the other
hand,
were
largely
unrepresented.
Panofsky
recorded
his aston-
ishment when the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
appointed
as head of deco-
rative arts
Georg
Swarzenski,
who had been director of
the
Frankfurt
Stfdel
Museum for
thirty years,
and his son Hanns Swarzenski to the
Department
of
Painting,
because
foreigners
in
general,
Jewish
or
not,
sim-
ply
were not considered for
museum
positions.69
In
1930,
Panofsky
was recruited for the
fledgling
department
at New
York
University
and,
in
1931,
he
began spending
half a
year
in
New York
and half a
year
at
Hamburg University
where he was a
full
professor.70
thinking
in the
argument
of
the
book,
which was evidence
of the
compromise
Mannheim
was
attempting
to
make
between his
German roots and
the
sociology
of
England,
his
adopted country.
Adorno states that the
liberal,
who
sees
no
way
out,
makes himself the
spokesman
of
a dictatorial
arrangement
of
society
even
while he
imagines
he is
opposing
it
(p.
48).
Martin
Jay provides
an
interesting
critique
of Adorno's
analysis
in The Frankfurt
School's
Critique
of Karl Mannheim
and
the
Sociology
of
Knowledge,
Permanent Exiles:
Essays
on the Intellectual
Migration
rom Germany
o
America
(New
York,
1985),
pp.
62-78.
Jay
turns Adorno's
criticism
around and notes that Adorno failed to understand
Mannheim's
challenge:
what is the Archimedean
point
in
which a true
consciousness can be said to be
grounded? (p.
72).
This takes
us
back to
Dilthey's
and Husserl's dilemma in the
first
dec-
ade
of
the
twentieth
century.
68.
Panofsky
described
American
art
history
in rosier
hues
in Three Decades
of Art
History
in the
United
States,
but
in
his
personal correspondence
he was
far
more critical.
69.
Panofsky,
letter to Hanns
Swarzenski,
4
Apr.
1949: it is
a
tremendous distinction
for an
emigrant
scholar to be offered a
permanent position
at an American
museum of
the
rank
of
the
M.F.A.
at
Boston.
There are several other statements to
this effect in
Panofsky's
correspondence.
70. Richard
Offner,
letter to
Panofsky,
13
Dec.
1930,
wherein
Offner
invited
Panofsky
to teach
in
the
graduate
division of
the
College
of Fine Arts at NYU.
Panofsky
told
the
Hamburg
Hochschulbeh6rde that
he needed a leave since
he
had
just
turned
down an offer
at
Heidelberg
University,
and
he
wanted to take the U.S.
position.
Senator
Chapeaurouge
of
the
Hamburg
Assembly
asked the
Hochschulbeh6rde to
deny Panofsky's
leave
for
fear
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Critical
Inquiry
Spring
1993
563
When he was
dismissed
from the
university
at
Hamburg
in
1933
by
the
Nazis,
he
decided
to
emigrate
and his
family
moved
in
1934.71
In
1935,
the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton invited Panofsky to become
one of
its
original
members. Thus
Panofsky,
by
virtue
of his
incredible
scholarship
and
extreme
good
fortune,
was
placed
in
a
position
to
ensure
the
future
of his
own
work and that of his
colleagues
and
students.
He
helped
(among
others)
his
professor
from
Freiburg
University,
Walter
Friedlaender,
come
to teach
at the Institute of Fine
Arts
at
NYU,
as well
as
Karl
Lehmann,
the
classical
archaeologist.
His
German
and American
students
read like
a who's who in
the
discipline:
Peter
Janson,
Adolf
Katzenellenbogen,
Walter
Horn,
Hugo
Buchthal,
Ludwig
Heydenreich,
Marilyn and Irving Lavin, George Kubler, Edgar Wind, Frederick
Hartt,
William
Heckscher,
Colin
Eisler,
and Lotte
Brand-Philip, among
many
others.
Karl
Mannheim,
like
Panofsky,
was
fortunate
again
in his
second
jour-
ney
into
exile,
which took
him
to
England
in
1933
to lecture
on
sociology
at the
London School
of
Economics.72
Mannheim's
strategy
of
adaptation
to
this new cultural
matrix was
more
startling
than
Panofsky's.
His
pub-
lished work
changed
dramatically
after 1933. His
earlier
epistemological
concerns in the
sociology
of
knowledge
receded,
and
pragmatic problems
of social
planning
and reform in the liberal state took
precedence.
One
can
ascribe this
shift
in his
research
to a sense of
urgency
in
the need
to
that
they
would
lose
their
best
professor
(Hochschulwesen
Dozenten
und Personalakten
IV
1204,
Staatsarchiv
Hamburg).
71. See
Panofsky,
Three Decades
of
Art
History
in
the United
States,
pp.
321-22.
Shortly
after
taking power
in
1933,
the Nazis
instituted a law for
the
purification
of the
civil
service,
the
Wiederherstellung
des
Berufsbeamtentums.
They
sent
a
questionnaire
to
all
civil servants, which included all
professors
at German universities, to discover their
racial
origins.
On the basis
of the
7
April
1933
questionnaire,
mostJews
and
political
and
cultural dissidents
were
immediately
fired.
Even in liberal
Hamburg,
the law
took
immedi-
ate effect. Most
astonishing
is the fact
that two
museum directors in
Hamburg
with
pure
Aryan
roots-Gustav Pauli of the
Kunsthalle
and Max
Sauerlandt
of
the Museum
of Arts
and
Crafts-were
also
immediately
fired.
Their
impurity
resulted from
collecting
mod-
ern
art.
There
are
some remarkable
letters in the
Panofsky
Papers
between
Panofsky
and
Pauli,
Udo
von
Alvensleben
(an
aristocratic friend
and
student
of
Panofsky),
and
Peter
von
Blanckenhagen
(a
student and later classical
archaeologist),
during
the
period
of
1933-34
when
Panofsky
was in the
process
of
leaving Germany.
Von
Blanckenhagen
was
one of the
few
students
who
wrote
to
Panofsky
when
he
read the
newspaper
in
April
1933 and
learned
of
Panofsky's
dismissal
from the
university.
It
is a
moving
document,
for he
explained
to
Panofsky
that
not
all
Germans
support
Hitler
and that
resistance is bound
to
result.
Von
Alvensleben saw
the immediate
danger
and
offered
sanctuary
to Dora
Panofsky
and
their
sons
(Panofsky
was
already
in
the United
States).
Pauli tried to
convince
Panofsky
to
stay,
and in
these letters
Panofsky
explained
his reasons for
leaving.
72.
See
Simonds,
Karl
Mannheim's
Sociology
of
Knowledge, pp.
5-6,
and
Gunter W.
Remmling,
The
Sociology
of
Karl
Mannheim
(London,
1975),
pp.
83-103.
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564
Joan
Hart
Panofsky
and
Mannheim
reform
society,
resulting
from his direct
experience
of the
German disas-
ter.73
The
Anglo-American
tradition of social science was
positivist,
and
Mannheim courted acceptance in his new environment. He succeeded. In
1946 he
accepted
a
position
in
the Institute
of
Education at the
University
of
London,
where he could
pursue
his
interest
in
the
development
of
pub-
lic education.
He
took the
position
of
director of
European
UNESCO
prior
to his death
in
1947.
Panofsky
had to make a
different kind of
adjustment
in
America.
The
natural
sciences,
particularly
physics,
were the status
disciplines
in
America,
not
the humanities.
(Panofsky's
two sons became
scientists.)
The humanities
were
largely
nontheoretical,
even antitheoretical.
Panofsky's work, even when he did not discuss theory, was initially diffi-
cult for American art historians to understand.74 There
was no
tradition
in
the United States
comparable
to
that
which had existed
in
Europe.
Panofsky
set about
recreating
the
European
tradition in the U.S. insofar
as he
could,
but he
proceeded
cautiously,
with
charm,
and
by
demon-
strating
the
usefulness
of
iconology,
not
through theorizing
about
it.
He
left
his
legacy
through
his students and
his
publications.
His
later
pub-
lished works
were devoid
of the
philosophical
jargon
and difficult con-
struction
of his earlier work. He
believed that it was
in
learning
English
73.
Remmling
believed that Mannheim's
direction
changed
in
England
as
a result
of
the need
to
adapt
to
the new academic
philosophy
and
his own
desire
to
transform
society.
This is a kinder
interpretation
than
Simonds
gave.
Paul
Kecskemeti,
in
his
introduction to
Mannheim's
Essays
on
Sociology
and
Social
Psychology,
ed. Kecskemeti
(London,
1953),
assigned
great
importance
to
the idea
of
structure in Mannheim's
early
work:
underly-
ing
this
concept
of
structure
was, then,
a
metaphysical,
quasi-religious
belief in
the
creative
function
of
history
(p.
1).
According
to
Kecskemeti,
totalitarianism broke the
spell
of his-
tory
for Mannheim.
Harmonizing
structure could no
longer
be
explained.
Kecskemeti
ascribed the
change
in
Mannheim's
work in
England
to the Nazi
experience
and the atmo-
sphere
of academic life in
Britain,
which he described as far less
Olympian
and inbred
and
in
which
sociology
was a new
and
less
important
field. Mannheim drew
on
Freudian
theory
to
develop
ideas on social
planning
in his
last works.
74.
Panofsky
admitted
in
a
letter
to Monsieur
le
Chevalier
Guy
de Schoutheete de
Tervarent,
a
diplomat
and
iconographer
(17
Feb.
1966),
that
Studies
in
Iconology
could
safely
be
entitled Studies
in
Iconography :
When it was
published
the
very
term
iconology,
as
yet
unknown in
America,
proved
to
be
puzzling
to
certain
colleagues
and one of them
(the
late-lamented
Henry
Francis
Taylor,
the Director of the
Metropolitan
Museum)
became so
angry
that
he
made me
personally
responsible
for
the rise
of
Hitler,
saying
that
it
was
small
wonder
that
stu-
dents confronted
with this kind of
incomprehensible
and
useless
investigation,
turned
to National
Socialism
in
despair.
He,
of
course,
had never heard
of
Ripa
and his
fol-
lowing;
nor
had
he ever
thought
of
the difference between
iconology
and
iconography
as it was
understood
before what
may
be
called the
iconological
revolution. He
repented,
however,
in
the
end;
and
now,
I am
afraid,
things
have come to the
point
where
iconology
has entered a kind
of
Mannerist
phase
which evidences both the suc-
cesses and the
dangers
of
what we all have been
trying
to
do
during
the
last
few
decades.
Taylor's
letter
of
repentance
is
preserved,
undated,
in
the
Panofsky
Papers.
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Critical
Inquiry Spring
1993 565
that
this transformation occurred. More
likely
it was his
adaptation
to
the
prevailing
academic
culture,
which
was
permeated
with
scientism,
that led to this change in his style.75
Art
history
in
America,
until the
arrival of
the
refugee
scholars,
was a
weak
discipline,
although
there
was a
strong
tradition
in
the
archaeology
and
analysis
of
medieval and
classical
art.
Connoisseurship
and
apprecia-
tionism
were
probably
the
strongest
currents
in
the
discipline.
Panofsky
and other
refugee
scholars were forced to come to terms with the
indige-
nous tradition that
they
had
previously
scorned. Even as late as
the late
1950s,
one of
Panofsky's
students wrote to
him in
despair
that she was
being
forced to
teach art
history
as
though
it
were timeless because her
colleagues believed historical methods are wrong and old-fashioned.
Her
superiors
insisted
that
by
discussing
an
artist
as
an
integral part
of
his
time,
I
deny
his
'free-will.'
76
Before
she
resigned,
she asked
Panofsky
what she should do.
His
answer
was
ajustification
of historical
methods:
It seems to
me that
just
historical
methods
are
the
only
ones that rec-
ognize
the
artist's
free will whereas all
nonhistorical methods-
whether
psychological
or,
God
forbid,
aesthetic-always preestablish
absolute standards
(mostly
unbeknownst to the writers or
speakers)
which tend to measure artistic achievements
by
the
prejudices
of the
speaker.
In
your
further discussions
you may
remind
your
interlocu-
tors
that
with
a
very
few
exceptions
no
artist,
however intense his
human
expression,
was ever
judged according
to his merits. We all
know that the whole
seventeenth
century
violently
disapproved
of
ce
fanfaron de
Michelange,
that
Shakespeare
and Rembrandt were
long
considered to be
barbarians,
and
that,
conversely,
such
German
writers
as
Scheffler looked
down
upon Raphael
as
a
producer
of
picture postcards
and
accepted only
what
they
thought
was
Gothic.
Thus,
who
are
we
to
pass judgment on,
or
even
to
understand,
the
works of art
produced
in
an
environment different from our own
if
not
by
the
application
of historical
methods?77
Although
Panofsky's
tone was
even,
he
had,
in
fact,
been
more
involved
in
the
fight against
appreciationism
than
he
admitted
here,
or in
Three
Decades of Art
History,
where he
painted
a
rosy
picture
of Amer-
ican
art
history.
Later he
told
his
student that it
was,
in
fact,
merely
because these
diabolical tendencies
began
to
get
hold
of the
College
Art
Association that I resigned from its board of directors. You and I (and, I
hope,
a few
others)
will have to
resign
ourselves to the role of reactionaries
75. He admitted this
link
with
the
pervading atmosphere
of
positivism
in
Three
Decades
of Art
History,
p.
329:
it was
a
blessing
for him
[the
emigrant]
to come into
contact-and
occasionally
into conflict-with an
Anglo-Saxon positivism.
76. Mirella Levi
D'Ancona,
letter to
Panofsky,
10 Dec.
1959.
77.
Panofsky,
letter to
D'Ancona,
15 Dec. 1959.
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566
Joan
Hart
Panofsky
and Mannheim
who,
in
the
end,
may yet prove
to be ahead of the
general
swim. ' 78
t
would be
interesting
to know more
about
the
history
of
this
appreciation-
ism that sounds like I. A. Richards's New Criticism applied to the visual
arts,
that
is,
taking
a
text
or work of art
completely
out of context to dis-
cuss its
intrinsic
meaning.79
While art
appreciation
courses are still
taught,
the
historical method
of the
emigrants
dominates
in
art
history
programs
today.
The
United
States
became
deprovincialized;
students came
from
abroad to
study
here,
and
European professors
often came
to teach
here. This
process
has con-
tinued,
although
new theories from
abroad
have
recently challenged
the
older,
entrenched
theory
of
iconography.
Panofsky radically changed the discipline of art history in America.
From his
central
position
at
the
Institute for Advanced
Study,
which
he
made into
his
fiefdom,
he
exerted the
greatest
authority
in the
discipline
during
his
lifetime;
he was
cherished
in
this role.
In
Germany,
Panofsky
and Mannheim
could
proceed
along
similar
theoretical
paths
that
privi-
leged
the
cultural sciences over the natural sciences.
For
Panofsky
in
the
United
States,
their common route culminated
in
the formulation of
iconology,
an almost
theological harmonizing
of
meaning
in
the visual
arts.
With
the
emigration,
Mannheim and
Panofsky
had to
adjust
to
dif-
ferent ecological matrixes: Mannheim to the Anglo-American positivist
strain
in
the social sciences and
Panofsky
to the
atheoretical,
incipient
art
history
in
America.
Despite
their later
changes,
it
was
their
early
theoreti-
cal
work,
in
which
they
had
cooperated,
that
ultimately
had the
greatest
impact
in
their
new
environments.80
78.
Panofsky,
letter to
D'Ancona,
7 Oct. 1960.
79.
Panofsky
characterized
appreciationism
in
Three Decades
of
Art
History,
but it
would be
worthwhile
to consider its
origins
and
protagonists.
There are some
suggestive
letters
from
Panofsky
to
Sumner
Crosby,
the
Yale
medievalist,
during
Panofsky's
tenure as
a member of the
College
Art Association's board of
directors
(see,
for
example,
the
letter
of
2
June 1941). Wolfgang Panofsky
informed me
in a
recent letter that
his
father
was
very
critical
of
art
appreciation
in
Germany. Accordingly,
Panofsky
refused
requests
by
art deal-
ers and collectors
for
statements
of
attribution,
authenticity,
or
quality
of
artworks,
although
sometimes
he
gave
detailed
information
about
the item
if he
found it
interesting.
80.
Mannheim's
Ideology
and
Utopia:
An
Introduction
to the
Sociology
of
Knowledge
(1929;
New
York,
1936)
was
the
culmination
of
his
early
theoretical
essays
and
his
most
complete
exposition
of his
hermeneutic method.
Sociologists
in
the United
States,
notably
C.
Wright
Mills and Daniel
Bell,
found it
compelling,
for
different
reasons,
in
the
1960s. See
C.
Wright
Mills,
The
Sociological Imagination
(London, 1959),
p.
168.