On judging works of visual art

104 Pages·1978·2.286 MB·English

by  Conrad Fiedler

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On Judging Works of Visual Art

CONRAD FIEDLER
On Judging Works
of Visual Art
TRANSLATED BY HENRY SCHAEFER-SIMMERN
AND FULMER MOOD. WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY HENRY SCHAEFER-SIMMERN
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley, Los Angeles, London
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES
CALIFORNIA
O
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, LTD.
LONDON,ENGLAND
COPYRIGHT, 1949, 1957, BY
THE REGENTS OF TFIE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
SECOND EDITION, REVISED
CALIFORNIA LIBRARY REPRINT SERIES? EDITION 1978
(with corrections)
isbn: 0-520-03597-6
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE TO THE
SECOND EDITION
I The first edition of this book sold out
faster than I expected—though it took eight years.
The treatise is not an easy one to read and digest.
Moreover, at the time this translation first appeared,
the modern artist and his public were showing little
interest in such ideas as Fiedler grappled with. I
hardly dared look forward to the possibility of a sec¬
ond edition.
Nevertheless, in circles where doors are kept open
to thoughtful inquiry into the nature and meaning of
art, and where it is understood that “art can only be
one and the same thing, whatever name is given to it,”
Fiedler has certainly contributed to the understand¬
ing of art and of art’s relationship to life. I am espe¬
cially thankful to Sir Herbert Read for having turned
to Fiedler for “the basic theory” of his Charges Eliot
Norton Lectures delivered at Harvard University in
1953 and published in his book Icon and Idea: The
Function of Art in the Development of Human Con-
Cvd
vi Preface
sciousness (Harvard University Press) in 1955. He
opens his discussion as follows:
“ ‘Artistic activity begins when man finds himself
face to face with the visible world as with something
immensely enigmatical.... In the creation of a work
of art, man engages in a struggle with nature not for
his physical but for his mental existence.’
“These words were written in 1876 by Conrad
Fiedler, whose importance as a philosopher of art is
now beginning to be recognized outside Germany.
Fiedler was an amateur of the arts and a friend of the
most original artists of his time, such as Hans von
Marees and Adolph Hildebrand. His fragmentary
writings express, in my opinion, a profound under¬
standing of the nature of art.
“At any rate, it is from Fiedler that I have taken
the basic theory of this book—the theory that art has
been, and still is, the essential instrument in the devel¬
opment of human consciousness. The significance of
art, Fiedler held, lies in the fact that it is the particular
form of activity by which man not only tries to bring
the visible world into his consciousness, but even is
forced to the attempt by his very nature. Such an
activity, Fiedler adds, is not fortuitous, but necessary;
its products are not secondary or superfluous, but ab-