Table Of ContentTHE SOCIAL HISTORY OF ART
VOLUME I
‘As much a work of intellectual history as art history, Hauser’s work remains unparalleled in its scope as
a study of the relations between the forces of social change and western art from its origins until the middle
of the 20th century.’
Johanna Drucker, Professor of Art History, State University of New York
‘Harris’s introductions to each volume—dealing with Hauser’s aims, principles, concepts and terms are
extremely useful…. This edition should bring Hauser’s thought to the attention of a new generation of
readers.’
Whitney Davis, Professor of Art History, Northwestern University
First published in 1951 Arnold Hauser’s commanding work presents an account of the development and
meaning of art from its origins in the Stone Age through to the ‘Film Age’. Exploring the interaction
between art and society, Hauser effectively details social and historical movements and sketches the
frameworks within which visual art is produced.
This new edition provides an excellent introduction to the work of Arnold Hauser. In his general
introduction to The Social History of Art, Jonathan Harris assesses the importance of the work for
contemporary art history and visual culture. In addition, an introduction to each volume provides a synopsis
of Hauser’s narrative and serves as a critical guide to the text, identifying major themes, trends and
arguments.
Arnold Hauser was born in Hungary and studied literature and the history of art at the universities of
Budapest, Vienna, Berlin and Paris. In 1921 he returned to Berlin to study economics and sociology under
Ernst Troeltsch. From 1923 to 1938 he lived in Vienna where he began work on The Social History of Art.
He lived in London from 1938 until 1977, when he returned to his native Hungary. He died in Budapest in
1978.
Jonathan Harris is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Critical Theory at the University of Keele. He is
the author of Federal Art and National Culture: The Politics of Identity in New Deal America (1995), co-
author of Modernism in Dispute: Art Since The Forties (1993) and co-editor of Art in Modern Culture: An
Anthology of Critical Texts (1992).
The Social History of Art
Arnold Hauser, with an introduction by Jonathan Harris
Volume I—From Prehistoric Times to the Middle AgesVolume II—Renaissance, Mannerism,
BaroqueVolume III—Rococo, Classicism and RomanticismVolume IV—Naturalism, Impressionism, The
Film Age
THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF ART
VOLUME I
From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages
Arnold Hauser
with an introduction by Jonathan Harris
London and New York
First published in two volumes 1951
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Third edition 1999
© 1951, 1962, 1999 The Estate of Arnold Hauser
Introductions © 1999 Routledge
Translated in collaboration with the author by Stanley Godman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-98484-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-19945-X (Print Edition) (Vol. I)
ISBN 0-415-19946-8 (Print Edition) (Vol. II)
ISBN 0-415-19947-6 (Print Edition) (Vol. III)
ISBN 0-415-19948-4 (Print Edition) (Vol. IV)
ISBN 0-415-21386-X (Set)
CONTENTS
List of illustrations xi
General introduction xii
Introduction to volume I x xii
I Prehistoric times 1
1 Old Stone Age: magic and naturalism 1
Prehistoric naturalism
Art in the service of livelihood
Art and magic
2 New Stone Age: animism and geometrism 4
Prehistoric geometrism
Sacred and profane art
Magic and animism
The traditionalism of peasant cultures
Archaeology and anthropology
3 The artist as magician and priest: art as a profession and domestic craft 9
The emancipation of art as a profession
Peasant art and folk art
II Ancient-Oriental urban cultures 12
1 Static and dynamic elements in Ancient-Oriental art 12
Urban culture and art
Political coercion and artistic quality
2 The status of the artist and the organization of artistic production 14
The priesthood and the royal house as patrons
Art education in the temple and palace workshops
vi
The organization of artistic work
3 The stereotyping of art in the Middle Kingdom 17
The courtly conventions of Egyptian art
The rationalization of artistic techniques
Frontality
4 Naturalism in the age of Akhenaton 20
The new sensibility
The stylistic dualism of Egyptian art
The differentiation of style according to subject
Egyptian provincial art
5 Mesopotamia 22
Formalism
Naturalism in the representation of animals
6 Crete 23
The problem of Cretan art
Formal freedom
Anti-naturalistic conventions
III Greece and Rome 26
1 The heroic and the Homeric ages 26
The heroic age and its social ethics
The heroic lay
The origins of the epic
Bards and rhapsodes
The social outlook of the Homeric epics
Hesiod
Geometrism
2 The archaic style and art at the courts of the Tyrants 32
Aristocratic choral and reflective lyric
Statues of Olympian victors
The beginnings of individualism in poetry and art
vii
The courts of the Tyrants
Cult and art
The autonomy of forms
3 Classical art and democracy 38
Classicism and naturalism
The tragedy
The mime
The tragedy as an instrument of political propaganda
Naturalism and stylization in the plastic arts
4 The age of enlightenment in Greece 42
The cultural ideal of the Sophists
Euripides
Plato and the aestheticism of his time
5 The Hellenistic age 48
The rationalization of international scientific and artistic activity
Eclecticism
The production of copies
The origin of the domestic comedy
6 The Empire and the end of the ancient world 51
Roman portrait sculpture
The ‘continuous’ representation
Late Roman impressionism and expressionism
7 Poets and artists in the ancient world 54
The social position of poets and artists
The divorce between the artist and the work of art
The art market
Plotinus
Changes in the valuation of art and the artist in Rome
IV The Middle Ages 58
1 The spirituality of early Christian art 58
viii
The concept of the Middle Ages
Late classical and early Christian spirituality
The decay of the Roman art tradition
The didactic character of Christian art
2 The artistic style of Byzantine Caesaropapism 62
The paralysing of private capital by the State
The aristocracy of officials
The ostentatious courtly style and the monastic style
3 Causes and consequences of iconoclasm 65
The political and military background of iconoclasm
The fight against the influence of the monks
The stylistic consequences of iconoclasm
4 Art from the age of the migrations to the Carolingian Renaissance 68
The ornamental style of the age of migrations
The miniature painting of the Irish monks
The Frankish monarchy and the new nobility
The shift of the cultural centre from the towns to the countryside
The cultural monopoly of the Church
The court of Charlemagne as cultural centre
The Carolingian Renaissance
The elaborate court style and the impressionistic style of book illumination
The palace workshop and the monastic workshops
5 The epic poets and their public 75
The decline of the heroic lay
The replacement of aristocratic dilettanti by professional poets
The romantic theory of the ‘folk epic’
The origins of the ‘chanson de geste’
The descent of the minstrels
6 The organization of artistic production in the monasteries 80
The dissolution of the royal court as a cultural centre
ix
The separation of craft from the household
The decorative arts in the monasteries
The monastic workshop as a school of art
The ‘anonymity’ of medieval art
7 Feudalism and the Romanesque style 84
The nobility and the clergy
The development of feudalism
The ‘closed household economy’
Traditionalistic thinking
The ecclesiastical ‘culture of authority and coercion’
The formalism of Romanesque art
The Cluniac movement and the ‘late Romanesque baroque’
The symbolism of the Romanesque
The Last Judgement
The secular art of the early Middle Ages
8 The romanticism of court chivalry 92
The revival of the towns and money economy
The rise of the bourgeoisie
The end of the cultural monopoly of the Church
The knighthood
The development of aristocratic class-consciousness
The knightly system of virtues
The concept of the courtly
Woman as the upholder of culture
The love motif in classical and knightly poetry
The theory of the fictitiousness of courtly-chivalric love
The sexual-psychological motives of chivalric love
The theories of the literary origin of the troubadour lyric
The displacement of the clerical by the secular poet
Troubadour and minstrel
