Wilhelm Worringer and the Relationship between Abstraction and Representation in European ...

410 Pages·2013·3.2 MB·English

by  Cristina Silaghi

Plenitudes of Painting:
Wilhelm Worringer and the Relationship
between Abstraction and Representation in European Painting
at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree
of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History and Theory
at the University of Canterbury
by Cristina Silaghi

University of Canterbury
2012

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ................................................................................................ vi
Abstract ................................................................................................................. ix
Key words.............................................................................................................. ix
Preface .................................................................................................................... x

Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1

Part 1: Outer pictures, inner contours ............................................................ 10

Wilhelm Worringer: sketch for a portrait ..................................................... 10
About Worringer: W. Eugène Kleinbauer,
Hilton Kramer, Debbie Lewer ....................................................................... 14
Worringer, T. E. Hulme and Herbert Read .................................................. 17
Recent opinions, 1960-2008 .......................................................................... 23

Gazing in the mirror of history: Worringer’s forewords
to Abstraction and Empathy and Form in Gothic ........................................... 37
1908: first foreword to Abstraction and Empathy ....................................... 38
1910: Abstraction and Empathy, third foreword ......................................... 41
1918 and 1919: Form in Gothic forewords .................................................. 42
1948: Abstraction and Empathy republished ............................................... 44
1957: a new edition of Form in Gothic ........................................................ 47

Worringer’s approach to the writing of art history and theory ................. 49
Immanuel Kant and Theodor Lipps:
creativity, aesthetics and experience ............................................................. 51
Empathy: Friedrich Theodor Vischer and Robert Vischer ......................... 54
Heinrich Wölfflin: embodiment and expression .......................................... 57
Objects, feelings, and aspects of empathy .................................................... 59
Worringer: subjectivity and objectivity ........................................................ 62

Empathy, abstraction and representation
in Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy ....................................................... 65
Empathy and abstraction: Lipps and Worringer .......................................... 65
From aesthetics to art-making: naturalism and style ................................... 75
W. J. T. Mitchell and Juliet Koss about empathy ........................................ 77
Abstraction and representation: Clement Greenberg, Frances Colpitt ....... 81

Representation and abstraction in art-making:
Worringer’s perspective .................................................................................... 86
Adolf Hildebrand: nature, form, imitation

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and artistic self-sufficiency ............................................................................ 87
Imitation, naturalism, empathy and abstraction
in Abstraction and Empathy .......................................................................... 90
Ferdinand Hodler: exactness and expressiveness,
emotion and parallelism ................................................................................. 92
Distinctions and transitions:
Alois Riegl on the art of antiquity ............................................................... 103
Abstraction: representational inflections .................................................... 106
Worringer and Classicism ........................................................................... 109

Part 2: Predecessors, critics, supporters ....................................................... 111

‘Common to all’: form for Kant and Worringer ........................................ 111
Form, beauty, charm and emotion .............................................................. 113
Senses and form ............................................................................................ 113
Wölfflin and Worringer: beauty, form, matter and will ............................ 115
Regularity and uniformity............................................................................ 117

A matter of will: Schopenhauer and Worringer on life and art ............... 122
Distancing, urges, and will .......................................................................... 123

Riegl and artistic will ....................................................................................... 127
Will, perception, inner drive, and art-making ............................................ 128

Abstraction, representation, opposition:
Worringer and Rudolf Arnheim .................................................................... 132
Withdrawal, productive thinking, and abstraction ..................................... 133
Re-examining Abstraction and Empathy.................................................... 134

The relationship between abstraction and representation:
highlights from Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy,
and Gilles Deleuze’s Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (1984) ........ 140
Classical ornament and Gothic line ............................................................ 141
Non-organic dynamism in Gothic art ......................................................... 144
Painting, representation and abstraction according to Deleuze ................ 146

Part 3: Around Expressionism ....................................................................... 149

The words of Worringer: ‘Expressionism’
at the beginning of the twentieth century ..................................................... 149

‘The Historical Development of Modern Art’ (1911):
Worringer’s early response to Expressionism ............................................. 158

Worringer’s impact: Expressionism (1914) by Paul Fechter,

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and Expressionism (1916) by Hermann Bahr .............................................. 185

Current Questions on Art (1921):
Worringer revisits Expressionism ................................................................. 196

Questioning Worringer: critical discussions on the writings of
Worringer and his association with the Expressionism movement ......... 199
Georg Lukács and the decline of Expressionism ....................................... 200
Richard Sheppard, and Lukács’ debt to Worringer ................................... 204
Joseph Frank’s Worringer: expressiveness,
emotion and the passage of time ................................................................. 205
William Spanos: empathy, abstraction,
and the urge to engagement ......................................................................... 207
Ulrich Weisstein: Worringer, Expressionism,
and abstract-representational middle grounds ............................................ 210
Neil Donahue: ‘world feeling’ and the history of ideas
in Abstraction and Empathy ........................................................................ 211

Worringer and Expressionism: late twentieth-century perspectives ...... 215

Part 4: Redrawing antithesis .......................................................................... 225

Antithesis: Classical, modern and contemporary contexts ....................... 225
Aristotle and antithesis ................................................................................. 227
Worringer’s rhetoric: Neil Donahue, Geoffrey C. W. Waite,
and Joshua Dittrich ....................................................................................... 230
Kant, Schopenhauer, Riegl, Wölfflin, antithesis ........................................ 233

Gradation, displacement and transposition: alternatives to antithesis
in Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy ..................................................... 244

Form in Gothic: interplay readdressed ......................................................... 254

History and Ego: Worringer’s approach ..................................................... 257

Interplay in naturalism .................................................................................... 260

Interplay in the Gothic art of Northern Europe:
memory, assimilation, interpolation .............................................................. 261

Schiller, Worringer, interplay ........................................................................ 264

Interplay: a dual, hybrid state in Gothic art ................................................ 270

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Part 5: Interplay in painting ........................................................................... 274

Worringer, his contemporaries, and early twentieth-century art-making
in Abstraction and Empathy ............................................................................. 274

Pictorial contexts for abstract-representational interplay:
Cézanne’s realized sensations ......................................................................... 278

Monet, Worringer’s Impressionism, and the interplay
of abstraction and representation .................................................................. 293

Monet and his motifs: representational and abstract aspects................... 298

The Doorway (Morning Effect) (1894): re-materializations ....................... 301

Representation and abstraction in Monet’s Water Lilies (1907) ............... 308

Towards the expression of inner worlds: Kandinsky, Worringer,
and turn-of-the-twentieth century artist writings ....................................... 316

Interplay in Kandinsky’s On the Spiritual in Art (1912)
and ‘On the Question of Form’ (1912) .......................................................... 325
On the Spiritual in Art: oppositions and interplay ..................................... 325
Kandinsky’s approach to form and content:
The Struggle for Art (1911),
and the First Exhibition of the Editors of the Blaue Reiter (1911) ........... 328
Inner life, painting, and its relationship with the world
in On the Spiritual in Art ............................................................................. 329
Representation and abstraction in interplay ............................................... 334
‘On the Question of Form’: the inner similarity
of representation and abstraction ............................................................... 338

Painting interplay: Kandinsky’s Impression V (Park) (1911),
Picture with a Black Arch (1912), and Picture with Red Spot (1914) ......... 343

Rethinking abstract-representational interplay: Worringer, Arnheim,
Deleuze and Guattari ....................................................................................... 350

Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 362

Selected bibliography ....................................................................................... 373

List of illustrations ............................................................................................ 398

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Acknowledgments

A University of Canterbury Master of Arts Scholarship (2009), and a Doctoral Scholarship
(2010-12) have made this research possible; I would like to extend a debt of gratitude to the
Postgraduate Office and Scholarships Office of the University of Canterbury Te Whare
Wānaga o Waitaha, who have generously facilitated my inquiries over the last four years. My
warmest thanks go to my supervisors, Morgan Thomas, Emilie Sitzia, and Richard Bullen,
for their guidance, input, advice and insight, as well as for accepting to gift their time,
attention and expertise to a research project proposed by a Fine Arts student. With the
encouragement and support of Emilie Sitzia, I have presented my work at the 2011
Conference of The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, Contact, as well as at the
2012 Symposium of The Australian Modernist Studies Network, Modernism, Intimacy and
Emotion. I wish to express my gratitude to David Maskill, Lorraine Sim, Ann Vickery, and to
all the organizers of these events for granting my access to two most valuable learning
opportunities. I very much thank Jon Winnall and Judith Brooks for their interest in my
project, as well as The University of Canterbury, Universities New Zealand Te Pōkai Tara,
and The New Zealand Federation of Graduate Women, for their funding my participation to
the 2011 AAANZ Conference and the 2012 AMSN Symposium. As a 2012 Claude McCarthy
Fellow and recipient of NFGW Conference and Travel Awards, I pursued my research in
Paris at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, at the Bibliothèque Kandinsky of the Musée
National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, and in the Centre Pompidou exhibition
spaces; I would like to warmly thank these organizations for their welcome and support.
Kindest thanks to Barbara Garrie and Katherine Higgins for including my contribution in the
first number of Oculus: Postgraduate Journal for Visual Arts Research. I am grateful to
Barbara Garrie for inviting me to take part to a collaborative project, Stochastic Dialogue,
presented by her at the 2009 Conference of the Association of Art Historians of Manchester
Metropolitan University, Intersections. The 2011 Place and Placelessness Online Graduate

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Workshop was a great learning opportunity for which I am grateful to Andrew Watson and
Michael Del Vecchio. I warmly thank Janet Abbot, Rudolf Boelee, Tony Bond, Wendy Cox,
Margaret Duncan, Victoria Edwards, Douglas Horrell, Kiri Jarden, Ina Johann, Simon
Ogden, and Louise Palmer for their professional advice, words of kindness, and support of
my practice. For their contribution to and support of Sense of Place (2010-12, Hastings City
Art Gallery) and Colour of Distance (2011-12, Papakura Art Gallery), I am most grateful to
Celia Wilson, Kim Lowe, Helga Goran, Jocelyn Mills, Tracey Williams, Maree Mills, Kath
Purchas, and the wonderful teams at PAG and HCAG. I kindly thank Justin Morgan, Jodie
Dalgleish, Warren Feeney, Janet Bayly, Jasmine Bailey, Kim Lowe, Linda Lee and Mirabel
Oliver for welcoming my work at The New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Mahara Gallery,
and Shared Lines – the 2012 Christchurch/Sendai Project.
My thoughts often go, in heartfelt gratitude, to Riduan Tomkins for his clarity of vision,
luminous practice, passionate engagement with art, insightful advice, generosity and support.
The earliest motivating factor in the writing of this thesis was my admiration for the art and
thought of Desmond Rochfort; I extend my boundless gratitude to him for his support of my
practice and kind encouragement. At crucial points of my research, I have had the chance to
be surrounded by the wisdom, kindness and generosity of Gabriela and Letiția Silaghi, Libby
Munt and Alex J. Plescan, Ana and Narcis Gǎnescu, Elena, Alex and Zoe Nesterovich, Jane
Williamson, Nadia and Andrew Plescan, and by the wholehearted support of Alex M.
Plescan; they have my deepest, very special thanks.

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To Lucian Silaghi,
in loving memory

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Abstract
Throughout the twentieth century, the relationship between representation and abstraction has
been regarded predominantly in terms of opposition. One of the prominent early twentieth-
century defenders of this approach is Wilhelm Worringer (1881-1965), who introduces
representation and abstraction as antithetic modes of art-making in Abstraction and Empathy.
A Contribution to the Psychology of Style (1908). However, while he distinguishes between
abstraction and representation on theoretical grounds, Worringer also observes that, in the
history of art, these modes of art-making coexist.
The current thesis examines Worringer’s approach to the writing of art history and theory,
inquiring into his perspective on the personal responses of viewers and artists to the world,
and the manifestations of these responses in art. Abstraction and Empathy addresses issues of
empathy, form, and will, in aesthetics and art-making; it discusses and extends the writings
of Theodor Lipps, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Alois Riegl. At the beginning
of the twentieth century, Worringer’s book attracted much attention: like its sequel, Form
in Gothic (1910), it was often associated with the rise to prominence of Expressionism
in Germany.
Later in the twentieth century, Worringer’s thought came under the scrutiny of Rudolf
Arnheim, who criticized Worringer’s emphasis on abstract-representational opposition. Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari praised Worringer’s approach to antithesis, yet questioned the
terms Worringer proposed as opposites. For Arnheim, Deleuze and Guattari, alternatives to
the antithesis between abstraction and representation became visible. Indeed, in Worringer’s
time, artists such as Adolf Hildebrand, Ferdinand Hodler, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet and
Wassily Kandinsky underscored the common grounds between representation and
abstraction. Exploring Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy and Form in Gothic, as well as
the words and works of Hildebrand, Hodler, Cézanne, Monet and Kandinsky, this thesis aims
to highlight abstract-representational interplay as observable in early twentieth-century
writing and art-making.
Key words: Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy, Form in Gothic, abstraction, empathy,
representation, antithesis, interplay, painting.

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Preface
Painting is either representational or abstract, the notes I had been taking for the last two
weeks seemed to imply. The University of Canterbury postgraduate seminar for fine arts, art
history and theory students organized by Desmond Rochfort and Pamela Gerrish Nunn was
due to begin soon; we would be responding to a painting of their choice, and sharpen our
interpretive skills in the process. As a painter working with abstraction,1 I felt more at ease
focusing on my canvases in 2007 – to search for the words, concepts and contexts that could
accompany my viewing of artworks was a task I approached with the curiosity and hesitation
of a newcomer. My readings explained that contemporary pictorial explorations revolved
around issues of abstraction and representation, two modes of art-making predominantly
approached as antithetic.
If common grounds between representation and abstraction were to be found, I mused while
hastening towards the seminar room, a key question of the art of painting would be
answered.2 Soon I was to come across Mark Rosenthal’s Abstraction in the Twentieth
Century: Total Risk, Freedom, Discipline (1996), where the approach of Wilhelm Worringer
(1881-1965) to artistic tendencies was summarized. Worringer, Rosenthal explained,3
recognized two distinct urges (or inner tendencies) in art: an urge to empathy and an urge to
abstraction; in Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy. A Contribution to the Psychology of
Style (1908), these urges featured as polar opposites.4 At first glance, the distinction between
representational and abstract tendencies in art-making appeared to drive Worringer’s inquiry

1 I explore the interweaving of colours, lines, shapes in my paintings. While my works seem independent from
motifs in the world, they develop in resonance with such motifs. The processes that foster ‘abstract’ practices in
contemporary painting require in-depth investigation, and need to be addressed in self-standing essays.
2 Five years later, I acknowledge the role of this thought as a starting point of my explorations. However, I see
in representation and abstraction only two of the coordinates that support the access of viewers and artists to
painting. The key questions posed by painting abound; they can indeed receive punctual solutions, but are not
limited to them.
3 Mark Rosenthal, Abstraction in the Twentieth Century: Total Risk, Freedom, Discipline (New York:
Guggenheim Museum Publications, 1996), 8-9.
4 Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style (New York:
International Universities Press 1953 [1908]), 4.

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