Abstraction and Empathy by Wilhelm Worringer

Abstraction and Empathy by Wilhelm Worringer

Wilhelm Worringer's landmark study in the interpretation of modern art, first published in 1908, has seldom been out of print. Its profound impact not only on art historians and theorists but also for generations of creative writers and intellectuals is almost unprecedented. Starting from the notion that beauty derives from our sense of being able to identify with an object, Worringer argues that representational art produces satisfaction from our objectified delight in the self, reflecting a confidence in the world as it is-as in Renaissance art. By contrast, the urge to abstraction, as exemplified by Egyptian, Byzantine, primitive, or modern expressionist art, articulates a totally different response to the world: it expresses man's insecurity. Thus in historical periods of anxiety and uncertainty, man seeks to abstract objects from their unpredictable state and transform them into absolute, transcendental forms. Abstraction and Empathy also has a sociological dimension, in that the urge to create fixed, abstract, and geometric forms is a response to the modern experience of industrialization and the sense that individual identity is threatened by a hostile mass society. Hilton Kramer's introduction considers the influence of Worringer's thesis and places his book in historical context.

Worringer's little book is an enduring classic-- James Sloan Allen * Arts and Letters *

Wilhelm Worringer (1881–1965) was an art historian who lectured and taught at the universities of Bern, Königsberg, and Halle. Hilton Kramer is editor of The New Criterion.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781566631778
ISBN 10	1566631777
Title	Abstraction and Empathy
Author	Wilhelm Worringer
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Ivan R Dee, Inc
Year published	1997-10-01
Number of pages	168
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable