DOI Artikel:
Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta: Adam Miłobędzki, mapping and the geography of art
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14574#0029
ADAM MIŁOBĘDZKI, MAPPING AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF ART
25
of this tradition. Braudel penned several books around geographical concepts, notably several major studies
of the Mediterranean and of France16.
As Michelet's tableau also suggested, maps - mental and real - are intimately connected with geography.
And as in the writing of history, scholars who discussed Kunstgeo'graphie and its équivalents in other languages
assigned an important role to the process of map-making in answering its questions. For them, mapping was
thought to offer a way of determining the spatial location and délimitation of artistic phenomena.
Significantly, the geographer who first coined the term Kunstgeographie, Hugo Hassinger stated that
one of its methods would be the cartographie représentation of the spread of the forms and styles of houses.
The distribution of forms as indicated on a map was supposed to reveal essential features about the place of
art. Hassinger was quite spécifie about the central role of mapping in the project of the geography of art. In
a fundamental essay of 1910, he said that "Die Verbreitung der architektonischen Kunstformen und stilarten
festzustellen und auch kartographisch zur Anschauung zu bringen, ist die Hauptaufgabe des Kunstgeographen,
die noch vollstandig unerfiillt" (The détermination of the spread of architectonic forms of art and stylistic
genres, and also their cartographie depiction, is the chief task of the geographer of art)17.
Consequently Hassinger composed what is the first art historical atlas, the ancestor of a récent large
publication edited by John Onians18. This was a Kunsthistorischer Atlas of the imperial capital and residential
city of Vienna. Hassinger believed that his work originated in a borderland between the historie geography
of settlements, and the history of art. His approach was designed to depict cartographically the spatial order
of art in a city. Cartography was to be the basie method of Kunstgeographie, that was intentionally to rely
on an essentially geographical task19.
Although Hassinger reiterated that he himself was primarily a geographer, his approach found fruitful
réception in the work of a number of Germanie art historians during a period that extends from the first
world war until the end of the second. Hassinger's idea of artistic geography was also echoed by numerous
contemporaneous scholars, including Heinrich Wôlfflin, Wolfgang Worringer, and Alois Riegl, and it was
picked up especially by such scholars as Kurt Gerstenberg, the author of a work on the geography of art
published in 192320. Although this is not the place to discuss ail the ramifications of artistic geography, one
practice that Hassinger sponsored can be emphasized. In the second and third décades of the twentieth
century a number of scholars traced out some gênerai lines of artistic geography in ways that involve
cartography as a central aspect of their method.
One important example of this practice is Heinrich Gluck, a pupil and collaborator of Josef Strzygowski,
professor of art history in Vienna, in whose important history of Armenian art (dedicated pointedly to Bielitz
in its time of need, presumably against its becoming what is now Bielsko-Biała!) he had written a section
on the artistic geography of Armenia21. In a programmatic essay of 1921 on the art geographical picture of
Europe Gluck employed mapping further to become as a crucial part of his undertaking22. Though suggested
by a barely legible map, Gluck seemed to believe that the image of Europe could be literally realized in
a cartographie représentation of the continent on which building forms and materials could be plotted. Gluck's
approach envisaged a far-flung if not universal approach in which maps would indicate a very broad picture
of the world. This was akin to the approach of his teacher Strzygowski, who among other things opened up
the whole range of Asian art history to European (and subsequently American) scholarship. Strzygowski and
his followers often saw things in terms of what we could call megastyles, but they thought of also as racial
16 F. В r a u d e 1, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II, Paris 1949; idem, L'identité de la
France, vol. 1-2, Paris 1986.
17 H. H a s s i n g e r, Ober Aufgaben der Stàdtekunde, "Dr. A. Petermanns Mitteilungen aus Justus Perthes' Geographischer
Anstalt", 56, 1910. pp. 289-294.
18 Atlas of World Art, Oxford 2004.
19 H. H a s s i n g e r, Kunsthistorischer Atlas der k.k. Reichshaupt- und Residenzstadt Wien und Verzeichnis der erhaltenswerten
historischen, Kunst- und Naturdenkmale des Wiener Stadtbildes, Wien 1916. See further Hassinger's comments in: Beitràge zur
Siedlungs- und Verkehrsgeographie von Wien, [in:] Mitteilungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft zu Wien, Wien 1910, pp. 5-88.
20 K. Gerstenberg, Ideen zu einer Kunstgeographie Europas, Bibliothek der Kunstgeschichte, ed. H. T i e t z e,
vol. 48/49, Leipzig 1923.
21 See: H. G 1 ii с к, Die Natur des Landes als Voraussetzung seiner kunsthistorischer Entwicklung, [in:] Die Baukunst der
Armenier und Europa, ed. J. S t r z y g o w s к i, Wien 1918, vol. 1, pp. 606-613.
22 In his programmatic essay Das kunstgeographische Bild Europas am Ende des Mittelalters und die Grundlagen der Renai-
ssance, "Monatshefte fur Kunstwissenschaft", 14, 1921, no. 1, pp. 161-173.
25
of this tradition. Braudel penned several books around geographical concepts, notably several major studies
of the Mediterranean and of France16.
As Michelet's tableau also suggested, maps - mental and real - are intimately connected with geography.
And as in the writing of history, scholars who discussed Kunstgeo'graphie and its équivalents in other languages
assigned an important role to the process of map-making in answering its questions. For them, mapping was
thought to offer a way of determining the spatial location and délimitation of artistic phenomena.
Significantly, the geographer who first coined the term Kunstgeographie, Hugo Hassinger stated that
one of its methods would be the cartographie représentation of the spread of the forms and styles of houses.
The distribution of forms as indicated on a map was supposed to reveal essential features about the place of
art. Hassinger was quite spécifie about the central role of mapping in the project of the geography of art. In
a fundamental essay of 1910, he said that "Die Verbreitung der architektonischen Kunstformen und stilarten
festzustellen und auch kartographisch zur Anschauung zu bringen, ist die Hauptaufgabe des Kunstgeographen,
die noch vollstandig unerfiillt" (The détermination of the spread of architectonic forms of art and stylistic
genres, and also their cartographie depiction, is the chief task of the geographer of art)17.
Consequently Hassinger composed what is the first art historical atlas, the ancestor of a récent large
publication edited by John Onians18. This was a Kunsthistorischer Atlas of the imperial capital and residential
city of Vienna. Hassinger believed that his work originated in a borderland between the historie geography
of settlements, and the history of art. His approach was designed to depict cartographically the spatial order
of art in a city. Cartography was to be the basie method of Kunstgeographie, that was intentionally to rely
on an essentially geographical task19.
Although Hassinger reiterated that he himself was primarily a geographer, his approach found fruitful
réception in the work of a number of Germanie art historians during a period that extends from the first
world war until the end of the second. Hassinger's idea of artistic geography was also echoed by numerous
contemporaneous scholars, including Heinrich Wôlfflin, Wolfgang Worringer, and Alois Riegl, and it was
picked up especially by such scholars as Kurt Gerstenberg, the author of a work on the geography of art
published in 192320. Although this is not the place to discuss ail the ramifications of artistic geography, one
practice that Hassinger sponsored can be emphasized. In the second and third décades of the twentieth
century a number of scholars traced out some gênerai lines of artistic geography in ways that involve
cartography as a central aspect of their method.
One important example of this practice is Heinrich Gluck, a pupil and collaborator of Josef Strzygowski,
professor of art history in Vienna, in whose important history of Armenian art (dedicated pointedly to Bielitz
in its time of need, presumably against its becoming what is now Bielsko-Biała!) he had written a section
on the artistic geography of Armenia21. In a programmatic essay of 1921 on the art geographical picture of
Europe Gluck employed mapping further to become as a crucial part of his undertaking22. Though suggested
by a barely legible map, Gluck seemed to believe that the image of Europe could be literally realized in
a cartographie représentation of the continent on which building forms and materials could be plotted. Gluck's
approach envisaged a far-flung if not universal approach in which maps would indicate a very broad picture
of the world. This was akin to the approach of his teacher Strzygowski, who among other things opened up
the whole range of Asian art history to European (and subsequently American) scholarship. Strzygowski and
his followers often saw things in terms of what we could call megastyles, but they thought of also as racial
16 F. В r a u d e 1, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II, Paris 1949; idem, L'identité de la
France, vol. 1-2, Paris 1986.
17 H. H a s s i n g e r, Ober Aufgaben der Stàdtekunde, "Dr. A. Petermanns Mitteilungen aus Justus Perthes' Geographischer
Anstalt", 56, 1910. pp. 289-294.
18 Atlas of World Art, Oxford 2004.
19 H. H a s s i n g e r, Kunsthistorischer Atlas der k.k. Reichshaupt- und Residenzstadt Wien und Verzeichnis der erhaltenswerten
historischen, Kunst- und Naturdenkmale des Wiener Stadtbildes, Wien 1916. See further Hassinger's comments in: Beitràge zur
Siedlungs- und Verkehrsgeographie von Wien, [in:] Mitteilungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft zu Wien, Wien 1910, pp. 5-88.
20 K. Gerstenberg, Ideen zu einer Kunstgeographie Europas, Bibliothek der Kunstgeschichte, ed. H. T i e t z e,
vol. 48/49, Leipzig 1923.
21 See: H. G 1 ii с к, Die Natur des Landes als Voraussetzung seiner kunsthistorischer Entwicklung, [in:] Die Baukunst der
Armenier und Europa, ed. J. S t r z y g o w s к i, Wien 1918, vol. 1, pp. 606-613.
22 In his programmatic essay Das kunstgeographische Bild Europas am Ende des Mittelalters und die Grundlagen der Renai-
ssance, "Monatshefte fur Kunstwissenschaft", 14, 1921, no. 1, pp. 161-173.