Walter Benjamin a hĺbka historicity (Benjamin a Viedenská škola dejín umenia)
Walter Benjamin and the Depth of Historicity (Benjamin and the Viennese School of Art History)

Summary/Abstract: The first half of the study shows the depth of the kinship between the problem understanding of art historicity in W. Benjamin and a significant representative of the Viennese school of art history, A. Riegl; the key notion here is “Kunstwollen”, a notion adopted from Riegl, which in the time perspective includes the dynamics of historical metamorphoses of art depending on its perception (which is, apart from social determination, other explicit postulate i.a. also in Benjamin’s essay on the reproducibility of the work of art). At the same time, since 1925, it is possible, within Benjamin’s reading of Riegl, to disclose also moments of overinterpretation (for example introducing the notion of a crisis, or a decline into the concept of developmentality). The deepening of art historicity in Benjamin heads, in the following parts of the author’s study, further – similarly as in M. Dvořák – to radicalization in the sense of transformations of his essence. At the same time, the notion on the history-formation of art corresponds with opinions of Benedetto Croce, and his Viennese followers, Julius von Schlosser and Hans Sedlmeyr. It is possible, from the perspective of the Vienna school, to consider also Benjamin’s key notion of “aura”, to which to a large extent Riegl’s notion of “Alterswert” corresponds, whereas the background of Benjaminian art history as a history of a loss of the aura creates Hegelian prophecy about the end of art. The depth of historicity, which is shown in Benjamin’s perception of art metamorphoses in the course of time, is at the same time a sign of historical pluralism, adopted from the Vienna school.

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