Sektion des Gastlandes Tschechien: Barocke Deckenmalereien als virtuelle Welt der frühen Neuzeit
Tomáš Murár, Prag

The Tacit Dimension of Perspective: Re-constructing (Inside) the Vision of the Artwork

Philosophical and theoretical interpretations of the second half of the 20th century suggested the absence of the material basis of a work of art as its necessary transformation in order to preserve its existence (Danto, Belting, Agamben, De Duve, etc.). However, as Georges Didi-Huberman pointed out, works of art are still present for the viewer at the moment of perception, or rather, they are anachronistic with respect to their origin. For the art historian, therefore, it is necessary to ask how and under what circumstances does contemporary viewer construct his knowledge of a historical work of art that becomes a virtual dimension of his space on the basis of a historical perception of the surrounding reality? Is it possible to think of a biologically-legitimate assumption of any viewer, or is it possible to define cultural determinism regardless of historical transformations? The paper will offer answers to these questions, on the one hand, by the example of the individual human “tacit knowing,” as formulated by the Hungarian philosopher Michael Polanyi, and on the other hand, by the example of the understanding of cultural determinacy in the technical appropriation of space, as formulated by the Italian aesthetician Renato Barilli. By combining their reasoning, it is possible to formulate the importance of perspective for the contemporary knowledge of the work of art as the basis for the noetic re-construction of reality in individual vision.

Kurzbiografie Tomáš Murár
since 2018Research Fellow at the Department of Historiography and Art Theory of the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
2019PhD in art history, Charles University, Prague
2019–2021Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Historiography and Art Theory of the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
currentlyResearch Fellow at the Department of Historiography and Art Theory of Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
Forschungs- bzw. Arbeitsschwerpunkte The history and theory of Central European art history; the Vienna School of art history
Publikationsauswahl
  • Kunstwollen: The Transfer and Precarious Survival of An Artistic-Theoretical Concept in Czech Art History of the 20th Century, Slovo a smysl. Časopis pro mezioborová bohemistická studia 24/12 (2015), p. 42–49.
  • Nighthawks in The Age of Anxiety. Interpretation of the painting by Edward Hopper by means of the “Baroque Eclogue” of Wystan Hugh Auden, in: Umění/Art 3/65 (2017), p. 244–261.
  • Moderner Inhalt in manieristischer Form. Max Dvořák unter dem Einfluss Georg Simmels, in: RIHA Journal 256 (2021) (https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2021.0.81503).
  • Die Tragik in der Kunst Michelangelos als Max Dvořáks Vermächtnis in der Kunstgeschichte Hans Sedlmayrs, in: Folia historiae artium, Seria nowa 20 (2022), p. 29–39.
  • Notes on Franz Wickhoff’s School and Max Dvořák’s Italian Renaissance Studies Based on New Archival Materials, in: Journal of Art Historiography 29 (2023) (in print).