The Vienna School of Art History (Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte) was the development of fundamental art-historical methods at the University of Vienna. This school was not actually a dogmatically unified group, but rather an intellectual evolution extending over a number of generations, in which a series of outstanding scholars each built upon the achievements of their forerunners, while contributing their own unique perspectives. Essential elements of this evolution became fundamental for modern art history, even if the individual methods can today no longer claim absolute validity.
A characteristic trait of the Vienna School was the attempt to put art history on a "scientific" ("wissenschaftlich") basis by distancing art historical judgements from questions of aesthetic preference and taste, and by establishing rigorous concepts of analysis through which all works of art could be understood. Nearly all of the important representatives of the Vienna School combined academic careers as university teachers with curatorial activity in museums or with the preservation of monuments.
The concept of a Viennese "school" of art history was first employed by the Czech art critic and collector Vincenc Kramář in 1910; it attained general currency following articles published by Otto Benesch in 1920 and by Julius von Schlosser in 1934. In the following entry it has only been possible to make cursory mention of the most important representatives of the school.
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