 |
| "Vergrößungs- und Projektionsapparat" |
Wölfflin also innovated ways of looking through his use of the slide projector:
“Also, slide projection, which by 1900 had become standard in academic art history, was not only used as a didactic instrument but as an autopoetic guide to research. For Grimm the multiplying projection had the same analytic approach as the microscope. He valued the slide projection over the naked eye for its higher standard of representation of the artist’s originality. How much Grimm relied on slides to construct art history as Bildwissenschaft can be demonstrated by the fact that he hardly cared for books. When Heinrich Wölfflin succeeded Grimm as the chair of art history in Berlin in 1901, he found 1300 publications, but 15,000 slides.
“Using these slides, Wölfflin was able to demonstrate and at the same time reflect upon his bipolar Kunstgeschlichtliche Grundbegriffe through his magical style of double projections. By developing his categories from examples of high art, Wölfflin meant them to be helpful in understanding the visual culture of whole epochs in the broadest sense. He never used the term Bildgeschichte, but he did call art history “the development of modern seeing,” which is in fact a broader and deeper concept.” (1)
1. Horst Bredekamp. “Art History as Bildwissenschaft.” Critical Inquiry 23 no. 3 (2003): 421-422.
