The Concept of Structure and the Work of Art in the Structuralist Art History of Hans Sedlmayr in Comparison with the Structural Aesthetics of Jan Mukařovský
AbstractJosef Vojvodik offers a detailed and highly original study of structuralism based on a comparison between the art historian Hans Sedlmayr and the Czech theorist Jan Mukařovský. Both produced theories of general aesthetics developed in a series of three phases ultimately focused on a central concept: the “explicit character” for Hans Sedlmayr and the “semantic gesture” for Jan Mukařovský. Josef Vojvodik explains the key concepts of their works, such as the importance of gestalt theory and of gestalt psychology, the key role of semantics, the Macchia colored spot theory and the process of decomposition, and the significance of noetic understanding. The author concludes his text with an interrogation of Jan Bakos’s comparison of the Prague Linguistic Circle and the New Viennese School of art history.