Objects in Air: Artworks and Their Outside around 1900

Art scholars, critics, and choreographers in the early 1900s studied the artwork as an actual object in real-time and space, influenced by the science of their time. Theorists such as Aby Warburg, Alois Riegl, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Rudolf Laban examined air as the material space surrounding an artwork, establishing its "milieu," "atmosphere," or "environment." This theory of unbounded form described an artwork's ecstasy or ability to stray outside its limits and engender its own space, challenging the discourse of empathy aesthetics and the modernist self-contained artwork. Margareta Ingrid Christian's work offers ways to rethink entrenched narratives of aesthetics and modernism and to revisit alternatives.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 07 June 2021
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

Margot Ingrid Christian delves into the fascinating ways in which art scholars, critics, and choreographers around 1900 approached the artwork as an actual object in real-time and space, seamlessly connected to the viewer through the very air we breathe. Theorists like Aby Warburg, Alois Riegl, Rainer Maria Rilke, and the choreographer Rudolf Laban drew on the scientific advancements of their era to examine air as the material space surrounding an artwork, establishing its "milieu," "atmosphere," or "environment." Christian explores how the external space of artworks was perceived as an aesthetic category in its own right, beginning with Rainer Maria Rilke's observation that Rodin's sculpture "exhales an atmosphere" and that Cezanne's colors create "a calm, silken air" that pervades the empty rooms where the paintings are exhibited.

Writers of this time developed an early theory of unbounded form, which described the artwork's ability to transcend its limits and create its own space. This perspective challenges the prevailing discourse of empathy aesthetics, the focus on self-projecting subjects, and the notion of the modernist self-contained artwork. For instance, Christian invites us to historicize the immersive spatial installations and "environments" that have emerged since the 1960s and to consider their roots in the turn-of-the-twentieth-century aesthetics. Throughout this beautifully written work, Christian offers insightful ways for us to reexamine entrenched narratives of aesthetics and modernism and to explore alternative perspectives.

Weight: 680g
Dimension: 161 x 235 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780226764771