Publication in issue No. 63 | Fall/Winter 2024 of the journal CRITIQUE D’ART of an interview with Rémi Mermet and Giovanna Targia about the Principles of Art History. The interview was conducted with David Zerbib.
Published in 1915, the Principles of Art History by Heinrich Wölfflin features among the most influential works of the 20th century for that discipline: it has been reissued many times during the author’s lifetime and beyond. Since 2015, the centenary of the original publication, the Swiss art historian’s work has been the subject of renewed interest, spurring readers to reinterpret it in the light of contemporary debates. A new edition by L’Ecarquillé has just been published. At the same time, the University of Zurich has been preparing a critical edition of the author’s complete works for almost a decade, in paper and digital versions, edited by Tristan Weddigen, Oskar Bätschmann and Joris van Gastel.
We have the opportunity to revisit this emblematic figure from a critical point of view with the help of two young researchers: Rémi Mermet, FNRS postdoctoral researcher at UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles, who holds a doctorate in philosophy and art history, and Giovanna Targia, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Zurich, who holds a doctorate in art history and is a member of the editorial team for the complete works of Wölfflin. How can the “principles” of Wölfflin’s art history prove relevant today, at a time when art history is rethinking itself in the light of critical readings of Western historiography and when the very concept of its subject –art– is called into question by theoretical perspectives which relativise its significance and dissipate its specificity within a de-hierarchized relationship to cultural forms?