From the Darwinianische Evolutionslehre to the Geisteswissenschaft: Max Dvořák on Alois Riegl’s Positivistic Art History

Besides being known for his writings on the history of art, Max Dvořák (1874–1921) reveals a refined understanding of the art-historical methodologies that preceded him and informed his own method of art-historical analysis. This generally ignored aspect emerges with great force from the unpublished notes Dvořák prepared for his lessons at the University of Vienna, where his archive is still preserved. In the manuscripts composed during his university career, between 1902 and 1921, Dvořák shows a particular interest in a methodological shift that had begun with his teacher, Alois Riegl, and Franz Wickhoff at the end of the nineteenth century and had spread widely during the first quarter of the twentieth century.