Beethoven scholar and esthetician. Wrote catalog of the collection at the Gemäldegalerie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna in 1901.
Selected Bibliography
Von alter und neuer Kunst: ausgewählte Kunstgeschichtliche Aufsätze. Vienna: C. Stephenson, 1922; Die Apokalypse in den Bilderhandschriften des Mittelalters: eine kunstgeschichtliche Untersuchung. Vienna: C. Gerold’s Sohn, 1885; Zur Kunstphilosophie, eine kritik der Schönheitslehren. Munich: Leipzig, G. Müller, 1910; Gemalte Galerien. Berlin: G. Siemens, 1896; Handbuch der Gemäldekunde. Leipzig: J .J. Weber, 1894; Kleine Galeriestudien. Bamberg: C.C. Buchner, 1892-ff; Geschichte der Wiener Gemäldesammlungen. Berlin: G.H. Meyer, 1899-1901; Verzeichniss der Gemälde in Besitze der Fran Baronin Auguste Stummer von Tavarnok (Galerie Winter). Vienna: Verlag der Sammlung-Druck v. Carl Gerold’s Sohn, 1895; Verzeichnis der Gemälde in gräflich Schönborn-Wiesentheid’schem Besitze. Pommersfelden, s. n., 1894; Zur Kritik von Dürers Apokalypse und seines Wappins mit dem Iodtenkopfe. Vienna: C. Gerold, 1884; [magazine] Blätter für Gemäldekunde. Vienna: Gerold. 1905-ff; Wiener Kunstleben, 1897-1898. Vienna: Philipp & Kramer, 1899; Beiträge zu einer Ikonographie des Todes. Vienna: s. n., 1891.
Sources
Trenk, Renate. The Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Vienna: Böhlau, 2002, pp. 10, 12.
Citation
"Frimmel, Theodor von." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/frimmelt/.
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Princeton University Byzantinist and early administrator of Dumbarton Oaks. Friend entered Princeton University in 1911, received his B. A. in 1915 and continued his graduate work in the Department of Art and Archaeology with Allan Marquand as chair. It was with medievalist Charles Rufus Morey that Friend did most of his graduate work. During World War I he served with the American Expeditionary Force in France in 1918. After his return he joined the Princeton Department in 1921, remaining on the faculty the rest of his life. He never completed the Ph.D. degree. Initially Friend researched and wrote on medieval manuscript illumination. His studies on the manuscript style of the Abbey of St. Denis, although today generally discredited, was his initial foray into the field. From there, Friend’s interest in Evangelist types in the art of both east and west, ultimately brought him into his mature area, Byzantine studies. He was elected Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 1936 and made Professor of the department. Friend built a research room at Princeton equipped with a library and photographs to better research the topics of the so-called “Manuscript Seminar,” begun by Morey and attended by scholars from throughout the world. The photographs were those taken on Princeton expeditions to Greek Orthodox monasteries on Mount Athos. Friend used the collection to make important discoveries, including tracing the work of the eighth-century theologian, John of Damascus, through a sticherarium or hymn book, concluding John as the “father” of both Byzantine music and art.
Friend became editor of the project to publish a corpus of Greek Bible manuscripts based on the “Athos photographs” a project known as the volumes, Illustrations in the Manuscripts of the Septuagint. The first volume appeared in 1941. His single publication on renaissance art, an article on Dürer, appeared in 1943. In 1943, too, he was named named a member of the Board of Scholars to Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks, a research center for Byzantine studies outside Washgington, D. C. Thus began a long and important relationship with the institution. He directed the 1944 symposium at the center, became a resident scholar between 1947-1948, and from 1948, Director of Studies. Although retaining Princeton faculty status, Friend’s devotion to Dumbarton Oaks developed it into the premier Byzantine studies center on which its current reputation is based. As an administrator, he strengthened its ties with the university, giving scholars academic rank while there, and creating junior position for newer scholars. Each spring Friend hosted distinguished seminars at Dumbarton Oaks, bringing together the best scholars on Byzantine culture. In 1946 succeeded Morey as Marquand Professor at Princeton. A three-year illness cut short his work. He died at 62.Friend’s research focused on reconstructing the origins of early manuscript illumination. His methodology followed that of C. R. Morey, his mentor and colleague. His students included James Breckenbridge (finish later under Kurt Weitzmann).
Selected Bibliography
“Portraits of the Evangelists in Greek and Latin Manuscripts.” Art Studies 5 (1927): 115-47, 7 (1929): 3-29; “Carolingian Art in the Abbey of St. Denis.” Art Studies I (1923): 67-75; “The Canon Tables of the Book of Kells.” in Medieval Studies in Memory of A. Kingsley Porter, ed. Wilhelm R. W. Koehler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1939: 611-66; “Dürer and the Hercules Borghese-Piccolomini.” Art Bulletin 25 (1943): 40-9. and DeWald, Ernest T., and Weitzmann, Kurt. The Illustrations in the Manuscripts of the Septuagint. 3 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941- .
Sources
Panofsky, Erwin. “The History of Art.” In The Cultural Migration: The European Scholar in America. Introduction by W. Rex Crawford. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953, p. 87, mentioned; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, p. 63, mentioned; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, pp. 59, 53 n. 110; [obituaries] DeWald, Ernest. “Albert Mathias Friend, Jr.” Speculum 32 (July 1957): 641; Menzies, Elizabeth. “A.M. Friend, Jr. Educator, 62, Dies.” The New York Times March 25, 1956; p. 92; “Albert Mathias Friend, Jr.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 12 (1958): 1-2.
Citation
"Friend, Albert M., Jr.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/frienda/.
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Princeton University Byzantinist and early administrator of Dumbarton Oaks. Friend entered Princeton University in 1911, received his B. A. in 1915 and continued his graduate work in the Department of Art and Archaeology with
Griechen und Römer. 1866. Volume I of Geschichte der Bildenden Künste (Karl Schnasse, see entry for full record). 2nd. ed. 8 vols. Stuttgart: Ebner & Seubert, 1866-79. Catalogs of Berlin Museum holdings in antiquities: Bausteine zur Gescheichte der griechisch-römischen Plastik oder Berlins antike Bildwerke. Die Gipsabgüsse im Neuen Museum, in historischer Folge erklärt, 1868; and Geräte und Bronzen im Alten Museum, 1871.
Sources
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 57-58.
Citation
"Friedrichs, Karl." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/friedrichsk/.
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Succeeded Eduard Gerhard as Director of Berlin Antiquarium 1868-1871, a.o. Professor at Berlin University 1859-1871. His students at Erlangen included the early study years of Reinhard Kekulé von Stradoni
New York University baroque scholar, 1935-42. He was born in Glogau, Germany, which is present-day Poland. Friedländer was the son of Sigismund Friedländer, a merchant, and Anna Joachimsthal (Friedländer). Orphaned early in life, Friedländer was raised a Lutheran, though his deceased parents had both been Jewish. He moved at age 13 to live with a sister in Berlin, where he obtained the nickname “Fridolin.” Friedländer attended the University in Berlin studying Sanscrit under Albrecht Weber (1825-1901). He also spent a semester in Geneva studying linguistics under Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). His Ph.D. on the topic of the Sanskrit language was granted in Berlin in 1898. In 1900 he traveled to London on a post-doctorate fellowship at the British Museum. The treasures of the National Gallery convinced him to become an art historian. He returned to Berlin taking courses in art history under Heinrich Wölfflin, although Berlin would not allow a second Ph.D. Friedländer wrote newspapers magazine reviews under the pseudonym “Dr. Friedrich Walter,” from 1904 onward. He traveled to Italy, and, in 1912 wrote his book on Federico Barocci which established him as an art historian. His next monograph, on Nicolas Poussin, in 1914 was the result of study in Paris. Unfortunately, a book on the same subject, published by Otto Grautoff appeared the same year, largely overshadowing his accomplishment. In 1914, too, he married Emma Cardin and became a Privatdozent at the University of Freiburg am Breisgau. The Freiburg art history department was led by the eminent medievalist Wilhelm Vöge, who had initiated the art history seminar in 1908. Friedländer’s inaugural lecture re-evaluated the Mannerist period of Italian painting in a talk entitled “Anti-classical Style of 1520.” Friedländer was a visionary here, especially considering that Wölfflin’s Grundbegriffe, which would appear the following year, still considered the last sixteenth century an ignorable period. Friedländer taught a range of courses from medieval to nineteenth-century. Among his first students was the brilliant Erwin Panofsky who eventually wrote his dissertation under Vöge in 1914. Vöge suffered a mental collapse in 1916, leaving Friedländer to carry much of the teaching load. In 1925 Friedländer published his lecture on early (Mannerist) “Anti-classicism,” a second in 1929 on later and post-Mannerism, and an primer on the early modernist movement, Von David bis Delacroix in 1932. For this, he was promoted to Nichtbeamtete Professor extraordinarius, but not full professor. Panofsky, now at the University in Hamburg and the Warburg Library, oversaw publication of a festschrift to Friedländer in 1933, despite Friedländer’s largely formalist methodological approach. Before Friedländer could retire and the festschrift printed, the Nazis dismissed Panofsky and Friedländer on “racial/Jewish” grounds. Friedländer traveled the next two years in Germany before Panofsky secured a temporary position for him at he University of Pennsylvania and at New York University’s new Institute of Fine Arts. He and another German refugee, Karl Leo Heinrich Lehmann, were given permanent appointments at NYU. In 1939, his catalog on Poussin drawings began appearing (through 1974). His articles on mannerism and anti-mannerism were translated by his students, (Mahonri S. Young and others), and circulated widely in mimeographed copies. Friedländer retired in 1942 to emeritus status. He divorced in 1943; he continued to be productive, advising students and writing until his death. His students translated Von David bis Delacroix in 1952 as From David to Delacroix. In 1955, Friedländer’s last book, Caravaggio Studies, appeared. It had started as a larger work on the artist during Friedländer’s Freiburg years. His articles on the anti-classical and post-Mannerism, again, translated by his students, appeared in 1957. His papers were donated to the Leo Baeck Institute for the Study of the History of Culture of German-speaking Jewry. Friedländer’s students included the modernists Robert Goldwater, Milton W. Brown, and Bob Rosenblum; in his own subject area, students included John P. Coolidge, Frederick Hartt, Jane Costello, Creighton E. Gilbert, Frances Huemer, Walter B. Cahn,Richard Judson, and Donald Posner. Friedländer’s reputation as an art historian is uneven. Methodologically he employed a largely formalist approach to his history which remained unaffected by other emerging methods, though he was capable of criticizing Wölfflin’s work such as Classic Art. Friedländer was among those art historians who rejected the notion of Italian Mannerism as a degenerate style, even eschewing the term “Mannerism” itself. He formulated the boundaries of Mannerism (“anti-classicism”) as beginning around 1520 and generating a second wave around 1550. Posthumously published volumes of his catalog of Poussin drawings were significantly changed by its editors, Rudolf Wittkower, who disagreed with Friedländer’s decisions on autograph works, and Anthony Blunt, who was working on a Poussin book of his own. His volume on Caravaggio revised the artist’s reputation to underscore Caravaggio’s religious seriousness. He refused to credit formally the work of his New York University students in his books (Caravaggio Studies for example), except for dedication to them.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Der Mahavrata-Abschnitt des Cankhayana-Aranaka. Berlin, 1900; Caravaggio Studies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955;”Die Entstehung des antiklassichen Stiles in der italienischen Malerei um 1520,” Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 46 (1925): 49-86; “Der antimanieristische Stil um 1590 und sein Verhältnis zum übersinnlichen,” Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg 1928-1929 (1930): 214-43, English, appearing as: Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting. New York: Columbia University Press, 1957; [two copies of the outlawed 1933 Friedländer festschrift exist at the Warburg Institute, University of London, and New York University]; From David to Dalacroix. Translated by Robert Goldwater. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952; Nicolas Poussin: A New Approach. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1964; [and Wittkower, Rudolf; Blunt, Anthony; Waterhouse, Ellis; Shearman, John; Hughes-Hallett, Richard, and Costello, Jane, eds.] Nicolas Poussin Drawings: Catalogue Raisonné. 5 vols. London: Warburg Institute, 1939-1974.
Sources
[complete bibliography, except for early newspaper exhibition reviews:] Festschrift Walter Friedlaender zum 90. Geburtstag. Kaufmann, Georg and Sauerlaender, Willibald, eds. 1965, and The Walter Friedlaender Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute, NY [letters, diaries, etc.]; “Theses and Dissertations Prepared at the Institute of Fine Arts Under the Supervision of Walter Friedlaender.” Essays in Honor of Walter Friedlaender. New York: Institute of Fine Arts, New York University [Marsyas supplement 2], 1965, pp. xi-xiii; Gilbert, Creighton. “Walter Friedlaender.” American National Biography; Posner, Donald. “Introduction.” Friedlaender, Walter. Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965, pp. xi-xix; Colin Eisler, “Kunstgeschichte American Style,” in The Intellectual Migration, ed. Fleming and Bailyn, 1969; Blunt, Anthony. Introduction [to vol. 5] Friedlaender, Walter and Blunt, Anthony. The Drawings of Nicholas Poussin. 1974; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982; pp. 84-5; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, pp. 48 mentioned, 49, 70 cited, 81 mentioned, 85 cited; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 189; Beyer, Andreas. Zehn Klassiker der Kunstgeschichte: Eine Einführung. Cologne: Dumont, 1996, pp.13-21; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 104-107; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 174-9; [obituaries:] New York Times September 8, 1966 [numerous errors].
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Citation
Lee Sorensen. "Friedländer, Walter F.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/friedlanderw/.
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New York University baroque scholar, 1935-42. He was born in Glogau, Germany, which is present-day Poland. Friedländer was the son of Sigismund Friedländer, a merchant, and Anna Joachimsthal (Friedländer). Orphaned early in life, Friedländer was r
Subject Area(s): Netherlandish and Northern Renaissance
Overview
Netherlandish art scholar and director Kaiser Friedrich Museum. Friedländer was the son of Leopold Friedländer (1832-ca.1880), a Berlin banker, and Helene Noether (Friedländer) (1843-after 1901). He began studying art history in 1891 in Munich, continuing in Florence (under August Schmarsow, and ultimately Leipzig, writing a dissertation on Albrecht Altdorfer under Anton Springer. Friedländer volunteered at the graphics collection (Kupferstichkabinett) of the Berlin State Museums under Friedrich Lippmann in 1891 and the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne between 1895-96 under Ludwig Scheibler. Through Lippmann’s recommendation, he joined the Gemäldegalerie (Paintings Department) of the Berlin State Museums in 1896 under Wilhelm Bode. He was appointed Deputy Director (immediately under Bode) in 1904, adding the Kupferstichkabinett responsibilities of the Museum in 1908. He and Bode were responsible for the great acquisitions years of the Berlin museums, with Friedländer personally donating a number of works to the Gemäldegalerie and Kupferstichkabinett. In 1924, Friedländer began publishing his magnum opus, a history of early Netherlandish painting artist by artist, which, for its detail and documentation, has never been surpassed. He succeeded Bode as Director in 1924. He and Jakob Rosenberg wrote a monograph on Lucas Cranach in 1932. His retirement age coincided with the ascension of the Nazi rise in 1933 and the proscriptions against Jews in federal employment. He left museum, working as a private expertiser for German and foreign art dealers, enjoying the protection of Nazi Reichmarshall Hermann Goering (1893-1946) whose art collection he helped advise. Friedländer emigrated to his spiritual home of Amsterdam in 1939. After the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II, an erroneous arrest was reversed through intervention of the Nazi art dealer Karl Haberstock (1878-1956) who was also working for Goering. Friedländer’s book, On Art and Connoisseurship, appeared first in English in 1942 and in German only after the war as, Von Kunst und Kennerschaft in 1946. Shortly before his death, his 1916 Von Eyck bis Bruegel was revised and edited by Fritz Grossmann and published in 1956 in English as From Van Eyck to Bruegel, Early Netherlandish Painting. Though methodologically a connoisseur-style art historian, Friedländer was a severe critic of the method of Giovanni Morelli, as was Bode. This may have been as much an anti-Austrian, anti-academician stance, since Morelli was most highly revered by the University of Vienna art historian Franz Wickhoff. Friedländer wrote that “Academicians enter the museum with ideas, art connoisseurs leave it with ideas.” (Ladis). Vienna school art historians generally were distained by the Berlin museum directors. Friedländer retorted to Erwin Panofsky, after seeing the posthumously titled book Art History as the History of the Mind (Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte), by the Vienna school (and van Eyck) scholar, Max Dvořák, that “we [in the museum world] are engaged in the physical art history” (Körpergeschichte). Friedländer’s brand of connoisseurship relied on intuition and vast experience rather than a Morellian cataloging of stylistic idiosyncrasies of an individual artist. His realm was the rarified world of the dealer and connoisseur: he never gave a public lecture (Panofsky). His interests within art, however, were wide-ranging. A monograph on the contemporary artist Max Liebermann written by Friedländer included works from Friedländer’s own collection. Other modernist art books by Friedländer included ones on Max Slevogt and the French Impressionists, of whose styles he, unlike Bode, approved. Next to Bode, Friedländer was the most consulted “art expert” in Berlin (Wendland). Many of the most important art historians of the next generation passed through his Print Room as volunteers. These included Jenö Lányi. During the last part of his life he was often compared to the other nonagenarian connoisseur art historian, Bernard Berenson, though the two had little in common. He is not related to the German-American art historian Walter F. Friedländer.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Albrecht Altdorfer der Maler von Regensburg. Leipzig, 1891; Von Eyck bis Bruegel: Studien zur Geschichte der niederländischen Malerei. Berlin: J. Bard, 1916, English, From Van Eyck to Bruegel, Early Netherlandish Painting. New York: Phaidon Publishers, 1956; Der Kunstkenner. Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1919; Die altniederländische Malerei. 14 vols. Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1924-33 and Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1935-37, English, and Veronee-Verhaegen, Nicole. Early Netherlandish Painting, 16 vols. Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1967-1976; Echt und unecht: aus den Erfahrungen des Kunstkenners. Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1929, [later appearing with Der Kunstkenner as] On Art and Connoisseurship. London: 1942, reappearing in German as, Von Kunst und Kennerschaft. Zürich: B. Cassirer und E. Oprecht, 1946; and Rosenberg, Jakob. Die Gemälde von Lucas Cranach. Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1932; Essays über die Landschaftsmalerei und andere Bildgattungen. The Hague: A. A. M. Stols, 1947, English, Landscape, Portrait, Still-life: their Origin and Development. Oxford: B. Cassirer, 1949; Heilbrunn, Rudolf M. ed., Erinnerungen und Aufzeichnungen. Mainz and Berlin: Kupferberg, 1967, English, Reminiscences and Reflections. London: Evelyn, Adams and MacKay, 1969.
Sources
Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, 47 mentioned; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 251-253, 255, 497; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 102-104; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 162-73; Ladis, Andrew. “The Unmaking of a Connoisseur.” in, Offner, Richard. A Discerning Eye: Essays on Early Italian Painting. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998, p. 7; Ridderbos, Bernhard. “From Waagen to Friedländer.” in, Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception, Research. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005, pp. 218, 240-51; Blumenreich, L. “Max J. Friedländer: Verzeichnis der Schriften” Berlin, 1927; Aan Max J. Friedländer 1867-1942 aangeboden door enkele vrienden en bewonderaars van zijn werk The Hague, 1942; Max J. Friedländer ter ere van zijn negentigste verjaardag. Amsterdam, 1957; Panofsky, Erwin. “Preface.” Friedländer, Max J. Early Netherlandish Painting. volume 1. Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1967, pp. 9-13; Sutton, Denys. “The Connoisseur as Impressionist.” Apollo 86 (1967): 70-72; Rosenberg, Jakob. “Friedlaender and the Berlin Museums.” Burlington Magazine 101 (March 1959): 83-85.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Citation
Lee Sorensen. "Friedländer, Max J.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/friedlanderm/.
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Netherlandish art scholar and director Kaiser Friedrich Museum. Friedländer was the son of Leopold Friedländer (1832-ca.1880), a Berlin banker, and Helene Noether (Friedländer) (1843-after 1901). He began studying art history in 1891 in Munich, co
J. R. Herbert Boone Professor of Humanities; Professor of Humanities and the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University, 1975- and critic. Fried began writing art criticism in his teens. While an undergraduate at Princeton University, he sought out the art critic Clement Greenberg in 1958 and the pair examined art together at galleries. Fried received his B. A. in English summa cum laude at Princeton University in 1959 (at age 20). Following graduation, he was named a Rhodes scholar at Merton College, Oxford University for 1959-1961. At Oxford he took a private course with the esthetics philosopher Richard Wollheim (1923-2003). He returned to the United States and entered Harvard University, appointed a junior fellow there for the years 1964-1968. As a graduate student, he was intensely involved in contemporary art and writing criticism. At Harvard he made the acquaintance of Stanley Cavell (b. 1926). He contributed art criticism for Art International and Arts magazine. Fried began writing for Artforum magazine in 1965 and was named a contributing editor the following year (through 1973). He became close friends with critic Barbara E. Rose and, at the birth of her daughter her husband, the artist Frank Stella, Fried acted as godfather. Fried established his art theory and criticism with a 1967 essay, “Art and Objecthood” in Artforum. It remains the essay for which he his best known. In it, he attacked minimalism as being primarily “theatrical,” i.e., relying on what he considered necessity of of being viewed, of pandering to an audience reaction (Gewen), i.e., a theater relationship, for its success. Fried instead championed artists like Stella and the color-field painters Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski and the sculptor Anthonly Caro, most of whom he knew well personally. In 1968 he was appointed assistant professor of fine arts at Harvard. His Ph.D. was granted the following year with a dissertation on Manet’s artistic sources. Fried was promoted to Associate professor in 1972 and awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the 1973-1974 year. He moved to Johns Hopkins University in 1975, presenting the Christian Gauss lectures on Criticism at Princeton the same year. In his research, Fried pushed back his subject area to the eighteenth century, developing his theory of theatricality and applying it from the 1750s to Impressionism. His 1980 book, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot consolidated this view to the art-historical world. In 1986 he was named J. R. Herbert Boone Professor of Humanities at Hopkins. Fried published subsequent books drawing upon the concept of theatricality for later art historical periods, one on Courbet in 1990, another on Manet in 1996, and a third on Adolf Menzel in 2002. The same year, 2002, he delivered the Andrew Mellon Lectures in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washgington, D. C. Fried also wrote poetry, publishing a volume, To the Centre of the Earth. His interest turned to photography in later years. Fried acknowledged Greenberg as his mentor, joining him in what Fried termed “evaluative criticism,” contending that great paintings can come in various types, but that some are better than others. The modern heir of formalist criticism, works of art, he insisted, had to be first and foremost art with other conditions secondary (Gewen). When Minimalism emerged in the 1960’s, Fried opposed it, most clearly in his essay “Art and Objecthood” and what he called Minimalism’s “theatricality,” the surrounding event of the exhibition, becoming as important work itself. His efforts to check Minimalism were ignored and Fried wrote little criticism after the 1970s in favor of an academic post. Fried’s abstract Formalism contrasted the view of Harold Rosenberg, who desparage artists like Stella. Fried’s 1990 book Absorption and Theatricality outlines two basic views of subject matter in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art. The first is where the subject-matter (sitter) is absorbed in his/her intent and not consciously regarding the viewer. The second is where the subject is clearly represented for a viewer’s gaze (the theatricality). Fried drew upon contemporary documentation to show how these two subject selections related to the events of the time. This thematic view of art was followed in subsequent books of later years on Corbet and Manet. A maverick in the art-history world, he has been embraced as much by literary critics as art historians.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Manet’s Use of the Old Masters, 1859-1865. Harvard, 1969; “Art and Objecthood.” Artforum 5 (June 1967): 12-23; Three American Painters: Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella. New York: Fogg Art Museum/Garland Pub. Co., 1965; Jules Olitski: Paintings 1963-1967. Washington, DC: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1967; Morris Louis. New York: H. Abrams, 1970; Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980; Realism, Writing, Disfiguration: on Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987; Courbet’s Realism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990; To the Center of the Earth. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994; Anthony Caro: an Exhibition of Recent Sculpture on the Occasion of the Artist’s Seventieth Birthday. New York: André Emmerich Gallery, 1994; Manet’s Modernism, or, the Face of Painting in the 1860s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996; Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998; Menzel’s Realism: Art and Embodiment in Nineteenth-century Berlin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Sources
Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 8; McQuillan, Melissa. “Art Criticism of Michael Fried.” Marsyas 15 (1970): 86-102; “Michael Fried.” Challenging Art: Artforum 1962-1974. Newman, Amy, ed. New York: Soho Press, 2000, p. 473; Cavanaugh, Joanne P., and Keiger, Dale. [interview] “Art’s Decent to ‘Theatricality,’ Looking Back on ‘the buzz’.” Johns Hopkins Magazine June 1998, http://www.jhu.edu/jhumag/0698web/arts; curriculum vitae, http://www.jhu.edu/humctr/FriedCV06.pdf; Harris, Jonathan. Writing Back to Modern Art: After Greenberg, Fried, and Clark. New York: Routledge, 2005; Gewen, Barry. “State of the Art.” New York Times Book Review December 11, 2005: 28.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Citation
Lee Sorensen. "Fried, Michael." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/friedm/.
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J. R. Herbert Boone Professor of Humanities; Professor of Humanities and the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University, 1975- and critic. Fried began writing art criticism in his teens. While an undergraduate at Princeton University, he sought out
Place Born: Elberfeld, Wuppertal, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, and Classical
Overview
Historian of ancient greek art and theater, particularly the ancient late Mycenean period. Professor at the University of Strasbourg (1913-1918) and the University of Kiel (1920-1925).
Selected Bibliography
Athens Mauern im IV. Jahrhundert v. Christ, 1905. Die Hera von Tiryns, 1912. Lenäenvasen, 1912.
Sources
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 216-217.
Citation
"Frickenhaus, August." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/frickenhausa/.
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Historian of ancient greek art and theater, particularly the ancient late Mycenean period. Professor at the University of Strasbourg (1913-1918) and the University of Kiel (1920-1925).
Subject Area(s): Florentine, Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, Renaissance, and sixteenth century (dates CE)
Overview
Art historian of the Florentine Renaissance and 16th-century art historiography. Frey attended the University of Berlin from where he wrote his dissertation on the Loggia dei Lanzi in 1884. His early publications were on the writing of the early art biographer Giorgio Vasari, an edition of the Vite between 1884 and 1887. Between 1891 and 1893, the Hungarian scholar Cornelius von Fabriczy (1839-1910) published articles in the Archivio storico italiano on two artistic biographies before Vasari, manuscripts found in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence of Antonio Gaddiano and Antonio Billi. Between that time, in 1892, Frey published edited versions of both these texts as well as the Magliabechiano manuscript (discovered in the Magliabechiano collection), known to be authored simply by “Anonimo Magliabechiano” (anonymous of Magliabechiano). In the latter 1890s, Frey’s attention turned to Michelangelo. He began what he hoped would be a critical edition of the artist’s letters in 1907 with, Michelagniolos Jungendjahre. However, none more was published. He published books on Michelangelo’s drawings between 1909 an 1911 before embarking on a project of Vasari’s work and influence. Frey’s death in 1917 left these unpublished. Some were completed by his sone, Hermann-Walther Frey. Notes about Frey’s opinions appear in the annotated catalog owned by Richard Offner, the 1937 Mostra Giottesca. Frey’s work was one of the foundation blocks for Architecture of Michelangelo (1961) of James S. Ackerman (Lein).
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Die Loggia dei Lanzi zu Florenz: eine quellenkritische Untersuchung. Berlin, 1884, published, Berlin: W. Hertz, 1885; Sammlung ausgewählter Biographien Vasari’s. Zum Gebrauche bei Vorlesungen. Berlin: Hertz, 1884-1887; Il libro di Antonio Billi esistente in due copie nelle Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze. Berlin, 1892; Il Codice magliabechiano, cl. xvii. 17, contenente Notizie sopra l’arte degli antichi e quella de’ Fiorentini da Cimabue a Michelangelo Buonarroti, scritte da Anonimo Fiorentino. Berlin: G. Grote’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung 1892; Die Dichtungen des Michelagniolo Buonarroti. Berlin : G. Grote, 1897; Michelagniolos Jungendjahre. volume one of, Michelagniolo Buonarroti: Quellen und Forschungen zu Geschichte und Kunst. Berlin: K. Curtius, 1907 [no more published]; and Frey, Hermann-Walther. Der literarische Nachlass Giorgio Vasaris. 2 vols. Munich: Georg Müller, 1923-1930.
Sources
Southorn, Janet. “Frey, Karl.” Dictionary of Art 11: 770; mentioned, Ladis, Andrew. “The Unmaking of a Connoisseur.” in, Offner, Richard. A Discerning Eye: Essays on Early Italian Painting. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998, p,19, note 1 (as “Fabriczy”); Lein, Edgar. “James S[loss] Ackerman: The Architecture of Michelangelo.” Naredi-Rainer, Paul von. Hauptwerke der Kunstgeschichtsschreibung. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner, 2010, p.1.
Citation
"Frey, Karl." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/freyk/.
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Art historian of the Florentine Renaissance and 16th-century art historiography. Frey attended the University of Berlin from where he wrote his dissertation on the Loggia dei Lanzi in 1884. His early publications were on the writing of the early a
Scholar of Renaissance and Baroque art in Austria and Italy, Nazi collaborator during World War II. Frey studied (practicing) architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna. In 1911, the second-Vienna School art historian Max Dvořák took him as his assistant in the Austrian monument conservation bureau. Dvořák encourage Frey to study art history, and Frey wrote his dissertation in 1915 (under Dvořák) on Bramante’s plan for St. Peter’s. In addition to Dvořák, other Vienna-school leaders, Julius Alwin von Schlosser and Schlosser’s nemesis, Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski also exerted tremendous influence on Frey. In 1929 he published his controversial Gotik und Renaissance whose subtitle was “the principles of a modern worldview.” In it, he asserted that gothic art is perceived over time (in a succession) whereas the renaissance is experienced simultaneously. He was appointed professor of Art History at Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) in 1931. In 1938, Frey authored the article “Die Entwicklung nationaler Stile in der mittelalterlichen Kunst,” connecting national characteristics with style. After the invasion of Poland by Germany in 1939, Frey was one of three leading professors selected by the Nazi high command to validate Poland as a “Teutonic land” deserving of German invasion and to rewrite Polish history without Jewish involvement. Frey’s 1941 book, Krakau, denied any Slavic influence in the art or culture. Likewise, his 1942 guide to the city of Lublin, one of the oldest Jewish communities in Poland, mentions Jews only once. Frey was interrogated by the OSS and relieved of his position in 1945. He returned to Austria to work in monuments preservation office in Vienna again. In 1951 he moved to Stuttgart as professor of art history at the Technische Hochschule. His post-war research involved earlier renaissance figures (Giotto) as well as Titian, Michelangelo and Rembrandt. His son, Gerhard Frey (1915-) was also a professor and edited his father’s writings. Methodologically, Frey demonstrates the influence of the multiple Vienna-school scholars under whom he studied and worked. His allegiance to documentary evidence is closest to Schlosser. His theoretical view of space and time is akin to the theoretics of Dvořák. To the unorthodox Strzygowski, Frey borrowed his interest in interdisciplinary methods, and unfortunately, a predilection for assigning national/ethnic characteristics to art. In Gotik and Renaissance, Frey suggests that the Renaissance introduced a closed space (linear perspective) where figures are instantaneously comprehensible in their enclosure. By contrast, Gothic painting and sculpture requires “reading” to construct the scene by the view. This ingenious view of two art epochs draws much from Lessing’s view that the visual arts are static and the arts of literature, temporal. Renaissance and baroque architecture were the thrust of his research as well as local history books on Austria in addition to his infamous Krakau and Lublin. His interest in theories of art and methodologies makes his work of lasting value. Frey’s writing on style and African and Eurasian cultures shows the influence of Tübingen art historian Konrad von Lange. Joseph Frank’s “Spatial Form in Modern Literature (1945) and W. J. T. Mitchell, (1980) employs this theory directly. The work of the medievalist Miriam S. Bunim (1912-1986) also draws upon Frey’s theory. Frey’s intent was to combine different disciplines into a philosophy of art which could make use of multiple approaches. It remained uncompleted at the time of his death.
Selected Bibliography
[complete bibliography:] “Dagobert Frey: Verzeichnis seiner Werke.” österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege 16 (1962): 154-7; [dissertation:] Bramantes St. Peter entwurf und seine apokryphen. Vienna: Anton Schroll & Co., 1915; and Titzenthaler, Edgar, ed. Krakau. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1941; Michelangelo-Studien. Vienna: Kunstverlag A. Schroll, 1920; Johann Bernhard von Erlach: eine Studie über seine Stellung in der Entwicklung der Wiener Palastfassade. Vienna: E. Hölzel, 1923; Architecture of the renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michael Angelo. The Hague: G. Naeff, 1925; Architettura barocca. Rome: Socità editrice d’arte illustrata,1926, 1925; Gotik und Renaissance als Grundlagen der modernen Weltanschauung. Augsberg: B. Filser, 1929, English excerpt (chapter 2), “Gothic and Renaissance.” Sypher, Wylie, ed. Art History: An Anthology of Modern Criticism. New York: Vintage, 1963, pp. 154-172; and Ginhart, Karl, eds. Die Kunstdenkmäler österreichs (Dehio Handbuch). Vienna: A. Schroll, 1933ff.; “Die Entwicklung nationaler Stile in der mittelalterlichen Kunst des Abendlandes.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 16 (1938): 1-74; “Ein entwurf Giulianos da Sangallo für das gestuhl in der palazzo Medici-Riccardi. Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 5 (July 1939): 197-202; Kunstwissenschaftliche Grundfragen: Prolegomena zu einer Kunstphilosophie. Vienna: R. M. Rohrer, 1946; Grundlegung zu einer verglichenden Kunstwissenschaft: Raum und Zeit in der Kunst der afrikanisch-eurasischen Hochkulturen. Vienna: Margarete Friedrich Rohrer Verlag, 1949; “Wiener Schule der Kunstwissenschaft.” in Dagobert Frey, 1883-1962: eine Erinnerungsschrift. Kiel: Kunsthistorische Institut der Universität Kiel,1962; Frey, Gerhard, ed. Manierismus als europäische Stilerscheinung: Studien zur Kunst des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1964; Frodl, Walter and Frey, Gerhard, eds. Bausteine zu einer Philosophie der Kunst. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976.
Sources
Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, p.154 mentioned; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 97; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p 191; Lachnit, Edwin.”Frey, Dagobert.” Dictionary of Art 11: 769; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 100-101; Weinreich, Max. Hitler’s Professors. New York: Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1946, pp. 84, 193; “Dagobert Frey.” Sypher, Wylie, ed. Art History: An Anthology of Modern Criticism. New York: Vintage, 1963, p. 153; Gensbaur-Bendler, Ulrike. “Dagobert Frey: Lebensphilosophische Grundlagen seiner Kunsttheorie.” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgechichte 42 (1989): 53-79.
Citation
"Frey, Dagobert." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/freyd/.
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Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Scholar of Renaissance and Baroque art in Austria and Italy, Nazi collaborator during World War II. Frey studied (practicing) architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna. In 1911, the second-Vienna School art historian M
