Hegel on the “Task and Vocation” of Art History

Antonio da Correggio, The Nativity (La Notte) c. 1529–1530

Oil on canvas, 256.5 cm × 188 cm.

Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

For Hegel, the “task and vocation” of art history “consists in the aesthetic appreciation of individual works of art and in a knowledge of the historical circumstances which condition the work of art externally; it is only an appreciation, made with sense and spirit, and supported by the historical facts, which can penetrate into the entire individuality of a work of art.”[1] Like a human person, each artwork is singular and only makes sense within its historical context, so that aesthetics requires detailed knowledge not just of the history of art, but of the history of art history and criticism; “far from writing about art as an abstract metaphysician, Hegel had a number of distinguished examples of German scholarship before him when he was working on the historical framework of the Aesthetics.”[2]  Hegel remarks in the introduction to his Lectures on Fine Art that real knowledge of art requires “a precise acquaintance with the immeasurable realm of individual works of art, ancient and modern…Further, every work of art belongs to its own time, its own people, its own environment, and depends on particular historical and other ideas and purposes; consequently, scholarship in the field of art demands a vast wealth of historical, and indeed very detailed, facts” (Hegel, 1998:14).

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[1]. G. W. F. Hegel Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art (Vol. I) T. M. Knox, trans. Oxford University Press, 1998 p. 21

[2]. Michael Moran, “On the Continuing Significance of Hegel’s Aesthetics” in The British Journal of Aesthetics Vol. 21, No. 3 (Summer, 1981) p. 219