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

Francesca Bottura
Centro di Ricerca Rossana Bossaglia, Università degli Studi di Verona
https://orcid.org/0009-0000-5539-3372

Volume 10, April 2026

Abstract 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 This generally ignored aspect emerges with great force from the unpublished notes Dvořák prepared for his lessons at the University of Vienna, where his archive is still preserved.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. Dvořák termed the beginning of this methodological transformation as historical Positivism, which introduced the theory of evolution into the history of art, thanks to the contributions of scholars such as Riegl. This approach can also be interpreted as a kind of ‘botany’ of art, committed to cataloguing, dissecting, and comparing the objects of study. Riegl’s Darwinianischen Evolutionslehre, or Darwinian evolutionary theory, was fundamental for the development of art history as a scientific discipline. Gradually, Dvořák’s reflection emphasises the need for a more in-depth study of creative experience, taking into account the broader history of ideas and human subjectivity. Dvořák describes the progressive abandonment of formalism in favour of a reconsideration of the emotional aspects of artworks by comparing the shift in thinking with the ideal distance between the series Les Meules (1890–1891) by Claude Monet and Das Konzert (1920–21) by Oskar Kokoschka. This essay aims to reconstruct, through Dvořák’s texts and notes, the methodological transformation underway between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the history of art, underlining his role in it but above all the characteristics of his interpretation.

Keywords Max Dvořák, Alois Riegl, Cultural Darwinism, Vienna School of Art History, methodology of the history of art, theory of evolution

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