CONRAD FIEDLER
On Judging Works
of Visual Art
‘TRANSLATED BY HENRY SCHAEFER-SIMMERN
{AND FULMER MOOD, WITH AN INTRODUCTION:
BY HENRY SCHAEFER-SIMMERN
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
Berkeley, Los Angeles, LondonCCOPYRCITY, 1940, 1957, 47
‘CASPoRSA Lameany REPRINT 4s LOMO 1998
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PREFACE TO THE
SECOND EDITION
| ‘Tue First zormion of this book sold out
faster than I expected—though it took eight years,
The treatise is not an casy one to read and digest.
Moreover, at the time this translation first appeared,
the modern artist and his public were showing little
interest in such ideas as Fiedler grappled with, I
hardly dared look forward to the possiblity of a sec-
‘ond edition.
Nevertheless, in circles where doors are kept open
to thoughtful inquiry into the nature and meaning of
art, and where it is understood that “art can only be
‘one and the samme thing, whatever name is given to it,”
Fiedler has certainly contributed to the understand-
ing of art and of art’s relationship to life. Iam espe-
cially thankful to Sir Herbert Read for having turned
to Fiedler for “the basic theory” of his Charles Eliot
Norton Lectures delivered at Harvard University in
1953 and published in his book Icon and Idea: The
Function of Artin the Development of Human Con-
Cv]vi Preface
sciousness (Harvard University Press) in 1955. He
opens his discussion as follows:
“‘Antistic activity begins when man finds himselé
face to face with the visible world as with something.
immensely enigmatical.... In the ereation of a work.
of art, man engages in a struggle with nature not for
his physical but for his mental existence.’
“These words were written in 186 by Conrad
Fiedler, whose importance as a philosopher of art is
now beginning to be recognized outside Germany.
Fiedler was an amateur of the arts and a friend of the
most original artists of his time, such as Hans von
Marées and Adolph Hildebrand. His fragmentary
writings express, in my opinion, a profound under-
standing of the nature of art.
“At any rate, it is from Fiedler that T have taken
the basic theory of this book—the theory that art has
been, and still i, the essential instrument in the devel-
‘opment of human consciousness. The significance of
art, Fiedler held, lies in the fact that itis the particular
form of activity by which man not only tries o bring
the visible world into his consciousness, but even is
forced to the attempt by his very nature. Such an
activity, Fiedler adds, is not fortuitous, but necessary;
its products are not secondary or superfluous, but ab-
Preface vi
solutely essential if the human mind does not want
to cripple itselé”
To the end that these vitally human and mental
values may be recovered for art and artistic activity,
Fiedler’s ideas ought surely to be made known as
widely as possible. It is by such endeavors that one
may hope for the eventual disappearance of all shallow
approaches to art, of meaningless valuations imposed
upon art, and the unbearably empty phraseology that
is so often used in discussions of art and artist,
In the revision of the English for this second edi-
tion, we have tried anew to come as close as possible
to the intentions of the German text. One detail re-
quires explanation: We have decided to translate
Gestaltung a8 “Gestalt-formation.” In the early and
middle eighteenth century, Gestaltung was used by
German philosophical writers (Herder, Goethe) in
their qualitative descriptions of works of art as sclF-
sustained unities of form in which all parts receive
their artistic meaning only by their interfunctional
relationship to the whole. Later, the word Gestalt
received a special meaning in psychology, and so has,
been borrowed by English-speaking psychologists.
Now, as “Gestaltformation,” the older term will
again, we believe, be found useful in discussions of
art and artistic activity.
Biss.