Eva Koethen: “Kunstrezeption als problematisierter Bereich der Kunstwissenschaft”,
‘Reception of arts as a problematized domain within the science of arts (aesthetics)’,
PhD dissertation (in German), University of Bochum, 1981

Subject of the relation of art history to the question of aesthetic experience in a wider historical context: Under which circumstances did the reception of art come to be a problem, and which development and expression did the awareness of the problem find?

First of all it is explained how the question of art reception arises through the formation of a public which begins to make claims upon art. In this process the aesthetic of “sentiments” becomes a focal point, entering also into the 18^th century’s art history as an indispensable requirement for gaining experience while being confronted with art. However, the integration of the subjective relation to a work of arts is vanishing in the course of scientification of art history: the 19^th century treats the reception of art reception – if at all – as an isolated matter of cultural politics. Attaching to the normative art concept of the 18^th century, art is propagated as a moralizing instrument while the (national) economic aspect is playing a more and more important part. E.g., one can elucidate through policies in art didactics how the specific of aesthetic experience can be distorted into the message of a pseudo experience of presence which ultimately does nor more then serve to compensate for a materialized version of reality.

This development was interrupted through the stance of the Romantic on the one hand, the cultural critique by J. Burckhardt on the other hand – thinkers of art history who oppose the functionalization of art as no longer emancipating. The question arises from their critique whether the art-educational programs for a broad audience might not have influenced the participation in arts in a negatively stabilizing manner. For, without reflection of the art concept in a historical context, those programs begin to render autonomous: they become aesthetic decrees which do not capture the specific existence of art.

In which way the view of the problem has narrowed becomes apparent through a confrontation with the understanding of reception within the modern arts. By being demonstrated through the example of cubism, that active seeing is, to a certain extent, a part of the picture’s structure itself, the posing of the problem gains a totally new dimension: through the constitution of a (dynamic) reality of interrelation, modern arts make possible a different view of the world. Thereupon the confrontations with the problematic of art reception of the latter modern times become a matter of relativity, while the dealing the pictural work might be brought into that deeper context in which the phenomen of arts has to be seen as a whole.