WORRINGER, Wilhelm | Abstraktion und Einfühlung

Munich: R. Piper and Co Verlag, 1919.

8vo.; text annotated in pencil throughout in the hand of Hans Richter; age-toned; gently warped with a few leaves torn, no text affected; notes in pencil on front endpaper; illustrated brown boards stamped in dark brown and black; mildly rubbed; bumped. 

Later edition. Signed by Hans Richter on the title page. 

Wilhelm Worringer (1881–1965) was a German art historian known for his theory of abstract art, which questioned what he described as “the one-sidedness and European-Classical prejudice of our customary historical conception and valuation of art.” First presented as a dissertation in 1907, Abstraktion und Einfühlung was published as a book in 1908. In the book, Worringer makes a distinction between two kinds of artistic expressions – the art of abstraction and the art of empathy, while providing a comprehensive psychological explanation of both. If the art of empathy deals with organic representation, which provides a recognizable spatial illusion of reality, abstraction is associated with inorganic geometric stylization. Worringer argues that the former is presupposed by the fact that “aesthetic enjoyment is objectified self-enjoyment. To enjoy aesthetically means to enjoy myself in a sensuous object diverse from myself, to empathize myself into it.” Abstract art in its turn suggests another kind of aesthetic enjoyment – that one of alienation from an “anxious relationship” with the world. Regular abstract forms, suggests Worringer, are: “therefore, the only ones and the highest, in which man can rest in the face of the vast confusion of the world-picture.” 

Having analyzed diverse cultures and historical periods, Worringer was one of the first to introduce the idea that abstraction contributed to the interest of non-European cultures among avant-garde artists, and was particularly influential for German expressionists. This copy was given as a present to the artist and experimental filmmaker Standish Lawder by the German Dadaist Hans Richter, who made extensive annotations to the text and the front endpaper. 

Held with autograph note by Standish Lawder. Undated. 8vo.; recto only. Indicates source of gift.