부르크하르트 미술사 연구의 특징

The Characteristics of Study of Burckhardt s Art History

Burckhardt recognized the 19th century as the age of crisis and he thought that new historical view and a method of study were needed to overcome the crisis. That was why that he denied the method of a rigid historical material criticism by Ranke that was a method of historical study in the 19th century of German. At that time Burckhardt thought that a method of historical study ought to meet the ideology of scientific and industrial development with the change of the times. So, his emphasis was rather placed on the interpretation and the expression of historical material than discovering and examinating the genuineness of it. Also he had concern for the background and the idea of the times in historical material. For him, to understand the times was more important than to describe it. It seemed that his view was different from the method of cultural history at that time but that was similar to historical view by Humbolt. Perhaps more than any other cultural artifact, the genre of historical painting best articulated the aesthetic preferences of the desire to express great historical moments, as well as its openly didactic politicization, realism had found its most potent form of expression. However, according to Burckhardt at least, the overwhelming passion for realism was made at a cost; in its name idealism was sacrificed, and the harmony which characterized the truly sublime spirit of individual creativity was lost. He thought a ideal historian to have sensitivity and imagination for understanding what was its true mature. Burckhadt s historical study connected with not history for study but history for education of the public. Needless to say, his aim was not the public made meet the needs of the times but their lost sensitivities and imaginations in the process of industrialization inspired them again. So his lecture continued in Pedagogium, and he thought that a study of high-class culture was the proper of preserving humanistic culture.