This first comprehensive study addresses modernity and middle ages as the two focal points in the work of the Austrian art historian Hans Sedlmayr. It is devoted to the dialectic of “Art in Crisis: The Lost Centre”, his (in)famous pamphlet against modern art, and “Die Entstehung der Kathedrale” (En.: ‘The Origin of the Cathedral‘), Sedlmayr’s major contribution to medieval studies. Its focus is on the role of the author as cultural critic. By analyzing typical cultural-critical patterns of argumentation it is possible to explain—and also to criticize—the fusion of modern and reactionary ideas, which might seem paradoxical at first sight. The book points out which kind of ideological implications do underlie art historiography and thus informs about the structures of the subject.weiterlesen