Blind Spots: Critical Theory and the History of Art in Twentieth-Century Germany

This book is the first to focus on the extraordinary symbiosis between Critical Theory and other discourses of the visual in the first half of the twentieth century. In four extended case studies, Frederic J. Schwartz traces the way central concepts of the aesthetics later termed “Frankfurt School” were deeply rooted in contemporary developments in painting, photography, architecture, and film, as well as psychology, advertising, and the discipline of art history as it was practiced by figures such as Heinrich Wölfflin, Erwin Panofsky, Wilhelm Pinder, and Hans Sedlmayr.

This book is the first to focus on the extraordinary symbiosis between Critical Theory and other discourses of the visual in the first half of the twentieth century. In four extended case studies, Frederic J. Schwartz traces the way central concepts of the aesthetics later termed “Frankfurt School” were deeply rooted in contemporary developments in painting, photography, architecture, and film, as well as psychology, advertising, and the discipline of art history as it was practiced by figures such as Heinrich Wölfflin, Erwin Panofsky, Wilhelm Pinder, and Hans Sedlmayr.

Frederic J. Schwartz is reader in history of art, University College London, and author of The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass Culture Before the First World War, published by Yale University Press.