Pevsner's Art History
Professor William Vaughan
Birkbeck College
Trained in Germany in the 1920s, Pevsner's approach to the History of Art was deeply coloured by the tradition of Kunstgeschichte that he had studied at Leipzig and elsewhere. Unlike many other émigrés, he did not see himself primarily as a methodological innovator. Modestly describing himself once as a 'general practitioner' he sought to modify and adapt the methods he had learned to the new tasks that he found facing him when he came to settle in Britain. He brought with him a faith in the Wölfflinian method of stylistic analysis, and subscribed to the view - held by his Doctoral supervisor at Leipzig, Wilhelm Pinder - that artistic forms were profoundly affected by geographical as well as temporal factors, He also shared with Pinder (and members of the Vienna School of Art History) a belief that art was primarily the expression of the geistig (a term commonly translated as the 'spiritual' but which can also mean the 'psychological') in man. It was such a belief that provides a central theme to his great survey Outline of European Architecture, (1943), in which the history of European Architecture is interpreted as a triumph of spatial expression - itself a symbol of the modern spirit, as he made clear in his earlier ground-breaking study Pioneers of the Modern Movement (1936). The interest in the geography of art (evident in his well-known The Englishness of English Art (1955) lay behind the two major series that Pevsner planned and published through Penguin Books in the post-War years - the Pelican History of Art, and the Buildings of England. Both had prototypes in German publications, but in a British context they set the study and understanding of History of Art on a new footing. While the Pelican History of Art provided an informed and scholarly coverage of World Art in the English language for the first time, the Buildings of England provided an uniquely extensive coverage of the architecture of the country. The 47 volumes of the Buildings of England represent a stupendous achievement - all the more so because they were largely written by Pevsner himself. He was aware that they had shortcomings - caused by the need to cover the material under great pressure of time - and aimed from the start for the series to be one undergoing constant revision. As well as these major achievements, mention should also be made of his seminal contribution to the study of the institutions of art, Academies of Art (1940), and to his studies in design history, which provided an important impetus for a new discipline. In such works he can truly be said to have been an innovator in approach as well as in the area that he covered.
