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Degree

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, Art History, 1990.

Abstract

Alfred Stieglitz’s interests and his activities, both creative and catalytic, in the field of early twentieth century American art have already been documented and analyzed, but his equally important status as a photographic chemist and philosopher of science has not yet been given its due. Stieglitz’s formative years, c. 1880-1900, straddled a period of intense discovery and theoretical formulation in the sciences. A student of chemist August Wilhelm von Hofmann and physiologists Emil du Bois-Reymond and Hermann von Helmholtz in Berlin, during this period Stieglitz was also an independent reader in the physical, physiological, and biological sciences. His grasp of empiricist perceptual theory and empirio-criticism (a late nineteenth century philosophy, associated with the physicist Ernst Mach, that criticized the narrowness of empiricism when not integrated into original structures of thought) reveals that he was not a dilettante but was cognizant of key developments and figures in the history and philosophy of science. Stieglitz’s drive to excel as both a laboratory technician and proponent of Wissenschaftideologie, an ethical ideal of research fostered by German academic scientists, shows that his was a philosophy of impassioned research and discovery. His well-known intense preoccupation with his own internal drives and with sensation in general takes on new significance in light of experimental ideas that were “in the air” and known to his scientific colleagues, particularly progressive and experimental psychologists. Stieglitz formed a part of this avant-garde movement, verifying his own conclusions in the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession – his “experiment station” also called “291” – as well as in his own photographs from c. 1890 to 1910. It is from this scientific rather than strictly aesthetic vantage point that Stieglitz’s early career will be chronologically and thematically assessed. Although esoteric and speculative concerns are treated in this study, its intent is to clarify an issue in turn-of-the-century thought, not to muddy it. Such a multi-disciplinary approach is appropriate for scholarship related to this period in American art and criticism, justifiable because of the artistic, scientific and philosophical bent of some of its greatest minds, including Alfred Stieglitz.

Keywords

Alfred Stieglitz science 1880-1910

Advisor

Ellen G. Landau

Pages

559p.

Document number: case1054656549
Permalink: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1054656549

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