Ingeborg Reichle, "The Rise of World Art History: Ernst Grosse's Encounter with the Beginning of Art." In: Christine Guth, Melanie Trede, and Mio Wakita (eds.), Japanese Art - Transcultural Perspectives. Studies in Asian Art and Archaeology, Vol. 29. Brill, Hotei, Leiden, 2024, pp. 21-52.
The late nineteenth century witnessed the rise of a concept of art history that involved the arts of all cultures and epochs. Aimed at establishing a “World Art History” (Weltkunstgeschichte) in imperial Germany this trend coincided with a growing interest in non-Western art among scholars from various disciplines. The first comprehensive study on non-Western art was published by the German philosopher and ethnologist Ernst Grosse (1862–1927), who in later life became a well-known art collector and scholar of Chinese and Japanese art. In his early writings, published in 1891 and 1894, Grosse was concerned primarily with revealing the “laws” of human creativity by including objects of nonclassical and so-called “primitive art” within the established canon of art history. He called for the application of an “Art Science” (Kunstwissenschaft) that would engage with new methodical approaches borrowed from the field of ethnology. He also sought to expand the emerging academic discipline of Art History to subsume all forms of artistic expression.
