Freedom from theory? An attempt to analyse Sten Karling’s views on (Estonian) art history

Abstract

This article focuses on a Swedish-born art historian Sten Ingvar Karling who was a professor in the Estonian national University of Tartu from 1933 to 1940. Karling published a great number of texts on local art history that were based on substantial archival inquiry, careful observation and stylistic systematisation of works of art. Karling’s discussions about the nature of art were brief and he hardly stressed the need for theoretical self-reflection. It is, however, obvious that his presentation and evaluation of artistic material was theory based. His ideas of art as an expression of 'will of art' and 'spirit of the time' and his views about change of styles mostly originated from the Vienna school of art history. At the same time he was a promoter of the concept of Baltic-Nordic artedominium, the construction that confronted the concept of German-dominated artistic past of the Baltic countries. Thus Karling’s logic of the 'construction of (Estonian) heritage' was coherent with the aim to strengthen one's own national identity through a new positive art historical narrative that took place intensively in the whole of Europe over the 1920-1930s.