Arnold Hauser (art historian)

Arnold Hauser (8 May 1892 in Timişoara, Temes County – 28 January 1978 in Budapest) was a Hungarian art historian who was perhaps the leading Marxist in the field. He wrote on the influence of change in social structures on art. His The Social History of Art (1951) argued that art—which, after a paleolithic period of naturalism, began as "flat, symbolic, formalized, abstract and concerned with spiritual beings"—became more realistic and naturalistic as societies became less hierarchical and authoritarian, and more mercantile and bourgeois (Harrington).

Writings

• 1951: Sozialgeschichte der Kunst und Literatur (The Social History of Art and Literature)
• 1958: Philosophie der Kunstgeschichte (The Philosophy of Art History)
• 1964: Der Manierismus. Die Krise der Renaissance und der Ursprung der modernen Kunst (Mannerism: The Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origin of Modern Art)
• 1974: Soziologie der Kunst (The Sociology of Art)
• 1978: Im Gespräch mit Georg Lukács kleiner Sammelband mit drei Interviews und dem Essay „Variationen über das tertium datur bei Georg Lukács“