More than modern, contemporary. Riegl and the protection of cultural heritage in the last decade

Abstract

Although it has been more than a century since its publication, the Moderne Denkmalkultus still occupies a prominent place in the international culture of conservation, especially considering the global presence it has acquired in the last decade. Considered a true theoretical and methodological pillar on which were based the concepts of monument, memory and heritage, which structure the Western cultural landscape, Riegl’s thinking does not seem to have aged. Instead, it continues to offer food for thoughts, even if the coordinates of today’s global protection have well transcended the European geo-cultural borders, and refer by now to deeply changed philosophical and axiological references to the past. The reasons for this affinity between the reflection of the Austrian intellectual and the current issues of memory conservation go back essentially to the strong vanguard of his thinking: Riegl went beyond the historical-critical limits established by European culture to the theory of restoration during the 19th century and laid the foundations of a conscious and updated approach at the time, in open dialogue with a society in deep transformation and whose cultural capacity was maturing in proportion to its own development. What today still marvels of Riegl’s thinking is the relevance of his early 20th-century “theory of values” compared to the relationship between contemporary culture and objects of the past, centered on emotional, affective or intellectual reactions that stimulate the individual and the community. For these and other reasons, it may be useful to reconsider the range of discourses that still lead us to appeal to Riegl and to his Denkmalkultus, which still remains among the most cited, recalled and beloved theoretical references in the literature concerning the transmission of the memory of the past.