French Literature Reviews - 2026

A. Riegl, The Modern Cult of Monuments (new ed.)
Art and Visual Culture

Aloïs Riegl, Le Culte moderne des monuments (new edition)
Its Essence and Genesis

revised and expanded edition

Translated by Daniel Wieczorek

07/03/2013

Paris: Seuil, Hors collection, Literary Essays

176 pages - €19.00 (incl. VAT)

Publisher's Description

The first French translation of Aloïs Riegl’s masterpiece, Le Culte moderne des monuments, was published by Éditions du Seuil 29 years ago. The distinction the historian was the first to draw between the monument—an artifact with a universal cultural purpose—and the concept of the historical monument—a designation unique to Western culture—anticipated by half a century Claude Lévi-Strauss’s diagnosis on the impossibility of a global culture (“There is not, and there cannot be, a global culture,” Race and History).

At the same time, this distinction invalidated the erasure of both terms, “monument” and “historical monument,” in favor of the term “heritage,” endorsed and adopted by UNESCO (World Heritage Convention, 1972) following André Malraux, ultimately leading to the museumification and subsequent commodification of this so-called heritage.

Since then, the rapid pace of globalization, driven by information technology, has only accelerated, lending Riegl’s warning an even greater depth and urgency today.

Aloïs Riegl (1858–1905) was an Austrian art historian. Having directed several departments of the Vienna Museum of Applied Arts at a very young age, he had just been appointed president of the Commission for Historical Monuments when he wrote this book. It was in this capacity that he addressed—as a theorist, yet one deeply concerned with practical solutions—the questions raised under the title of The Modern Cult of Monuments.

Aloïs Riegl was a central figure of the Vienna School of art history, a movement renowned for formalist analysis and a rigorous approach to the evolution of artistic styles. Originally written when Riegl presided over the Austrian Commission for Historical Monuments, this text addresses the practical and theoretical dilemmas of preservation. By contrasting the intentional monument with the unintentional historical relic, Riegl laid foundational concepts for modern heritage studies, examining how societies assign value to material culture across different historical epochs.

This revised and expanded edition of Le Culte moderne des monuments offers contemporary readers a vital framework for questioning modern preservation practices. It will particularly interest students and scholars of art history, cultural heritage, architecture, and museology who seek to understand the ideological roots of UNESCO-led conservation. The volume provides sharp intellectual tools to analyze how globalization and commercialization continue to transform our relationship with historical artifacts and public space.