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Alois Riegl is known as a pioneer of formal analysis, but his theory of beholding contradicts formalistic preoccupations. The essay interprets this theory in the intellectual context of fin-de-siècleVienna, arguing that Riegl regarded the relationship to the beholder not as the formal means, but as the ethical purpose of art, and defended the beholder's participation against the charge of “theatricality.” Riegl's “formal” theory, too, was not hermetic, but responsive to the same intellectual challenge as the theory of beholding. A brief discussion of intellectual currents in the later twentieth century reveals the strengths and limitations of Riegl's endeavor.