Le comte de Caylus as Art Critic: Amateur and Art Criticism in the 18th Century France

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 5-25
Author(s):  
Hangyul Kim ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Art Criticism ◽  
18Th Century

scholarly journals ‘A Supreme Fiction’: Michael Fried and Art Criticism

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-102
Author(s):  
Alison Green
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
French Painting ◽  
Supreme Fiction ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
Prior Relationship

One of the striking aspects of the trenchant legacy of Michael Fried’s ‘Art and Objecthood’ is its status as a piece of art criticism. Widely perceived as difficult and personal, philosophical and explicatory, doxa or sermon, the essay stands out. To explore its singularity, this article compares Fried’s conception of the period criticism of 18th-century French painting in his book Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (1980) and the method of criticism enacted in ‘Art and Objecthood’ (1967) which he saw as connected. The author pursues this and other crossings between Fried’s art historical writings and art criticism, tracking it to an extended endnote in Fried’s Menzel’s Realism: Art and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century Berlin (2002). ‘Art and Objecthood’ is a key essay in this story aimed at Fried’s thinking about criticism, its history, theory and practice. Doing this matters because it puts the critic in a particular relation to art and to Fried’s idea of an ‘ontologically prior relationship between painting and the beholder’.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard: The New in the Notions of “Sketchiness” and “Completeness”

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-185
Author(s):  
Elena E. Agratina
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Artistic Experience ◽  
Modern Period

The second half of the 18th century was a time of active changes in the perception of art, rethinking many concepts and phenomena. One of them was the pictorial sketch, which transformed from a preparatory stadium work into an independent, complete piece of art. Many art theorists and critics, as well as painters themselves had contributed to this rethinking. Many young artists, bored of historical painting and indifferent to all the academic principles, were searching for new media of expressiveness, using the sketch-like pictorial manner to give their works a new dynamism and an impression of “easy production”. The article is dedicated to J.-H. Fragonard (1732—1806), an artist in whose works the “sketchiness” became a conscious artistic method used in small-format pieces, in large-scale canvases, and even in panels. The use of such a technique in grand scale works is considered to be an extreme unconventionality, which, however, was not appreciated by Fragonard’s contemporaries and even by scholars of the next two centuries. Fragonard’s series of ‘Fantasy Portraits’ attracted enough investigators’ attention, but his series ‘Progress of Love’ has only recently begun to be recognized by researchers as an unusual and bold for that time artistic experience. Based on the analysis of the artist’s selected works, the author builds her original research, designed to highlight Fragonard’s special role in the evolution of art on the way from the Modern Period to Contemporary History. The relevance of the present article is caused by too little examination of this topic: minimal in Russia and relatively small in France. Besides consultation with research literature, this required the author to constantly directly refer to the 18th-century sources, such as treatises by art connoisseurs and scholars, art criticism, and catalogues of exhibitions arranged by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture or the Académie de Saint-Luc.

Analytic Approaches to Aesthetics

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lamarque
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Analytic Approach ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Aesthetics Of Nature

Aesthetics is broadly that branch of philosophy concerned with fundamental questions about the nature of beauty, the nature of art, and the principles of art criticism. Some of these questions go back to the ancient Greeks, but systematic study of the foundations of aesthetics did not begin until the 18th century. Analytic philosophers turned their attention to this branch of the subject relatively late and in the 1940s and 50s tended to be scornful of what they found (John Passmore famously wrote of the “dreariness” of aesthetics in 1951 in the journal Mind). However, in the fifty years up to the turn of the 21st century, and beyond that point, analytic approaches to aesthetics developed with considerable sophistication and there is now a huge literature on all aspects of the subject under the broad heading of “analytic aesthetics.” Other approaches exist, of course, notably that associated with Continental philosophy, which is more historically oriented. The analytic approach is rooted in the analysis of concepts (albeit increasingly informed by work in the empirical sciences) and tends to examine issues about the nature of art and the aesthetic qualities of objects in an ahistorical manner, even if noting and evaluating ideas from earlier periods. In the years since the early 1990s there has been a notable growth in attention to the individual arts (music, painting, literature, film, etc.). Important developments in the aesthetics of nature and the environment have also occurred.

Michael David Kighley Baxandall 1933–2008

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Onians
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Neural Structure ◽  
Renaissance Art ◽  
The World ◽  
Wood Sculpture

Michael Baxandall was probably the most important art historian of his generation, not just in Britain but in the world. In a series of books published between 1971 and 2003 he kept expanding the frontiers of the discipline, introducing new topics, new ways of writing, and new explanatory models, always demanding of himself and his readers an undissembling clarity of thought and expression. If art history is now a field that can hold its own with more established areas of the humanities, it is largely because Baxandall had a talent to transmit to others through the printed page the powerful intellectual resources he had built up through tireless inward reflection. These resources he applied with equal engagement to Italian Renaissance art criticism, German wood sculpture, the understanding of shadows in the 18th century, the planning of the Forth Bridge, and the functions of the neural structure of the retina.

EPITAFIES OF THE RELATIVES OF HADJI IBRAHIM AL-URADI AS A SOURCE ON THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE SCIENTIST AND ON THE HISTORY OF GIDATL

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 13-21
Author(s):  
Sh M Khapizov ◽  
M G Shekhmagomedov
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Medieval History ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
Arabic Script ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Culture ◽  
The Look ◽  
Cultural Monuments ◽  
Written Sources

The article is devoted to the study of inscriptions on the gravestones of Haji Ibrahim al-Uradi, his father, brothers and other relatives. The information revealed during the translation of these inscriptions allows one to date important events from the history of Highland Dagestan. Also we can reconsider the look at some important events from the past of Hidatl. Epitaphs are interesting in and of themselves, as historical and cultural monuments that needed to be studied and attributed. Research of epigraphy data monuments clarifies periodization medieval epitaphs mountain Dagestan using record templates and features of the Arabic script. We see the study of medieval epigraphy as one of the important tasks of contemporary Caucasian studies facing Dagestani researchers. Given the relatively weak illumination of the picture of events of that period in historical sources, comprehensive work in this direction can fill gaps in our knowledge of the medieval history of Dagestan. In addition, these epigraphs are of great importance for researchers of onomastics, linguistics, the history of culture and religion of Dagestan. The authors managed to clarify the date of death of Ibrahim-Haji al-Uradi, as well as his two sons. These data, the attraction of written sources and legends allowed the reconstruction of the events of the second half of the 18th century. For example, because of the epidemic of plague and the death of most of the population of Hidatl, this society noticeably weakened and could no longer maintain its influence on Akhvakh. The attraction of memorable records allowed us to specify the dates of the Ibrahim-Haji pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, as well as the route through which he traveled to these cities.

Nature, poetry and medicine in late 18th century England: a unified perspective of Erasmus Darwin

1976 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 537-537
Author(s):  
M. McNEIL
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Nature Poetry ◽  
Medicine And Philosophy ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
Medical Theory ◽  
Lunar Society Of Birmingham ◽  
Organizational Principles ◽  
Century Science ◽  
Erasmus Darwin

Erasmus Darwin was the focus and embodiment of provincial England in his day. Renowned as a physician, he spent much of his life at Lichfield. He instigated the founding of the Lichfield Botanic Society, which provided the first English translation of the works of Linnaeus, and established a botanic garden; the Lunar Society of Birmingham; the Derby Philosophical Society; and two provincial libraries. A list of Darwin's correspondents and associates reads like a "who's who" of eighteenth century science, industry, medicine and philosophy. His poetry was also well received by his contemporaries and he expounded the evolutionary principles of life. Darwin can be seen as an English equivalent of Lamarck, being a philosopher of nature and human society. His ideas have been linked to a multitude of movements, including the nosological movement in Western medicine, nineteenth century utilitarianism, Romanticism in both Britain and Germany, and associationist psychology. The relationships between various aspects of Darwin's interests and the organizational principles of his writings were examined. His poetical form and medical theory were not peripheral to his study of nature but intrinsically linked in providing his contemporaries with a panorama of nature. A richer, more integrated comprehension of Erasmus Darwin as one of the most significant and representative personalities of his era was presented.

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